Tosca at the Met review – Sharp, breathtakingly engaging and freshly relevant

Succinct was the analysis of Robert Benchley, the early 20th-century American humorist when he said: “Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of dying, he sings”. He disliked opera. His son, Peter, disliked sharks. He grew up to write Jaws. Peter was not a humorist. In Puccini’s Tosca, there is much dying. Not by Tuberculosis, the composer’s recurring coup de grace of choice for heroines, but stabbing, shooting and jumping from battlements. 

As a repertoire favourite, Tosca can easily be dismissed as run of the mill. Under the baton of Yannick Nézy-Séguin, last Saturday’s matinee performance at New York’s Met was anything but. 

Straight to Act II. Midway comes the famous Tosca aria, Vissi d’Arte (I have lived for art), with its earwormy descending four-note opening phrase. “Yes, officer, I was sitting in the front stalls. Row C, seat 102. Could I see Nézy-Séguin? So close I could have head-butted him. It never crossed my mind. This isn’t Glasgow.

That soprano, Sondra Radvanovsky, singing Tosca? Right opposite. They were at it. Conspiring to change the tempo. Direct eye contact throughout. Call himself a conductor? He never even looked at those Puccini score directions. He went right overboard and followed her. I knew that Radvanovsky would be trouble as Tosca as soon as she flounced on. Gave that lover, Cavaradossi hell too. Right liberty it was.

One of the joys of being hooked on opera is you can never anticipate when the usual, “Cor blimey it’s amazing”, is going to be ratcheted up several notches to an earth-standing-still climax. I have to tell you, in the Lincoln Center at 14:07 on 11 December 2021, for the 3,500 plus capacity audience, the earth did stand still. As the aria’s final bars approached, Radvanovsky slowed the pace. It seemed natural and spontaneous.

Nézy-Séguin’s head popped up like that annoying Compare the Market.com’s anthropomorphic meerkat, Count Aleksandr Orlov. Only world-class conductors have the gut instinct to know when singers on stage have spotted an opportunity to bend their orchestra to the wind a singer is creating onstage. Plan B is that there is no Plan B. Follow the moment, wherever it leads.

The eyes of the singer and conductor locked. For two minutes, Radvanovsky became the musical director. The subtle nuances of her expression and delivery were instinctively reflected by the conductor’s baton and the totally connected orchestra. 

At this moment in the drama, we come to know Tosca. She lays her unfulfilled life unashamedly bare, with huge pathos. Some Toscas take this aria at a bit of a clip, spitting defiance. Rather, Radvanovsky’s Tosca withered before us. 

When the final phrase faded into silence, the audience exploded into a roar of rapturous noise. Radvanovsky discreetly observed the tradition of not acknowledging mid-Act, spontaneous applause; motionless, head bowed. 

Not so Nézy-Séguin, snappily dressed in his matinee patterned grey shirt. He opened a wide grin, nodded vigorously and gave Tosca a far from discreet thumbs up. The years of training these uber-professional artists had devoted to their craft had come together to deliver what seemed a spontaneous moment of pure magic. 

It is, of course, anything but. Years of disciplined practice are required to produce these casual zingers. That afternoon both geniuses knew they had nailed it. 

Tosca, written in 1899, is an opera for today. More so than it was an opera for the ’80s, ‘90’s or early noughties. The uncompromising themes of oppression, abusive relationships, and the corruption of power that dominate the storyline resonate more strongly in this George Floyd/Jeffrey Epstein era than they did back then. 

Some directors think it necessary to bring the Tosca setting into the present day, away from Rome at the time of Napoleon – 1800 – and the battle of Marengo. 

But provocative kitchen sink Toscas in sleazy walk-up apartments with tee shirted Scarpias, a blousy heroine and coke-snorting artist-hero, Cavaradossi, simply divert from Puccini’s intended action, which requires a firm sense of place and time.

The opera spans only one day, in three specific locations. Those locations matter, as they reflect the shifting themes of the opera; the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, Scarpia’s sinister living quarters in the Pallazo Farnese and the rooftop of the Castel Sant’Angelo.

