Tosca

When the revolutionary-minded painter Mario Cavaradossi secretly tries to help a victim of political persecution escape, his lover, the famous singer Floria Tosca, believes that he is cheating on her with another woman. The unscrupulous police chief Scarpia uses her jealousy to convict Cavaradossi and then demands a night with Tosca in return for the release of her lover.

With stringent dramaturgy and distinctive realism, Puccini created one of his most harsh and dramatic works — a milestone in opera history. Against the backdrop of the conflict between Napoleon's revolutionary army and the Habsburg-Papal troops in 1800, which was the undoing of the protagonists of the opera, Puccini acoustically takes the listener to the center of Rome: the Sant'Andrea della Valle church, the Palazzo Farnese and Castel Sant'Angelo, each of which the composer gave their own musical color. In the production by Latvian acting director Alvis Hermanis, the singers move in a psychologically dense narrative, set in the time when the opera was created around 1900. The staged presentation is supplemented by an intricately designed graphic novel by stage and costume designer Kristīne Jurjāne, which is set at the original locations of June 17 and 18, 1800 in Rome and on a stage set by monuments representative architecture is projected.