On the podium of the Sala Grande, leading the Orchestra and the Coro del Maggio and the children's choir of the Accademia del Maggio, the main conductor Daniele Gatti, the direction is by Massimo Popolizio.

In the main roles, Vanessa Goikoetxea is Floria Tosca; Piero Pretti plays Mario Cavaradossi, Alexey Markov is Baron Scarpia.

Thursday 23 May 2024, at 5pm, in the Ridotto of the Foyer of the Galleria del Teatro del Maggio, conference by Luca Logi on 'Romanità di Tosca'. 

Free entry until all available places are available.

The performance on 6 June will be broadcast live on Rai Radio 3 

The first performance is completely sold out in every seating order, the performances on 26 and 6 June are rapidly selling out.

Wider residual availability in the performances of 3 and 8 June. 

We thank Ferragamo for its support of the 86th Festival del Maggio

Florence, May 21st 2024 – After the success of Turandot directed by maestro Zubin Mehta and the recent Jeanne Dark by Fabio Vacchi, presented for the first time to the public in the three performances staged in Sala Mehta, the opera programming of the 86th edition of the Festival del Maggio Musicale Fiorentinobillboard – in the continuation of the celebrations of the centenary of the composer Giacomo Puccini – is enriched with one of his most beloved opera titles, Tosca.

The opera is scheduled for Friday, May 24th at 8pm in the Great Hall of the Theatre; four more performances are scheduled: June 3rd, 6th and 8th  at 8pm and May 26th at 3.30pm. The first performance is completely sold out in every seating order, the performances on 26 and 6 June are rapidly selling out. Wider residual availability in the performances of 3 and 8 June.

On the podium, leading the Maggio Orchestra and Choir and the Children's choir of the Accademia del Maggio, the main conductor Daniele Gatti, already a protagonist in the Festival del Maggio with the warm successes of the inaugural concert on 13 April and then that of the recent May 5th.

The direction of this new production is curated by Massimo Popolizio, making his debut as a director at the Maggio and who, in his vision, transports the opera of Puccini's in the Rome of the early 1930s.

On stage, in her debut on the stage of Maggio, the soprano Vanessa Goikoetxea plays the protagonist of the story, the singer Floria Tosca. Piero Pretti, one of the most appreciated tenors on the international scene, who returns to Maggio after the great success achieved with Rigoletto in autumn 2021; for the first time in his career he plays the role of Tosca's lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi (played in the performance of 8 June by Vincenzo Costanzo). Alexey Markov, also making his debut on the stage of the Theatre, is the sadistic Baron Scarpia, ruthless antagonist of Puccini's story. Gabriele Sagona plays Cesare Angelotti; Matteo Torcaso plays the role of the Sacristan; Oronzo D'Urso and Dario Giorgelé are respectively Spoletta and Sciarrone, Scarpia's henchmen. He closes the singing company in the role of A jailer Cesare Filiberto Tenuta.

The scenes are by Margherita Palli, one of the most prestigious artists of recent decades who oversaw the scenography of the historic Tosca at the Teatro alla Scala in 1997, directed by Luca Ronconi; the costumes are by Silvia Aymonino, who recently designed the costumes for the Ernani in October 2022 while the lights are by Pasquale Mari.

The maestro of the Coro del Maggio is Lorenzo Fratini. The maestro of the Children's Choir of the Accademia del Maggio is Sara Matteucci.

Before each performance, presentations of the shows are also offered to the public, held by Katiuscia Manetta, Maddalena Bonechi and Marco Cosci: the guides are held in the Foyer of the Zubin Mehta Hall or in the Galleria Foyer of the Great Hall approximately 45 minutes before the start of each performance. In the foyer of the Great Hall of the Theater there is an exhibition dedicated to Giacomo Puccini and the staging of his works at the Maggio.

Performed 16 times during the Maggio’s seasons, the last of which, in concert form, on the occasion of maestro Zubin Mehta's 85th birthday in may 2021, Tosca is among the most famous operatic titles of all time. The subject of the opera – which Puccini began to compose in the spring of 1896, a few months after the debut of La bohème – is based on the drama of La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, which the composer had the opportunity to see in Milan in 1889, performed by great Sarah Bernhardt. Puccini was very passionate about that subject, working hard to transform it into an opera and, after having discussed it with Giulio Ricordi and having obtained authorization from Sardou, he set to work on it, entrusting the libretto - after Bohème - again to Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. The opera debuted on 14 January 1900 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, immediately entering the repertoire of the major opera houses of the world.

