Puccini - Tosca (Belfast, 2023)

Giacomo Puccini - Tosca

Northern Ireland Opera, 2023

Eduardo Strausser, Cameron Menzies, Svetlana Kasyan, Peter Auty, Brendan Collins, Matthew Durkan, Niall Anderson, Aaron O'Hare, Connor Campbell, Paul McQuillan, Mollie Lucas, Alexa Thompson

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 12th September 2023

You can't go wrong with Tosca and not going wrong is important to a company like Northern Ireland Opera, a company trying to get on its feet again after the pandemic, in a time of cuts to arts budgets and with no working Assembly in place in Stormont. Tosca is also a safe bet, like the previous two operas staged by NIO, La Bohème and La Traviata, neither of which inspired me to go and see live opera in my home town. But then it strikes me that NIO are not appealing to an opera audience - which is probably indeed limited here - but, as collaborations with musicals at the Lyric Theatre suggest, aiming to win over a certain class of theatre-going audience. Even then, there is a presumption that even there isn't a large enough audience or budget to put on more than one full scale opera a year. Oliver Mears, who directed the company with a more ambitious programme from 2011 to 2018, might disagree with that, but clearly we are in different times.

Tosca however strikes me as being a good test to judge how successfully an opera company might be able to meet its current challenges. It's a perfectly calibrated drama with music scored for maximum impact on those dramatic points, with carefully placed arias in each act and each act delivering a highly charged emotional climax. The good news is that Cameron Menzies's production rightly went for spectacle and impact and delivered on expectations for this opera. I originally typed 'minimum expectations' there, but I suppose that is subjective and dependent on what you expect from this opera. As far as the majority of the audience are concerned, which is more important, it delivered pure operatic drama. As far as expectations for commercial viability, NIO also delivered four sold out shows. You can't reasonably ask for more than within the current limitations, but there is surely a case for suggesting that four performances of one full-scale opera a year must be considered a bare minimum.

Whatever budget the Northern Ireland Opera had been allocated for Tosca, it was however well used in Niall McKeever's decoration of the elaborate stage set. In the past NIO would take Tosca to site specific locations and a new audience in Derry/Londonderry and bring a meaningful context to the story as a way of illustrating its power. If you're only going to put on one full-length opera a year in Belfast to appeal to a regular theatre-going audience hoping attract future funding, donations and investment, you might as well make it impressive. Act 1 of Tosca does look very impressive, the portrait of the Madonna encased in a huge circular stone frame, looking something like a fresco in the dome of a cathedral. Other than that though, the setting was worryingly unimaginative, sticking close to the original period and stage directions with scaffolding, naves and the Angelotti private chapel. Still, when you have room for the chorus of nuns and altar-boys filling the stage for the Te Deum and the Ulster Orchestra booming it out to the audience, there's no ground for complaint at the effectiveness of the direction here.

Any concerns about this being a staid by-the-book production were put aside as Menzies had more up his sleeve for the sets and continuity between them through Act II and Act III. The surrounding scaffolding remained in place for no meaningful reason other than perhaps for it being difficult to move, but the period is less easily tied down. Scarpia's dining room sits on a raised platform looking like it was fitted by IKEA, with a huge backdrop of a topless woman throwing off what looks like a transparent veil. Visually this worked well, not just to put Scarpa's lust up in the stage (this would hardly be needed considering the expression of the libretto and the score), but it also provided good sightlines so that everyone in the Grand Opera House could get a good view of one of the most powerful scenes in the opera repertoire (not to mention the Act III finale, which is similarly very well staged). This also serves to bring the opera's themes into a more contemporary post-#MeToo age, and there is after all no reason why it should hark back to the troubled history of the province as the Oliver Mears's production did. Different times, different audience, different requirements to achieve the necessary impact. It's not as if Puccini's Tosca was any kind of commentary on police and politics of its time.

