The large audience at Wellington’s St James Theatre for the opening night of Wellington Opera’s Tosca held its breath, as soprano Madeleine Pierard sang the famous aria Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore (‘I lived for art, I lived for love’), creating a beautiful, still centre in one of the most fast-moving and popular operas in the world.

Puccini’s Tosca is a brilliant example of the operatic art form and of its composer’s art. The music is glorious and emotionally masterly, with some of the most famous arias ever written. It has big themes of love, lust, political and emotional power and evil desire. And it has pace! The tragic story, originally set in Rome in 1800 during the Napoleonic wars, takes place within a breathless 24-hour period.

Wellington Opera’s current production marvellously captures the opera’s momentum, enthralling the audience with edge-of-the-seat tension. [More]

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In Tosca’s opening aria, Recondita Armonia, the painter Mario Cavaradossi sings of the “hidden harmonies” that underpin art. In the same spirit, this new production by Wellington Opera boasts a coherent, carefully worked-through artistic conception.

The set, built around a semi-circular colonnade of stark white pillars, is suffused with tones of red and black, gesturing to the traditional colours of the army and the clergy, two forces whose brooding presences loom over the action. This set forms a simple but coherent backdrop as Cavaradossi and his lover Floria Tosca, harbouring a political fugitive, are drawn into the clutches of the villainous police chief Scarpia. [More]

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It is occasionally said that simplicity is the hallmark of genius. Puccini was no doubt a genius. His Tosca makes no special claim to grandness or complexity. It simply deals in an unflinching and intimate way with fundamental human issues using only a small performing company to carry its argument.

It brings a stark focus to bear on the brutal interaction between three central characters: Tosca the doomed heroine, her condemned rebel beau Cavaradossi and the routinely unethical police chief Baron Scarpia. All will be visited by the Grim Reaper in due course – all to the strains of darkly beautiful operatic melody.  

Set in Rome in 1800 (exactly a century before Tosca’s first performance date) the opera ushers its audience into a fraught historical world in which the invading Napoleon Bonaparte is exercising the same dread as was Fuehrer Adolph Hitler in 1940. Rome swells with anti-republican adventurers from many countries. Everywhere there are military bloodlettings fuelled by escalating bad faith. Trust has left the area. Executions by firing squads are mounting as Scarpia and his henchmen live with the emerging realities in a city historically well versed in such things.

Floria Tosca (a role previously written in France for the great actress Sarah Bernhardt) finds herself in that horrendous bind most famously dramatized in Shakespeare’s virginal nun Isabella from Measure for Measure. The unscrupulous Scarpia, playing Angelo redux, demands physical gratification in exchange for Cavaradossi’s life; he now being on Scarpia’s death row for supposed crimes against the old order.  

Sothe opera Tosca does not, by having music, shrink from torture, attempted rape, murder, execution and related dark acts. The excellently written theatre programme specifically warns of this. The Italians called it verismo. Puccini might fairly claim to have put an end to the lingering notion of opera as an exercise in outrageous make believe (if not absurdity) in which people often manage to sing while performing incongruous actions. 

There are three Acts.

Act 1 is set in a Roman church. It sets up the all-important central plot while underlining the sacrilegious and duplicitous way in which the police chief operates. An escaped and in-hiding revolutionary becomes dramatic bait that brings famous painter Cavaradossi (a revolutionary sympathiser), the lover of opera singer Floria Tosca, into the orbit of Scarpia. The latter has evil designs on said lady. Scarpia skilfully manipulates the situation with untrue allegations of unfaithfulness against Cavaradossi. Enraged, Tosca unwittingly leads the police to him and he is arrested.

Scarpia (Teddy Tahu Rhodes) is no pantomime villain. He comes across here as a repellent but consequential synthesis of, say, Vladamir Putin and Harvey Weinstein.  His baritone role, however, is the glue that holds the drama structure together. Against the implacable and ever-present Scarpia, our star opera singer (Madeleine Pierard) and the painter/lover (Jared Holt) are just hurling themselves at a stone wall. Odious though he is, Scarpia unquestionably has gravitas and presence. He even manages to formulate a theological argument for his treatment of women; they being largely tasty dishes to be devoured as a perk of the job. He rashly dares to suggest that he is fulfilling God’s plan that humankind enjoy all of His fruits of creation. His bleak and mendacious methods survive his unplanned death. Quite a piece of work is Scarpia.  

Act 2 is set in Scarpia’s apartments. Cavaradossi is being tortured in the next room while the police chief savours haute cuisine. Tosca is beside herself in hearing this happen. At her wits’ end she betrays the escaped man we saw at the start of Act 1. News then arrives that Bonaparte has won the battle of Marengo, the people of Rome having previously been told that he had been defeated. That gives Cavaradossi new revolutionary heart but he is nevertheless taken away to be executed. Turning to Tosca, Scarpia cunningly promises a mock execution if she will sleep with him; despite her seemingly agreeing to that strategy Tosca suddenly stabs Scarpia to death.

Middle passages of all artistic works present challenges as the piece moves from introductions through plot business to climax. This one surmounts all of them. Again the baritone voice of Scarpia in his pomp gets through some tuneful melodies as he sits at the dinner table. He debases his enemies almost as if that is what a host does, alternating between torture-through-the-wall and ravishing the lady guest. Puccini has the unique ability to compose airs of overwhelming sweetness that can pivot into dread in order to highlight the more distasteful action; action that can destroy people and their very worlds.

