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Fyodor Ataskevich: “In our <i>Tosca</i> everything is as it should be”

21.03.2019

Fyodor Ataskevich: “In our Tosca everything is as it should be”

Tosca is one of the most popular operas in the international repertoire, as our audience’s preferences confirm: the 1999 production is now twenty years old. This anniversary will be marked by a performance on 26 March. Fyodor Ataskevich has been singing the part of Cavaradossi at the Mikhailovsky Theatre for nine years. He shared his thoughts about the character and the opera in general.

„The character I play has changed over time, of course. When I was young, I tended towards youthful maximalism. At that time, I saw Cavaradossi as a revolutionary and a hero. He is still that now, but less hot-headed, less zealous. He fights for justice and humanistic ideals.“

Our readers may be interested to know that the first performance of Tosca at the Mikhailovsky was on 19 September 1924. The production was conceived as an answer to the question of the relevance of an opera house to the demands of post-revolutionary society. Puccini’s opera was staged by Nikolay Vinogradov, who also wrote a new libretto, and conducted by Daniil Pokhitonov. Under its new title, Fighting for the Commune, it was performed 14 times in all. The production disappeared from the repertoire in that same season of 1924/1925, but it remains one of the most radical reinterpretations of a classical opera in the history of our theatre. It is hard to imagine now how events at the time of the Paris commune could have been set to Puccini’s music at the Maly Opera House, how the famous actress Floria Tosca could have been transformed into the Russian communarde Jeanne and her lover Cavaradossi become the artist Arlen, who is creating a painting entitled The Triumph of Communism.

„But still, the most important thing in Cavaradossi’s life is love,“ continues Fyodor Ataskevich. „I think everybody should be like that. His beloved Floria Tosca is an actress, and somewhat eccentric. Theatregoers often accuse her of destroying the artist with her jealousy. But allow me to take her side. I sense a kind of charm to their relationship; it’s just a sort of playful lovers’ game. And my character plays up to her.

Cavaradossi’s deathbed aria is similar to Lensky’s aria in certain respects: there is a presentiment of impending death in the music. Only Cavaradossi does not doubt that he will be shot and that there will be no miracle. So he attempts to write a final letter, and doesn’t even know how to begin. I can imagine myself writing ‘Dear Flo...’, and not knowing what to write, because there’s so much I want to say — that I love her and have always loved her, and that it grieves me to be about to lose my life. At the same time, I realize that I shouldn’t write that to her, to spare her the pain. A maelstrom of emotions. And so he starts to write, and the aria comes into being: ‘I remembered how you came in, a ray of light fell and you shone...’
From time to time I’m invited to perform the role in other theatres. I have sung in four different productions; everywhere the classical version of the opera reigns and there have never been any attempts to play around with the meaning. Cavaradossi and I are lucky in that respect. I am conservative, and am absolutely convinced that classical operas should be staged according to the same rules by which they were written. Operas like Tosca are tied to a certain period and historical context, to the behavioural norms and style of the time.

In our Tosca, everything is as it should be — although because of that my wife, who is also an actress, finds it difficult being in the auditorium, especially during the torture scene. She says, ‘I realize you’re just shouting backstage, but you do it in such a way that I believe that you’re in pain, that you’re being stabbed and killed, and it makes me feel uneasy.’“