Tosca blew her brains out. Propped against a white tiled bathroom wall. Next to the toilet bowl. Blood splattered around with Quentin Tarantino generosity. Sleazy prison setting. The famous soprano still formally dressed in the spangly frock in which she had just delivered her last performance. A world of stark contrasts, boldly created.
Already dead, to the thundering, closing Puccini chords she slowly slid to the floor. Leaving a horrific, tell-tale, oozing, trail of blood smeared on the wall. Louisa Proske, the Director of Puccini’s Tosca at the Glimmerglass Opera Festival had driven the audience into a state of profound shock. Lights out for everybody.
We all know Tosca. She’s the jumper from the battlements of Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo at the end of the same name opera. When she discovers her lover Cavaradossi has been executed. Not saved from a firing squad armed with blanks, as the evil police chief Scarpia had sort of promised.
When he told his henchman, Spoletta, it was to be a fake execution, “Exactly like you did for Palmieri” the audience knew it was to be a nudge, nudge, wink, wink job. Tosca did not.
Tosca audiences know well the variations on a theme. The running jump approach. Maybe the perched perilously on the battlements for a heart stopping moment before plunging fatally onto Hadrian’s tomb below schtick. Arms outstretched. Arms pinned to the side. Knees up. Swallow dive.
I’ve seen them all. The posture usually dictated by whether there is a mattress, a box filled with blocks of absorbent foam, or a trampoline cunningly concealed below. Dive headfirst or scrunch up as required.
In Chicago in the 1960s, soprano Eva Turner was famously a returning Tosca, bouncing back into view several times. Springy trampoline. Apocryphal? Nah! She admitted it in a TV special hosted by Robert Merrill. Must be true.
In Glimmerglass, with shock and awe, Proske had recaptured the sense of the unexpected that must have gripped audiences at the premiere in Rome, 14th January 1900. Provoking music critic, Joseph Kerman to dub the work, “A shabby little shocker”. Audiences had thrilled to Tosca. Can’t have that!
Proske has a knack of bringing a fresh touch to opera while remaining faithful to the original score and libretto. No distracting, Regietheater self-indulgence. Her Tosca was set close to the present day, but with an atmosphere of corruption that today’s audience can understand only too well. Often lost in a more conventional, plush 19th century setting.
For those unfamiliar with Tosca, a complete synopsis can be found here.
This production opens with police chief Scarpia having obviously just enjoyed sex with a cowering girl, shamefacedly dressing herself, in full view of his subordinates. We are in a drab, threatening prison setting.
Is this man immoral? No doubt. So, when he is torturing the artist, Cavaradossi while wheedling Tosca’s agreement for a carnal liaison, traded for her lover’s safety, we all know where matters stand.
Proske had prepared the perfect backdrop for Tosca’s plangent, headline Act II aria “Vissi d’arte”, where she declares she lived for art and love and has been abandoned by God. When she sings, “Why, why, Lord, ah, why do you reward me thus?” it is a pivotal moment.
Tosca is now, since God is AWOL, going to take matters into her own hands. All the more convincing for being sung in similarly squalid conditions one can imagine framing conflicts today – from captured Ukrainian soldiers through to Hamas hostages.
Proske has a sense of humour. A sign of a director with self-confidence. The fussy sacristan dancing attention on Cavaradossi in the church where he is painting in Act I slipped behind the statue of the Madonna and emerged buckling up his belt, presumably having relieved himself.
I wasn’t sure if I had been overinterpreting, so I asked Proske. She was enigmatic. But no outraged denial meant I was right.
Proske has a talent for bringing vivid theatrical worlds to life. Her Glimmerglass 2023 Rinaldo, Handel’s opera set in Crusader times, was a stunning romp ably aided and abetted by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo whose pants were on fire throughout as he rescued Almirena from an evil sorceress.
