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Conductor
Mark
Shanahan
Director
David
McVicar
Designer
Michael Vale
Tosca
Cheryl barker
Cavaradossi
John
Hudson
Scarpia
Peter
Coleman-Wright
Angelotti
Nicholas
Garrett
Sacristan
Jonathan
Veira
Spoletta
Andrew Rees
Sciarrone
Toby
Stafford-Allen
Gaoler
Gerard
O'Connor
Shepherd-boy
David Stark/
Andrew
Bullmore
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London
Coliseum
21 - 29 November
2002 |
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Tosca
is an intensely atmospheric opera, full
of tension and danger, betrayal, menace,
threat, oppression and tyranny –
including the tyrannies of passion and
desire. These powerful themes are touched
by moments of tenderness and playfulness,
by poignant yearning, and by heroism,
which come as brilliant dashes of colour
into a suffering night; not to relieve
the tenor of the whole, so much as to
show its depths by the contrast. Puccini's
match of music to drama is peerless:
subtle harmonic shifts and skilful thematic
self-quotation maintain a perfect dramatic
integrity, and the great musical passages
– Tosca's aria Vissi
d'arte (to use its universally-known
Italian tag: here of course sung in
English) in the second act, Cavaradossi's
E lucevan le stelle
in the third, and the climactic orchestral
reprise of that music at the moment
Tosca jumps to her death from the battlements
– are unsurpassed for their beauty
and astonishing emotional reach. No
occupant of an auditorium seat, at the
moment the curtain comes down, could
understand why the musicologists debate
Puccini's use of the E
lucevan le stelle music at the
climax: it is utterly right.
Great
operatic art always calls for great
operatic artistry, and sometimes calls
it forth too. It does so in this excellent
ENO production. Cheryl Barker is so
good as Tosca that the part might have
been written for her. She is a very
good actress, and her superb voice is
rich in dramatic colour and possibility.
Peter Coleman-Wright as Scarpia gives
a perfectly judged because slightly
understated rendering of the menacing,
ruthless, power-corrupted, passion-gripped
but bleakly intelligent police chief.
With fine support from John Hudson –
who in his Act III aria is magnificent
– and an amusing Jonathan Veira,
and with outstanding musicality from
the orchestra under Mark Shanahan's
baton, the production is a classic.
There is only one flaw, and it has to
be laid at the door of David McVicar's
otherwise admirable direction. When
she has laid the crucifix on Scarpia's
body after killing him, McVicar's Tosca
runs her hand suggestively over Scarpia's
loins, and then kisses him. This contradicts
every premise of the opera. Doubtless
McVicar aimed to introduce an ambiguity
into Tosca's relationship with Scarpia
– an unwanted feeling of attraction
in the midst of the repulsion she feels
for his dangerous darkness. There is
psychological truth in the general proposition
that such a thing might happen, but
emphatically not in the case of Tosca.
Consider her hot jealousy in the church
in Act I, her betrayal of Angelotti
to save Cavaradossi in Act II, and above
all her act of murder – these are
not symptoms of ambiguity or division
of feeling. Tosca is passionate, fiercely
loving and loyal – not for her
the shifting anxieties of sexual response,
not for her the desire for what is hated.
There is exceptionless clarity in the
moral acts of immorality she resorts
to in saving Cavaradossi from further
torture – the betrayal of Angelotti,
which leads to his death – and
in plunging the knife into Scarpia's
heart.
Leave
that jarring moment aside: here, for
all the rest, is a Tosca
as it is meant to be: every note played
and sung, every gesture acted, to absolute
satisfaction.
AC Grayling |
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