Ellen Kent Amphitheatre Productions Presents TOSCA

The opera Tosca was based on a Victorian melodrama which was made famous by Sarah Bernhard who played the leading role. Puccini was inspired by seeing this melodrama.

Tosca is set against the dramatic landscape of Rome and the Napoleonic Wars and the corrupt Italian regime of that time. Floria Tosca was a great beauty and a famous opera singer who was in love with a well known artist Mario Cavaradossi. The conflict of this drama circles around these figures together with Baron Scarpia, the corrupt Chief of Police of Rome – a true mafia figure. He is determined to make Floria Tosca one of his conquests and sets out to seduce her. The conflict reaches a pitch of treachery and excitement when Cavaradossi is taken into the torture chambers of Scarpia’s headquarters to be tortured into revealing where he has hidden an escaped prisoner from the clutches of Scarpia. In order to prevent Cavaradossi’s execution Tosca enters into a deal with Scarpia where Scarpia’s price is her seduction in return for letting the two of them escape to Rome after a fake execution of Cavaradossi. Tosca cannot bear to give herself to Scarpia when the moment arrives and after Scarpia attempts to force her she stabs him to death in his apartments. The opera ends with Tosca bribing her way to Cavaradossi’s prison cell as he awaits his ‘fake execution’ bearing the letter that Scarpia gave her as their passport of escape. Scarpia had no attention of faking Cavaradossi’s death and after he is shot Tosca realises the truth and rushes to his body lying on the ground. Hearing Scarpia’s secret police coming up the steps to the top of the fortress where the execution was held Tosca realises all was lost and throws herself from the battlements to her death.

Thursday 4 December 7.30pm
TICKETS- £16.50 - £37.00 (Concessions Available)