Mild things

English Touring Opera is playing safe this spring, with Tosca and Patience, and was rewarded, in Cambridge at least, with full houses. Its Tosca has been moderately reviewed, and that is about what it deserves. There is only one set, designed primarily with the tableau of chorus and soloists at the end of Act One in mind. Not at all atmospheric, it has to conjure up for us a church, a room in a palace, and dawn at the Castel Sant’Angelo, but scarcely succeeds with any of them.

The soloists have a heavy weight of responsibility, which only the Tosca of Paula Sides fully managed. She is fine-looking, slim, good at acting temperamentally, and a powerful singer, though a slightly short-breathed one. You could see why Scarpia is lustful, though forgetting God (as he claims she makes him) is rather extreme. Scarpia, Craig Smith, was low-keyed, neither the slobbering lecher one looks forward to, nor the smiling sadist who can give you the creeps; even so, Tosca made an unusually thorough job of stabbing him. Her beloved Cavaradossi, sung by Alexander James Edwards, a qualified plumber, so the biographical notes told us, was phlegmatic. Like all Cavaradossis, he belted out ‘Recondita armonia’, marked piano throughout, as if he was announcing that ‘None Shall Sleep’, and he was not good at expressing his passion for Tosca physically, but he did die well.

One of the problems with reducing the score of Tosca is that the orchestration may be the most interesting thing about it, and reveals Puccini’s mastery as no other aspect of the work does. The slimmed-down version, conducted with all his usual flair by Michael Rosewell, and well played, couldn’t suggest the sheer crushing viciousness of Scarpia or the syrup that Puccini pours over the lovers, so the result was mild, not really what you want this opera to be.