28 – 29 March
Puccini’s drama of tyranny and resistance, first produced in 1900, speaks with compelling relevance to our troubled times in this powerful production by Oxford Opera Company. Director Katie Blackwell has transposed the story from the Rome of the Napoleonic Wars to an imaginary, nameless, vaguely South American country under a brutal contemporary dictatorship. The design of a simple platform under three enormous, illuminated crosses suggests the regime’s reliance on an oppressive Christianity, while the overall palette of black and red hints at a lurid combination of blood and fascism.
Only when the forces of liberation emerge towards the end does light fill the stage, bringing hope in the form of a children’s chorus dressed in white, splashed with coloured paint and adorned with yellow feathers. These singers from Oxford Youth Chorus are one happy outcome of the company’s mission to bring opera and music to local young people through outreach and education. In this context, it makes sense that the company’s Tosca should be sung in English. And Chris Cowell’s translation (2022) is sharp and often witty. But Puccini intended his work to be sung in Italian and not just the meaning, but the quality of the sound must change when moving from a language of long vowels and unstressed endings to one of clipped diphthongs and hard consonants.
Fortunately, the trio of magnificent principals bring so much technical wizardly to the score that it’s possible to abandon expectations and simply revel in the beauty of the vocal lines and sumptuous interweaving of voices. Marlena Devoe’s dramatic soprano soars effortlessly to the heights, equally at home in moments of greatest passion and those of quiet intimacy. ‘Art was my life’ doesn’t have quite the ring of ‘Vissi d’ Arte’, but we are nonetheless drawn deep into her anguish at this moment of sublime terror.
Tosca has strong contrasting characters and a fast-moving dramatic story, rich in twists, but it can feel a little unrelenting in its darkness. Violence to women is fundamental to the plot and it only works dramatically if we can inhabit the mental world of the villain, Scarpia. Phillip Rhodes remarkable performance enables us to do just that. He is a terrifyingly seductive monster, pouring out his lust in a forceful baritone, a consummate actor, every tiny physical movement indicating his need to dominate and control. He is well matched by a heart breaking Cavaradossi (Sam Furness) who gives an exquisite rendering of the familiar aria ‘O dolci mani,’ translated as ‘Your hand as gentle’ as he imagines his lover’s assassination of their mutual nemesis. One of the many things Puccini does superbly well is to swing from a character’s outer world to their inner world at moments of great tension.
The playhouse has a large pit, big enough for a reduced professional orchestra. The acoustic is a little hard and unforgiving, but the quality of the playing under John Warner last night was high. The auditorium was packed with an attentive and enthusiastic audience. It seems a shame that this fine local company can only offer the city a two-night run of this excellent show.
