English National Opera's latest revival of Puccini's Tosca is a flawed affair, though its central performance by Anthony Michaels-Moore as Scarpia makes the evening a remarkable experience. Some baritones have viewed the role primarily in terms of thuggery. Michaels-Moore, however, offers us a study in the sexuality of power and the psychopathology of evil.
We are conscious from the outset of his malign charisma and eerie physical grace. The veneer of charm with which he first accosts Claire Rutter's Tosca barely conceals his insistent rapacity. Later, aroused by her reactions while Gwyn Hughes Jones's Cavaradossi is being tortured, he forcibly pins her to a seat. In what is arguably the most disquieting moment of all, he creeps up behind her when she is distraught and beings sniffing her skin. His voice, meanwhile, is in terrific shape and his singing wonderfully baleful and incisive.
His dominance, however, points up the evening's principal flaw, namely that Rutter's and Hughes Jones's depiction of the relationship between Tosca and Cavaradossi isn't ideally successful. This has nothing to do with their singing. Rutter lets fly top Cs as one born to it. Hughes Jones is all lyrical ease and impeccable diction. But a lack of on-stage chemistry between them renders their scenes together curiously unconvincing.
After a slowish start, Stephen Lord's conducting is exemplary in its passion and weight. The production, by singer turned director Catherine Malfitano, was considered traditional when it opened last year. It's not quite that; the sets have a geometric quality reminiscent of Italian Futurism. Malfitano is good on the pervasive mechanics of tyranny – Scarpia's agents scuttle everywhere like vermin – if occasionally slipshod with detail, failing, for instance, to establish that there is a knife on Scarpia's desk until Rutter actually finds it. Go and see it for Michaels-Moore, though, whatever you think of the rest of it.
