Visually and musical impactful, this season-opener from Welsh National Opera features a stellar cast. Never mind the straightened circumstances and cost-cutting obliging the company to perform Tony Burke’s orchestral reduction, this is a Tosca that compares favourably with that currently running at London’s Royal Opera House.
So farewell to WNO’s classic and much revived staging by Michael Blakemore, first unveiled in 1992, and welcome to Edward Dick’s production previously seen at Opera North in 2018. Gone are those handsome, if ageing, sets evoking Rome’s Sant’Andrea della Valle, Palazzo Farnese and Castel Sant’Angelo, traded for a stage dominated by a gilded cupola, its ceiling-high portrait of an unfinished Mary Magdalene bringing religious art and a completion job for the painter Mario Cavaradossi. Courtesy of Tom Scutt, this ornate dome remains in place for each act, albeit cleverly tilted in Act 3, where it neatly frames the single appearance of the Shepherd Boy and offers a central space from which Tosca will hurl herself to her death. Votive candles (Lee Curran) dimly illuminate the rear of the stage and provide ominous shadows to hint at the impending tragedy.
Fotini Dimou’s costumes are mostly contemporary with Cavaradossi and Scarpia garbed respectively in painter’s smock, convict overalls and business suit, with some curious attire for Tosca as she swaps a vintage coat (redolent of the 1970s) to a floor length evening dress, then dons a cream raincoat. Presumably, we’re meant to infer that Tosca is not just an opera singer, but an ordinary woman caught in the grip of forces beyond her control. Elsewhere, Scarpia’s black clad henchmen bring contemporary and disquieting resonances of a thuggish far right movement.
There have been many Toscas at WNO, but this was something special where casting – not just singing and acting – and direction generated maximum dividends. Chief amongst the principals was Natalya Romaniw, singing gloriously and with wonderful control in “Vissi d’arte”, investing every movement and facial expression with meaning to create a totally believable portrayal. Jealousy, rage and vulnerability have never been so finely nuanced. No less well-defined, if a little less gratifying vocally (some pinched upper notes), was Andrés Presno’s Cavaradossi. Laden with decibels and stage presence, his final parting with Tosca was the evening’s emotional high-water mark, with “E lucevan le stelle” bringing rapturous applause.
One was in no doubt of Scarpia’s lecherous designs on Tosca, made explicit by Dario Solari, whose advances from a four-poster bed brought suggestions of a caged animal ready to devour his prey. He’s not the most powerful of baritones, but there was plenty of malevolence, most unnervingly when relaying Cavaradossi’s torture to Tosca via livestream from a laptop. Amongst other characters Ross Fettes was in fine fettle as the Sacristan, James Cleverton stood out as the luckless fugitive Angelotti and Alun Rhys-Jenkins disturbed as Spoletta. Not least, Max Fokkens added mellifluous tones with his Shepherd’s song. The WNO Chorus and a dozen Cardiff-based children fashioned all the right vigour to Act’s 1’s closing Te Deum.