Tosca is an opera that has all the hallmarks of Puccini at his tear-jerking best. It has a story with a dramatic beginning, a conflict-ridden middle and a tragic end. It has glorious music with two of the composer’s best arias. And it offers directors all sorts of opportunities to link the drama to current concerns. So this Welsh National Opera production hits the ground running with a contemporary setting, fine singers and eye-catching designs. But unfortunately this performance in Bristol did not quite make the grade.
Floria Tosca is a singer who performs for royalty. She loves the artist Cavaradossi who has radical views – but she has aroused the lust of Scarpia, Chief of Police. An escaped political prisoner comes across Cavaradossi in a church where he is painting a Madonna and the artist impetuously decides to hide him at his villa. Scarpia and his thugs find clues that this is what has happened and Cavaradossi is brought in for questioning and tortured. Scarpia then summons Tosca, makes her watch the torture on a live stream laptop, and blackmails her into revealing Cavaradossi’s secret. He is brought back to Scarpia’s room, gives way to a revolutionary outburst, and is condemned to death. Scarpia demands sex with Tosca as the price for releasing Cavaradossi. She agrees but stabs him before he can violate her. But, in the final act, Scarpia’s posthumous treachery leads to the death of Tosca and her lover.
The formidable Natalia Romaniw, whose early career was nurtured by WNO, sings the role of Floria Tosca. She has become the complete star soprano with superb vocal powers, equally at home with the quieter romantic passages and the dramatic tragic moments. Her Cavaradossi is Andres Presno who gives a rather macho version of Cavaradossi – more soldier than painter – and who overdoes the volume at a couple of important moments. Dario Solari is a sinister Scarpia and makes the most of the wonderful entrance Puccini has written for him. But he ran out of steam in the second act and the final confrontation with Tosca was disappointing. In the smaller roles James Cleverton impresses as Angelotti, the escaped prisoner and Alun Rhys-Jenkins, from the WNO chorus, is an effectively brutal Spoletta. And the children, playing the riotous choristers about to sing a celebratory mass, are excellent. And a special word of praise for the WNO orchestra, conducted by Gergely Madaras – the cellos were particularly fine and the whole performance was spell-binding despite the reduced score they used.
Director Edward Dick, in a production originally commissioned by Opera North, sets the work in a contemporary police state – plenty to choose from these days. This leads to some fine dramatic effects, including the clever device of having Tosca watch the torture of her lover streamed on a laptop. In the first act, Cavaradossi painting a small section of the Madonna, to be fitted into a ceiling cupola in the second act, is a telling touch. But in that second act, to have Scarpia’s office presented as a bedroom dominated by a four poster bed is a step too far – the fact that he is a sadist and rapist doesn’t need such heavy-handed emphasis. In the third act, the cupola turns into a symbolic ring at the back of the stage and it is through this object that Tosca makes her final dramatic exit ….spectacular but puzzling.
Tosca never fails to scale the dramatic heights and this performance in Bristol was never less than engrossing, with a very fine Tosca in Natalia Romaniw. But with more persuasive performances from the two male leads, and without the bed, it could have been an unqualified success.
Composer: Giacomo Puccini
Libretto: Giacosa and Illica
Conductor: Gergely Madaras
Director: Edward Dick
Performers incl: Fiona Harrison-Wolfe, Andres Presno, Dario Solari
Running time: 2 hours 40 Minutes
Dates: until 18 October
Photo credit: Dafydd Owen