It's an evergreen. According to the Operabase website, it was performed 540 times in 5 seasons. So it might not be completely out of this world that Tosca will be staged for a third time in 7 years at the Aurora Opera House in Gozo. The theatre that gave birth to opera in Gozo, last produced Tosca in 2011 with a super-stellar cast comprising Michele Crider, Neil Shicoff and Juan Pons. The Gaulitanus choir brought another Tosca at the Aurora in 2014 as part of their Gaulitana Festival of Music. This October, the Aurora presents yet another Tosca with a series of 'new's, the first being Vivien Hewitt as stage director.

Acting and subtle lighting are at the centre of her work but so are unusual collaborations with sculptors, artists and fashion designers and it seems like this fusion will be coming to Gozo with her. "I think this year the public will see something very original with a strong design component. I'll be working with a Maltese team with an international outlook and an awareness of how fashion and design can interact with theatrical creativity. I think the result will be very fresh and exciting". The inference that Hewitt will not be the only innovation is clear from the onset. However, how does this tally with the fact that Tosca is an epitome of verismo operas, set in very specific locations, time and date?

"Doing "new" with Puccini, who is very much a realistic composer, is like walking a tightrope between tradition and innovation. We see a lot of clicés in older Tosca productions and a lot of ugly expressionist attempts at radical updating in new ones" says Vivien Hewitt. She questions, for example, the well-dressed policemen with black cape coats in the mid June when the opera is specifically set, as well as Tosca's grand frock and jewels in Act 1 that no hard working singer would wear to rehearsals in a hot dusty theatre in mid summer. Her "new" lies is making the characters feel true to life, in capturing the ethos of downtown late baroque Rome, the stifling dark atmosphere of a closed church that for a moment explodes with light and incense for a grand ceremony, the frightening feel of a police chief's private study in a commandeered building where a grand reception continues as Scarpia and his rough thugs torture a prisoner, the nostalgic beauty of a dawn that breaks on a condemned man in the most ancient prison in the world. "Tosca is like a film and I hope to capture the opera's realistic feel" she quips.

Tosca is one of the few operas that has an absolutely precise historical collocation: June 1800. The Battle of Marengo was won by the Austrians in the morning but Napoleon launched a counter offensive in the afternoon and defeated General Mélas. Luigi Illica, the librettist, was a passionate republican but Puccini was apoltical and loved being the Italian Royal Family's favorite composer.

Hewitt believes Puccini was interested in people, in what makes them tick, and in good dramaturgy, not in launching manifestoes or making judgements. She thinks that the central theme of the opera is the "temporary insanity" that we call love, that renders all the characters victims of their passions. Cavaradossi doesn't think rationally when he finds Angelotti and decides to hide him in his Villa. His passionate love for Tosca and of liberty leads him to fatal decisions. Tosca is so passionately in love with Cavaradossi, yet so jealous and insecure that she immediately fears he is unfaithful. Scarpia, who is apparently cynical and self controlled, is actually dominated by his own sexual impulses, and is really more interested in having Tosca at his mercy than in capturing republican conspirators. Like many religious and political fundamentalists, he is a victim of the potent urges he would like to suppress.

This analytical reading of the plot and the characters is key to the kind of production that Hewitt aims to construct. For example, Hewitt does not share the idea of the Te Deum as a political point, or a representation of the corruption of the Catholic Church. "The Te Deum springs for Puccini's personal experience of religious ceremony and Church processions in Lucca." Puccini's home town, where Hewitt herself lives, is called the city of the 100 churches and the Procession of the Volto Santo on 14th September when the whole city is illuminated with tens of thousands of candles  and every diocese takes part in a procession with hundreds of pole lantern's religious symbols, massive banners carried by footmen in 18th century costume and confraternities carrying candles. The whole event ends at the Cathedral where there is a "Mottetone". The four generations of Puccini's who were Maestri di Cappella in the Cathedral wrote Mottetones as part of their job and as a child Giacomo played the organ in such ceremonies.

The Te Deum is a fabulous backdrop to Scarpia's aria and at the same time a cathartic revocation of religious experience. Puccini understood that there can be a powerful connection between religious fervor and eros, just as Bernini did when he created his ecstasy of Santa Teresa d'Avila.The richer and more magnificent the Te Deum, full of light and incense and glory, the more fascinating, severe, black clothed, eros driven Scarpia becomes. The Church represents the established order of things, but Puccni's Scarpia makes an abusive use of his relationship with the sacred world instead of serving it.

There is some good thinking going on for Tosca at the Aurora, not to mention a very healthy artistic exchange, the fruit of which will be publicised in due course. Undoubtedly there is a bold eye for detail. But in between a trip to Gozo and another, Hewitt was keeping herself busy with a production of Madama Butterfly at the Puccini Festival that runs till 18th August and another with the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa that alternated with Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Being the artistic director of the Illica Festival in the home town of Puccini's librettist meant another four events culminating in a big opera and tango Gala. Very soon she's off to Lubiana Festival for Rigoletto with Leo Nucci where she works in tandem with world famous baritone Rolando Panerai who is still directing at 94. Then, she might be able to take a breath as she catches her flight to Malta and a ferry trip to Gozo before she's off again to Livorno for Mascagni's operetta "Sì" and Fidenza for "Lucia di Lammermoor".

This will be Hewitt's first collaboration with an opera in Gozo, although she has been visiting Malta for quite a number of years. She says she's fascinated by Gozo because the activity there is born of a spontaneous love for opera and has managed to retain and develop community involvement while the rest of the world seems to be forgetting it. She says design has improved compared with the early 80's and the quality of the casts is world class. Well into her first months into this collaboration, she looks very positive about this. In her own words, "It is an interesting and stimulating time for the Aurora and its audiences".