On the podium of the Sala Grande Daniele Gatti, in his penultimate appointment as part of the 86th Festival del Maggio; the main director of the Theater will return to lead the Orchestra and Choir of the Maggio on 7 June dedicated to the music of Goffredo Petrassi and Dmitrij Shostakovič.

The main director of the Maggio, who returns to take the score of Tosca in his hands after 22 years, underlined what are the most fascinating aspects of Puccini's masterpiece: “Approaching a score is like reading a novel and approaching Tosca is exactly like read a book that has inspired thousands of films. I will try to bring to light those aspects of the work and its musical nuances that are still in the shadows. In a certain sense the score must be 'interrogated' and it is necessary to focus on the choice of tempos: it is in fact in the rhythm itself that we find the psychology of the characters of the work contained. Popolizio's interpretation is absolutely interesting and gives us confirmation that the human soul - regardless of the era in which a work takes place and is conceived - does not change at all.”

The direction is signed by Massimo Popolizio, making his debut as a director on the scenes of the Maggio but already present as an actor in the Theater seasons: he was in fact among the protagonists of two historic shows directed by Luca Ronconi; The Fairy Queen of July 1987 and Sturm Und Drang, staged at the Teatro alla Pergola in May 1995 (in this last show, just like for this production of Tosca, the scenes were designed by Margherita Palli). As underlined in his interview for the booklet, Popolizio thinks of his Tosca in the Rome that fades from the 1920s to the 1930s of the twentieth century, giving another point of view on the story to best enhance the themes themselves: “Together in Margherita Palli we set ourselves the objective of recreating a Roman majesty which instead of looking - especially with regards to the scenes we will see - at the baroque splendor of the original places where the work takes place takes as its reference the 'modern majesty' which is breathe in the Eur district of Rome. But I want to underline that I didn't try to venture into strange situations or directorial solutions, but only to find another point of view to best enhance the themes of the work. For example, during the Te Deum, what we will see are kids from the suburbs - like EUR, in fact - the ladies wearing the best dress for the occasion, nuns in collegiate habits, in short: we will not see costumes or objects scenes of enormous visual impact also because this 'cleaning' work towards which we have oriented ourselves makes what we see unfold on the stage almost more sacred. As a reference we took a great film by Bernardo Bertolucci, The Conformist, in which you can clearly breathe the air of Rome, an air that we are trying to 'bring to the stage' here at Maggio with this new staging of Tosca. In our vision, the Rome in which the protagonists move is certainly elegant, but also extremely violent: one of the pillars of this work is in fact Scarpia, who is not only a violent man, but also profoundly sadistic. Even scenically this is underlined by the objects collected by this man, macabre and horrifying objects: in the second act, for example, we will see a bookcase, where stuffed animals and beasts are preserved under formaldehyde. So what we tried to think of and stage is a temporal transposition into a beautiful and violent Rome which, however, does not change the substance of the story and, above all, does not change the relationships between the protagonists on stage."

Precisely in reference to the Te Deum, among the most famous choral moments of all time, the maestro of the Coro del Maggio Lorenzo Fratini underlined the genius of this moment of the opera: "Puccini had this brilliant intuition of having the first act end with this Te Deum, which is the song of maximum jubilation in the Catholic liturgy: this is because this solemn chorus stands out with the words pronounced at the same time by Scarpia, which have completely different intentions. The peculiarity of this moment is related to the fact that the first part of the chorus is not sung, but rather declaimed, therefore Puccini introduces a part of the text of the liturgy into an opera; the other great peculiarity is given by the Choir singing in unison: there is no accompaniment, except that of the trombones that accompany the last notes of the first act, which finally take up Scarpia's theme.”

