Tosca

Review: The crux of Tosca is what she calls a "filthy bargain": her sexual submission to Chief of Police Scarpia in order to save her lover Cavaradossi from execution. This grubby transaction is traditionally depicted on lavish sets of the three landmarks in Rome specified for each act in Puccini's 1899 score: a church, a palace and a castle. In the era before radios and 747s, a night at this opera was a great way to do armchair tourism with a soundtrack and a movie.

Opera Australia's new version (actually produced by UK's Opera North in 2002) compresses all the action into a grubby back room. Director Christopher Alden came to opening night and received some booing amid the applause, in contrast to the well-deserved standing ovation given to American soprano Takesha Kizart and the excellent cast. At the second performance none of the creative team ventured on stage and the curtain calls for the singers and conductor Andrea Licata were uniformly rapturous. So what was the creatives' despicable crime? Depriving subscribers of customary fashion parade from 1800, or the majestic sights expected with a $200 ticket? Why shouldn't a filthy tale be put against a filthy background (particularly one so beautifully lit, by set designer Charles Edwards)? Yes, they were booed for violating the irrational requirement that not only must Tosca be gorgeous (she was) but everything about the opera must be gorgeous - despite the sexual assault and murders.

When Scarpia chews on takeaway pizza between phrases (one unusual example of the many outstanding acting and singing skills of John Wegner) it broke the villain's mystique. Why the expectation that this Baron, who is carefully planning a blackmailed rape and declaring to the audience how he takes what he wants and then disposes of it when finished, wouldn't be so rude as to talk with his mouth full? This production, set in Berlusconi's Rome, stresses the banality of evil, with bored torturers sitting around reading, even when they shouldn't logically be on stage. The religious painter Cavaradossi is demoted to an artisan or even tradesman, but his love is not diminished, and Rosario La Spina's impassioned tenor voice seems even more arresting than ever. Even Tosca's trademark suicide leap from the parapets is jettisoned, leaving us with the heartbreaking sight of her body slumping on stage. None of these changes would raise an eyebrow, let alone a boo, in non-musical theatre: opera is the most conservative of the performing arts, or at least its audiences are. Still, it's paradoxically consoling to be shown that such passionate aesthetic convictions, reminiscent of Parisian audiences quarrelling over the premieres of Pergolesi and Gluck, are still being shouted out at Circular Quay.

But with singing of this quality, the set designer could have kept the soloists neck-deep in styrofoam without hindering the applause. Kizart's stage presence and acting were certainly impressive, but the voice was an astonishing combination of shimmering colour, emotional suppleness, and sheer power. Perhaps some of the concentrated emotional force of this production should actually be credited to the director's ruthless pruning (traditionalists might say amputation) of every obvious cliché of the genre: we are left with less to distract us from the singing and the suffering. Never mind the odd boo. Jason Catlett