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Culture Opera

Opera Preview: A Florentine Tragedy/Gianni Schicchi

A FLORENTINE TRAGEDY /GIANNI SCHICCHI by Alexander Zemlinsky (Tragedy) and Giacomo Puccini (Schicchi), directed by Catherine Malfitano. Presented by the Canadian Opera Company at the Four Seasons Centre (145 Queen West). Opens tonight (Thursday, April 26) at 7:30 pm and runs to May 25, various days (see coc.ca). $12-$318. 416-363-8231. See listing.

Catherine Malfitano is praising monster-like behaviour on the stage.

“It’s a compliment,” she says, laughing. “When you’re called an animal or a monster, you are someone who can devour any role – anything that’s thrown at you! – and create something with magic and power. You’re a huge personality.”

She should know, since in her legendary operatic career she’s devoured tons of roles, and spit them out beautifully.

Take her outing as Strauss’s sexually twisted teen Salome. Not only did she sing the role for the first time in a live German broadcast, but, unlike 99.9 per cent of sopranos, she performed the erotic dance of the seven veils – complete with nudity.

“Yes, that took guts, and a lot of talking to myself,” she says, looking imperious and proud in a red and black ensemble in a lounge at the Canadian Opera Company’s Four Seasons Centre.

“I was shy about it, but I had to be in the skin of the character, and the character had no problem doing it.”

Download associated audio clip.

Or take her Emmy-winning turn as Tosca in an unprecedented 1992 real-time broadcast from the actual Roman settings of the opera.

“That was a once-in-a-lifetime, maybe a once-in-a-century kind of experience,” she says. “There were problems. The stakes were high. Even my husband was telling me not to do it. But if I had listened to everyone, I would have missed out.

“And I wanted to be the one who crossed the finish line,” she says, “not some other soprano.”

She’s bringing that same chutzpah to the next part of her career: directing, which she’s done since 2005.

She’s helming a double bill of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Alexander Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy. Even opera novices will recognize the former by its famous aria O mio babbino caro (used in car commercials and the movie A Room With A View). But the latter’s new, to Malfitano, too.

“It was a complete discovery, yet it quickly turned into something I could adore and get excited about,” she says. “The first few bars sound like Salome or Elektra, but then it goes way past being imitation Strauss. [Zemlinsky] has his own very distinct language he was influenced by the composers around him but was also himself influential.”

The two men wrote the operas a year apart – the Austrian Zemlinsky in 1917, the Italian Puccini a year later. But both use Florence as a setting for their stories of family problems.

“Audiences will see themselves in these pieces,” says Malfitano, “or at least see their own temptations, the horrible, awful and dreadful things they do that are also very funny.”

It’s the human connection, suggested in music and text, that draws Maltifano to a piece.

“That’s where I like to delve,” she says, “in the world of emotion, feeling and intention. What do people mean by saying this or that? Where are you coming from?’

“Those were questions I always asked of my own characters, and now as a director I’m asking them of everyone.”

Additional Interview Clips

Malfitano on her early curiosity about directing and being “a muse” for the director:

Download associated audio clip.

On using one’s imagination in opera, taking cues from music, making confident choices, and keeping roles fresh and spontaneous:

Download associated audio clip.

On how opera is like “an archeological dig”:

Download associated audio clip.

glenns@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/glennsumi

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