National Arts Centre Orchestra opens season with slimmed-down production of Tosca and Canadian voices | Canada Voices

Puccini’s Tosca is an opera that thrives on excesses of emotion, violence and drama. Floria Tosca’s climatic demise is the last of a sequence of events driven by romantic jealousy, the anguish of political prisoners, public executions and the sting of betrayal – all set against the backdrop of Napoleon’s invasion of Italy in 1800.

The source material provides a lot to work with, so any production can deliver a feast for the senses. However, the National Arts Centre Orchestra’s production – which opened the 2025/26 season on Sept. 10 – did without elaborate set designs and costumes to deliver an opera-in-concert experience.

This pared-down approach is risky business, relying equally on the audience’s imagination and the acting ability of the singers. All in all, this production is a reminder that the vocal talents of Canada’s next generation of opera singers should inspire serious excitement. But it’s also a reminder that honing strong acting skills and a compelling stage presence – the ability to really work a crowd – are a necessary part of a complete package.

The slimmed-down production moved the NAC Orchestra from the operatic pit to the stage, side by side with the singers. It was yet another opportunity to showcase Southam Hall’s improved acoustics and expanded backdrop (from a 2019 renovation): The performance featured about 90 musicians, including vocalists, for almost 2 hours of music.

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Yet the behind-the-scenes orchestration that brought this program to fruition is itself a work of art. For some of the soloists, NACO partnered with Edmonton Opera’s Emerging Artist Program; for the chorus, it brought in the Ottawa-based Ewashko Singers. The director is Joel Ivany, who just concluded his 12-year tenure as artistic director of the opera program at the Banff Centre, where a few of the soloists and covers from this production had recently participated in a similarly spirited opera intensive.

An all-Canadian cast of Emerging Artists will bring this production to Whitehorse on Sept. 20 – the first opera production in that city in more than 50 years. One more stop will be made in Saskatchewan with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra on Sept. 27. These are some big strides for early career opera artists, so it’s important that they stick the landing.

Musically, the Ottawa production was cathartic at every turn. It more than met the moment as the opener of conductor Alexander Shelley’s final season with NACO. To begin, American soprano Ailyn Pérez delivered a Tosca that was stamped with her own velvet seal. Her characterization of the infamous diva leaned more on the chamber side of things, appropriately scaled to this two-dimensional set.

Pérez’s Tosca swaps gravitas for relatability. She’s intimate where others choose to be bombastic, transporting the audience into the corner of her vanity room, where every tormented aria is transformed into an urgent voice message with resonant effect. The final duet with her lover Cavaradossi, “Amaro sol per te m’era il morire” (Only for you was dying bitter), took the air out of Southam Hall.

Across from Pérez stood the towering figures of tenor Matthew Cairns (Cavaradossi) and bass-baritone Nathan Berg (Scarpia, the deranged baron pursuing Tosca). This triangle of talent formed a vocal unit that added meat to the bare bones of this opera-in-concert staging.

Some interesting casting came by way of Danlie Rae Acebuque, a “flexible” baritone who first appeared as Angelotti – whose escape from Scarpia’s prison with Cavaradossi’s help leads to the latter’s demise – and later as the jailer keeping Cavaradossi behind bars. Even the smaller roles stood out, including tenor Jeremy Scinocca’s Spolleta, who shines briefly but brightly in Act 1’s “Tre sbirre, una carrozza” and later in the climactic “Presto, su! Mario!”

Yet, despite this studio-ready vocal ensemble, and an orchestra playing with furious abandon, the production was one left hook shy of a knockout.

The selling point of the opera-in-concert concept is also its biggest risk. It is a boiler plate distillation of set, music, libretto, voice and the occasional dazzling dress. There’s no fluff, just a bare-knuckle brawl between the singers and orchestra, trading arias and melodies back and forth like jabs. This rarefied air also means there’s nowhere for the singers to hide.

When this staging works – as it did when Toronto Summer Music staged a concert version of The Coronation of Poppea back in July – it’s because the singers commit to a bit of crowd work. When the fanfare of set and costume design is gone, you have to grab the audience by the jugular; when the stage is stripped of drama, you have to invent your own. In short, for an opera-in-concert production to work, it has to be more opera than concert.

Opera is a total work of art, and a totalitarian one at that. So if it is to share the stage, the singers have to build their own bridge to the audience through imaginative acting choices (Pérez carried the team in this respect). This may be one of the most valuable lessons for emerging singers in the genre: They need to match their strong voices with strong acting, and sing to the audience as much as they are singing to each other.