A YOUNG WOMAN pleads to God for her salvation. She’s been good and kind all her life and she’s been focused on developing her singing talent. Yet, here she is, being offered the sparing of her beloved’s life in exchange for the brutal loss of her innocence to a corrupt and evil man. These timeless sentiments, articulated by Floria Tosca (Lise Davidsen), are not the opening lines of the eponymous opera, but easily international opera’s most famous and beautiful aria. Named Vissi d’Arte, this song is given a special and deeply moving interpretation in the Met Opera’s current staging of the great Puccini opera, which is being screened in South Africa on 24 December 2024 at midday, by Ster Kinekor.

And it’s a tragic tale gloriously replete with all the bits and pieces of what makes classical opera compelling: bloodshed and betrayal, vindication and war, love and agony, Romantic music central to its period. And of course, arias that will move you to tears even if you have never heard an opera in your life or don’t know Italian.

This version of Tosca is compelling and beautiful, but ironically, in the first act, it demonstrates a flaw in the value of watching the monumentality of Met Opera productions on a movie screen: The sound. Yes, you get up close and personal and a better view of the goings on onstage than you would, sitting in the auditorium. But the glorious hymn Te Deum sung by the full company and the Met Opera’s children’s choir, at the end of Act One is accompanied by massive purpose-driven instruments, including a giant set of chimes, an Æolian-Skinner Pipe organ and a drum big enough to rattle the whole Met with its voice, signifying the cannon. You don’t get the kind of guttural booms and reverberations that you’d experience in the theatre’s floor, in your teeth and your soul, while you’re sitting in a movie theatre.

The first act is also rendered unintentionally comical through staging decisions. Davidsen is a very tall soprano. She’s much taller than Freddie de Tommaso, who plays Mario Cavaradossi, Tosca’s love interest. The height discrepancy flies in the face of a traditional understanding of the aesthetics between male and female performers and infantilises de Tommaso, unforgivably.

Or rather, unforgivably, until both performers get to spread their characters’ individual wings, in Act Three. And then, you appreciate why both of these extraordinary performers were cast together in this work. When Cavaradossi, having been tortured by the government of the time, emerges bloodied and full of love for Tosca, his aria E lucevan de stelle, a declaration of his undying belief in her even though he’s about to die, will melt you. De Tommaso’s articulate and true sound resounds across time and generations. Indeed, this is arguably another of the top arias in contemporary (and even non-opera) circles. You know this song even if you don’t. And what De Tommaso does with it, will may you cry.

It is, however, the presence of Hawaiian bass-baritone Quinn Kelsey in the role of the bad guy, Baron Scarpia, that is the real reason you must cancel your Christmas eve plans, this year, or bring all your guests to Ster Kinekor. He has a presence vocally and onstage that will chill you to your very intestines. An openly immoral character who has the world by its proverbial shorts and curlies, he can get an innocent woman to give herself to him because she loves another. Or can he?

And finally, with a strong supporting programme and several bits of fascinating behind-the-scenes footage during the work’s two intervals – the whole event weighs in at almost four hours – you get to meet boy soprano Luka Zylik, with the clarity of voice and sweetness of timbre who, if the stars guide him appropriately, will be a performer to watch as he grows. His is the voice of the herd boy off stage that brings Act Three into existence, with cow bells and a wonderful open sense of the pastoral.

It’s a treat of a work which will hold you tight in the dramatic whirligig of early 20th century European opera exactly as it should.

Tosca was composed by Giacomo Puccini, who also wrote the libretti. First performed in 1900, it is directed for the Metropolitan Opera in New York by Sir David McVicar and features design by John McFarlane (set and costumes), David Finn (lighting), Leah Hausman (movement) and Gary Halvorson (direction of screening for Met Opera Live). Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, it is performed by a cast headed by Patrick Carfizzi, Lise Davidsen, Freddie de Tommaso, Quinn Kelsey and the Met Opera children’s choir, featuring Luka Zylik as the soloist in Act Three. It is hosted by Ailyn Pérez and is screening by Met Opera Live and Ster Kinekor in South Africa, at Bedford Square, Brooklyn Commercial and Rosebank Nouveau in Gauteng; Gateway Commercial in KwaZulu-Natal; and Blue Route, Garden Route, Somerset and V&A in the Western Cape on 24 December at midday, 2024.