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A Tosca too Far or Restraining Regietheater

This paper will examine Calixto Bieito’s Tosca produced at Opera Noske to illuminate the pitfalls of the practice of regietheater in opera. As Müller discusses at length this concept is open to interpretation which is fitting since the concept is, at its core, interpretation of the work by a director. (Müller 583) This practice is not foreign in the sphere of theater -in fact a production of Shakespeare using classical/original staging and design concepts would now more than likely be considered positively avant-garde. As Opera (capitalization intentional) moves into this age of re-examination and re-interpretation of the canon I believe that the role of the dramaturg in opera needs to be expanded upon within the production team.

The base issue in this re-interpretation of Opera is its identity being tied to a musical score. Unfortunately we do not live in a world where the spoken word is regarded as highly as the sung word. The room to interpret is narrowed by the notations and rhythm set down by the composer. This in turn limits what a director would be able to do with the production as a whole as the score would be anchored to the original concept. The director may have a new vision of the production but the conductor controls the auditory. If a series of visuals or tableaus presented veer too far from what is being heard then the production is not a new counterpoint to the original but attacks it (and the viewer) with its dissonance.

This is the core issue with the Bieito Tosca. The visuals that he and his production team have assembled do not seem to be in the same key as the score. How can a production know when it is slipping out of tune? Is this the responsibility of the director or dramaturg or of the production team as a whole? It is through the examination of the choices that Bieito and his production team made that these questions can be answered. But before you can have a counterpoint one must have a melody to work from. What is the identity of Tosca? Kipp 2

There is an issue with finding an identity of a performed text due to its inherent temporal nature. Does a work only truly exist when it is performed? Diana Taylor theorizes that a performance is dependent on the archive of its past performances. (Taylor 28) You cannot truly archive a live performance because of the temporality of its nature. This liminal state slips quickly into the archive of an audience memory, a published critique or, a “live on tape” capture.

As this archive continues to be performed it continues to grow and is reinforced. If this identity is performed in a similar fashion repeatedly over time then the identity becomes homogenized to a point where variations of performances are harder to recognize. It is easier to find the person singing off key in a quartet rather than a choir of one hundred. It is also harder to compete with a choir of one hundred when trying to make yourself heard. This is what a work of regietheater and

Bieito in particular is up against.

This challenge is made much more difficult when the source text has narrowed the range of choices one can make concerning its performance. Puccini was writing Tosca durning the age of Verismo, or Realism in the theater world. (Oxford) This is the age of Chekov, Ibsen and,

Strindberg. If one examines the libretto there are references to actual buildings in the city of

Rome. It is not a story of magical beings looking for the souls of the fallen soldiers. There is also mention of actual events happening off stage setting the work in a specific period of time. The characters themselves are grounded in reality. There are no magical powers -just the human conditions of love, lust and, jealousy. It is these emotions that Bietto has chosen to concentrate on instead of honoring the full world given to him by the libretto.

The libretto also has integral parts of the production identity in the form embedded actions and props that they rely on. In the first act the Sacristan sets up the identity of

Cavaradossi by examining the brushes and lunch basket. Later in this act the mention of lady’s Kipp 3 garments left in the chapel is pivotal to the action of Scarpia in the second act when confronting

Tosca. The spectacle of the on stage death by firing squad in the last moments of the third act motivate Tosca for her final act. These visuals act as much as the libretto even more so if one is not familiar with the story or language that it is being sung in. Without this knowledge these visuals carry the full weight of the production identity within themselves.

Bieito’s production of Tosca is not devoid of the production identity of Pucinni’s Tosca.

First and foremost is this production still refers to the composer and the title. Bieito is using

Puccini’s score and libretto with a traditional orchestration. He is not reinterpreting those aspects with additional modern instruments or casting the singers in a non traditional way. The biggest change Bieito has made is to condense the running time by discarding the two intermissions.

This brings the production into a more modern cinematic realm however, the musical transitions into Act Two and Act Three still remain. These now become somewhat awkward interludes due to the nature of the set as discussed later.

Bieito has chosen to emphasize the state in this production. The concept of a Holy

Government takes on new meaning as Bieito transfers the action into a more modern contemporary era. In doing so the government ceases to be holy in a historic sense and the acts of worshiping the government take on new meaning. This is a classic regietheater concept.

Where does the power lie in a contemporary setting but in the structure of a modern secular government that is increasingly influenced by the dogma of business. Bieito has given the audience a way into the production that should be easier to comprehend than one set in the period stated in the libretto.

