A Night at the Opera
By Daily Bruin Staff
June 3, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 Photos from L.A. Opera L.A. Opera presents Puccini’s
"Tosca." It will open on June 6 for nine performances. Student rush
tickets available one hour before curtain for $20.
By John Magnum
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
After more than 25 years as an opera singer, Tom Fox has
encountered just about every role
This month, he’s singing Scarpia, the villainous police
chief from Puccini’s “Tosca” in nine performances
with Los Angeles Opera, beginning June 6. Scarpia is a character
that Fox has revisited throughout his long career, and he seems to
enjoy the part.
“It’s an old friend,” Fox said during an
interview at the Music Center. “I’ve been doing this
role since 1984, but not every year. For a while I did it every
year, but recently I haven’t done it as often as I did in the
’80s and in the early ’90s, because my
repertoire’s changed more and more into the Germanic
stuff.”
He made his L.A. Opera debut in 1998 as one of the German
repertory’s big parts, John the Baptist in Richard
Strauss’ “Salome.”
“Tosca” inhabits the same cultural world as
Strauss’ work ““ one that is both shocking and
scandalous.
With a plot that revolves around Scarpia’s lust for Tosca
and his manipulation of her lover to fulfill his own desires,
“Tosca” includes several scenes that would have
appalled any good middle-class European at the work’s
premiere in 1900.
Fox singled out a few of his favorite scandalous scenes. The
first, which comes at the end of act one, has Scarpia longing after
Tosca while he’s in church, as the chorus sings “Te
Deum” in praise of God in the background.
“The “˜Te Deum,’ with the chorus and
everything, that is a high point,” Fox said. “That
gives us a look into Scarpia’s underlying motives. He wants
to conquer Tosca, and he’s going to use her as a means to
find out information from her lover, Cavaradossi, but his actual
goal is to conquer her.”
The second act, which Fox described as “an extended
duet” for Scarpia and Tosca, is the rawest part of the work.
Scarpia relentlessly pursues Tosca, using the offstage screams of
her lover, who is being tortured, to force her to submit.
 "Tosca" has a plot that revolves around Scarpia’s lust
for Tosca and his manipulation of her lover to fulfill his own
desires. “That is a big dramatic point for both
artists,” Fox said. “The huge crescendo in the
orchestra, the tremendous energy coming out of the orchestra pit,
as those two lock horns, that’s an exciting
moment.”
But, Tosca maintains her resolve and musters all of her strength
to stab Scarpia to death onstage at the act’s end. For Fox,
the dramatic impact of the scene, and the work as a whole, depends
greatly on the way he interacts with his fellow artists.
In performances at L.A. Opera, he appears opposite soprano
Catherine Malfitano in her role as Tosca, and tenor Richard Leech
sings the part of her lover, Cavaradossi, the painter turned
revolutionary.
“It’s very much dependent on your colleagues,”
Fox said. “The soprano is especially important for Scarpia.
In Catherine Malfitano, you’ve got a great actress and a
great singer, and we’re old friends ““ I think the first
time we performed together was 25 years ago ““ so that adds
another dimension too.”
Fox’s lengthy career began right out of college. After
studying voice at the University of Cincinnati, the decisive moment
occurred when he joined the Civic Opera Company in Frankfurt,
Germany. For Fox, it was a perfect environment for a journeyman
singer and one he would recommend to young singers today.
“They performed 240 nights a year, so you got plenty of
experience and plenty of chances to develop your repertoire
there,” Fox said. “You worked all the time.
“That’s a great thing for younger singers to do. You
have to be ready for that,” he continued. “It can chew
you up and spit you out as fast as anything too, because
you’re signing so much, but it was a great life. It was total
immersion in theater.”
OPERA: L.A. Opera presents Puccini’s
“Tosca” with Catherine Malfitano in the title role and
Tom Fox as Scarpia. It will play for nine performances beginning
June 6. Student rush tickets can be purchased for $20 one hour
prior to curtain, subject to availability. For more information
call (213) 972-8001 or visit www.laopera.org.
