Tosca: Opera Australia

About the Event

Experience Puccini's most famous musical tragedy, in a new production set in Nazi‐occupied Rome.

“Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore,” Tosca bemoans her fate with devastating beauty and poise. “I lived for art; I lived for love.”

Like the knife concealed against Tosca’s silk gown, Puccini’s verismo drama has a sharp edge, employed to startling effect in lushly orchestrated tunes. It is that theatrical instinct that has lured the director John Bell into the world of opera.

Bell has transplanted Tosca’s story to 1943, when Mussolini’s successors abandoned Rome to the invading German armies. Michael Scott‐Mitchell’s sets recreate the radiant, baroque interior of Sant’Andrea della Valle church and, in cruel contrast, the grim, fascist architecture of Scarpia’s headquarters.

Reimagining the Puccini classic is not a task John Bell takes lightly. "World War II is within the memory of many of our audience: they either lived through it or their families did,” Bell explains. “They’ve seen the documentary footage, the movies and the books. I want the experience of our own lifetimes to bring the story into focus.”

Conductor: Andrea Molino
Director: John Bell
Set Designer: Michael Scott‐Mitchell
Costume Designer: Teresa Negroponte
Lighting Designer: Nick Schlieper
Fight Choreographer: Nigel Poulton
Assistant Director: Roger Press

Tosca: Svetla Vassileva
Cavaradossi: Diego Torre
Scarpia: Claudio Sgura
Angelotti: Steven Gallop
Sacristan: Luke Gabbedy
Spoletta: Graeme Macfarlane
Sciarrone: Adrian Tamburini
Gaoler: Tom Hamilton

Orchestra Victoria
Opera Australia Chorus
Opera Australia's Children's Chorus