Puccini’s Tosca is an opera built on irresistible contradictions: a thriller wrapped in velvet, a story of political terror carried on some of the most seductive melodic writing of the turn of the 20th century. Premiered in 1900, Tosca emerged from an age on the brink—compressed, volatile, and unmistakably modern in its psychological and political urgency. In the right hands, its three acts unfold with the unrelenting logic of a trap closing—beauty and brutality tightening together until the drama combusts. At the Opéra Bastille, Pierre Audi’s revival demonstrated how effective quiet intelligence can be in a work this volatile. His staging remains classical, lucid,…