Opera reviews: Tosca and The Fairy Queen

3 / 5 stars

MORE than any other Puccini opera, Tosca is a rollercoaster from start to finish.

ToscaPH

More than any other Puccini opera, Tosca is a rollercoaster from start to finish

Set in the turbulent Rome of 1800, its fight between good and evil has a beautiful diva trapped into a sordid sexual bargain with a sadistic Chief of Police for the life of her artist lover.   

It is nothing less than full-on melodrama and everything hangs on the ability of the three main protagonists to sweep the audience along with them. 

The revival by Donna Stirrup of Catherine Malfitano’s 2010 staging doesn’t have such an effect this time around. Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones, returning as Cavaradossi, is in fine voice from the start, setting the pace from his first aria Recondita Armonia, comparing the fair beauty of the Madonna he is painting with the darker beauty of his lover Tosca. 

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The revival by Donna Stirrup of Catherine Malfitano’s 2010 staging doesn’t have such an effect

American soprano Keri Alkema, making her London debut as Tosca, seems less assured and one wonders whether this may be due to singing the role in Edmund Tracey’s earthbound English translation rather than the original Italian libretto. At the start her voice was virtually drowned by the overloud orchestra, conducted by Oleg Caetani.  

Bass-baritone Craig Colclough as Police Chief Baron Scarpia gets an entourage of black-caped henchmen for his entrance to the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle. The menace of his bark, though, lacks conviction during the all-important second act. 

Scarpia meets a violent end through efficient knife work from Tosca, who foregoes the usual candles of forgiveness placed either side of the corpse.

Designer Frank Philipp Schlossmann’s sets are conventional for the first two acts but the third act at the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo takes off into symbolism with a huge section of a tunnel opening on to a starry cosmos. Tosca’s backward fall into space provides a distinct frisson of shock at the end.  

The Fairy QueenPH

Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at the Barbican Hall

The Academy Of Ancient Music’s stage director Daisy Evans has devised a semi-staging like a studio space where the singers are in throes of rehearsal for Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. 

Thus soprano Mhairi Lawson’s First Fairy is also a mop-wielding cleaner and there is confusion among singers over music scores while director Richard Egarr conducts from the harpsichord.  

Bass Ashley Riches’s Drunken Poet wanders into the rehearsal and gets soundly pinched by the fairies for his “dogrel rhymes”.  

He tangles with counter tenor Iestyn Davies in the Coridon and Mopsa “courtship” scene where Coridon taking off his specs sends panic signals to Mopsa (Davies). Rowan Pierce delivers “If Love’s A Sweet Passion” in crystalline tone and actor Timothy West wanders in from the auditorium to interject a series of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

The general effect is messy but musically of a high order, illustrative of the shambolic genius of Purcell’s own life. The Academy (aam.co.uk) will be at Milton Court Concert Hall in London on December 7 with sopranos Rowan Pierce and Carolyn Sampson in The Glory Of Venice.

VERDICT: 3/5

Puccini’s Tosca English National Opera, The Coliseum, London WC2(Tickets: 020 7845 9300/eno.org; £12-£125)

Purcell’s The Fairy Queen Academy Of Ancient Music/EgarrBarbican Hall, London EC2 (One night only)

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