It's been called a shabby little shocker.
It's seemingly facile storyline has attracted
all manner of critical abuse.
But few operas have kept audiences in thrall like this one.
Giacomo Puccini's Tosca.
Tosca is the story of a great diva
as impulsive as she is politically naive.
Add to this her jealousy and you have a recipe for disaster.
It's also an evocative portrait of a great city, Rome.
Like many great stories, Tosca has its basis in real characters
and real events. Puccini, often using deceptively simple means,
weaves a musical tapestry that offers highly charged entertainment
that keeps audiences on the edge of their seats,
and most importantly, keeps them wanting more.
Ever since its premiere in Rome in 1900,
Tosca has rarely been off a stage somewhere in the world.
That's not surprising,
because the Opera seems to have everything audiences want.
Passion,
violence,
and tragedy.
Pure melodrama.
Giacomo Puccini was the last in a line
of great Italian opera composers.
With his talent for combining music with tightly wrought drama,
he took Italian opera into the 20th century.
Puccini had already composed Manon Lescaut and La boheme,
but it was Tosca which saw him in full command of his powers,
cementing his reputation.
It also made him a very rich man.
I'm going to take a closer look at the world behind Tosca,
and examine what makes Puccini the ultimate dramatist.
How he creates character, drives the action,
and how he grips the audience, keeping us enthralled.
In our production at the Royal Opera House in London,
we've assembled a cast of international superstars.
In the title role as Floria Tosca, the Romanian soprano
Angela Gheorghiu.
The way Puccini wrote the music,
his lines, all the time,
for the three characters,
he, all the time,
put the right sound,
the right power, and the right sensibility.
With Tosca, he did a masterpiece.
The German tenor Jonas Kaufmann plays the part of Tosca's lover,
Mario Cavaradossi.
It's fantastic how Puccini describes the emotions
and the soul,
if you would call it like that,
of a human being.
And that was his main target,
describe the real feelings of real persons.
Bryn, stretch it, stretch it, stretch it.
The Welsh bass baritone Bryn Terfel
plays the Chief of Police, Baron Scarpia,
one of opera's truly evil characters.
The role of Scarpia, for me, has that twinge of danger.
What do I do?
Do I stride in purposefully?
Do I have a mean, horrible face?
No, it's all in the music.
A stillness within the role of Scarpia, for me,
I think says a great deal more than giving gestures.
It's all through the glint of an evil eye.
But this opera isn't just about the people on stage,
the other star is Rome, the Eternal City.
For Puccini, Rome is as important as any of the characters.
Using three iconic locations
and music that somehow captures their essence,
he sets the action within the space of a single day,
June 17th, 1800.
This day has real significance in Italian history.
When news reached Rome of the defeat
of Napoleon's forces at the Battle of Marengo.
Napoleon's aim was to impose a single republic
onto the numerous self-governing states that made up the country.
What's more, there were some Italians who wanted the same thing.
The first character we meet is one of them,
a Republican sympathiser on the run,
and seeking sanctuary in church.
This is Sant'Andrea della Valle,
one of the great landmarks of the city.
Two Popes are buried here.
It's one of the largest and most important churches in Rome
after St Peter's.
The whole of Act I is set here.
What could be more theatrical than this vast space
and its baroque splendour?
A perfect counterpoint
to the lurid and profane goings-on of the plot.
It's midday, and into the church scurries Angelotti,
who has just escaped from prison.
Puccini sets the scene superbly,
catapulting us into an atmosphere of extreme tension.
Angelotti's sister has concealed the key
to one of the private chapels for him to hide in.
It's his escape that is the catalyst for the whole opera.
But how do fact and fiction meet here?
Eight private chapels line the nave of Sant'Andrea,
each dedicated to some of the great aristocratic families
connected with the church.
But none of them quite fits the description
of the Attavanti Chapel in Tosca.
However, this is the Barberini Chapel.
It is the only chapel
that is separated from the main body of the church
by an iron grille.
This is more like it.
And, over here, we have another iron grille.
This leads to the crypt of the Barberini family.
Surely, Angelotti would have hidden down there.
Angelotti's fear of being caught was a very real concern
in Rome at the end of the 18th century.
So far, the church had been the main influence ensuring that
the city was stable and relatively prosperous.
But after the French Revolution,
Republican zeal spread.
The Pope was eventually forced to flee
and Rome was declared a republic with its own Roman consul.
In Tosca, this is the character of Angelotti.
But most Romans didn't want a republic, and it collapsed.
With the power vacuum, the King of Naples seized control,
installing a brutal secret police to keep order.
