2025 Season

Wonder of Wonders

“Every single day through the last seven decades…Fiddler, by all accounts, has been on stage somewhere in the world”

When the creators of Fiddler on the Roof—book writer Joseph Stein, composer Jerry Bock, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and director/choreographer Jerome Robbins—set out to adapt Sholem-Aleichem’s Yiddish tales about a beleaguered milkman with three marriageable daughters, they didn’t expect to make a splash, much less a fortune. They were motivated by simple love of the material. The stories were just so warm and human and emotional,” Harnick once told me, “that they cried out for music.” As the artists searched for a backer, one after another rejected the “property” (as potential Broadway shows are known) for being likely to appeal only to a narrow audience. One naysayer, referring to the nationwide Jewish women’s organization, famously asked, “What will we do when we’ve run out of Hadassah groups?” Too bad he didn’t invest!

Opening on Broadway in September 1964, the show swept the Tony Awards that season, winning in nine categories, and it ran for a then record-breaking 3,242 performances (and has been revived on Broadway five times). Every single day through the last seven decades (except during the COVID lockdown), Fiddler, by all accounts, has been on stage somewhere in the world, from Caracas to Klaipeda, in schools, community theaters, or professional venues.

A major reason for its abiding popularity is obvious: it’s a great show with memorable songs, exciting choreography, and endearing characters. But that doesn’t account for the myriad ways Fiddler has seeped into many cultures, glowing with radiant meanings that far exceed the satisfactions of even the best Broadway blockbusters. Fiddler was the first work of American popular culture to offer a general, post-Holocaust audience an affectionate image of the Yiddish Old Country, proudly celebrating the world Ashkenazi Jews had come from. For Jewish Americans from that back- ground, the show was an exhilarating coming-out party. Spectators wrote to the producers to thank them for making them unashamed to be Jewish. At that time, it was nothing less than astonishing to see characters on a popular stage lighting Shabbos candles or getting married under a chuppah; until then, such images belonged only to specific communal Jewish spaces, unless they were being played for laughs in mainstream venues.

Fiddler helped frame postwar Jewish identity and memory in the United States, and beyond—and the way non-Jews understood them. At the same time, running on a parallel track of universality, the show spoke as deeply to all kinds of audiences—to anyone familiar with the tensions between steadfastness and flexibility, cultural pride and adaptation, the agonizing loss and hopeful possibilities of change. Which is to say, everyone. Joe Stein loved to tell the story of attending the first production in Tokyo, where a producer asked him how Americans could understand the show since it was, after all, “so Japanese.” The show’s essential gesture is dialectical—on the one hand, on the other hand, as Tevye often says when he considers his wrenching options. Having transported old Yiddish stories into the form of amid-century musical, Fiddler is a work of cultural adaptation—and it is about cultural adaptation. And it thus remains open—indeed, inviting—to every generation to engage it anew.

Alisa Solomon is the author of the award-winning book, Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, and a professor at Colombia University.

Who is Tosca in 2025?

Soprano Evelina Dobračeva in Cincinnati Opera's 2016 production of Tosca. Photo by Philip Groshong.

Villain loves Woman. Woman loves Good Guy instead. Villain makes drastic attempts to win Woman. Most characters die by the end. We know this story. So why does Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca keep us in a stranglehold 125 years after its premiere—and what can we still learn from it? Often, the art that moves us most manages to balance this familiarity (classic stories, archetypal characters, timeless concerns) with a singular uniqueness (Puccini’s music, a talented cast bringing it to life on stage). We return again and again to witness as the story plays out, and ideally to discover something new each time. In an authoritarian Rome, our villain Baron Scarpia polices the streets from the shadows. He has long been obsessed with our heroine, Floria Tosca, and when her love—the artist Cavaradossi—gets caught attempting to free a political prisoner, Scarpia uses Cavaradossi’s arrest as a bargaining chip to get what he really wants: Tosca.

However, while simple descriptions such as these tend to reduce Tosca to the role of victim or even pawn, there is much more to discover. When the opera opens, we meet Tosca in a state of jealousy—in fact, it is only because she is pursuing this jealousy that she discovers Cavaradossi’s secret agenda and becomes embroiled in the political chess match in the first place. Act II puts Tosca under enough pressure to break most people: Scarpia tortures Cavaradossi until she gives up her information, then threatens to execute him unless she gives herself over. She agrees—what else can she do, in the moment?—but after securing Cavaradossi’s freedom along with her own, she wrenches back her agency in the form of a knife and kills Scarpia.

Scarpia (Gordon Hawkins) attempts to bend Tosca (Evelina Dobračeva) to his will. Photo by Philip Groshong)

The final act finds Tosca betrayed yet again: Scarpia has tricked her by secretly ordering Cavaradossi to be executed, and she is to be arrested. Rather than lose her freedom once more, Tosca leaps from the castle walls to end her life. A coward’s way out, or a final act of agency? Once arrested, Tosca would have been put to death—not only for her role in freeing a political prisoner, but now also for the murder of her blackmailer and rapist. Tosca is left with one final way to take control of her own life, one ultimate choice that is hers and hers alone. She makes that choice. To return to our original question, why do we continue to revisit familiar stories, even when we know how they end? Perhaps partly to explore the ways that stories fail to change—in 2025, themes of political machinations, sexual assault, and violence against women are as relevant as ever. But perhaps we also return to these predictable stories to understand how we are changing, such as the subtle ways we discover strength and agency in a character who is given few choices and yet refuses to completely forfeit her power. Sopranos have sung the sumptuous role of Floria Tosca for 125 years, but what we hear, and what we believe, Tosca is telling us, continues to evolve.

Erica Reid lives in Colorado and returns often to her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. She writes for arts organizations and teaches poetry. ericareidpoet.com

A Fool's Game

Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto is a powerful opera built on contrasts—between light-hearted melodies and dark moral truths, personal loyalty and systemic cruelty, and justice and futility. At its center is Rigoletto, a jester trapped in moral compromise, whose attempt to shield his daughter ends in heartbreak. This enduring opera invites audiences to wrestle with uncomfortable truths beneath its beautiful music. Read more about Rigoletto here.

Class Act: Cincinnati Opera Takes Center Stage in Schools

For students across Greater Cincinnati, school is back in session, and with it, a new year full of possibilities. Cincinnati Opera is excited to play a role in enhancing students’ learning by partnering with local schools on a variety of arts-based educational offerings geared toward young people of all ages.