The adrenaline rush of Tosca

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This article was published 20/11/2025 (313 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Tosca returns to the Centennial Concert Hall this weekend for the first time in more than a decade.

Puccini’s beloved tragedy was last presented by the Manitoba Opera in 2010 and was on the books for 2021, but the pandemic had other plans.

Set in Rome following the French Revolution, the Italian libretto sees famous singer Tosca (played by Marina Costa-Jackson) and her painterly lover Cavaradossi (David Pomeroy) entwined in a deadly struggle with the corrupt police chief, Scarpia (Gregory Dahl).

This is American Costa-Jackson’s Canadian debut and a homecoming for Dahl, who was born in Winnipeg (no relation to soprano Tracy Dahl). It’s also a professional reunion for Pomeroy, who has been a frequent performer on local classical stages.

Ahead of opening night, the Free Press sat down with the stars of Tosca for a conversation about one of Puccini’s most popular creations and the state of opera in 2025.

Free Press: How many times have each of you performed in Tosca?

Gregory Dahl: It’s my fifth time (playing Scarpia). And I love it, it’s my favourite opera. I love being the bad guy onstage because I’m not the bad guy in life. It’s fun to play that kind of character.

Marina Costa-Jackson: This is my second production. The first time I did it, the director had been a very famous Tosca, Carol Vaness (who sang opposite Luciano Pavarotti during his final opera in 2004). It’s very tricky music. It’s verismo, so the drama comes to pass with all the high notes and the big moments. So she had all these tips about, “OK, here you’re going to need to take a breath and calm down because you’re about to ramp up again.”

David Pomeroy: Five or six productions of Tosca for me. And I love singing Cavaradossi because it feels really natural: he’s a nice guy, he’s an artist, he’s a lover. And it gives me such beautiful, romantic music and some of the most famous tenor arias.

FP: What’s your favourite scene?

Marina: Act 2 (in which Scarpia interrogates the imprisoned Cavaradossi and his lover, Tosca) is certainly exhilarating. I think every audience member is going to leave that act feeling like, “Holy smokes, what just happened?”

David: Scarpia sends me offstage and I’m being tortured because I’m not giving up Angelotti, the guy I protected in my villa. Then, there’s a historic battle that my people won. And Cavaradossi has all these cries of “Vittoria” — victory, victory, victory. That’s a really exciting moment.

Gregory: Every corner has a new moment. It’s such a well-crafted piece. You’re not gonna be bored, you’re going to be totally enthralled by what’s going on. It’s a great first opera.

FP: Is that something you grapple with as performers, the fact that newer audiences might not be as familiar with the art form?

Gregory: All of us started out not knowing opera. Once you get into it, you realize it’s amazing. Everything we hear in life nowadays is canned music that’s electronic. We’re pre-electricity. There’s no mics on the stage. What you get is my body vibrating. It’s an oral experience that’s visceral. If I can access opera growing up in Westwood, anybody can.

David: It’s a North American thing, too. In Europe, all of the kids are brought up with opera. My first opera, I was 21. We just don’t get exposed to it.

Marina: I’ve been to Russia five or six times and opera singers were A-list superstars there, we were followed around by paparazzi.

FP: What makes Tosca a good opera for first-timers?

Marina: It’s fast. You get that adrenaline and dopamine rush from everything coming at you, like we get with social media. This will give you that and it will stay with you for a very long time.

David: The drama is non-stop. You’ve got guns, you’ve got suicide, you’ve got betrayal. The music is so glorious, but the story is just nuts.

FP: Everybody dies in Tosca (spoiler alert). As an actor, what’s it like to die onstage?

Gregory: It’s kind of fun and exhilarating. The sopranos usually die in the operas I’m in, five times out of six. I just hope it looks real.

David: I always feel a little bit nervous because (as Cavaradossi) I am actually in front of a gun squad and they have rifles and gunpowder. But it is kind of exciting, you hear the bang and flop to the floor and hope you don’t bruise yourself.

Marina: It’s a sort of catharsis, too. You get to, in a safe space, explore that human experience. Also, reciprocally for the audiences, they get to absorb that human experience all of us will go through — hopefully, not by tragic murder.

FP: How does Tosca’s famous final leap play out in this version?

Marina: It’s a trust fall to her death, falling backwards five or six feet. When I first got up to do it, it gave me a moment of pause. But, like anything, you get used to it. And I like to be on the edge of things.

FP: Marina, your sister, Ginger Costa-Jackson, made her Manitoba Opera debut in Carmen last season. Did she give you any intel on Winnipeg?

Marina: Ginger prepped me. She said, “You’re going to love it there, the people are really great.” So, I was really excited to come out. And now (David, who played opposite Ginger as Don José) is the third tenor that’s kissed two of the three Costa-Jackson sisters. (Younger sister Miriam is also an opera singer.) We haven’t had a tenor kiss all three yet.

Gregory: Since moving away from Winnipeg, I’ve found the quality here is way up compared to elsewhere. It’s a great arts place.

David: Even the opera chorus here. The first time I came here, I was like, “Are these professionals? My god, they’re as good as the Canadian Opera Company chorus.”

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The soft art of trompe l’oeil

The set used in the Manitoba Opera’s production of Tosca is a rare artifact.

On loan from the Seattle Opera, the canvas backdrops were hand-painted in Italy in the 1950s and are the last remaining examples in North America of trompe l’oeil — a painting technique that creates three-dimensional illusions on flat surfaces — currently in use within the opera world.

“It’s older than I am,” says Sheldon Johnson, the opera’s director of production.

While the set has been touched up over the years, its longevity is thanks to the original material used. Instead of modern latex paint, which has a tendency to peel and crack over time, the tall cloths were painted with dye.

“They’re soft and they hang beautifully,” says Johnson, who worked with the same set in 2010.

Another benefit? The soft scenery set is much easier to build than a set built with hard materials, such as wood.

“Shows with more three-dimensional scenery take up more room in the trailer and take longer to assemble; it’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle. This one goes up quite quickly,” he says.

In Tosca, the hung drapery transforms into the interior of the Sant’Andrea della Valle basilica, the Palazzo Farnese and other real Roman locales in which the opera is set.

“To paint something with that much detail and at that scale is what’s really impressive,” Johnson says.

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com