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Livret Tosca

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How was it that when Sardou’s drama was transformed into an opera it became the very symbol of operatic art? Is it because Tosca portrays a singer whose jealousy has a fatal bearing on the destiny of her lover? Is it because Puccini’s music floods the play, highlighting the sensuality and the subtlety of its eponymous heroine? Or is it ultimately because, from the moment the curtain rises to the heroine’s final fall, Tosca advances towards the final tragedy with the relentless efficiency of a perfectly regulated machine? The remarkable theatrical director Pierre Audi treats Puccini’s opera to a production that reflects the dimensions of the score: a Pasolinian landscape overshadowed by a gigantic cross symbolising the collusion between those who oppress in the name of the church and their political counterparts. The work is performed by an impressive cast including Anja Harteros, Marcelo Álvarez and Bryn Terfel. Orchestre et Chœurs de l'Opéra national de Paris Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine/Chœur d'enfants de l'Opéra national de ParisA coproduction by Act 4 Productions and the Paris Opera © Opéra national de Paris – ACT 4 Productions - 2014

Floria Tosca: Famous singer Mario Cavaradossi: Painter and Floria Tosca’s lover, a republican sympathiser Baron Scarpia: Rome’s chief of police Cesare Angelotti: Political prisoner, escaped from the Castel Sant’Angelo Spoletta: Scarpia’s police agent Sciarrone: Another of Scarpia’s agents The Sacristan: Sacristan at the Sant’Andrea della Valle church The jailor: Warden at the Castel Sant’Angelo prison

Tosca - 5

Tosca

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How was it that when Sardou’s drama was transformed into an opera it became the very symbol of operatic art? Is it because Tosca portrays a singer whose jealousy has a fatal bearing on the destiny of her lover? Is it because Puccini’s music floods th

Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Puccini was born in 1858 in Lucca, Italy, to a family of organists (his father was a notorious theoretician and music teacher). A performance of Verdi's Aida, which he saw in Pisa in 1876, convinced him that his vocation was to become a composer. He studied at the Milan Conservatory with, among others, Amilcare Ponchielli. On Ponchielli's advice, he took part in a composition competition launched by the Sonzogno publishing house in 1883 for a one-act opera. Although he did not win the prize his piece, Le Villi, was staged in 1884 in Milan with some success. The music publisher Ricordi then commissioned him a second opera, Edgar. His third opera, Manon Lescaut, brought him lasting fame and marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Together, they wrote Puccini's three greatest masterpieces: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904). In 1910, the premiere of La Fanciulla del West took place at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Puccini then composed a lighter piece, La Rondine, performed without much success at the Monte-Carlo Opera. After that, Puccini slowed down his compositional work. A car accident left him lame for the rest of his life and it was not until 1918 that The Triptych (Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi) premiered at the Metropolitan Opera. He died in Brussels in 1924 of throat cancer. His last opera, Turandot, remained unfinished. The last two scenes were completed by Franco Alfano. However, when Toscanini premiered Turandot at La Scala in Milan on 25 April 1926, he hold his baton to mark the point Puccini had reached before dying and turned to the audience: “Here the master laid down his pen. He stopped there when he died”. Puccini also wrote a number of religious works (Salve regina, Messa di Gloria).

Martina Serafin was born in Vienna into a family of musicians and studied at the Vienna Conservatory under Otto Edelman. She made her debut in operetta (Lehar, Strauss, Kalman) before tackling opera in Graz and Stuttgart, and soon made a name for herself on some of the world’s most famous stages. Today, she is one of the great performers of the title role of Tosca, which she has sung at the Rome Opera (with Gianluigi Gelmetti), in Florence (Zubin Mehta), at London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Antonio Pappano), the Verona Arena (Marco Armiliato), Milan’s La Scala (Nicola Luisotti), the Baths of Caracalla (Renato Palumbo), the Paris Opera (Daniel Oren), and the Vienna Staatsoper (Paolo Carignani), as well as in Berlin, Barcelona, Melbourne, Beijing and Monte Carlo. Her career has been punctuated by many other roles including Manon Lescaut (Venice’s La Fenice, the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, the Hamburg Staatsoper), Maddalena in Andrea Chénier (Zurich, Vienna, Catania, Cagliari), Turandot (the Puccini Festival, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Verona Arena, Bari’s Teatro Petruzzelli, Genoa, Zurich, Bilbao, San Francisco, and New York’s Metropolitan Opera), Donna Elvira (the Vienna Staatsoper), the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro (Los Angeles), Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte (Stuttgart), and Lisa in The Queen of Spades (Vienna, Barcelona, Bologna). In 2013, she tackled the Verdi repertoire performing the role of Elisabeth in Don Carlo at Milan’s La Scala and then singing the Requiem in Monte Carlo. She then went on to appear as Abigaille in Nabucco at the Chorégies d’Orange, Barcelona, the Verona Arena and Milan’s La Scala and Lady Macbeth in Barcelona and Vienna. Martina Serafin is also a renowned performer of the German repertoire: Sieglinde in Die Walküre (New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Zurich Opera, the Paris Opera, Berlin, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Barcelona, and Tokyo), Elsa in Lohengrin (Palermo, Dresden, Stuttgart, Bologna, and the Paris Opera), Elisabeth in Tannhäuser (Rome, Amsterdam), Isolde in concert at the Ravello Festival, the Marschallin (New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna Staatsoper, the San Francisco Opera, Toulouse, Munich and Amsterdam), Schumann’s Genoveva (Palermo), and Marie in Wozzeck (in Essen). She also performs in concert all over the world, with performances devoted to Schubert and Schumann, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and the Four Last Songs by Strauss.