The protagonist of the story is the singer Floria Tosca, who in this production is seen through a temporal filter - as mentioned - which paints her as a fascinating and seductive interpreter of jazz, music which largely dominated the popular music scene in the years in which it was this new production of Tosca is set. The voice is Vanessa Goikoetxea, making her debut at the Maggio: speaking about her part, she underlined the multiple nuances of her character, which make her a unique character: “From my point of view Tosca has three true and proper character faces: a first aspect, the one which still leads her to be a substantially pious woman and a second side which instead tends to make her a dreamer. Added to these is the more hidden and sanguine side of her, which leads her to kill in order to regain the freedom of her beloved Cavaradossi with all her strength. These aspects make Tosca an affectionate and sweet character but also terribly strong: when in front of Scarpia's corpse she sentences 'And before him all Rome trembled!' it is as if in that moment she had done justice not only for her and Cavaradossi, but for everyone".

Piero Pretti, making his debut in the role, is Mario Cavaradossi: “I think I'm in the right time to finally debut in the role of Cavaradossi and I'm very happy about it: together with maestro Daniele Gatti I had a very clean approach to Puccini's score and the The staging is truly fantastic, in terms of direction we really had a lot of fun staging this production. My operatic debut was with an opera by Puccini, La bohème, and as far as the characters were concerned he was extremely precise, not only in the music but also in the indications on them and this really leads to a truly musical rendering of these perfect.”

Vincenzo Costanzo returns to Maggio where he debuted in Madama Butterfly in February 2014; interprets Cavaradossi in the performance on 8 June: “Being able to be part of this production was a real privilege for me: the work done with maestro Gatti – who I consider one of the points of reference for conducting on an international level – and with Massimo Popolizio, a man of theater whom I have always admired, he truly made me perceive (and feel) Tosca in a completely new way. Each passage, musical or recitative, is supported in a perfect and logical way and this contributed enormously - also - to creating an absolutely wonderful atmosphere between us performers".

Baron Scarpia, head of the Papal police, is played by Alexey Markov, making his stage debut in Maggio. Gabriele Sagona, among the protagonists of Il barbiere di Siviglia in the spring of 2019, plays the role of Cesare Angelotti; two talents from the Accademia del Maggio, Matteo Torcaso and Oronzo D'Urso, are the Sagrestano and Spoletta respectively. The cast concludes with Dario Giorgelé as Sciarrone and Cesare Filiberto Tenuta as the jailer.

The opera:

On 14 January 1900, Tosca made its debut at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. The source is the historical drama La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, written in 1887 specifically for the actress Sarah Bernhardt. Puccini was passionate about that subject after seeing a theater performance and did everything he could to transform it into an opera. However, the publisher Ricordi initially entrusted the project to another composer, Alberto Franchetti, only to then put it back in the hands of Puccini in 1895. To create the libretto of Tosca, the Illica-Giacosa tandem, already successfully tested in La bohème, was confirmed. But the work proceeded slowly and with numerous complaints from the librettists. Both consider Sardou's drama unsuitable for operatic transposition due to the too many events that take over the poetry. Puccini, on the other hand, didn't worry about it and following only his musical intuition in 1899 he signed what would soon become another of his great masterpieces. Tosca is therefore an action opera where the tension never loosens and in which the musical discourse must necessarily proceed without stopping, with rare exceptions. This leads the composer from Lucca to adopt a narrative technique built on a dense network of short and recurring motifs - often combined with each other - to comment on the frenetic unfolding of the story. The protagonists Floria Tosca, a passionate and strong-willed prima donna, and her lover Mario Cavaradossi, a painter with liberal sympathies and a convinced anti-clerical, are hindered by Baron Scarpia, head of the Bourbon police at the service of the papacy. Animated by murky passions and an innate evil, the baron, like a sadistic puppeteer, determines the progress of events from beginning to end. Fierce persecutor first of Mario and then of Tosca (until he is murdered by the woman after an attempt to rape the latter), Scarpia continues to hover like a ghost in the orchestra even in death with the repetition of his menacing theme built on the tritone, the sinister interval that has been associated with Evil in music for centuries. But the dramatic atmosphere of the story, which involves three violent deaths (a stabbing, a shooting, and a suicide), is also further accentuated by Puccini through orchestral writing laden with dissonance and tension, anticipating expressionist aesthetics, and vocals that are often exaggerated and pushed to the limit.