Puccini - Tosca (Aix, 2019)

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

Verdi - Stiffelio (La Fenice, 2015 - Webcast)

Giuseppe Verdi - Stiffelio

Teatro La Fenice, 2015

Daniele Rustioni, Johannes Weigand, Stefano Secco, Julianna Di Giacomo, Dimitri Platanias, Francesco Marsiglia, Simon Lim, Cristiano Olivieri, Sofia Koberidze

Culturebox - October 2015

I'm not sure how Stiffelio came to be regarded as one of Verdi's lesser and rarely performed operas. Sure, its plot is rather on the 'domestic' side compared to the grand melodrama of personal turmoil conflicting with political duty in Don Carlos, but other than Otello and Falstaff - all later works - you're not going to find the same level of sophisticated musical and dramatic characterisation in in any of Verdi's earlier writing. Admittedly Stiffelio is not even quite at the same level of Verdi greatness that was to see fruition soon after in Rigoletto and La Traviata, but it's clearly heading in that direction in how Verdi combines dramatic action with great melodic invention.

Like quite a few of Verdi's earlier works, a large part of the reason for it being underestimated might have more to do with its troubled history with the censor. Stiffelio (1850) ran into objections from Catholic authorities over the religious content of the work, a work moreover which features a Protestant minister, a married man of God which would have been judged to be too shocking for a sensitive Catholic audience to consider. Verdi wasn't happy with the changes that were demanded and the work consequently languished in obscurity for years until the composer came to rewrite the work in a new setting under the title of Aroldo (1857). Stiffelio received some recognition, and became a personal favourite, when it was revived by the Royal Opera House and broadcast on television in 1993, with José Carreras in the leading role.

La Fenice's 2015 production of Stiffelio plays to the strengths of the work as well as exposing its weaknesses. As is often the case with Verdi, particularly the earlier Verdi works, the measure of the weakness can often be only be determined by the quality of the singers. With the right kind of cast in roles that need very specific voices to meet the kind of challenges they pose, something appears to click into place for certain operas, allowing them to function much better than might be apparent on paper. Carreras and Malfitano, for example, demonstrated what could be made of Stiffelo and Lina in the 1993 production, but while Stefano Secco and Julianna Di Giacomo prove to be very capable in this Venice production, they aren't quite strong or starry enough to give the opera the extra boost that it needs.

Daniele Rustioni in the pit and Johannes Weigand directing for the stage do at least recognise the quality and the nature of the work. Stiffelio is not bombastic early Verdi, but requires a measure of lyricism in the playing and a dynamic that is closer to that of La Traviata. In terms of the setting, the austere approach is one that also matches the subject and setting of a Protestant preacher in a small German religious community. Like La Traviata, where questions of social hypocrisy are also to the fore, the drama in Stiffelio is very much a personal one where the internalised passions occasionally spill over into public life in a scandalous fashion.

Wiegand's very formalised period setting - dark and moody, with the characters all dressed in greatcoats - suits the buttoned-up and concealed illicit passions that lie in the work. It also finds an appropriate manner to capture the way that those passions overflow and are exposed with grander gestures. Hence, when Lina's affair is publicly uncovered in the cemetery scene that develops into a duel between her father Count Stankar and her lover Raffaele at the end of Act II, the stage explodes with the coloured light from the stained glass windows of the church. Even though religious sentiment isn't new, the choir in the church present an emotional and dramatic counterpoint that is rather different from the typical revenge scene.  Verdi would use similar religious contrasts later to highlight hypocrisy and conflict, but Stiffelio is refreshingly free from cynicism here.

That and the spirit of forgiveness that is shown in the final scene of Act III are what mark Stiffelio out as a very different work from the more typical Hugo and Schiller heroic dramas that were the main source of inspiration for Verdi's earlier works. It also shows Verdi taking a rather more restrained approach to dramatic realism, or perhaps he was just a little more idealistic and tolerant than when he later contrasted Violetta's dilemma with Parisian society in La Traviata. Again, Wiegand's setting for this grand moment is well-judged, capturing the emotional power of the scene, but keeping it on a human level. That's the overall balance that needs to be maintained in Stiffelio and that's well worked out here between the pit and the stage.

Considering that it's La Traviata that is the measure against which this work needs to be judged - not one that is going to be favourable for any opera - Stiffelio holds up rather well. It is too over-reliant on the cabaletta/cavatina/aria form for it to be able to truly break any formal constraints, but even within that Verdi demonstrates a wonderful lyricism in Stiffelio, with touches - such as the trumpet solo in the overture, a bass aria, some of the clarinet accompaniment of the characterisation - that you won't find quite the same anywhere else in his work. The singing performances however are merely competent in this production, when it needs a little more personality.

Stefano Secco sings reasonably well as Stiffelio, but you don't get a great sense of him being a man of God in conflict with the emotional demands of being a mere man and a betrayed husband. It's there in Verdi's score however and this at least comes across to some extent. Julianna Di Giacomo is a fine Lina, capturing at least the emotional turmoil in a role that is quite limited in development (she's a sinner, while the main male roles are those of betrayed honour). Dimitri Platanias doesn't have great clarity of diction or the full Verdi baritone force for Stankar, but gets the emotional plight of the prototypical Rigoletto role. Francesco Marsiglia's high constricted tenor isn't all that pleasant, but that suits the character of a role that isn't meant to be pleasant either. There's a lovely fullness of tone to bass Simon Lim's Jorg.


Links: Culturebox, Teatro La Fenice