Born on 22 December 1858, in Lucca, Tuscany, Italian composer Giacomo Puccini remains one of the most impactful and effective champions of operatic realism to date. Verismo, the Italian term for “realism”, came to the fore in Italy during the late 19th century and centres around the everyday people, their struggles, and the gritty realities of life. Themes of verismo often focus on love and even violence, presented passionate arias accompanied by emotion-driven harmonies and lush orchestration.
Puccini comes from a long lineage of musicians. His great-great-grandfather, his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and eventually his father all succeeded each other as music director and organist at Lucca’s Cathedral of San Martino, a musical ancestry that spanned 124 years. Puccini’s father died when he was just five years old, and due to the tremendous musical impact the family had in Lucca, the municipality financially supported Puccini’s family, even keeping his father’s position at the Cathedral vacant, until Puccini was properly trained and of age.
Guided by his uncles, Puccini first studied at Pacini School of Music in his home town and continued his education at the Milan Conservatory. Composing throughout his studies, Puccini’s reputation grew rapidly and was widely considered as one of the great emerging young composers at the time.
Puccini first encountered French playwright Victorien Sardou’s La Tosca in 1889. An immensely successful play, La Tosca was staged throughout Europe more than 3,000 times. The idea of composing an opera based on Sardou’s work germinated in Puccini, even when he was still completing his other most beloved operas: Manon Lescaut and La Bohème. He writes to his publisher: “I see in this Tosca the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music.”
However, Sardou had initial doubts and unease, preferring his play to be adapted by a French composer. Librettists were also doubtful regarding how La Tosca would translate to audiences in operatic form. After many, many back and forth negotiations between Puccini’s publisher and Sardou’s agent (as well as another composer who was initially granted the rights to the play), Puccini was finally successful. Six years after he first saw La Tosca, Puccini set out to compose his own Tosca with librettist Luigi Illica.
Premiered on 14 January 1900, in Rome, Tosca, with each of its three acts set around well-known Roman monuments – Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, Palazzo Farnese, and Castel Sant’Angelo – follows the journey of a capricious singer, an idealistic painter, and a cruel police chief. Despite some hostility towards the subject matter (with even threats of violence), a massive crowd gathered around the theatre as early as 11 a.m. for that night’s premiere. The Gazzetta Musicale reports that the shouting and stamping outside from people trying to get into the theatre was so loud that the orchestra, which had just barely started playing, had to stop and start over once everyone had quieted.
At the conclusion of Tosca’s premiere (with countless bows from the soprano and tenor after their encored arias during the performance), Puccini received six stage solo bows with 21 bows for the cast, which offered five more encores to the wildly enthusiastic audience. Despite the audience’s reception, critics were paradoxically less enthusiastic. The Gazzetta Musicale alludes to the so-called “unnerved” production as result of the chaotic crowd at the top of the performance, as well as the violent threats presumed to be from the composer’s jealous peers. Regardless, Puccini calmly writes to his publisher, “This is not conceit on my part. It is the conviction of having expressed to the best of my ability the drama which was before me.”
Tosca begins on the morning of 17 June 1800, and concludes by the dawn of the following day. Cesare Angelotti, a former consul of the Roman Republic had escaped prison. Seeking refuge in the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, he hides in a chapel where his sister had hidden a key.
The artist Mario Cavaradossi enters to resume work on his painting of Mary Magdalene. An elderly sacristan observes his painting, noting that the face of Mary resembles greatly of a woman who had visited the very chapel in which Angelotti is hiding, and Cavaradossi reveals that the blonde woman of his painting is actually modelled after Angelotti’s sister. In his short but soaring tenor aria Recondita armonia (“Concealed harmony”), Cavaradossi, much to the dismay of the sacristan, compares his love for the celebrated singer Floria Tosca to his painting of Mary, noting how art has the ability to blend two contrasting beauties together. Boasting long, uninhibited melodic lines atop a lush orchestration, the aria builds to a climax with timpani punctuation as Cavaradossi proclaims, with raw emotion, that his thoughts are still of Tosca as he paints Mary.
As soon as the disapproving sacristan leaves, Angelotti emerges and begs the painter – who has political sympathies for the consul, for help. With a promise from Cavaradossi to help that night, Angelotti hides once again when they hear Tosca approaching.
A jealous Tosca enters, suspecting the painter is cheating on her. In her soprano aria, Non la sospiri, la nostra casetta (“Do you not long for our little cottage”), questions Cavaradossi about his satisfaction with their life together, illustrating their little cottage with all the contradictions that surrounds them and expressing her mad love for him. The aria begins plaintively with accompanying plucked strings, seemingly depicting their idyllic home in the grove and moodily turning melancholic with questions and hurt. Puccini morphs the quaint tune that opened the aria into sudden outbursts of unabashed proclamation, and the aria ends abruptly with just a few plucked notes once again.
Initially calmed by Cavaradossi, Tosca suddenly recognises the face of the blonde beauty in the painting as that of Angelotti’s sister, the Marchesa Attavanti. To assuage her inflamed jealousy once again, he reassures Tosca of his fidelity, explaining that he merely had seen the Marchesa praying in the chapel as he painted. In Qual’occhio al mondo (“What eyes in the world”), the painter appeases Tosca and convinces her of his love for her. Puccini’s writing is abandoned, with surging and rising lines that at once capture the insecurity of Tosca as well as Cavaradossi’s unbridled feeling for his jealous lover. Once again, the orchestra swells with impulsiveness, bursting emotionality throughout as Tosca, finally allayed, leaves the chapel. Angelotti reappears, and with a cannon signalling the discovery of his escape, the two hasten back to Cavaradossi’s villa for refuge.
