DgcityPuccini’s “Tosca” has returned to Beijing in a joint staging by the National Centre for the Performing Arts and the Mariinsky Theatre, with Valery Gergiev in the pit at the Beijing Art Center opera house. The production runs from November 6 to 8, with four performances including matinees, and reunites partners whose “Otello” in the same house became one of last year’s talking points.
The casting splits the principal roles between Mariinsky singers and Chinese voices. Tatiana Serjan and Inara Kozlovskaya share the title role of Floria Tosca, with tenors Sergei Skorokhodov and Roman Shirokikh as Cavaradossi and baritones Amartuvshin Ganbaatar and Roman Burdenko as Scarpia. The Chinese soprano Zhang Liping and NCPA singers join the center’s chorus, layering two distinct stage traditions into one Italian work.
“Tosca” rewards that kind of intensity. Premiered in 1900, the opera compresses political terror, sexual menace and artistic jealousy into roughly 24 hours, each act set in a precise Roman location: a church, a palace, a castle rampart. Puccini refused to call it anything but an ordinary story of ordinary people, even as he built some of the most exposed arias and ensembles in the repertory.
Gergiev’s approach, honed over decades with the Mariinsky, favours propulsion and weight, letting the score slide between lyricism and threat without hard breaks. The company knows the work intimately, and the Beijing orchestra pit has been expanded in recent seasons to accommodate exactly this scale of visiting forces.
The collaboration reflects a deeper pattern in China’s opera life. Rather than simply importing finished Western productions, the NCPA increasingly builds them jointly with houses such as the Mariinsky, sharing rehearsals, chorus work and stage direction, and mixing casts so Chinese singers perform alongside those who created the roles. Later this month, a co-production with the Opéra National de Bordeaux of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” follows in the same spirit.
For Beijing audiences, this “Tosca” lands in a crowded autumn: the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra and chorus are also in the city for concert programmes led by Gergiev, and the Mariinsky Ballet arrives the following week with “The Sleeping Beauty” and “Don Quixote.” The opera is the anchor of that residency, and the hardest test: three characters, three rooms, and nowhere for a singer to hide.
