Classical and Jazz: Preview - ENO’s Tosca at the London Coliseum
Published: 1 December, 2011
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
Claire Rutter is back again after seven years as Floria Tosca in English National Opera’s revival of Puccini’s tear-jerker.
Wow! Can she sing! She really is the real thing, a true diva singing the role of a diva! Effortlessly alighting on top C as though it was just any old note. She takes us on Tosca’s journey through fickleness, jealousy, fear, outrage, love, remorse, terror, happiness, sorrow and yet more love.
Her performance is so well-paced, starting calmly, building slowly, saving her voice for the most demanding sections, yet still leaving her best for the last.
She’s got great company in the Tosca revival, too.
Both Anthony Michaels-Moore as police chief Scarpia and Gwyn Hughes Jones as her love Cavaradossi rise to the challenge of her singing.
The orchestral contribution under conductor Stephen Lord lacks similar vigour, much being too comfortable, without delineating Puccini’s multiple motifs.
Oddly, though, that doesn’t matter too much as your attentions are left free to hear the singing.
The ENO revival comes a year after the production was launched last year.
Its director is Catherine Malfitano, herself an international singer with long Tosca experience.
Much of the production is good.
You get to feel Scarpia’s power immediately in Act One when his henchmen are sent scurrying to look for Angelotti, very much like The Bill out to catch a thief, drug-dealer or whatnot.
But it’s strange that Malfitano should downgrade the great Act Two killing scene.
Puccini instructed that Tosca should kill Scarpia with two knife stabs to his heart.
It’s the melodramatic highpoint, Tosca’s defence of her person against vile Scarpia’s manly intentions.
But in Malfitano’s production, we don’t get the double stabbing.
Instead, he’s killed when he throws himself onto Tosca only to fall on the knife waiting hidden in her hand.
It’s almost death by accident – not the greatest killing in all opera.
• ENO’s Tosca is performed at the Coliseum on December 2, and January 17, 21, 24, 29. Tickets 0871 911 0200, www.eno.org