There are few operas that are so high-pressure from the first bar, few in which the temperature change from ice-cold calculation to overheating occurs in a matter of seconds. And hardly any in which private entanglements and personal tragedy are so interwoven with political attitudes with historical accuracy. Giacomo Puccini's Tosca has electrified audiences since its premiere. The shock wave that came from this opera was so strong that for decades, many reactions will speak more of the bewilderment and overwhelmingness of those affected than of the qualities of the piece itself and its love triangle involving the singer Floria Tosca, the painter Mario Cavaradossi and the police chief Baron Scarpia. The artistry of the protagonist couple Tosca and Cavaradossi is not a coloristic ingredient, but rather defines the profile of their characters; it establishes Tosca's eccentricity as well as Cavaradossi's liberality and also explains the singer's pronounced self-confidence: the heroine of the stage becomes a heroine in life. Scarpia's appearance can also be understood as an outgrowth of his unleashed totalitarian power, and his sexual sadism is still one of the truly scandalous moments in opera literature today. In general, the historical detail is not a decoration, but rather forms “the prerequisite for the conflict between the representatives of two opposing social systems” (Norbert Christen) in a time of crisis. With his network of musical recognition motifs, which - with the exception of the rigid Scarpia chords - adapt sensitively to the situations, Puccini achieves a new dimension of through-composed opera structure; In the extremely dense cohesion of the score, he nevertheless creates islands in which reflections condense into moments of the highest arioso intensity.
