Becoming Tosca - Battle Abbey

About

Prologue Opera returns to stages in East Sussex but this time to the beautiful surroundings of Battle Abbey School with our new production of Becoming Tosca. A new team of stellar cast and creatives present a piece of musical drama you will not want to miss.

Have you ever seen a show and wondered about a character's backstory and what brought them to the point at which the action starts? So have we. Hastings' new opera theatre company present a prologue to Puccini's famous opera, Tosca. Becoming Tosca is an innovative and unique piece of drama, illuminating the earlier lives of the well-known characters and propelling the audience into their world. Every song and every word of dialogue in the Prologue brings us new insights into their backgrounds and choices. An evening of revolution, romance and tragedy, combining newly composed music with a tango flavour and an abridged version of Puccini's sumptuous score, will entertain you from the opening chords to the dramatic finale, challenging your preconception of both the original piece and the artform of opera itself.

Scene Setting for Becoming Tosca

Catholicism and the appeal of dictatorship are never far from the surface in Puccini's Tosca. Can revolution or religion change human nature? Can art be the agent of either or does it merely passively record the process? Becoming Tosca relocates the action to an unspecific Latin American setting in the second half of the 20th century; a nation founded on Jesuit colonisation, where religion now jostles with the politics of capitalism and self-interest. It is a society dominated by the struggle to exchange poverty for influence, still seeking solutions to all-pervasive inequalities and oppressions. Does the church love repentance or does it prefer punishment? Is brutality a necessary weapon to control a turbulent population? Even now, we do not have answers and until we do, these questions must continue to be examined.

The Team

A team of local creatives are bringing this piece to life. The founder of the company, Anthony Flaum, will be performing in and producing the piece alongside a stellar cast of professional singers. The design, stage, lighting team, musical director and 2 of the cast as well as the highly acclaimed composer Frank Moon, are all locals! We are also investing in youth talent as one of our cast is from the White Rock Youth Theatre and is playing the young revolutionary Angelotti. Prologue Opera are keen on investing in the broad range of creative talent in the area.

Cast & Creatives

Director, Translator, Writer - Christopher Cowell

Musical Director - Lesley Anne Sammons

Composer - Frank Moon

Designer - Viva Halton Wright

Stage Manager - Jane Richardson

Tosca - Anna Sideris

Cavaradossi - Anthony Flaum

Scarpia - Brendan Collins

Spoletta - Jonathan Cooke

Angelotti - Harry Gentry