Alan Riding

To see footage of Callas in the role is to understand that she was Floria Tosca: her fury when her artist lover, Mario Cavaradossi, paints a portrait of another woman; her cries of “Muori!” (“Die!”) after knifing Rome’s police chief, Baron Scarpia; or her unhesitating leap to her death from the Castel Sant’Angelo after Cavaradossi’s execution.

Daring were those who competed with Callas in the role during her prime in the 1950s and 1960s. But today, dramatic sopranos — those with the range and volume for the part — line up to sing a part, which, if all goes well, earns certain ovations at the final curtain.

On May 16, Pierre Audi’s production of “Tosca” returns to the Paris Opera, running through June 23. And on this occasion, accompanied by Jonas Kaufmann and Marcelo Puente as Cavaradossi, and Zeljko Lucic and Luca Salsi as Scarpia, three renowned sopranos will sing Floria Tosca. I asked them how they approached this familiar yet challenging role.

Anja Harteros

A 46-year-old German soprano, Harteros has added “Tosca” to her repertory only in recent years but now regularly sings the role, including in Audi’s production in 2016 and just this week at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich.

“‘Tosca’ is a great opera because it is so short and it is such fun,” she said in a telephone interview from her home near Cologne. “Don’t get me wrong! Killing someone is not fun, but it is a joy to do it in an opera. You feel so many different emotions, but it’s always an opera, so it’s a pleasure.”

Is “Tosca” credible as a story? “Yes, because the roles and personalities in Puccini’s operas are so natural, they have direct emotions,” she said. “With Verdi, Wagner and Richard Strauss, you have to think about them a long time. Puccini is clear. You do it as he has written it. That’s why so many productions of ‘La Bohème’ and ‘Tosca’ are really old because we have the feeling that they’re right.”

Does the opera pose vocal risks? “In Act 2, the aria ‘Vissi d’arte’ comes after quite a lot of physical movement,” she said, “so you have to recover your breath and become calm before you sing it. It’s a bit like after a workout when your heart is bumping even if you’re sitting calmly. What I like about Callas in Act 2 is that she’s not always the diva we expect. She’s really natural in her gestures.”

Singing opposite Kaufmann in Paris later this month will be no novelty for Harteros. They have already sung “Tosca” in Hamburg and Munich, and they have appeared together in “Lohengrin,” “Don Carlo,” “Il Trovatore” and “Andrea Chénier.”

“I love to sing with Jonas,” she said. “I think we’ll have a very special feeling in Paris.”

Martina Serafin

A 49-year-old Austrian, Serafin came late to all Italian opera because, she said, her agent felt her happiest singing in her native German. But then she married an Italian and was persuaded otherwise. Since her first “Tosca” at the Rome Opera in 2008, she reckons she has sung the role well over 100 times.

So who is her Tosca? “Tosca is a woman of very many facets. She has a very big register of emotions which makes her so beautiful to sing because she has everything a woman wants to be. She is very passionate, very female, very jealous. Tosca is a lot of different women. Any woman can see herself in Tosca. And every soprano can bring part of herself to the role.”

Like Harteros, she said the drama preceding “Vissi d’arte” created dangers. “If you have a very active Scarpia, touching you and pulling you, you automatically become more dramatic. But you mustn’t let yourself go because you might get tired and not be ready to sing ‘Vissi d’arte’ where Tosca is addressing God with the question, why?”

For Serafin, reached here in Paris after arriving early for rehearsals, Maria Callas still haunts the role. “Before Franco Zeffirelli directed my first ‘Tosca,’ he showed me film of her in Act 2,” she recalled. “‘Look how she looks at the mirror,’ he said, ‘look how she’s doing this, how she’s doing that, because it is so beautiful.’ I’ll never try to be like Callas because she was unique, but I try to learn from her.”

Tosca’s final act — leaping into the void — is one that Serafin is not eager to repeat since breaking her leg doing so in Vienna three years ago. “I used to tell directors, without jumping there is no ‘Tosca,’” she said with a laugh. “But after my little accident, I’m convinced you can do it without jumping.” And in Paris she will not jump.

