Tosca

The Teatro dell’Opera di Roma is staging Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, an opera in three acts with a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based on the play of the same name by Victorien Sardou. The production recreates the historic 1900 staging, originally designed by Adolf Hohenstein.

Antonino Fogliani is the conductor, whilst Alessandro Talevi is the stage director. The sets, reconstructed by Carlo Savi, and the costumes, reconstructed by Anna Biagiotti, are based on Hohenstein’s original designs. Vinicio Cheli is responsible for the lighting, whilst Ciro Visco is the choirmaster. The cast features Eleonora Buratto as Floria Tosca, Jonathan Tetelman as Mario Cavaradossi and Luca Salsi as Baron Scarpia. The other roles are performed by Gabriele Sagona as Cesare Angelotti, Domenico Colaianni as the Sacristan, Matteo Mezzaro as Spoletta, Daniele Massimi as Sciarrone, Alessandro Guerzoni as the Jailer and Maria Nardone as the Shepherd Boy. The Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma perform alongside the Children’s Chorus, conducted by Maestro Alberto de Sanctis, bringing one of the most celebrated masterpieces of Italian opera to the stage. The performance is recorded by Rai Cultura and broadcast on Rai 3, RaiPlay and Radio 3, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture.

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.

The programme is subject to change

The audience at the Rome Opera House. Photo: Fabrizio Sansoni – Teatro dell'Opera di Roma