Tosca/Jenufa, English Touring Opera, Crawley

It's rough, ready...and perfect

English Touring Opera's performances at The Hawth, where they had expected to perform this week, and in the Friary Hall of St Francis and St Anthony, where they had not, stood by the ancient maxim that the show must go on. With Craig Smith and his understudy both voiceless for Monday's performance of Tosca, and the following night's performance of Jenufa cancelled because of industrial action by The Hawth's employees, the company could be forgiven for scrapping the Crawley leg of its countrywide tour. Instead, they hit the phones, found a new Scarpia to sing from the pit while Smith mimed on stage, found another venue for Jenufa, refunded the ticket-holders for that production, and delivered a free, semi-staged performance of Janácek's bitter tragedy to 200 of their most loyal local supporters.

On balance, it was good for ETO that Unison called its strike for Tuesday rather than Monday. Of the two touring productions, Jenufa is the one that best translates to an intimate setting. Though Tim Carroll's darkly-lit staging of Tosca has an icy minimalist glamour, the character development stops when the singers are silent. Carroll conjures an admirable spectacle with limited resources, but fails to reflect the sophistication and depth of Puccini's score or to establish a climate of terror.

Some of his directions are positively counter-intuitive, and the Sacristan (Richard Mosley-Evans) is, unusually, the most convincingly drawn personality in this production. Even allowing for the difficulty of Scarpia's voice coming from the pit, courtesy of Charles Johnston, while the rest of him was on stage, there is a palpable lack of tension.

Last seen as ETO's mischievous Alice Ford, Julie Unwin has a generous gleam to her voice, impeccable intonation, and shapes Tosca's arias exquisitely. Her vocal composure is admirable, her physical composure too complete to make you fear for her. Not for one second do you believe she'd be jealous of the Marchesa Attavanti or fall for Scarpia's lies, and I fancy she could have dispatched him with her bare hands had she so wanted. That said, her suicide leap was genuinely shocking: a fierce act of resistance, executed with balletic precision. Her Cavaradossi (Sean Ruane) is similarly cool under pressure, helping himself to a glass of Barolo during his interrogation like a well-upholstered William Powell. I dare say this was intended to underline his character's aristocratic background, and were I facing torture, I'd probably fancy a quick drink too. Still, this gesture of gentlemanly unflappability sits most uncomfortably with the score. Nice as it was to hear a suave version of E lucevan le stelle - and it's hard to be suave when you're singing in English - the role needs more urgency. Johnston's singing, though occasionally forced, was more passionate than that of either lover, Jane Harrington's Shepherd more affecting.

Hearing a familiar work arranged for reduced forces - there are 29 players in the orchestra, and a chorus of only 16 - is one of the greatest pleasures of an ETO production. Though Tony Burke's arrangements of Tosca (conducted by Noel Davies) and Jenufa (by Michael Rosewell) lack the luminosity of some of Jonathan Dove's reductions, they show a real ear for detail and colour. How Tosca was ever deemed "shabby" is beyond me. If the price of hearing the intricacy and subtlety of Puccini's transitions is losing some heft in the Te Deum, so be it. And when the uninvited guests at Jenufa's wedding sing as brightly as choristers on May Day morning, and the strings have the bite of a quartet, I can forgive a synthesized harp, if that is what the ploinking chords from the electronic keyboard were supposed to be.

Now for two apologies: first to Andrew Slater, whose excellent Leporello became an excellent Masetto in last week's review of He Had It Coming; second to ETO, to whose management I promised I would write only a few words about Jenufa. It deserves more. In the modest setting of the Friary Hall, with in-house lighting, a tiny Am-Dram stage, and nothing but two chairs to dress it, James Conway's production had none of the glamour of Carroll's Tosca. What it did have was thoroughly developed relationships between the characters, and immediate, intense, and sustained emotional impact. Maybe Conway was luckier with his cast. Maybe he is the more musical director. But it's astonishing what can be achieved in an ostensibly compromised performance when the most important elements are there.

Amanda Echalez is a born Jenufa: tall, bright-eyed, sensitive and serious, with a voice that has muscle, intelligence and delicacy. Most remarkably, she, Anne Mason (The Kostelnicka), and Linda Hibberd (Grandmother Burya) have adopted the crazy-mirror body-language of people who have lived as a family. Mason's Kostelnicka is a tragic figure, brittle with badly expressed love, Dwayne Jones's Laca too scarred by the same disease to understand his own actions. From Harrington's sweet-voiced Jano to the maids Kolusina and Barena (Helen Johnson and Anna Wall), Martin Lamb's Mayor, Mosley-Evans's Foreman, and Richard Roberts's spineless Steva, this is a very strong, highly committed cast. The sound in the hall was rough, the seats uncomfortable, the stage over-crowded, but I doubt that anyone who came to this unique performance will regret having done so, and I envy those who will see the full production.

a.picard@independent.co.uk

Touring to 27 May, www.englishtouring opera.org.uk, 020 7833 2555