'Tosca' review — Anna Netrebko shines in charismatic performance

Read our review of Tosca, starring Russian prima donna Anna Netrebko, now in performances at the Royal Opera House to 7 October.

Summary

• Oliver Mears’s new production of Puccini’s thriller is filled with unflinching terrors
• The opera follows the doomed relationship of opera diva Floria Tosca and young painter Mario Cavaradossi
• Russian prima donna Anna Netrebko returns to the stage in a performance full of volatile charisma and luscious singing

Succeeding Jonathan Kent’s much-loved, 1800-set production of Tosca, which was revived over a dozen times from 2006 to 2024, Oliver Mears’s new production of Puccini’s sex-and-violence-imbued thriller is filled with unflinching terrors that overlay the beauty and power of the music. With Tosca, the rapturously romantic composer entered grittier, bloodier territory with this tale of love made hopeless by politics, set against the baroque and bloody city of Rome.

The relationship between opera diva Floria Tosca and young painter Mario Cavaradossi is doomed when he helps an escaped prisoner and incurs the wrath of police chief Baron Scarpia. Act I appears to be set during the final days of Mussolini’s dictatorship in 1945, while Acts II and III suggest a more modern setting, as if to indicate that the story’s political machinations and corruption could take place at any time.

Simon Lima Holdsworth’s set design opens in a church that’s filled with rubble, with the Madonna in a beseeching pose in the centre, and is visibly crumbling during the victory procession that concludes Act I. The harshness of Scarpia’s grey marble office with Trump-like gold doors and the death chamber below, are accentuated by Fabiana Piccioli’s lighting, which leaves no place to hide.

Russian prima donna Anna Netrebko, performing her celebrated role as the star singer Tosca, is full of volatile charisma and luscious singing; her aria “Vissi d’arte” is imbued with wistful softness which turns to defiance as she gathers her strength to murder Scarpia. As the only woman in the piece, her costumes (by Ilona Karas) are the most colourful thing on the stage. She enters looking like a Sophia Loren-esque film star in a hot pink outfit (made demure by a black veil) and in Act II, she wears a beautiful green recital gown with gold trimmings.

As the sadistic Scarpia who keeps an eye on the proceedings in the death chamber below through CCTV, Gerald Finley is diminutive in stature with the persona of a middle manager. He's an unremarkable man with the power to make a woman’s life hell, though Finley perhaps comes across a touch delicate for the role. As Cavaradossi, British tenor Freddie De Tommaso is convincing as a working artist and a devoted lover, the purity of his voice shining through to the end.

The most memorable part of the staging is the chilling Act III, which is set in an execution chamber. While a shepherd boy (Raphy Laming) sings angelically over the radio, we witness a dumbshow where Scarpia’s henchmen carry out a conveyor belt of killings in which the victim is brought in, his possessions confiscated, and the paperwork sorted; he is swiftly dispatched and the next casualty is dragged in before the janitor has mopped up the blood.

The opera that was one condemned as a “shabby little shocker” can claim that label as a badge of honour. Royal Opera’s new music director Jakub Hrusa conducts with tremendous drama and it isn’t difficult to envision this new production remaining part of the repertoire for some years to come.

Tosca is at the Royal Opera House to 7 October. Book Tosca tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Tosca (Photos by Marc Brenner)