In emphasizing the state Bieito has also increased the perceived power of Scarpia and has transformed him into more than just a local chief of police. Bieito has sidestepped the landmines Kipp 4 of the more colorful and controlling leaders that arose in Italy during the twentieth century.

While not knowing if this Scarpia makes sure that the trains run on time, we are shown a level of brutality towards prisoners that is in the same tradition as more modern Italian politial leaders than what was shown by Puccini -at least onstage. Once again this Bieito is using regietheater to clarify the characters of the opera for a modern audience.

While elevating Scarpia Bieito, by moving the time period of his production, has also diminished the status of both Cavaradossi and Tosca. By lowering the character’s status it does not affect the relationship between the two young lovers but moves them more towards La

Bohéme Paris than the Rome of the libretto. This once again showcases the positive nature of regietheater by showing a class of artist that is more in line what a modern audience would expect. This also amplifies the power dynamic between Scarpia and the two lovers from

Puccini’s era. Tosca’s choices are that much more limited when her agency reflects her status.

Bieito has brought Tosca the character to a modern audience.

This modernity and agency is reflected in the costuming choices within the production.

We are not given a lush period piece that is set by the libretto and honored by much of the production identity. Bieito’s choice of moving the action away from the specific of the libretto to the current era of vauge late capitalism gives the production an identiy that is more familiar to an audience unfamiliar with the libretto but this does not fully serve to support all of the characters.

In the costuming choices, Anja Rabes, has given Scarpia a well recognized outward persona of a modern megalomaniac. His well cut, contemporary suit is the most vivid in the muted color pallete of the overall production. The vivid blue of the suit contrasts with the maroon (or blood red) of his pocket square and tie. This maroon is mirrored in the uniforms of the school children, which in turn has the same insignia on their jackets that Scarpia’s agents badges on their suits. Kipp 5

While this sets up the power dynamic of the production, the characters Cavaradossi and

Tosca are not as well established as Scarpia. Cavardossi has been turned into a modern performance artist rather than a painter of portraits. His costuming, like Scarpia, puts him squarely in the modern era with a pair of hipster jeans and glasses and an oversized homespun

“artisanal” sweater over a graphic t-shirt. This look evokes modern Brooklyn than Rome but is in line in reinforcing the character for an unfamiliar audience.

Tosca, the character, seems to be the least inspired in costuming in this production. Her initial look mirrors Cavardossi in jeans and a sweater that both hides her figure and possibly ages her into the realm of a “soccer mom.” While many modern opera singers have dual identites of power moms, we are not given any visual clue to her identity that does not match her lover. Even when she reappears after a concert to be questioned by Scarpia her identity is static. She only changes clothes by the coercion of Scarpia. This evening dress and shoes shifts her identity to one associated to Cavardossi to one that is the property of Scarpia. While this new outfit finally gives her a silhouette, the dress still is laking in color. She is not only just a piece of flesh but she remains a woman reliant on men.

What the audience is heavily reliant on are the props due to the concept of the set.

However the properties are severely lacking in this production. There are significant absences in this production that are established by the libretto and the production identity. The most obvious of these is the ladies fan. This hand prop intersects with all of the main characters. Cavardossi is incriminated by it through the family crest found on it. Scarpia uses the fan to fuel the flames of jealousy in Tosca in his interrogation/seduction of her. This is sung about but never seen or mimed or given a modern equivalent such as a custom made purse -not unlike the one that Kipp 6

Scarpia’s wife carries. Tosca is also given no knife to stab Scarpia leaving the action of his murder as ambiguous as where the source of the blood on her hands and on his neck came from.

What we are given for props mostly belong to the Scarcrisant who has been transformed into a homeless person carrying his possessions on his back along with garbage bags full of recyclables. While these props help signify the new interpretation of the character, it is discerning that this amount of props were given to a minor character. This would have not been an issue if other characters were given any other substantial props. There nothing used to help define the other characters. We are given the bare minimum to help us decipher the characters presented to us.

Bieito’s sense of modernity in this production does indeed mean minimalism. Susanne

Gschwender’s set works against the production identity by giving us a dynamic but empty void.

This void is shaped by grid ceiling and wood paneled walls that run at right angles to the proscenium. The ceiling swiftly presses down in the first chords of the production creating a sense of oppression as it changes the aspect ratio of the stage space giving a sense of the cinematic. While the ceiling moves up in subsequent scenes the walls move in, compressing the action that maintains the oppression symbolic of the state that Scarpia is ruling. These walls only give a slight respite from the emptiness of the setting by having just a hint of semi-gloss that produces a much needed depth to the set. Besides the tape used in the art installation there is nothing filling this void, no scaffold, no desk, no candelabra. While the set does succeed in providing an apt metaphor to the rule of Scarpia it lacks the grandeur specified by Puccini’s text.