Paranoia and fear stalked the streets.
It was in this Rome that we find our hero, the young noble and artist,
Mario Cavaradossi.
Cavaradossi has come to Rome.
He has fallen in love with the singer Floria Tosca,
and he's a liberal.
He's a follower of Bonaparte and the Republican ideas.
But we get to know him through this music.
A much more romantic music...
..with a stalwart feel,
majesty, impetuosity.
He unveils the painting.
Love music.
Like most of Puccini's operas,
Tosca is named after a strong
but ultimately tragic heroine.
Tosca's introduction.
She's a very religious character,
full of fervour and intensity...
..in everything she does.
Passionate, warm, devoted,
and in love.
And, of course, what that means,
we also get to know the other part of her, which is this.
And listen, if you can guess what the emotion is.
Did you hear those tremolos?
One of the main engines of all Italian music is the tremolo
to create atmosphere.
But what is it, what is it describing?
Well, it's describing, of course, jealousy.
This is the fatal flaw.
She is incredibly jealous.
She's a diva. She's a star, in Rome.
So, perhaps she's allowed all these foibles,
but in the story,
this jealousy will destroy her in the end.
The plot is tightly wound, and every element is significant.
Cavaradossi has used the girl he saw in the church as the model
for his painting.
But when Tosca sees the painting, she flies into a jealous rage,
falsely suspecting him of taking a rival lover.
This girl was Angelotti's sister, who, unknown to them,
had left a key and women's clothes to help her brother's escape.
Well, Cavaradossi loves her so much, and loves everything,
including her jealousy, including her outbreaks,
and it's just, he cannot control.
It's just there.
He's so much in love, and that is also very essential, actually,
for the whole action,
and for the outcome of the second and third acts.
The man who exploits Tosca's jealousy is Scarpia.
And as far as statements of intent go,
few could be deemed as powerful as the very first chords of the Opera,
Scarpia's theme, dominating all that follows.
But what is this music?
For me, it conjures up the Titanic majesty of Rome,
the power of the Church,
and Baron Scarpia's stranglehold
on political society in Rome.
Scarpia is drawn from a number of real life characters.
One of the most significant is a man called Gerardo Curci,
a bandit known as Sciarpa, meaning scarf or sash,
after an item of paramilitary clothing.
He was one of the most murderous of the anti-Republicans,
and was made a Baron by the King of Naples in 1800.
Described as a crude figure,
who exuded loutish cunning and religious hypocrisy,
he was merciless, working around the fringes of the law.
Certainly, Scarpia is frightening.
There are certain colours that you need for the role of Scarpia.
Is that, does the music... It draws something out of you.
It makes you want to go over the top, doesn't it? Definitely.
Any sinister, any misfit, any malcontent on the stage
tends to make you
both sing at a different pace that you are used to,
and maybe your persona on the stage
becomes more active and more terrifying.
More sinister. He has to have an air of invincibility.
You know, he's aristocratic, as well.
So, everything falls into place within the danger of this role.
Scarpia doesn't actually appear
until towards the end of the first act.
But Puccini has already well established his presence.
We've heard his theme, but we want to meet him. Where is he?
Well, Cavaradossi, the painter, introduces him as a bigot,
a satyr, a confessor, and executioner at the same time.
And he says these over...
..the theme, repeated over and over again.
When he says "confessor and executioner",
listen to how it changes.
Now we are ready to meet the real Scarpia.
Cavaradossi hides Angelotti at his villa.
Meanwhile, news of Napoleon's defeat at Marengo has reached Rome,
and a Te Deum is to be sung in celebration.
Puccini sets the scene
for one of the most impressive entrances in all opera.
He allows the innocent joy of choirboys to reach its peak,
and only then kills it stone dead
with Scarpia's arrival.
It's a fabulous theatrical device
to reinforce his terrifying persona.
The first act, of course, he has this wonderful introduction.
Then, very cleverly, but with authority,
questions the different people on the stage.
There's nothing much you have to do to gauge a character.
It's all there in the music, every stride, every step forward,
every colour of a phrase.
But when Tosca arrives looking for Cavaradossi,
the music describes a surprisingly different side
to Scarpia's character.
Totally unexpected, out of the blue,
comes this amazingly insinuating
but gentle singing from you,
being the grand seigneur,
and eliciting a colour from you that is...
"Where did that come from?" You know? Here she goes, right on the bell.
Remember, this whole scene is taking part in the church.
So, you see how Scarpia's music is
constantly changing,
constantly impulsive,
always surprising us.
Scarpia's insinuating words fire Tosca's jealousy
so that she'll lead him to Cavaradossi and Angelotti.
