In his staging, acclaimed by Press and public alike at the première in 2002, director Dietrich Hilsdorf shows “Tosca” by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) as “a realistic psycho-logical crime story hardly to be equalled in atmospheric tension” (Ulrich Schreiber).

The singer Floria Tosca, who lives only for her art, becomes inadvertently caught up in the political and personal machinations of Baron Scarpia. The latter has long since had erotic ambitions towards Tosca and uses her anxiety for her lover Mario Cavaradossi to achieve his base aims by blackmail. If she is to save him from execution, she must yield to the Baron’s lust. Tosca ostensibly accedes to the deal, but as Scarpia makes for her, she stabs him. The way to liberty seems free, and Tosca dreams of life with her lover after her deed; but she is jerked brutally back into reality when it transpires that he has been done to death after all.


 
***
Giacomo Puccini

TOSCA
Opera in three acts
Libretto by Luigi Illica und Giuseppe Giacosa
 
Sung in Italian with German titles
 

Musikalische Leitung Stefan Klingele
Inszenierung Dietrich Hilsdorf
Bühne und Kostüme Johannes Leiacker
Chorleitung Christoph Kurig
Kinderchorleitung Petra Verhoeven
Dramaturgie Cornelia Dr. Preissinger
 
Tosca Morenike Fadayomi
Cavaradossi Giancarlo Monsalve
Scarpia John Wegner
Angelotti Timo Riihonen
Sagrestano Peter Nikolaus Kante
Spoletta Florian Simson
Sciarrone Lukasz Konieczny
Chor Chor der Deutschen Oper am Rhein
Kinderchor Kinderchor St. Remigius
Orchester Düsseldorfer Symphoniker