The Royal Opera’s long-awaited new production of Puccini’s opera — the house’s first since Maria Callas’s diva sparred with Tito Gobbi’s Scarpia for Franco Zeffirelli in 1964 — opened last Tuesday to the kind of reception rarely heard in Bow Street these days: wild (and deserved) cheering for Terfel; the Argentinian tenor Marcelo Alvarez as Tosca’s inamorato, Mario Cavaradossi; and Antonio Pappano and his superb orchestra.
Somewhat to my surprise, the clapometer reading dropped noticeably for the curtain call of the prima donna, the beautiful but ever-controversial Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu, and there were even a few boos from the upper parts of the house.
So, an unqualified triumph for Terfel, the vocal star of the show, and Pappano; a big success for Alvarez; and a respectful hand for the production team, Jonathan Kent, director, Paul Brown, designer, and Mark Henderson, lighting, who had the unenviable task of replacing the iconic work of Zeffirelli and his associates. Gheorghiu’s failure, if it can be called such, is more perplexing, because the portents were so good. About six years ago, she made a soundtrack recording to a pretentious Tosca film by Benoît Jacquot, with Pappano conducting his ROH forces, at EMI’s Abbey Road studios. Close-miked, the soprano suggested she would be a Tosca to reckon with when she chose to sing the role in the theatre. It was always going to be a daunting task for her, especially at Covent Garden, where the ghost of Callas hovers over every subsequent soprano who sings the role in this theatre.
For all the ductile beauty of her timbre — a classic lyric Puccini voice, with its individual vibrato and gleaming high notes — and her alluring physical presence, Gheorghiu lacks the essential weight and cutting edge the role requires in a big theatre. On opening night, she never seemed to inhabit the part as a star of her standing should. Her offstage entry didn’t synchronise with Pappano’s beat, and anxious glances at the conductor throughout the evening suggested incomplete mastery of the notes. She may have been nervous, but her tentative singing of Tosca’s show-stopping Vissi d’arte and her rather improvisatory, “actressy” posturing once again raise questions about her dedication to the job. With so much natural talent at her disposal, she gives the impression of “coasting”. On the other hand, I don’t think I have heard Tosca’s love music more beautifully sung in the theatre; but, in the final analysis, her voice is probably too small to succeed as Tosca on the world’s most prestigious stages. We’ll see.
The good news, though, is that Kent and Brown have, for the most part, delivered a Tosca production the Royal Opera can be proud of and revive regularly. When the curtain rose on Act I, I was worried that, once again, the company’s addiction to scenic clutter was going to restrict the acting area. The internal architecture of Brown’s Sant’Andrea della Valle looks like no Roman church I have seen, with its double staircase descending from the high altar behind a grille — Kent and Brown are obviously not interested in Zeffirelli-style representationalism. This split-level set at least has the virtue of separating Terfel’s brooding Scarpia from the Te deum procession at the end of the act.
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It is a relief, too, that director and designer have dared to give London a broadly traditional Tosca, but one that suggests a fresh and detailed approach to the music and libretto. And there is a genuine frisson in the interaction of Terfel and Alvarez’s Cavaradossi in their inquisition scene. Terfel presides over a grand study, dominated by a statue of St Michael conquering the Devil and noticeably short of books: the only shelves laden with tomes prove to be the concealed doorway to the torture chamber, suggesting the veneer of civilisation with which the hypocritical Scarpia attempts to mask his brutality. The Welsh bass-baritone is riveting to watch in this scene, and Alvarez rises to the challenge of his testing cries of “Vittoria!” at the news of Melas’s defeat at the hands of Napoleon.
Pappano is the only RO music director in recent memory to take Puccini seriously — a sign not only of the conductor’s Italianate sympathies, but also of the composer’s rehabilitation as an operatic genius. And apart from a couple of horn blips at the beginning of Act III, the orchestra plays with real bite and attention to Puccini’s dynamic markings. This was a great night for Pappano, and one hopes he returns to Tosca soon and frequently.
Opera Holland Park opened its season a week earlier in balmy weather, and to the usual distractions of whining peacocks and Heathrow-bound aircraft, with a different Puccini, the earlier Manon Lescaut, and a rare production of Fedora — like Tosca, based on a play by Paris’s provider of steaming potboilers, Victorien Sardou — by Puccini’s younger contemporary, Umberto Giordano. Fedora is modestly but elegantly staged by John Lloyd Davies, with sumptuous fin-de-siècle frocks by Bob Bailey. It’s a serviceable platform for Yvonne Kenny, still a pleasure to watch and hear in the “senior diva” role of the vengeful titular Russian princess, and for a promising Australian tenor, Aldo Di Toro, as the lover who has murdered her husband. Dramatically, it’s a feeble opera, with too many subsidiary characters appearing conveniently in unlikely locations and off-stage events, but worth an occasional airing.
By contrast, Manon Lescaut is a youthful masterpiece, but this was OHP reverting to village-hall mode, with ludicrously poverty-stricken sets and risibly stiff “operatic” acting, apart from Amanda Echalaz’s charismatic and vocally audacious Manon. This is a young singer of thrilling potential, but she needs careful nurturing in an organisation of higher artistic ambition than OHP. Pappano should take her under his wing.