‘To tell her I love you', my soul awakens to a new life.’ It’s typical of Puccini ’s ability to distill intense emotion into a mere two-and-a-half minutes. ‘I have never seen a woman, such as this one’, he sings. The aria, like many others by Puccini, begins monton.

Like Verdi, Puccini occasionally made fun of punishing the notorious late comers. Recondita armonia is a highlight of the opera and is performed early in the first act. In Tosca we can find some of the best-loved arias in the operatic repertoire, such as the beautiful romanza sung by Mario Cavaradossi Recondita armonia, the intense Te Deum in the final scene of the first act, Tosca’s aria Vissi d'arte, and the Mario’s famous aria E lucevan le stelle. In his brief but powerful aria from Act One, Des Grieux digs deep. In the famous aria «Recondita armonia» Cavaradossi is dreaming of his lover Floria Tosca. Musically speaking, Puccini maintains his style of musical continuity, where arias, recitatives, choruses and other musical forms interweave throughout the whole work. It is also one of the most representative operas of Italian verismo, which can be appreciated in terms of a dramatic intensity that is unequalled in any of Puccini’s other operas. This opera in three acts – with Italian libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based on the play La Tosca (1887) by Victorien Sardou – is one of the composer’s most famous, together with Madama Butterfly and La Bohème.

Tosca by Giacomo Puccini comes to Rome, where the action of the opera itself unfolds, on the same stage where it was premiered on 14 January 1900 – the Teatro Costanzi, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma – and with a production which follows the original design of the premier.

Tosca opera famous aria