Cheers erupted, with a few people leaping to their feet, even before the curtain rose or a note sounded. For a ninth revival and third cast change of Puccini’s Tosca at the Royal Opera House, there had to be a reason for such optimism. The answer was the bearded, silver-haired figure taking over in the pit for five performances: Plácido Domingo.
The star tenor turned baritone-conductor, 77, made his Royal Opera debut in 1971 singing the role of Cavaradossi in this same opera. He has enthusiastic fans. They were out in force. Domingo has conducted Tosca before, but for anyone, the chance to hear a singer of his experience bring insight to a performance still acts as a powerful magnet. Having missed most of the revivals since Jonathan Kent’s production was new in 2006, I went to see how this box-office mainstay was faring (and whether it was as bad as the lacklustre reviews it received, with a different cast and conductor, in January).
The opera’s three opening chords – major in key, augmented in harmony, savage in mood – announce the threat of Scarpia (Marco Vratogna), the ominous chief of police whose cruelty overshadows the work. Here they sounded pensive, if not downright slow. Not a comfortable start. Yet what followed, against all expectation, was an electrifying performance, the orchestral playing alive and pliant, the principal singers – Vratogna, with Riccardo Massi as Cavaradossi and Martina Serafin in the title role – igniting the necessary fiery tension.
Serafin, a regular Tosca in this ROH production and worldwide, is currently moving into heavier Wagnerian roles: Brünnhilde last year, Isolde later this season. That tells you something about the dramatic expression she brings to Puccini’s heroine. Her voice has some coarseness at the top, causing a tricky start to the climactic Vissi d’arte, but she has enduring strength. Vratogna (who was Iago to Jonas Kaufmann’s Otello at the Royal Opera House last year) is a snarlingly ambiguous, dark Scarpia, Massi a potent Cavaradossi. Hubert Francis’s new Spoletta and Jeremy White’s seasoned Sacristan – still able to sing while descending a wobbly ladder – stood out.
Domingo’s tempi stayed moderate but, strange to say, he seemed to know what the singers wanted. The chorus singing the Te Deum at the close of Act 1 – one of Puccini’s finest large ensemble scenes – made a fervent impact against the sinister cries of Scarpia, struggling between lust and faith. The orchestra, too, excelled: the grace of flute and pizzicato strings in the Sacristan’s jaunty Act 1 music, the bloom on the strings throughout, the freedom with which the clarinettist shaped the long solo that precedes Cavaradossi’s highlight aria, E lucevan le stelle. The slightly greater amplitude Domingo favoured may be exactly what is missing when a performance of Tosca doesn’t work, but it’s a fine balance. The chemistry of live performance remains as mysterious and addictive as ever.
History does not, as far as I’m aware, record what the American composer Morton Feldman thought of Tosca. Puccini’s music is as blood-red and rich with notes as Feldman’s is minimal and white and full of silence. A festival of contemporary music now in its second year called Principal Sound – its name taken from Feldman’s only organ work – explores the substance of sound itself, with works by Feldman and Luigi Nono as a pivot.
The final concert, by Explore Ensemble and the vocal group Exaudi, mixed ancient and modern: from Machaut’s courtly promise of spring love – Rose, liz, printemps, verdure – to Wolfgang Rihm, Rebecca Saunders, John Croft and a world premiere, Uncertain for 8 Voices, by the American composer Linda Catlin Smith. Hushed, evocative and hinting at louder dissonances that never materialise, this was a setting of fragments from Virginia Woolf’s The Years.
At Kings Place, this year’s unwrapped theme, Time, marches on. A specially devised new work by the percussionist Manu Delago called Inside a Human Clock took a literal and spatial approach to chronometry. Starting exactly on the hour, a mixed ensemble of instruments and voices – appropriately a dozen musicians in all – mimicked the internal mechanisms and outward progress of a clock, marking the seconds and minutes of a single hour via ticks, tocks, chimes and whirrs, as well as a lugubriously metrical and oddly catchy account of Rock Around the Clock.
The audience sat in the middle, some splayed on beanbags, others upright, alert to the minute oscillations of each player, who processed around the circumference, improvising according to Delago’s preconceived framework. His own delicate playing of the hang stole the show. This drum-like instrument, shaped like a flying saucer, inspired by steel pans and played with the fingers, is a 21st-century invention, its sympathetic vibrations and strange acoustical properties as much a fascination to physicists as to musicians. It was invented by the Swiss, who might think they’ve had it up to here with clocks. It may explain why this enchanting curiosity ended bang on time, but let’s credit the punctual musicians, timekeepers par excellence.
Star ratings (out of 5)
Tosca ★★★
Principal Sounds ★★★★
Inside a Human Clock ★★★★
