I attended two performances of the new Royal Opera House production of Puccini's masterpiece - my favourite Puccini opera. The first new production in forty years. I held off from reviewing it after the first performance I saw, because I was in an acoustically poor seat, and, perhaps more importantly, the star, Marcelo Alvarez called in sick with salmonella - I don't know if it was a dodgy Cadbury's chocolate bar.
The opera is called Tosca, and that makes a lot of people erroneously think the soprano is the star. That is not so, because she only gets one aria - admittedly Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore (I live for art, I live for love), but the tenor gets two show-stopping arias - Recondita armonia and E Lucevan le stelle. And by coincidence, I found two tremendous versions of them of YouTube today. Angela Gheorghiu sang Tosca. Scarpia was sung by Bryn Terfel. The fill-in-at-short-notice Cavaradossi was Fabio Armiliato, who has an interesting history with the role...* The bloke waving the stick was Antonio Pappano.
Considering that it had been hyped as the hot-ticket for the summer, and it is an opera that I love, I have to say that I was a bit disappointed. It was star-studded: I would see it with any one of those stars; to have all three is quite something. It might be that even on my second night I still didn't have a great seat, but, I have to say, I have sat in worse before and have been more impressed.
The sets looked fantastic, but the more I think about them, the more I think 'so what'. All the productions I have seen of Tosca, either live or on video, have all looked pretty much the same, except for the one filmed in the real locations at the actual time of day. So I decided that were I to be a director of Tosca, it would be set in an urban wasteland, have Cavaradossi as a recovering drug addict painting a community centre, Tosca as a transgendered lesbian Reality TV show winner, and Scarpia as the local pimp/crack dealer. It would work. Tosca could leap
off the multi-storey car park.
I felt that because the Act 1 set was double-decker, some of the dramatic impact was lost. I realised on second viewing that the first time I had missed most of Scarpia's entrance: because it started so high up it wasn't visible from the gods. Much of the lighting was too dark. Yes, it created the right atmosphere but it just made it more difficult to see the acting. None of the acting performances will be entered into my little book of 'ones to remember' .
So it was just as well the singing and music was of such a high standard. Overall, anyway. A lot of the time I could not hear Bryn Terfel, at either performance, drowned out too often by the orchestra. I did not rate the last-minute-stand-in-guy very highly, although ironically, I rated his acting more than his singing. It was difficult to believe that he played the role with little, or no, rehearsal, but his renditions of the two great arias were good rather than great - and this became obvious when contrasted with Marcelo Alvarez's performance. His Recondita Armonia was beautiful, but he saved his best for E lucevan le stelle, which was heart-stoppingly gorgeous. Just a shame that some thoughtless tosser jad to break in with a premature 'bravo' to ruin the moment, just because it was on the radio. Interestingly, I would say Fabio's Vittoria vittoria rang out sweeter and more victorious than Marcelo's. Marcelo's acting was reasonably convincing for him, although it could never be described as instinctive. He did not really roll around on the ground, although I was terribly impressed when Scarpia's heavies carrie dhim and just threw him to the ground with a thud. He did not flinch. What a tenor!
Angela was intriguing as Tosca. People moan that her voice isn't big,and it isn't, but it's big enough, and I found that she was penetratingly audible in my rubbish seat in Row T. She has such a gorgeous voice, so difficult to describe,. On both occasions her Vissi d'arte was breathtakingly beautiful. I thought she was the most succesful at portraying a nuanced character. She had made some remarks beforehand about how she did not rate Callas's Tosca. That really set the cats a-flapping, vindictive and vitriolic character assassinations from Callas widows who certainly had no intention of seeing angela in this production, probably haven't seen her live, and probbaly never saw Callas live, at least not in an opera. I think this characteristed much of the Dead Tree Media, who in order to knock her down, overpraised Bryn so much that my expectations were raised and I was left thinking 'so what?' It also rebounded, because it made Angela's vocal performance more welcome.
It was one of those performances which was perfectly enjoyable and a lovely way to forget the England penalties debacle. There wasn't any aspect that I could constructively criticise with much force, but yet, it was a situation where the reality simply did notlive up to the hype. And, also, I had made the mistake of playing a video, a DVd and a CD beforegoing, because, apparently, that's what you're supposed to before you go to a live opera - do your homework. I'm not making that mistake again. Jimmy reckoned that Marcelo Alvarez was outstanding, but 'not as good as Pláci'. And he was outstanding; he has a gorgeous, expressive, sweet, flawless voice.
No Stage Door shenanigans. We had had a long day already on Saturday, and wanted to get home, so we made a hasty exit to the bus stop. Even after half-eating a disappointing Chinese Takeaway, I was in bed at midnight with a headache brought on by not drinking enough water on a baking hot day. And no photos: on neither occasion was I positioned sufficiently well to make it worth my while getting my camera out.
*
From the front-page headlines in Italian newspapers: "Cavaradossi has been shot!"... At the Macerata summer festival on 30 July 1995, the tenor (Fabio Armiliato) was shot in the 3rd act - as usual. But this time when Tosca (Raina Kabaivanska) rushed to him she heard a whisper: "Call an ambulance!...", and then she fainted at the sight of his blood. Because of a blank charged with too much powder, the tow had pierced Cavaradossi's boot and hurt his leg. It is possible that the gun was overcharged because of another accident at the same festival, some years before, when the headlines read: "Cavaradossi dies from heart attack" (the guns did not go off!). Armiliato, after an hour of surgery, said he "had been lucky that the soldier did not aim at the right height". But he should have been grateful to the stage director for not sticking to the realism Puccini wanted: he staged the shooting on a staircase, with the soldier's head at the level of Cavaradossi's feet. (5 days later, going on stage at the beginning of act 2, Armiliato's crutch slipped, causing a double fracture of the other leg...)
