Tosca

By Giacomo Puccini

White’s Hotel

Review: Tom Mooney

Unusual for a ShortWork at White’s, the production team didn’t take too many liberties with one of the most famous and compelling operas.

Suffused with gorgeous music and arias immortalised by Callas, Tosca appeals on so many levels musically that it would take an act of genius to make a dog’s dinner of it, and Wexford didn’t.

Director Dafydd Hall Williams prefers an unfussy stage, confident in Eunhee Kim’s ability to deliver a resounding and ceiling shattering Vissi d’arte, which she did like she was born for it: Vissi d’arte conquered, the audience can relax, as the holy grail is in the right hands.

Alexandros Tsiliogiannis is a satisfyingly tragic Mario Cavaradossi, and has a dramatic bag of tricks to bridge the Recondita armonia and E lucevan le stelle, as he prepares for death.

Because the arias are so well known, so well worn, you are more than happy if both soprano and tenor suffuse the performance with tone and intensity: the only danger is that Vissi d’arte will always interrupt the natural flow of the drama.

If there is one quintessential opera where the tenor and the soprano need to be of almost equal strength to balance the drama, it’s Tosca. Get the voices right, and everything else is wallpaper.

With the piano mimicking the words of the arias, it wouldn’t really matter if the setting was Disneyland and not the fabled Castel Sant’ Angelo, but the production team borrow heavily from Rossellini’s Rome, Open City.

Though Tosca as written takes place in a 24 hour period in 1800, Wexford’s adaptation is fast forwarded to Rome under the Nazi occupation: Cavaradossi is executed sitting on a chair (like Don Pietro in Rome, Open City) and the final scene is the still shocking still from the movie of a murdered Pina, played by Anna Magnani.