Forget the Puccini centenary. Every year is Puccini Year at the Royal Opera House, with a revolving door of Bohème, Butterfly and Tosca stagings, house staples that will collectively clock up over 50 performances in 2024. Puccini is a banker for the house, a guarantor of bums on seats… except that Tosca, back for a July double cast run, currently has 100+ tickets available for all six remaining shows. Puccini fatigue? Country house opera competition? Perhaps the tourists will snap them up at the last minute.
They would be in for a vocal treat if they did. The principal roles are well cast, led by Ludovic Tézier as an oily Baron Scarpia, the chief of police whose lusting after operatic diva Floria Tosca matches his drive to rid Rome of republican revolutionaries (this is June 1800 and Napoleon is about to retake Italy). Tézier is in his vocal prime. His refulgent baritone eased through its gears in the Te Deum, while “Ha più for te sapore”, his Iago-like credo expressing his love of violent amorous conquest, was fervently sung.
In Jonathan Kent’s production, revived here by Peter Relton, Scarpia is presented as a greasy-haired thug, but the French baritone offered something a little different. His Scarpia is still a bully, but there’s sinister charm and ironic humour here too. He plucks a ribbon from Tosca’s hair and winds it through his fingers. When he goes to kiss Tosca’s hand, but she withdraws it, you can see in his eyes his thought process as he decides to ascend the other staircase to block her exit. When Tosca’s back is against the wall in Act 2, he sings a long, teasing “Ebbene?” when he asks if she’s made her mind up. All arched eyebrows and mocking smile, Tézier’s Scarpia is like a cat toying with a mouse. You sense him relishing the chase.
Angel Blue was his prey. In Act 1, her Tosca was gentle and soft, visibly melting when Cavaradossi, her painter boyfriend, sings a paean to the beauty of her eyes. She then batted her lashes almost comically when instructing him to repaint the Madonna’s eyes black – just like hers. Blue scaled the vocal demands of the role well. Her phrasing in “Vissi d’arte” was a little clipped, but her sense of devotion was credible and there was plenty of attack in her singing. Tosca’s leap from the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo was tentative, taken rather later than usual.
Russell Thomas made an ardent Cavaradossi, albeit an unsubtle one. “Recondita armonia”, his musing on Tosca’s beauty, was belted out as if he was trumpeting Otello’s victory over the Turks and “E lucevan le stelle” was histrionic and hard-edged. But it’s an exciting voice with thrilling top notes that ring around the house.
“There are no small roles, only small actors.” Supporting Konstantin Stanislavski’s case were two veterans of this production. Jeremy White’s irascible Sacristan, nosing through Cavaradossi’s things, is still a masterclass, while Hubert Francis’ Spoletta is such a creepy henchman. When he retrieves the fan that Tosca has thrown at the portrait, he sniffs its perfume lasciviously, and the relish with which he informs Scarpia that “Everything is ready” for Cavaradossi’s execution marks him out as a chief of police in waiting.
Alas, two disappointments. Andrea Battistoni, making his house debut, led a stodgy performance that often dragged, particularly in Act 1 where several times singers and conductor favoured different tempi. The orchestral sound was richly upholstered, however, with fine cello and clarinet solos leading into Cavaradossi’s big number in Act 3.
And this revival seems even more dimly lit than ever. Kent bizarrely stages Act 1 in near darkness when it’s meant to be midday – the Sacristan checks to see if Cavaradossi has eaten his lunch, after all – but here events take place in Stygian gloom. Donations to the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, please, to pop a few more coins into the meter…