Sonya Yoncheva

A Bulgarian soprano, Yoncheva is, at the age of 37, the youngest of this production’s sopranos as well as the one least practiced in the role. Her first “Tosca” was at the Metropolitan Opera in New York 18 months ago, her second is this week in Berlin and her third next month in Paris. Having begun as a lyric soprano, she explained from Berlin, she needed time to develop her middle register. “Now, Tosca is actually a very comfortable part for my voice,” she said.

She also has strong views on how Floria Tosca should be interpreted. “After Callas and her contemporaries, we always thought Tosca was this arrogant diva everyone had to bow to, but I see her as very young,” she said. “Yes, she is a diva, but she’s ready to die, to kill, to love, to destroy everything or risk everything to save her partner. This is something very young. When you are young, you just go for it.”

“So I’m playing this passion in a different way,” she added. “A woman has instincts. Women are very interesting animals, we have the psychology to understand what’s happening. Tosca immediately understands what Scarpia really wants. She is a very instinctive woman.”

As with Harteros and Serafin, “Vissi d’arte” came into the conversation. “If you sing it in a concert, it’s actually very short and beautiful and caressing to the voice,” Yoncheva said. “But in the opera, it comes after a lot of screaming, so the challenge is to switch from the dramatic to a kind of angelic lyrical voice.”

As for the infamous leap from the castle, even had the Paris production included it, Yoncheva would have declined because she is six months pregnant with a girl.

“I’m not sure I want her to be a singer,” she said, “but I think she already knows ‘Tosca’ by heart.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/arts/paris-opera-tosca-sopranos.html" id="ce82a533-1646-3ff3-aa5d-b1fe65882fd0">The New York Times</a>.

PARIS — Many 19th-century opera composers wrote roles to suit the voices and characters of their wives or mistresses. When Puccini created a tempestuous diva called Floria Tosca, however, he could hardly have imagined that Greek-American soprano Maria Callas would someday turn his “Tosca” into one of the most popular operas.

A Trio of Toscas

Few stages are more welcoming to the 64-year-old Canadian than those of the Paris Opera. Earlier this year, his immensely popular 2001 staging of “Rusalka” returned here, and his 2013 production of “The Magic Flute” is back through June 15. I tracked him down in Berlin, where he had just directed a world premiere of Detlev Glanert’s opera “Oceane” at the Deutsche Oper. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.

Q: You trained as an actor yet became a director. How come?

A: I’d wanted to be an actor since the age of 8. I had a very bad speech defect as a child, and I was taught to speak again by a voice teacher by reading Shakespeare and other dramatists. That got me interested in the theater. Much later, while I was studying at the Bristol Old Vic Theater School in England, one of the teachers asked me if it had ever occurred to me to be a director.

Q: Were you surprised?

A: Well, yes. At first I thought, am I that bad an actor? And he said, no, you’re not, but you come to all the rehearsals — not just the scenes you’re in — and we don’t see so many students who are interested in everything. So I thought maybe he’s right: I should try it out. And I started working as an assistant director. But it was almost 10 years before I got my first professional job.

Q: Why opera, not theater?

A: That was mainly an accident. I needed to find work quickly, and someone put me in contact with Gian Carlo Menotti at the Spoleto Festival, and the festival took me on board. My first jobs were all unpaid, and they turned out to be in opera. For someone just starting, there were so many talented young people with really good academic backgrounds wanting to be theater directors that somehow opera seemed the right thing to try out, not only because I loved music theater but also because I could speak French, German, and I was learning Italian very quickly.

Q: How did you make your mark as an opera director?

A: My first big professional job was “Mefistofele” at the Geneva Opera in 1988. Hugues Gall, the intendant, had liked something I’d done semiprofessionally, and we started discussing possible titles. The extraordinary coincidence is that I suggested “Mefistofele,” which he had just agreed to do with Samuel Ramey. That was my breakthrough. It traveled widely and in fact was just put on again at the Met in New York last autumn, 30 years almost to the day after the Geneva opening!

Q: Was that when opera houses began looking for you?

A: It wasn’t that suddenly everyone was banging on my door but, yes, I was able to start getting some other jobs.

Q: How do you pick your operas?

