"Tosca" at Opera in the Baseball Park but diva refuses to play ball; Timeout with Pedro Rodelas

Take me out to the op-er-a . . . come on everybody sing! It’s probably fun to see anything on a summer night at the baseball park, even over the top pathos like Puccini's Tosca. Ah, the aroma of garlic fries, something you don't get at the opera house, which simulcasts the production Friday evening, June 5 at 8:00 pm.

SFO says:

Through state-of-the-art technology made possible by the Koret-Taube Media Suite, this simulcast will be transmitted in 1920x1080 high definition (HD) to AT&T Park’s 103-feet wide Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision scoreboard—one of the highest quality outdoor scoreboards in the nation—live from the stage of the War Memorial Opera House. Concert quality audio combined with AT&TPark’s huge screen will create an unmatched operatic experience for attendees sitting in the stands and on the baseball field. Traditional baseball game concessions will be available, providing audiences the rare opportunity to eat hot dogs, peanuts and garlic fries while listening to glorious opera.

See Puccini with somebody who has a sense of humor, even gallows humor, like tenor Pedro Rodelas, who seems to be a gregarious fun loving sort who sings Broadway as well as opera. His father was a professional soccer player and Pedro has certification to teach turbo kick. He's six feet tall and also likes to tango.

Pedro Rodelas

So the TDH (tall dark and handsome) tenor and I attended the dress rehearsal (that's a link to the photos) of Tosca on Saturday afternoon. He told me the Tosca stories or rumors, about how one Tosca bounced back after she leaped off the roof of Castel Sant’ Angelo to her death. Another involves the supers or non-singing actors . . . they didn’t know what to do in the final scene and were told to just follow Tosca. So they did, and leaped off the tower after her.

He says you can really see if the singers are connecting or if it’s park and bark when you see them on the Jumbotron, referring to Opera in the Baseball Park on Friday night.

Yet the lesson here remains, Tosca does not play ball.

She doesn't go for the pretty woman Mario paints as the virgin mother Magdalene, she doesn't go for the beast Scarpia. I had to laugh in appreciation as Scarpia, played at SFO by Lado Ataneli, blew a kiss to the audience for his curtain call at the dress rehearsal.

One wonders what would have happened if Tosca hadn't been so devout, so loyal to her lover and to her God, if she had just played ball with the Baron. I bet he would have crumbled if not begged if she had turned on him with sexual aggression, the diva . . . and he did in fact die begging for her help. However. She did give in partially when she coughed up the hidden political prisoner and look where that got them all . . . dead anyway. One wonders why Puccini would punish pretty innocent women so . . . if he couldn't have them nobody could? If he couldn't live as a woman then his heroines could not either?

Tosca Trivia?

Pedro and I were having a brunch at the crepe place near the opera house, seated at the window table with sundried tomato quiche and side salads with feta, olives, tomatos and red onion. Tessa walked in with a friend; Pedro emails today My friend Tessa was actually 10 (even more amazing) when she played in the pit of Tosca back in February 2003 with Townsend Opera Players. She’ll be 16 this June. How time flies! Her website [which Pedro designed] is www.tessaofcelloslovakia.com

He was singing Cavaradossi then.

Pedro Rodelas/Tosca

He mentioned the Maria Callas film of Tosca, she’s a very good actress he says, emailing today the Callas movie I mentioned is “Callas Forever”, a Franco Zeffirelli film starring Fanny Ardant and Jeremy Irons.

There’s also the film Il Bacio di Tosca. It's a poignant story about an old age home for opera singers . . . perhaps inspired by the real life retirement home Verdi built in Italy with his wealth.

I have the DVD embedded above with Angela Gheorghiu and her French born husband Roberto Alagna; Ruggero Raimondi as Scarpia. Moreover there's a version on Youtube with Raimondi and it's filmed in the exact places of the libretto, with Zubin Mehta conducting a few miles away.

The chemistry between Angela and Roberto looked believable on the DVD, they are indeed married and both young enough and attractive. The camera angles involve Cavaradossi’s view from his painter’s scaffold into the colorful pots of paint and you see the paint on his hands. The colors have a burnt orange or rust range, warm colors and textures setting off Gheorghiu’s youthful and fresh yellow dress and her abundance of glossy black hair.

