The opera 'Tosca' premiered with a profit motive. Today, it’s a map to former glories

By Jeremy Reynolds / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

There’s something magical about grand old opera, sort of like a dusty bottle of top-shelf Italian wine.

Some of these older works, many of them more than a century old, continue to draw a crowd no matter how many times a company performs them. These “blue chip” operas are the works with some name recognition today — “Carmen,” “Madama Butterfly,” “The Marriage of Figaro” and “The Magic Flute” — and glorious music that stokes the very fires of the soul.

They’re also a remnant of a time when opera actually needed to be popular to be considered a success. Opera has always been subsidized by the wealthy to one degree or another. But historically, it functioned more like the for-profit Broadway model, where benefactors sponsor new works and they run as long as they can sell tickets.

“Tosca” is one of these operas.

Despite an initially tepid critical reception at its premiere in Rome in 1900, it had immediate popular appeal and is now on pretty much every “Top 10 Most Performed Operas” list on the internet.

Each season, Pittsburgh Opera programs a mixture of blue-chip works like “Tosca” along with lesser known historical and modern titles, but the season kickoff is usually something well-known and splashy. (Literally, in this case. “Tosca” is quite the bloody tale.)

The company launched its season on Saturday with a particularly intense production of “Tosca” at the Benedum Center in Downtown.

This is a work and a performance that reminds us why so many people still attend and revere this art form.

Plotting music

The Italian composer Giacomo Puccini chose a French melodrama set in 1800, when control of Rome was slipping from the Kingdom of Naples’ grasp. Its politics were just scandalous enough that its first performance had to be delayed due to bomb threats.

Floria Tosca, a famous, pampered opera diva, finds herself embroiled in political intrigue in Rome when her lover helps an escaped prisoner and secrets him away from the chief of police. It’s a tragedy, so it ends with torture and a pair of suicides, a betrayal and murder. Blood. Everywhere.

Much of the credit for this work’s continued success lies with Puccini’s dense score, a complex web of music that elevates the melodramatic plot into immersive maelstroms of feeling and passion. There aren’t all that many tunes involved in “Tosca,” and even an untrained ear can notice some of the ways these repeated themes evolve over the course of the show. This is a style of composition still employed by today’s film composers; there’s a direct line from operatic music to film scores.

High notes

Credit must also go to the performers and professionals who bring the drama to life. Kyle Albertson’s Scarpia, the corrupt chief of police, was especially excellent Saturday, bringing plenty of vocal heft but also enough color and nuance to his melodies to give a more three-dimensional picture of the opera’s zealous villain than other productions I’ve encountered.

Jonathan Burton’s Cavaradossi, Tosca’s lover, was strong as well, shining best in the lighter moments of the first act but bringing a fervor to his torture scenes that made them impressively poignant.

Ana María Martínez as Tosca distinguished herself with a keen, penetrating high range that brought chills when she directed it against her tormentor. Her voice had an intensity that lacked warmth and weight at times in the opera’s lighter moments, but overall she brought a particular sort of horrified desperation that carried the night.

Conducted by Antony Walker, the orchestra also performed well aside from a few bumps in the opening scene — which seemed a touch stiff all around Saturday, perhaps just opening night jitters — and a few entrances that weren’t together. (These are minor notes meant only to tighten an already quite good interpretation.) Credit also to the sets and lighting, which helped sell the historical reality of the production with taste and refinement.

Finale

American opera creators, composers and librettists alike are looking to the country’s history to mine similar such dramatic stories, but most of these newer works haven’t caught on in nearly the same way. There are exceptions, of course.

Part of the reason, I’d argue, is that new operas are not meant to be popular or enjoyable insomuch as they are intended to be a sort of “pure” artistic exercise, a platform for creators’ visions and messages to reach the stage without an actual need to sell.

This is admittedly reductive, but a strong crowd at “Tosca” on Saturday provides an evidentiary point for the old-fashioned idea that approachable, enjoyable music will still sell.

Overall, I’m hearing today’s compositions trend back toward more approachable tonality and forms at both the opera and the symphony, but nothing on the concise, formally familiar level of Puccini’s work. I’d never advocate that all composition should regress as a whole to this sort of style — variety is the spice of life, and music — but I do think that more operas today rely on the strength of their story and dramaturgy rather than the appeal of their music, when historically this was often reversed.

Perhaps there’s room for a little more Puccini-esque flair and populism on the stage today. Pittsburgh Opera’s “Tosca” is an exquisite vintage, and one well worth sampling and celebrating. Bravo.

“Tosca” continues at 7 p.m. Tuesday, 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets begin at $15 at pittsburghopera.org.

Jeremy Reynolds: [email protected]. His work at the Post-Gazette is supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Getty Foundation and Rubin Institute.