Thavoris designs ‘a mighty set’ for Tosca

The new Tosca at Santa Fe Opera, designed by Yannis Thavoris, has been described as ‘a stellar production’ by the Examiner, with ‘a mighty set depicting the grand architecture of the ancient city in keeping with the opera’s historical period’.

One of four Performing Arts clients working at the Santa Fe Opera this season, Yannis has produced a set consisting of elegant period rooms whose spaces have been tipped awry. In Act I the audience is looking straight at the dome of the Basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle, and the huge painting that Cavaradossi is working on becomes the floor, a feature that some reviewers found disturbing. However, as James Keller notes on Santa Fe New Mexican, the set provides a commentary on the action: ‘Scarpia’s Act II office-plus-torture-chamber suite at the Palazzo Farnese, for example, is right-side up, but it is backed by a mural crumbling in craquelure, an apt metaphor for a regime built on unsustainable tyranny.’