Serafin.Martina

Born in Cordoba (Argentina), Marcelo Alvarez made his debut in 1995 as Elvino (La Sonnambula) at La Fenice, Venice. Since then he has sung at many international opera houses (the Metropolitan Opera, New York; La Scala, Milan; Covent Garden, London; the Bavarian State Opera, Munich; the Vienna State Opera, the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires and the Verona Arena), where he has sung the Duke of Mantua (Rigoletto) – the role in which he made his French debut at the Capitole de Toulouse in 1997 –, Alfredo (La Traviata), Tonio (La Fille du régiment), the Italian Tenor (Der Rosenkavalier),the title roles of Werther and Faust, Arturo (I Puritani), Carlo (Linda di Chamounix), Fenton (Falstaff), Des Grieux (Manon), Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor), Nemorino (L’Elisir d’Amore), Gennaro (Lucrezia Borgia), Rodolfo (La Bohème and Luisa Miller), Riccardo (Un Ballo in Maschera), Roméo (Roméo et Juliette), Cavaradossi (Tosca), Manrico (Il Trovatore), Don José (Carmen), Hoffmann (Les Contes d'Hoffmann), and Maurizio (Adriana Lecouvreur).
He made his debut as Radames (Aida) at Covent Garden in April 2010. More recently he sang Enzo (La Gioconda) at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Manrico at La Scala, Milan, the title role of Andrea Chenier at the Metropolitan Opera, Canio (Pagliacci) at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and Cavaradossi at the Bavarian State Opera, Munich. He has recorded several albums for Sony Classical: The Tenor’s Passion, French Opera Arias, Bel Canto, Alvarez Sings Gardel, Duetto (with the tenor Salvatore Licitra), Manon (recorded at the Paris Opera), Tenorissimo, a CD of Verdi opera arias with Decca, and numerous DVDs (including Tosca and Il Trovatore with the Metropolitan Opera, and Adriana Lecouvreur with the Teatro Regio in Turin).

After his beginning in Lucerne and Lyon, mostly in the Mozart and Bel Canto repertoires, Ludovic Tézier has been invited to perform on the greatest international stages. He sang the major roles of the baritone repertoire, under the baton of conductors such as&nbsp;Riccardo Muti, Antonio Pappano, Riccardo Chailly, Gustavo Dudamel and Philippe Jordan.He has performed the role of Amonasro (Aida) at the Verona Arena and the Royal Opera House in London, the title role in&nbsp;Rigoletto at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the Vienna Staatsoper and the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the title role of&nbsp;Simon Boccanegra in Zurich, the roles of Renato (Un ballo in maschera) at La Scala in Milan, Barnaba (La Gioconda) and Carlo Gerard (Andrea Chénier) at the Sydney Opera House, Wolfram (Tannhäuser) in Munich and Vienna, Baron Scarpia (Tosca) at the Salzburg Festival, in London and Berlin, Amfortas (Parsifal) and Athanäel (Thaïs) at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.



