UK Edition
Review
ENO's latest revival of Tosca is all right for a Monday night – review
Given the delicate state of ENO’s finances and morale, its operations allow no margin for error or room for slacking, and standard revivals of public-pleasing favourites matter as much as headline-hitting new productions.
On that score, this routine exhumation of Catherine Malfitano’s 2010 production of Tosca passes muster. But is that quite good enough? The acting is so stilted and the English translation so genteel-fustian (trembling hearts burning with passion and other such clichés) that no newcomer to opera is going to come away blasted or converted; and the staging, rather limply rehearsed by Donna Stirrup, has nothing of interest or urgency to say about the drama or its vividly drawn characters.
Young audience members sitting near me were sniggering at the lovers’ phoney embraces, the hammy murder of Scarpia and Tosca’s absurd death leap: I bet nobody felt like that when Callas and Gobbi sang under Zeffirelli’s direction.
Still, Malfitano tells the story clearly and simply, in handsomely gilded and pillared period settings (though I fail to understand why Act 3 takes place inside the Hubble telescope). It’s a decent show.
Keri Alkema was Tosca, making this the seventh ENO production in a row to be led by an American singer: further comment on this statistic is superfluous. With a voice even throughout its range, she sang securely and competently but without a trace of individuality, suggesting neither the captivating capricious diva nor the ruthless peasant who might secretly find Scarpia’s sleazy offer quite a turn-on.
Craig Colclough (another American) gives the latter character a coating of unctuous benevolence that was the evening’s one interesting feature, the only downside to his crisply articulated interpretation being a failure to raise the rafters at the climax to Act 1. As his antagonist Cavaradossi, Gwyn Hughes Jones had volume to spare and his ringingly powerful tenor sailed as effortlessly through his cry of “death to tyrants” as the lyrical arias and duets. But he has a stolid stage presence, no glamour or romance about him at all.
Oleg Caetani conducted, carving a loud, hard, fast and confident path through the score. The sum of it was OK for a Monday night. As a punter, I would say it was worth about 30 quid tops, but had I been forking out the £106.50 whack demanded for Stalls or Dress Circle, I’d have felt cheated.
Until Dec 3. Tickets: 020 7845 9300; eno.org