Tosca

In the organizer's words:

Opera by Giacomo Puccini

With "Torture and death, bells and cannons", Puccini wanted to startle his audience in Tosca. He composed a naturalistically shocking drama about the gripping last 24 hours in the life of the singer Tosca - torn between her lover, the artist Cavaradossi, and the unscrupulous man of power Scarpia. The plot culminates in an open-stage murder: in one of the most famous scenes in the repertoire, Tosca stabs her potential rapist to death. But she and her lover do not survive the end of the opera either. A breathless plot, a sex-and-crime thriller in which Puccini, the melodic heartbreaker, also wrote the game of mistaken identity, deceit, deception and manipulation. Sound contrasts include the realistic ringing of church bells, the singing of a young boy, Tosca's desperate, introspective prayer and Cavaradossi's glowing lyricism in familiar Puccini sweetness. In Tosca, too, the composer shows himself to be a master of emotional nerve-wracking and thus an extremely modern musician and pioneer of 20th century film music.