Caitlin Gottimer as Tosca and Matteo Lippi as Cavaradossi in Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s Tosca, directed by Ted Huffman. Photo: Richard Hubert Smith
Puccini Tosca
Glyndebourne / Robin Ticciati
The banality of evil is the vile seam that threads through Ted Huffman’s hard-hitting production of Puccini’s Tosca at Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Smirking diners eat and drink as Tosca, the opera singer pursued by chief of police Scarpia, is cornered by him, and her lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi is tortured in the kitchen.
There is no obvious kitchen in other productions of this site-specific opera, but here the normally opulent Palazzo Farnese boasts a faceless dining room, or restaurant, for Scarpia’s inner circle. Most of Tosca”s humiliation is casually witnessed by others, who do not act.
And this is strange, as Huffman, directing his first Tosca – and Glyndebourne’s first production of the opera – has spoken persuasively about the essential intimacy of a work normally associated with bigger houses. He introduces extra, silent, characters who either demonstrate indifference to suffering or suffer themselves in a highly visceral staging. He has worked hard at making this an uncomfortable evening that, he believes, relates more closely than a traditional staging to the cruelty of the world we know.
Caitlin Gotimer (Tosca) and Vladislav Sulimsky (Scarpia). Photo: Richard Hubert Smith
Puccini’s Rome locations, Sant’Andrea della Valle (c1600), Palazzo Farnese (1515) and Castel Sant’Angelo (AD135), are only hinted at, in 50 shades of grey, in Nadja Sofie Eller’s set design. The church in Act One, for which Huffman invents some religious noodling with censers and libations, has a Sixties blandness, the palace diners are in a black-glazed box and the Act Three place of execution is a wasteland.
There is simultaneously nothing to look at and yet a distracting amount of action, so thank goodness for the London Philharmonic Orchestra on sizzling form under Glyndebourne music director Robin Ticciati, and a business-like cast led by American soprano Caitlin Gotimer, making her Glyndebourne debut in the title role. Her palette of vocal colour, from a stripped bare growl of suspicion to the howl of a creature in danger, will stand her in great stead for the marathon 20 performances that span the whole season. But Huffman robs Tosca of agency, changing the ending. It’s a brave man who thinks he knows better than Puccini what Puccini wants.
Celebrating in church. Photo: Richard Hubert Smith
Her Cavaradossi, Matteo Lippi, also makes an assured house debut that follows Glyndebourne Touring roles of Pinkerton, in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, and the Duke of Mantua in Verdi’s Rigoletto. To the manner born, this Genoese tenor is sure to be back. Plausible and propelled by loyalty into heroism, his Act Three hymn of praise to life itself, E lucevan le stelle, is all the more poignant for being sung in a starless quarry, scene of summary executions in an exceptionally graphic and violent opening to Act Three. Atalia Ayan sings Cavaradossi at August’s 10 performances.
Belarussian-born baritone Vladislav Sulimsky’s Scarpia is a creep in a double-breasted suit, Huffman enjoying side glances at Trump, with his burger and ketchup, and Epstein, with his seedy coterie. Alfred Walker takes on the role in August. Among Scarpia’s henchmen, Italian tenor Didier Pieri’s Spoletta is sinister and vocally agile.
Huffman’s first encounter with Tosca was as a child in New York, singing the Shepherd Boy at the Lincoln Centre in a concert performance with Pavarotti as Cavaradossi. Shepherd Boy at the second performance was lucidly sung by Rufus Green, a member of Glyndebourne Youth Opera, a bright light in a dark place.
Tosca is sung in Italian with English surtitles. Further performances are on 30 May, and throughout June and August.