Scarpia now sees a way to fulfil his own lust for Tosca,
and Puccini uses an extraordinary theatrical device to portray this.
Act I climaxes with the monumental Te Deum,
a high hymn of thanksgiving to God,
which is sung to celebrate the victory at Marengo.
Having come from generations of church composers,
Puccini was no stranger to the power of the ritual.
I went to the heart of Catholic Rome,
to St Peter's Basilica itself,
to find out about the importance of the Te Deum.
Massimo, what function
does the Te Deum have in the liturgy?
Puccini certainly knew what he was doing.
I had a chance to hear the famous Sistine Chapel Choir
sing a specifically Roman Te Deum.
Aware of all the elements that could be used to maximum effect,
Puccini employed the Roman Te Deum
as one part of a vast ecclesiastical sound world,
to create an unholy marriage between the sacred and the profane.
It's an intensely dramatic way of underlining Scarpia
as someone who is utterly amoral.
A feature of Puccini's writing for Scarpia
is that he is the only character
who sings asides to the audience,
revealing his innermost thoughts.
Offsetting Scarpia's words,
Puccini uses all the tricks at his disposal.
Underpinning it all,
the ritual tolling of bells.
This is oppressive, repetitive music, that starts quietly
and builds layer by layer.
The long strings, the woodwinds, the organ, cannons from offstage.
Still softly building.
Very lustful, isn't it?
Yes, and it builds and builds, weaving and weaving...
The way you say your name always, and hers together, enjoy them both.
..Tosca.
Fabulous.
Now a new effect, the rhythmic muttering of devout voices.
Like Iago in Verdi's Otello, he confesses his evil
and manipulative nature.
In church, he conjures up the image of Angelotti on the scaffold,
and at the same time,
the image of Tosca in his arms.
It's amazing, you've got the setting, the church,
the service that's going on, and you, lusting.
It's almost masturbatory.
I mean, it's frightening that this could happen, and this juxtaposition
of church and lust, this is what the whole piece is about, actually.
With the climax of the Te Deum, the stage is set
for the bloody and gruesome events that inevitably follow.
But like so many of his operas,
Puccini found inspiration from someone else's work.
Were it not for Puccini,
the name Victorien Sardou
would be just a historical footnote.
In the late 19th century,
Sardou was one of the most famous playwrights alive,
having 70 plays to his name.
His masterwork...La Tosca.
In 1889, Puccini had seen La Tosca twice,
and both times starring the greatest actress of the day,
the flamboyant and charismatic Sarah Bernhardt.
Tosca had everything Puccini wanted.
Intensely dramatic situations, violent and raw,
that you could easily get a handle on,
and crucially, at its heart, a heroine,
a passionate, fiery, yet ultimately tragic heroine.
This was the clincher.
It fired Puccini's imagination
and he set out to reduce Sardou's
five plot-heavy acts
to a lean, finely-honed three.
For this, his publisher, Ricordi,
assembled the dream team behind Puccini's most recent success,
La boheme, the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa.
Between them, they did such a good job
that Sardou himself declared
that the libretto was dramatically superior to the play.
And Puccini certainly ratchets up the drama in Act II, which is set
in one of Italy's finest Renaissance buildings, the Palazzo Farnese.
Now the French Embassy in Rome, it was once home to Popes, Queens,
and briefly, the King of Naples.
The perfect setting for Scarpia's headquarters.
Astonishing.
I've conducted Tosca so many times,
but to actually be in the room
where the heart of the Opera takes place
is, for me, a...is just an amazing moment, actually.
The walls are covered by these stunning Florentine frescoes,
celebrating the Farnese family's fidelity towards the church.
How ironic it is that this
should be where Scarpia conducts his business.
Time has passed and it's now later in the evening of the same day.
The mood has changed, too. Now it is darker, almost claustrophobic.
One of Puccini's great skills is that he crafts the action
and the music so very precisely.
There's a tremendous economy to his writing.
It's almost lean.
Everything happens
just when it's supposed to happen.
Having hidden Angelotti,
Cavaradossi tells Tosca everything
before Scarpia's henchmen get their hands on him.
Puccini then uses the sound of a concert given by Tosca
offstage to heighten the tension onstage.
It's often been said
that Puccini was the creator
of what would become the cinematographic soundtrack,
and I think theatricality, in all senses,
is enhanced by music that is so descriptive,
and so telling,
that it reaches the audience with an immediacy that is palpable.
Listen to this music, for instance,
as Cavaradossi is brought to the torture chamber.
