Opera is big, generally speaking: big sound, big emotions, big sets. So when Opera Australia announced it was going to stage Puccini’s Tosca at Margaret Court Arena – a sports stadium with a 7,500-seat capacity, although less than half of that is utilised – it didn’t seem a totally ludicrous proposal. And yet, as the curtain descends on the grand tragedy, with the three leads dead and the smoke from the firing squad slowly clearing, the overarching thought is that they should have gone bigger.
Part of the problem is the opera itself. Tosca does have a single, glorious scene with a full chorus at the end of the first act, but for the most part it’s a taut and intimate chamber piece, almost a three-hander. Its emotional sweep is expansive in the way of most Italian opera but its dramatic focus is concise and its psychology compact. Peering at the distant stage from the arena’s utilitarian plastic chairs, it takes a certain effort to connect to the material. It’s certainly far from overwhelming.
Puccini wrote Tosca at the turn of the 20th century and set it a full century earlier, during Napoleon’s turbulent occupation of Rome. Director Edward Dick does away with period verisimilitude, preferring a nebulous, undifferentiated setting that suggests several things at once. The painted cupola that sits over the stage is straight out of the Renaissance, and the bedroom in the second act is full of 1980s Italianate kitsch. There’s a laptop, through which Tosca watches the torture of her lover, and a bunch of hired goons who look suspiciously like extras from The Sopranos.
None of that matters much, though, in a production that concentrates so deliberately on the foregrounded characters and the scrappy melodrama that engulfs them. Tosca (Karah Son), the famed singer in love with painter Cavaradossi (Diego Torre), is ardent but also racked with suspicion and jealousy. It’s a trait ruthlessly exploited by chief of police Scarpia (Robert Hayward), who ostensibly uses her to get at escaped prisoner Angelotti (David Parkin) but really just wants her for his own carnal pleasure.
Scarpia is a baddie of the moustache-twirling variety, and Hayward brings a charismatic swagger to the role, as well as a commanding, silky baritone. The character directly references Shakespeare’s Iago, but he’s really more of an Angelo from Measure for Measure, priggish and perverse. There is a great wealth of sexual deviance in the role, a fetishistic and fascistic depravity Hayward only touches on. This Scarpia is sleazy and corrupt, but he’s not particularly menacing. I’d be keen to see what Warwick Fyfe makes of the part, playing on alternate nights.
Torre is a marvellous lover, a part he’s played for Opera Australia before and which he inhabits with great poignancy and suppleness. That clarion tenor has never sounded better, effortlessly floating through his vow of fidelity, “Qual’occhio al mondo” in act one, and rising to the heights of plangent romanticism in the final act’s “E lucevan le stelle”. It’s become a signature role for Torre and he wraps it around himself like a luxurious, fatalistic coat.
Son is forceful and convincing as the doomed heroine, alternately skittish and steely, tormented and remorseless. Tosca is a great part, flawed and unreliable in her initial interactions but increasingly self-empowered; she’s cornered into action, but once in she’s unstoppable. Son brings a potent dignity and sense of agency to the role – even if Dick has her throwing herself on to the floor a lot – and her act two aria, “Vissi d’arte” is rich and heartfelt.
The production looks smart, despite its eclecticism and diminished scale. Tom Scutt’s sets, with that cupola hanging precariously over the opening scenes that becomes a swooning disk of stars in the final act, are lush and clever. Fotini Dimou’s costumes are witty and idiosyncratic – although in the case of a clear plastic mantle that covers the tortured Cavaradossi like cling-wrap on a cooked chook, occasionally perplexing – and Lee Curran’s chiaroscuro lighting design is suitably moody.
Orchestra Victoria – under the assured baton of Garry Walker – play that luscious, richly melodic score with great feeling, although it’s disconcerting to have them tucked away behind the sets and out of view. The logistics of the venue necessitates amplification through a sound system, the musicians and singers miked throughout. It’s probably unavoidable in this context, but it’ll disappoint serious opera lovers accustomed to the acoustics of the world’s pre-eminent opera houses. Newcomers mightn’t mind so much, happy to sacrifice vocal prowess for clarity.
Perhaps newcomers are the point of this experiment in scale, brought on by the State Theatre’s closure for renovations. Stadium opera is a bit of a turnoff for the usual pundits – who prefer their surrounds as lush and expensive as their outfits – but it’s hard to see this being particularly persuasive for the uninitiated. Tosca is a crowd-pleasing masterpiece, and Puccini’s genius survives the shift to a cavernous venue, but only just. Those sets should feel monumental, even planetary, and that extraordinary “Te deum” from the chorus should sound thunderous and thrilling. Overall, this production feels too diminished and distant. Sometimes with this art form, bigger is better.
Opera Australia’s Tosca is on at Margaret Court Arena until 30 May, then Sydney, 25 June–16 August 2024
