Anja Harteros excels in the title role of Michael Sturminger’s cinematic staging of Puccini’s “Tosca”, the centrepiece of Salzburg Easter Festival. Aleksandrs Antoņenko compellingly portrays Cavaradossi, while Ludovic Tézier is a thrillingly malevolent Scarpia. Christian Thielemann leads the Staatskapelle Dresden. “Tosca” is a political thriller with a heart-breaking love story that gives a vivid account of the harassment of artists, political persecution, torture and arbitrary executions. In Salzburg it is set in the Mafiosi world of modern day Rome and is “the perfect thriller … reminiscent of Scorsese’s ‘Goodfellas’” (Kleine Zeitung), a “film noir”