Tosca

Giacomo Puccini's most dramatic opera returns to the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in the evocative reconstruction of the historical 1900 staging based on Adolf Hohenstein's original sketches. 

Presented at three different times - in January, March and May - with the direction of Alessandro Talevi, three different casts and three different conductors, the melodrama celebrates the 125th anniversary of its first performance, which took place on the stage of the Costanzi in the presence of the composer himself.

Composed in 1889 to a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, Tosca is inspired by the historical drama by Victorien Sardou, first performed at the Théatre de la Porte-Saint-Martin in Paris on 24 November 1887. Characterised by continuous coups de théâtre and rapid evolution of the melody, Puccini's masterpiece portrays the events taking place in Rome on a single day, 14 June 1800, at the time of the fall of the Roman Republic, the Restoration of the Papal States and the revolutionary echoes coming from France. Reconstructing the historical tensions, the Tuscan composer portrays an extraordinary fresco of persecuted love around the three main characters, the singer Floria Tosca, the painter Mario Cavaradossi and the police chief Scarpia, finding a new musical language.

On stage in March, with splendid costumes reconstructed by Anna Biagiotti, are great opera singers - including the star Anna Netrebko, Yolanda Auyanet, Yusif Eyvazov, Luciano Ganci, Amartuvshin Enkbath and Gabriele Viviani - accompanied by the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell'Opera, conducted by Daniel Oren and Ciro Visco, with the participation of the School of Choral Singing of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma.

Photo: Tosca 1900, Anna Pirozzi (Tosca), ph Yasuko Kageyama-Opera di Roma 2015-16