Tosca

Synopsis

A fast-moving story of torture, murder and attempted rape, Puccini’s Tosca is a tense political and sexual thriller set in Rome at the time of Napoleon’s invasion of Italy.

Directed by celebrated American soprano Catherine Malfitano, Tosca is conducted by Stephen Lord, following his acclaimed ENO performances in revivals of Jonathan Miller’s Rigoletto and La Boheme.

Recently singled out as ‘the only British soprano with all the requisite vocal thrills and spills for Tosca’ (Sunday Times) and praised earlier this year for her ‘glorious display of bel canto’ (Daily Telegraph) as ENO’s Lucrezia Borgia, Claire Rutter assumes the role of the temperamental diva, alongside Anthony Michaels-Moore as the sadistic police chief Scarpia.

Our Review:

Keith McDonnell - 26 November 2011

Catherine Malfitano’s staging of Tosca is back at ENO, after having premiered in May of last year. I warmed to it when it was new, but am less enthusiastic this time round. It just looks, well, a bit naff now. Maybe part of the problem was that this revival’s Tosca, Claire Rutter, had sung the role here previously but in David McVicar’s tragically short-lived mise-en-scène, and seeing her again reminded me of McVicar’s preferable take on the work.

It also didn’t help that the first night audience was one of the worst behaved I can remember, all but obliterating the wonderful start to the third act with coughing of such magnitude that I thought a thousand Violettas were in the audience. And who was the idiot who kept applauding at every pause in the music? Here’s a helpful tip – if you’re going to an opera you don’t know, wait and see when everyone else applauds. Admittedly conductor Stephen Lord allowed b...

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