5. Idealism and power.

The story of Floria Tosca, created by Victorien Sardou in 1887, entered Puccini’s life two years later, when Prévost’s story of Manon Lescaut had been lying on his desk for some time. Though it took him four years to decide about Manon another six were to pass before he made up his mind about Tosca. In the interval, the contract with Sardou was passed from Ricordi to Franchetti and careful negotiation was required to get it back to Puccini.

Tosca has little to do with realism. The characters do not belong to the lower classes or the bourgeoisie, indeed their catastrophe has nothing to do with their social position; it arises rather from their nature and their ideology. The link with reality instead comes from the connection between the historical and the fictitious in the original play. The action is set in Rome on 17 June 1800, three days after the Battle of Marengo. The political background is a crucial factor in the fates of the famous singer Floria Tosca, and of Mario Cavaradossi, who embodies the ideals of the French Revolution. Both the play and the opera have their focal point in the complex character of the Sicilian baron, Vitello Scarpia, whose roots lie in the universal history of political regimes which have never lacked men who have used power to their personal advantage.

The principal characters are inserted in a fully rounded picture of papal Rome at the beginning of the 19th century. Puccini studied every detail of the liturgy, from the rites specifically followed in Rome (for the first finale) to the sound of the bells for the morning song in the third act, into which he introduced a sonnet in Romanesque dialect specially written by the poet Gigi Zanazzo. Baron Scarpia is placed at the centre of the action, introduced by three chords before the curtain rises which link him firmly to the image of the church.

Tosca is distinguished from the preceding operas in that it strictly follows the Classical unities. A decision was made to eliminate from the libretto those parts of the play which contradict the unity of action and place. From this derives the high relief given to three places in which the action evolves: the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, the Palazzo Farnese and the platform of the Castel Sant’Angelo. The intense concentration of events in the opera also obliged Puccini to adopt an accelerated time scheme and consequently to modify the formal narrative technique based on the recurrence of themes and reminiscences used to identify figures and situations without any particular hierarchy. Instead he devised a close musical pattern to provide an agile commentary to the frenzied succession of events. He made use of the chords associated with Scarpia, and the hexatonic scale related to them, as a pivot for the opera. In addition, he sprinkled his harmonic palette with dissonances, and frequently pushed orchestration, dynamics and voice to their limits, loading them with laceratingly expressive tension.

The dynamic development of the drama did not preclude lyrical elements. Love (which for Tosca involves furious jealousy) does not occupy a dominant place as an element in itself, but as a relief from the tensions of a difficult and oppressive life, like a breath of sensual happiness experienced somewhere far from the world, a refuge from the tentacles of papal Rome. But the ephemeral and sensual evocation of a night of love is also one of the most characteristic moments of the decadent modern art of Puccini in its lack of heroism. Because the only genuinely lay character in the opera could not appeal to other religions, to the exaltation of art or to memories of Rome, he had to prepare to die with desperate awareness. Cavaradossi is conscious of his inevitable death even when Tosca waves the safe-conduct at him. In fact, if we are to accept the logic on which the opera is built, only a believer can have faith in his confessor. The scene which symbolizes the whole opera confirms his lack of faith, when Floria flings herself from the ramparts of the Castle, surrendering her body to the city with the cry ‘O Scarpia, avanti a Dio!’. Only at this moment, after the drama of politics and bigotry has ended with an impossible challenge, can the return of the desperate melody of Cavaradossi’s aria conclude the opera, a symbol of sensual love, the only certain and real value.

Tosca is still one of the operas most vividly present in the collective imagination. Its vitality is derived above all from Puccini’s technical skill. The composer stuck faithfully to his intention to represent a reality, real surroundings and characters, putting the music at the service of the drama. Imaginative tone colour, melodic inventiveness and motivic elaboration have their origin in economy and lead on to still bolder achievements in structure which bring him in line with the developments in European opera of the time. Combining the late 19th-century sensibility of the play by Sardou with modern modes of expression, ardently admired by Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, though no less passionately deplored by Mahler, Puccini, in the best way possible, ushered in the 20th century.

Puccini: (5) Puccini, Giacomo