Glyndebourne’s ‘Tosca’: brutal yet sublime

“A shabby little shocker” is how one critic once described Puccini’s Tosca, a comment that strongly reflects Glyndebourne’s new staging. The company has produced an explosive production if you judge by the number of gunshots, yet it all started in an orthodox way, with Cavaradossi in a church painting a picture of the Madonna. When the chief of police Scarpia enters we suddenly feel fear and revulsion. There is more than a hint here of totalitarianism under his ruthless hedonism, and I found myself thinking of modern cruelties in a time of military conflict, which is unsurprising since this opera was originally set in the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

This first ever Glyndebourne production of Tosca by Ted Huffman, however, is set in the early 1940s, another period of appalling warfare. Brutality is the running theme from the first moments in church when some poor guy is  being literally kicked around by military clad officers, and the final scene is horrendous. No spoilers but you need to be prepared for gunshots and cold blooded murder meted out to anyone who gets in the way. Almost incongruously the second act is set in a dining establishment used by the dictatorial elite, and the casual cruelty of the elegantly clad women who disdain Tosca herself typifies the complete absence of normal feelings in the ruling clique. These people are a self-appointed mafia with no care at all for the people they rule over.

Yet the music was sublimely performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with excellent choral singing in the church under the baton of Robin Ticciati. As a beautifully voiced Tosca, Caitlin Gotimer appears very simply dressed in Act I, but in Act II more sumptuously as the opera singer she represents, and although her final moments do not have the same drama that Puccini intended, Huffman clearly has in mind the nasty little shocker of true verismo opera. It works.

Matteo Lippi’s Cavaradossi was richly and passionately sung, contrasting well with the cold command of Vladislav Sulimsky as Scarpia. Excellent supporting cast with Kristian Lindroos as the former consul and escaped prisoner Angelotti, Didier Pieri as Scarpia’s henchman Spoletta, Michael Ronan in the bass role of another henchman Sciarrone, and superb stage presence from Federico De Michelis as the Sacristan, helping to generate the superiority of the church before mendacious forces of the law sweep divinity aside.

If you want the warmth of a beloved staging of Tosca, the coldness of modern reality may not appeal, but then this is supposed to be a “shocker” — and it is. See it if you can.