Having summoned Tosca,
Scarpia hopes that the torture of Cavaradossi
will force her to reveal Angelotti's hiding place.
Listen to the dark colours.
You can imagine the place already, from the sound of the celli...
..and the violas.
Using the open strings to give that bite and snarl.
What could be more filmic than that?
And what a suggestive, almost Sibelian darkness in this music.
In so many respects,
Tosca anticipates the world of film,
and at two hours, it runs just like a film.
Many of the ideas that Puccini employs can be
found in the music of film composers today.
I went to the world-famous Cinecitta film studios in Rome
to meet Ennio Morricone,
composer of the iconic score
to The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly,
and a great Puccini fan.
Nowhere does this have more impact than in the scene where
Puccini depicts Tosca's torment,
whilst in a room offstage,
Cavaradossi is being brutally tortured.
Puccini takes this torture music now
and enhances it, as Scarpia's describing Cavaradossi with
a rim around his head with nails in it that will be tightened
so that there'll be blood spatter,
so he talks and gives the information.
Listen to the blood spatter of the trumpets
in this musical enhancement.
Tell me where Angelotti is.
She writhes in agony.
And brings her to the top C.
This certainly satisfies our animal instincts,
this music of a rare violence.
In fact, Herbert Von Karajan said,
it helps, once a year, for a conductor to conduct Tosca
to...just to let all his...baser instincts be released, if you like.
Eventually, it's too much for Tosca,
and she gives away Angelotti's hiding place.
MAN SCREAMS
Sometimes, it's good not to know some information.
Well, he's a master at that. It is a master.
He is a master at knowing how to actually put pressure on you.
And, in fact, it works. You do spill the information. Yes, I spill. Ah...
And this. This is, I don't, I never...
It's a betrayal. Yes, it is.
But, you know, in Tosca, I never like this.
When I saw for the first time, I was so upset. "No, don't, ah!
"No, you must not. How could you?" Yeah.
But she did, because he knew it, how to do it. How to... Yeah.
..to take the information from her.
It's impossible not to understand the feeling
we have as an opera singer.
This is the first role we play ourselves, I mean,
I play myself, in a way.
The sheer emotional force of the role,
and the turmoil Tosca goes through,
demands of the singer her full range of interpretive powers.
Since its premiere,
the role of Tosca has become one of the iconic operatic characters,
one that almost defines a singer's greatness.
One of the legendary Toscas was the brilliant
and notoriously temperamental Maria Callas.
With her own turbulent and colourful life,
she almost created the image of the great diva.
Lover of millionaires and famous for her fiery temper,
she ended up deserted and heartbroken.
But behind the public figure
lay a fastidious and extremely hard-working professional,
famous for her attention to the finest detail,
for leaving no stone unturned
in the pursuit to find the heart of a role.
Here she is with the great baritone
Tito Gobbi as Scarpia,
in a 1964 performance from Covent Garden.
Cavaradossi is condemned to death,
but Scarpia gives Tosca a terrible choice.
Submit to his sexual advances and Cavaradossi will live.
Out of this desperate situation emerges one of Puccini's most
moving arias for soprano.
Curiously, this now famous aria,
Vissi d'arte,
wasn't even planned to be in the opera.
But during rehearsals for the premiere,
the soprano singing Tosca,
Hariclea Darclee, a Romanian, like Angela,
had a bit of a diva moment herself.
When Hariclea Darclee starts singing the role, Hariclea says,
"Maestro, I have no aria, and it's me, Tosca!"
And thanks to her,
I always said,
because I'm proud about this
because she's a Romanian soprano.
Finally, he composed
Vissi d'arte. Vissi d'amore.
Initially, Puccini wasn't convinced,
as he feared it would slow down the action.
But there is no doubt that it adds to the drama.
A fervent yet disillusioned prayer before Fate strikes.
Grazie, Angela.
Scarpia agrees to issue a safe-conduct pass,
providing Cavaradossi goes through the pretence of a mock execution,
and Tosca satisfies his lust.
Everything is very important within the storytelling.
This is a genius of Puccini, in a way, that he's giving you such
dramatic intensity.
So, it has everything.
Even the death has to be entertaining for people.
By letting the action play in real-time,
Puccini, again,
brilliantly strings out the game of cat and mouse
to heighten the nervous tension.
How will Tosca resolve this dilemma?
And there in the music is Tosca's answer.
And it's something this great diva
would never have dreamed herself capable of
even an hour earlier.
It's before dawn the following morning
and I've come to the Castel Sant'Angelo,
where the third Act of Tosca is set,
and where Cavaradossi is awaiting execution.
