Seattle Opera’s Legendary Tosca Manufacturing

Ross was aggressive, and performed his playing cards rigorously. In his
first season he offered Boris Godunov, a massively bold work, approach
past the capability of his child opera firm. However Boris had simply been
given on the College of Washington, and Ross was decided to point out the
public the distinction between pupil opera {and professional} opera. A pair
years later he purchased a used manufacturing of Aida at a cut price value.
Seattleites would inevitably evaluate this cheap “Tender Surroundings” Aida
with the ritzy one from the World’s Honest. 

The 1962 World’s Honest Aida directed by “Horner of Hollywood” (inventor of the turntable set).

The 1968 Aida, carried out on painted drops created by Sormani Scenography.

Ross was instructing the general public one other lesson: spend your
cash on singers, not elaborate surroundings, if you’d like compelling opera that
doesn’t break the financial institution.

What’s “Tender Surroundings”?
That second Aida, designed by Enzo Dehò of Milan’s Sormani
Scenography workshop, consisted of a pair painted canvas backdrops and a few staircase
models (which provided ranges for visible curiosity, plus they functioned as risers
for Aida’s sizable refrain). There wasn’t a lot to it. With that sort of
‘mushy surroundings,’ fabric backdrops hold from pipes above the stage, that are
raised and lowered by a collection of pulleys.

Head Carpenter Justin Loyd working backstage at “the rail.”

Theaters first borrowed this expertise from crusing ships,
again when opera was born within the late Renaissance. Tender surroundings was the norm in
opera up till the Nineteen Seventies, when ‘arduous surroundings’ began to change into extra well-liked.
Acoustically, arduous surroundings’s strong surfaces will help direct singers’ voices out
into the theater, as a substitute of absorbing sound the way in which the fabric of sentimental surroundings
does. However mushy surroundings is useful and sensible; it helped Ross preserve his
budgets below management. It may well additionally contribute to a compelling opera manufacturing,
if it’s designed rigorously.

Who Designed this Tosca?
We’re taking part in Tosca this Could on a murals with a captivating
historical past: “mushy” Tosca units Glynn Ross bought in 1969 from Milan’s
Sormani workshop. Recognized these days as Sormani Cardaropoli Scenography, that agency was
based in 1838 by Ercole Sormani to design and construct opera surroundings for La
Scala and different theaters. Italian opera was in transition in 1838: Bellini had
lately died, Donizetti was about to desert Italy for Paris, tenors have been now
singing excessive Cs in chest voice, and the younger Giuseppe Verdi had simply moved to Milan.
Over the approaching many years, as bel canto opera reworked right into a extra
theatrical Gesamtkunstwerk, Sormani’s studio thrived. Sormani should have
recognized the right way to recruit and prepare the most effective collaborators, how to decide on an
method or type acceptable to every piece, and the right way to give the general public what it
wished, as a result of by the top of the century his agency was creating opera and
ballet units for theaters throughout Italy and overseas, and had been showered with
awards.

When this Tosca was designed and constructed, within the Nineteen Fifties,
Sormani’s grandson—additionally known as Ercole, Italian for “Hercules”—was operating the
household firm, with Enzo Dehò supervising the artists. For Tosca these
included designers Alessandro and Nicola Benois, a Russian father and son from
a creative St. Petersburg household. The daddy, initially Aleksandr Benua, first
designed surroundings for St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater earlier than heading west with
Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1909. 

Aleksandr Benois’ design for the world premiere of Stravinsky’s Petroushka. (Wikipedia)

 When he moved south to take a job at La Scala, his son
Nicola, whom he had educated, adopted him.

Nicola Benois

Nicola Benois would go on to design tons of of opera and
ballet productions. He died in Italy in 1988, as did his shut pal and
collaborator Ercole Sormani Jr (whom he affectionately known as “Ercoletto,” one thing
like “Herkie”). Singers reminiscent of Zinka Milanov and Renata Tebaldi sang Tosca on
La Scala’s copy of those Tosca units.

Design in ink, signed decrease left by Nicola Benois in 1952, for Tosca Act Two. Notice that the unique idea was for the torture chamber to be accessed by a entice door within the flooring.

