Music at the Lighthouse: A Tosca Portrait in Stonington Borough
Music at the Lighthouse: A Tosca Portrait brings Salt Marsh Opera to the grounds of the historic Stonington Lighthouse Museum on Sunday, September 6, for an outdoor performance built around one of opera’s great works.
Soprano Emily Margevich and tenor John Pickle will perform selections from Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, accompanied by Salt Marsh Opera artistic director Simon Holt on piano. The concert begins at 5:30 p.m., with the lighthouse and Stonington Harbor providing a setting that feels unusually well matched to Puccini’s sweeping music.
This is the second concert date for Salt Marsh Opera’s Music at the Lighthouse program. Guests are encouraged to bring friends and family along with picnic blankets and lawn chairs for the outdoor performance.
A Portrait of Puccini’s Tosca
Calling the program A Tosca Portrait is appropriate because this isn’t a complete staged production of the opera.
Instead, Margevich, Pickle and Holt will use selections from Tosca to create a concert portrait of Puccini’s work.
First performed in Rome in 1900, Tosca unfolds over roughly 24 hours amid political turmoil in Rome in June 1800. At its center are celebrated singer Floria Tosca and painter Mario Cavaradossi, whose relationship is caught in the machinery of political repression and the schemes of police chief Baron Scarpia.
Puccini packed the opera with jealousy, devotion, torture, murder, betrayal and some of the most recognizable music in the operatic repertoire.
For a concert built around soprano and tenor voices, Tosca provides extraordinary material.
Cavaradossi’s music includes “Recondita armonia” and the third-act aria “E lucevan le stelle,” while Tosca’s “Vissi d’arte” has become one of the defining soprano arias in opera.
Salt Marsh Opera hasn’t published a complete musical program for the September 6 concert, so the exact selections are best left to the performance.
Emily Margevich and John Pickle Take the Lead
Salt Marsh Opera has chosen Emily Margevich, soprano, and John Pickle, tenor, as the featured singers for A Tosca Portrait.
They’ll be joined at the piano by Simon Holt, Salt Marsh Opera’s artistic director.
The reduced format puts considerable emphasis on the singers themselves. Without a full orchestra, elaborate scenery or a large supporting cast, the audience can concentrate on Puccini’s vocal writing and the relationship between the two principal voices.
It’s a different way of encountering an opera written for the theater.
Rather than recreating Rome on a stage, the performance takes Puccini out of the opera house and puts it beside the water in Stonington.
Opera on the Grounds of an 1840 Lighthouse
The location is more than an attractive backdrop.
The Stonington Harbor Light was built in 1840, replacing an earlier lighthouse constructed in 1823.
The granite structure stands near the southern end of Stonington Borough, just a short distance from Stonington Point and the harbor entrance.
Its active life as a navigational light was relatively brief. The lighthouse was decommissioned in 1889 after the construction of the Stonington Outer Breakwater Light.
But its second life proved remarkably important.
The Stonington Historical Society, now Historic Stonington, acquired the building in 1925 and opened it as a museum in 1927. Today, the Lighthouse Museum preserves both the building and collections connected to the long maritime history of Stonington.
The result is one of the Borough’s most recognizable landmarks and an unusually intimate setting for an outdoor concert.
Instead of looking toward a conventional stage wall, the audience has a historic granite lighthouse rising behind the performers and the waters around Stonington Borough nearby.
Bring a Picnic, Blanket and Lawn Chairs
Music at the Lighthouse is designed as an outdoor community concert rather than a formal night at the opera.
Salt Marsh Opera specifically encourages guests to bring picnics, blankets and lawn chairs.
That changes the atmosphere considerably.
There’s no need for an opera-house dress code or a theater seat. Guests can settle onto the lighthouse grounds for an early-evening performance overlooking the water.
The 5:30 p.m. start also places the concert during one of the better times of day to be at the southern end of Stonington Borough in early September.
Because the performance is outdoors, weather matters.
Salt Marsh Opera has set Sunday, September 13 as the rain date.
Salt Marsh Opera Begins Its 26th Season
The lighthouse concert arrives as Salt Marsh Opera celebrates its 26th season.
The company grew out of an idea that began after two local opera lovers attended a performance in New London and encountered an impromptu concert in the lobby. From those beginnings, Salt Marsh Opera developed into a regional company producing opera and musical programming in southeastern Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Its mission extends beyond full theatrical productions. The nonprofit also works to introduce new audiences to opera, provide opportunities for emerging artists and offer educational programming for children and adults.
Music at the Lighthouse represents the more informal side of that mission.
It brings professional voices into a familiar community space and allows people to experience Puccini without first committing to a full-length opera.
Later this fall, Salt Marsh Opera returns to fully staged opera with Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka, scheduled for performances at the UNITED Theatre in Westerly and the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook.
An Accessible Introduction to Tosca
For someone who doesn’t regularly attend opera, A Tosca Portrait could be a particularly approachable introduction.
Puccini wrote music with an extraordinary ability to communicate emotion quickly. You don’t need a detailed understanding of operatic form to recognize fear, love, desperation or grief in Tosca.
And a concert of selections removes another barrier.
Rather than asking newcomers to follow an entire three-act story in Italian, the program can focus attention on some of the music and characters that have kept Tosca in the international repertory for more than a century.
For experienced opera audiences, the appeal is different.
They already know what these voices and melodies can do inside an opera house.
Here, they’ll hear them outdoors beside an 1840 lighthouse overlooking the Connecticut shoreline.
Event Details
Event: Music at the Lighthouse: A Tosca Portrait
Date: Sunday, September 6, 2026
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Rain Date: Sunday, September 13
Location: Stonington Lighthouse Museum
Address: 7 Water Street, Stonington, CT 06378
Presented By: Salt Marsh Opera
Featured Soprano: Emily Margevich
Featured Tenor: John Pickle
Piano: Simon Holt
Program: Selections from Puccini’s Tosca
Setting: Outdoor concert on the lighthouse grounds
What to Bring: Picnic, blankets and lawn chairs
TICKETS: Tickets are available for $20 in advance, $25 at the event, with children under 14 attending for free. To purchase tickets in advance, call the Box Office at (860) 535-0753. Tickets are also available for purchase at Tom’s Newsstand in Stonington Borough, located at 133 Water Street, Stonington, CT.
More information is available at the Event Website link below.
Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.