United Kingdom Puccini, Tosca: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Daniel Oren (conductor). Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 28.11.2022. (CSa)
Production:
Director – Jonathan Kent
Revival director – Simon Iorio
Designer – Paul Brown
Lighting designer – Mark Henderson
Chorus director – William Spaulding
Cast:
Cesare Angelotti – Josef Jeongmeen Ahn
Sacristan – Jeremy White
Mario Cavaradossi – Gwyn Hughes Jones
Floria Tosca – Malin Byström
Baron Scarpia – Gabriele Viviani
Spoletta – Hubert Francis
Sciarrone – Thomas D. Hopkinson
Young Shepherd – Emilia Cristina Gahan
Gaoler – John Morrissey
November 2022 marks the sixteenth anniversary and twelfth revival of Jonathan Kent’s highly effective manufacturing of Tosca, Puccini’s fifth and arguably most enduring opera. It nonetheless packs a mighty punch. The late Paul Brown’s opulent designs, huge in scale, dwarf the singers and tower above the motion. In Act I, we’re offered with the elaborately frescoed Attavanti chapel of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle. Bathed in eerie chiaroscuro, we’ve to go looking arduous at first to detect the precise location of the painter Mario Cavaradossi’s easel and picnic basket. In Act II, Scarpia’s big rococo examine within the Palazzo Farnese incorporates a hid en suite torture chamber, conveniently situated behind a flooring to ceiling bookcase. The starlit ramparts of the Castel Sant’Angelo in Act III present a dramatic backdrop in opposition to which this timeless story of political intrigue, corruption and cruelty, lust, love and loss of life is in the end performed out. Indeed, the tragic story of brave artists who unwittingly grow to be embroiled in a private battle in opposition to political tyranny is as related at present because it was in pre-Risorgimento Italy.
Adapted from the late-nineteenth century play La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, Puccini’s opera is ready in Hapsburg dominated Rome through the Napoleonic Wars, particularly a interval of lower than twenty-four hours in June 1800, when the French military crushed Austro/Italian forces following the Battle of Marengo. The operatic drama is triggered by the escape of a political prisoner, Cesare Angelotti (Josef Jeongmeen Ahn), pursued by the town’s sinister Chief of Police, Baron Scarpia (Gabriele Viviani), assisted by his sullen police agent, Spoletta (Hubert Francis). The fugitive seeks refuge within the grandly recreated chapel, the place he’s hidden by republican sympathiser Cavaradossi. Scarpia orders the arrest of the painter and makes an attempt to find Angelotti’s whereabouts from Cavaradossi’s lover, the singer Floria Tosca (Malin Byström) with whom he turns into morbidly and sexually obsessed. The police chief’s aria, ‘Ha più forte sapore’ by which he chillingly professes his choice for conquest by drive over his sufferer’s passive acquiescence, tells us the whole lot we have to learn about his sadistic propensities.
Once Cavaradossi is seized and sentenced to loss of life for harbouring the wished man, Scarpia strikes a take care of Tosca. If she submits to his needs, he’ll launch her lover and difficulty passports to make sure their protected conduct from Rome. Nonetheless, he insists, there have to be the appearance of an execution, and methods her into believing that it is going to be faked utilizing dummy bullets. No ahead of the passports are written out, Tosca picks up a knife from Scarpia’s supper desk and kills him. Tosca witnesses the next execution of her lover, slowly realising to her horror that she has been deceived and actual bullets have been used. In despair, she plunges from the parapet of the Castel Sant’ Angelo to her loss of life.
The inherent drama of the plot is basically propelled and maintained by a high-quality forged by which the three lead singers excel. The famend Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones portrays Cavaradossi convincingly. His appearing expertise are tremendously enhanced by a voice of adamantine brilliance, the thrilling timbre of his high notes rising excessive above the orchestra to the furthest reaches of the auditorium. His splendidly sung clutch of arias was topped within the third act by a rapturously acquired account of ‘E lucevan le stelle’. Swedish lyric soprano Malin Byström, who earlier this 12 months took Royal Opera House audiences by storm because the eponymous heroine in Richard Strauss’s Salome, thrills as Floria Tosca. The high quality of her voice – darkish and wealthy on the decrease finish of the register, hovering effortlessly on the high finish – gave her well-known second act lament ‘Visse d’arte’ (‘I lived for my art. I lived for love’) an inexpressible poignancy. She discovered an ideal foil in Lucca-born baritone Gabriele Viviani, whose portrayal because the evil Baron was persuasively sung.
Underpinning these performances, the musicians of the Royal Opera House, below the deft baton of Daniel Orin, ensured that the wealthy orchestral palette of Puccini’s rating was absolutely realised.
Chris Sallon