We’re staying in Beijing for this week’s Sunday Opera (10/25 3:00 p.m.) for a performance of Puccini’s “Tosca” from The National Center for the Performing Arts. With a libretto by Luigi illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, this well-loved tale of political turmoil, jealousy, corruption, murder, revenge, and suicide premiered in Rome in 1900.
There are three main characters in the opera. Floria Tosca (Monica Zanettin) is a fabled singer who is in love with a painter named Mario Cavaradossi (Han Peng) and is very jealous because she believes that Cavaradossi is seeing another woman whom he has used as his inspiration for the painting of Mary Magdalene on which he is working. That woman turns out to be the sister of escaped political prisoner Cesare Angelotti (Guan Zhijing) whom Cavaradossi helps escape from the clutches of Baron Scarpia (Ambrogio Maestri), the corrupt Rome police chief.
Tosca’s jealousy betrays Cavaradossi and Angelotti leading to a confrontation with Scarpia who says he will spare the painter’s life if she becomes his mistress. This leads to the tragic ending featuring Cavaradossi’s death by firing squad and Tosca’s famous leap from the top of the Castel Sant’Angelo.
Joining our main performers are Wang Meng as the Sacristan and Liu Naiqi and Chen Lei as Scarpia’s henchmen Spoletta and Sciarrone. Xu Zhong leads the NCPA Orchestra and Chorus.
After the opera, we’ll continue with jealousy as a theme in classical music with Jean Sibelius’ “Nights of Jealousy,” Leos Janacke’s Jealousy Overture, and Mahler’s reconstructed Symphony No. 10 which was written partially as a reaction to the betrayal and jealousy he felt resulting from his wife’s infidelity.
