Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 17 May 2012

LIFE is so much easier as an arts reviewer, rather than an arts critic.

IF ONE of those omniscient characters had been in the Empire Theatre at Eden Court last Thursday for the latest revival of Scottish Opera’s 1980 production of Puccini’s Tosca he would have been hard pushed to fill a space the size of a postage stamp, whereas the reviewer has full scope to lavish the praise on the performance that it deserved.

Tosca. Susannah Glanville and Jose Ferrero as Tosca and Cavaradossi (photo Mark Hamilton)

For an opera novice, this Tosca delivers everything that one could imagine an opera should contain; love and lust, violence and death, lush music and intense drama. Puccini and his librettists Giacosa and Illica used the Sardou play La Tosca as the basis of their opera, and in turn Sardou had based his main characters on real people in the struggle between the Neapolitan Royalists and the Bonapartists following the Battle of Marengo in June 1800.

There really was a theatrical singer called Floria Tosca. She was a waif from Verona, taken in by Benedictine monks and taught to sing in church. It was at the insistence of Cimarosa and of Pope Pius VII that she became an opera singer. The two other main characters, Mario Cavaradossi the painter, and the cruel ruthless licentious Baron Scarpia had real life equivalents in Caravadossi and Sciarpa.

But the renowned director Anthony Besch and his colleague and regular collaborator, the designer Peter Rice, decided to bring the action forward from Rome in June 1800 to Rome in June 1943, when the conflict was between Mussolini’s Fascisti and the many Italians who supported the Allies in World War II. And it works beautifully as the only elements that need to change chronologically are the costumes. The buildings where the action takes place are timeless, and almost uniquely in opera, this thirty-two year old production is still fresh and contemporary, for which praise must be lavished on the revival director,  Jonathan Cocker.

The singing was exquisite. Making their Scottish Opera debuts as the lovers Cavaradossi and Tosca were José Ferrero and Susannah Glanville, two characters devoted to each other despite the petty squabbles. Ferrero has a tenor voice that is not overly powerful but rather is pure and rich, and he uses that voice to great effect without overdoing the melodramatic emotions. By convention, as the tenor, Cavaradossi has the best tunes, such as Recondita armonia in the opening scenes, or E lucevan le stelle in the final act

But the dominating relationship in the opera is not that between the lovers, but the one between the evil Scarpia and Tosca. Susannah Glanville has but one great solo aria, Visi d’arte, sung, cowering immobile on Scarpia’s very ordinary bed, with a sense of despair during Act II as she beseeches the monster to spare her lover’s life. For the most part her role is in duets with either Cavaradossi or Scarpia, or in a style of singgedicht, but such is the quality of her voice that at no time is the audience aware of the lack of show-stopping numbers. Not that conductor Derek Clark was giving the packed theatre any encouragement to break the tension with applause as he took the music forward without stopping

Holding the whole opera together is the menacing presence of Baron Scarpia, the Chief of Police. Even if not on stage, his threatening musical motif hangs over everything like a storm cloud. Baritone Robert Poulton fitted the role to a tee, with a thin veneer of urbanity masking the cruel and lascivious evil lurking underneath. From his majestic Te Deum in the first act until even after death, stabbed by Tosca at the end of Act II, his spectre shrouds the vain dreams of the lovers. The only occasion when this mask was allowed to slip was when he was greeted by a chorus of booing at his curtain call! His smile said it all, “Result!

We have become used to the little touches that set a Scottish Opera production apart from the mere ordinary, be it the bicycling nun in The Barber of Seville, or the domestic details in Intermezzo (sadly not seen in Inverness). In this Tosca there were the extra non-singing characters that added flesh to the bare bones of the melodrama; of course a diva like Floria Tosca would have a chauffeur, and Mussolini would accompany the King and Queen of Italy to the Te Deum. It is this level of perfection that all of a sudden makes us think that of course Scarpia would expect one of his henchmen to attend to the mundane matter of paying his visitor for the “social service” she has just provided

But there was one little detail that is not exclusive to Scottish Opera and has always puzzled me about this opera, ever since I saw Franco Zefferelli’s Covent Garden production nearly half a century ago with Maria Callas, Giuseppi di Stephano and Tito Gobbi. The action is specifically set in the middle of June in Rome, so why on earth does Scarpia have a blazing fire in his apartment? Perhaps it is symbolic of the even hotter place he is about to enter

This Tosca may have been a revival, but having taken it out of storage and blown off the cobwebs it has become yet another example of the world class productions that should make every one of us proud of our national opera company.

© James Munro, 2012

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