At the Paris Opera: La Bohème (Schaunard), 1999 ; La Bohème (Marcello), 2001, 2009, 2014 ; Le Nozze di Figaro (Count Almaviva), 2003, 2010 ; The Queen of Spades (Prince Eletski), 2005, 2012 ; Lucia di Lammermoor (Enrico Ashton), 2006, 2013 ; Un ballo in maschera (Renato), 2007, 2009 ; Werther (title-role), 2009 ; Werther (Albert), 2010 ; Don Carlo (Rodrigo, Marquis de Posa), 2010 ; Eugen Onegin (title-role), 2010 ; Carmen (Escamillo), 2012 ; La Traviata (Giorgio Germont), 2014, 2018, 2019, 2024 ; Tosca (Baron Scarpia), 2014, 2021 ; Il Trovatore (Count di Luna), 2016 ; Rigoletto (title-role), 2016, 2021 ; Don Carlos (Rodriguez), 2017 ; Simon Boccanegra (title-role), 2018 ; Manon (Lescaut), 2020 ; Aida (Amonasro), 2021 ; La Forza del destino (Don Carlo di Vargas), 2022

Tézier.Ludovic (c) 

Smilek-Wojtek

Carlo Bosi is regularly invited on the Italian (La Scala Milan, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Teatro Comunale Bologna, Festival Rossini Pesaro, Arena di Verona, Teatro Regio Turin, Teatro Carlo Felice Genoa…) and international operatic stages (Monte-Carlo, Geneva, Santander, Tel-Aviv Opera houses, Maestranzai in Seville, Dutch National Opera…). His repertoire includes roles such as Normanno (Lucia di Lammermoor), the Messenger (Aida), Flavio (Norma), Dr Cajus (Falstaff), Mastro Trabucco (La Forza del destino), Cassio (Otello), Monostatos (The Magic Flute), Guillot de Morfontaine (Manon), Pang (Turandot), Parpignol (La Bohème), Goro (Madama Butterfly), Spoletta (Tosca), Danieli (The Sicilian Vespers), Tinca and Gherardo (The Triptych), Edmondo (Manon Lescaut), Le Remendado (Carmen), the Royal Herald (Don Carlo), the four evil tenors in The Tales of Hoffmann, Poisson (Adriana Lecouvreur). He also sang l’Incroyable (Andrea Chénier) at Teatro Real in Madrid, the Paris Opera and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Flavio (Norma) at La Monnaie in Brussels, Mastro Trabucco and Spoletta at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Rodolphe (William Tell) at the London Proms, Don Basilio (Le Nozze di Figaro) and the Herald at La Scala in Milan, Dr Cajus at the Royal Opera House, La Scala and the Dutch National Opera, Pang at the Teatro Comunale in Florence, Rustighello (Lucrèce Borgia) at La Monnaie, Monsieur Triquet (Eugene Onegin) at the Teatro Regio in Turin, Basilio, Goro, Spoletta and Poisson at the Paris Opera. Recently, he has sung Le Remendado in Palermo, Altoum (Turandot) at Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Paris Opera, Normanno in Naples, the Abbé de Chazeuil (Adriana Lecouvreur) at La Scala and Goro at the Royal Opera House. During summer 2022 he performed at the Arena di Verona Festival in the roles of Remendado, the Messenger, Abdallo (Nabucco), Gastone (La Traviata) and Altoum.

Bosi.Carlo

Andrea Nelli was born in Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, Italy. He began studying voice at the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in Florence and perfected his skills under baritone Gino Bechi. He was a finalist at competitions in Parma, Casciana Terme, and Rieumes and he participated as an artist in the chorus at performances at the Verona Arena, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Milan’s La Scala, Bologna’s Teatro Comunale and Catania’s Teatro Bellini. He subsequently became a tenured member of the chorus at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. He has performed as a soloist at the Teatro Sociale in Como, the Sirmione Festival in Brescia in Verdi’s Il Trovatore (the role of Ferrando) and he played the Commendatore in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Nuits Musicales festival in Bazoches. He has been a tenured bass with the Paris Opera Chorus since 1995.

Nelli

Born in Beirut, Pierre Audi founded the Almeida Theatre and its contemporary music festival in 1979 and was its director until 1989.From 1988 to 2018, he was Artistic Director of the National Opera in Amsterdam, where he created most of his productions. He has worked with renowned visual artists such as Karel Appel, Georg Baselitz, Anish Kapoor, Herzog &amp; de Meuron, Jannis Kounellis and Jonathan Meese.&nbsp;At the same time, Pierre Audi has staged numerous contemporary music works, such as Morton Feldman's Neither, Claude Vivier's Rêves d'un Marco Polo, Stockhausen's Aus Licht, and the world premieres of works by Wolfgang Rihm, Hans Werner Henze, Tan Dun, Param Vir, Kaija Saariaho, Alexander Knaifel. He has been invited by the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich (Henze's Venus and Adonis, Parsifal), the Salzburg Festival (The Magic Flute, Dionysius), the Drottningholm Court Theatre (Tamerlano, Alcina, Zoroaster), the Paris Opera (La Juive, Tosca), the Vienna Staatsoper (Rigoletto), the Theater an der Wien (Partenope), La Monnaie de Bruxelles (Pelléas et Mélisande, Iphigénie en Aulide, Iphigénie en Tauride, Orlando, Tamerlano, Alcina), the New York Metropolitan Opera (Attila, Guillaume Tell), the Ruhrtriennale (Gisela!), the Teatro Real in Madrid (Bomarzo by Ginastera).&nbsp;He has directed the world premieres of Julian Anderson's Thebans, Pascal Dusapin's Penthesilee, Louis Andriessen's Theatre of the World and Samuel Beckett's Fin de Partie by György Kurtág, staged at the Paris Opera last Season.&nbsp;In 2018, he took over the direction of the Aix-en-Provence Festival. He is also the Artistic Director of the Park Avenue Armory in New York since 2015.

