Fiery. Explosive. Passionate.
That, in a nutshell, is Tosca, the opera opening Skylight Music Theatre’s 2015–16 season. Cassandra Black (last seen as the titular character in the company’s world premiere opera The Snow Dragon last year) will lead a powerful cast in this riveting Giacomo Puccini opera.
Tosca’s story is dramatic on stage and off. In December of 1899, the opera was in rehearsals in Rome. However, due to ongoing political and civil unrest, the premiere was moved to January 1900. When the opera did finally open, audiences packed the houses, and that set the stage for several other large company premieres in short succession, including La Scala in Milan and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
In just a few years, the opera became part of the standard repertoire around the world. And it remains so today — although the Skylight has never before attempted it.
A three-act opera, Tosca follows the opera singer Tosca, her lover the painter Mario Cavaradossi (Chaz’men Williams-Ali), and the chief of police, Baron Scarpia (David Kravitz), who seeks to foil their relationship and take Tosca for himself. Of course, fate has other plans for all three.
To mount a work of this size can be difficult, but Skylight is ready for the challenge. Leading the cast and crew are stage director Jill Anna Ponasik and music director (and Skylight artistic director) Viswa Subbaraman. “It’s intimidating,” explained Ponasik in a recent phone interview, “Much of my previous experience involves developing new works, and so directing one that is so well known already is pretty daunting.”
To make the best use of the Cabot’s space, the set has been designed to be “visually stunning and sweeping.” Layered lighting will cast shadows large and small on the singers and across the stage. “The character’s state of being is represented in these shadows,” explained Ponasik.
The set further develops the psychology of the opera. Its design is elegant and streamlined while being deeply rooted in the time period of the piece. The color palate is that of marble in large European cathedrals. “We chose the colors and the set to really allow the audience to draw into the singers. Everything is elegant, but also subtle in a way that allows for the singers to be telling the story,” says Ponasik.
One of the more original aspects of this production — in multiple meanings of the adjective — is indeed the lyrics. Tosca makes a departure from recent years in which the operas were performed entirely in English. This year, selections that Tosca and Cavaradossi sing will be performed in the original Italian while the rest of the opera will be sung in English. “The decision to perform some of the arias and more drama filled moments was artistic. We didn’t want to take away from the integrity of the music,” Ponasik says. “Skylight is one of two major companies in the United States that perform works in English translation regularly, but the company has a history of performing in original language as well.”
Tosca provides several milestones for Skylight. In addition to being the season opener, the opera is new territory for nearly all involved. “This is the first Tosca for the entire cast, music director, and stage director as well as for the Skylight,” said Ponasik. “The energy is great. We have an extraordinary group of individuals in this cast, and it’s going to be a great show.”
ON STAGE
Tosca runs Sept. 24-Oct. 11 at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway, Milwaukee. Tickets are $32 to $77 and can be purchased at 414-291-7800.
Skylight’s new season
Tosca is only the first installment of a season the Skylight has targeted around women, with five female directors leading the way on five very different projects, all in the Cabot Theatre.
After this first show, Skylight will take on Lerner and Loewe’s classic My Fair Lady, an adaptation of Pygmalion in which the distinguished professor Henry Higgins transforms Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a proper lady. The musical runs Nov. 20 to Dec. 27.
Next, the Skylight takes on the Thomas Adès opera Powder Her Face, an intimate look into the woman at the heart of an infamous scandal — British duchess Margaret Campbell, a socialite whose 1963 divorce was marked by the release of scandalous photos and gossip relating to her extramarital sexual affairs. This marks Subbaraman’s second time producing the opera; he first presented it at his former Houston company, Opera Vista. The show runs Jan. 29 to Feb. 14.
In the spring, Milwaukeean Sheri Williams Pannell directs Crowns, a gospel musical set on a single day in the life of a Chicago woman, Yolanda, who goes south after her brother’s death and finds strength in the wise women of the congregation there. The musical runs March 4-26.
The season concludes with the Skylight’s first return to the works of Gilbert and Sullivan since Subbaraman began his tenure with the company in 2013: The Pirates of Penzance. This romp along the coast of Cornwall runs May 20 to June 12.
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