TOSCA

Rome in 1800. Against the backdrop of the Napoleonic era, the plot of the opera unrolls within a period of 24 hours. Nine months have passed since the fall of the Roman Republic and Scarpia, chief of police in Rome, has established a regime of terror that nips every republican movement in the bud. The singer Floria Tosca and her lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, are also unwittingly drawn into the political conflict. Tosca, however, only wanted to dedicate her life to art. When Cavaradossi hides the fleeing consul of the failed republic at his house, he comes into the firing line of Scarpia, who is also obsessed with Tosca's beauty and blackmails her to win her favour. Tosca only pretends to accept his offer to save Cavaradossi. But this draws her deeper and deeper into Scarpia's deadly intrigue.

With "Tosca", Giacomo Puccini created exactly one hundred years later, in 1900, an operatic thriller par excellence and a musical panorama of the Eternal City between the church, Palazzo Farnese and Castel Sant'Angelo.