NZ Opera's Tosca features the great Simon O'Neill

Tosca by Giacomo Puccini
NZ Opera
September 17-27 ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre Auckland
October 10-17 St James Theatre Wellington

Puccini’s grand opera Tosca tells the story of three people – a famous opera singer, a freethinking painter, and a sadistic chief of police – who  are caught in a web of love and politics. 

It combines melodrama with political and social themes that are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago

NZ Opera general director Stuart Maunder’s new production of the opera brings home New Zealand’s most celebrated living tenor for his first major opera role here in more than a decade.

Simon O’Neill, who has studied the role of Cavaradossi with Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, says it is some of the greatest music ever written for a tenor.

“I am just delighted to come back home and sing when, I hope, my voice is on the way to its peak. Puccini is such a great joy to sing – it’s like Italian olive oil on the vocal cords.”

Irish soprano Orla Boylan, who has recently finished a season at La Scala in Milan, and was a memorable Senta here in The Flying Dutchman in 2013, is the staunch, seductive Floria Tosca.

The Times has praised her as “in sensational form, finding a radiance and warmth … matched by tender insight.” “She is a great singing actress,” says Mr Maunder, “performing an incredibly dramatic and theatrical, iconic role.

"Tosca murders Scarpia, her Cavaradossi is assassinated, and she makes a decision to go against every Christian bone in her body and commit suicide in order to be free.”

New Zealand’s Phillip Rhodes, who is enjoying great success internationally, performs the part of brutal police chief Scarpia. “It’s a role he was born to sing, and to which he brings a palpable sense of evil,” Mr Maunder says. “At one point he is praying for a purely carnal end, while a choir of 38 sings in praise of God.”

Popular baritone Barry Mora returns as the Sacristan, with Wellington’s James Clayton as Angelotti. Spoletta is played by James Rodgers, and Sciarrone by Wade Kernot. The Auckland Philharmonia and NZSO will play under the baton of Tobias Ringborg. 

Mr Maunder and his creative team have moved the melodramatic masterpiece to a period immediately following World War II, closer to our own time than its original Italian setting around the Napoleonic wars.

“It’s in the depths of the Cold War, when the mafia was the sinister power behind the government; a time of secret police and the reign of terror, where the political background gives Baron Scarpia a position of power from which he can murder and torture,” Mr Maunder says.

Elizabeth Whiting’s costumes are in a “classically beautiful period”, he says. “They hark back to Victorian lines, and have a Grace Kelly, 1950s feel.”

Jan Ubels has adapted the glowering, towering set, and the atmospheric lighting design is in the experienced hands of Jason Morphett.

“It’s monumental – a highly theatrical opera on a mammoth scale,” says Mr Maunder, for whom this production marks nearly 40 years as a director. “There’s blood, the sounds of torture, a firing squad on stage, and three people are murdered. It’s a thrilling night in the theatre – a musical thriller.”