Act III likewise found a novel and effective way to present that all-important Castel St. Angelo finale by having Cavaradossi led onto a raised gallows-like platform for execution, the firing squad taking aim from the surrounding scaffolding. The stone circle is present behind this, looking like a deep void into which the heroine plunges at the conclusion. It could hardly be more dramatic. Arguably the scene could hardly fail to be, but I have seen productions where it has been less effective than it should be. The audience were suitably impressed here, and from some reactions I heard, taken totally by surprise.

I wasn't totally won over by the singing. Peter Auty singing Cavaradossi has a beautiful dramatic tenor line, but the challenges of hitting and sustaining the high notes showed. He hit them consistently of course but I found myself wincing and willing him on. Russian soprano Svetlana Kasyan had no trouble with the high notes, sustaining them or projecting them to the back of the opera house, but the accuracy of her notes was inconsistent and I'm afraid the clarity of her diction wasn't strong. Floria Tosca is a big challenge however and Kasyan commanded attention as the diva and in a strong 'Vissi d'arte'. Brendan Collins was an effective Scarpia, never resorting to pantomime bad-guy swaggering, but a bigger baritone voice is needed to really deliver that villainous bile.

Tosca is not just all about love, sex, violence, betrayal and murder between the three major roles, and it's not just a showcase for a leading soprano, tenor and baritone, or at least it doesn't have to be. Personally I enjoyed some of the little touches and smaller roles more than the big ones and Puccini adds plenty of other colour and detail in the likes of the scene stealing chorus Te Deum finale to Act I, although that is hardly what you would call a little touch. Niall Anderson's sacristan and the shepherd heard (and seen) on the streets of Rome at the beginning of Act III (either Mollie Lucas or Alexa Thompson) sang well and it's a credit to the casting and direction that attention was paid to these details.

As it was to the orchestration. It's always a pleasure to hear the Ulster Orchestra play and conducted by Eduardo Strausser, Puccini's score wasn't too shabby about delivering its notorious shocks, musical as well as dramatic. Tosca is a great opera and, albeit with minor misgivings, I enjoyed this performance. It was also nice to see opera at the Grand Opera House in Belfast again - even the touring companies have abandoned us. It would be a shame if we have to wait another year for the next one.

External links: Northern Ireland Opera

Verdi - Don Carlo (Turin, 2013 - Blu-ray)

Giuseppe Verdi - Don Carlo

Teatro Regio di Torino, 2013

Gianandrea Noseda, Hugo de Ana, Ramón Vargas, Svetlana Kasyan, Ildar Abdrazakov, Ludovic Tézier, Daniela Barcellona, Marco Spotti, Sonia Ciani, Luca Casalin

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

The familiar Verdi themes of love versus duty, loyalty and betrayal, the abuse of power versus individual liberty, fathers against sons, all spiced up with a good bit of melodrama are all there in Don Carlo, and taken to even greater heights than in any of composer's previous works or even his subsequent later masterpieces. It was undoubtedly the challenge of taking on all those themes from Friedrich Schiller's drama that attracted Verdi out of semi-retirement, and at this stage late in his career the composer's ability to present a more mature, nuanced account of entwined personal and political ambitions is astonishing. It's as if all the previous works have been pulled together into one great work that bears all the might and brilliance of Verdi at his best.

First presented in Paris in French as a five-act grand opera, the challenging length and nature of the work meant that it would undergo several further revisions, but in whichever version it's presented, Don Carlos or Don Carlo remains one of Verdi's greatest works and one of the most impressive spectacles in all of opera. Each version however also brings with it considerable challenges as far as staging and casting. The 2013 Teatro Regio di Torino production of the 1884 four-act version of the Italian Don Carlo is impressive enough on spectacle and in the manner in which it presents the themes of the work, but the music and singing are not quite up to task here.

