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Toscaopera in three acts Music: Giacomo Puccini Libertto: Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa after the play Floria Tosca by Victorien Sardou Production: Stanislav Gaudasinsky Set and Costume Designer: Vyacheslav Okunev Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Mikhailovsky Chorus: Vladimir Stolpovskikh Director of the Reconstruction: Yulia Prokhorova Assistant to the Director: Vyacheslav Kalyuzhny Chorus Master: Alexey Dmitriyev Lighting Design: Mikhail Mekler Principal Pianist: Maria Kopyseva Premiere at the Mikhailovsky Theatre: February 28, 1999 Premiere of the revival: June 17, 2009 Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes Performance has two intervals Performed in Italian (the performance will have synchronised Russian supertitles) Victorien Sardou’s drama La Tosca was created for the great actress Sarah Bernhardt. Puccini saw Sardou’s play when it was touring Italy in 1889 and, after some vacillation, obtained the rights to turn the work into an opera six years later. Turning the wordy French play into a succinct Italian opera took four years, during which the composer repeatedly argued with his librettists and publisher. The work is a melodramatic piece set in Rome in June 1800, with the Kingdom of Naples’s control of Rome threatened by Napoleon’s invasion of Italy. It contains depictions of torture, murder and suicide, yet also includes some of Puccini’s best-known lyrical arias, and has inspired memorable performances from many of opera’s leading singers. The dramatic force of Tosca and its characters continues to fascinate both performers and audiences, and the work remains one of the most frequently performed operas. At the Mikhailovsky Theatre one can hear the best soloists of the house.
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1833–2012 Mikhailovsky Theatre St. Petersburg
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Idea Fix