OperaUpClose perform a radical new version of Puccini’s Tosca
in Actors and Performers, Directors, London Fringe
12th September 2013
INTERVIEW: ADAM SPREADBURY-MAHER and DEMELZA STAFFORD
The co-founder of OperaUpClose, and director and librettist of the company’s production of Puccini’s Tosca, and one of the two sopranos sharing the title role talk to Judi Herman about setting the opera in East Berlin in 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. They also discuss OperaUpClose’s intimate production style, how it works especially well for Puccini and about why they chose this setting. Recorded at the Soho Theatre, 10 September 2013.
What Puccini has allowed us to do with this production is take time to tell stories not just through the libretto and through the singing but also through a visual language, so we’re able to celebrate the delicious detail of that period where if you were found with a coke bottle for example you could be thrown in prison.
