Puccini’s TOSCA Returns to Seattle Opera in May

Seattle Opera will close its 2024/25 season with Giacomo Puccini’s shocking melodrama Tosca, the fiery tale of an opera diva who risks everything to save her beloved from the grasp of a sadistic and lecherous baron. The classic production, returning to McCaw Hall for the first time since 2015, features good-old-fashioned stagecraft, opulent costumes, and an international cast of top-tier performers.

Audiences are sure to notice the lavish scenery, which comprises a collection of painted backdrops designed in the 1950s by the legendary Milanese scene shop Ercole Sormani (now Scenografie Sormani-Cardaropoli). The Sormani studio has been producing sets since 1838, when Italian theaters regularly produced new works by the likes of Gaetano Donizetti and Giuseppe Verdi. Painted in intricate detail using special perspective and trompe-l’œil techniques, the wing-and-drop sets for Tosca depict the locales and cityscapes of Rome at the turn of the 19th century, grounding the opera in time and place.

“Seattle Opera is fortunate to own such beautiful pieces of opera history,” said General and Artistic Director James Robinson of the drops, which Seattle Opera has regularly rented to opera companies across the US and Canada since they were purchased by former General Director Glynn Ross in the 1960s. “They harken back a bygone age when it was uncommon to use built structures on stage. Instead, the combination of perspective painting and stage lighting creates a remarkable sense of depth, immersing the performers in the lushness of their surroundings.”

Director Brenna Corner, who debuted at Seattle Opera for the film version of Don Giovanni (’21), will bring these sets to life along with lighting designer Connie Yun (Samson and Delilah in Concert ’23), Costume Designer Andrew Marlay (Tosca ’15), and wigs, hair, and makeup designer Ashlee Naegle (The Magic Flute ’25). Sound designer Robertson Witmer (X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X ’24) will craft the soundscape of bells and cannons that punctuates Puccini’s evocation of the eternal city.

Seattle Opera has assembled an international cast of sought-after singers in the opera’s principal roles. Sharing the role of the glamorous Floria Tosca are Armenian soprano Lianna Haroutounian, who impressed in her Seattle Opera debut as Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly (’17), and Spanish soprano Vanessa Goikoetxea, who wowed audiences in the title role of Alcina (’23). As the idealistic Mario Cavaradossi, Korean tenor Yonghoon Lee, returning after his debut in 2023’s concert presentation of Samson and Delilah, alternates with Kosovar tenor Rame Lahaj, in his Seattle Opera debut. Serbian baritone Željko Lučić and American bass-baritone Craig Colclough both make their Seattle Opera debuts as the vile Baron Scarpia.

The rest of the cast features Adam Lau (Narbal, Les Troyens in Concert ’25) as Cesare Angelotti, Barry Johnson (Antonio, The Marriage of Figaro ’22) as the Sacristan, John Marzano (Beppe, Pagliacci ’24) as Spoletta, Ilya Silchukou in his Seattle Opera debut as Sciarrone, Seattle Opera chorus member Micah Parker in his principal debut as the Jailer, and Grace Elaine Franck-Smith (Second Genie, The Magic Flute ’25) and Anthony E. Kim (Third Genie, The Magic Flute ’25) sharing the role of the Shepherd Boy.

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