As she reminisces with her lover, the director has cut in black and white scenes from the recording session, making Tosca a story within a story . . . and you get Tosca’s memories of home filmed with a handheld camera like a family amature’s, in a burnished tint like old film. You get images of sea, wind and rain . . . then with Baron Scarpia’s song where he sets free her jealousy, it’s almost a waltz, his dance with sadistic pleasure. Tosca you make me forget God, he declares in the church. Scarpia’s chambers have an aerial shot as if you are a fly on the wall and Tosca’s red gown flows like blood over the beautiful Italian tiles. Indeed he has made torture an art form . . . candlelight dinner and a show.

Tosca sings in her gilded cage, as in the Maria Callas video above . . .

I have lived for art, I have lived for love.

Never have I harmed a living creature. Why do you repay me thus?

I find this particularly poignant in these days of hard times. I always say, I live like a nun, somebody who has taken a vow of poverty and chastity. I own nothing, I ride a bicycle. I’m 49 and single, no children.

It’s not exactly a magnet for potential husbands. I still wear my wedding ring to fend off the perverts, dirty old men, dirty old women, married men, alcoholics. I am so uncomfortable not being treated as if married—like a leper or swinging actress, those are the choices. I imagine Tosca suffered more from the perception of her as an opera star rather than as a political antagonist or French sympathizer. Moreover evil will target innocence and women alone, that’s the nature of evil.

John Martin said you have to have a Scarpia who is physically capable of forcing himself on her. You get these small ones or older ones and it just doesn’t work. I agreed, I said I must see Greer Grimsley someday, another TDH to make you say, “Cavaradossi who?” Even Pedro who has peformed the doomed Cavaradossi seemed amused by the challenge.

So. The audience reacted heartily during the dress rehearsal to Tosca’s lament scene, where she’s set up for martyrdom. Pedro said “I like it” and I nodded in agreement. Tosca entreats Scarpia, who has simply been gazing out the window,

Do not crush my anguished spirit.

. . . which is just what any sadist longs to hear. Little does he know Tosca has a kiss for him in store. And killed by a woman! she will declare. Interestingly enough, Pieczonka’s Tosca not only gives Scarpia the kiss of death by stabbing him in the torso, she stabs him again in the back.

Pedro told me it helps a lot when you have an attractive soprano and said a Carmen he performed with was really sexy.

Femme Fatales?

Yet he also mentioned Fatal Song, a performance he was in during graduate school in Maryland which parodied the tragic deaths of so many women in opera. I too, featured dead divas in one of my first articles. In Fatal Song apparently one singer gets to be in Mozart. So when she gets pulled back into a tragedy she cries out wait, women in Mozart don’t die! But I have to admit, baritones have a high mortality rate too. As Greer told me once when I asked why his characters always die, he said when it’s a bad guy you expect the pay off of death in the end.

More Puccini?

Pedro’s also been the bandit in another Puccini performed locally, La Fanciulla or Girl of the Golden West. SFO performs La Fanciulla next June, 2010, with Deborah Voight.

Pedro Rodelas/Berkeley Opera/La Fanciulla

Berkeley Opera performed it in English as is their custom, Scott Marley’s adaptation. Pedro says the backstory is that the characters met on a trail to Salinas so Berkeley filmed a horseback encounter, put it in silent film black and white and played this during the overature. Then Berkeley filmed the ending, walking off into the sunset, in the Berkeley hills. Minnie was banned by the miners from California. Pedro sang at Berkeley’s anniversary the part where he begs his jailers not to tell Minnie of his fate and to let her think he was free.

Pedro Rodelas/Berkeley Opera/La Fanciulla

Meanwhile Pedro has been busy with The Three Waiters, a comedic musical routine that was once performed for the three tenors. It's an international organization having performed in sixty countries and started in Australia.

He’ll be singing the role of chef at the Bracebridge Dinner at Yosemite’s Ahwahnee this Christmas for the fifth year. He expanded the role by singing opera in between lines. He also sings a Spanish version of Christmas carols at Bracebridge.

Besides Puccini's Tosca, SFO will stage Puccini's La Fanciulla and Il Trittico this season. Il Trittico is with Paulo Gavanelli who last sang Rigoletto at SFO, Patricia Racette and also Andrea Silvestrelli. Andrea sang at the Verdi Requiem last week while Patricia cancelled due to illness. La Fanciulla will be next June, in 2010, with Deborah Voight.

For more info: www.SFOpera.com, TheThreeWaiters.com, BerkeleyOpera.org

Baseball photo: Edgar Lee

Pedro Rodelas photos: Courtesy Pedro Rodelas, Berkeley Opera

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