It is an event that attracts thousands of music lovers to Verona every summer: the opera season in the ancient Roman Arena. Nearly 22,000 spectators regularly fill the amphitheater for the performances. The dream couple, Sonya Yoncheva and Vittorio Grigolo, returns to the breathtaking open-air stage, to perform Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca—a dramatic and tragic story of passion and jealousy set in Rome during a time of political unrest in 1800. The plot centers around three main characters: Rome’s opera diva Floria Tosca, her lover Mario Cavaradossi, and the corrupt police chief, Baron Scarpia, who has long lusted after Tosca. Celebrated soprano Sonya Yoncheva is “one of the best Toscas currently singing” and tenor Vittorio Grigolo “the most Italian Cavaradossi we know.” (Online Merker). The captivating staging by Argentine director Hugo de Ana, who masterfully exploits the amphitheater’s vast space by placing huge elements on the stage that are reminiscent of or borrowed from the locations of the action, makes the opera a “spectacle of monumental opulence” (Online Merker).

Composer: Giacomo Puccini
Conductor: Francesco Ivan Ciampa
Orchestra: Orchestra dell’Arena di Verona
Artists: Sonya Yoncheva, Vittorio Grigolo, Roman Burdenko, Giorgi Manoshvili, Coro dell’Arena di Verona
Genre: Opera