A tiny theatre in the historic centre of Rome is making a bid to stage the longest-running opera production in Italian history in an effort to popularise the art form.
The Piccola Lirica company is putting on an abridged version of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca six days a week, every week, until May next year for a total of over 200 performances.
Productions in Italy's large opera houses usually run for no more than 15 nights, and Tosca's eight-month stretch from September to May will require ten sopranos to play the heroine, eight tenors in the role of her lover Cavaradossi and eight baritones as police chief baddie Scarpia.
The opera has been boiled down from its normal running time of three hours to just 90 minutes for its marathon run in the hope of attracting a younger audience used to watching films, television programmes and football matches of similar lengths.
"Even in Italy, opera eventually risks dying out because young people are just not interested," said Gianna Volpi, who is responsible for chopping up Tosca's libretto for the production.
"They have to go through the palaver of booking expensive tickets in advance and then going to the opera itself takes up four or five hours of their time it's not like going to the pub or the cinema," she said.
"Condensed versions provide an affordable alternative and many people who have never been to an opera before come to see us and then leave very excited to learn more," she added.
YOUTHFUL CAST PROVIDES ADDITIONAL APPEAL.
The company is also trying to shrug off the stereotype of tubby middle-aged divas with a youthful cast of under 35s.
Staging the opera in a 200-seat theatre is further calculated to appeal to the television generation, who will be close enough to see the expressions on the singers' faces rarely possible in large opera houses.
The orchestra has been pared down to four musicians and a conductor who use a state-of-the-art musical instrument digital interface and preprogrammed electronic keyboards to play a score that usually requires an ensemble of 60 instruments or more.
"Each of the musicians plays live the various parts assigned to them from the string, brass and woodwind sections, and the resulting effect is very much that of a large orchestra," said Volpi.
The company chose Tosca for the current record bid because of its setting in 19th-century Rome with acts in three city landmarks still on tourist itineraries today the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle, Palazzo Farnese and Castel Sant'Angelo.
The opera tells the story of Tosca, a singer, and her painter sweetheart Cavaradossi, who helps a political offender on the run from Castel Sant'Angelo prison.
Cavaradossi is executed for his pains and in the opera's famous final act the heartbroken heroine leaps to her death from the castle ramparts.
The opera was premiered in Rome in Teatro Costanzi, now the Opera House, on January 14 1900.
The Piccola Lirica has already had a trial run for the opera marathon, staging 65 performances of Tosca between March and May earlier this year, and has previously condensed La Traviata, The Barber of Seville, Carmen and Manon for shorter runs.
While purists might accuse the company of dumbing down opera with the pocket-sized productions, its supporters include the late composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who described the trimmed versions as "a turning point in the history of opera performance".
"Even (film and stage director) Franco Zeffirelli has experimented with taking opera to the small stage," said Volpi, referring to the maestro's 2001 production of Verdi's Aida at a tiny theatre in the composer s hometown of Busseto.
"We think it's the future."
Tosca opened at the Teatro Flaiano on September 26 and runs until May 25.
