Tosca

This year, Tosca at the Teatro dell'Opera, scheduled for November 1st and broadcast live on Rai 3 by Rai Cultura in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, closes the celebrations for the 125th anniversary of Puccini's masterpiece.

The three-act opera, with a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1895 and 1899, was performed at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in 1900; the libretto is based on Victorien Sardou's play La Tosca, which premiered in 1887 at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin in Paris, and whose success was largely due to Sarah Bernhardt's performance.

The plot centers on the singer Floria Tosca, lover of the liberal painter Mario Cavaradossi, who, however, is simultaneously courted by Scarpia, the minister of the papal police. Scarpia imprisons the painter and blackmails Tosca: if she does not give herself to him, Cavaradossi will be shot. However, Tosca, unwilling to give herself, first obtains a safe conduct from Scarpia, and then kills him. According to the agreement with Scarpia, the painter was supposed to be subjected to a mock execution, but instead he is actually shot on the battlements of Castel Sant'Angelo; Tosca then throws herself from the castle. From its first performance, the love story and death of Tosca and Cavaradossi, the painter's imprisonment and torture, the interrogations, the execution, the sweeping stage settings, the attention to the early nineteenth-century Roman setting, the orchestration rich in powerful effects and above all the two famous arias "Vissi d'arte" and "E lucean le stelle" -all these features together have contributed to the success of this opera, one of Puccini's most beloved.

Tosca is also considered the great Tuscan composer's most dramatic opera, full of twists and turns that keep the audience in constant suspense.

Conductor, Daniel Oren; stage direction, Alessandro Talevi; Chorus Master, Ciro Visco; Set design, Adolf Hohenstein, reconstructed by Carlo Savi. Costume design, Adolf Hohenstein, reconstructed by Anna Biagiotti; lighting design, Vinicio Cheli.

Characters and performers: Floria Tosca, Eleonora Buratto; Mario Cavaradossi, Jonathan Tetelman; Baron Scarpia, Luca Salsi; Cesare Angelotti, Gabriele Sagona; Sacristan, Domenico Colaianni; Spoletta, Matteo Mezzaro.

Orchestra and Chorus of the Rome Opera House, with the participation of the Rome Opera School of Choral Singing. Production by the Rome Opera House, with a reconstruction of the historic 1900 production.

Photo credits: Yasuko Kageyama - Teatro dell'Opera, interior