Puccini Tosca Opera Holland Park, July 2008 Director Stephen Barlow Lighting Peter Mumford

The production was also presented at the Richmond Theatre in February 2009. It was revived in 2024.

Reviews

... thrilling and faultless... director Stephen Barlow and his designers Yannis Thavoris and Peter Mumford have ingeniously resolved the spatial limitations of the temporary stage... visually arresting... Holland Park's Tosca is a triumph. (Independent on Sunday)

... the most brilliantly original production of Tosca to be seen in this country for decades... incendiary music theatre - quite literally at one point. (Guardian)

... Opera Holland Park – one of the best productions it has staged.

To begin with and to circumvent the awkwardness of the wide but shallow stage that is Holland Park Theatre, Barlow, and designer Yannis Thavoris, have turned the locations inside out and telescoped them into one. ... The action is updated to 1968, another time of revolution in Italy and elsewhere. This is a radical change, ..., but it has been figured out in such fine detail that it works beautifully without any incredulity setting in.

The church is plastered with posters for the Christian Democrat and Communist Parties and some of Scarpia, who rules Rome with a rod of iron, side by side with those of the singer Floria Tosca and her next performance. Angelotti, the escaped prisoner, is a young rebel seeking sanctuary in the church. His sister, the Marchesa Attavanti, is the subject of the picture that Mario Cavaradossi is creating in the Piazza, as a piece of street-art. Tosca is dressed in pop gear, bright yellow coat and long white boots, as per the fashions of the time. And, in another odd switch, the production turns the usually repellent Scarpia into a younger, more charismatic guy with an all-too-obvious sexual attraction in his sharp Italian suit and black shades. ...

The second act ... is set outside the bar next door to the church. ... In the last act, with the ‘pretend’ killing of Mario, which turns out to be a real assassination, Scarpia’s henchman pumps bullets into Mario as he sits in a Fiat (note the nameplate) that has been visible throughout. The last problem for Tosca: with no castle battlements to jump from, is how to escape the clutches of the police and commit suicide? That is the last surprise of the evening and it’s absolutely bloody brilliant!

This production shines a new light on a classic piece. (ClassicalSource.com)

Yannis Thavoris’ designs are a major asset. The opera is moved forward to the Rome of 1968 - a year of social unrest and student revolt. The ambience and period are finely suggested in a lively Roman street scene with a bar and the portico of the church outside which Cavaradossi works on his pavement art representation of Mary Magdalene. An abandoned car becomes a crucial element in the last act, when Tosca’s suicide is re-enacted in a novel and shocking way. (The Stage)

... a wonderful evocation of a scruffy Italian piazza in Mafia-infested Rome... a dramatic and musical triumph. (Online Review)

Barlow's ingenious solution is to place the action in the piazza in front of the church. Designer Yannis Thavoris covers the church facade with political posters and adverts for Tosca's latest album. A small seedy trattoria next door is Scarpia's hangout.

Every detail is thought through, and there are as many witty touches as clever ones. The whole piece suddenly feels fresh and true, and it fires like a rocket. (Bloomberg)

How do you stage Tosca’s final leap of death on a small stage? By a stroke of genius, that’s how. ... a thrilling and astonishing production... (Metro)

... an endlessly inventive production, witty and moving... The detail was staggering... (Opera Now magazine)

Opera Now magazine cover November 2008