All this talk of relocating English National Opera to Manchester must be very disconcerting for Opera North, a much better run company that has been “levelling up” opera provision in the north of England for more than 40 years. This revival of Tosca, for instance, opens in Leeds then visits Salford, Nottingham, Newcastle and Hull.
And it’s a corker of a show — cast with seasoned Opera North regulars at the top of their form, staged imaginatively and cogently, and with Puccini’s searing score pungently played by a fired-up orchestra. ENO’s leadership could learn a lot from it.
Edward Dick’s production, first seen in 2018, is updated to the present day — primarily, it seems, so Scarpia can treat Tosca to a live streaming on his laptop of her lover Cavaradossi being tortured. Other innovations include real incense wafting across the stalls in the spine-tingling Te Deum (bells and smells — real Catholicism!) and the staging of Act II not in Scarpia’s office but in his bedroom, which gets straight to the point, I suppose, and allows the vile police chief to excite himself by rubbing his crotch against a bedpost.
The most gripping drama, however,
is created not by the director but by
Giselle Allen and Robert Hayward as Tosca and Scarpia. Indeed, I have rarely seen the vicious, volatile Act II confrontation done with more raw venom, right down to a stabbing so brutal you gasp with shock.
Allen matches that by turning her voice — so thrillingly focused up top — into a guttural snarl of pure hatred. She also makes her Act III exit so audacious that you wonder whether she has been rushed straight to A&E. Of all her magnificent performances for Opera North, this is the most terrifying and gripping.
As for Hayward, this is just the latest in his epic series of perverted psychos. His singing is compelling enough, but his acting is something else. He does a creepy Dr Strangelove thing with his right arm that suggests inner turmoil.
There’s much to admire, too, about the Ukrainian tenor Mykhailo Malafii as Cavaradossi, though he needs more lyricism and less heft in gentler moments. And in the pit Garry Walker conducts a tremendously persuasive orchestral performance: not just thunderous in the climaxes but also full of beautiful things from, for example, solo clarinet and cello. A riveting evening.
To March 2 then touring, operanorth.co.uk