Proske set the scene in an intensive care ward with Almirena and Rinaldo as patients, the whole opera playing out as an illusion. Sounds bonkers? Well, the opera is bonkers but Glimmerglass 23 out-bonkered any staid production I have ever seen. True to its tradition of being the first Italian language opera to be staged in London.
During her four year tenure as Associate Artistic Director and Resident Director at Oper Halle, Germany, Proske delivered Amigi di Gaula “Handel on steroids”, as I wrote at the time. Medieval figures snarled up in an AI blue-winking world of data servers.
Chatting with the Musical Director of Glimmerglass, Maestro Joseph Colaneri, over breakfast in the idyllic Sunflower Café in nearby Springfield, – no Bart or Homer Simpson in sight – he promised me Proske had delivered a Tosca with a ‘Wow’ factor. Super ‘Wow!’ Simple advice, really. If you want to see opera delivered with vim, vigour and pizzazz, follow Proske.
Glimmerglass is an opera castle of Oz. The Yellow Brick Road is the New York State Thruway, a three-hour journey after leaving Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge, following the river Hudson. Soon malls make way for countryside and the Catskill mountains. Past Poughkeepsie, skirting State Capital, Albany.
Country towns replace urban sprawl. Rural poverty is palpable. Many stores are shuttered. Occasional wood-framed family houses lie abandoned on Main Street – the rotten teeth of the economy. In election years they house the despicables so successfully courted by Donald Trump.
Reach Lake Otsego and the isolated Alice Busch Opera Theater offers a safe haven for the arts. As well as Tosca, this year’s Glimmerglass brought Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George and a world premiere, The House on Mango Street.
Based on the classic novel by Sandra Cisneros, with music from composer Derek Bermel, it tells the tale of deprived New York neighbourhood through the eyes of a young girl.
Rake was superb, as was Sunday in the Park, the story of George Seurat’s famous painting, La Grande Jatte acted out by its subjects, then in Act II contrasting the pointillist master’s style with the art of his grandson, also George, who has created something called Chromolume #7. I’m glad I missed out on 1 to 6 and have no intention of hanging around for 8.
I thought The House on Mango Street, frankly, a failure. Derivative. Lenoard Bernstein’s West Side Story and Kurt Weill’s Street Scene tell the turbulent, seamy-side tale of New York better. But every opera festival has an ‘also ran’.
With Artistic Director, Robert Ainsley, now firmly in the saddle – he joined in 2022 – this 50th anniversary Glimmerglass was one to be proud of. Ainsley is a constant presence, brimming with enthusiasm and stepping up pre curtain at each performance to greet his audience. Other festivals would do well to follow his example. Glyndebourne is a welcome – free zone.
On the empty dual carriage highway, ten miles out of Glimmerglass, early in the morning, en route back to Manhattan, the dreaded revolving red light of a State Trooper’s patrol car popped up in my rear-view mirror.
“Is there a problem officer?” “Driving licence, sir. You were doing 75 in a 55 area. Where ya comin’ from?” “Glimmerglass.” “My daughter sang in the chorus last year.” “Ah, that must have been Pagliacci. The chorus was brilliant” – You can see where this is heading. – “Well, doggone, you heard my little girl sing! That Opry is great for the community. Guess I’ll let you be on your way.” Whew!
While new chum Trooper X will not exactly be invited for Christmas, my encounter illustrates what encourages Glimmerglass loyalty. In 2026 expect Mozart’s Cosi, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, an exciting lesser-known work, Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers, premiered in Cincinnati in2016 and youth opera favourite, Robin Hood by Ben Moore and Kelley Rourke.
With luck Trooper X will be in the audience watching his daughter. Not holding me to account on Highway 20.
And – a final thing!
I hope readers have enjoyed my opera reviews, penned for Reaction over eight years, as much as I have derived pleasure from writing them.
Eras end and other outlets beckon. Watch this space. Or rather, another space. And thanks for your indulgence. I made the most of it.
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