The choice of the 1884 version obviously has an impact on the direction the production takes. Gone is the whole of the original Act I, where Carlo first meets and immediately falls in love with his promised bride Elisabeth of Valois in the gardens of Fontainebleau. It's not uncommon for significant prior events to be omitted in an opera (even if the jarring introduction successfully remains in Verdi's previous opera La Forza del Destino), but in this case, the whole tone of Don Carlo is coloured by the exigencies of state that no sooner introduce the happy young couple than tear them apart in order for Carlo's father Philip II to marry Elisabeth himself. Opening with Carlo and Rodrigo shifts the emphasis from love story to brotherhood, family and duty, but with Verdi's ability to tie it into Schiller's mix of politics and religion, this is still highly charged drama.

This tone comes through most successfully in the Turin production, particularly in this version, which opens with a funeral and an apparition rather than the romantic encounter of the five-act version of the work. The monumental size of the sets, the stone pillars, the religious backdrops, the formality and richness of the costume designs, all contribute to a sense of deeply serious intrigue and dark drama, which is how Don Carlo ought to appear. Everything about the production design here gives that impression of grandeur and intensity of purpose that matches Verdi's vision. The stage direction and choreography are good - a little theatrical, but not stagey, it plays to the dramatic nature of the work itself. As a spectacle it's marvellous, looking every inch the ultimate expression of complete opera, which in many ways Don Carlo is.

While the epic scope is all there on the stage, the level of nuance and psychological probing that needs to be expressed through the playing and the singing just doesn't live up to the exceptional demands of Verdi's score here in the Turin production. Don Carlo is a heavy work, it's dark and oppressive, but even so Gianandrea Noseda's management of the pace and tone of the work is quite leaden, never finding the light and shade that is there also. Even within the dark palette of the work, there are deeper undercurrents and themes, complex characterisation and different facets to each of the personalities in their public and private faces, that interplays with one another and impacts upon the outcome of the drama.

To cite just one example at a key point in the opera, the revelation of the nature of his marriage to Elisabeth followed by Philip II's meeting with the Grand Inquisitor contains a wealth of suggestion and implication. Verdi's score switches between the personal and royal, between political and religious in a way that deepens the sentiments and raises the stakes, but it also brings in and makes you aware of the off-stage characters, of the implications this scene will have in determining the fate of both Carlo and Rodrigo and for how it will impact on Elisabeth, not to mention the wider state of the world. There's a lot demanded of all the singers then, but despite the fact that the cast here is an exceptionally good one, it's hard to feel that any of them are right for the roles, or at least the roles as they are defined in this production.

Ildar Abdrazakov comes out best, his singing capable, controlled and authoritative as Philip II. Ramón Vargas' voice however has lost some of the former force and that's needed for Carlo. He's at his best alongside Ludovic Tézier's Rodgrigo, forming the close brotherhood that is at the heart of this version of the opera, but neither performer is able to bring any range or subtlety to the characterisation that is required elsewhere. Elisabeth is much too big a role for Svetlana Kasyan, and - other than her heart-wrenching cry that closes the work so dramatically - her wavering pitch rarely matches the force of the sentiments that are expressed. Even the wonderful Daniela Barcellona is pushed by the excessive demands of this work, but her Pincess Eboli at least hits all the points of the lovestruck woman's rejection turning to jealous fury and then regret, agony and self-loathing. Even if they are unable to get across the full measure of Verdi's brilliance, the Turin production is still impressive, and you are never in doubt that this is one of the greatest creations in all opera.

The production looks stunning in High Definition on the Blu-ray release, the image crystal clear, the sets looking impressive with bold colouration and strong contrasts. The singers are not wearing radio mics so it can be a little echoing, but there's a rich dark tone to the orchestration that is warm and enveloping, with good presence in the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mix. There's a deep low-frequency boom on the surround mix which has most impact during the Grand Inquisitor scene. The only extra feature on the disc is a Cast Gallery, but there's an essay on the creation of the work and a synopsis in the booklet. Subtitles are in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.