As Tosca, Kara Shay Thomson dominated the stage with a performance that echoed the golden days of the past. When Cavaradossi is really killed by a firing squad and Scarpia’s men pursue her, Tosca leaps to her death from the top of Castel Sant’Angelo.ĭuring these calamitous events, rhapsodic love duets and great arias follow with spectacle, pomp and drama. In the opera, famed singer Floria Tosca and her lover Mario Cavaradossi, a painter and revolutionary, are victims of Rome’s Chief of Police Baron Scarpia, who accuses Tosca of harboring a “political refugee.” Tosca makes a “bargain” for a “mock” execution of Cavaradossi with the sadistic, lustful Scarpia, then stabs him. This “shabby little shocker,” as it was called, premiered in Rome in 1900 and has thrilled audiences ever since. The great composer Giacomo Puccini set it to music with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. On the evening of Saturday, March 14, we attended the production of “Tosca.” The action takes place in Rome in 1800 and is based on a play by French playwright Victor Sardou. It was also nice to greet Stephanie Sundine, who directs many of the operas at Sarasota and is the wife of DeRenzi. All of that Brooklyn “grit” is a valuable tool for this great energetic opera company. Publicist Laura Grant, who once lived on Prospect Avenue, fondly recalled the people, places and things she still misses about Brooklyn.

Verdi opera set in cypress