Uve from the Met: Tosca
In Puccini's highly coloured melodrama, set in Rome at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, an artist called Mario Cavaradossi helps a political prisoner escape. He is interrogated by the cruel and corrupt police chief of Rome, Baron Scarpia, who tries to persuade Cavarodossi's lover, the opera singer Floria Tosca , to give herself to him as the price of Cavarodossi's freedom. The three acts take place in the ornate church of St Andrea, the elegant Palazzo Farnese, and the grim tower of the Castel Sant'Angelo. Sung in Italian.
Chorus and Orchestra of the New
York Metropolitan Opera, conductor Nello Santi
Act
7.15 New York Stories
Specially commissioned interval talks for Radio 3 in which novelists, essayists and playwrights who have moved to
New York present portraits of the city through fiction and non-fiction. In this programme, British journalist
Christopher Hitchens describes a corner of his own New York.
7.45 Act 2
8.25 The Met Opera Quiz
Listeners' questions are put to a panel of opera buffs.
SEND QUESTIONS TO: Met Opera Quiz, FOR Station, PO Box 805. New York, NY 10150, USA
8.55 Act 3