Tosca eventually makes her way here,
with the pass securing the safe conduct for her and her lover.
From these ramparts,
you really get a sense of the geography of the city,
and how it fits in with the opera.
Just over my shoulder
is the Sant'Andrea della Valle church,
where Act I takes place,
and just hidden behind there
is the Farnese Palace of Act II,
so the distances are very, very short, actually.
It's a very tight feel.
You can imagine Tosca running here
after she has murdered Scarpia.
The Castel Sant'Angelo is one of Rome's most imposing landmarks,
once home to the papal guard, and their prisoners.
For centuries, it has symbolised the fusion of Church and State.
The dawn breaking music at the beginning of Act III
is where Puccini really establishes Rome
as its own character in the opera.
What he does is to create yet another cinematic effect,
a musical soundscape that vividly captures its majesty and atmosphere.
Underpinning a sighing melody is the sound of bells,
but myriad bells,
the sound of Roman bells sounding the matins.
It is alleged he came here
to hear for himself how this would have sounded.
To recreate the sense of perspective,
Puccini was very particular with his requirements.
To realise Puccini's intentions,
we set up four percussion players
at the back of the stage in different positions,
near and far, and they have different pitched bells,
and the first bell,
the B natural here,
is marked lontanissimo, very far away.
This next bell is a little closer, meno lontano.
Now this bell, vicino, it's marked.
Near.
It was considered quite unusual, and strange,
the actual sounds of the city
superimposed onto music.
What was this?
And at the time, it was quite controversial.
But what a stunning effect.
Puccini was meticulous in researching
the actual pitches of the bells he heard,
even enlisting the help of a religious music expert,
who found out that the great bell of St Peter's, the Er Campanone,
produced just the sound he needed.
The new day finds Cavaradossi being led from his cell
to face the firing squad.
The music now prepares us for perhaps
the opera's most celebrated aria.
In setting up Cavaradossi's aria,
E lucevan le stelle,
an aria which is about memories of the good times,
but also the feeling of impending doom,
his impending death,
Puccini creates, and it's very, very special, a pathos, here,
using four cellos.
This is a tradition to create intimacy of expression,
already used by Verdi in Otello,
at the beginning of William Tell, of Rossini.
So it's an Italian form of creating something new and special.
Using the love music.
It's perfectly set up by Puccini.
It's always this question,
how can you manage to be in this mood?
To really be in this frustrating,
but at the same time,
still deeply loving moment of love and regret.
The answer is very simple, just listen to the music.
This leads into a remarkable new theme.
The aria is written perfectly.
That's the secret. I mean,
that's the magic that lies between the lines.
He guides you exactly to the right spot.
Cavaradossi is remembering a night of love with Tosca,
and what's striking is that the melody is in the orchestra,
the words are almost spoken.
And there's this moment in the aria which I find always very beautiful
because then he drops his mask of heroism,
and you suddenly reveal a normal human being
that is afraid of death.
Big hug while I'm in climax. Yes.
Tosca arrives with Scarpia's safe-conduct pass
and shows it to Cavaradossi.
But the precise moment
when he realises that he won't escape alive
has always been a source of debate and interpretation...
..something we discussed in rehearsals.
There's a discussion going on about
how much Cavaradossi knows about what's really going to happen,
and Jonas is communicating to Angela here
that at the moment she says
there's going to be a simulated execution,
he realises, he knows
that Scarpia would never agree to something like this,
the oppression of his regime,
the manipulation,
it would never work, and,
somehow to humour her,
he goes along with it
and he goes along with her hope.
Almost to the very end,
Tosca believes that it's all just playacting.
Strangely, when Tosca premiered in Rome in 1900,
real-life events echoed the opera's historical setting.
The economic situation in Italy was bad. Anarchist groups flourished,
and there had been riots in the North and South.
It was a pretty tense time.
The unrest caused the premiere to be postponed by a day,
and on the first night, there was a rumour of a bomb scare.
But it turned out to be a false alarm and the performance went ahead.
The moment when I see the blood, I realise
I had no other solution than to kill myself.
I had no time to think.
It was just an instinct.
The public loved it.
Several numbers were encored, and there was a rapturous
ovation for Puccini himself at the final curtain.
With Tosca, Puccini's reputation
as THE Italian opera composer was secure.
Over the next quarter century, the masterpieces continued to flow,
operas like Madama Butterfly
and Turandot joined Tosca as worldwide hits.
Puccini's airtight musical dramas, still dominated though
by his astonishing melodic invention,
established the template for what makes a successful opera.
I love conducting this music,
and I love this city, Rome.
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