But as Pérez dug deeper into the role, she also discovered something quintessentially human: optimism. Tosca’s confidence, combined with her tempestuous, unpredictable personality, reminded Pérez of the Greek gods. “I find that it's un-relatable, but then that's the very thing that makes her Tosca,” Pérez says. Pérez sees her as courageous one moment and almost childlike in the next. Tosca zigzags from trust to jealousy, piety to gravest sin. She’s a character full of contradictions-“sharp turns,” as Pérez calls them. And yet, she believes in the possibility of a happy ending, right until the very end. Tosca’s lover is captured, tortured, and then shot before her very eyes, even though she had struck a devil’s bargain to assure his safety. Tosca chronicles the story of the soprano Floria Tosca, a performer whose life is upended when a predatory police chief singles her out as his next victim. I just thought, ‘Why is everyone screaming in Act II?’ I couldn’t understand it. “It didn’t capture my heart in terms of how La Bohème does. Pérez is currently starring in her first-ever run of the opera, playing the title role for San Francisco Opera. “I never was moved by it, if you can believe it,” she now says with a laugh.

Tosca opera length