Tosca at The State Opera

Giacomo Puccini had been intrigued by Victorien Sardou’s drama La Tosca ever since 1889, when in Milan he saw a performance featuring the celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt. Yet the complicated negotiations between his publisher Giulio Ricordi and Sardou, as well as his working on the operas Manon Lescaut and La bohéme, delayed his composing Tosca, which he would only complete in 1899. The world premiere took place at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900 and was a huge success, even though Gustav Mahler said it was a “masterful patchwork”, and Richard Strauss castigated it in even harsher terms.

Nevertheless, today the opera about the famous singer Tosca, her lover (the painter Cavaradossi) and the malicious chief of police Scarpio, set in 1800 in Italy at the time of Napoleon’s war against Austria, is one of the most popular operas worldwide. Our current production makes use of Josef Svoboda’s legendary sets dating from the period of the Fifth of May Grand Opera (today the Estates Theatre). A faithful copy of the 1947 sets, created by means of modern technology, has contributed to the production’s great popularity at the present time.