Tosca

Tosca premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on January 14, 1900, conducted by the much-esteemed Leopoldo Mugnone, who had led the premiere of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana at the Costanzi ten years earlier. The sets were designed by Adolfo Hohenstein, who also created the famous poster for Tosca, which features Tosca placing a crucifix on Scarpia’s corpse against a sea of red. The audience was resplendent with glitterati, including Queen Margherita, Mascagni, and Richard Wagner’s son, Siegfried. Despite favorable audience reaction, critics wrote unkindly about Tosca, finding especially distasteful its overt sexuality and excessive violence. At issue, as Puccini scholar Alexandra Wilson has put it, was Italy’s “moral well-being.” Critics from near and far declared the work “depraved,” “tinged with blood,” “black, tragic, terrible,” and, perhaps worse, “superficial.” Such negativity would peak with the remarks of musicologist Joseph Kerman, who, in the first edition (1956) of his Opera as Drama, condemned Puccini’s opera as a “shabby little shocker” and later compared it to a “chain-saw movie.”

But negative criticism of Tosca, past and present, only mimics the reception of its literary source, Victorien Sardou’s La Tosca (1887). Audiences were thrilled by the play (and its star, Sarah Bernhardt), while reviewers such as Jules Le Maître, reacted vociferously to its “brutal sensations,” concluding that “M. Sardou is thirsty for blood. He is the Caligula of the drama.” One might well ask: does the faithful operatic adaptation of Sardou’s play make Puccini the “Caligula of the opera”? Obviously, some critics thought so. Yet, it would seem, it is precisely the “danger” of Tosca that has kept it in front of today’s audiences.

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In 1889, shortly after completing his least-known opera, Edgar, and while he was already formulating ideas for Manon Lescaut (1893), Puccini saw Victorien Sardou’s 1887 French play, La Tosca, and immediately recognized in it the kind of passion that is at the core of opera. Feeling a sense of urgency, he wrote to publisher Giulio Ricordi, “I’m thinking about Tosca! I implore you to do everything necessary to obtain Sardou’s permission before abandoning the idea—that would grieve me terribly, since I can see that Tosca is the opera that is just right for me.” Ricordi, however, was doubtful about the subject, as was Giuseppe Giacosa, who told Ricordi as late as 1896, when he was already engrossed in the project, “the more one gets inside the action and penetrates each scene to draw out lyric or poetic life from it, the more one is convinced of its absolute unadaptability for music theatre.”

Puccini was, nonetheless, determined, and Ricordi moved forward with the difficult task of persuading Sardou that an Italian opera composer and not a French one could best transform his work. In 1892, an agreement was reached and the contract signed, but by that time Puccini had become deeply distracted by Murger’s serial novel Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851), and devoted the next four years to collaborating with Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa on La bohème (1896). The delay was a problem for the publisher, however; Sardou was anxious to see the new version of his play, and to satisfy the playwright, Ricordi brought in Alberto Franchetti (Cristoforo Columbo, 1892) to compose the opera and Luigi Illica to sketch an outline of the plot. In 1895, however, Franchetti withdrew from the collaboration; Puccini stepped back into the scene and Giuseppe Giacosa was brought in to assist with versification of the libretto. The second collaboration of the trio of Puccini, Illica, and Giacosa was now set into motion (composer and poets would come together for the last time in 1904 for Madama Butterfly). 

But composition of Tosca would take another four years, during which time Puccini made a number of efforts to ensure that his opera would be as authentic as possible. It was with this particular mission in mind that he made his now-famous trip to Rome to hear the bells of St. Peter’s, which he would incorporate into Act III. He also met several times with Sardou to discuss various other aspects of verisimilitude in the plot, including the precise location of the Tiber, which flows alongside the Castello Sant’Angelo and not between the Castello and St. Peter’s, as Sardou mistakenly believed. The issue, of course, was whether or not there would be a river for Tosca to jump into when she leapt from the parapet of the Castello at the final curtain of the opera.

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Imagine the realpolitik of Rome in 1800, its Neapolitan government threatened by Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Marengo. The action—political, religious, and sexual—plays out under the radar, as the villainous Scarpia, driven by desire for Tosca, plots seduction and murder. Act I may be viewed as a microcosm of the whole, vacillating from action piece to romance to seductive thriller in a little under an hour. Puccini raises the curtain with the so-called “Scarpia” chords, three fortissimo statements that forecast the opera’s violence with their unique and unusual harmonic relationship, dissonant and incompatible by classical standards: B flat, A flat, E major. The opening scene is practically wordless, as Puccini’s syncopated music underscores Angelotti’s desperate search for the key to the Attavanti Chapel in the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle. The “escape” music yields to a comic Sacristan followed by the dreamy musings of Cavaradossi (“Recondita armonia”), a passionate love duet between Tosca and Cavaradossi, and finally, the magnificent “Te deum” that celebrates the apparent defeat of Napoleon at Marengo and concludes the act. And here Puccini masterfully knits together sacred and profane: As the procession enters the church to the sound of the organ, Scarpia declares his lust—”Tosca, you make me forget God!”—and then kneels to pray.

