How many sound worlds fit in one room?
The musicians’ position becomes part of the question in English National Opera’s new Tosca in London. Annilese Miskimmon removes specific place names from Amanda Holden’s translation and puts the entire opera in one space. The programme identifies a concert hall. Yet Flora Willson describes an opening image that resembles a church despite its piano and string quartet. Changing the world around Puccini’s voices requires a fresh account of who sings to whom, from where and across what distance.[1]
Willson argues that the treatment loses the collision of church and state at the end of the first act and the layering of onstage and offstage worlds in the second. The musical issue is that sounds heard together need not belong to the same place. The relationship between an unseen ensemble and a visible character can itself carry drama. Making every sound visible changes how that relationship is understood.[1]
A single space may make it easier to follow the characters’ power relations continuously. That offers a plausible alternative justification for the choice. It also requires clarity about how the space carries contrasts between voices. The instrument smashing and constant movement described by Willson introduce another competition for attention. The musical measure is how clearly one sound’s relationship to another can be heard.[1]
The tenor’s position and the orchestra’s power
Under Ben Glassberg, the orchestra sometimes produces a sumptuousness that overwhelms the stage action in Willson’s account. She praises the brass attacks and the engagement of adult and child choristers, as well as Axelle Fanyo’s tone in the title role. Those details direct attention toward the particular contributions of the musical forces alongside the disputed staging choices.[1]
For Chaz’men Williams-Ali’s Cavaradossi, the difficulty in the review is more specific: making an impact from the back against musicians now placed onstage and other, larger voices. Position and audibility meet in that description. Assigning the problem solely to the tenor’s power would be premature; placement and accompaniment belong to the same musical equation. The precise diction Willson praises in Christopher Purves’s Scarpia supplies another measure: whether the words cut through.[1]
That is where to judge Tosca’s new space: how chorus, orchestra and solo voice relate to each other. Remaining in one room leaves that musical question fully alive. The distances within the opera need to be rebuilt inside the new arrangement. In the production running at the London Coliseum until 11 December, Willson’s contrast between a powerful orchestra and the tenor’s difficult balance provides a concrete place to begin.[1]