Pregledi pretekle produkcije
3Floria Tosca is an opera singer, a diva, but in Victorien Sardou’s play – and in Puccini’s opera – we mainly see her as a woman in love, tormented by jealousy, whose life is shattered by a powerful, unprincipled man who does not hesitate to sentence her lover to death and blackmail her into submitting to his desires in her desperate attempt to save him. Director Robert Carsen, in his 1990 production, focuses almost entirely on “the diva”. The setting is in a theatre: in the first act Cavaradossi is painting the scenery, and the Te Deum is sung by the audience in the orchestra stalls. The second act is backstage, while Tosca sings on a stage the other side of the backdrop, and the third act takes place on stage, as seen from the back.
Lighting (courtesy of Davy Cunningham) greatly enhances this particular production. Shafts of light come in from all angles, protagonists hide in the shadows, whilst there is a row of very bright stage lights at the end, after Tosca leaps to her death – not into the River Tiber (which, in reality, one probably cannot quite reach from the top of the Castel Sant’ Angelo) but into the pretend orchestra pit at the back of the real stage.
“Well, I think my Norma is something in between Maria Callas and Cecilia Bartoli.” Sonya Yoncheva, stepping into the title role at Covent Garden when Anna Netrebko decided Norma wasn't for her after all, was giving herself plenty of wriggle room when interviewed last month in The Sunday Times. Perhaps it was good she raised the spectre of Callas herself, because plenty of others would have been ready to do so. In the end, Yoncheva's Norma is a good deal closer to the legendary Greek soprano on the vocal spectrum than many would have wagered.Joseph Calleja's warm vibrato and liquid golden tone is a throwback to the age of Björling, Gigli and Tagliavini – a far cry from the clarion tenors often associated with the role of the Roman proconsul Pollione. He suffered a few intonation issues at the start, but quickly settled to deliver a performance which almost made Pollione sympathetic, despite being the love-rat in the nest.Act II opens on an unsettling domestic scene – Norma's children blithely playing with Scalextric and a Spacehopper while Watership Down is aired on the flatscreen television (Richard Adams' timid rabbit Fiver referencing the Druid's clairvoyant powers?). Ever the practical priestess, Norma lays down plastic sheeting to minimise the mess as she prepares to commit infanticide. Revealing that she has betrayed her vows, Norma condemns herself to the sacrificial pyre. Crucifixes begin to glow as a giant cross flickers animated flames to which Norma and Pollione seem destined, before a cruel twist at the end denies her that Brünnhilde-like immolation. Pay attention, or you'll miss it! A striking production and a terrifically enjoyable evening, especially for Yoncheva's superb assumption of the title role.
