Sex and Violence at Opera in the Heights

What’s more elemental in opera than a grand tale of lust, love, murder, and suicide? Tosca (1900), Giacomo Puccini’s international smash hit after his previous international smash La bohème, roars onto the stage like a juggernaut. Simple in plot, employing only three principle roles, it is the epitome of verismo, the shocking genre that kicked the romantics right out of the theater. Gritty, downtown, and titillating, it shoved “real life” directly in the audience’s face. Just this side of melodrama, this adaptation of Sardou’s play from the Italian master librettists Giacoso and Illica is compact, no frills, and runs on the highest octane of all, Puccini’s sublime melodies. Toxic masculinity has never sounded so good nor portrayed with such abandon and excitement.

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