Three sold-out evenings for the Rome Opera in Japan. The first two performances of Traviata at Tokyo's Bunka Kaikan were greeted by ten minutes of applause. The premiere of Tosca, held at the Kanagawa Kenmin Hall in Yokohama, received fifteen minutes of applause, with standing ovations from the audience for all three evenings. This is the balance of the first part of the tour involving the Capitoline Lyric Symphonic Foundation in Japan, which will continue until September 26 with another performance of Verdi's masterpiece and three more of Puccini's. On the podium in all performances appears Music Director Michele Mariotti, engaged in a great effort crowned with great personal success. Protagonists and opera stars such as Lisette Oropesa, Francesco Meli and Amartuvshin Enkhbath in Traviata, Sonya Yoncheva, Vittorio Grigolo and Roman Burdenko peep in for Tosca. The Rome Opera thus returns to Japan bringing two acclaimed productions: Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, directed in 2008 by Franco Zeffirelli - revived today by Marco Gandini on the centenary of the great director's birth - and Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata in Sofia Coppola's successful 2016 staging, with costumes by Italian fashion symbol Valentino Garavani. In addition to the soloists, the tour involves 227 people including orchestral professors, the chorus directed by Ciro Visco, the corps de ballet directed by Eleonora Abbagnato, and the technicians and workers of the Rome Opera.