The designers and artists of the Sormani workshop knew how
to create the phantasm of depth with two-dimensional painted backdrops. For
occasion, Tosca’s first act church location appears a lot deeper than it
really is, because of the intelligent placement of columns and a hemispherical apse
at again, which look volumetric however really take up no house in any respect. In Act Two
you’d swear the ceiling of Scarpia’s eating room on the Palazzo Farnese curves
out overhead and is stuffed with adorned niches. However no—it’s only a piece of
fabric.

Tosca Act 2, Seattle Opera 2015

Italian visible artists have been fooling viewers’ eyes since
the times of historical Rome; trompe l’oeil, “trick the attention,” this system
was known as by an eighteenth century French artwork theorist.

Amongst the trompe l’oeil tips featured in Tiepolo’s 1757 Sacrifice of Iphigénie are the deus ex machina stag flying in on a cloud at left and the hand reaching across the second column from the best.

“Trompe l’oeil does two issues without delay,” says Chiyo
Ishikawa, former Deputy Director for Artwork and Curator of European Portray and
Sculpture on the Seattle Artwork Museum. “First, the murals disappears,
as a result of initially you’re satisfied you’re in an area. After which, when it dawns
on you that it is artifice, you marvel at this tour de drive by craftsmen
so expert at creating an phantasm that they’ve pulled the wool over your eyes.
It’s a double-edged factor; you’re meant to do a double-take, actually.”

Ishikawa noticed Tosca performed on these Sormani units at
Seattle Opera in 2015, lit by Connie Yun (who returns this season). “The best way she
lit that Act 1 church scene, there’s one lighting for the foreground, a special
lighting within the center, and it’s brighter within the apse. That helps the phantasm.
To be surrounded by trompe l’oeil on this immersive scale is actually
transporting for the viewer-listener.” And the selection of a trompe l’oeil
method is especially acceptable for a veristic opera a couple of painter and a
singer—an opera that digs deep into the house between artwork and actuality.

A Properly-Traveled Tosca Manufacturing
Glynn Ross made a sensible transfer when he bought these Tosca units. Tosca
is an ever-popular “high 10” opera, and Seattle Opera has used these units to
showcase Puccini’s thriller in 1969, 1977, 1986, 2015, and now 2025. Says
Robert Schaub, Seattle Opera Technical Director within the days of Speight Jenkins,
“We didn’t use that Tosca within the ‘90s and ‘00s as a result of it might have
felt dated, to audiences who (a few of them) remembered the times when all opera
was offered on mushy surroundings. However a era later, it’s time to take pleasure in this
once more. There’s the pleasure of nostalgia, to see opera the way in which it was finished in
the times of Puccini. There’s additionally extraordinary artistry right here. It must be
dealt with rigorously. Connie [Yun] is wise to not focus her lighting devices
on the drops themselves. As a substitute, she lights the singers and permits ambient
gentle to bounce off the ground and contact the drops gently. That makes all of the
distinction.”

Tosca Act 1, Seattle Opera 2015 (Robert Reynolds, pictures)

And since the delivery prices are minimal—canvas drops don’t
take up a lot house, and the entire manufacturing matches in a single truck—dozens of
American theaters have rented this Tosca from Seattle Opera over the
years. Add collectively all these productions—5 in
Seattle, plus not less than 30 leases since 2000—and also you begin to see the influence of
Ross’s buy. Thousands and thousands of opera-goers have had an opportunity to take pleasure in Tosca,
sung amid these fragile items of material.

Sustaining Tender Surroundings
Opera productions don’t final endlessly. There’s put on and tear each night time,
onstage. And a well-liked manufacturing like this one, which has been shipped all
over America and Canada, is usually handled extra roughly than is appropriate for
a helpful murals. Earlier than rehearsals started on this season’s Tosca manufacturing
the skilled palms of Seattle Opera’s backstage crew gave the present somewhat TLC. 

Unrolling one of many fabric backdrops within the rehearsal studio

Fixing tears the place the Act One fabric backdrop had been folded (Glenn Hare, pictures)

The big canvas drops have been hung, to flatten out any
wrinkles from how they’d been folded for delivery. The place there have been small rips
and tears, skinny muslin patches have been added from behind (and painters made positive
all the pieces appeared proper on the opposite facet). Torn screens and mesh have been
changed. The place there are small items of wooden for framing, screw holes needed to
be crammed in. In accordance with Justin Loyd, Head Flyman at Seattle Opera, “That is
an awesome previous manufacturing, and it nonetheless has life in it. We simply must take good
care of it. It’s like part of our household.”