Giacomo Puccini - Tosca
Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2019
Daniele Rustioni, Christophe Honoré, Angel Blue, Catherine Malfitano, Joseph Calleja, Alexey Markov, Simon Shibambu, Leonardo Galeazzi, Jean-Gabriel Saint Martin, Michael Smallwood, Virgile Ancely, Jean-Frédéric Lemoues, Frank Daumas
ARTE Concert - 9 July 2019
You can always rely on the Aix Festival to bring something fresh and original to established opera classics, and it looks like that principle is going to continue under the directorship of Pierre Audi. If anything with Audi, you could expect it to be ever more challenging and idiosyncratic. Christophe Honoré has been here in Aix before, with a stunning and wholly original colonial take on Mozart's Così Fan Tutte in 2016, and this year the French filmmaker takes an even more cinematic departure from the standard opera approach to Puccini's Tosca.
There are a number of surprises throughout the Aix production of Tosca, but perhaps the greatest is the presence of the great American soprano Catherine Malfitano in the opera, a famous Tosca in her day, not least for the on-location 1992 film version alongside Plácido Domingo. She seems to have retired from dramatic performance for a while now, working mainly now as an opera director, so it's delightful that Honoré has found a way to bring her back to the stage, but also manage to do so using her aura and personality meaningfully in service of the opera. I imagine that the movie version must have made as much of an impression on Honoré as it did on me back then.
It's a lovely idea as a homage then to have Malfitano take on the role of La Prima Donna who is passing on her experience to an up-and-coming new singer in the role of Tosca (and I'm sure there's some blurring of the lines between reality and drama in Angel Blue being the soprano here), but there's always the risk that while it might sound like a fun idea, it could only detract from the power of the original work. You do get that impression of distancing at the start of Act I, with an additional camera crew on the stage supposedly making a documentary about a great opera diva, who is not in great form for the guests who have been booked in to see her that day.
As it's an opera company putting on a production of Tosca who are hoping to gain a few pointers from one of the greatest singers in the role of Floria Tosca, there's evidently a danger of the opera within an opera distancing the viewer from the true emotion and purpose of the original work - Malfitano even at one stage calling the conductor to halt proceedings while she coaches Angel Blue - but you do start to see some overlap in the emotions of the company, as Angel Blue or 'Angel Blue', starts to get a little jealous of the attentions and adoration that her Cavaradossi (Joseph Calleja) is displaying over the eyes of the madonna/prima donna, or perhaps it's the opera that is freeing those heightened emotions.
With the documentary camera crew capturing all these little undercurrents and correspondences from multiple angles, which are broadcast live over the big screens at the back of Alban Ho Van's impressive cinematic set designs on the stage of the Théâtre de l’Archevêché, this does come across more like a movie than a 'proper' opera. It's interesting that Ivo Van Hove recently used a similar behind-the-scenes on-stage crew technique for his theatre adaptation of 'All About Eve' and it's clear that there is another film reference here, Honoré setting Malfitano's prima donna like the silent movie star Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's 'Sunset Boulevard', past her prime and in the midst of a personal crisis over her absence from the limelight.
That becomes more evident in Act II, but despite initial misgivings I was already sold on the idea by the end of Act I, since it was clear that there's a recognition here that - to state the obvious - Tosca is an 'operatic' opera, larger than life. Fitting the traditional Napoleonic drama of Act II into this stage version is inevitably going to be a challenge however, but Honoré rises to that challenge brilliantly by looking at Act II as essentially Tosca's dilemma. Here, dressed like Norma Desmond, Malfitano's diva suffers a crisis after having been introduced to these young rising stars, as the after rehearsal party turns into something nightmarish.
The horror of the abuse, torture and murder in Act II of Tosca here becomes blurred in the fevered mind of the diva with the reality of her real life past and present and her opera characters. Brilliantly, Honoré identifies her struggles with the characters of Madama Butterfly, Lucia di Lammermoor and Salome - all notable Malfitano roles. In this context Scarpia here becomes an almost Harvey Weinstein figure (appropriate as the Weinsteins of the opera world are also coming to light now), and Honoré even manages to make the diva something of a dark figure in her seduction (or paying for) the attentions of young men. It's as highly charged and sexualised (and scandalous) as Act II of Tosca ought to be. The 'Vissi d'arte' is also a showstopper, delivered by Angel Blue, but back projections of other famous Toscas over the years show that the struggle goes back a long time.
Where can you take that in Act II, well to be honest you'd go anywhere with the director after that, but Honoré follows through on the premise and still holds a few surprises in reserve. For Act III he puts the orchestra and conductor up on the stage for the concert performance that was being rehearsed in Act I, and this acts as a backdrop for the 'real-life' tragic demise of Malfitano's diva, identifying with Tosca, her illusions shattered. It's a breathtaking conclusion that, by putting the orchestra centre stage, essentially returns the power back over to Puccini's music. Daniele Rustioni, who we've been fortunate to gain as the chief conductor of the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast and have already experienced his passion for Italian composers and opera this summer, shows us that in Act III Puccini's music is everything.
Well, not entirely everything. Considering the difficulties of playing dual-roles in close up to cameras, the performances are also outstanding. Angel Blue is glorious, Joseph Calleja is tragic, Catherine Malfitano incredible just for her presence and acting performance. What is impressive however is that there are no egos involved here, each of them prepared to put in whatever it takes to make this production one of the most moving Toscas I've ever seen. Impressive on any number of levels, it's not about voices, divas and drama, it's not inflated egos and pretentious concepts; Christophe Honoré's production works because it blurs boundaries between life and art, reducing and elevating Puccini's masterpiece to the level of pure emotion, pure opera, pure Tosca.
Links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence
