When Puccini’s “Tosca” begins, danger and suspicion thicken the air.
Rome in 1800 was a stinking cauldron of fear and intrigue. Napoleon’s spies were everywhere. Political factions jockeyed for power.
Yet for many, “Tosca” is, at its core, a great love story. How about a political thriller with glorious music? Napoleon is on the march. The Papal States are corrupt, the police are worse, and the resistance doesn’t have a chance.
“Tosca” is so much more than a fictional love triangle; it is grounded in real historical events.
The action takes place on a specific date – June 17, 1800. There is good reason. A month earlier, Napoleon had crossed the Alps headed for northern Italy. On June 15, his Reserve Army defeated the Austrian Army at the Battle of Marengo. The victory ended the bloody French-Austrian struggle to control Italy. It also ratcheted up Bonaparte’s plan to declare himself emperor of France and conquer all of Europe.
In Act II of Puccini’s “Tosca,” news of Napoleon’s victory is announced. It emboldens the villain, Baron Scarpia, to intensify his campaign against the Republican resistance, in particular Mario Cavaradossi, Tosca’s lover.
In 1800, news took days to travel, so Puccini, and the French play on which the opera is based, set the action specifically two days after the battle: June 17.
The first character we see in “Tosca” is Cesare Angelotti, an escaped political prisoner. He rushes on stage to hide in a cavernous church. Angelotti is a freedom fighter, part of the Resistance, and he’s based on a real Italian, Libero Angelucci, first consul of the doomed Republican movement.
One other Act II event is grounded in history: a banquet for the queen of Naples. In the opera, it takes place offstage. We hear Tosca singing but never see the Queen. The banquet has been documented and can be found in “Tosca’s Rome,” a well-researched book by Susan Vandiver Nicassio. She uncovered dozens of historical sources behind the French play, which Puccini in turn adapted for his opera.
Parisian playwright Victorien Sardou wrote “La Tosca” in 1887 for Sarah Bernhardt, then at the peak of her fame. It is a five-act melodrama in which Floria Tosca, a famous fictional singer, loves Mario Cavaradossi, a French national with an Italian father – also made up. He studied art in Paris with the great Jacques Louis David, a Bonapartist to the core. In Rome, the lovers encounter Scarpia, chief of police. He pursues traitors with vengeance and lusts after Tosca with even more vengeance. That’s the fictional love triangle. Playwright Sardou based Cavaradossi’s rebel friend Angelotti on the very real Angelucci. Sardou’s melodrama vaguely glorifies Napoleon and partially accounts for its enormous popularity. The Battle Marengo, well-known to all French schoolchildren, was a turning point for Napoleon and critical to the play. That plus wagonloads of sex, lust, violence, torture, murder and suicide in sumptuous Rome catapulted Sardou’s “La Tosca” to become a European sensation.
In 1887, “La Tosca” was all the rage. George Bernard Shaw called it a dramatic triumph and coined “Sardoodledum.” An aging Verdi regretted he was too old to make it into an opera. Puccini, 42 at the time, saw the play twice, in Milan and Turin, and quickly decided to get the rights for an opera. After complex negotiations, he did.
Twelve years on, Puccini’s “Tosca” premiered in Rome – June 1900.
You can see a live transmission Saturday at Fort Lewis College. The Met performance runs three hours and 35 minutes with two intermissions.
jreynolds@durangoherald.com. Judith Reynolds is a Durango writer, artist and critic.
If you go
The MET: Live in HD presents Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca,” at 10:55 a.m. Saturday in the Vallecito Room of the Fort Lewis College Student Union. Based on the French play, “La Tosca,” by Victorien Sardou, with Patricia Racette as Tosca, Roberto Alagna as Cavaradossi and George Gagnidze as Baron Scarpia in a production designed by Luc Bondy. Tickets cost $23 general, $21 seniors, students and MET members, available online at www.durangoconcerts.com, by phone at 247-7657 or at the Welcome Center at Eighth Street and Main Avenue, or at the door. Note: Surcharges may apply. Running time: 3 hours 35 minutes.
