“A stripped-back reimagining of Puccini’s Tosca exploring faith, power and art.”
Becoming Tosca by Prologue Opera – whose mission is to explore the backstories of characters from well-known classics – is presented as part of the 2025 Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola Theatre. The production combines new music by Frank Moon with an abridged version of Puccini’s original score, interspersed with theatrical dialogue, all translated and written in English. A stripped-back production, relocated to an unspecified South American setting in the late 20th century, it sets out to tackle themes of Catholicism, political oppression, and artistic expression. However, this setting is not rendered in the design or culturally grounded in any way, beyond being mentioned briefly in the text.
Anna Sideris as opera singer Tosca, Anthony Flaum as renegade artist Cavaradossi and Brendan Collins as bitter church reject turned corrupt Secretariat of State Intelligence Scarpia command the score with vocal prowess and mostly clear enunciation of the libretto, necessarily supported by surtitles. The prologue song “I Remember Sundays” beautifully weaves their backstories around the church, though the prologue itself does feel exposition-heavy, each character taking a turn to explain who they are before Act I begins.
Sideris and Flaum’s meet-cute-turned-revolutionary-romance is admirably sung but undermined by the spoken dialogue, which reduces their connection to superficial traits – looks, aesthetics, petty jealousy – rather than a shared passion for the transformative power of art. As a result, their relationship feels unconvincing as a love that could later inspire betrayal of state and murder. With the opportunity to give Tosca more, I would have liked to see greater complexity and autonomy, acknowledging some of the representational issues of the original.
Collins plays a cartoon villain as Scarpia, sinister and an unambivalent creep who we’re more than happy to see stabbed. Harry Gentry as Angelotti, Cavaradossi’s young, hopeful apprentice, does an admirable job at delivering a rousing speech on revolution and class struggle, though the speech sits awkwardly in the context of an “unspecified” South America. Performed in London to a mostly older, white, affluent audience familiar with the operatic canon, the moment underlines how the production’s political themes felt underserved and blunted by its generic setting.
Puccini’s music remains luminous, and pianist Berrak Dyer (also Musical Director) and clarinettist Boyan Ivanov fill the space with a dramatically pared-down arrangement. Yet the dialogue scenes felt like missed opportunities to flesh out the world – often basic, lacking drive or characterisation. The direction was similarly static, with little design or dynamism in the staging.
While there were issues of pace, length, and storytelling, the strength of the production lay in the singing and music, which the audience responded to warmly, culminating in a partial standing ovation. Prologue Opera’s mission to make opera accessible is admirable, and while the scale of ambition here may have overridden execution, Becoming Tosca remains an interesting exercise in how opera might be reimagined and made relevant for contemporary audiences.