Act II takes place in the intimacy of an apartment in the Palazzo Farnese, where Scarpia fantasizes about Tosca. His henchmen have arrested Cavaradossi, who is interrogated and dragged off to the torture chamber. Tosca joins the scene, and, flinching at the sound of her lover’s cries of pain, reveals Angelotti’s whereabouts to Scarpia, who offers her a deal: free passage out of Rome in exchange for sex. Left alone with Scarpia, Tosca pleads with God in a confession of faith and devotion to art (“Vissi d’arte, Vissi d’amore”). Puccini carves out this private moment with delicacy and conviction; the tempo is slow (Andante lento appassionato), the dynamic pianissimo and the expression “dolcissimo con grande sentiment.” What follows is one of Puccini’s most adeptly crafted “action scenes,” detailed in the stage directions: “As Scarpia writes, Tosca approaches the table, and with a trembling hand, takes the glass of Spanish wine that Scarpia had poured; however, as she raises the glass to her lips, she notices a sharp, pointed knife on the table; she glances rapidly at Scarpia, who is absorbed in what he’s writing—and with extreme caution gropes for the knife, answering his questions and watching him closely all the time.”

The orchestra now takes over, the tempo changes to Andante sostenuto, and the dynamic is pianississimo. Violins and violas play a gritty, intense, and passionate melody that must, according to Puccini’s instructions, be played on a single string (meaning no string crossings), thus forcing the fingers into upper positions where lower strings will speak only under additional pressure from the bow. Tosca stabs Scarpia in the chest, crying, “Questo è il bacio di Tosca [This is the kiss of Tosca]!”, unleashing a torrent of non-lyrical vocal expressions indicated in the score as: “gridando [shouting],” “con voce strozzata [with a choked voice],” “con odio [hatefully],” “soffocato [suffocating],” “affievolendosi [fading],” “con ferocia [ferociously],” and finally, “con forza crescente [with increasing force].” A strange calm then prevails as Tosca places candelabra next to Scarpia’s corpse and a crucifx on his chest. She inspects the body and utters scornfully, “E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma [And before him trembled all of Rome]!”

Four unison horns herald the curtain rise on Act III, which takes place in the prison of the Castello Sant’Angelo. It is not quite dawn and the lament of a shepherd boy can be heard in the distance along with the bells calling for morning prayers. Cavaradossi, alone in his cell and awaiting execution, ponders his muse (“E lucevan le stelle [And the stars shone].”) In the long and chromatic introduction to the aria, a quartet of solo cellos underscores Cavaradossi’s despair; it’s a thrilling and frighteningly difficult passage for the cellos as well as the tenor, who must hold the stage silently and pensively before beginning the aria in a whisper that must be sustained until the climactic words, “E non ho amato mai tanto la vita [And I’ve never loved life so much]!” Tosca enters the cell and offers one final hope: they have been given passage out of Rome. The execution will be fake and Cavaradossi must mimic death in order for the ruse to succeed. Tosca uses her skills as an actress to teach him a realistic way to die; she watches him proudly as he falls, exclaiming, “What an artist!” But, as we all learn very quickly, Tosca has mistaken life for art.

HELEN M. GREENWALD

Helen M. Greenwald has written scholarly articles on vocal music from the 18th to the 20th centuries. She is editor of the critical editions of Rossini’s Zelmira and Verdi’s Attila. She contributed to the Oxford Handbook of Opera, is writing a monograph on Verdi’s Rigoletto for Oxford University Press, and has written essays for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, La Scala, Teatro Regio, Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Festival, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Metropolitan Opera. Professor Greenwald teaches music history at the New England Conservatory of Music.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra first performed the complete Tosca at Tanglewood, on July 26, 1980, with Seiji Ozawa conducting, soprano Shirley Verrett in the title role, tenor Veriano Luchetti as Cavaradossi, and baritone Sherrill Milnes as Scarpia. Music from Tosca entered the Boston Pops repertoire in May 1908 and the BSO repertoire in December 1908, since which time various excerpts have appeared in concerts of both orchestras.