The real world locations are tossed aside for a metaphor. This void of a set fails to fill the expectations of the production identity. Kipp 7

Bieito as a director does try to fill the space with action. This is made more difficult as

Bieto has also compressed this opera by ridding it of intermissions he is faced with filling the intermezzos as well. Bieito first does so by transforming Cavaradossi into a type of modern installation/performance artist. The painting that is mentioned in the libretto is now a web of tape that surrounds a female artist’s model representing one of the biblical Marys. This occupies the mid third of the stage which limits the blocking within the first part of Act One. This also sets up a non realistic approach to the movement of the singers that are limited to the downstage apron of the stage. As the walls move in as the production continues this “middle ground” becomes less and less useable for our singers and is relegated to upstaging action. While the limited number in the singing cast lends itself to a chamber production, the set pushes away from this. The fear of being lost in the grand scale of a realistic setting is replaced by the fear of being swallowed by the void of the set. The need for nature wins out.

Michael Bauer’s lighting is far from naturalistic. Following the design aesthetic of

Gschwender, Bauer gives us an environment more of shadow than of light. This is especially true in the second act when upstage violence is shown in the shadows playing against the seduction of

Tosca by Scarpia. Even in these scenes the main action is lit by intense sidelight. These hard contrasts contour the bodies on stage that fill this void with foreboding that matches the opening chords of the production. While this brings the characters out from the endless depth of the set this also does little to add any naturalism to this production. Bauer limits his lighting palette to the cooler side of the spectrum, using a lavender as his warmest color for most of key lighting and only using a warmer tone on the front fill to balance out the singer’s skin tone. This fill is used sparingly as Bieito seems to have those with more power on stage steal and block light from Kipp 8 those they are oppressing. In these applications Bauer has used light as a medium of subtraction rather than additive art.

Unlike the synopsis listed on The Metropolitan Opera website the synopsis for the Bieito production lacks the specifics mentioned in the libretto. Using this as a guide to this production is problematic due to the uneven acting style or direction given. Throughout the production there are several stage pictures more reminiscent of a concert production than and a fully staged opera.

This staging is apparent in the first act when Cavaradossi and the Sacristan occupy the stage together but their movements do not signify that they are in the same space. This is compounded by the blank unit set that is reliant on the singers to define their space by their actions. This is also the case at the end of the opera when Tosca and Cavaradossi spend their “final” moments together. There is little attempt to acknowledge or play off one another and the use of space does not denote any location. There is no attempt to ground the production identity of place in this space.

The Bieito synopsis also deviates from the libretto in its depiction of women. In the first act Cavaradossi is now working on an art installation depicting the Virgin Mary where the libretto states he is working on a painting of Mary Magdalene. This opens up a new interpretation of Tosca as she compares and contrasts herself against a symbol of purity rather than a symbol of adultery. This does seem to justify Bieito’s direction of making Tosca more of a sexual being than one of piety. This is quite apparent during the final moments of the second act when Tosca actively seduces Scarpia before murdering him. This shift in agency is also shown at the end of the production when Bieito reimagines Tosca’s final act robbing her of an identity of a rebel heroine. Kipp 9

The flipping of the Marys also illuminates the shift of religion in Bieito’s vision. This is enacted in two places in the first act. The first is when the school children enter and beat up

Sacristan. This image is made more frightening as the children are dressed in school uniforms that are emblazoned with the crest of the state and not the Church. This disregard to the Church is also shown by depicting the Sacristan as a homeless person with mental issues along with a devotion to the Virgin Mary. The most substantial depiction of the State supplanting the Church is at the end of the first act. This is when Scarpia, after his henchmen and the townspeople have destroyed Cavaradossi’s art installation, beats the representation of the Virgin Mary while the chorus sings the Te Deum. “Thee, O God” does not refer to the Holy Father but of Scarpia. This shift is inline with Bieito’s vision of the state and corporate profit supplanting the role of art and religion. To that end, this is the best realized moment in this production however it is not fully supported throughout the production.

