Tosca

Pittsburgh in the Round: Pittsburgh Opera inaugurated its 79th season last night with an overall brilliant performance of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca. The opera is a perennial favorite, and deservedly so. Puccini penned possibly the last “grand opera” of the 19th century when he set to music this Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It was first heard at the Teatro Costanzi, Rome, in January 1900. The work, based on Victorien Sardou’s 1887 French-language play, La Tosca, is a melodrama set in Rome in June 1800, while the Kingdom of Naples’ control of Rome is threatened by Napoleon’s invading forces. The three leading roles are Floria Tosca, a singer; Mario Cavaradossi, her artist lover, and the villainous Baron Scarpia, who has Rome under an iron fist.