OPERNHAUS BRATISLAVA/PRESSBURG – TOSCA at Slowakisches Nationaltheater - Neubau des Nationaltheaters

The story of the singer Tosca and the painter Cavaradossi is a masterpiece of musical drama, an oeuvre electric with tension in which - unlike most other operas - nothing can be excised or abridged. ´Tosca´ was premiered in 1900, and not only in this literal sense, but also in terms of its ethos as musical drama, it belongs to the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Puccini embarks from the tradition of Italian opera resting on the bel canto style and setting idealistic romantic subjects; at the same time, however, he oversteps its boundaries. His music is beautiful and soaring, but at the same time also expresses constant anxiety and imperilment by the unseen and pernicious dangers incorporated in the opera by the sanctimonious Baron Scarpia. And thus it is probably in the music of ´Tosca´ that the prime theme of the whole of Pucini´s opus is best expressed: the momentariness, fragility and transience of human happiness.