Last Updated on June 8, 2026
The First Cut is the Deepest
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
We are a bit late to the party in reviewing American director Ted Huffman’s new production of Tosca at Glyndebourne. I only managed to get to see the fourth performance of the opera house’s first production of Puccini’s “shabby little shocker”, as described by critic Joseph Kerman in 1952. The opera establishment’s distaste for the melodrama, realism and gore of what is the 5th most popular opera in production can be the only reason for this programming omission.
Tosca was first performed in 1900 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome; the opera, with a score that swerves between being ravishingly lyrical and nakedly melodramatic, and a lean libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, was an immediate hit. It is the second of Puccini’s sequence of three operas featuring tragic heroines – La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly – that have become staples of the repertoire. The libretto is based on La Tosca, an 1887 French play by Victorien Sardou that originally starred Sarah Bernhardt. Tosca is traditionally set over the 17th and 18th of June 1800 in Rome, whilst Napoleon is fighting the royalists at the Battle of Marengo north of the city, which he plans to recapture. At this point in its history, Italy was not yet unified and was in a constant state of upheaval with foreign powers jockeying to take control of the wealthy city-states that made up the country.
The Glyndebourne team have handed the creative reins of the production to Ted Huffman, an American director not afraid to reinvent the wheel. Huffman’s setting is influenced by the 1945 neo-realist film Rome, Open City by Roberto Rossellini. Gone is the traditional gilt and red velvet of the Palazzo Farnese setting, replaced by a minimalist restaurant space; gone are the counter-reformation glories of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle; and the final act’s setting amongst the turrets of the Castel Sant’Angelo has been transplanted to a quarry illuminated by a car’s headlights with a reframing of the opera’s denouement that will anger some but worked for me.
Unlike Oliver Mears’ visually striking recent Tosca for the Royal Opera that takes a similar approach, this production feels thematically coherent. Tosca is one of the first operas written in the new ‘verismo’ style, aiming for an authenticity of narrative and emotion with a score underpinned by a series of thematic and character-based repeating musical ‘leitmotifs’. Designer Nadja Sofie Eller has taken a similar approach, fabricating a set dominated by grey concrete slabs that represent the unapologetic violence of the repressive state. This use of ‘Brutalist’ iconography, the post-war Italian architectural style emerging out of the classical monumentality of the Fascist era, is carried through both the church and restaurant, with the spaces lacking the lavishness and visual comfort of a more traditional Tosca. The church is unadorned and becomes complicit in the acts of repression. The restaurant doubles as a torture chamber, with the well-coiffed blonde female clientele accepting the screams emanating from the kitchen. In a nod to contemporary politics, Tosca’s baddie, Baron Scarpia, eats a burger, which he slathers with the blood-red tomato ketchup. The audience was in no doubt as to whom Ted Huffman was referencing.
Glyndebourne’s casting for the principal characters was spot on, and critics who have questioned their dramatic synergy need their specs changing. If Anna Netrebko is the Tosca for grown-ups, then American soprano Caitlin Gotimer, making her UK debut in a fetching black spotted frock, has made a strong case for herself as the Tosca for millennials. She was a youthful force of feminine nature, bursting with pride and jealousy always tempered by the character’s connection to God. Her ‘Vissi d’arte’ had an intimate sublimity, but there was also power when needed.
Gotimer has a strong connection with her Cavaradossi, Italian tenor Matteo Lippi, no stranger to Glyndebourne. He successfully combined romance with revolutionary zeal and a bloody resistance in the face of torture. ‘E lucevan le stelle’ was an exercise in controlled passion, but Lippi also has a harder edge to his voice that came out in the torture scenes.
In his pinstripe suit, Belarusian baritone Vladislav Sulimsky made a demonic Baron Scarpia. His voice and characterisation were both more sinuous than relying on brute force, which made him even more chilling. Sulimsky enjoyed his well-deserved baddie boos at the curtain call.
As the fugitive Cesare Angelotti, Finnish Kristian Lindroos brought a dignified sense of desperation to his characterisation with his rich-toned bass-baritone being sonorous without being ponderous. Federico De Michelis was a sanctimonious Sacristan, Didier Pieri a weaselly Spoletta and a constantly smoking Michael Ronan delivered Sciarrone as a suitably sinister hoodlum.
Robin Ticciati did a terrific job in the pit. The drama unfurled relentlessly, and the romance elements had room to breathe. He is becoming adept at marshalling the internal dynamics, bringing out elements of Puccini’s orchestration that are too often hidden. The London Philharmonic Orchestra were resplendent. But I’m biased as my grandfather used to play for them.
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This is a powerful, if bleak, Tosca, but the production works as a snapshot of Italian history with many parallels to the original Napoleonic setting. Huffman’s changes make sense within the world he has created, and with a vibrant rendering of the score, this is a production that Glyndebourne can be proud of.
Photo credit: Richard Hubert Smith
21 May – 22 June; 4 – 30 August
Glyndebourne, Lewes, East Sussex, BN8 5UU
Looking for more Summer Opera? We recommend Rosenkavalier at Garsington Opera
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