Roger Hecht wrote:

>My lifelong love of opera began the day I heard Tosca in English.  It
>is such a dramatic piece, almost cinematic.  I doubt hearing it first
>in Italian would have had the same effect.  Certainly, hearing other
>operas in the original language did not.  But when I heard this one, I
>suddenly realized that opera was music AND drama and for the uninitiated,
>at least, there is no drama when listening in a foreign language.  As
>Puccini certainly knew.  In his day, opera was to be savored and its text
>immediately understood by everyone.  It was not just a jewel to be admired
>from afar by the elite.  Otherwise he'd have written Tosca in English.  Or
>Sanskrit.

My reaction to hearing Tosca, from the very first was similar to how
you describe yours, except I didn't hear it in English and, certainly at
that age, knew no Italian.  All I had going for me in following the story
was Milton Cross' explanation of the plot, act by act.  From the opening
scene w/ its delicate music (which I'd describe as pastoral) accompanying
the priest in the church where Mario is working on his painting, to the
increasingly dramatic scenes, I found the opera, w/ its music and plot
breath taking.  To this day, it's for me the opera that has everything:
love, jealousy, hate, sadism, revenge, piety, deception, and culminating
in a totally cathartic ending.

Walter Meyer