Mario recognises him and swears to do everything in his power to save him. Once the sacristan has left, Angelotti comes out of his hiding-place. By chance the beautiful Marchesa Attavanti, who has been coming to the church regularly in order to prepare her brother’s flight, has become the model for the saint the painter has undertaken to depict. The latter, a young Roman aristocrat and a sympathiser with republican ideas, is painting a fresco in the church.
The sacristan is surprised not to find the painter Mario Cavaradossi at work. He has taken refuge in the church, where his sister, the Marchesa Attavanti, has hidden woman’s clothing in the family chapel so that he can escape without being recognised. The church of Sant’Andrea della Valle Cesare Angelotti, former Consul of the Roman Republic, has escaped from the Castel Sant’Angelo, where he was being held for political reasons. An interpretation that skilfully deploys the strands of the drama and lays bare its tragic mechanisms. In Pierre Audi’s production, first performed in 2014 at the Paris Opera, the oppressive shadow of a cross hovers above the stage, symbol of the collusion of political and religious tyranny. At the summit of his art, the composer struck a powerful note even as the curtain rose with five arresting chords evoking Scarpia, the infamous chief of police, whose desire to possess the diva knows no limits. Eleven years later, in 1900, Puccini’s opera Tosca had its triumphant first performance in Rome. Love, politics, sadism and religion: all these ingredients are brought together in the story of the jealous and impulsive singer Floria Tosca, who is in love with the idealistic Mario Cavaradossi in an Italy fighting for its independence. When Giacomo Puccini saw a performance of Victorien Sardo's play La Tosca, whilst Sarah Bernhardt was touring with it in Milan, he was immediately captivated by the power of the drama.
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