WILMINGTON, NC – Being able to watch an Italian opera first staged in 1900 live in coastal North Carolina in 2024 is something of a miracle when you really stop and think about it. This is an art form that has managed to survive for hundreds of years, always finding new spaces to exist in. A lot of this persistence comes from the medium itself, but a big part of it also can be attributed to companies like Opera Wilmington – companies who curate opera for a contemporary audience and are committed to presenting it in an exceptional way.
If you’re curating opera for a modern audience, Puccini’s Tosca is probably one of the best examples to choose. While possessing a narrative with all the melodramatic twists and turns expected from an opera, both the music and the character of Floria Tosca are on the cutting edge of the 20th century opera scene. For this staging, it feels as if Opera Wilmington has leaned into the dichotomy between classical and modern. Max Lydy‘s set design communicates an immediate sense of period (the story takes place during the Napoleonic era), but Mark D. Sorensen‘s costumes are anachronistic, allowing for expressive touches, such as dressing all the villains as Italian fascists or having Tosca wear a different primary color in each act. I was not initially sold on Benjamin Cornett’s lighting design, finding it a little plain at first, but as the story moved forward, I was captivated by its occasional bold touches. For example, at the end of the second act, Tosca departed the stage through a single lit doorway; at the beginning of the third, Cornett created a beautiful and captivating sunrise. All three of these technical elements were brilliantly realized, and credit is due not just to the heads of the respective departments but to everyone who worked with them. On the subject of excellence, I have nothing but praise for the orchestra. Puccini’s music with its jagged edges and bombastic sensibilities does not sound as if it’s easy to perform, but Daniel Brier and his orchestra handled it masterfully. Similar praise for Aaron Peisner and the chorus, not to mention the rest of the principal cast. It helps that UNCW’s Mainstage Theatre has the kind of acoustics where even someone who isn’t opera trained can be heard from the lobby outside.
Regarding the opera’s three leads, I hope it is not controversial to say that the strength of a production of Tosca is not on the strength of Cavadorossi and Tosca, but actually on the strength of Scarpia and Tosca. It’s not that Cavadorossi is a lesser character – as the other half of the main couple and one of the men who sets the plot into motion, he is essential to the narrative and his aria in the third act is phenomenal (Jonathan Kaufman excels in the role), but the antagonism between Scarpia and Tosca is the genesis of all Tosca‘s drama, making it crucial to cast these parts right. Needless to say, with Shannon Kessler Dooley as Tosca and Joshua Conyers as Scarpia, Opera Wilmington cast the two parts perfectly.
Conyers’ Scarpia is a man in love with his own wickedness; he knows he is a vile man but seems to have accepted that fact. He doesn’t do evil for its own sake as much as he is evil for his own selfish pleasure. Conyers wears the role with the comfort of a second skin, playing Scarpia as a man who walks into a room and immediately commands attention, while also being prone to bursts of violence and hints of fear. Dooley’s Tosca is his match, a woman driven by love in more typical opera fashion, but whose love for Cavadorossi has a jealous flavor to it and is in competition with her hatred for Scarpia. Most of the second act is essentially Tosca and Scarpia matching wits with each other; Dooley and Conyers brought these sequences to life majestically.
“Brought majestically to life” is actually the phrase that best sums up Opera Wilmington’s production of Tosca. The company picked a fine piece to stage, and yet in its staging they have gone above and beyond to create something truly spectacular. Performances continue through this weekend and next, with the final performance on July 28 – purchase tickets here.
