Giacomo Puccini’s native Lucca, a lesser-known gem among Tuscany’s historic cities, observes the centennial of the composer’s death with Luca Orsini’s new staging of Tosca (coproduced with opera houses in Pisa, Ravenna, Livorno, Modena, and Ferrara, where it travels in months ahead). Clarissa Costanzo assays the eponymous Roman diva, alongside Azer Zada as the painter of fetching Magdalenes and revolutionary firebrand Cavaradossi. As Scarpia, the chief of Rome’s secret police, Massimo Cavalletti completes the principal trio in this melodrama of mutually assured destruction. Aficionados will be paying close attention to the conductor Henry Kennedy, a 20-something Brit on the rise who goes out of his way to assimilate endangered performance standards, disciplines, and traditions before they disappear completely. To this end, he has examined Wagner with Christian Thielemann, bel canto and Bizet with Richard Bonynge, and Verdi as well as Puccini with Riccardo Muti, whose crackerjack Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra (founded in 2004) will be heard in the pit. —Matthew Gurewitsch