Catonsville resident Rosanna Tufts had the most proper, most elite of musical educations, but deep in her soul, she yearned for more earthy entertainments.
So Tufts threw off the bonds of her conservatory upbringing and ran off to join the musical theater. "Stage musicals and light opera are my real passion," she says. "They allow me to sing, but also to act and occasionally dance."
And, occasionally, they allow Tufts to compose. Excerpts from her rock opera, The Passion of Persephone, are being performed this month at the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington.
Her background is as blue-blooded as they come.
Tufts, 49, began taking voice lessons at age 14, and specialized in singing Baroque and early Renaissance church music. A graduate of Peabody Conservatory, she was a longtime member of the acclaimed Baltimore Symphony Chorus, and was a founding member of the Concert Artists of Baltimore. One career highlight occurred in 1986, when Tufts was part of a choir invited to perform with famed former tenor Luciano Pavarotti in Philadelphia. More recently, audiences have seen her in starring roles with the Baltimore Municipal Opera.
But the soprano also has an adventurous side that gets expressed in The Passion of Persephone, which Tufts began writing in 2006, and in which she stars.
Parental Advisory: Though the show's Web site describes the rock opera as being appropriate for teens aged 13 and older, Tufts describes it as "a steamy story of love and sexual awakening" in which the heroine derives pleasure from pain. Several scenes involve bondage and whips, and the brochure reads, "Leather and lace never sounded so good."
PLOT SYNOPSIS Hades, the god of the underworld, has captured the goddess Persephone and tied her up to keep her from leaving his kingdom. When the girl's mother, Demeter, discovers why Zeus won't rescue Persephone, she wreaks a terrible vengeance on the world.
IN HER OWN WORDS I know this sounds kind of hokey, but I woke up from a dream one morning, in which I saw myself auditioning for a new, original musical where I would be tied up on stage for half of the show. I thought, 'What if someone did such a thing? What would the story be about?' A couple of days later, I woke up from another dream, and I had the story line. I composed an opera that updates the myth of Persephone to the early 20th century. That allows me to portray her as a heroine in a silent movie or melodrama.
