Music and politics: the triumph of ‘Tosca’
This new season for the Royal Opera started with protests outside the House. I agree with their passion against Russia’s war on Ukraine, but the Opera House can do nothing about it. They had hired Norwegian soprano Lisa Davidson in the title role of Tosca , but as she is now pregnant with twins they needed a replacement. World class singers are booked years in advance, so they did rather well to engage the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko as her replacement. She knows the role and has sung it in the world’s great opera houses, so what’s not to like?
She made a brilliant operatic diva as Tosca on Thursday evening, and the Royal Opera was lucky to have her at relatively short notice. With Freddie de Tommaso as her lover Cavaradossi, and Gerald Finley as chief of police Scarpia, this was a cast headed by a world class trio of singers. To top that the minor role of the Sacristan in Act 1 was taken by one of the world’s finest comic singers, Alessandro Corbelli — and he made the most of it.
In fact Act I brought out intriguing details that are often overlooked, and was the finest start to a Tosca I have ever seen. In the church where the escaped prisoner and former consul Angelotti (sung by the young artist Ossian Huskinson) has sought refuge, and been welcomed by Tosca’s lover the painter Cavaradossi, things are awry. The setting is modern and the church has evidently been hit by shells, as bits of plaster from the ceiling fall on the congregants as they sing the Te Deum. Evidently a main door opens from time to time, allowing in bright light from outside as people enter the church for safety. This is wartime after all.
Act 2 revealed a huge marble-lined room in the Farnese Palace where the brutal, sleazy Scarpia, so well portrayed by Gerald Finley, was dining alone at one end of a long table, and Act 3 showed a grim room with white tiles stained in blood where we first see a prisoner brought in. He is asked to sign something, told to kneel and executed by a single pistol shot. Blood splatters the wall. Will it be the same for Cavaradossi, or will it be the promised false execution with the gun firing blanks? Awareness that it was all too real comes as blood seeps from the inert body on the floor. In this enclosed space when the executioners leave and Tosca enters, there is no roof to jump off, but she smashes a window and is gone.
This new production is by the artistic director Oliver Mears who has now been at the Royal Opera for some eight years. He was previously in charge of opera in Northern Ireland, with its close memory of the Troubles, and he has given us a Tosca with a brutality that leaves little to the imagination. For those used to more artistically appealing versions of Act 3, its setting in a torture chamber may come as an unwelcome shock, but the music carries all before it under the baton of music director Jakub Hruša. Tension was ever present, and he allowed a slight pause and ample space for those two most famous arias, Tosca’s Act 2 Vissi d’arte, and Cavaradossi’s Act 3 E lucevan le stelle. A low key start to Act 1 was suddenly brought superbly to life by Freddie de Tomasso’s hugely powerful Recondita armonia. Production questions aside this was a hugely musical Tosca under Hruša’s brilliant direction.
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