Tosca, Royal Opera House
Torrid? Over the top? Bombastic? Magniloquent? I’m here for the music after being exposed to a snippet during Quantum of Solace, and I love the wildness of Italian opera plots. I’ve never seen a full version of Tosca before and have no idea of plot or what to expect.
It’s a 19th century Roman setting — although none of the main characters are actually Roman. Sung-spoken, Tosca flirts and heckles with her lover in Napoleonic dress, dazzling in a brilliant yellow dress and flushed pink Spencer jacket. He’s a painter, she’s a singer and she suspects his faithfulness as his latest painting features a lady with blue eyes who looks remarkably like a recent church attendee. For the record, Tosca’s eyes are brown. But this is no obvious tragedy — Cavaradossi is faithful. However, he is a free thinker as Napoleon rampages across the globe and provokes the ire of local police chief Scarpia by hiding an escaped prisoner (and apparently eating his lunch in the church!)
Puccini’s music demonstrates character wonderfully. Scarpia manipulates, placing suggestions to Tosca and then unleashing her jealousy upon her unwitting lover. Scarpia quite likes the sweeping Floria Tosca and hopes to use this to his advantage.
Astoundingly at one point there is singing going on in the chapel of the church as a full Catholic church service to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon, plus nuns takes place above. The opulence! The clashing brass and cymbals.
Scarpia has Cavaradossi arrested and tortured as he eats his dinner and makes Tosca listen. Tosca is under tremendous pressure to say anything to save him — such as revealing where the escaped prisoner is hidden. She does this and is tricked into thinking that Scarpia will release her lover from torture and prison through a faked execution and give them both safe passage. We follow Tosca’s mental and emotional suffering and pressure and her reasoning in prayer — what has she ever done to Scarpia? No mere courtesan, she has always tried to do the right thing. Her dilemma is real and crucially we also hear her say ‘no’. Scarpia delights in telling Tosca exactly what is going on, how and letting her have a good listen. He has his own agenda — he wants Tosca. Horribly having had her lover tortured, he now wants Tosca to join him in a ‘civilised’ dinner tete-a- tete.
Tosca fights back, killing Scarpia and then has to appalling rifle his body to find their papers to get out of there. She goes to be with Cavaradossi, unaware of how Scarpia has betrayed and manipulated the whole situation, and thinks that the execution is a mock one — only it isn’t, it’s real. Her pain when she discovers that there is no escape, no freedom, that he has been killed for real, and then flees her own capture by jumping off the battlements to her death. The drama, the emotions, the music!
Natalya Romaniw was in full stately swish as Tosca, trying to elude Scarpia’s grasp and retain her dignity and beautifully arranging her glittering train at the end for her well-deserved applause. Erwin Schrott’s Scarpia was horribly ruthless and I wanted to boo him; truly a character who enjoyed his own power over others. Gwyn Hughes Jones stepped in at the last moment as Cavaradossi to replace an unwell cast member. The sweetness of Cavaradossi’s love came across in his lyrics as he had compassion on Tosca — her hands weren’t made for murder, she isn’t a natural born killer; he truly understands how she has suffered and the awful situation she was put in.
The stars here are also the monumental staging, setting and lighting. We’re in a church complete with a statute of the Virgin Mary and some almost completed religious art, brilliantly lit; then we sweep to Scarpia’s library/study complete with an enormous statue and dimly candle lit dinner (and off stage torture chamber behind the bookcase); then to a very simple execution yard with a starry sky and horrible prisoner stakes in a yard. (The only prop a buff soldier having an on-stage ablution a la Mr Darcy, which highlights the casualness with which they take their duties — state mass murder has become a way of life). There is a whole choir of boys at one point and at another a whole choir of women singing off stage, matched by Tosca. Scarpia is not a fan of this off-stage fun and just wants to get Tosca! But the opera’s beauty isn’t just in its magnificence, but in the naturalness of the spoken-sung lyrics and emotions expressed, there are even jokes.
Sadly no upstaging by Mr Bond tonight….and thankfully no Quantum in the audience. But wonders on the stage and in the orchestra pit, (again well deserved applause for Daniel Oren’s conducting. Even from a standing view I could see his furiously waving arms!) (Not to mention getting lost round the Royal Opera house as you try to locate your standing room only location behind a locked door)…
