Opera Australia mark 100 years since Puccini with 'Tosca'

WORDS Cassandra Dimitroff PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of Opera Australia PUBLISHED Mon, 25 Mar 2024 - 4:09 pm

The height of drama is inarguably a night at the opera – tender love duets, mournful arias – it's about unforgettable storytelling, fabulous costuming and mesmerising sets, all backdropping some of the most spectacular and richly romantic scores you're likely to hear in your lifetime.

We're certainly partial to a night at the opera (we recently stepped out for an evening viewing of La Traviata with L'IDEE WOMAN), but there's simply no one who does it quite like Giacomo Puccini. The Italian composer may have passed a century ago, but his legacy – and the relevancy of his body of work – live on.

In homage to the 100th anniversary of the death of the late, great Italian composer, Opera Australia are putting on a special run of his most beloved opera – Tosca – across Melbourne and Sydney. Originally debuting at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome at the turn of the 20th century, Tosca is the blood-soaked story of love, murder, lust, and politics, and is one of the world's most well-known opera shows.

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Marking the debut programming announcement by Opera Australia's new Artistic Director, Jo Davies, Tosca will also playing outside of the OA's usual home base at State Theatre. "Whilst the State Theatre is closed it’s a great opportunity for OA to spread its creative wings and think about opera outside of traditional theatre spaces," said Davies. "This also means looking beyond the city to regional areas and presenting opera in new venues in exciting, innovative ways."

Excitingly, this will also be this production of Tosca’s first staging outside of the United Kingdom.

Where will it be showing?

The Opera Australia run of Tosca will be performing in Melbourne at the Margaret Court Arena, and in Sydney at the Sydney Opera House's Joan Sutherland Theatre.