Stage: Love & Treachery

Passion and drama from Puccini and drama and comedy from Ayckbourn in Eastbourne

Puccini’s powerful opera Tosca comes to the Congress Theatre, Eastbourne on 4th February. This magnificent, traditional, fully-staged opera is set against the dramatic landscape of Rome and the Napoleonic Wars and the corrupt Italian regime of that time. Opera & Ballet International proudly presents an Ellen Kent production with international soloists, highly praised chorus and full orchestra. Starring Vladimir Dragos as Scarpia with International Sopranos Maria Tonina and Alyona Kistenyova as Tosca.
Directed as a Gothic, Victorian horror story, Puccini’s Tosca is an epic tale of true love and treachery featuring some of opera’s best-known music, and is based on the play by Victorien Sardou. Once described as a “shabby little shocker” it tells of Floria Tosca’s true love for artist Mario Cavaradossi. Tosca is forced to enter into a deal with the Chief of Police Baron Scarpia, in order to save Cavaradossi, her lover, from execution. Scarpia’s price is Tosca’s seduction, but she cannot go through with it, and in desperation she stabs Scarpia to death. Cavaradossi is executed and, realising all is lost, Tosca throws herself from the battlements to her death.
This most popular of operas, with its tender and moving arias Recondita Armonia, Vissi d’Arte and E Lucevan le Stelle, is a heady mixture of true love, suffering and deceit, with two of the best roles for tenor and soprano ever written, plus a pure evil villain as the baritone. Vladimir Dragos returns to sing his most famous role of Scarpia after his acclaimed portrayal of Rigoletto on Ellen Kent’s last tour.
This production is sung in Italian with English surtitles.
Congress Theatre
Thursday 4 February, 7.30pm
Tickets priced £22 – 34 available online at www.eastbournetheatres.co.uk or call Box Office on 01323 412000

CONFUSIONS & HERO’S WELCOME
The Devonshire Park Theatre spring season opens with a very exciting theatrical event – the world premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s brand new 79th play Hero’s Welcome which is performed alongside a new adaptation of one of his most popular and studied plays Confusions.
Written 40 years apart these two productions are being performed in a mini-repertory theatre season, with Confusions performed Monday, Thursday and Saturday and Hero’s Welcome on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Ayckbourn directs this new production of Confusions in which we meet a variety of characters; from a devoted and isolated mother, to her unfaithful travelling salesman husband, through a solicitous waiter to well-heeled diners and an utterly shambolic garden fete, human frailty is laid bare as one hilarious situation after another unfolds. From high farce to poignant observation; the laughs, however dark, keep coming.
The world premiere tour of Hero’s Welcome follows a decorated war hero, Murray, who returns to his boyhood stomping ground with a new young bride, but is all as it seems? Once the welcome flags have stopped waving, few of his friends seem particularly happy to see him back.
Murray’s declared intention of staying put and settling down threatens to stir up all sorts of old rivalries and resentments. Suddenly the couple, in search of peace, find themselves once more in the firing line.
Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne from 22 – 27 February Confusions is performed Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 7.45pm, with matinee on Saturday at 2.30pm. Hero’s Welcome is on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 7.45pm with a Wednesday matinee at 2.30pm.
Tickets priced at £15.50 – £21 with concessions available including a duo-show discount! To book or for more information call the box office on 01323 412000 or visit online at www.eastbournetheatres.co.uk