As the audience squelched and dripped its way into the interior of the Coliseum for English National Opera’s opening night of Tosca, a vague hope that the heat of revolutionary Rome in 1800 might sear away the vestiges of the squall was balanced against the known inclinations of Christof Loy – directing this production of Puccini’s shabby little shocker – towards sets of monochromatic boxes. Surprisingly, however, Loy’s concept, first seen at the Finnish National Opera back in those halcyon pre-pandemic days of 2018, is unusually appealing to the eye.
To ensure that everyone realises that ENO is ‘hip’, we were first given a poem from the stage by Kieron Rennie which, for me at least, did not lend anything to the evening save to further extend the time spent at the Coliseum. The curtain then rose to reveal the interior of a basilica: the shrine to the Madonna at the side bedecked with flowers, Cavaradossi’s easel in the centre. Plenty of grey, true, but Christian Schmidt’s set designs are attractive and well-considered; the vast open spaces of the basilica and Scarpia's rooms in the Palazzo Farnese are contrasted with Cavaradossi’s diminutive cell in Act 3 before the backdrop rises again to show the top of the Castel Sant'Angelo, a welcome change from the Star Wars chic of ENO’s previous production of this piece.
Loy’s production does not wholly hit all the right notes. His decision to lean on sartorial anachronisms is unconvincing. The costumes initially look as though derived from the first half of the 20th century before Scarpia strides on in a full 19th-century tunic. Further complicating matters, we then get appearances from the chorus in what looks to be 18th-century garb. Loy seems to be reaching for a cultural clash, the modernism of Cavaradossi’s ideals versus the buttoned layered corsetry of Scarpia’s tyranny, or perhaps a comment on the timelessness of oppression, the battle for freedom and the subjugation of women, but it was clumsily executed and under-explored.
Likewise, the deployment of a painted curtain backdrop, particularly noticeable when it draws across the stage as Act 2 climaxes, felt like an idea not fully thrashed out: is this just a performance for Tosca the opera singer? Does the closing of the curtain symbolise the closure of life? The production veers more towards vagueness than strategic ambiguity. That said, what the production lacks in conceptual clarity is compensated by some high quality Personenregie. Loy’s direction of his characters is spot on, from the high-octane romance of Cavaradossi and Tosca down to the sanctimonious Sacristan, a bumbling busybody bustling around the stage with a watering can, a recognisable figure from every small village or work place.