BY JASMINE MIDDLETON
Tosca
Freeze Frame Opera
Centenary Pavilion, Perth, 9 June
As I entered the huge, air-craft hanger space of the Centenary Pavilion, I felt like I had discovered a makeshift underground bar heralding from the 1920s prohibition era. With the chilling winds outside and rain rattling on its tin roof, you could feel the oppressive political tensions enclosing you.
The three-storey high ceiling, industrial doors, unadorned metal poles, exposed structure (now also used by trendy, up-market cafes), and ominously empty spaces were certainly a far cry from the cosy and plush setting of traditional opera.
Little did I know, I had already entered the fully immersive world of Freeze Frame Opera’s Tosca.
Reimagined in suave thriller style, FFO’s biggest production to date – directed by Rachel McDonald – delivered authentic, hard-hitting drama at its best; an unashamedly sensual and violent exposition of the human experience through fierce singer Floria Tosca.
Music director and pianist powerhouse Tommaso Polio expertly led the condensed all-Western-Australian cast through Puccini’s weighty score. It was the stunning, silky voice of soprano and FFO founder Hattie Marshall that radiated as the lead. Her harrowing lower register and chilling, shrill outbursts authentically conveyed many of the complex layers to her character. Jun Zhang played her condemned lover and painter Cavaradossi with equal emotive intensity. While some high notes fell a bit short, this, in some ways, added to his character’s realistic sense of turmoil.
Kristin Bowtell’s deep, brazen tone conveyed the desperation in Angelotti attempting to escape. Pia Harris debuted in her role of the sassy Spoletta, and Robert Hoffmann offered both humour and depth as the Sacristan and Jailer. Baritone James Clayton portrayed the ultimate antagonist as the simultaneously intimidating and smooth-talking chief of police Scarpia.
It was both refreshing and intriguing to be presented with a blank canvas of a stage in a venue historically foreign to opera.
The surrounding world FFO created felt just as tangible as its characters, its modernisation bringing the political and social issues of the opera slightly closer to home. Men (and even off-duty singer Tosca) donned bleak-coloured pants and collared shirts. Typewriters, banged-up couches, and old-timey phones made up some of the deliberately selective props on stage.
Lighting designer Jerry Reinhardt’s bold choices made for an exciting cinematic-style experience; an unexpected highlight being the use of strobe lights in the church setting when an alarm was raised through a fuzzy loudspeaker, paired with Mia Holton’s thought-provoking video projections.
The imaginative use of staging and set design by Robbie Harold cleverly manipulated the venue to utilise every space. Characters quickly moved from serenading on the grand piano to running out of sight behind the audience – still singing – to filling up a water barrel from a (real) tap; military personnel entered the building through ear-shatteringly loud roller doors; other characters escaping through another. With the swish of a curtain, what I thought was the backstage area instead revealed a torture chamber with Cavaradossi getting, quite literally, waterboarded on a rusty, metal table. (So that’s what the water was for.)
At other times, the set was intentionally closed in to create an ominously intimate space; one where Scarpia would threaten and proposition Tosca, only to later be strangled to death by her.
A sure highlight was the beginning of Act 3, when a fully functional vintage car drove into the building. After popping its boot to dispose of a recently assassinated body, it just-as-silently escaped into the night.
The production skilfully navigated through an array of juxtapositions. For the hostile, clinical nature of the large warehouse stage, it compensated in extremely intimate moments between the characters. Just before the dramatic and grim torture scene, we witness the mighty Scarpia’s silhouette singing in the shower, before continuing to nonchalantly sing around his sleazy office – shirtless.
In the audience, I felt fully engrossed in the three-dimensional experience. For an opera company that initially formed to present small operatic snapshots in an accessible way, FFO more than proved itself in this new monumental-scale; gritty, edgy, and relevant, production, with the perfect amount of classic operatic drama.
READ NEXT: Opera Queensland is putting on Tosca, too. But they’re going ’70s style!
Disclaimer: Scarpia (James Clayton) is a distant relative of Jasmine’s. So she excluded any subjective analysis of his skills. Cool. BTW, here’s a picture of him being strangled to death by Tosca in a dress rehearsal.
Images supplied. Credit: Robert Frith.