The sacristan and the church chorus are celebrating the French defeat in Northern Italy when Baron Scarpia, Rome’s police chief, arrives with his henchmen Spoletta and other policemen. Searching the church, they discover a fan bearing the Attavanti coat of arms. After learning that Cavaradossi, someone Scarpia distrusts politically, was working in the church earlier, Scarpia concludes that the painter must be complicit in Angelotti’s escape.
When Tosca returns to meet Cavaradossi, Scarpia – recognising the face of the Marchesa Attavanti in the portrait – uses the fan to trick Tosca into believing that Cavaradossi was unfaithful after all. Enraged, Tosca rushes home and vows to have vengeance, unaware that Scarpia’s men are trailing her back to Cavaradossi. As they depart, the congregation fills the church and intones Te Deum, a Latin hymn in praise of blessing and thanks. Scarpia declares that he had all along intended Tosca for himself and to execute Cavaradossi as he joins the hymn.
Act Two finds Scarpia dining in his home at the Palazzo Farnese. Spoletta reports that, though Angelotti was nowhere to be found, Cavaradossi had been arrested and brought to the Palazzo. Scarpia, knowing full well Tosca will be singing at the Palazzo that night at a gala, summons her. Before Cavaradossi is taken away for torture, he crosses paths with Tosca and he whispers to her, pleading she must not divulge anything. As Scarpia begins to question Tosca about her knowledge of Angelotti’s whereabouts, he informs her the painter is being tortured next door. Unable to bear hearing Cavaradossi’s screams, Tosca, resolute at first, eventually reveals Angelotti’s hiding place.
Scarpia orders the painter to be brought back in, bloodied and bruised, and cruelly reveals that Tosca had betrayed him. Police agent Sciarrone arrives with the news that Napolean’s French army is marching towards Rome, and Cavaradossi shouts to Scarpia that his reign of terror will soon be over. Scarpia immediately orders him to be taken away for execution.
When alone with Tosca, Scarpia makes a proposition: he will set Cavaradossi free if Tosca gives herself to him. Outraged and revolted, Tosca repeatedly refuses and rejects his increasingly insistent advances. Hearing the drumming outside announcing an execution, Tosca prays. Her aria, Vissi d’arte (“I lived for art”), perhaps one of the most iconic arias by Puccini, is a prayer questioning why God had abandoned her. Opening with a bleak lament with subtle strings underfoot, Tosca utters “I lived for art, I lived for love, I never harmed a living soul!”. With the entrance of the harp, the prayer blooms as more strings enter. The climbing and falling melody, filled with grief and despair, pauses and surges. Puccini’s pacing echos the human heartache and condition, offering breaks to ponder, to breathe, and to cry. Tosca’s voice rises to full, unabashed peak before ending in a desolate whisper.
Spoletta suddenly returns, announcing that Angelotti had committed suicide. In complete anguish, Tosca reluctantly agrees to Scarpia’s proposition in order to save her lover. Scarpia orders Spoletta to set up a mock execution of Cavaradossi, and Tosca demands they must receive, in writing, a document of safe conduct as they escape Rome.
Agreeing to these terms, Scarpia drafts the document behind his desk, unaware that Tosca has just hidden behind her back a dagger she seized from the dining table. Scarpia gleefully approaches Tosca after the document is completed, and as he embraces her, Tosca stabs him and cries, “This is the kiss of Tosca!”. Once certain he is dead, Tosca takes their pass of safe conduct, places a couple of candles around Scarpia’s body, and leaves the mortal dagger resting on Scarpia’s chest, fleeing the chamber.
Act Three opens at dawn, with Cavaradossi awaiting execution at Castel Sant’Angelo. A shepherd boy can be heard in the distance singing Io de’ sospiri (“I give you sighs”), a plaintive and rhythmic tune that hauntingly contrasts with the chimes of weighty, ominous church bells.
Cavaradossi tries to compose a letter to Tosca but becomes overwrought with despair. His aria, E lucevan le stelle (“And the stars were shining”), opens with a mournful clarinet melody rising and falling, ending the phrase with a simple turn of a couple of notes that mirror the quiver of one’s voice. Yet another of Puccini’s most recognisable arias, the solo clarinet evokes the sense of loneliness, haunting the tenor’s voice like a shadow. Cavaradossi takes over the sorrowful melody, now underscored by strings, slowly rising in emotionality and raw, unabashed power and culminating in the cry: “Alas I die despairing! And never was life so dear to me, no never, so dear, no never!”.
Tosca suddenly arrives, showing him the document of safe conduct and revealing that she had killed Scarpia after he had provided them the document and made orders for a fake execution. Overcome by his lover’s audacity and fearlessness, Cavaradossi sings O dolci mani (“Oh sweet hands”) as he looks into Tosca. Opening with quintessential long phrases and imbued with texts of gratitude and relief, Puccini manages to inject ominous harmonies that foreshadow what is truly ahead. The two lovers join in harmony and ecstasy, dreaming of their lives together far, far from Rome.
After imploring Cavaradossi to fake his death convincingly, Tosca watched the sham execution from afar. When the execution squad fires, Tosca even exclaims Ecco un artista! (“What an actor!”), as he falls. As soon as the squad had left, Tosca hastens towards Cavaradossi, finally realizing that Scarpia had lied, and the execution was real. Holding Cavaradossi’s dead body in her arms with utter agony and anguish, she hears the voices of Spoletta, Sciarrone and soldiers yelling that Scarpia is dead and Tosca is guilty.
As the men rush to arrest Tosca, she pushes them off her and runs up towards to the parapet, with Spoletta yelling “Ah, Tosca, you will pay for his life most dearly!”. Defiant, Tosca responds, “With my own!”, and hurls herself off the ledge, crying out as she falls to her death, “Oh, Scarpia! Before God!”
By Jules Lai