GREENSBORO – Puccini’s “Tosca” is coming to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.
Opera Vermont will present Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca” at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, Feb. 16 and 17, at the Highland Center for the Arts. The production is fully staged with chamber orchestra and sung in the original Italian with English supertitles.
Set amid the Napoleonic Wars there is a sadistic police chief, Scarpia, who lusts after the Diva of Rome, Tosca. She will have nothing to do with him. She loves the artistic painter Cavaradossi who is painting Mary Magdalene as a beautiful blonde resembling another of Rome’s femme fatales. Tosca is jealous. And then Angellotti arrives on the scene. He is an old friend of Cavaradossi. He is also an enemy of the Papal states of Rome with Napoleon on Rome’s doorsteps. Cavaradossi tries to help Angelotti hide from the constabulary. Scarpia is hunting both of them. He plays on Tosca’s jealousy and the plot thickens.
This is not your usual good guy, bad guy, good guy gets the girl, bad guy gets what he deserves Hollywood rendition. Puccini isn’t one to let us off that easy.
Sonja Krenek is Tosca with Opera Vermont’s Artistic Director and tenor, Joshua Collier, as her lover, the painter, Mario Cavaradossi. Krenek has sung in opera houses spanning the country, singing much of the soprano repertoire including Mimi in Puccini’s “LaBohème,” Leila in Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers,” and many others. This performance marks her role debut as Tosca.
David Kelley is a Vermont attorney. He lives in Greensboro and is a former chair of the Hazen Union School Board. He was part of the legal team that represented more than two dozen rural elementary school districts that appealed forced mergers under Act 46.
