What is in Kelvin's Head?

Tosca Review – Scottish Opera 16 October 2019 – ****

21/10/2019

If the fascists came to power, how far would you go to stand up to them? Would you save a prisoner on the run? Would you betray a friend? Would you be prepared to die for love?

Scottish Opera’s endlessly revived production of Tosca asks all these questions and more.

Thirty nine years ago, almost to the day, Anthony Besch’s glorious production first came to the stage, updating Puccini’s melodrama to Mussolini’s Italy. Jonathan Cocker has blown fresh life into it as the revival director and proves that it still has something to say today.

The sets look gorgeous, the singing is strong and Stuart Stratford’s conducting managed to bring off the difficult trick of making the orchestra sound expansive and rich without ever swamping the singers.

In Act 1, Puccini takes us to church. From the first appearance of Dingle Yandell as Angelotti a political prisoner on the run it was clear that singing was going to be one of the strongest features in this revival. Both he and Gwyn Hughes Jones as Cavaradossi, Tosca’s love interest brought an easy confidence to their singing.

The only big trouble in this production is the sheer volume of liturgical faux pas that have been seen before and still haven’t been corrected. People don’t cross themselves a dozen times whilst reciting the angelus. Nor do they turn their backs on the central statue of the Virgin Mary whilst doing so. Nor do bishops process anywhere other than at the back of a procession and when they do, they carry their crosiers in their left hand the better to bless those around them with their right hand. Women were not singing in choirs in Italian churches in the 1940s and when naughty choirboys misbehave (and they do!) they don’t do it like that. For a production that is so detailed and so deliberately set in one place and time, all this does rather jar.

But on to Act 2, and Tosca’s showdown with the villain of the piece, Baron Scarpia. Natalya Romaniw was a revelation, bringing light, energy and bitter pathos to the great aria Vissi d’arte. It felt as though the whole theatre was still – the only movement being the tears gently rolling down a number of faces in the audience. Meanwhile, Roland Wood never seemed to have quite the click of the heels or stamp of the jackboots that one might have expected of a fascist tyrant. A bit more badness would have gone a long way.

By the time we reached the battlements for the final Act, the audience had been on an emotional rollercoaster. Tosca brought it all to an end – betrayed and alone but utterly defiant to the last.

It does seem astonishing that a production that has been revived so many times over nearly 40 years could still pack in a strong audience and still have so much to say. This production is reassuringly the same but times have changed. With the rise of the far right there is a need for art to stand up to oppression wherever it is found. Even opera has a role to play and this production offers courage and inspiration. The fight against tyranny isn’t over and this revival feels all too timely and more relevant than ever.

Rating:

This review was first published by Scene Alba Magazine

Opera Reviews

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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