Opera is filled with big emotions: passionate lovers swearing allegiance to each until death, jealous lovers swearing vengeance against their rivals.
But maybe nothing is bigger for start-to-finish heaving drama than Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, which opens Opera in the Heights’ 2026 – 2027 season. Love. Vengeance. Betrayal.
“ It has everything, right?” said Kathryn Frady, artistic director of Opera in the Heights, who is also singing the titular role. You’ve got love and jealousy and power and strength and courage and fear and desperation. Tosca really experiences every single emotion throughout the course of this evening, and that does make it so operatic in that way. People don’t necessarily have these huge, expansive emotions all in one day, we hope, right?”
The opera is the story of an opera singer, Floria Tosca, who is wildly in love with a painter, Mario Cavaradossi. The dramatic action is set in motion when he agrees to give refuge to a political prisoner, Cesare Angelotti, who’s escaped from jail and is hiding out in the church where Cavaradossi is painting. Hot on the prisoner’s heels is the villain of it all, chief of police Baron Scarpia, who wants Tosca for himself. He tracks his prey to Cavaradossi’s church, finds a fan dropped by Angelotti’s sister and uses it to trick Tosca into believing her lover is unfaithful. The impetuous diva confronts Cavarodossi, Scarpia’s spies who’ve been following her arrest and torture him, and Scarpia tells our heroine he’ll save her beloved from execution…if she’ll give herself to him. She gives in. He betrays her. And people start dying.
When Tosca premiered in January of 1900, Puccini was well established as one of the biggest names in opera, riding financial successes from Manon Lescaut and La Bohéme. Audiences loved it, but critics were put off by the violence in the show.
That’s something Frady thought a lot about in her decision to program the piece. Too much of it could be alienating; too little risks making the bad guy too sympathetic.
“ I think that leaning into really telling the story in a visceral way is more effective,” she said. “It goes back to the idea that there’s, there’s love, there’s passion, there’s jealousy, there’s fear, there’s all of these great big things.”
All of it, for Frady, is part of what makes live theater what it is, that ability for the audience to feel something viscerally, in the moment it happens. She believes audiences today will be drawn into the story, the same way they were 126 years ago. She’s also betting on the opera, for all its emotion and drama, as one that is approachable.
“ The music is so beautiful and lush, and I love that Puccini really has all of these wonderful musical themes that tell you what character is about to walk on stage,” she said. “We all have our own theme music, which I think is just brilliant and fun for us in our character development, but also for the audience to know what’s about to happen.”
She also notes that the plot takes place across a single day, and the running time, at around two-and-a-half hours, feels manageable.
“ It’s a very tight script and the timing of everything flows really beautifully, which doesn’t always happen in opera,” she said.
Tosca also marks Frady’s on-stage debut with the company she’s helmed since last year. She directed Opera in the Heights’ production of Don Pasquale for the 2025-2026 season, and she’s sung the role of Tosca before. It also represents a full-circle moment. Frady was born in Houston and has performed around the world; singing Tosca here is like a homecoming.
“ It’s amazing,” she said about singing the part for the company. “I think that it’s a really wonderful opportunity to give our audiences a little bit more understanding of who I am as an artist and as a performer. They’ve seen some of my directing work. Obviously they know me as an administrator. But it’s also a wonderful opportunity for me to collaborate with our musicians.”
Performances are scheduled November 13, 15, 19 and 21 at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and 2:00 p.m. on Sunday at Lambert Hall, 1703 Heights Blvd. For more information, call 713-861-5303 or visit operaintheheights.org. $45-$115.