Tosca by Puccini, Sat 24 Meán 2016, Ó (2016/2017), Faoi stiúir Alvis Hermanis, Gudrun Hartmann, Seoltóir Domingo Hindoyan, Schiller Theater, Berlin, Germany

When the revolutionary-minded painter Mario Cavaradossi secretly tries to help a politically persecuted man escape, his lover, the famous singer Floria Tosca, believes he is cheating on her with another woman. The ruthless police chief Scarpia uses her jealousy to convict Cavaradossi and then demands a night with Tosca in exchange for her lover's release. With a stringent dramaturgy and pronounced realism, Puccini created one of his harshest and most dramatic works - a milestone in operatic history. Against the background of the conflict between Napoleon's revolutionary army and the Habsburg-Papal troops in 1800, which was fatal to the protagonists of the opera, Puccini acoustically takes the listener to the center of Rome: to the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle, the Palazzo Farnese and the Engelsburg, each of which the composer gave its own musical color. In the production by the Latvian drama director Alvis Hermanis, the singers move in a psychologically dense narrative, set in the time when the opera was written around 1900.