The "Tosca" Post

What do you get when you put an artist, an entertainer, and a corrupt official in a church together? You might think the "Hunchback of Notre Dame." Wrong. You get Giacomo Puccini's seminal, immediately accessible operatic hit, "Tosca."

For anyone who is unfamiliar with opera, "Tosca" has everything that you think about when you think about opera: passion, love, drama, tragedy, lies, death, and - most of all - people singing notes that can blow the doors open while the orchestra swells in the background.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the Newhouse Arts Journalism Program are the field trips. Every week, we go to different cultural institutions in Syracuse to find out more about the local artistic scene and find out more about the state of the arts in Syracuse and by proxy, across the country. Suffice to say, it's treading water and most institutions are on the brink of sinking.

Yet when you go to something like the opera, or a musical, or theater, it's easy to forget the struggle that is always present, to present beautiful works of quality in such a tenuous period while still staying afloat.

We drove about two hours out of Syracuse yesterday to Cooperstown, the home of James Fenimore Cooper, and on the shores of Glimmerglass Lake. Cooperstown, also to the home of the baseball hall of fame, was so small-town American and quaint that it was almost sickening and sweet.

The Glimmerglass Opera House is on the shores of the lake. The immediate reaction upon reaching the house was, in the words of James, "It looks like a barn." The public relations person who was leading us around described the setting as "rustic." I would have preferred a cleaner face for such an elite institution, something more classic and clean, rather than a structure that looked like it used to house wildlife. These people are singing and playing their hearts out in a more than 200 year old tradition, they deserve a more beautiful venue to showcase that talent.

As for "Tosca," not being a connoisseur of opera in the style of Professor David Rubin (who has seen "Tosca's" from the 1970s), I can't give an opinion on technique. But I can say that by the entr'acte of Act III, I was close to tears and the sheer beauty of Pucchini's music. He set the opera in Rome and so, he incorporated the exact pitch of the bells that played in Rome during certain periods of the day, layering it over the music. And listening to it, I missed the holy city, getting swept away in the beauty and romanticism and imminent tragedy of everything.

Though the director chose to set this "Tosca" in Mussolini's Italy instead of 1800's Italy, the original period, which was jarring especially when the play references specific battles of the 1800's.

I will not say how it ends but I will say that there is a love triangle and it does not end well. And I preferred the male arias to the female arias, though that may have something to do with the fact that I did not find this Floria Tosca believable. Though I was pleasantly surprised by how independent and courageous Puccini wrote Tosca, considering his less than favorable treatment of his heroines (remember Madame Butterfly?).

Here is the great Placido Domingo singing one of my favorite arias in the music, the "Secret Harmonies." The most beautiful line is towards the end. "My only thought is of you, Tosca."

And whenever we go anywhere, we get free food (free meaning prepaid in tuition). Free food and free beautiful music. What more could a poor student want?