Church, in decay, embodying the compromised morality of religion. Sanctity has been corrupted by Scarpia’s pervasive intervention in the holy space. He may make the sign of the cross, but it is a meaningless ritual. Clerics have been thrust aside or recruited as collaborators. No more is a traditional sanctuary to be relied upon in Sant’Andrea della Vella. Liberty is at risk. Scarpia would have favoured compulsory vaccination. 

Dictatorial state power is embodied in his requisitioned Pallazo Farnese. Torture in the offstage side rooms is everyday practice. The contrast between inflicted pain and the sumptuous backdrop to Tosca’s attempted seduction has to be downright sinister.

The regime’s killing field is the roof of Castel Sant’Angelo, its iconic wing-spread angel’s gaze averted from the atrocities being committed in the courtyard below the battlements. “Not in my name”, the statue screams, looking over the city where the power of the dictator’s regime is about to be overwhelmed by Napoleon’s liberating army. This is a bleak spot.

Recasting it even as a barren field misses the point. It needs to be anchored in the regime which has perverted its purpose. Of all operas, Puccini’s Tosca needs to be firmly rooted in the time and place required in the original libretto. 

There was a near revolution at the Met in 2009 when the adventurous – that’s a euphemism for deluded – director Luc Bondy skewered tradition and set the action in no particular place or time, with stark, darkly illuminated sets. 

Much of the imagery was stripped away. After knifing Scarpia – incidentally, Benchley, he does not sing as he slips to the floor, dead – Tosca, with deft, bitter irony, customarily arranges the religious symbols of candles at his head and places a crucifix on his chest.

Bondy dropped this and also cut Tosca’s jump from the balcony in the final Act. Crudely voluptuous women were draped over Scarpia’s dining table. The production was a mess, and Bondy was roundly booed.

To convince, Scarpia has to be a spare, arid character, fixated with only Tosca. He doesn’t do girly drapery from Hooters. Extra-numerary voluptuaries will simply not cut it. Nor is he an extra from the Sopranos. 

Back to Saturday’s performance. No Bondy nonsense. Was Georgian baritone, George Gagnidze any good as Scarpia? I thought he made a fist of it, even though he was perhaps ominously ponderous rather than manically threatening. 

Others disagreed: “I don’t rate Scarpia unless afterwards, I wanna go have a bath.” Gagnidze had failed the rating system of my lady neighbour at the interval dinner table. No post opera ablutions are required on Saturday. 

Radvanovsky reigned supreme. Spanning Tosca’s translation from the quirky, jealous lover of Cavaradossi, pouting at the image of Marchesa Attavanti the artist has used as a model for his portrait of Mary Magdalene, through the sensitive exposition of Vissi d’Arte, eventually driven to despair and suicide when she realises Cavaradossi has been shot on Scarpia’s orders despite her wiles, the Canadian soprano made this role her own. 

Cavaradossi was American Brian Jagde. He is a dramatic tenor perfectly suited for the role. He exploited every well-directed gesture. At the last, when he is shot by the firing squad, as Cavaradossi hit the ground with an expression of disbelief he made a hand stretching gesture to Tosca, unseen as her back was turned.  

His expression captured the realisation of Scarpia’s fatal deception perfectly. 

Tosca is Puccini verismo opera with knobs on. This Met production benefits from three casts over its season from December to March. Sharp, breathtakingly engaging and freshly relevant, it would be unreasonable to ask for more from this consistent favourite, which can still deliver fresh surprises.

And another thing…

On Wednesday evening, I attended a concert by a cappella group, Seraphic Fire, in Miami. Catch their rendering of Jesus Christ the Apple Tree online here.

Tired of Christmas rum-ti-um, or being blasted away by over-orchestrated annual favourites? Just how many trumpets can be forced into Adeste Fideles arranged for massed choirs? Road test Seraphic Fire’s spare arrangements, luscious harmonisation and new composer carols instead. 

There is plenty to find on the usual-suspect channels if you can’t make it to Miami. Seraphic Fire is composed of young singers from across America who come together occasionally, drawing in local talent, too. I have been following them for years.  

It’s a seasonal miracle that they deliver their seamless sound with only 18 days of rehearsal time. Treat yourself online. I left St Sophia’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral walking on air – and suffused with Christmas spirit.