Over the top: revamped Tosca returns to the Theatre in the Woods

When Grange Park Opera unveiled its new Theatre in the Woods home in 2017, it was inaugurated with Peter Relton’s production of Tosca which, by all accounts, was a static park-and-bark affair, set in Mussolini’s Rome. Six years on, Tosca is back, but with a new director. Francis O’Connor’s sets largely remain – there’s more bomb damage to Sant’Andrea della Valle and the Palazzo Farnese, and a fractured stained glass window now looms over both. Stephen Medcalf, practically a house director at this festival, has been called in to ginger things up a bit. If anything, he has over-compensated. 

Medcalf delivers some deft directorial touches. A fallen chandelier in the Palazzo Farnese symbolises the rot in the hierarchy; the other one flickers and expires as the first snare-drums are heard outside. After recovering the safe conduct pass, Tosca wisely checks it to make sure Scarpia has not duped her. When Cavaradossi hands over his farewell letter to Tosca, the jailer reads it, sneers and screws it up. Angelotti eavesdrops on the whole first-act conversation between Cavaradossi and Tosca, as does a tramp sheltering in the church and the nun who attends him. (I was secretly hoping for the nun to turn out to be a fascist informer, but this was not to be.)

But there are questionable decisions too. Things turn a bit pantomime when a chef blow-torches Scarpia’s supper as Cavaradossi is taken in for “questioning”; Scarpia then sharpens his knife and manically carves in time to the music. There are continuity errors, not least when Tosca appears at the (unrecognisable) Castel Sant-Angelo wearing the same coat that she had left in the Palazzo Farnese. The denouement was flunked. In O’Connor’s redesigned set, Tosca has no means of scaling the ramparts, so when the firing squad of four return to the scene with Spoletta, you expect them to shoot her. Instead, she impales herself on one of the rifles. Perhaps a double execution wasn’t in their contract. 

The performance was loud and unsubtle, but often thrilling. Polish soprano Izabela Matula entered Sant’Andrea della Valle in full Brünnhilde mode, with no sense of the coquettishness required in Act 1. When, in “Vissi d’arte”, she sings the line “I’ve never harmed a soul”, somehow, one doesn't believe her for a second. Hers is a severe Tosca who eats chiefs of police for breakfast; she dispatches Scarpia with a carving fork… and strangles him for good measure. At full pelt, Matula’s voice rang resoundingly around the small, bright auditorium, but there’s more light and shade to this character than she is yet prepared to offer. 

Otar Jorjikia was in muscular but blustery voice as Cavaradossi. Flat top note apart, “Recondita armonia” was well shaped – while painting the tiniest portrait of the Madonna in art history – but by his histrionic “E lucevan le stelle”, his tenor was tiring, paying the price for giving too much too soon. Brett Polegato was the best of the cast, in commanding voice. His baritone has the vocal chops for the Te Deum and he snarled and taunted menacingly in Act 2. Andrew Slater’s Sacristan was sincere, not played for laughs, and Alan Ewing’s Angelotti was firmly voiced.

The BBC Concert Orchestra made some gorgeous sounds, with swooning string portamenti and a lovely cello ensemble in Act 3, but Mark Shanahan’s conducting lacked urgency, underlining key moments – like Scarpia’s use of the fan to inflame Tosca’s jealousy – slowly in bold ink. With a little more energy in the pit, this is a Tosca that could really catch fire.