Audiences have been known to boo baritone Corey Crider.
“They love it when I die,” he said of the audience.
Crider seems affable, yet sometimes, people say, he can be a villain with no redeeming qualities.
That is when he portrays Baron Scarpia in Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca at the Valentine Theatre Oct. 18 and 20. He’s the character who lusts after the titular character, Floria Tosca, and is the main reason she and her lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, can be together only in death.
Is there anything redeeming about the chief of police in Napoleonic Rome?
Crider thought about it. “He's, you know, he's really just trying to do things by the book and follow his convictions.”
He gave up. “So, no, I don’t think so.”
Because his convictions are evil.
“There's too much in the libretto that lets you know that really, really at the bottom of it, he is a slave to his basest desires for lust, power, and exploitation of those around him,” Crider said. “And he gets pleasure from that.”
Scarpia, Crider says, can ooze the right amount of charm by wearing fine clothes and exuding his command and power. So that’s what the baritone tries to do.
“If Scarpia can have a certain charm to him and magnetism, it highlights the evil. So I hope to bring some of that layer, or lacing the demon with a little bit of light.”
Scarpia’s desire is the diva Floria Tosca, who knows who Scarpia is, what he wants, and how he always gets it. Scarpia makes it clear what he wants during a church service celebrating the supposed defeat of Napoleon, and the fact that Tosca abhors him makes her more desirable to him. Let’s just say what Scarpia feels isn’t love.
The combination of a holy choir and Scarpia’s odious desire is a powerful one. Adding to the tension are talented singers like Crider, Brendan Boyle, and Lindsey Anderson, plus resident artists and the Toledo Opera’s chorus. Then mix in sumptuous sets and costumes and Puccini’s music.
Putting all those pieces together is Jeffrey Buchman, a director who has been at the helm of several Toledo operas, including Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore and Puccini’s La Boheme .
It’s always a challenge, Buchman said.
‘That's the beauty of the way regional opera houses work, is that these often are cast who have not worked together before,” he said. “Very often the bigger singers come in and are plugged in at the last minute. They've worked together, and they don't always mesh to what the production is that they're in. They kind of bring the ideas from all the other productions they've been in.”
But he said that’s what makes each production a little bit different.
Because each version of Tosca, or any live performance, brings in different singers, each production is unique even if you’ve experienced it many times.
‘So sometimes doing opera at regional opera companies offers an even more interesting opportunity,” Buchman said. ‘It’s about the bringing together of these individual artists to see what is Tosca through these three, Scarpia, Tosca, Cavaradossi. When you change the chemistry of the three, whoever else you bring into that mix, and with the director's storytelling that he or she is working hard to flow through them, every production becomes a very individual experience.”
Tenor Brendan Boyle, a former TOA resident artist who sang Father in last season’s Ragtime , is having his first experience as Mario Cavaradossi.
He credits Buchman for helping him discover who his character really is.
Buchman “has insights that I hadn't thought of,” Boyle said. “He did it with Pavarotti a bunch of times. So [I get] a lot of insights from him.”
Cavaradossi is helping Cesare Angelotti, a revolutionary hiding in the church from police and turns to his artist friend for help. Cavaradossi is working on a painting of the Madonna, but Floria Tosca’s jealousy flares when she sees the portrait is of someone else. Boyle sings “Recondita armonia,” in which he muses over the differences in the two beauties.
“It's an interesting character,” Boyle said, “You get that nice little duality.”
Boyle says that his character is a tough guy who is also a sensitive artist.
“It's easy for me to go out there and be macho, but you have to work in the vulnerability, especially in Act Two, where Scarpia has complete control of everything,” Boyle said. “You have to kind of work in being a little scared, because you know what this guy does, and you know what he can do to you.”
We see that in Act 2, when Cavaradossi is interrogated by Scarpia over Angelotti’s location as a horrified Tosca looks on. Scarpia promises Tosca freedom [wink, wink] for her and Cavaradossi, if only she gives him what he wants. [Again, wink, wink].
Cavaradossi knows that his fate is sealed, Boyle said.
“He wins the show in the end,” Boyle said.
Tosca debuted in January, 1900, four years after La Boheme ’s huge success. Critics gave the new piece mixed reviews. The audience loved it.
Tosca had little in common with the beloved Boheme . Though the audience wept at the end of the opera about poverty-stricken poets and painters, Boheme gave the audience something to laugh about in a few lighthearted moments.
Conductor Geoffrey McDonald, who conducted Blue and Suor Angelica - Cavalleria Rusticana in 2022, said “early audiences and critics, including fellow composers, were ... scratching their heads after Tosca . There were different criticisms. There's nothing gauzy about this piece. And so that was a shock.”
The plot is racy, and Floria Tosca murders a man.
“Look, Carmen is the big hit of the decades before. And there, as usual, the woman gets it. Now it's the woman with the knife, which is a pretty big reversal,” he said.
People noticed.
“There's a famous comment by [music critic] Joseph Kerman, who called it a ‘shabby little shocker,’ which is sort of a winning turn of phrase, even if I disagree with him,” McDonald said.
The pace is fast and the arias are short, the maestro said.
One of the tenor’s important arias, “E lucevan le stelle,” isn’t long. But, McDonald said, “It's exactly enough time to capture the emotional color.”
And there’s plenty of emotion, driven by Puccini’s music and Floria Tosca herself.
In fact, Anderson, who was in Toledo for the Celebrazione del Coro in 2023, says Tosca takes the audience — and the performer who sings it — on an emotional roller coaster.
“I see Tosca as a woman who truly knows herself and doesn't apologize for her varied emotions, and she shows a full breadth to them,” Anderson said. “In this opera, she shows pretty much every emotion you can imagine ... from grief to passion to anger to sorrow to joy, happiness, laughter. All of it's there. I've never performed a character that has had all of those emotions showcased in the forefront so beautifully, not only with the music, but with the text.”
“She talks a lot,” she continued. “So I would say [ the challenge is] the pacing but also making sure that you exhibit all of those emotions that are put into the text, even the most subtle of nuances, in making sure that the audience can see ... a glint of your eye, or a small action movement — making sure that those choices are clear.”
“And you know that probably the biggest challenge is making sure that you make the most of the text so the audience gets everything out of it that's put there.”
Audiences can follow along by simply reading the supertitles, or captions — in English — that roll across a screen at the top of the stage.
“[The text] touches you in a way that you're feeling the story, but you're also feeling the vibration of that human voice,” Anderson said. “And I think in that way, it connects you to emotion, especially in Act 2.” That’s where Tosca sings “Vissi d’arte,” one of the most famous soprano arias in all opera.
Artists who sang the role back in the day often did so while seated on the floor. Anderson says she knows why.
“It's one of those moments that bring you to the floor,” she said. “In this aria, she goes through all of those things in her life, and she’s tried not to harm others. And she’s saying, why am I being rewarded thus, at this moment, after living such a good life.”
We all know that in operas, love doesn’t win out in the end.
Anderson disputes that.
“It really does, because they stayed committed to this love, even in the worst of times. So, I think it does,” she said.
Tosca is performed at the Valentine Theatre, 410 Adams St., at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, and 2 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets for Friday and Sunday range from $39 to $139. visit toledoopera.org or call 419-255-7464.
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