Tosca at Margaret Court Arena review – Puccini opera just survives the stadium treatment

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Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne, then touringStaged in the cavernous stadium while the State Theatre undergoes renovations, Puccini’s crowd-pleasing masterpiece feels too small for such a big setting

‘Tom Scutt’s sets are lush and clever’ … Opera Australia's 2024 production of Puccini's Tosca at Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne.‘Tom Scutt’s sets are lush and clever’ … Opera Australia's 2024 production of Puccini's Tosca at Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne.

Puccini wrote Tosca at the turn of the 20th century and set it a full century earlier, during Napoleon’s turbulent occupation of Rome. Director Edward Dick does away with period verisimilitude, preferring a nebulous, undifferentiated setting that suggests several things at once. The painted cupola that sits over the stage is straight out of the Renaissance, and the bedroom in the second act is full of 1980s Italianate kitsch.

Torre is a marvellous lover, a part he’s played for Opera Australia before and which he inhabits with great poignancy and suppleness. That clarion tenor has never sounded better, effortlessly floating through his vow of fidelity, “Qual’occhio al mondo” in act one, and rising to the heights of plangent romanticism in the final act’s “E lucevan le stelle”. It’s become a signature role for Torre and he wraps it around himself like a luxurious, fatalistic coat.

 

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