LOVE LUST & MURDER
Celine Byrne on tackling Tosca and getting her opera debut in the States...
IF music is the food of love as they say, then a night at the opera amounts to a sumptuous feast. And with the formation of a national opera company this year, more of us will be able to experience the delights of the genre right on our doorsteps.
The uninitiated might not realise we have a wealth of Irish operatic talent making waves all over the world, including super soprano Celine Byrne who is once more bringing her spine-tingling sound back to home turf next week.
We speak as Celine is surrounded by singers, warming up their vocal chords with warbling notes ahead of a performance in the Austrian city of Salzburg, a week before her performance of Tosca which the Mikhailovsky Opera Of St Petersburg is bringing to the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, its first production here.
And Puccini is one of Celine’s big passions. ‘This will be my third production of Tosca — the first one was Tosca that I did in Norway and then the Dublin one starts on March 14 and I am currently in Salzburg doing a new production of Tosca there,’ she says.
‘I love all the works of Puccini because it is the kind of music I like to sing. It’s the music that suits me. Puccini is a wonderful composer and I have sung many of his roles. I’ve sung Butterfly, I’ve sung Mimi, I have sung Liu in Turandot and I will be making my American opera debut singing in La Rondine.’
Puccini’s opera style is verismo, which was tied to the Italian literary movement of the same name.
At the time it meant the writers were creating performances centred around the stories of everyday people, rather than those of kings, queens and mythology.
But Floria Tosca is no ordinary woman so it’s no wonder Celine feels a special resonance when it comes to the role.
‘Tosca is a wonderful role,’ she enthuses. ‘It is passionate and it is kind of like the Spanish equivalent of Carmen.
‘I love Tosca, I just think she is wonderful as there are elements of me in her.
‘I would be quite fiery and so is she. She is a singer so that’s easy for me to do and she is a bit jealous — I think most women are!
‘It’s just a lovely role to play and it’s fun to be an opera singer because there are so many characters I play in opera, they all have different themes and they all have different moods.’
With each passing week, Celine could be stepping into the shoes of a different woman, but passion is something all the characters have in common.
‘For example a few weeks ago I played Dona Elivra in Don Giovanni in Israel,’ she says.
‘She is a very fiery person as well, she is after a guy who is a bit of a player and she is trying to convince him to come back to her. In the end he doesn’t so she decides she’s too good for him and leaves him alone. But he regrets it because in the end his soul is lost.’
THIS is one thing about the feisty women of opera — there’s never many happy endings which is one of the reasons the roles are so interesting to play.
‘Tosca is in love with Cavaradossi — they love each other so much but her love is what betrays him in the end,’ Celine adds.
Without offering up too many spoilers to the uninitiated, Tosca is a story of political intrigue, love, lust and murder which was actually written as a five-act play in French as La Tosca by Victorien Sardou in the late 19th century.
Puccini wanted to adapt the play into an opera and initially Sardou was against the idea as he had no love for the Italian composer after their first meeting.
Puccini heard what Sardou thought of him and then refused to work on the idea but eventually returned to the project and created an opera that is now one of the most frequently performed in the world.
This, however, is the first time Celine is performing Tosca in Ireland and she says the tale is a very easy one for newcomers to the genre to understand.
‘It’s a very sad story but it is a wonderful one,’ she explains. ‘You don’t have to understand Italian to understand the story because it is told so beautifully on stage and unfolds in such a way that you can’t help being captivated by it.’
Celine performed in the starring role of Floria Tosca at Russia’s prestigious Mikhailovsky Theatre with the Mikhailovsky Opera Of St Petersburg last November.
And in a kind of opera exchange trip, Russian star Maria Litke will perform in the role for the first time at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre on March 15 and 17.
‘I love this production of Tosca [in Dublin], it is my favourite of the three I have done,’ Celine explains. ‘The costumes are traditional, it is very beautifully portrayed on stage and there will also be the help of the surtitles on the performance nights.
WHAT is lovely for me is that I’ve got a family so it is great to be able to perform at home because normally when I am performing abroad my family have to come to me.’
This is one of the reasons why Celine is very much in favour of Irish National Opera, the new body which both aims to create more public engagement with the art form and also provide a bigger platform at home for Irish artists as many are working more abroad than at home. ‘I am one of the artistic partners for the Irish National Opera,’ she says. ‘I think up to now we were the only capital city in Europe who didn’t have a company and when I say capital city that is important because we have the Wexford Opera Festival. ‘But that is a festival and even though it is world-renowned, we needed something else. ‘We needed opera, we needed a full-time company that was going to perform three or four operas every year.
‘That’s what Irish National Opera is starting out with — hopefully that number will increase as the company grows and the years go on.’
Giving new talent the chance to perform is one of the things Celine is passionate about.
‘But not only that, when it comes to Irish talent it is not just a case of me saying off the cuff that we have so many great singers from Ireland working abroad — it is a concrete fact,’ she insists.
‘We have had singers in the Met, we have had singers in Covent Garden, in the biggest houses that are all round the world and we are still working there.
‘And I think it is time that we had an opera company so that we can perform at home, so that people can see the art form at home and see the singers at home who are working abroad most of the time.
‘A lot of my extended family have never seen me performing in an opera because they are working and they can’t come and see me perform abroad as it is expensive.
‘So with Tosca it will be great that they can get into the car and drive up to Dublin to see me on stage.’
Celine is every inch the opera diva,
with a mane of glossy locks and sparkling blue eyes and a voice so pure it could cut glass.
She’s performed in front of thousands all over the world but there’s nothing diva-like about her personality. She still lives in Kildare with her husband Thomas and their three children.#
‘I never left my babies, not for one day when they were smaller,’ she says. ‘Then when they went to school that’s when I took up more work.
‘And now that they’re a bit older I can work a little bit more and put more time into my work because I know that they’re at home with their dad.’
Thomas is now a stay-at-home dad, allowing Celine to jet all over the world for performances, something she admits can be lonely at times, but then, that’s what it takes to sing in the best companies all over the world.
‘I can’t do what I do unless there’s a constant at home for the kids,’ she explains.
‘I don’t feel that I’m not seeing my children taking their first step or their first this or that because I’ve done all that.
‘I just have to worry now that I’m away for the first heartbreak. I’m not looking forward to that. That’s the one I’m dreading. We’ll see when it happens.’
Celine won’t reveal her children’s ages ‘in case people do the maths’, preferring not to let any perceptions of age get in the way of getting the roles she wants.
And these roles are many — rumours are rife that Celine has been asked to perform for Pope Francis but she steadfastly refuses to be drawn into any conversation surrounding this.
Meanwhile, Celine is concentrating on what’s coming up next — Dublin and her American debut which is on the cards too as she is booked in for another Puccini classic La Rondine in the States, her first major role there.
‘I have had the privilege of working all round the world and I have had many opera performances around the world but especially in Europe,’ she explains.
‘I have sung in Carnegie Hall twice which was lovely but this will be my first opera in America. I’m looking forward to it.’
And with such a beautiful voice heading their way, there’s no doubt the opera audiences of America are looking forward to it too.
The Mikhailovsky Opera of St Petersburg will perform Tosca as the composer intended, with traditional sets and singing in Italian with English surtitles, accompanied by the magnificent RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. Celine Byrne will be taking the lead role of Floria Tosca, singing on Wednesday, March 14, Friday March 16, and Sunday, March 18, while Russian star Maria Litke will perform the role on Thursday, March 15, and Saturday, March 17. Tickets are available on ticketmaster.ie