It's Time for Tosca
By Mary Barber - Staff Writer
Jackson Citizen Patriot - from Sunday, April 20, 2003, page C-1
 

    
Richard Fracker of Lansing and Melissa Osmond of Jackson embrace during practice for their roles as Cavaradossi and Tosca.  The duo will perform with the Jackson Symphony Orchestra

Ask Stephen Osmond what the Jackson Symphony Orchestra's production of "Tosca" will look like Saturday, and the conductor laughs.  "I'm very curious about that myself," he says.  The orchestra hasn't staged a full blown opera for 15 years, he says, and he hadn't intended to stage one now. He says he planned a "semi-staged" version, with sets and costumes and lighting - but nothing too fancy.

Then stage director John Piper's scenery designs and prop lists started showing up on his desk. "Oh, it's passed the semi-staged stage," says tenor Rick Fracker with a laugh. He will sing the role of Mario Cavaradossi.  "They have sets, and we have places to sing, and we have acting to do," he says. It probably is only going to be lacking the monstrous sets that are usually associated with opera."  In any Case, it's an impressive project, says Fracker, a Michigan Center native who has sung regularly with the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

"This is not something a symphony of Jackson's size would undertake," he says. "In fact, most symphonies don't take on opera. ... It's a real credit to the Jackson Symphony and Stephen that they're willing to put in the kind of work, and have the kind of players, to pull this off I "I have no doubt that they're going to do a great job."

"Tosca," composed by Giacomo Puccini and set in 19th century Rome, describes the tragic triangle involving singer Floria Tosca, artist Cavaradossi and police chief Baron Scarpi. Tosca and Cavaradossi are in love. Scarpi (sung by baritone Arturo Rodriguez) Mosses Cavaradossi in jail for his political views and threatens to execute him unless Tosca becomes his mistress. Tosac pretends to agree and arranges Cavaradossi's escape or so she thinks.

It's a great opera," Fracker says. "It has everything in it that people are drawn to opera (for). It's a great story, filled with passion. It has a real bad guy in the baritone; a sympathetic, idealistic guy in the tenor; and it's got a beautiful, passionate, intelligent woman who gets kind of caught in political circumstances and love and romance, and that complicates her life.  "And all the main characters die. It's really great."

Melissa Osmond, who will sing the title role, 'says this is one of the meatiest, operas for sopranos.  "I just love it," she says. "It's a great role to sing."  Like Fracker, Melissa Osmond has sung "Tosca" before. But that wasn't much help, she says. She sang it with the Saginaw Symphony 15 years ago, and the music didn't seem all that familiar when she started working on it last fall.  "I thought, did I ever know this?" she says with a laugh.

Fracker has a full-time career as a singer. Melissa Osmond has a fulltime career as a teacher at Hillsdale College. But she devotes a couple of hours a day to the score.  "I've been eating, breathing, sleeping this role," she says.  And it's not just re-learning the tough music that makes this stressful, she says. Having just one night to perform and no understudy has made her cautious.  "You're afraid to go out of the house in case you catch a bug," she says.

Fracker will sing "Tosca" again; he is booked to do eight performances in Norway this November.  But Melissa Osmond may not take on any more opera.  "This is a wonderful under taking," she says. "But I'm not sure I want to do it again. ...  This would be a wonderful work to go out on."

That may be one of the reasons she's in favor of the more elaborate staging that's evolved - unlike her husband, Stephen.  "He's a guy," she says. "He says keep it simple. ... I think,. if you're going to do opera, do it. It's opera, so why not?"

Even people who aren't familiar with opera likely will recognize the music, Fracker says.   "People have probably heard arias from 'Tosca" without even knowing," he says, because they're often used in advertising.

Fracker says they debated whether to sing it in English or the original Italian. They chose Italian.  "This opera is so self-evident," he says. "The action is pretty clear."  And it has the virtue of being "relatively short, by operatic standards," he says. He expects the entire evening to last less than three hours.

No matter what the final production, looks like, says Stephen Osmond, it will be "definitely theatrical."  "It's an interesting concept," says Fracker. "It's a real feather in the Jackson Symphony Orchestra's cap to do this, and do it well."