A: What often happens is that a management already knows what they’d like to put on, and they ask if you’d like to direct it. Then it’s a question: Is this something I could do well? I can only take on a work if I have a genuinely positive response to it. There are certain composers, like Rossini, whose work doesn’t speak to me, so I’d never attempt to direct their works as it would do them a disservice. Then there are theaters one has worked with before, and they may say, OK, what shall we do next?

Q: How do you prepare?

A: I ask myself, how do I feel about this opera and how can I bring this to life for the audience? We directors are always saying that we are storytellers. But because the number of operas is comparatively limited, it’s as if we’re telling stories to children who already know the stories. So we often feel we have to tell a particular story in a new way so that the audience can experience it as if for the first time. An opera production should not be Proust’s madeleine.

Q: In the case of “The Magic Flute” at the Paris Opera, why did you decide on an entirely new production?

A: I first directed it in Aix-en-Provence in 1994, but when I reread the libretto I felt completely differently about it. I was astonished by how dark it is and how many references to death there are. I remember counting over 60 of them, which for a joyous opera is something of a surprise. And I thought perhaps the opera itself is a symbol of our journey through life to death. I think that’s one of the reasons why death is so present in poetry, opera and theater: It helps us imagine our life ending.

Q: Is opera a battle for power among the composer, the librettist, the singers and the director?

A: I’m not interested in any kind of power battle. The reason opera is such a powerful art form is that it is the combination of all the arts: the spoken word, song, music, the visual arts, sculpture, painting, poetry, dance, architecture and now film, too. Everything is there. And the director’s joyous task is to bring everyone and everything together. Richard Strauss wrote his brilliant last opera, “Capriccio,” on this very theme.

Q: Do you have any say in picking the singers for a new production?

A: It depends on the opera house. Some come to you with the singers in place. Very often, one is thrilled. And other times, you know perhaps it wouldn’t work so well. Once or twice, with a certain singer, I’ve thought to myself, maybe better not.

Q: How do you manage divas and divos?

A: The word divo or diva is usually associated with bad behavior. This often comes from insecurity. So I feel my job is to make people feel as secure as possible, to make them feel trusted and that they can trust me. This can also be difficult because sometimes, five minutes into the first day of rehearsal, you’ll find yourself putting two people in bed together who’ve only just met, and you need them to make passionate love together! I think it’s important to create an atmosphere where people feel they can try things out and where they won’t be exposed or judged.

Q: Is opera above all an emotional experience?

A: For me, it is. When it works really well, there is an alchemical balance between the head and the heart. On the one hand, you have the libretto, which is completely concrete and intellectual. And then you have the music, which is totally abstract and emotional. An opera is only really satisfying if the head and the heart are satisfied and one cannot really explain why.

Q: Do you have a favorite opera house?

A: I always say there’s only one theater in the world, and that’s the one you’re working in. Theater is such an immediate activity. There’s the deadline, the opening night, you’re working towards that. It’s like life: There’s never enough time. But no matter how large or small the stage, the budget, the auditorium or the city, it’s always the same process: You’re collaborating with a group of people to bring something to life that doesn’t really exist.

Q: Are there any operas on your bucket list?

A: “The Rake’s Progress.” That’s at the top. I also love Handel operas. I’ve only done about six or seven — there are quite a lot more to do. I love very modern work, and I love very early works particularly. There’s a freedom in both cases. There’s also theater. I love doing musicals, and I’d love to do some more. I also design exhibitions, which has led me to designing some plays and operas. It seems to me that there’s still a lot to do.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/arts/opera-robert-carsen.html" id="cb5ca310-a1cf-3418-aa45-ef1c7e9999a8">The New York Times</a>.

PARIS — In an art form as hyperbolic as opera, Robert Carsen stands out for the deceptive simplicity of his work as a director. Rather than aiming to shock or show off his cleverness, his productions — about 120 over three decades — have routinely won him accolades for their visual beauty and the intelligence of their storytelling.

Seen an Opera Lately? Robert Carsen Might Have Directed It

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Alan Riding

Articles written by the author

A Trio of Toscas

Seen an Opera Lately? Robert Carsen Might Have Directed It