Tosca

Giacomo Puccini

Tosca

LIVE IN HD

Overview

Extraordinary soprano Lise Davidsen stars as the volatile diva Floria Tosca for her first time at the Met. David McVicar’s thrilling production also features tenor Freddie De Tommaso in his eagerly anticipated company debut as Tosca’s revolutionary lover, Cavaradossi, and powerhouse baritone Quinn Kelsey as the sadistic chief of police Scarpia. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the electrifying score, which features some of Puccini’s most memorable melodies. This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.

English StreamText captioning is available for the Met’s transmission of Tosca here. A transcript of the transmission will also be available to view after the live performance.

Buy tickets for Tosca live in the opera house here.

Production a gift of Jacqueline Desmarais, in memory of Paul G. Desmarais Sr; The Paiko Foundation; and Dr. Elena Prokupets, in memory of her late husband, Rudy Prokupets

Major support from Rolex

The Met gratefully acknowledges the support of the Gramma Fisher Foundation, Marshalltown, Iowa

Revival a gift of The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, Mastercard, and Rolex

Tosca

Premiere: Teatro Costanzi, Rome, 1900. Puccini’s melodrama about a volatile diva, a sadistic police chief, and an idealistic artist has offended and thrilled audiences for more than a century. Critics, for their part, have often had problems with Tosca’s rather grungy subject matter, the directness and intensity of its score, and the crowd-pleasing dramatic opportunities it provides for its lead roles. But these same aspects have made Tosca one of a handful of iconic works that seem to represent opera in the public imagination. Tosca’s popularity is further secured by a superb and exhilarating dramatic sweep, a driving score of abundant melody and theatrical shrewdness, and a career-defining title role.

Creators

Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) was immensely popular in his own lifetime, and his mature works remain staples in the repertory of most of the world’s opera companies. His operas are celebrated for their mastery of detail, sensitivity to everyday subjects, copious melody, and economy of expression. Puccini’s librettists for Tosca, Giuseppe Giacosa (1847–1906) and Luigi Illica (1857–1919), also collaborated with him on his two other most enduringly successful operas, La Bohème and Madama Butterfly. Giacosa, a dramatist, was responsible for the stories, and Illica, a poet, worked primarily on the words themselves.

PRODUCTION

David McVicar

SET and COSTUME DESIGNER

John Macfarlane

LIGHTING DESIGNER

David Finn

MOVEMENT DIRECTOR

Leah Hausman

Headshot of Giacomo Puccini

COMPOSER

Giacomo Puccini

Setting

Tosca

No opera is more tied to its setting than Tosca, which takes place in Rome on the morning of June 17, 1800, through dawn the following day. The specified settings for each of the three acts—the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, Palazzo Farnese, and Castel Sant’Angelo—are familiar monuments in the city and can still be visited today. While the libretto takes some liberties with the facts, historical issues form a basis for the opera: The people of Rome are awaiting news of the Battle of Marengo in northern Italy, which will decide the fate of their symbolically powerful city.

Music

The score of Tosca (if not the drama) itself is considered a prime example of the style of verismo, an elusive term usually translated as “realism.” The typical musical features of the verismo tradition are prominent in Tosca: short arias with an uninhibited flood of raw melody, ambient sounds that blur the distinctions between life and art, and the use of parlato—words spoken instead of sung—at moments of tension.

Tosca