Tosca review – Natalya Romaniw is riveting in WNO’s season-opener

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
The Welsh-Ukrainian singer was in ravishing voice, and the orchestra brought richness to a reduced score, while Edward Dick’s production seemed chillingly relevant

Welsh National Opera have opened their autumn season with the production Opera North premiered in 2018. So this Tosca is neither new to the company nor helped by the attention focused on last week’s Royal Opera House staging in which Anna Netrebko commanded the headlines. Here, the focus was on the Welsh-Ukrainian Natalya Romaniw, who three years ago made an acclaimed ROH debut in the career-defining title role. This was emphatically Romaniw’s night, every inch the absolute diva, in ravishing voice and investing her characterisation with such fine nuances of gesture and colouring of the words as to hold one riveted. It was certainly worthy of Sarah Bernhardt, for whom Victorien Sardou wrote his original play and whose performance inspired Puccini to compose his opera.

Puccini’s faithfulness to the specific Roman locations and the historical facts of June 1800 in this period of the Napoleonic wars, would seem to preclude a contemporary setting elsewhere. Yet director Edward Dick’s allusions to the rise of the far right and the thuggery of the regime which chief of police, Baron Scarpia, represents are all too chillingly resonant of the political machinations and skullduggery that have only escalated globally in the seven years since Dick conceived his approach.