But Loy’s approach enables some striking visual effects from designer Christian Schmidt, as the dour grey walls of the Scarpia’s apartment where he determines to seduce Tosca are gradually smothered by a rich red baroque curtain, while bewigged flunkies of purest white hover in the background, and mingle in the church setting of the first act where Tosca comes to visit her lover. This is not quite coherent: Puccini’s fantastically effective music conjures up violence, verismo and intense sentiment in equal measure, rather than any radical critique of society.
Loy’s concept is that the opera inhabits two worlds, that of an old regime represented by Scarpia and his gang of thugs, and the new revolutionary spirit captured by Cavaradossi. Christof Loy has worked at the Royal Opera on several occasions, but this is the first time he has come to ENO, with a staging that made its first appearance in Helsinki in 2018. The story of the tragic singer Floria Tosca, her lover the painter Mario Cavaradossi and the police chief Scarpia who is besotted with her and murdered by her, has resounded through countless different stagings since its premiere in 1900, maintaining its intense popularity through waves of critical disapproval at its crudities.ĮNO’s new version, though, is no cut-price radical rethink, but a tried and tested production by one of Europe’s currently top-notch opera directors.
Puccini’s melodramatic thriller opens the English National Opera season in style.
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