Amal Choucri Catta spots promise Opera "Tosca" by Giacomo Puccini, Cairo Opera Company, director Abdalla Saad, Cairo Opera Orchestra, conductor Nader Abbassi, Cairo Opera Choir, director Aldo Magnato, Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 18-20 March, 8 pm Giacomo Puccini was always responsive to visual stimuli: he excelled at the evocation of an ambiance such as a grey dawn on the roof of a palace -- where the melancholic song of a shepherd boy is heard off-stage, as in "Tosca" -- or that of a bleak winter dawn by a Parisian city gate, as in "La Boheme". A characteristic of Puccini's harmonic idiom is what has been called "the soft dissonance", which avoids a semi-tonal clash while facilitating the absorption of pentatonic and whole-tone harmony into the musical discourse. More than any of his Italian contemporaries, Puccini made use of recurring orchestral motifs, both as a means of musical arrangement and to complement the story. But the significance of such motifs alters according to context. He furthermore described his operatic area of interest as that of "great sorrows in little souls"; he is said to "remain the Charles Dickens of Italian Opera -- and no less imperishable". During the early decades of last century, "La Boheme", "Tosca", and "Madama Butterfly" enjoyed the same sort of sanding as Giuseppe Verdi's "romantic trilogy": "Rigoletto", "Il Tovatoe" and "La Traviata". All six operas are included in the Cairo Opera's repertoire: the question we have to ask is, rather, why do we have to get "Tosca" twice a year, why not three nights of "Tosca" and three of "La Boheme", or Verdi's "Rigoletto"? Cairo Opera House has the sets, the costumes and the singers to perform any of the six operas, so why not make use of them? On the other hand, operas such as "Turandot" or "La Boheme" would give a larger number of singers the opportunity to appear on stage while adding more colour to the programme, whereas with an opera such as "Tosca", most of the singers are jobless, asking themselves why they ever thought of studying singing in the first place. After all, the Cairo Opera House is an opera house and not only a concert hall for local song and music and folklore performances. Unfortunately, however, there are only a very precious few to realise this. Having said this, let us concentrate on Tosca latest return to the Cairo Opera's Main Hall -- with some welcome changes. She has loved and she has killed, and in the end, she will die but in the meantime, she is singing her joy and her anguish, while putting up a courageous fight for the man she loves. Soprano Iman Mustafa was the heroine of Puccini's three-act opera for two nights last week: the celebrated singer, in harmony with both her God in heaven and her lover on earth, her life dedicated to beauty and to song. At least, that is what she says in her famous "prayer" of Act Two, while sitting in Scarpia's Salon and being questioned about her lover's political aspirations. By that time, though, she should have known that Scarpia is nothing but a scoundrel, and should never have trusted him. Aye, her trust was the flagrant flaw in the entire plot, for it cost her the lives of three heroes: hers, her lover's and Scarpia's. The times, however, they are achanging; and the battle of Marengo having resulted, for the moment, in Naple's victory over Bonaparte -- though he did beat the Austrians in the end -- a special religious service was planned for that day at the church of Sant Andrea della Valle. Politics had become part of Tosca's life, and she unsuspectingly turned into a major pawn in Baron Scarpia's political schemes. Scarpia was an elegant, heartless rascal, chief of police to Marie-Caroline, queen of Naples, who was temporarily ruling Rome in 1800, and he more or less represents the reactionary Italian force,. By then, Bonaparte was generally regarded as an "apostle of freedom". Based on Victorien Sardou's play "Tosca", there are, likewise, three main actors in Puccini's plot: Tosca, Scarpia and Mario Cavaradossi, the painter and Fiora, Tosca's lover. Baritone Mustafa Mohamed was cast as Baron Scarpia and tenor Walid Korayem as the painter. It must be said that Korayem and Iman Mustafa make a most enchanting pair on stage: they are tall, good-looking and exude a captivating charisma. Their amorous sequences were quite spontaneous and entertaining. Iman Mustafa's costumes were attractive, this time: she is doubtless at her best with conductor Nader Abbassi, who seems to have a way with his singers and musicians. There was real colour throughout her performance: she gave us some soulful pianissimi, while her fortissimi were often gripping. Walid Korayem was a convincing Cavaradossi, too, giving life to the painter who is embroiled in politics and finally condemned to death. As for Mustafa Mohamed, his interpretation of Scarpia was remarkable: he seemed to find real pleasure in tormenting Tosca and torturing Cavaradossi while having his dinner served on an impeccable white tablecloth and enjoying the sweetest of apples by romantic candle-light. In the end, however, Fiora Tosca does give him her "kiss of death" while plunging the table-knife into his heart, before hurrying into Rome's dungeons and onto the Farnese palace's roof, where her beloved Cavaradossi is to be shot by a firing squad. That is when the latter sings his fascinating aria: "E lucevan le stelle", in which he reflects on his love for Tosca, as he writes his last letter before his execution. It is also when Tosca arrives, happy and disheveled, telling him that his execution is to be a sham and that they can escape, but he must pretend convincingly that he is dead. Which, in the end, he was. Only then does she discover Scarpia's treachery, and as the soldiers come to arrest her for Scarpia's murder, she climbs onto the parapet and flings herself to her death. This time, Count Angelotti, the escaped prisoner who appears briefly in Act One, was beautifully performed by bass Reda El-Wakil, while we were given baritone Elhamy Amin in the role of the Sacristan of Act One; he was, as always, an excellent performer, imbuing his part with just the right amount of comedy, but refraining from an overdose of ridicule. Thus, he was the perfect Sacristan, just as Puccini would have wanted him to be. Born in Cairo in 1977, Elhamy Amin graduated from the Cairo Conservatoire. He has successfully performed in Massenet's "Thais" in 1997, and has been enthusiastically applauded for his brilliant performances as Figaro in Mozart's "Le nozze di Figaro", as Papageno in "The magic flute", Belcore in Donizetti's "L'elisir d'amore", and Ben in Menotti's "The telephone", among others. He is, likewise, a remarkable performer in musicals and has often been cheered at the Cairo Opera House. A name to look out for.
