TRULY TERRIFIC TOSCA
CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★Dramatic would be an understatement. Black drapes hung from ceiling to platform transforming Symphony Hall into a gigantic catafalque, over which loomed a gigantic cross formed from myriad lights. The CBSO players occupied every inch of space, they too in black, illuminated only by music stand lamps. Kazuki Yamada's baton stabs down incisively, the CBSO roars into life with menacing doom-laden chords saturated in percussion and brass. Seconds later the political fugitive Angelotti (Ashley Riches) is racing down the left stalls aisle and onto the platform desperately seeking refuge in the Church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle. Just under three hours later Tosca (Anna Patalong) takes her fatal plunge as the cross dazzles us with a blaze of pure white light. A capacity audience from stalls to the precipitous seats in the grand tier roar their approval of a superb performance that has gripped us throughout. In the 1950s professor of music Joseph Kerman sneeringly dismissed Puccini's opera as "a shabby little shocker". While he is now remembered for one snide comment, 'Tosca' was the fifth most performed opera in the world in the last century, and the second most in this millenium. Puccini's music transforms and elevates his source material from dross to pure gold in a miracle of musical alchemy.
I saw tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones as Cavaradossi in the Welsh National Opera production of 'Tosca' in 2013 at Birmingham Hippodrome here he was once again working at his painting of the Madonna but in this stripped-down semi-staged production, doing so with invisible brushes on an imaginary canvas. He has since moved into Wagnerian roles; had singing Tristan tarnished his burnished Italianate sound? His heroic impassioned 'Recondita armonia' instantly dispelled doubts: erotic passion and romantic love incarnate, the voice soared to the triumphant declaration 'Tosca, sei tu!' with the ringing trumpet-like "squillo" sound echoing through Symphony Hall, swiftly followed by audience acclaim. Gentleness too in the wistful times-past of 'E lucevan le stelle...' Jones honed his voice down to a soulful whisper. Anna Patalong, a late replacement for the indisposed Natalya Romaniw, looked every inch the reigning diva of Rome; raven-haired, voluptuous, swathed in clinging red silk. Little wonder that Sir Bryn Terfel's jowly and lubricious Scarpia seemed always in danger of reaching out a hand to squeeze the flesh he so desires; a Harvey Weinstein sexual predator prowling the Palazzo Farnese. When Terfel first appeared in the church he's a Mafia capo flanked by his two henchmen Spoletta (sharp and incisive Aled Hall) and man mountain Sciarrone (saturnine Sion Goronwy). Their comic interplay with the officious Sacristan (a firm voiced Ross Ramgobin) was amusing as he cowered with the giant Sciarrione looming over him. Terfel was splendidly sinister, his 'Va, Tosca!' a powerful threat of destruction; every small gesture carried weight and significance, in his big scene with Tosca there was never a wasted move. At the start of Act II Yamada turned on the podium to see if Terfel was ready, he was already in character thus it was Scarpia who waved a hand at the conductor to begin. Delightfully droll.
Patalong began her career as a lyric soprano but has moved to the dramatic repertoire and at first her vibrato widened under pressure but soon settled down. Her 'Vissi d'arte', delivered sitting on the platform step, lost in private rapture, combined delicacy and purity as it soared, with warmth, expanding without strain. Her deadly confrontation with Scarpia, the explosion into despairing rage, was convincing and the teamwork with Terfel, the ebb and flow of their transaction, cogent. The constraints of the platform performance impinged on Patalong most of all; in the theatre the aftermath of Scarpia's death, the blood, knife, the setting of the post-mortem candles give it a macabre ritualistic quality with Tosca as high priestess. In the execution scene she was at the front of the platform and Cavaradossi at the back so that Tosca's ironically touching advice of how he should play dead went for little. The director James Bonas ensured that the music's impact was not compromised and there were some deft touches as, for example, the CBSO Children's Chorus entering the church to celebrate the 'Te Deum' via the aisles, scampering quietly down like church mice. Howard Hudson's lighting design was imaginative and effective, switching colour and intensity to reflect the music's mood: a muted red for Scarpia's study, erupted into searing scarlet at his death; a pale blue for the dawn in Act III modulating to warm yellow at sunrise, complementing the pastoral carolling of the Shepherd (Evelyn Byford). Of course all this subsisted on on the CBSO's playing (how many opera houses around the world would like a band this good in their orchestra pit?) marshalled with immense vigour and enthusiasm by Yamada, plus Chorus Master Julian Wilkins' sterling work with the talented and versatile CBSO Children's Chorus, CBSO Youth Chorus and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir.
Norman Stinchcombe