tosca’s kisses
by
Douglas Messerli
Giacomo
Puccini (music), Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Ciacosa (libretto, based on a play
by Victorien Sardou) Tosca / the production I saw was from The Metropolitan
Opera's HD production of October 10, 2009
By
coincidence, soon after seeing a filmed version of Puccini's La Bohème,
Howard and I attended the High Definition film production of The Metropolitan
Opera's October 10, 2009 performance of Puccini's Tosca.
Both Howard and I had previously seen
Tosca on film and, together, witnessed the Berlin Opera's production at the
Kennedy Center in 1975-1976. Howard saw the same production in Berlin the next
year.
Accordingly, we felt we knew the opera
quite well, and perhaps I do not need to repeat the entire plot for most
readers, although it is easily summarized.
The painter, Mario Cavaradossi
(brilliantly sung by Marcelo Álvarez) is at work on a painting of the Madonna
in the Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome when he discovers a friend,
Cesare Angelotti (former Consul of the Roman Republic) hiding in a family crypt
nearby. Angelotti has just escaped from prison, and Cavardossi offers him a
hiding place in his nearby villa.
Enter the noted opera singer Floria Tosca
(Karita Matilla), Cavaradossi's lover, who immediately becomes suspicious that
her beloved is seeing another woman, having overheard Cavaradossi whispering to
someone. He assures her that he is in love with only her, but when she notices
the painting on which he has been working, she recognizes the face of the
Marchesa Attavanti (Angelotti's sister), who Cavaradossi has observed praying
at the church. Her jealousy returns, as she demands Cavaradossi change the blue
eyes of the painting to her own darkly-colored eyes.
Later that night, Scarpia awaits Tosca in
his home in the Farnese Palace. His henchman have discovered and arrested
Cavaradossi in his home, suspecting him having hidden Angelotti. As Tosca
arrives, Scarpia orders Cavaradossi to be tortured in the next room. He demands
Tosca tell him what she knows about Angelotti, but she claims to have no
knowledge and refuses his demands. As the torture continues, however, she
wavers, and finally unable to bear her lover's cries, confesses that Angelotti
is hiding in a well near Cavaradossi's hut. The artist is released, taken off
to prison to be hung.
Tosca now pleads with Scarpia to save
Cavaradossi, but he is unwilling to do anything unless she give herself over to
his sexual desires. In what is perhaps the most dramatic scene of the opera,
Tosca hatefully gives herself up, but only if Cavaradossi's life is spared and
they, together, are given a letter of free passage out of the country. Scarpia
orders his henchmen to perform a mock-shooting of the artist and writes out the
letter. As he moves to Tosca for his reward, she stabs him in the stomach,
proclaiming the knife to be "Tosca's kiss."
The final act is a short one, as
Cavaradossi awaits to be killed. Tosca arrives, quietly telling him the news
that she has killed Scarpia and the artist's life has been spared. All he has
to do is dramatically fall as the soldiers pretend to shoot, and when they
leave she will tell when it is permissible to "return to life."
Liberty is at hand!
There have been numerous books and
hundreds of essays written about this popular opera, and I have little of great
originality that I could add. I would just reiterate the fact that, although
this opera seems, in Puccini’s hands, to be centered upon emotional issues of
love and passion, jealousy and hate, it is just as significantly motivated by
the politics of the moment. Both drama and opera are set on a single day, June
17, 1800, a day in which, after having crossed the alps with his army, Napoleon
Bonaparte met in the Battle of Marengo with the Austrians, led by General
Mélas. The events of the play follow the historical reality. Early in the play
we hear that Napoleon amazingly has been defeated by the Austrians, and Tosca's
evening performance is given, in part, in celebration for that event. Later in
the day, however, the truth is revealed: new troops joining Napoleon's army
helped reverse the situation, and by evening, just as Tosca was performing in
celebration for the French defeat, Napoleon's army crushed the Austrian forces.
When the news reaches Scarpia's rooms, we observe Cavaradossi celebrating the
fact before he is taken away to be tortured.
