A Tested Tosca

It’s that age-old question, an icky-sticky query put to all interview subjects, but one that opera singers of the female persuasion seem particularly loath to answer: the question of age.

Parisian soprano Sylvie Valayre, who appears in the title role of Puccini’s “Tosca” opening Tuesday in Costa Mesa, is obviously attractive, but more than a tad reticent to reveal hers.

“Never say your age,” Valayre said during a recent phone conversation between rehearsals. “Some people will think you’re too young for the part, some will think you’re too old. I decided I’ll never say my age, I’m always just the age of the character. Tosca is 18 in the opera.

“I’m not 18, obviously,” she added somewhat demurely.

That much is clear. Valayre has four productions of “Tosca” under her belt; the first took place in Belfast eight years ago. She appeared in 1987 with the Rome Opera.

Opera Pacific performances of the Puccini work run through Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Other principals include tenor Clifton Forbis as Floria Tosca’s lover, painter Mario Cavaradossi, (except at the March 1 performance, when Ian Denolfo takes over that role). Renowned baritone Justino Diaz is the villainous Scarpia.

Originally mounted at San Francisco Opera, the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production will be directed by Harry Silverstein, best known for his work on Philip Glass operas, and conducted by David Agler, Vancouver Opera’s music director.

Valayre was hard put to say which has been her most memorable production of “Tosca,” but acknowledged she has high hopes for this one: Everything depends on your partners, she said.

“This one for me is very important,” Valayre said. “Working with Justino Diaz? Diaz, he is a big star, a great Scarpia.

“And David Agler, he listens very much to the singers. It’s the first time I meet a conductor [who says,] ‘I don’t want a music rehearsal now. I want to hear what you want to do, to get used to you, the way you breathe, the way you take time, how long are your pauses, . . . For now I want only to listen to you, we’ll talk after.’ The first time in my life!”

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Well, not exactly the first.

“The only other one was Bernard Haitink,” she continued, “in Royal Albert Hall in 1996, for [Verdi’s] ‘Don Carlos.’ I thought, ‘I don’t know if I’m good enough for Haitink, maybe he will ask me [to do] incredible things.’ I was a replacement, I had no rehearsals, and I thought he would be very demanding.

“But he was just watching me with his big blue eyes and smiling, just making music with me. After the rehearsal, I said, ‘Maestro what do you want?’ He said, ‘Nothing. Just sing, and I’m with you.’ ”

Valayre made her Covent Garden debut earlier that year as Abigaille in Verdi’s “Nabucco,” and soon after her La Scala debut in the title role of “La Gioconda,” the first production of the Ponchielli opera at the celebrated theater since the historic 1954 production with Maria Callas. She made her San Francisco Opera debut as Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” last summer, and her New York debut this month with the Opera Orchestra of New York’s production of Verdi’s “Jerusalem.” Plans are laid for Strauss’ “Salome” in Graz, a “Don Carlos” in Seville and a “Tosca” in Santiago.

Valayre, a Paris Conservatory graduate, recalled the challenge of her first “Tosca.”

“It was finding the right way of walking, of behaving, of moving my hands,” she said. “Tosca cannot walk like Mimi. She is impulsive. She wasn’t raised like a regal child, but she has learned how to be regal, how to behave--like a diva. She can’t walk like the shepherdess she was before, [but] needs to have some moment when she is back to what she was. That is why she is able to kill in such a savage way Scarpia.”

That type of challenge is to be expected. Some demands have been more curious, among them, Valayre said, “singing high notes legato while crawling on the floor like an American GI in Vietnam,” which she did for Zygmunt Krauze’s opera “Die Kleider.”

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Other performances have been downright incendiary.

“I was singing [Mozart’s] ‘Cosi fan tutte’ in the beginning of my career, the second act rondo, very difficult,” Valayre recalled. “I smelled smoke, and I heard my colleague talking backstage very loud. I thought, ‘Why is she doing that to me? We are good friends. And why do people smoke backstage?’ Smoke makes me cough.

“In fact, the set was burning and I was about to burn myself. My colleague was trying to tell me, but I was so concentrated, I only thought she was talking loud and somebody was smoking. I finished my aria, and the stagehands came with the fire extinguishers.”

What did catch fire was her career. Valayre makes her Metropolitan Opera debut in the 1999-2000 season, but she wouldn’t disclose the role.

“I can’t te-e-ell,” she said teasingly. “I swear it won’t be Isolde. Leporello either.”

* Opera Pacific presentation of Puccini’s “Tosca” opens Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 7:30 p.m. $28-$93. Also 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. (800) 346-7372.