It also testified to Puccini’s skill as a man of the theatre, as the gorgeous music of Tosca seamlessly blends into the deep reverence he has for the melodrama of the original Sardou play on which the opera is based, La Tosca. Its searingly beautiful and passionate score guaranteed its great success and established Puccini as Verdi’s successor of the 20th century. Perhaps Puccini’s greatest masterpiece, Tosca premiered on January 18, 1900. With Members of the Vancouver Festival Orchestraįull program available here on performance day Opera West Society presents Tosca starring Sondra Radvanovsky, Yonghoon Lee and Gregory Dahl in collaboration with the UBC Opera Ensemble. But the perverse machinations of Scarpia outlive him: after a brief glimmer of hope, Mario dies, executed, while Tosca, fleeing her pursuers, jumps off the top of the Castel Sant’Angelo to her death.Luigi Illica & Giuseppe Giacosa | Librettists Cavaradossi is arrested and Scarpia comes close to having his way with Tosca, before she stabs him to death.
The only way to achieve his evil ends is to manipulate the beautiful Tosca, the object of all his fantasies. The chief of police, Scarpia, whose political ambitions thinly disguise his unparalleled cruelty, is on Angelotti’s trail and quickly discovers Cavaradossi's involvement. While working on the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, lover of the (jealous) Tosca, agrees to assist a political prisoner, Cesare Angelotti, in his efforts to escape. Art, love, religion, sadism, conspiracies… all the ingredients of a perfect melodrama mingle and resonate with strength and contemporary realism. Tosca offers two hours of action and passion, captured in a torrent of lyricism and luxuriant orchestration and a libretto that is as effective as a motion picture scenario. With the city of Rome as a backdrop, the opera tells a realistic story of passion and politics, overshadowed, from the moment the curtain rises, by Scarpia, the terrifying chief of police whose toxic personality gradually poisons the atmosphere of this oppressive huis clos. Can a diva be the heroine of an opera? The beautiful and sanguine Tosca is perhaps the most striking character penned by Puccini, inspired by a role Sarah Bernhardt created for the theatre.
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