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Conductor Edward Gardner encourages the orchestra to let rip, echoing the air of menance created by baritone Bryn Terfel as Scarpia | Photo: Thor Brødreskift

Over the last seven years, Bergen National Opera (BNO) has built up a superb reputation for their concert productions and Tosca, which opened the Bergen International Festival was no exception. The collaboration between the festival, BNO and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra follows previous outstanding festival performances; Peter Grimes in 2017 and Salome last year.

Nicolai Riise’s concert staging for Tosca continues BNO’s winning formula of placing the music and singing front and centre of the drama while also adding some of the elements you’d expect in a full-scale production such as props, lighting and some stage direction. There were flowers and scaffolding flanking the stage to create the feel of a church interior, while lighting designer Jesper Kongshaug framed the mood of each act with subtle washes of colour projections. The lighting at the back of the stage cast ghostly silhouettes of the choir made up of singers from the Bergen Philharmonic Chorus, Edvard Grieg Kor/Boys Choir and Collegium Musicum Kor, expertly drilled by chorus master Håkon Matti Skrede.

The stellar cast was led by Lise Davidsen in the title role, Bryn Terfel (Scarpia) and Freddie De Tommaso (Cavaradossi) with an impressive line-up of supporting singers. This included Ashley Riches as Angelotti the aristocratic prisoner escapee, Christian Valle as the tell-tale Sacristan and Ludvig Lindström who as Scarpia’s sidekick Sciarrone seemed to be enjoying the torture scenes far too much. But it was Terfel who stole the show with his powerful baritone and commanding presence, pacing up and down snarling and sneering like a hungry panther. Tommaso was the ideal foil to Scarpia, the emotional tug in his voice  –typical of the heroic Italian tenor – underlined his romantic sincerity in this sensational performance.

Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen unleashes her belter of a voice | Photo: Thor Brødreskift

Popular with the home audience, soprano Lise Davidsen was underwhelming both vocally and dramatically. She has a wide-ranging belter of a voice that favours the mezzo end where her dynamic control of her warm rich tone, especially in the quieter passages, was magnificent. However, this quality got somewhat lost in the nasal sharpness of her vibrato on the top notes. And although this was a concert performance, the rest of the singers knew their parts and moved around the stage with ease which left Davidsen somewhat isolated, clinging to the music stand and reliant on the score. This inability to interact physically with the other singers meant that her Tosca came across as weak and vulnerable instead of defiant and fiery.

Fortunately Puccini has the knack of writing the dramatic and emotional content of a scene into every bar of his music, so there was plenty to go around. Conductor Edward Gardner brilliantly co-ordinated his forces with military precision – especially the off-stage elements in acts two and three – always moving the pace forward and intelligently shaping each phrase within the overall musical narrative. He constantly stretched the dynamic ranges of the sections, especially the strings who were hushed one minute, the next producing gutsy and gritty textures that racked up the tension, especially towards the tragic finale.