Another concept that Bieito includes in his vision is the inclusion of two short statured male presenting supernumeraries dressed in the same school uniform as the children’s choir. This is a source of confusion since they are not mentioned in the synopsis. Are they portraying children? We first see them at the start of the opera coming in with the other performers of

Carvardossi’s instalation and seem to be willing participants of that performance doing a version of a child’s clapping game. Is this action combined with their dress showing us that they are children? This gets more complicated when Scarpia embraces one of these performers in a slightly sexualized way. Is this showing an aspect of Scarpia’s sexual dominance and perversion? The confusion around these characters grows when they are seen in the shadows torturing Carvardossi while Scarpia is seducing Tosca. Do they work for Scarpia? Are they Kipp 10 revolting against Carvardossi because of bad working conditions? In either case visually their story arc is unclear and muddies the overall story.

The overall story of Puccinni’s Tosca is one of tragedy. This does not take much analysis to conclude since all three principals and a featured performer are dead by the end of the production. Bieito interprets death differently in his vision. Scarpia’s death by the hands of Tosca is the truest to Puccini’s work. Tosca’s lower status and Bieito’s staging of a more ruthless sexual predator in Scarpia amplifies the intent of Puccini. However, Bieito is not consistent with this respect. The offstage death of Angelotti in Puccini’s work -a suicide to avoid recapture, turns into an onstage stylized execution by Scarpia’s henchmen. This robs Angelotti of agency. This does not compare to the agency that is taken from Tosca at the end. Instead of a Thelma and Louise style ending for Tosca, Bieito lets her and Cavaradossi escape death to live under the increased power of the ideal of Scarpia. Bieito has created a beloved leader out of a cruel fascist. In a production where violence is moved to the forefront of the action it ends with less death than the original work.

So the question still remains. Is this Tosca? Is the action and the stagecraft sufficient to relay the scenario of Tosca that Puccini set out to tell? This can be answered by looking at the very basic components of the production.

The production gives us the score of Tosca however the action of the libretto is not consistent with the action that is seen on stage. This incongruity is jaring to an audience that either knows the story or knows the language of the libretto. The leads to a style of acting that is pivoting away from the realism embedded into the text. This unmooring, while allowing the director to expand on a vision, is unsettling to an audience. The audience, however, is given moments when the action portrayed is in line or analogous to what is embedded in the libretto Kipp 11 but the lack of consistency in this convention sets the audience adrift. This leads to an audience that is unsure of its relationship to the production as well as where the production is going.

The “where” or the time and place of this Tosca far from specific. Where the text gives us a grounding in a well known reality of specific real world locations and references to historical events this production’s design elements reject both. This black box void that is presented does not evoke a style of architecture associated with a time or place. The lighting is constantly cold throughout the production without any nuances to signal the time of day or interior or exterior locations. The costumes only evoke a generic modernity of the last two decades. This production is not docked in a familiar port of realism but is drifting into the waters of the symbolic but it can still see the dock.

In this Tosca, her future, along with her lover’s, is uncertain. Death has not greeted them.

Their lives are unresolved. In the final tableau we also are shown that Scarpia, at least in spirit, has not died either. He has become the martyred leader. His legacy will go on. There is no chance for a legend of Tosca, the woman who took down the most powerful man in the city and then robbed his henchmen of the vengeful act of killing her themselves, to be born and spread. She is still the oppressed. Instead, she has given birth to the mythos of Scarpia.

Then are we given a story of Scarpia? Visually we are given scenes of Scarpia dominating and brutalizing women. His story arc is brutalizes a woman, clearly shows dominance over his wife and ridicules her by seducing and emotionally torturing Tosca to the point of being killed by her. He is then ‘resurrected’ in the final tableau. This story seems incomplete, as if there needs to be another act to show the effects of this veneration by the townspeople on Scarpia’s wife and apparent son. In opposition to the story line of Tosca, there is Kipp 12 no closure. The audience is left to extrapolate the rest of the story but the trajectory is unknown.

Will “evil” be vanquished?

Bieito has peppered the synopsis and promotional materials with phrases such as a critique on neoliberalism and a story about the clash of artistic freedom and a world revolving around profit. Unfortunately these ideas do not appear on stage. We are given a piece of performance art that is destroyed by the state. We are given a singer that does not seem to be more than a sexual pawn instead of a renowned diva of the stage. We are given a political prisoner that may or may not be an artist or given a clear reason why he has been jailed. The signature phrase that bookends the performance is “silence will not protect you” but it also it’s moral. Putting together a series of tableaus while remaining silent on their meanings does not entitle you to the protection of an artist.

This is regietheater run-amok. This production has neither preserved the production identity of the libretto nor given us a analogous substitution that speaks to a modern audience.

