Tosca

Puccini’s Tosca is a tragic love story, but it’s also one of opera’s greatest thrillers: a drama of passion and power, corruption and courage set in Rome in an age of revolution. It’s June 1800, and the forces of repression are hunting down the surviving leaders of a short-lived democracy. Amid the terror and tumoil, the young artist Mario Cavaradossi is going about his business of painting saints, while soothing the jealousy of his beautiful and passionate lover, the opera singer Floria Tosca. But Cavaradossi has revolutionary sympathies, and the sadistic police chief Baron Scarpia—consumed with lust for Tosca—is weaving a web that will trap them both. Premiered in 1900, Tosca takes a drama by French playwright Victorien Sardou and gives it the pace and punch of an action movie. The stakes are high, but so are the emotions, and Puccini never holds back, expressing love, idealism, hatred and despair in melodies that burn themselves into memory: “Recondita armonia”, “Vissi d’arte”, “E lucevan le stelle”. It’s strong stuff, and Tosca’s sensational plot and ardent score have not always been admired by critics. Opera lovers around the world, however, have begged to differ, and from its first action-packed notes to its shocking and spectacular finish, Tosca remains one of the most popular of all Italian operas, for audiences and singers alike.