Tosca review – Puccini’s high-octane bloodbath bonanza makes for a shocking festival kick-off

Caitlin Gotimer’s Tosca goes from 0-60 in mere moments while the London Philharmonic unlock the barely contained violence in Ted Huffman’s long-awaited exceptional staging

Giacomo Puccini died only a decade before the first Glyndebourne festival opened. 92 years later, Tosca – global operatic blockbuster and the work once derided as a “shabby little shocker” – has finally made its Glyndebourne debut, opening the 2026 festival with a high-octane bloodbath presided over by director Ted Huffman. Forget shabbiness (and not just because of the champagne and tuxedos); this show is all about the shock.

But Huffman and conductor Robin Ticciati also play the dramatic long game. The curtain goes up on a mid-20th-century church interior. There are wooden pews and a small Madonna and child on the wall. Boys in uniform assist men in cassocks; there’s a real mop bucket, a real wooden ladder for the artist-hero and real mid-century modern spotlights to illuminate his work (the first of many exquisite details of this production’s lighting). It’s not 1800, but this is unmistakably Tosca, its accoutrements familiar.

Musically, too, we’re lulled into a false sense of security. There are gorgeously capacious woodwind lines, but Ticciati keeps tight control over the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s phrasing and dynamics. As Cavaradossi, Matteo Lippi is heroically burnished, a sobbing tenor of yore. Caitlin Gotimer’s Tosca achieves an emotional 0-60 in seconds, her gleaming top notes slicing through Puccini’s orchestration while her lower register bristles. The various smaller roles are exceptionally well sung.

With the entry of arch-villain Scarpia, this production’s screws begin to tighten. Clad in a double-breasted pinstripe suit, Vladislav Sulimsky looks every bit the scrubbed-up bruiser and sounds dangerously smooth. Ticciati coaxes midnight-black sonorities from the LPO’s lower reaches. The drumrolls and bell-tolls of the Te Deum are carefully overamplified, the scene’s sensory overload (underpinned by the chorus on fine form) hinting at real nastiness.

Thereafter: a powerful acceleration away from the Tosca-paradigm. The Palazzo Farnese becomes a high-end restaurant, Scarpia, the secret police chief, its social-misfit maître d’. He’s brought a burger and squirts ketchup with pantomime relish. Collaborators giggle and stare as Cavaradossi is brought in and tortured in the kitchens. Scarpia pops out for a quickie as Tosca sings Vissi D’arte. Gotimer sings the hit beautifully – but her desperate shout of “Muori” as she stabs Scarpia is more powerful still, Ticciati now allowing the orchestra free rein to snap and bark, its violence barely contained.

The final act is the most compelling of all. The setting is an abandoned nowhere, lit – with appalling, painterly beauty – by car headlights. The heartfelt polish of Lippi’s E Lucevan le Stelle and the orchestra’s luminous burst of optimism as Tosca enters provides grim counterpoint to the semi-darkness on stage. Huffman’s take on the famous denouement is too neat to spoil here, but makes absolute sense – even as it leaves me reeling.

• At Glyndebourne, Sussex, until 22 June and 4-30 August