An opera role to die for

By WILLIAM DART

The Mexican tenor Rafael Rojas, who plays Cavaradossi in NBR New Zealand Opera's Tosca, seems determined to please when he praises the grey Auckland lurking outside the coffee bar windows as "a huge, solid city, with a lot of personality".

The man has charm to spare, and critics on both sides of the Atlantic have spun superlatives about his performances in works ranging from Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Massenet's Werther, to Verdi's Macbeth and, most curious of all, a theatrical staging of the composer's Requiem.

Rojas' international career started in 1995, when he topped the zarzuela section in Placido Domingo's Operalia Competition. Ironically, he may have carried off an award for Spanish operetta, but now he finds he is drawn towards meatier fare.

Cavaradossi, he explains, is "one of those ideal roles for a tenor - beautiful arias, dramatic moments and you get to die at the end. We Mexicans are a dramatic people. We like drama. It's in our lives every day. For me it's very much a cathartic thing and I really enjoy dying and crying for my true love, being a poet and a romantic".

The New Zealand production is not new but comes with a fine pedigree, being created for Scottish Opera by the late Anthony Besch. Rojas recalls seeing it as a student in Glasgow 10 years ago.

"The sets were magnificent and for the whole of the first act I couldn't close my mouth. The ending was fabulous, and the audience in Auckland is really in for a surprise."

However, the Tosca we are being given is "a very traditional production apart from the fact that you see Mussolini", Rojas adds with a shrug.

It is certainly nothing like Christopher Alden's radical conception for Opera North last year, in which Cavaradossi was dead by the end of Act Two. "I was lying down on the floor in the third act, singing my part," remembers the ebullient Rojas.

Although he confesses that Verdi is "absolutely my favourite", Rojas is also a Puccini man. "Emotion-wise, Puccini is a magician, and he's brought together all the different elements so perfectly."

Not surprisingly, the singer has already proved himself as Pinkerton in several productions of Butterfly and this year will be tackling Calaf for the first time in the Welsh National Opera's Turandot.

Rojas is eager to talk tenors. This is a man who has listened to those who have gone before. He smiles at the mention of Gigli - "wonderful technique"; Corelli "for the way nature and voice are one"; Bergonzi - "very stylish", and Domingo's "absolute honesty on stage".

Honesty is paramount for Rojas. "If my whole body wasn't there I couldn't sing," he says with a note of vehemence in his voice.

"It's the only way of making it work. And I am a singer who likes to be directed. I like to buy what the director is selling. This allows me to explore things that I haven't done already because of personal prejudices, tastes or whatever."

There is a lighter side to it all, and Rojas chuckles at the "many diva explosions" he's experienced, not to mention such minor irritations as "matches not working in La Boheme, or my contact lens falling out and having to watch with one eye as the baton flies through the air".

But then,"It's all part of the live performance; anything can happen and there's nothing like the excitement of 150 people all working towards this one goal."

When the Auckland Tosca season finishes on October 25, Rojas returns to Mexico where there is a recording of Mexican songs to be completed, as well as some concerts lined up with his hometown orchestra in Guadalajara.

There are some CDs of Maori music in his luggage although he still has to find some local cookbooks. This way he gets to take a bit of the world back to Mexico. "When I go home, I invite people over to my house and cook them meals from the books I've brought back. Well, I get the basic idea and then I put the book aside and do my own version."

Some things you need to know about Tosca

* Puccini completed the score by 1899, with the libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, who disliked working with the master because of his habit of going off hunting and shooting while they slaved indoors. The work was based on a play by Victorien Sardou.

* This NBR NZ Opera production is a staging of an acclaimed version by Scottish Opera directed by Anthony Besch and restaged by Jonathan Cocker. Puccini's original work is set in Rome in 1800; this production is set in 1943, at the heart of Mussolini's fascist rule of Italy and his ill-fated support of Hitler.

* The hero, painter Mario Cavaradossi (Rojas), has a jealous lover, the famous singer Floria Tosca (Margaret Medlyn), who in turn is desperately desired by the sadistic police chief Baron Scarpia (Rodney Macann), one of the most monstrous villains of opera.

* When Cavaradossi gives shelter to escaped political prisoner Cesare Angelotti (Eddie Muliaumaseali'i), Tosca believes he has a secret lover. Then Scarpia arrests and tortures Cavaradossi. Under pressure, and tormented by her lover's cries, Tosca betrays the hiding place of Angelotti.

* But Scarpia tells Cavaradossi of Tosca's "treachery". She must bargain for her lover's life by offering her honour to Scarpia. However, the rogue has tricked her into believing a firing squad will only "pretend" to execute Mario, leading to a classic murder-murder-suicide denouement.

* Tosca is one of the most accident-prone of all operas. A Covent Garden production starring Pavarotti as the artistic hero had the audience partly shocked, partly laughing out loud because the huge tenor was unable to fall convincingly before the firing squad. Instead, he crouched, shuffled, sat on the floor, then rolled on his side.

* At another staging, in Buenos Aires, the stage director discovered in the middle of the third act that he had no guards to chase Tosca, so he rushed out and got five young men from a cafe. With "follow that woman" their only instructions, when she leaped, so did they.

* The most (in)famous story was about a prima donna who had made herself so unpopular with the stage hands by complaining about her "fall" off the battlement that one night they installed a trampoline. As Tosca fell to her death singing "avanti a Dio!", she bounced back into view - several times. (source: Opera: The Rough Guide)

Performance

* What: Tosca

* Where: Aotea Centre

* When: October 16, 18, 21, 23, 25