Tosca

In the organizer's words:

Opera by Giacomo Puccini

Floria Tosca lives entirely for music and her love for the artist Mario Cavaradossi. When he is sentenced to death for his political commitment against an inhumane regime, the singer is also on the brink of collapse. The jealous Baron Scarpia tries to blackmail Tosca: If she wants to save her lover from execution, she must give herself to Scarpia. Tosca agrees to the bargain - and stabs Scarpia to death. But the path to freedom is deceptive. Scarpia's power extends beyond death.
In hardly any other opera are personal passion and political arbitrariness so closely intertwined and at the same time so cruelly exposed as in Giacomo Puccini's Tosca from 1900. The unsparing reckoning with abuse of power and machinations and at the same time deeply moving love story still electrify today with a score that is as grippingly dramatic and nerve-wrackingly tense as it is full of moments of enchanting beauty. Arias such as Tosca's "Vissi d'arte" and Cavaradossi's "É lucevan le stelle" are among the icons of Italian vocal art for good reason.
Against the backdrop of a world in which art and power meet glamorously in public, director Vasily Barkhatov directs our attention to covetousness and abuse in the back rooms. In the visually stunning spaces of Zinovy Margolin, this Tosca is a musical-theatrical psychogram that gets under your skin.