SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Puccini: Tosca Maggio Musicale, conductor: Zubin Mehta, Teatro Comunale, Florence 12.12.2010 (JB)

Director: Mario Pontiggia

Sets and Costumes: Francesco Zito

Floria Tosca: Violeta Urmana

Mario Cavaradossi: Marco Berti

Baron Scarpia: Ruggero Raimondi

Zubin Mehta’s conducting is characterised by a well-known bite which he brings to the beginning of every phrase; not necessarily loud or aggressive (though that is not missing when the occasion calls for it) but always clearly marked with an ascetic, surgical precision. It is a quality which is delightful in sometimes unexpected circumstances. In a Puccini score, it prevents the music from deteriorating into slush or sounding irritatingly without direction. And it illuminates orchestral detail which other conductors tend to overlook. I had never, for instance, so strongly felt the chilling power of the cellos and double basses, playing on the bridge (sul ponticello) when Tosca, having just stabbed Scarpia, speaks the famous line, E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma.

The Maggio Musicale orchestra has never been so good. In particular, they have a brass section which must be the envy of the rest of the country, and there are a great many opportunities for those players to shine in Tosca. They appear to have an admirable rapport with their longstanding chief conductor, who has built the orchestra up over some twenty years. I vividly recall the 1986 Tosca production by Jonathan Miller, set in Fascist Italy (which worked best in the second act) and was also conducted by Zubin Mehta. However, the response he gets from his players of today is vastly superior to that of 1986. Thanks to Mehta, Florence is in the forefront of Italian opera production.

This Tosca is set in a very fine, traditional mode. Mario Pontiggia is a welcome, unfussy stage director, who understates the melodrama –though perhaps a little too much so in the second act, when Tosca finds the courage to murder Scarpia. Here is a stage director who doesn’t seem to know how you get the best effect out of two lone actors on a vast stage. The fixed lighting didn’t help either. But I particularly appreciated his dignified staging of the procession in the church at the end of act one. He here had the good sense to let the music dictate the various movements.

Francesco Zito’s sets were a joy to behold, owing more than a nod and a wink to the original Rome locations. Unlike Pontiggia, Zito knows what you do with space (some useful training as an architect comes in handy here). He makes us feel we are actually within the locations and thus incorporates the audience into the drama. His costumes imaginatively take into account the singers who wear them, so that the admirable Violeta Urmana appears in three magnificent gowns which amplify her already considerable stage-presence: there is a feeling of a great singer Under New Management.

Tosca is that rare entity, an opera about an opera singer, which can give it the feeling of an opera within an opera, though the present staging resisted any flirtations along these lines. All the same, Ms. Urmana, under the new management of the Zito gowns, has a voice of the size that would fill the Wembley Stadium. Moreover, hers is one of those rare, unforced, naturally big voices, and she has the good taste to never overplay it. When she addresses her Maker on the question of her Art, it sounds burningly sincere. Puccini is on record for having objected to the unqualified success of this stop-the-show aria, precisely because Vissi d’arte does just that: it stops the action of the drama. The director placed Tosca downstage left and spot-lit her for this number. Oops!, did I just say there was no flirting with the opera within an opera idea? Violeta Urmana brought the house down. A worthy triumph.

Marco Berti is an Italian tenor of the school you hardly hear any more: a big, well-focused voice with ringing top notes. Some of this makes him an ideal partner for la Urmana. However, his immense natural gift is not accompanied by her profound musical sensibilities. There is always a risk of his performance turning into a circus. He loves nothing better than to draw attention to his magnificent top notes. In a word, he is a showman. Fortunately, he has Maestro Mehta to keep him in line. But it is not clear that he appreciates the maestro’s guidance - I sometimes sensed a tussle going on. One feels a strong urge to stand up and shout, Your top notes are wonderful, dear Marco, but please don’t spoil them by drawing attention to them! Still, his is a memorable Cavaradossi. Such a voice on today’s scene is of inestimable value by virtue of its very rarity.

Judged in terms of its completeness, Ruggero Raimondi’s performance as Scarpia was the finest of the leading trio. He no longer sings to the edge of every note, but the voice is still steady and sure and he has such a grasp of the role that one feels that he really is Scarpia, whereas the others are acting. It is always a pleasure to see such a fine, complete artist continuing to deliver such excellence.

In March 2011, Japan will have the honour and pleasure of receiving this Tosca from Florence, though not with Madame Urmana, who had a previous Met contract for these dates.

Jack Buckley