Royal Opera - Tosca

The splendour of Rome. The devastation of war. Puccini’s operatic thriller returns in an epic new production.
Anna Netrebko and Aleksandra Kurzak share the title role, starring alongside Freddie De Tommaso and Gerald Finley in a thrilling new staging of Puccini’s Tosca for The Royal Opera. Conducted by new Music Director Jakub Hrůša and directed by Oliver Mears.
From the early 1890s Giacomo Puccini had toyed with adapting French playwright Victorien Sardou’s gripping melodrama La Tosca into an opera, but only began serious work following the premiere of the critically acclaimed La bohème in 1896. Employing La bohème's gifted librettists Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica to streamline Sardou's complicated plot, Puccini’s Tosca premiered in 1900. With the city gripped by political unrest, fears of violence plagued the premiere at Rome’s Teatro Costanzi. However, Tosca opened without incident, and although unpopular with critics who disliked its violence, it became an immediate success with the public and has remained a favourite ever since.