It was a glitzy and eccentrically dressed (the audience, that is) first night for English National Opera’s brand-spanking-new production of Tosca. There was an excitement in the air. The House felt it was going to see something special, and indeed it did.
As an aspiring librettist of a political opera (no names yet, no pack drill) I have a particular interest in Puccini’s Tosca, a powerful drama written by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica (in this production in a translation by Amanda Holden) and after a play by Victorien Sardou. Tosca was originally set in Rome in 1800 amid the Napoleonic Wars but written a century later. I refer to ‘Puccini’s Tosca’ since opera credits inevitably prefer the composer, but in the case of Tosca the drama, the love, the self-sacrifice and the assumed privilege of brutal power are at least as significant as the music.
When opera companies stage Tosca, as they do relentlessly because it is a great opera, they frequently try to market it to non-opera buffs with the strapline ‘a thriller’. In traditional productions, with the drama and lyricism of the music often overwhelming the often twee and stilted text, the description can be a tad misleading.
Not so in this production. However many times you have seen Tosca I guarantee you will be kept on the edge of your seat courtesy of Holden’s well-regarded text, originally translated for Raymond Gubbay’s 1999 arena production at the Royal Albert Hall, the reimagined setting and direction by Annilese Miskimmon, and the outstanding and passionate performances by Axelle Fanya as the singer Floria Tosca, Chaz’men Williams-Ali as the painter and Tosca’s lover Mario Cavaradossi, and Christopher Purves as Chief of Police Scarpia.
The setting is now a concert hall in an authoritarian state in 20th-century Eastern Europe which is under threat of invasion. Cavaradossi is painting a fresco within the hall. Workers and musicians and a group of children come and go as Alaric Green’s Angelotti, the rebel leader, seeks sanctuary after his escape from prison. Tosca is due to sing later, and she visits Cavaradossi. Her jealousy at the thought of her boyfriend painting another woman he has seen visiting the religious shrine in the hall is, in this staging, injected with humour, fun and wit. My one quibble was why there was a religious shrine in a concert hall. Obviously, the religiosity in the original text must be accommodated (Act 1 was originally set in a church), and the Sacristan, the keeper of the shrine, played by an excellent Robert Hayward, is now a worker rather than a priest. However, I give dramatic licence to the director to put a shrine there if he wants to!
Scarpia, with his fascistic leather-jacketed secret police and his uniformed and heavily armed troops, is on the prowl for the rebel leader. Their behaviour is brutal and shocking. Angelotti’s sister Atavanti, only referenced in the text, is now shown being arrested, dragged and beaten. Scarpia’s taunting of both Cavaradossi and Tosca is accompanied by a destructive rant of open hostility to the culture and civilisation the concert hall represents. When Cavaradossi is arrested, his torture and Tosca’s despairing cries are visceral.
The humour in the interchanges between Cavaradossi and Tosca in the first act contrasts with the utter brutality and naked power represented on stage thereafter, leading to a startling finale ultimo which I and other critics have taken an oath not to reveal.
Scarpia, in this production, is more than a cartoon villain. Purves, in his debut role as the Police Chief, has a commanding presence with his fine and crystal-clear bass-baritone. His mere appearance is threatening, and in a terrific acting performance he is devilishly sly in laying the ground, Iago-like, to procure Tosca’s jealousy, his craven desires equally divided between wanting to persecute Cavaradossi and lusting after Tosca.
The French soprano, Fanya’s Tosca is a brilliant imagining of the title character. She totally inhabits the role. Her lyrical and dramatic voice is a delight and the vivid intensity of her performance quite something to behold. Her Act 2 aria, “Vissi d’arte” (translated as “I lived for art, I lived for love”), lamenting her cruel fate and asking God why she is being punished, was a thing of great beauty.
Fanya is well matched in voice and performance by Williams-Ali, the 37-year-old tenor from St. Louis, MO, and there is, in this vividly painted drama of love, tragedy and cruelty, an authenticity in their relationship, especially so when he is brought, pained and tortured before Tosca by Scarpia.
The setting by Rosanna Vize replicated the great concert halls of old Europe, once grand but often, post-war, reduced to rubble, as is this concert hall.
The fine ENO Orchestra under the baton of Ben Glassberg gives a dynamic reading of the score. Listening to it again reminded me how modern Tosca really is. The text is conversational; the orchestral bridges and underscoring could easily be a modern movie soundtrack.
This Tosca is an opera for our time. It is a brilliantly reimagined production and as ‘a thriller’ it delivers with punch, power and performances that must rank it among the great Toscas.
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