Police brutality. Political torture. Passion, betrayal, jealousy. Murder. Suicide.

Yesterday’s headlines?

Nope, next weekend’s opera: Tosca.

Slated as Toledo Opera’s season opener, it will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Oct. 12 in the Valentine Theatre.

One of the all-time greats in the repertoire, this Giacomo Puccini classic created more than a century ago remains so very timely today.

Tosca’s tale has roots in 19th century Italian history, plus outsize characters representing extremes of human behavior.

No wonder Puccini chose it as a subject.

The composer, already famous and looking for a new story, first encountered it as a play, La Tosca. Written by Frenchman Victorien Sardou in 1887 for superstar actress Sarah Bernhardt, it was a mega hit, presented more than 3,000 times in France alone.

Puccini saw the play twice in Italy at least before buying the rights in 1895 and setting his librettists, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, to work.

His Tosca premiered in 1899 at Rome’s Teatro Costanzi, and the opera world gained another strong woman, a heroine willing to die for her principles.

“She’s a passionate woman of faith,” soprano Jill Gardner, who will portray the title character, said just before a Sept. 27 opening read-through. “She believes her talent is God-given.”

Gardner is an in-demand specialist in Puccini operas, all of which celebrate the power of the female through dramatic plots and lush, melody-infused scores. With the role of Tosca as her specialty, Gardner clearly is bringing her best game for her Toledo debut.

“Honey, we should talk,” she says just before rehearsal, her North Carolina roots lending her speech a soft blur. Clearly, Gardner has had plenty of time to ponder the complexities of this character.

Tosca already is a favorite of Toledo audiences, who are aligned with the rest of the world. According to a slew of informed guides, the Puccini work ranks among the top 10 operas to know. (Puccini’s La Boheme also makes that cut, as do two operas each by Mozart and Verdi.)

That’s one reason James Meena, artistic director of the Toledo Opera, chose it to open the company’s 2014-2015 season.

“It’s the perfect opera to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Valentine,” he told The Blade.

Meena conducted it for the Valentine’s inaugural performance in 1999. A fan of the 900-seat hall, saved from the wrecking ball and transformed into a downtown showcase, Meena calls it “a jewel box.”

Praising its flattering acoustics, he told the cast, chorus, and children’s choir assembled under the soaring rehearsal space on the Valentine’s fifth floor, “You actually can sing piano in this house.”

And, of the new renovations to the orchestra pit, Meena crowed, “Nearly 90 percent of the orchestra is under the stage.”

Prior to rehearsal, Meena said the set for this show will be the same as in 1999, a traditional setting with painted canvas backdrops from Italian designer Ercole Sormani.

“There are only a few sets by Sormani in the U.S.,” the conductor said. “These are owned by the Seattle Opera.”

Tosca has plenty of Italian verismo, based as it is on tumultous times.

Decades before the accord that would unify scrappy city states under a central government, Rome was a political football, claimed by Neapolitans from the south, then Napoleon from the north, with interference from Austria.

True patriots like Cesari Angelotti (Puccini’s character is thought to be based on the real Libero Angelucci), were imprisoned while corrupt cops like Baron Scarpia, a Napoleon sycophant, ran rampant.

Scarpia is the perfect villain, especially in the personage of bass-baritone Michael Chioldi, tall, broad-shouldered, swaggering. He’s ruthless, canny, and power-mad.

Chioldi brought Scarpia to life in 2007 in the Valentine for a production by Renay Conlin, then artistic director of the Toledo Opera.

Meena, too, praised his dark, edgy reading after Chioldi’s first entrance during the sing-through. Chioldi also is a regular at the Metropolitan Opera. He won an Emmy Award in 2008 for his portrayal of Sharpless in another Puccini classic, Madama Butterfly, on Live From Lincoln Center.

The sexual and personal tension between Scarpia and Tosca is the dramatic engine for the entire opera.

Tosca, a popular singer, is drawn into the vortex generated by Scarpia’s ambition and lust. Their collateral damage encompasses the artist Mario Cavaradossi, Tosca’s boyfriend.

During a rehearsal break, Maestro Meena urged more excitement from the 15 young choristers by trying to link Tosca’s fame in 1880s Rome to today.

“Who are your favorite singers?” he asked.

“Katy Perry,” shouted several. “Taylor Swift,” said others.

Gardner believes Tosca’s made of stauncher and more principled stuff than such pop performers. “She truly believes in love,” said Gardner. “She’s driven by a strong moral basis.”

In Act II, Gardner will sing Tosca’s credo, “Vissi’darte, vissi d’amore,” (“I live for art; I live for love”). It’s a lament infused with the melodic theme Puccini created for his heroine, ironically a victim of her own talent and beauty.

But Cavaradossi adds to the tension by trying to help Angelotti, the activist supporting the embattled king, escape the clutches of Scarpia and Napoleon’s henchmen. He is arrested by Scarpia as Act I ends.

Tenor Adam Diegel, a regular at the Metropolitan Opera, will portray Cavaradossi in his local debut.

In rehearsal, he certainly looked the part – tall and dramatically present. His voice offered richness and color similar to Placido Domingo, with whom he has worked. Domingo sang the same role with the Toledo Opera in a 1956 production, during the Spanish tenor’s inaugural U.S. tour.

Tosca comes in a three-act package. All principals and supporting characters are introduced as the plot develops.

Among the key supporting roles are Angelotti, played this time by Sean Cooper, a Bowling Green State University voice professor, and the Sacristan of the church where Act I is set, portrayed by Donald Hartmann (one of only two performers who were in the 1999 production).

Michael Capasso, who directed the TOA’s 2012 La Boheme, is shaping the stage action for Tosca. Act II, set in Rome’s Farnese Palace, is the peak of drama for this opera.

Tosca has come to bargain with Scarpia for Cavaradossi’s release – he is being tortured, audibly, in a nearby room. A deal is struck: Tosca’s priceless body and soul for her boyfriend’s freedom and safe passage for them out of Rome.

Then, word of Napoleon’s defeat in the Battle of Marengo reaches the palace and the mood changes drastically. Tosca gives in to Scarpia but then, torn apart by her emotions and his betrayal, stabs him to death.

Act III is all denouement, the carrying out of a supposedly faked execution of Cavaradossi, then the couple’s escape.

Tosca, with nothing left to live for – neither art nor love – jumps off the parapet of Castel Sant’Angelo, the landmark prison in the shadow of the Vatican.

In opera, as so often in life, there are no happy endings.

For the Toledo Opera, however, bringing this gorgeous tragedy to life for full houses will mean fulfillment.

Tickets for Toledo Opera’s Tosca are $40-70 at 419-255-7464 or www.toledoopera.org.

Contact Sally Vallongo at: svallongo@theblade.com

First Published October 5, 2014, 4:00 a.m.