His overbearing conduct against Tosca would be literally unbearable without the music which eases us to the point where Tosca has made her plan for escaping with Cavaradossi and while Scarpia his completed all the (inevitably worthless) paperwork. She then sits on the dinner table as if she were the dessert and delivers one of the ineffably great operatic arias: ‘Vissi d’arte’. It is a touching ‘confession’ of her human kindness (not her failings) and is sung with exemplary control and to profound effect. It entails questioning the justice of God in contemplation of the avenging act Tosca knows she must perform.

It comes from way out of left field and halts Scarpia’s urbane evil gloating in its tracks. Then Tosca brashly despatches Scarpia with the dinner knife leaving him dying and, almost tenderly, begging for her aid. The circle of drama and supporting music is complete and leaves the audience stunned. Few human emotions have been left unplumbed and the game has massively changed.  

Act 3: Cavaradossi is seen preparing for death at the Castel Sant’Angelo. Tosca arrives and assures him the firing squad will not be a real one. Alas, it is in fact real and Tosca has only a moment to grieve before police arrive. They have found Scarpia’s corpse. Tosca flings herself to her death from the parapet of the fortress. The curtain goes down on a scene of wretched pointless death and hopelessness. Puccini is maybe throwing down the gauntlet to his audience. You need to build a better world than this. One where virtue triumphs and not one where even after death Scarpia’s evil plan continues to pervade and drag our world down into the pit.  

Part of Cavaradossi’s preparation for the death that Tosca believes he can cheat is a paean of praise for her and her centrality in his life. In song, he recalls the excitement yet reverence of their first coming together. It is an abnegation of the animalistic methods of Scarpia and it comes wrapped in the second aria for which Tosca hods a supreme and honoured place. ‘E lucevan le stelle’ takes us above the smoke and poison of the banal world and lets us breath the clear air beneath the stars. Jared Holt delivers it with lyrical intensity and elevates the otherwise squalid scene towards the heavens. The audience is enthralled that such an ugly moment is somehow hallowed with human dignity.  

Wellington has received many a callous blow of late. The central city morale has slumped a little. But at the first night of Tosca in the redecorated St James (with some help from Puccini and his less celebrated collaborators) lifts all boats and hearts. The opera itself confronts the crushing of the human spirit and earthly hopes while trusting that people can, and will, get it all back someday. This production is a testament to that spirit. It is a breathtaking team effort with around 30 crucial people in ‘the back office’ (I assume the government might suggest getting rid of them).

Opera is, in a way, musical/dramatic rocket science. So many disciplines are brought to bear under huge pressures to ensure that the onstage momentum never falters. Images meld into music while he timing within each scene must be impeccable and the characters must remain true as living people and not just as concert singers fulfilling a role. The audience for Tosca has enjoyed that ultra professional blend.

Director Jacqueline Coats, with her assistant Waitahi Aniwaniwa McGee, has triumphed in bringing together top set design (Michael Zaragoza), costume design (Rebecca Bethan Jones) and lighting design (Rowan Mc Shane) – to whom can be added a fight director (Simon Manns), intimacy coordinator (Lori Leigh) and chorus Director (Michael VInten). Clearly the opera has been treated with the respect it manifestly deserves. All the attention to detail results in a seamlessness where the pace never flags.

The set design has been soundly conceived. It carries the beauty of the revamped auditorium onto the stage and gives it depth. A Christian cross-dominates the Church then in Act 2 becomes apartments and then, in Act 3, castle battlements. The sacred becomes the profane with a touch of opulent fascism and what was once a painter’s platform becomes crude military vantage point against which our trusting painter is shot and from where Tosca intentionally falls.  

In the lighting area, the chilling moment of Cavaradossi’s death stands out as a split-second coup de theatre.

In the costumes department the bright insertion of gaily clothed children at key moments balances out the darker themes and keeps us all in touch with the few persistent strands of hope.  Decking the police out in ‘smart’ quasi military uniforms styled somewhere between Mussolini and Goering raises a distant link to the world of Gestapo. The massive ensemble work at the end of Act 1 which gives the church back to its God for mimed rituals is a triumph of well-used cast numbers and ecclesiastical costume visuals. The huge applause as the orchestra hits a powerful crescendo reflects that.

The orchestra under Brian Castles-Onion sounds nimbly operatic, constantly inculcating changing moods, from ecstasy to outright despair, as well as melodiously accompanying the singers. It nicely catches Puccini in his famous playful moments too. (Some of the more bouncy snatches of themes might have fallen from from the soundtrack of Tom & Jerry.)

Overall, it is an inspiring night in a much-loved and well-filled theatre. All around people are declaring, “ I saw this in Verona/New York/ Milan/Napier. I’ve always wanted to see it again.” Tosca is a fixture for countless reasons. Nobody should ever pass up a chance to see it. This could be yours so do take it. Operas don’t come much better or coherent than this.  

Wellington Opera are to be complimented for a flawless and concentrated effort.  Tosca is just what the city needs right now.

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