Tosca, South Facing Festival, review: ENO's field trip is opera for people who don't like opera

Murder, a chase sequence, political corruption and an indecent proposal, all taking place in Rome’s most scenic locations: if ever there was an opera for the big screen it’s Tosca. Puccini’s “shabby little shocker” (as Joseph Kerman called it) is a Hollywood thriller ahead of its time – Michael Bay with melody.

All of which makes it a natural fit for English National Opera’s latest venture – trading their West End home at the Coliseum for breezy Crystal Palace Park, where, flanked by giant rock stadium screens, they share the stage of this year’s South Facing Festival with the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Supergrass and The Streets.

Last summer’s drive-through La boheme in a car-park was born of necessity, an ingenious answer to new questions and restrictions. But this Tosca is something else: a solution without a problem, a conscious repackaging of opera for people who don’t like opera but who do like festivals. So you get all the atmospherics of the latter – portaloos, burger vans (sushi too – this isn’t 1995) and picnic rugs on the ground – and none of the inconvenient specificity of the former.

The surtitle problem is solved by ENO’s opera-in-English policy, while a giant sound-system ensures operatic voices and orchestra are flattened down then piped out to the sprawled crowd with as much indiscriminate, two-dimensional power as any rock band. Screens and stadium-style lighting catch the drama with about the same subtlety. The effect is at once distant and deafening (roving cameras catch one player with his fingers in his ears), a live performance fighting a losing battle against digital and natural odds. “I have lived for my art,” sings Tosca at the opera’s climax. “Why, O Lord, do you reward me thus?” Well quite.

So it’s not opera, but is it any good? Yes and no. ENO field their musical A team and, as far as it’s possible to tell, they deliver the goods. Veteran conductor Richard Farnes has the unenviable task of wrangling an orchestra whose every detail arrives strangely magnified and distorted, balance favouring low brass (one suspects Scarpia’s henchmen of operating the sound booth) and strings, but swallowing chorus and text almost entirely.

The modern-dress production is credited to director Donna Stirrup, though actual staging is minimal: an M&S sandwich makes a starring cameo at one point. Cameras struggle to find useful angles, trailing reliably behind the action.

But the three principals are strong. Soprano Natalya Romaniw (Tosca) and tenor David Junghoon Kim (Cavaradossi) reprise their partnership from last summer’s boheme – she fiercely expressive, he with impressive ease at the top of the voice – while Roland Wood lowers and looms as Scarpia, blending the villainous and the banal to chilling effect.

You could pay up to £65 to almost see and almost hear this Tosca in a chilly field this week, or you could hold out for the comfort of the next Coliseum revival. I know which I’d choose.

Last performance Sunday Aug 29; southfacingfestival.com