A little back history may explain the
situation. Just two years earlier, in February 1798, French troops, headed by
Napoleon's general Louis Alexandre Berthier Louis Alexandre Berthier, occupied
the Vatican State, proclaiming the establishment of the Roman Republic. The
Pope, Pius VI, was forced to flee to Tuscany, and, ultimately, to France where
he died. Cavaradossi's friend, Angelotti, was one of the Republican leaders, a
consul.
The Bourbon king Ferdinando IV, King of
Naples, attempted to rescue the Pope and restore the Vatican but was defeated.
For a brief time in 1799, the Roman Republic was incorporated into the
Napoleon-supported Parthenopean Republic which included Naples, but by April of
that year General Suvorov, heading the Austrian-Russian army crossed into
northern Italy and defeated the French Republics. Soon after the Bourbons were
returned to power, which, under the orders of Maria Carolina of Austria, wife
of Ferdinando IV, began a "cleansing" of former Republicans,
liberals, artists, scientists and others who had supported or been sympathetic
to French rule. Both Angelotti and Cavaradossi, accordingly, were in danger,
Angelotti imprisoned for his political position and Cavaradossi under suspicion
for his artistic avocation. Thousands of men and women were killed under the
eye of the newly appointed Baron Sciarpa (upon whom Scarpia is said to based).
In reverse of Napoleon's battle, what
seems to have saved the day in Cavardossi's and Angelotti's lives ends in
death.
Tosca's political position in this time of
general turmoil is quite vague. She comes from the northern Italy, which
clearly is attempting to defend themselves from Napoleon's advance, and her
intense religiosity seems to suggest, as does her participation in the
celebration of Napoleon's supposed defeat, that she has aligned herself,
despite her lover's sympathies, with the Bourbons.*
In any event, we can observe in the very
political context of these momentous times that all the characters of this
opera are, as one observer has suggested, not what they seem to be. The artist
is also a revolutionary, the diva and sexually attractive lover is also
religiously devout, the outward devout chief of police is a lustful lecher and
liar. Even Angelotti is ready to don a woman's dress, which would have made him
one of opera history’s several cross-dressing characters, in order to escape.
If for no other reason, the shifting realities of these figures might justify
director Luc Bondy's decision to remove the brilliant colors of Franco
Zeffirelli's previous Metropolitan production, leaving the viewer with vast
abstract spaces murkily lit. It may be a justification, but, in my
estimation—and apparently in those of many other opera goers, who loudly booed
the opening night production—it was not successful. At times it was simply
difficult to "see" these brilliant singers, and one missed the
elaborately artificial trappings in which they might have further hidden their
identities.
My point in all this historicity (other
than my feeling that, in part, it is the very basis of the My Year
volumes, in which I am attempting to remember what is so easily forgotten), is
that, politically speaking, the characters are at "war" with one
another even before the curtain has been raised.
Floria Tosca is not only emotionally at
war with both Cavaradossi and Scarpia because of her love and jealousies, but
is spiritually at war with them, more pious than Cavaradossi's all too human
depiction of the Madonna and Scarpia's hypocritical worship of the symbols of
the church. She is, as Cavardossi's warns early in the opera, a natural
confessor, telling her own confessor "everything." It is strange,
accordingly, that he allows her to discover the circumstances surrounding
Angelotti, for, inevitably, even if it is presumably to save Cavardossi's life,
she betrays the cause.
Tosca's kisses, accordingly, are all
inevitably lethal, not only to Scarpia, whom she kisses metaphorically with the
knife, but to Cavardossi, whom she kisses passionately, only to condemn him,
unintentionally, to death. In such a world, in short, no one is to be trusted,
for it is a world in utter chaos, official rule changing nearly instant by
instant. The Battle of Marengo allowed Napoleon easier access to Italy, and
Rome would soon fall to his forces, his son given by birth the title, "His
Majesty the King of Rome."
*In
Shirley Hazzard's 2008 book, The Ancient Shore she describes a 20th century
dinner conversation with friends, a couple fiercely debating still about the
Bourbon reign of Italy. Apparently, Italians are still divided on the issues.
Los
Angeles, October 30, 2009
Reprinted
from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (October 2009).
