A series of screenings dedicated to Italian Opera Introduced by Deirdre O’ Grady, Emeritus Professor of Italian and Comparative Studies University College Dublin. Tosca, Giacomo PucciniConductor Daniel Oren with Fiorenza Cedolins, Marcelo Alvarez, Ruggero Raimondi, Marco Spotti, Fabio Previati, Enrico Facini, Giuliano Pelizon, 119’Puccini’s fifth opera, Tosca, was an immediate success with the public at its premiere in 1900 and has remained one of the most enduringly popular of all operas. Written four years after La Bohème and four years before Madama Butterfly, the tremendous vitality of Tosca is a tribute to Puccini’s technical skill. He succeeded so well that the tragedy of the singer Floria Tosca, her republican lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, and the scheming, sadistic chief of the Rome police, Baron Scarpia, has remained vividly present in the collective imagination ever since.