Tosca | Puccini

Premiered in 1900 at Rome's Teatro Costanzi, Puccini's new opera Tosca was a memorable popular success. Dominique Pitoiset re-reads the famous melodrama from a political angle, questioning the omnipresence of totalitarian regimes.

The action takes place in the Eternal City in 1800, occupied by the reactionary troops of the monarchy then in power in Naples, in the wake of Bonaparte's victory at Marengo. In order to save her compromised lover, the painter Cavaradossi, the singer Floria Tosca goes so far as to murder the Machiavellian chief of police, Baron Scarpia, only to suffer his posthumous revenge. All that remains of Victorien Sardou's historical drama is this infernal trio condemned to annihilation. Can love and freedom resist tyranny and lecherous sadism? Cruelty, cynicism and passionate love are the order of the day in this powerful and fluid work. The staging of this internationally acclaimed masterpiece, undoubtedly one of Puccini's most performed operas and of the Italian repertoire, questions the place of artists in the face of arbitrary power, in a society muzzled by political violence supported by complicit religious authorities.