Welly lacking: Tosca at the ROH
Tosca
The Royal Opera
Royal Opera House
Royal Box, general rehearsal
12 January 2018
ROH page
Tosca is the perfect opera. Or at least that’s something I’m fond of saying. This performance suggests either that it’s not as good in reality as in my mind, or that its perfection is more vulnerable than I thought.
Maybe again my expectations were too high. I was impressed by Adrienne Pieczonka’s Chrysothemis a few years ago, and both Gerald Finley and Joseph Calleja are longtime favourites. I’ve argued for the nuance of Jonathan Kent’s classic production and in the summer enjoyed conductor Dan Ettinger’s account of Turandot. What was there not to like?
I shouldn’t overplay my disappointment. I still enjoyed it; I still mentally hummed throughout; I was still able to squeeze out a tear as Tosca leapt from parapet to mattress. But as good as opera gets? Far from it.
Some of the problem is due to the proximity offered by the Royal Box. Part of me feels it’s unfair to come this close to opera singers: they’re trained to express themselves through their voices, not their bodies, and the majority of their audience is a good long way away. But another, larger part of me thinks this is feeble. They’re opera singers, not disembodied voices, and while the stage context demands more than the nuance of a film actor, that doesn’t mean that their actions shouldn’t be credible.
So it was distracting to look at Pieczonka and think that if I were Tosca and knew Cavaradossi was being tortured I would run to hold him the moment I could and only physical force could restrain me; that if I were Tosca and had just killed Scarpia then I would hunt for the safe conduct pass with rather more urgency; that if I were Tosca and was realizing that Cavaradossi would never wake up I would be a bit more bothered about it. Never did Pieczonka seem to be doing more than singing some music, and it turns out this is fatal to my enjoyment of Tosca.
Finley puts a lot more effort in but is hung out to dry by Ettinger, who encourages so much from the orchestra in their statements of Scarpia’s evilness that the relatively small-voiced Finley is left sounding a bit weedy. After his superb accounts of Amfortas I lay responsibility for this solely with Ettinger’s miscalibration. Finally Calleja sails through untouched but untouchable, the pleasure of hearing his beautiful, sun-drenched voice marred, as ever, by the apparent complete indifference of his bodily expression to his surroundings.
Post scriptum
On seeing Tosca again with expectations lowered (3 February 2018, Balcony D32 standing, £13) my initial impression was confirmed and extended. This meant amelioration for Finley, who sounded pretty jolly impressive from the Balcony and who now has had enough experience to know how to navigate Tosca’s train. His was the stand-out performance. Calleja sounded just as beautiful as before but was just as indifferent, his physical acting often comically undramatic (the expression of his body on learning that Tosca had given away Angelotti’s hiding place stretched at most to ‘Oh, darn’). Pieczonka, sadly, was sounding very worn, increasingly so as the evening progressed, by the end producing not much than a hollow shout.
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