‘VISSI D’ARTE’

Angela Gheorghiu talks to Jon Tolansky

Angela Gheorghiu was previously profiled in the March 1999 issue of OPERA, and at that time her now legendary appearance as Violetta at the Royal Opera House was still a relatively recent wonder—having happened only four and a quarter years earlier. Just around the corner was her dazzling recording of Massenet’s Manon, in which she would be acclaimed for her remarkable fidelity to the composer’s copious instructions for sudden changes of tempo, phrasing and vocal character to convey Manon’s extreme emotional instability, as well as her enchanting, capricious allure. And following hard on the heels of that, in 2000 she displayed her mastery of a completely different vocal style and dramatic personality when she took the title role of Tosca in a film directed by Benoît Jacquot (available on an Opus Arte DVD). It has been particularly striking to see how vividly she has brought the persona of Tosca to life in her creative collaborations with directors who have made markedly differing productions of this opera, as shown by comparisons between the Jacquot film and the Jonathan Kent staging first seen at Covent Garden in June 2006. Five years on (and following a revival in 2009) Gheorghiu once more sings Tosca in the Kent production at Covent Garden this month, and she has some probing observations on her role.

‘Puccini, like Verdi, was a genius in the subtle way he could make a voice change its characteristics as the course of events in the drama affects the personality of the role. In

■ Angela Gheorghiu

Tosca, the textures and colours of the vocal and orchestral writing when Tosca sings in the first-act duet with Cavaradossi convey such a girlish quality in her. There is a freshness and sweetness in the lines, they are almost innocent-sounding, even though of course she knows how to entrance her man, and she knows what it is to feel jealous. There is a youthful delicacy in her in this duet, and Puccini gives the soprano a great challenge to convey this and then follow it with such a dramatic difference later when she becomes distressed and we see how strong she is as she fights so hard to protect Cavaradossi.

‘By the second act she is like a different soprano. And now when she has to face Scarpia in this act, I feel particularly familiar with what she is experiencing, because I have been in her situation in a way. Like her, I am an opera singer, and even though she was living in Rome in

764

Opera, July 2011 ■ Gheorghiu and Bryn Terfel as Tosca and Scarpia at Covent Garden in 2009, roles they reprise there this month

1800, some of her moments with Scarpia remind me of how it was with the Securitate secret police in Romania when I lived there in the days of the Ceauşescu regime. You were forced to say something that they wanted, either to save your own life or someone else’s life. They were extremely intimidating. And so for me it is absolutely natural that when Tosca has been made almost desperate by all Scarpia’s threats, she sings “Vissi d’arte”. I know it has been said that this aria does not fit well at this place and that Puccini put it in just to give Tosca a solo in the midst of all the turmoil, but I don’t agree with this view at all. This is the moment when she has been driven so far that she is virtually singing a prayer for understanding, and so now as she reveals herself completely the audience really understands what she is all about and who she truly is. In La Bohème Puccini gives Mimì the opportunity to tell us about herself early on in the opera, as he does Rodolfo too—but here we have to wait until this moment when Tosca’s suffering has become almost intolerable to find out the real centre of her soul and being.’

Puccini portrayed a vocal progression of a strikingly different kind when on 17 February 1904, four years after the premiere of Tosca, the audience in La Scala was confronted with the profoundly unsettling picture of a young woman discovering a truth that is so horrible that she commits suicide. The title role in Madama Butterfly makes tremendous demands on the soprano, both vocally and psychologically, and it was only three years ago that Gheorghiu felt ready to take it on board and perform it for a recording. Her award-winning interpretation of Cio-Cio-San in EMI Classics’s CD set, with Antonio Pappano conducting, has been so widely extolled that many people must be hoping that there may perhaps be a staging of the opera for her some time in the future. It would be a very challenging emotional responsibility, as Butterfly is a work that has deep resonances for her.

Opera, July 2011

765