Forget about running marathons and climbing mountains, go and see Tosca at the Royal Opera House and you will die happily in the knowledge that you carped diem. Jonathan Kent’s production has been revived every season since it was new in 2006 and long may it continue: Puccini’s masterpiece looks and sounds fantastic in the main auditorium.
Tosca is a tragic love story set in Rome over 48 hours in 1800 when the city’s fate was bound up with the shifting fortunes of Napoleon’s military adventures. Paul Brown’s three incredible towering sets give a perfect sense of the ‘world outside the window’ for the characters: their passions are caught up in channels carved out by history and these limits on their freedom cause their downfall.
Celebrated singer, Tosca (Angela Gheorghiu) becomes fatally embroiled with her republican lover, Cavaradossi’s (Marcello Giordani) plans to save one of his friends from the corrupt Chief of Police, Baron Scarpia.
Scarpia is one of opera’s great villains and Bryn Terfel succeeds in rendering the amoral rapist somehow attractive to the audience with his colossal voice and vast stage presence. The musical high point of the evening comes at the conclusion of Act I as Scarpia’s schemes for murder and seduction simultaneously compete and blend with Te Deum, sung by the chorus.
Kent’s production is somewhat at the mercy of the set changes and comprises three shortish acts punctuated by two extended intervals. Fortunately the build-up of tension and emotion in each segment is such that the end comes far too soon: the same certainly cannot be said of marathon running.
