Tosca by Puccini, fre. 07 okt. 2022, Fra (2022/2022), Instrueret af Renata Scotto, Dirigent Giovanni Di Stefano, Teatro Comunale Chiabrera, Savona, Italy

First staged at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900, Tosca by Giacomo Puccini with libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based on the five-act drama by Victorien Sardou La Tosca (1887), is considered the most dramatic work of Lucchese. The historical picture of the story is real: in 1798, after Napoleon's victories in the first Italian campaign, the French troops had occupied Rome, suppressed the temporal power of the popes and proclaimed the Roman Republic. But with Napoleon's departure for the Egyptian campaign, the Neapolitan army of Ferdinand IV of Bourbon had expelled the French, overthrew the Republic, tried and imprisoned its representatives. Sardou's drama - which Puccini had attended at the Teatro dei Filodrammatici in Milan in 1889 with the great Sarah Bernhardt, who had been its first interpreter, in the role of the protagonist - had impressed the composer (despite not knowing French) to the point of to push the Ricordi publisher to work to obtain the rights of the subject who had already received the attention of Alberto Franchetti. By exploiting many of the protagonists present in the French drama (such as Queen Maria Carolina, Giovanni Paisiello or Diego Naselli), Illica and Giacosa developed a perfect clockwork mechanism which, in the space of a day, tells a dark story, in which love and death blend masterfully.