Carlos Gomes

Conductor : Alexander Anissimov

Designer and director : Giovanni Agostinucci

First performance : Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1873

The eponymous heroine is the sister of Gajolo, a pirate leader based on an island off the Istrian coast. She falls in love with Paolo, the son of a Venetian nobleman, whom the pirates have kidnapped but are about to release in return for a tidy ransom. Fosca declares her love but Paolo says no thanks, he'll stick with his fiancee, Delia.

Fosca enlists the help of the cunning slave Cambro - who, unbeknownst to her, intends to do away with her brother, seize power and marry her himself - to do away with Delia. Suitably disguised, the pair pounce on the hapless lovers at their wedding, only to find that Gajolo is already in the church, also in disguise, as part of a dastardly plan to rob the wedding guests. Back at the island, Fosca is so moved by Delia's devotion to Paolo that she relents and befriends her; meanwhile Gajolo, who has been captured in Venice (having been betrayed, of course, by the endlessly duplicitous Cambro), has done a deal with the Doge whereby he will return Paolo in exchange for his own freedom. Alas, Fosca has changed her mind and now tells Delia she will spare Paolo's life if Delia will be obliging enough to commit suicide; Paolo won't hear of this, so Fosca orders the pirates to kill him. In the nick of time Gajolo appears and frees the captives; Fosca begs everyone's forgiveness and stabs herself in the heart.

Giovanni Agostinucci

Having achieved considerable international success as a set and costume designer who worked on more than 200 productions with leading theatrical figures from Jean-Pierre Ponnelle to Franco Zeffirelli, Giovanni Agostinucci is now emerging as a respected stage director in his own right. He has created a formidable number of internationally acclaimed productions; Il Barbiere di Siviglia for the Opera-Comique in Paris; Verdi's I Lombardi for Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Tosca and the verismo double bill of Cav and Pag - Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leonca- vallo's Pagliacci - with Placido Domingo as Canio, for the Arena festival at Verona. His 1997 production of La traviata for Washing- ton Opera, described by the New York Times as "a main event", will tour the US and Europe over the next three years.

Now what was a Brazilian composer doing in 19th-century Milan writing gung-ho operas about 10th-century Italian pirates? Carving out a pretty successful career on a scene dominated by the gargantuan figure of Verdi, it seems. "As Gomes is never performed in Italy now," says Giovanni Agostinucci, "this opera came as a great surprise to me. And it was an even greater surprise to discover how much Gomes anticipated the verismo style. The hard-core verismo operas of Mascagni and Leoncavallo came much, much later; but Fosca could, in many ways, be seen as the first verismo opera. To begin with, it is based on a true story, and this is what verismo is, taking reality and making it into music." But isn't it difficult to portray pirates in a realistic way on a stage at the end of the 20th century? Won't audiences find it all somewhat quaint? "No, because the main characteristic of a pirate is someone who defies convention, an anarchist - naturally, in this piece, they are surrounded by this lush, romantic music, which softens the characters somewhat, but this bold, defiant mentality is exactly what's around today."

"And Fosca. She's a fascinating character. She's a woman in a man's world; she doesn't know anything about being a woman, really, but she has a very, very soft heart. All through the opera her feelings see-saw up and down; and although she kills herself for love at the end of the opera, it's not an `I give up' sort of death - it's really a revenge." In order to emphasise the characters as much as possible, sets will be kept minimal and abstract - which also, incidentally, helps with the tricky business of putting a very big opera on to a very small stage. "There are some very large set pieces in this opera, and it's important to use the stage for what it is - so we've designed a set which takes advantage of the good height, with vertical elements such as pillars and a staircase, and the characters will move diagonally to help add depth of field to the production." Fosca was a resounding failure at its premiere, partly because of a strong anti-Wagner element in the La Scala audience which rejected Gomes's use of leitmotifs and chromaticism in the score. But Giovanni Agostinucci says the "Wagnerism" of Fosca has been greatly exaggerated. Could it be, then, that what contemporary audiences sensed in the piece was simply some innovation of Gomes's own? "It's true that there is one passage in the second act which is very Wagnerian - you can feel the wind and the leaves swirling all around. But the rest is pure Verdi. There's a violin solo which is exactly like a passage from I Lombardi. A story of a woman in a man's world? Nothing very new about that."