Opera
Tosca (English National Opera)
Winning warhorse
Michael Tanner
This has been a year of Toscas, but strangely — or anyway I find it strange — instead of getting tired of what almost everyone, even its admirers, feel the need to patronise, I find that in some respects my admiration for it increases. Of the warhorses that a fairly conscientious reviewer sees quite often. Tosca is the one which causes me least apprehension of boredom. Even so, doing a new production for ENO must have seemed quite a challenge to David McVicar and Michael Vale, the latter responsible for the set designs. And anyone who has seen the riveting, startling, altogether remarkable and — I found — most impressive production that Opera North mounted a few weeks ago, can't expect to see anything that challenges their conception of the effect the piece can have to that extent again. No doubt by accident, ENO's production is in almost all ways a traditional one, which should weather changes of cast and conductor without trouble.
The programme book sports photo graphs of Albert Speer's designs for the Berlin that he and Hitler dreamed of after Germany had won the war, and utterly absurd as well as intimidating they look. Without trendily updating Tosca to Fascist Italy, ENO's staging does suggest connections by going in for gigantism of designs, all in black and white, but mostly black. Sant' Andrea della Valle is dominated by a vast cross hanging at a threatening angle over the proceedings, with a significantly small Pieta beside it, to suggest that Mercy looms much less conspicuously than Retribution in the Church's order of priorities. The Farnese Palace is bare, but once more on a scale which is reminiscent of the antihuman scale of most Fascist buildings in Italy: and the Castel Sant' Angelo is dominated by a rear view of the wings of the Terrible Angel, a truly frightening image.
Within this setting, the drama that familiarly unfolds has few surprises, except perhaps that it is so content to be traditional, relying on the unsinkable theatricality of the opera to look after itself. Act I, on the evening I went, worked very well, though it was more desperate than serious. Mark Shanahan seems to be a vertical rather than a horizontal conductor, and revealed how uncomfortably many seams there are in, for
instance, the love scene. Though his tempi weren't languorous, they often gave the impression of being, because he is wedded to the bar line, concentrating much more on momentary texture than on flow. Puccini's mastery of the orchestra at every moment, and the innumerable brilliant touches of colour throughout the score, were marvellously in evidence, but sometimes it seemed that the singers and the drama they were attempting to enact might flag.
Cheryl Barker's Tosca goes in for a combination of the usual qualities, together with a more than ordinary skittishness in Act I, which I found amusing and embarrassing in equal measure. She is an enthusiastic embracer, in the style of early talkies, flinging her arms ecstatically around Cavaradossi and nestling up to him with twinkling ardour. Her voice needs care and attention, if it's not soon to sound worn in the way that can happen rapidly with professional Puccinians. She couldn't sustain the line in 'Vissi d'arte' ('Life was music, life was for loving' in Amanda Holden's intelligently free new translation, of which about 20 per cent was audible), and she has no low notes, it seems, so that her comments about Scarpia after she has killed him went for nothing. Yet she has talents, and some temperament. John Hudson is a Cavaradossi of some stolidity, singing in style but without sufficient volume — except in `Recondita armonia', where it's not required to present a plausible revolutionary sympathiser. Peter ColemanWright's Scarpia begins very well, a figure of utmost repulsiveness, hideously solicitous when Tosca displays her jealousy and anguish, comforting her so plausibly that she is almost persuaded that he has her happiness at heart. They hold hands until she suddenly realises that there may be darker motives at work — a telling stroke, but there aren't enough of them. For the Te Deurn, McVicar pulls out the stops with a procession Zeffirelli wouldn't be ashamed of, while Scarpia stands to one side and indulges in mad orgies of breastsmiting lust.
After that, the virtually fail-safe Act II is a let-down. apart from the grisly grill which covers the torture chamber — but Opera North really has commandeered that scene for the foreseeable future. It is here that the conductor can make a big difference, and despite the savagery of the music. Shanahan failed to generate excitement; and Coleman-Wright didn't develop his portrayal of pious sadism, nor use his interesting voice to any particular effect. The limpness had the unusual effect of making Act III seem better than usual, and the opera's final gesture, Tosca's leap, is fearless. It adds up to an evening of what Tosco ungainsayably is: superb melody and orchestration, with a plot that should make any spectator ask himself what he is enjoying; but in this production you're allowed to get away without any awkward questions on that or any other subject.
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