ing distractions contin- ued but in the Te Deum at the end of Act I we got a big one. In one of all of opera’s great moments, the church bells toll and the cathe- dral’s choir and priests prepare to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon with a religious service. All the while, Scarpia sings of his desire for Tosca. But instead of feeling the tension between Scar- pia’s lust that makes me “forget my God” and the Te Deum prayer, I was drawn to a flurry of chair-passing activity to find seats for a pretend congregation. Worse than distracting, it’s stu- pid. We, the audience, are the congregation in that scene. This type of non-
sense gives opera a bad reputation when it comes to staging and acting. Apologists like to blame the rigors of singing for the poor stage activity, but the majority of these activities aren’t related to the singing or the story; they exist only to make a pretty picture, which may or may not have anything to do with the drama.
track left. I could say almost
A scene from Tosca
Miscast The other common opera issue that was present in Tosca is that, of the three principal singers, only Greer Grimsley had a bio that made sense. The roles for which he is known all go together with his voice type. The Tosca, soprano Alexia Voulgaridou, had a list of roles that do not line up with being a Tosca. Her voice was not quite appropriate for this type of spinto role. Think of it like weight classes in wrestling or boxing. Tosca is a light-
heavyweight role but Alexia Voulgaridou is a middleweight to light- weight fighter. If we could consider
only her singing and technique in another context, then she is a great singer. But in the context of Tosca, she sounded as if she was try- ing to create more weight in the sound. The quality was good until the very top of her range, where she lost the beauty and warmth of tone it pos- sessed in the lower range. It is dangerous to try
to categorize a singer at
this level, but my feeling was that she was miscast and that her performance suffered because of it. The current San Diego Opera administration can’t be blamed. This production was cast by Ian Campbell.
Voulgaridou had
her professional debut as Susanna in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. In days gone by, that would mean no Tosca for her. Had her debut been as the contessa in Figaro, then she would have been on the Tosca track if there were a
H E A L T H A N D B E A U T Y
the same thing about the tenor, Gwyn Hughes Jones. He listed roles such as Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Rodolfo in La Bohème, and Nemorino in The Elixir of Love. All of those roles go together and would suite his voice very well. He is also more of a middleweight. Cavaradossi is not in line with those roles. The crazy thing is that Gwyn Hughes Jones also has sung Manrico from Trovatore, Calaf from Turandot, and Walther from Wagner’s Meisters- inger. Those are all legiti- mate heavyweight roles and make no sense with his voice. The issue is not with
the singers — if a com- pany offers a role for the right money you take it. The issue is with compa- nies hiring younger and younger singers for roles such as Pinkerton or Mimi or Nemorino. This pushes more established singers to take whatever work is offered them. It changes the dynamic of operas and ultimately
results in less compel- ling performances
Goodfellas One more issue must be mentioned. In Act II, Tosca gets to sing her aria to art, Vissi d’arte. This is her counterpart to Cavaradossi’s afore- mentioned Act I aria about art (Recondita armonia) and confirms her as representative of the arts. A few minutes after Vissi d’arte she kills the scheming Scarpia — who, it bears repeating, symbolizes government control of art. In most Tosca pro-
ductions you will ever see, she stabs him once, he goes down, and then maybe she stabs him again. Stop it. A 200-pound man
who deals in violence every day is not going down from one thrust of a six-inch pointy thing. Tosca needs to attack Scarpia Goodfellas-style and not just for dra- matic reasons. This is the moment when the arts kill the representation of oppressive government. It’s a great moment.
— Garrett Harris ■
PHOTOGRAPH BY CORY WEAVER
28 San Diego Reader February 25, 2016
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