Just about every opera entwines two people fatefully pierced by Cupid’s arrow and, if the storyline went no further than that, what wondrously glorious music would we forever associate with the genre, yet how woefully brief would each production be … the classical music equivalent of a three-minute single.
Opera keeps our interest for an entire evening because intrigue and villainy intercede to thwart romance’s true course. G. B. Shaw maintained that the only operatic plot involves the tenor and soprano wanting to make love, but being prevented from doing so by the baritone. Tosca certainly has all these three, but so much more: jealousy, lust, corruption, torture, attempted rape, murder – both the impassioned and judicial varieties – and two suicides, one perhaps ballistic, but the other demonstrably gravitational.
For its latest run, Edward Dick directs the Company’s 2018 production, with its return to discrete sets for each of the three Acts and more civilised costumes than in its 2005 offering. Reliably good box-office, it is a sensible Tosca living solution in these cost-of-living conscious times.
In the title role, Giselle Allen‘s resplendent soprano and dramatic sense takes in amply Tosca’s strengths – her deep piety, sincere romantic ideals and wily, cat-and-mouse defence against authority’s manipulation – but also her tragic weaknesses – her jealousy and willingness to sacrifice everything for love. Puccini’s mission spotlights the interactions between his characters, predictably those between Tosca and her lover, Cavaradossi, but, even more pivotal, those between Tosca and the lecherous, corrupt Police Chief, Scarpia. Miss Allen, a noted, experienced exponent of the love-stricken Rusalka, the fanatical Salomé and the crazed, desperate heroines of Janáček for Opera North, gave us a towering portrayal of the night’s so-very-human heroine. It was a shame that her one great solo, Vissi D’Arte (“I have lived for Art, I have lived for love”) went awry at its blazing climax, certainly louder than lovely and too-frequently breathed, favouring the tearful moment over the mindful melodic line. I am sure music could prevail next time.
Ukrainian-born Mykhailo Malafii conveys Cavaradossi’s anguish, hopes and fears with abundant subtlety: the gentleness of the lover, the duress of the tortured – Pavarotti’s notion of the tenor voice as an “educated yell” very much in evidence – the desperate urgency of his Act III letter aria E Lucevan Le Stelle (“When the stars were brightly shining”). This was an impressive Opera North debut.
Perhaps the major accolades of the night should go to Robert Hayward as Scarpia. There is no defining, oft-recorded solo musical item for him, but as the mannered embodiment of loutish depravity, a truly sinister, self-serving sociopath operating behind a charade of lofty refinement, his is the performance one journeys home with.
There is strong vocal support to these principals from Matthew Stiff‘s jocular, unquestioning Sacristan, Alex Banfield‘s thuggish sycophant, Spoletta and Callum Thorpe‘s memorably vocally-expressive fugitive, Angelotti.
Opera North’s musical director Garry Walker draws fitting dramatic fire and exquisite tenderness from the orchestra, as usual equal partners in the production’s sweeping narrative, drawing justifiable plaudits from an appreciative audience at the close.
Sung in Italian with English titles.
Further performances at Leeds Grand Theatre: Saturday 28 January, Friday 03 February , Wednesday 22 February, Saturday 25 February , Tuesday 28 February and Thursday 02 March.
Then touring Salford Quays, Nottingham, Newcastle and Hull until 01 April.
Photography by James Glossop. Cover photograph: Robert Hayward as Scarpia with The Chorus of Opera North.
