Mild things

English Touring Opera is playing safe this spring, with Tosca and Patience, and was rewarded, in Cambridge at least, with full houses. Its Tosca has been moderately reviewed, and that is about what it deserves. There is only one set, designed primarily with the tableau of chorus and soloists at the end of Act One in mind. Not at all atmospheric, it has to conjure up for us a church, a room in a palace, and dawn at the Castel Sant’Angelo, but scarcely succeeds with any of them.

The soloists have a heavy weight of responsibility, which only the Tosca of Paula Sides fully managed. She is fine-looking, slim, good at acting temperamentally, and a powerful singer, though a slightly short-breathed one. You could see why Scarpia is lustful, though forgetting God (as he claims she makes him) is rather extreme. Scarpia, Craig Smith, was low-keyed, neither the slobbering lecher one looks forward to, nor the smiling sadist who can give you the creeps; even so, Tosca made an unusually thorough job of stabbing him.