BRATTLEBORO — Move over, Madonna and Lady Gaga, here comes Tosca.
At least that's what Windham Orchestra Director Hugh Keelan contends about Puccini's opera.
“Tosca is like a rock concert,” Keelan says. “Although it needs no electronics or amplifiers, the singing is so high-voltage that this opera is viscerally powerful. Hearing live the vocal power of these 'superhuman' opera singers, people will be astonished by the sheer sound in a way that listening to opera on records or at the cinema cannot duplicate.”
Even if you have never seen live opera, Keelan guarantees that the excitement of this show will knock you out of your seat.
With this promise to keep, Windham Orchestra and Panopera are joining forces to bring Tosca to the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro on Friday, May 30, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, June 1, at 2 p.m. A third performance is set for the Academy of Music in Northampton, Mass., on Thursday, June 5, at 7:30 p.m.
Tosca is a story of love and political intrigue set in Rome in 1800 with the Kingdom of Naples's control threatened by Napoleon's invasion of Italy. Rife with depictions of torture, murder and suicide, the opera - beloved of fans - contains some of Giacomo Puccini's best-known lyrical arias and is hailed as among the genre's most dramatically compelling works.
Keelan explains that Tosca tells the brutal truth about what drives us - our passions and desires.
“It's essential Puccini: lurid, ravishing, hugely enjoyable, and not to be missed. There are no gods or heroes; this is raw humanity on display. Who has not experienced desperation in love, particularly when a loved one is in pain? Who does not know the struggle between the higher and lower self? Who has not been helpless, overwhelmed in adversity - and tried to pretend they have it all handled?”
Keelan tells The Commons he loves this opera very much.
“Puccini's music is hair-raising, scandalous, ravishing, heart-achingly tender, as the moment requires,” he says. “I think Tosca is Puccini's masterpiece. Everything is just right in it. Nothing is floppy, there is no waste. Tosca expands on Puccini's favorite theses of violence and desire with undertones of sadism and misogyny.”
He adds that it is easy to hide from Tosca's power by calling it a crude melodrama or a lurid verismo opera, as some critics have, explaining that it is so much more:
“Tosca is about how, with profound love, some people can brave hideous violence. Pay close attention: Tosca has a really shocking, hair-raising libretto,” Keelan says.
He says Tosca will be staged simply. Employing basic costumes and sets, and with the orchestra on stage with the singers, Keelan is shifting this histrionic work away from a specific time and place to bring out the universal elements in the piece.
But this is also an opera that requires major operatic voices.
“This piece is impossible without three extraordinary dramatic singers,” says Keelan. “And we are lucky to have just those voices in our local area.”
Alan Schneider from Northampton, Mass., is the painter Cavaradossi; Stan Norsworthy from Chester is the sadist Scarpia; Jenna Rae from Putney is Floria Tosca, the prima donna who “lives for art and love,” as she explains in one of the most famous arias in all of opera, “Vissi d'arte.”
An alumnus of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Boston University, tenor Schneider has appeared in opera, operetta, and music theater productions with many companies in his native New England and beyond. Over the course of seven seasons with the Boston Lyric Opera he sang major roles in such works as La Traviata, Carmen, and Rigoletto.
Baritone Norsworthy enjoyed an extensive and distinguished career in the United States and Europe, both as a baritone and a heldentenor. He has performed many major baritone and heldentenor operatic roles and has soloed in major concert work. Norsworthy also teaches singing in Chester, and his students have been engaged by great opera houses on both sides of the Atlantic.
One special student whom Norsworthy has guided for years is Jenna Rae. Working together for so long, they have developed a unique chemistry that will be vital to their powerful scenes together in Tosca.
A graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied voice and clarinet, Rae makes her soprano debut in Tosca. However, as a mezzo-soprano, Rae has often performed locally in recital and solo work. In December 2008 she sang the role of La Zia Principessa in Keelan's ensemble production of Suor Angelica in Brattleboro. She also teaches music and drama at St. Michael's School in Brattleboro.
In addition, the supporting cast for Tosca all have local ties and are of strikingly varied backgrounds: a clown, a conductor, a singer and teacher, an 11-year-old, a musicologist, and three who are novices to operatic singing.
The supporting cast includes baritone Cailin Marcel Manson, director of Music at The Putney School, as the Sacristan; Javier Luengo-Garrido as Cesare Angelloti, and Patrick Donnelly and Preston Forchion.
A community effort, Windham Orchestra is joined for Tosca with a children's group, an adult chorus, and military drummers for an execution. Each group involved brings a rich constituency to the community.
As well, the audience is invited to contribute in singing the climactic final notes of the “Te Deum” that ends Act 1.
Tosca is the first complete opera produced by Panopera, a regional repertory opera company founded on community-building and contribution. Taking pride in local talents, Panopera says it is committed to producing the highest quality in performance and production.
Formed in 2013 by Keelan, Rae, Schneider, and Adrian Eames, Panopera's aim is to provide a new freedom in experiencing opera by focusing on the creation of a more hands-on, interactive, and involved theater experience.
“There are two things that makes Panopera's production of Tosca atypical,” Keelan says. “The first is that we have put out a call for visual arts from the community, which will be projected onto the stage as our 'set.' We have had a great response, with many works coming in which we will use, and we will consider everything submitted right up to the day of the show.”
These works are not realistic backdrops, but rather imaginative pieces based on the themes of the opera: sacred versus the profane, lust versus love, torture. Or else they are iconic images associated with Tosca such as the murderous knife, the candelabra, and the wine glass.
Panopera's second innovative feature for Tosca is new use of subtitles. Instead of a word-for-word translation of what is being sung in Italian projected above the stage, these subtitles will be much looser. Sometimes they will indeed convey the exact words sung; other times they will give a more generalized hint at what is happening, thereby encouraging the audience to listen more closer to the music to understand the drama.
“No one needs to understand Italian or 'know about opera' to relate immediately and instinctively to the emotional states of the characters and the horrifying situations they are in,” explains Keelan.
“Our aim is to provide you with nothing less than a new freedom in experiencing opera. This is your opportunity to create your own opera, with no plot or historical or language background required. Live in these people's skins: how would you feel, what would you do? Your Tosca is set in no time, no place; it is here on these two stages in Vermont and Massachusetts, the Windham Orchestra, and the players.”
Keelan is succinct: “I promise you it will be great.”