Arts Alive San Antonio

By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor –

Nowadays, many stage directors try to present classical theatrical works in contemporary setting to make them somehow more relevant, but E. Loren Meeker had no desire to go in that direction with her current staging of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Tosca, produced by Opera San Antonio. The show will premiere Thursday at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts.

“This opera is based on real events, a real historical period, real places and real people (though the three main characters are fictional). It’s difficult to separate the story from the time it’s set in,” she said. “It would be a disservice. There’s a lot to be learned from its setting.”

The place is Rome in 1800 when Napoleon Bonaparte and the King of Naples are fighting over the ancient city, which Bonaparte had turned into a republic for a while. When the opera opens, however, the king is in charge and his rootless chief of police, Baron Scarpia, is chasing and executing the republican-minded Romans. Against this background, the opera tells the story of the beautiful young opera singer Floria Tosca who is in love with the republican sympathizer, painter Mario Cavaradossi. Unfortunately, she is also Scarpia’s object of desire.

Passion, jealousy, betrayal, attempted rape, torture and murder, are all part of the tale, all wrapped in glorious music, featuring two of the most beautiful arias in all of opera. In Act II, Tosca – portrayed by soprano Jennifer Rowley in this production – sings Vissi d’arte, explaining that she has lived for art and love her whole life and never hurt a soul, and yet finds herself in a desperate predicament. The other fabulous aria, E lucevan le stelle, is sung by Cavaradossi (tenor Rafael Davila) toward the end of Act III as he is about to be executed.

Working with Rowley, Meeker, who had never staged Tosca before, is trying to show a slightly different heroine in this production. “In most people’s minds, she a diva, jealous, tempestuous, an over-the-top personality” said the director. “Jennifer and I had conversations about it. In Act I, Tosca is still very young and young at love. Cavaradossi is her first love. We wanted to show her like that, a person the audiences will fall in love with.”

In conversation, Meeker refers to the singers as “actors,” and when asked about it, she explained that “they are singing actors, equally intense dramatically as they are vocally stunning.”

Chicago-based music director/conductor, Francesco Milioto, praised all the lead singers as well, and, in fact, the entire cast.

“It’s an incredible cast of excellent singers. “The leads have sung Tosca so many times already. They know how to maximize the dramatic aspects of the score and they know how to work together,” said the conductor, who has had a lot of experience with this opera himself.

What he loves most about the score is “the dramatic pacing that Puccini uses” and how clearly the composer’s intentions are written into the score itself, even if singers were not singing. “You would know what is happening even without the singing,” he noted. “The music itself conveys the emotional and thematical content. When you hear this music, you know why it has been around for so long.”

Indeed. Tosca is not only one of the most produced opera around the world, it is also a much-coveted role for sopranos, including the legendary Maria Callas who first performed it in Athens in 1942 during World War II. She also made multiple recordings. Originally inspired by French actress Sarah Bernhardt who, in 1887, appeared in the play La Tosca written by French playwright Victorien Sardou, the character and the story live on through Puccini’s music.

Both Meeker and Milioto are traveling artists who have worked with many opera companies. Tosca is the Boston-based Meeker’s third collaboration with OSA, following The Barber of Seville and La Boheme. She usually spends 10 months per year on the road but she doesn’t mind. With a degree in choreography and directing, and her love of music, directing opera is the perfect art form for her skills, she said. For his part, Milioto, too, enjoys the challenge of working with different orchestras, but his artistic home is Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Performing in the Tobin is a special treat for both artists, as well as all the singers they have worked with, because of the excellent acoustics. “Great sound all-round,” noted Milioto. “Singers love to sing here.”

Tosca, presented by Opera San Antonio, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 12 and Saturday, Sept. 14.; Tobin Center for the Performing Arts; $38.50-$187, Tobin box office 210-223-8624, tobi.tobincenter.org