Revolution fizzles out

The three stabbing chords that urge Puccini's Tosca into dark life should be as thrilling as any opening bars in opera. ENO's new staging started promisingly: impassioned, loud, doom-laden. What followed was disappointingly lacklustre. What went wrong? Was it the absence of Paul Daniel in the pit? At a time of rudderless chaos off-stage - consultants in charge, jobs being reallocated - the presence of the music director at the first new production of the season would have been reassuring.

It might be argued Puccini's ingenious score almost plays itself. That was the problem. Conductor Mark Shanahan seemed carried along rather than cracking the whip. Sluggishness dogged the difficult first act, while the many climactic moments lurched soupily, each sounding like the last instead of building up an unbearable pressure. In the two big show-stoppers, Tosca's Vissi d'arte and her lover Cavaradossi's E lucevan le stelle, ensemble was ragged. The orchestra sounded uncharacteristically out of sorts, bringing the wrong kind of novelty to a score they must know inside out.

Cheryl Barker, singing the title role for the first time, gave a spirited account but as yet fails to hold the stage - notably at the end of Act 2 when, having killed Scarpia (Peter Coleman-Wright) she turns from jealous diva to vengeful murderess. The moment collapsed in precipitous applause as the audience drowned the closing bars, dousing any dramatic or sexual fire (the fact that Barker and Coleman-Wright have been married 19 years is no excuse).

The direction shared, or caused, some of this sloppiness. In BohËme and Carmen at Glyndebourne, David McVicar has shown himself expert at revitalising repertoire favourites. But Tosca has eluded him. Literal interpretation jostles uneasily with inconsistency. Costumes (by Brigitte Reiffenstuel) return to the Napoleonic period while Michael Vale's sets - big black church (Act I), big black office (Act 2) big black stairs to parapet (Act III) - find inspiration in the Berlin of Albert Speer (Tosca, with its political subtext, tends to attract Nazi/Fascist trappings). The painter Cavaradossi - a lyrical but never ardent John Hudson - doesn't so much as dib-dab a brush. His "blue-eyed" portrait, crucial source of black-eyed Tosca's jealousy, has her eyes shut while the Sacristan skips in from the wings of Iolanthe. At one moment I found myself noting that the most interesting thing on stage was Cavaradossi's coat, a stylish, tapestry affair. Can Puccini's revolutionary masterpiece have come to this?

Tosca
Cert: certPG