Bieito does succeed in a deconstructed Tosca but does not seem to care to rebuild a cohesive story outside of a series of disjointed moments of passion and violence that are held together not by the seemingly miles of tape but of a general sense of confusion. Apart from the score there is no action or location that would seem in line with the libretto for those who are familiar with it.

Even for those unfamiliar with the story line of Puccini’s Tosca they are given a pastiche of stage pictures that fail to show an arc of a story.

This brings me to the roll of the dramaturg in regietheater and reimagined pieces of theater. The dramaturg cannot be a passive research assistant for the director or just a mouthpiece for the director’s vision. They have to be an active participant in the production process in both honoring the production identity and nurturing the new work that is created to translate the story Kipp 13 to a modern audience. If they are not, a production like Bieito’s Tosca gets created and placed in the production archive moving it away from the original vision and intent. This not only sullies the identy for future productions but also does a disservice to those not knowing the original work.

So what should a dramaturg do? This depends on the directorial choice for the production. A more traditional approach to regietheater -if that is not an oxymoron- is to reimagine the original production through a translation process that can move the production through time, space and, language. This is a conventional approach that is prevalent in standard theater practices and their are well tested lines of questioning that a dramaturg has at their disposal. The roles are well known and the relationships within the production team to the dramaturg have been tested. This only is true if the director chooses the traditional route.

Bieito, however, does not take this route. His approach is not of what is well accepted to be regietheater but more of a devised work where one assembles a production from found items.

In this case the found items were the score and libretto to Tosca. This shift in thinking is crucial to the role of the dramaturg. Where in the more conventional route safeguarding the original identity of the production is paramount for the dramaturg, if one treats this production as a truly new work the original text is now just another source document. It is now the responsibility of the dramaturg to safeguard the vision of the director.

Bieito’s vision as stated on the website is a critique of neoliberalism. This does have grounding within the libretto as Cavaradossi mentions the “libertine lust” of Scarpia when conversing with Angelotti. These two words lay the foundation for Bieito’s work as he creates a work that emphasizes the power and sexual appetite of Scarpia and diminishes the love between

Tosca and Cavardossi. If this was a traditional regietheater piece one would try to amplify the Kipp 14 relationship to defend the dynamic of the Puccini work. This imbalance is not addressed to the detriment of the new work being created. Scarpia does not have a counterbalance to play off of.

This production is about his oppression and dominance over the city that he oversees. Even in death his power increases which simultaneously solidifies Bieito’s intent as it deforms Puccini’s work.

This deconstruction of the source material should not be an inevitable consequence of

Bieito’s vision. The role of the dramaturg in safeguarding the overall vision of the production should include to bring as much of the libretto or, in general, the source material to support and magnify the objectives of this devised work. In doing so the integrity of the production identity should remain or be bolstered. Instead of only using a single phrase about a character to create a full work, a dramaturg should have guided the production team to use or steal more of the source material as elements to build this new world. Anything less would be a disservice to the source document. What Bieito has done has killed the beast to take its tail. As a director is doing this, a dramaturg should have fully butchered the work and packaged it to be used by the production.

Once this harvesting is complete the dramaturg should examine what the team has created with the what has been supplied to them. Through this macro level inspection the dramaturg should see the shape of the new work to then be able to advise the team on how to further shape the piece to fully realize the newly formed conception and not produce a work that is only halfway finished. This assessment will also inform the dramaturg in the best way to bring the audience to the piece as they brought the source material to the production team. In the Bieito production it appears that this examination was not done. This does not mean blame should be put solely onto the dramaturg but rather to the team that does not seem to have empowered the dramaturg as the internal critique for the production. This shows that the dynamic of the Kipp 15 production team was overpowered by a structure of domination rather than a culture of collaboration. In a way the production team seems to have emulated the power structure they portrayed on stage.

Because of this dynamic the public was not given a new vision of the Puccini’s Tosca but a newly devised work that shared its name. By robbing the audience of a the familiar line of action or a cohesive substitution Bieito and his team have failed of showing us a story. They are given a half baked concept that confuses rather than enlighten. Even if the production team had fully committed to tell a new story the fact that the title remains would be enough to upset a portion of the audience without proper preparation. This is where a dramaturg should have stepped up to bring the audience to this new production. An opera that explores the domination of women in modern times and the rise of familiar brand of fascism. One can speculate what the reaction to this piece would have been if it was renamed and rebranded as a new work named

Scarpia instead of Tosca. Would it have been seen as a daring example of pushing the boundaries of regietheater instead of a confused muddle of concepts? Unfortunately the answer might only be given before God.