Tosca di Giacomo Puccini

The National Academy of Santa Cecilia, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the death of Giacomo Puccini (Lucca 1858 - Brussels 1924), inaugurates the new Symphonic Season 2024-2025 by performing the opera Tosca by the composer from Lucca, in concert form. This opening concert is doubly important because it marks both the installation of Daniel Harding as the new Musical Director of the Orchestra and Choir of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, and his debut conducting this work.

The three-act opera, with a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, composed by Puccini between 1895 and 1899, was performed at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in 1900; the libretto derives from the drama La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, performed for the first time in 1887 at the Théatre de la Porte-Saint-Martin in Paris, whose success was linked above all to Sarah Bernhardt's interpretation.

The plot has as its protagonist the singer Floria Tosca, lover of the liberal painter Mario Cavaradossi who, however, at the same time, is courted by the pontifical police minister Scarpia. The latter imprisons the painter and blackmails Tosca: if the woman does not give herself to him, Cavaradossi will be shot; but Tosca, who does not want to give in, first gets safe conduct from Scarpia, and then kills him. The painter, according to the agreement with Scarpia, should have been subjected to a mock shooting, but instead he was actually executed on the terraces of Castel Sant'Angelo; Tosca then throws herself from the castle. Since its first representation, for the story of love and death of Tosca and Cavaradossi, the painter's imprisonments and tortures, the interrogations, the shooting, the wide-ranging scenic settings, the attention to the Roman setting of the first of the nineteenth century, the orchestration rich in powerful effects and above all for the two famous arias "Vissi d'arte" and "E lucean le stelle", all these characteristics together contributed to the success of this opera, among the most loved by Puccini.

Tosca is also considered the most dramatic work of the great Tuscan composer, full of twists and turns that keep the viewer in constant tension.

The cast is made up of Eleonora Buratto, who already made her debut in the role of Tosca last May at the Munich Staatsoper, the American Jonathan Tetelman, who plays the role of Cavaradossi, the French baritone Ludovic Tézier, who plays the evil Scarpia and by Giorgi Manoshvili, who plays Cesare Angelotti.

Photo credits: The National Academy of Santa Cecilia Facebook official page