'The Drama of Tosca' streams on the Opera Philadelphia Channel beginning on June 17

The 90-minute concert adaptation stars soprano Ana María Martínez, tenor Brian Jagde, and baritone Quinn Kelsey in their company debuts

A special concert adaptation of Puccini’s Tosca, performed in May 2021 for socially distanced audiences in the TD Pavilion at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, will reach worldwide audiences beginning on Thursday, June 17, on the Opera Philadelphia Channel.

The streaming premiere date is a nod to the opera’s dramatic timeline. Puccini’s lethal love triangle unfolds over the course of 24 hours, from June 17-18, 1800. The concert is available for rent for $20 as well as unlimited viewing with an annual Channel Pass. Visit operaphila.tv to start streaming the Opera Philadelphia Channel.

The 90-minute concert, called “a powerful celebratory event” by Opera News, broke new ground for Opera Philadelphia in the company’s return to live audiences for the first time in 15 months. Three “high voltage singers” (Philadelphia Inquirer) make their company debuts in the concert: Grammy-winning Puerto Rican soprano Ana María Martínez stars in her title role debut as Puccini’s troubled heroine, opposite American tenor Brian Jagde as Tosca’s doomed lover, the painter Cavaradossi, and baritone Quinn Kelsey in his role debut as the treacherous Baron Scarpia.

Martínez received audience and critical acclaim in her title role debut, with Opera News raving “her rich upper voice and flaming high notes rang out handsomely.” Jagde is “a robust Cavaradossi” (Philadelphia Inquirer), while Kelsey is “a Scarpia for the ages” (Parterre Box). “The ninety-minute, intermissionless and narrated version of Puccini's classic achieved a high level musically, thanks to Corrado Rovaris's idiomatic, dynamic conducting” (Opera News).

Seen through the eyes of an omniscient narrator, this innovative version of Puccini’s beloved work bridges opera and storytelling, highlighting major themes from the original, and focuses on the three principal characters, joined by the spoken narrator (Charlotte Blake Alston). Jack Mulroney Music Director Corrado Rovaris leads 68 players from the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra, who appear on stage with the singers, and 40 singers from the Opera Philadelphia Chorus, who sing from the balcony level of the Mann.

The Drama of Tosca
Music by Giacomo Puccini
Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
Adapted by Francesco Micheli
Concert Performance
Performed in Italian with English narration and English closed-captioning
90 minutes
Underwritten, in part, by Judy and Peter Leone

About Opera Philadelphia

Opera Philadelphia, the only American finalist for both the 2016 International Opera Award for Best Opera Company and the 2020 International Opera Award for Best Festival, is “the very model of a modern opera company” (Washington Post). Committed to embracing innovation and developing opera for the 21st century, the company is “one of American opera’s success stories” (New York Times). The company is in the midst of a digital season on the Opera Philadelphia Channel, which creates a digital space in which artists can perform and explore, through a series of new commissions by visionary composers and dynamic performances produced for the screen. Season subscriptions priced at $99 are offered along with pay-per-view rental options for individual performances. The channel is available for viewing on computers and mobile devices, and on TV screens via Chromecast and the Opera Philadelphia Channel app on AppleTV, Android TV, Roku, and Amazon FireTV. For more information, visit operaphila.tv.