Blink and you'd miss it. But all eyes were on soprano Cynthia Lawrence in the spell-binding final moments of Tosca at the Albert Hall last night.

Puccini's shocked and shocking heroine pounded up a steep flight of steps then plunged 20 feet in full view. Spontaneous applause swelled into loud cheers when, to everyone's relief, she appeared to take her bow.

Nothing like this happened when David Freeman's perceptive and handsome in-the-round staging, mounted by Raymond Gubbay, was new nearly a decade ago.

Tosca's suicide jump is one of the most famous, and most often botched, moments in opera with stories of tripping, floating, parachuting divas, sometimes rebounding into view, Mary Poppins style.

Most just teeter and disappear off the back of the stage. Instead the American Lawrence, once a keen gymnast and high-jumper, capped a convincing performance with a moment of dangerous sport. Paula Deligatti, with whom she shares the role, will play safe and use a stunt double.

Yet Tosca, for all its massive popularity, is the hardest choice for arena opera. Most of it is intimate, punctuated by swift moments of high drama: Scarpia's murder, Cavardossi's torture and shooting, Tosca's leap. The first act can be puzzling, especially if sung in only partly audible English.

There are few crowd opportunities though the grand Te Deum scene, with scurrying choir boys and processing priests swinging incense, made a powerful impact.

If the Albert Hall gives a good impression of a Roman church or castle ramparts, it fares less well trying to shrink to Scarpia's private study.

However beguilingly nasty Peter Sidhom was as the evil Chief of Police, the vital claustrophobia of this ugly scene was never achieved.

These are minor cavils. Freeman and designer David Roger could hardly have done a better job and the Napoleonic setting looks magnificent. Amplification is almost unnoticeable.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, under Peter Robinson's at times ponderous baton, played with passion. All the lead singers, including Joseph Wolverton's Cavaradossi, are accomplished if prone to coarseness.

Best of all, typically of a Gubbay enterprise, this Tosca reaches a totally different audience from the usual ENO or Covent Garden crowd - unpretentious, enthusiastic, determined to enjoy a good show and boo the villain.

They even swap impressions in the bar, which in opera circles could be counted a subversive activity. On with the revolution.