Time to clean the opera glasses

Boy loves Girl. Girl suspects Boy of cheating. There is Bad Man, who is after Good Man. Good Man is Boy’s friend. Bad Man targets Boy to find Good Man. Bad Man also lusts after Girl. He tells her if she sleeps with him he will free Boy. But this is a lie, which Girl, being gullible, doesn’t get. But Girl is devious in her own way. She goes to sleep with Bad Man, but snuffs out his life with a knife. Bad Man’s henchmen kill Boy. Grief-struck, Girl jumps off a building and joins Boy in pastures beyond.

In the age of one-night stands and multiplexes, this plot appears mindlessly melodramatic if not utterly daffy for even Bollywood. No IT codie worth his html or corporate climber calibrated in jargon can soak in so much drama, popcorn in hand. But the NCPA’s 1,109-seater Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, where the above plot will pan out for over three hours on September 28 and 30, is almost house-full. And quite a few of the ticket buyers are IT codies and corporate climbers. What is going on?

Tosca, one of the world’s best loved operas.

The seats have been booked not owing to the plot, but because of expectations of a grand spectacle: opulent sets and props, lavish costumes, and glorious music.

Khushroo N Suntook, the chairman of the NCPA, says this is just the second time when a full-scale opera is being staged in the country by a home-based professional orchestra. “Several small productions have been organised in the past. But the first (big) one was Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in 2008, staged at the NCPA by the Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI).”

Tosca, too, is by Puccini. Giacomo Puccini, who lived from 1858 to 1924, is considered to be one of the greatest composers of opera. His musical style was the counterpart of the Realist movement in literature. Which is to say, his operas are like the novels of Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy in spirit and intent.

Puccini picked up subjects and characters from everyday Italian life. But though the settings of his operas were commonplace, he coloured the plots with soaring melodies, riveting duets and brilliant orchestral effects. Tosca and Madama Butterfly, along with La Bohème and Turandot, are his most popular works.

In Tosca, the Girl of the plot is Floria Tosca, who is in love with Mario Cavaradossi, a painter. The story is set in Rome, June 1800. The plot, to a 21st century person, appears banal, but this impression is superficial. In Puccini’s time, it had — and arguably still has — political significance. The Good Man of the plot is Cesare Angelotti, a former republican consul-turned-political fugitive, and the Bad Man Baron Scarpia, the chief of police with dictatorial tendencies. Scarpia’s character can be understood in the aria (operatic song) Ha più forte sapore (For myself the violent conquest), in which he says that for him, making love involves conquest and subjugation.

Staging Tosca, or most other operas, is a very big deal. “We have been planning for almost 15 months,” Suntook says. “It starts with choosing the opera. Then you have to check which singers, conductors, set and costume designers, and stage directors are available. In parallel, you have to work your budgets out and see what you can manage. Because staging an opera is a very
expensive affair.”

Expensive but fulfilling. “

takes your soul entirely. If you must not cry at the end, your soul must be damaged,” says Dirk Hofacker, the opera’s set designer, who has worked with Oscar-winning director William Friedkin (of The French Connection and The Exorcist fame).

Tosca’s sets have not being imported, but are being built in Mumbai. For Hofacker, this is a novel experience. “Anne Randine Overby (who will conduct Tosca) made an excellent decision to build the sets here. This is a spectacular experience for me, to see young people with love and fire in their eyes sculpturing capitals, columns and balustrades.

“I tell this, because in Europe opera is an industry. A lot of the workshop people are tired, bored without passion. But in Mumbai, I found passion, which for me is the unique aspect of this Tosca production.”

Overby concurs about the passion, albeit she mentions it with regard to the city’s concert-going audience. “I was here during the previous season of the SOI to hear the orchestra because I was going to conduct it for Tosca. I noticed the people in the hall and I saw how silent they were. You can know how much an audience loves the music being played by observing how silent they are,” says the Norwegian maestro, who will be the first woman to conduct the SOI, which is in its ninth ‘celebrity season’.

Incidentally, this is homecoming for Overby. The daughter of missionaries, she was brought up in India from when she was five till she turned 18. She went to school in the Nilgiris and it is there that she started learning music.

For Tosca, SOI will collaborate with Opera Bergen, which Overby founded in the late 1980s and nurtured for years against tremendous odds before government funding made life easier. Opera Bergen is the production backbone of Tosca.

The opera is in three acts, requiring a change of sets between acts.

The first act is set in a church, where Cavaradossi is making a mural of Mary Magdalene (yes, of The Da Vinci Code fame). One of the greatest operatic love songs is featured in this act. When Cavaradossi notices the contrast between the blonde blue-eyed woman in his painting and his dark-haired, dark-eyed lover Tosca, he sings Recondita armonia (mysterious harmony), often a staple of the ‘Three Tenors’ concerts, in particular sung by Pavarotti (tenor is the highest male voice).

The second act takes place in Scarpia’s palace. In this, Tosca — played by a soprano, the highest female voice — sings another great love song, Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore (I lived for art, I lived for love), after Scarpia’s indecent proposal.

The scene of the third act is a castle. In this, Cavaradossi, held prisoner by Scarpia, upon learning he has little time to live, is flooded with memories of Tosca and breaks into the supremely sensual E lucevan le stelle (And the stars were shining).
The details of the ending are best left for September 28 or 30. If you are a person with a soul, then, as Hofacker says, you will “cry at the end”.