opera on screen

The drama that plays out in Tosca is passionate, historical, cruel. And Puccini's music inhabits it with an intensity, a fever of every moment, crossed by flashes of tenderness or pure poetry which have long conquered the hearts of all opera lovers.
Three works by Puccini are among the five most performed operas in the world, and the match continues to be replayed between La Bohème, Madame Butterfly and Tosca. Because these masterpieces, very freshly received when they were created, very quickly established themselves on stages around the world and have never left them again. 
For Tosca, created in Rome in 1900, the consecration took less than three years. The trio made up of the young, amorous and jealous singer, the talented painter Mario Cavaradossi and the abject police chief Scarpia was invented by the French playwright Victorien Sardou, from whom Puccini was inspired, but it was the composer who brought to life these characters that the music characterizes with extraordinary eloquence. The way the orchestra underlines Scarpia's cruelty in the "Te Deum" of the first act, the generous nature and intelligence revealed in Mario's two arias, the energy and dismay of Tosca throughout his confrontation with the chief of police, form a breathtaking musical framework on which highly suggestive ideas are grafted such as this concert in the neighboring church, which we hear through an open window in the second act, or the sunrise over Rome which introduces the following act. 
A real challenge for all the performers, starting with the director Silvia Paoli, passionate about the work and its music.

Free with reservation.
Photography©Jean-Louis Fernandez