Nobody has ever been in any doubt about the brutality in Puccini’s Tosca. It’s there in the bestiality of the police chief Scarpia and it’s forcefully there in the music from the opening three thunderous chords on. Ted Huffman in his new production for Glyndebourne, with sets by Nadja Sofie Eller, costumes by Astrid Klein and lighting by D M Wood – astonishingly the first ever at the house – adds a few shocking twists of the knife.
Relocating the action to the wartime Fascist period, it begins and ends with a horrific execution. But it’s in the second act, when Scarpia demands Tosca’s body as the price of releasing her lover Cavaradossi to her alive, that Huffman offers his most original slant on the story. Instead of Scarpia’s ultimatum being delivered à deux, it takes place in a restaurant where sympathisers of the regime, including women (and at least one mistress), are witnesses. They collude with Scarpia’s womanising, laughing at his behaviour: he’s quite the ladies’ man – though even they turn their backs at the sight of the mutilated, tortured Cavaradossi. And is the burger on Scarpia’s table, covered in blood-like ketchup, a sly reference to a more recent autocrat, perhaps?