He has received numerous awards for his productions, including the Lesley Boosey Award, the Dutch Critics' Prize, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Prize, the Silver Medal of the City of Amsterdam awarded, the first Johannes Vermeer Award.&nbsp;In 2021, he directed the premiere of The Arab Apocalypse by Samir Odeh-Tamimi at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and early 2022, Rigoletto (Vienna Staatsoper), Orphée et Euridice (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino) and Parsifal (Bayerische Staatsoper).

Born in Salzburg, Christof Hetzer studied in Vienna with Erich Wonder. Since 2001, he has been working as a sets and costumes designer for the Berlin Schaubühne, the Theater Basel, the Bayerische Staatsoper München, the Oper Frankfurt, the Nationaltheater Mannheim and the Vlaamse Opera Antwerp.&nbsp;He has already created several productions in collaboration with director Hans Neuenfels, Pierre Audi, Deborah Warner and Jan Philipp Gloger, and regularly works with Lotte de Beer.&nbsp;He has created the decors and costumes of numerous productions by David Hermann, including Sing für mich, Tod at the 2009 Ruhrtriennale, L’Heure espagnole / La Vida breve and Médée by Charpentier at Frankfurt Opera, The Queen of Spades at the Theater Basel, Les Troyens at the Karlsruhe Staatstheater, Il turco in Italia and The Magic Flute at the Dutch National Opera, Helmut Lachenmann's The Little Match Girl, Iannis Xenakis's Oresteïa, L’Affaire Makropoulos at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Macbeth at the Aalto Theater in Essen, La Traviata at the Zurich Opera House, The Magic Flute and Simon Boccanegra at the Vlaamse Opera.&nbsp;Recent works include Orlando with Pierre Audi and René Jacobs at La Monnaie in Bruxelles, The Flying Dutchman (decors) at the Bayreuth Festival, Gurrelieder at the Dutch National Opera, Rigoletto at the Vienna Staatsoper, Tristan und Isolde at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Parsifal at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Tosca at the Paris Opera, world premieres of Thebans by Julian Anderson at the English National Opera and György Kurtág's Fin de partie at the La Scala in Milan (presented last season at the Paris Opera), The Tales of Hoffmann at the Copenhagen Opera House and the Bregenz Festival, Wozzeck at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Offenbach's Barbe-bleue, at the Komische Oper in Berlin, Le Nozze di Figaro in Hamburg, Schreker's Die Gezeichneten at Staatsoper Hannover, Jommelli's Didone abbandonata in Basel, Don Carlos in Stuttgart, Alcina in Düsseldorf, Falstaff in Malmö, Aida at the Paris Opera.

Robby Duiveman is the director of the costume and makeup department at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam. He has held similar positions at the Salzburg Festival and the Ruhrtriennale. He also taught costume and set history at the Salzburg Mozarteum and was director of the costume studios at La Monnaie in Brussels as well as costumier at the Hamburg Staatsoper. He has created costumes for the Hamburg Ballet, the Hamburg Schauspielhaus, the Tübingen Zimmertheater, the Ruhrtriennale, the Salzburg Festival (in the Peter Sellars' productions of La Clemenza di Tito in 2017 and Idomeneo in 2019), the Grand Théâtre in Luxembourg, the Welsh National Opera, the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, the Holland Festival, the Paris Opera (in the Pierre Audi production of Tosca, and Only the Sound Remains with Peter Sellars). He has worked in collaboration with Robert Wilson to create costumes at the Ruhrtriennale, the Los Angeles Opera, the Ahmanson Theater (Los Angeles), the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the National Theatre of Taipei, the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and London’s Barbican Centre. He has also worked with Miuccia Prada at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. In 2006, he received the Dutch Fashion Award. In 2014, he also oversaw the exhibition “Eiko Ishioka, the Ring Cycle Costumes” at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, partially revived in 2021 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo as part of the the collective exhibition "Eiko Ishioka, A Life of Design".In 2022, he has created the costumes for Salome at the Finnish National Opera.

