Artists in this former pasta factory are preserving opera traditions

Behind a rusty gate near Rome's Circus Maximus is a building passed daily by hordes of tourists. They're oblivious to the fact that behind its faded, flaking paint is a hive of activity sustaining one of Italy's grandest cultural institutions. It was a pasta factory until almost a century ago, when the Rome Opera House transformed the four-story building into a sprawling warehouse and workshop. It is home to a trove of scenic backdrops and 70,000 costumes from over a century of performances. Even more are being created - the traditional way.

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For this year, the opera house's costume designers, tailors and seamstresses have been scouring archives and working to reconstruct the original outfits of Giacomo Puccini's Opera “Tosca.” It is a tale of passion, cruelty and deception set in Rome in the 1800s, featuring a dark-haired beauty forced to commit murder to protect her dignity and the man she loves. This year marks the 125th anniversary of its first-ever performance.

“Fortunately, all the sketches for each costume exist and are very detailed and we have reconstructed them, respecting as much as possible the taste of the time from the point of view of the fabrics, the shapes and all the materials used,” Anna Biagiotti, the opera house's costume director, said in an interview inside the warehouse.