Tosca – Opera House, Manchester
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Italian composer Puccini, structured as a through-composed work, with arias, recitative, choruses and other elements musically woven into a seamless whole. Set in Rome in June 1800, the city is threatened by the advancing army of Napoleon Bonaparte.
In the inside of the church of Sant' Andrea della Villa, Cesare Angelotti (Eugeniu Ganea), former Consul and now an escaped political prisoner, has taken refuge. He hides on the arrival of a Sacristan (Valeriu Cojocaru) before the painter Mario Cavaradossi (Vitalii Liskovetskyi) appears to continue work on his portrait of Mary Magdalene, based on a blonde-haired woman who is in fact Angelotti's sister, and he compares her to his dark-haired lover, the singer Floria Tosca (Elena Dee).
Cavaradossi promises...