Jean Kalman was born in Paris in 1945 and since 1979 he has created the lighting for countless theatre and opera productions in France, Japan, Great Britain, Holland, and Italy.&nbsp;He has worked with numerous directors including Peter Brook, Hans Peter Cloos, Pierre Audi (for whom he created the lighting for several productions at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam,&nbsp;Iphigénie en Aulide,&nbsp;Iphigénie en Tauride&nbsp;and Pélléas et Mélisande at La Monnaie in Brussels as well as Attila at New York’s Metropolitan Opera), Robert Carsen, Nicholas Hytner, Tim Albery, Zhang Yimou (Turandot at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), Jean-Louis Martinoty (Le Nozze di Figaro at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées), Francesca Zambello, Jonathan Miller, Tim Supple, Adrian Noble, and Deborah Warner... He created the sets and lighting for&nbsp;Fidelio at the Glyndebourne Festival as well as the lighting design for the world premiere productions of Dionysos&nbsp;by Wolfgang Rihm at the Salzburg Festival and Gisela ! (Henze) at the Ruhrtriennale.&nbsp;Jean Kalman received the 1991 Laurence Olivier Best Lighting Design Award for Richard III at London’s Royal National Theatre and the 2004 Evening Standard Award for Festen at the Almeida Theatre.&nbsp;These last seasons, he created the lighting for Die Zauberflöte in Basel, Bergen, Budapest and New York,&nbsp;Otello at the Vienna State Opera,&nbsp;La Traviata at the Royal Opera House in London, La Bohème at the&nbsp;opera houses in Antwerp,&nbsp;Ghent and Cincinnati,&nbsp;I Capuleti e i Montecchi at at La Scala in Milan,&nbsp;Eugene Onegin at the&nbsp;Metropolitan Opera in New York,&nbsp;Orfeo ed Euridice at the&nbsp;Maggio Musicale Fiorentino,&nbsp;Titon et l’Aurore at the Royal Opera in Versailles and Falstaff at La Fenice in Venice.Jean Kalman is an associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company.At the Paris Opera:&nbsp;Peut-on penser le paysage ?, 1987 ; Le Prisme du chaman, 1987 ; Nabucco, 1995 ; Alcina, 1999 ; La Dame de pique, 1999 ; Dialogues des carmélites, 1999 ; Les Contes d’Hoffmann, 2000 ; Guillaume Tell, 2003 ; Salomé, 2003 ; La Juive, 2007 ; Tosca, 2014

Klaus Bertisch studied English and German literature, education theory and artistic training in Frankfurt. Between 1979 and 1987, he was a dramaturg at the Frankfurt Opera and he subsequently assumed the same role at various operas in Germany and Belgium. From 1987, he began working as a dramaturg and independent writer for the Siemens Cultural Programme in Munich and for a number of theatres and festivals in Europe. From 1990 to 2018 he was a dramaturg at the Dutch National Opera and worked with Pierre Audi for various productions such as Die Zauberflöte, the creations of Wolfgang Rihm's Dionysos at the Salzburg festival, Henze's Gisela! at the Ruhrtriennale and Fin de partie at La Scala in Milan (revived last season at the Paris Opera), La Conquête du Mexique and Bomarzo at the Teatro Real in Madrid, and Parsifal at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich.He has collaborated with Willy Decker on several projects, including the Ring Cycle at the Dresden Semperoper, Die Tote Stadt and La Traviata at the Salzburg Festival, as well as Death in Venice at the Liceu in Barcelona. He was also the dramaturg for the Dale Duesing production of Chabrier’s L’Étoile at the Berlin Staatsoper, and for the Floris Visser production of Così fan tutte at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. With Christof Loy, he has worked on Ariodante (Salzburg festival), La Forza del destino and Tannhäuser (Amsterdam), Euryanthe et Zazà (Theater an der Wien). In 2022, he was the dramaturg for the Andrea Breth production of Salomé at the Aix-en-Provence festival.Klaus Bertisch has also staged recitals on texts by Rilke, Heine, Goethe and Morike. He has been a lecturer in theatre studies at the Amsterdam university, and has taught at the International Opera Studio Nederland, Stuttgart's Academy of Fine Arts and the Aix-en-Provence festival's Academy. He now teaches at the Dutch National Opera Academy (Amsterdam). He has published the Schwanenmärchen collection, as well as a work on the director Ruth Berghaus and a biography of Dutch composer Leo Smit.

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