John Bell’s shocking Nazi-infused Tosca gets a far from shabby revival.

Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House
January 13, 2015

This is the first revival for John Bell’s thoughtful, dramatically charged Tosca in Sydney and it’s fair to say it remains the jewel in Opera Australia’s current repertory crown. Bell’s homework on 1943 Nazi occupied Rome ensures that what can sometimes be too much of the oft-quoted “shabby little shocker” resonates with issues of freedom and tyranny that carry as much weight in today’s turbulent world as they ever did.

Michael Scott-Mitchell’s monumentally impressive sets (that breath-taking rendition of a Baroque chapel still thrills), exquisitely lit by the ever-inventive Nick Schlieper, plus some finely detailed costumes care of Teresa Negroponte make for compelling viewing. But it’s Bell’s telling staging that turns a blood-and-heaving-bosoms melodrama into a piece of theatre as smart as anything on show in Sydney this month. Three priests cross the back of the stage, so absorbed in the newspapers that they almost forget to genuflect; a procession of ‘furs’ into church for the Te Deum shows the powerful contrast between church, society and state; the...