Tosca
- Robert Beale
- Jul 23
- 4 min read
Giacosa & Illica, after Sardou, Puccini
Clonter Opera
Clonter Opera Theatre, Cheshire
July 19-26, 2025: 2 hrs 45 mins
(Further performances July 24, 26)
Puccini’s “shabby little shocker”, as musicologist and critic Joseph Kerman described it in 1957, has been reimagined as “a timeless political thriller” by Steve Elias for this year’s Clonter Opera main summer production.
It’s his directorial debut in a full-length opera, though he was movement director for Clonter’s The Magic Flute in 2023 and associate director for The Butterfly House (a Clonter-created music theatre life of Puccini, told with his own music) there last year, and it bodes very well for his future as such.
His concept is to relocate the time of the story to 2023 and Giorgia Meloni’s Italy – not an entirely new idea (Opera North’s last production but one set it in Berlusconi’s era of Forza Italia, which was not so different), but one that makes interesting parallels with the end of the 18th Century.
At the outset we see on-screen video clips of recent events, and later some video to illustrate a church service for the end of Act One, of Tosca rushing from her cantata performance to try to save Cavaradossi (the audiovisuals are by Steve Brookfield).
The setting and costumes (design by Stewart J Charlesworth, following Steve Elias’s concept) are present-day: mobile phones, a cordless vacuum cleaner for the Sacristan; the portrait Cavaradossi paints identified with the Attavanti by Tosca by flourishing a cover picture of Vogue; Scarpia’s pad a cold and minimalist version of luxury, with TV screen to relay video of the off-stage torture (important to play the right clips there!); the report of the outcome of the battle of Marengo shown as a TV news item; the final Act beginning with a smuggled video of Angelotti (transformed here into a fearless investigative journalist) speaking to reveal that his determination will result in “a full archive uploaded to La Repubblica”.
The illusion of vast spaces required for the first and last acts (the interior of a very large church, and the open battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo) are evoked by glimpses of what lies behind a stage-dominating set made up of scaffolding, steel fabrication and white tarpaulins – in Elias’s view, to symbolise the unseen dimensions of what lies beneath surface appearance.
The acting direction is detailed, as well it might be, and the action of Act Two is particularly well envisaged – both believable in the brutality and suitably bloody at the end.
Clonter’s productions are always in miniature: this one has a singing cast of six and an orchestra of 12, and yet the stripping away of lushness and paring of the score to its barest essentials, in the ingenious reduction by Jonathan Lyness, has its rewards; the Clonter Sinfonia, led by Liz Rossi, does its utmost to big it up whenever possible.
Musical direction is by Philip Sunderland. He’s had to make compromises, of course: the Te Deum in Act One is heard on the PA system, as is Tosca’s off-stage “cantata” voice in Act Two and the shepherd’s song in Act Three. But the more delicate and intimate passages in the score (and there are many) are beautifully done.
There was another issue peculiar to the performance I attended. Konstantinos Akritides, who I found to be “a fine developing tenor” in his contribution to last year’s The Butterfly House, did not sing his role after three performances in four days but mimed it, with the voice of Martins Smaukstelis heard from the side of the stage (more on his fine contribution below). This was a collective decision, "due to the extraordinary vocal demands of this role ... this measure has been taken to preserve the vocal health of Mr Akritides, and ensure the highest quality for the remaining shows". Emilie Cavallo sang Tosca when I visited, and shares the task with Isabel Garcia Araujo.
The spotlight inevitably falls on the two big roles: Tosca herself, and Scarpia (Robin Hughes). Emilie Cavallo, who sang in The Butterfly House in 2024, this time had the opportunity to take a full and taxing role, and showed herself to be a performer of real vocal quality as well as a gifted actress. Her Vissi d’arte was sung as a kind of credo, pure and lovely to hear, and finally prayerful.
Robin Hughes is a very fine singer: keeping up the insistent menace and power in his voice and acting the character with all the repulsive, lecherous evil it requires – the more convincing for his being clearly young enough to be a formidable foe to Tosca.
Angelotti is Fionn Ó hAlmhain, Clonter’s Sarastro in The Magic Flute in 2023, and again imposing and resonant in his singing. The Sacristan is Sebastian Stride, who also sings Sciarrone, and Spoletta is Luke Horner: both roles requiring acting gifts as well as effective voices.
Martins Smaukstelis has a very interesting voice quality, lyrical and flexible in Recondita armonia and capable of great nobility and passion in E lucevan le stelle. Konstantinos Akritides, of course, was not heard by me but certainly showed that he could act his role.
More info and tickets here
