Puccini’s Tosca is pure 19th century pulp fiction. It is an irresistible, shabby, shocking – according to the critics of the day– little melodrama that hints at political tyranny and social upheaval. With a cast featuring a sadistic, sex-obsessed police chief , a green-eyed diva (with black eyes) and a revolutionary painter, you may wonder why it took Glyndebourne 92 years to stage this absolute masterpiece.
The French dramatist Victorien Sardou wrote La Tosca (1887) for France’s leading actress, Sarah Bernhardt, and the title role became one of her most iconic performances. She toured the play throughout the world, but in Rio de Janeiro her jump in the final scene from the parapet of the Castel Sant’Angelo parapet went wrong and she badly damaged her knee. That wound never healed properly and eventually caused gangrene, leading to the amputation of her leg ten years later. Why is this relevant? You’ll find out towards the end of this review.
George Bernard Shaw – a Nobel Prize-winning playwright – was not particularly impressed by Sardou’s melodramas, which he considered shallow, mechanical and contrived, favouring suspense over genuine psychology. He even invented the word, sardoodledom to describe them in his reviews.
The publisher Giulio Ricordi initially offered Puccini a libretto adapted from the La Tosca. Puccini was fired up after seeing Bernhardt’s performance – without understanding much of it, as he didn’t speak French. His interest soon waned, and other projects – Manon Lescaut and La Boheme – took over. Ricordi then passed Luigi Illica’s libretto over to Alberto Franchetti who later admitted that he was unable to deal musically with the drama’s realistic brutality. Years later at a reading of the libretto, Verdi reacted favorably and was deeply moved by Cavaradossi’s execution scene, E lucevan e stelle, but he thought the ending needed to be changed – did Glyndebourne’s diretor follow up on Verdi’s suggestion? The story goes that when Puccini heard about Verdi’s reaction, it reignited his interest in Tosca and he took up Ricordi’s offer.
Illica’s adaptation compressed the action from five acts with with 23 characters into three acts with nine. He also managed to stick to the classical unity of time: the story takes place within 24 hours. Giuseppe Giacosa was brought in, to versify Illica’s prose draft. He did complain that the plot was unsuitable, lacked poetry and that the narrative felt like a repetitive cycle of duets. After much to-ing and fro-ing Giacosa delivered a lyrical and singable text. (Giacosa also collaborated with Puccini and Illica on La Bohème and Madama Butterfly)
Sardou was known for being meticulous about the historical facts in his plays. He set the action in Rome on June 14 1800, the day Napoleon was taking on the Austrian occupying forces in a decisive battle at Marengo, in northwestern Italy. At the beginning of the play, it appears that the Austrians have defeated the French once and for all, which is why their supporters in Rome, the Royalists, are ready to celebrate. The Republicans , who see in Napoleon an advocate for political reform and national unity, have gone underground but maintain clandestine networks.
The director of the Glyndeourne production, Ted Huffman, was inspired by Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist film Roma città aperta (1945) and its aesthetics clearly inform the production.
There are striking parallels in the storytelling. Most notably, in both the opera and the film, all the main characters end up dead. It is true that verismo opera – with its gritty stories about ordinary people in contemporary settings – has much in common with neorealist cinema, which often used amateur actors and real locations to create a greater sense of authenticity and truth.
Review to follow soon
