Tosca

“ His rage increased steadily with the jealousy it fed upon. The long drawn courses were no sooner over than he seized upon some trifling pretext (we know not what) to leave Vergilia alone for a few moments while he drew his rival to that central court, whence perfumed zephyrs blew. The stranger still continued masked. To this Tosca first alluded laying his hand upon the hilt of that famous old sword of his. ”

“ Tosca now comes back, and after signalling to the Sacristan, Scarpia retires behind a pillar, watching her90 as she looks about for Cavaradossi. To serve his own ends, he decides to rouse the jealousy of the woman; and after a little flattery, expressed in a suave, flowing melody, he brings out a fan and mildly inquires whether it forms any part of the customary outfit of a painter. From the coronet on it Tosca recognises it as belonging to the Marchioness Attavanti, who is the sister of Angelotti, and a member of the family to whom the chapel is dedicated. ”

“ Those admirers of hers, who had not yet put their fate to the touch, all indignantly scouted the theory advanced by the rejected that she concealed a lover in this sanctum. Nor was such an idea surely possible to any one who looked with unjaundiced eye, even once on her virginal purity. Tosca gazed on her for the second time that day, and swore within his heart of hearts (quite drowning all recollection of that prior oath) that the very first lover she should have would be none other than himself. ”

“ After a short deliberation, however, Tosca decided not to let slip an opportunity as welcome as unexpected, and granted apparently in exchange for a trinket of no worth to him whatever, though he was not unaware that it might be of inestimable value to any one who knew (as this Frenchman presumably did) the secret of the Seven Sigils. With a parting sigh for its enigma still unsolved, so often the toy of his leisure hours, he detached it from his neck, and passed it on to the Gaul, who fastened it about his own. That he was a wizard of his word became immediately apparent. ”

“ It was no longer wine that the fountain had yielded, but the fetid water of the Bottomless Lake! And this also resulted from the breaking of the charm by burial of the body of Magloire. The curse of the Illyrian was closing in upon its victim. The fate of the Venetian was written large upon his forehead. Abrupt Despair gripped upon his heart-strings. Yet still the honour of the bout remained with Tosca. ”

“ Feigning calm, for the meeting with Angelotti, who had been concerned in the abortive uprising to make Rome a republic, has excited him, Cavaradossi admits Tosca. Jealously she insists that he was whispering with someone, and that she heard footsteps and the swish of skirts. Her lover reassures her, tries to embrace her. Gently she reproves him. She cannot let him kiss her before the Madonna until she has prayed to her image and made an offering. She adorns the Virgin's figure with flowers she has brought with her, kneels in prayer, crosses herself and rises. ”

“ Nothing but her eyes can be seen from under her hood. Are those the eyes of Vergilia that Tosca dreams of and deems unfathomable as the Bottomless Lake itself? Is the intuition of her sex, then, unfailing after all, and she a witch, that with love philtres works her syren spell, and seeks at this dread hour for the wherewithal? And what, then, can she peer for about the foundations of a gibbet, save alone that fetid and fearsome white-flowered orange-berried Devil's Candle mandragora that is engendered in the womb of earth from a gibbeted murderer's drippings on the midnight of his death? ”

“ The pedestal is not on the stage and the statue in the orchestra. Tosca does not offer us declamation as a key to symphonic music nor symphonic music as a key to declamation. The work does not follow the old operatic lines into matter of detail. All is subordinate to the changing situations and emotions of99 the stage. So far Tosca is modern; for the rest it presents the characteristics which have always distinguished Italian opera—long reaches of tender or passionate melody, intense climaxes, and a disposition to proceed everywhere on broad and direct lines to the desired goal. ”

“ Tosca having departed, Cavaradossi lets Angelotti out of the chapel. He is a brother of the Attavanti, of whom Tosca is so needlessly jealous, and who has concealed a suit of woman's clothing for him under the altar. They mention Scarpia—"A bigoted satyr and hypocrite, secretly steeped in vice, yet most demonstratively pious"—the first hint we have in the opera of the relentless character, whose desire to possess Tosca is the mainspring of the drama.
A cannon shot startles them. It is from the direction of the castle and announces the escape of a prisoner—Angelotti. ”

“ From the old world story of Murger, Puccini turned to a notable example of modern French stagecraft, in Sardou's drama of La Tosca. His librettists again were Giocosa and Illica, and they provided the composer with a strikingly apt presentation of the grim story; not one, perhaps, that lends itself altogether to musical expression, but one which certainly grips the attention and carries the hearer along. By Tosca, Puccini certainly sustained his now universal popularity made manifest by the preceding La Bohème. ”

“ When Tosca enters he embraces her, whispering into her ear not to betray anything she had witnessed in his villa.
Meanwhile Scarpia has called for Roberts, the executioner, and Mario is led into the torture chamber that adjoins Scarpia's apartment. Scarpia vainly questions Tosca about her visit to the villa; she assures him, that she found her lover alone. Then she hears her lover's groans, which are growing more fearful, the torture under Scarpia's directions being applied with more and more violence. ”

“ Dramatic action cannot be promoted by music. The province of the art is to develop and fix a mood or celebrate a deed. Tosca can sing of her love, her jealousy, her hate, her hope; she cannot sing her frantic efforts to escape the lustful arms of Scarpia; she cannot sing his murder (though she might have chanted its gory glory, if so she held it, after the fact) ; nor can she sing her own destruction. In fact, there is next to nothing in Sardou's drama fit for operatic song, either in the sense that prevailed at the time of Paisiello or prevails in the time of Wagner—which is now. ”

“ Scarpia directs further pressure to be applied. Tosca is allowed to gaze through the open door, and, distracted by what she sees, signifies her intention of revealing all she knows. Her mind is made up when she hears another groan of anguish, and she tells Scarpia that Angelotti is to be found in the well in the garden of the villa. Scarpia now orders Cavaradossi to be brought in. From Scarpia's directions to Spoletta, the fainting victim, nearly at his last gasp by what he had endured, learns of Tosca's treachery, and curses her. ”

“ And whichever of us falls shall by the terms of that enactment (of so short a while ago) be resented and avenged by that Master of ours, who waits even at this moment for that most unhappy man."
The face of Tosca became white and red. He flashed that time-honoured blade of his from its sheath, and motioned with it to the Illyrian to take up a position opposite to him. Janko turned round for one second to do so, and in that second the sword of his faithless foe was plunged remorselessly through his back. ”

“ What puzzled him was that the obvious cause in the prior case was a certain amulet of unknown antiquity and power, which Tosca was accustomed to wear round his neck upon a chain of gold, and which in a moment of confidence he had shown that once to his pupil. Whereas on the present occasion the cause of his vertigo could scarcely be the same, the talisman being invisible. And yet the effect was identical. If anything more than another had been the actual moving cause of his present icy chill it must certainly be the damsel of the coach. ”

“ Within the building, the rooms kaleidoscopically should never meet them twice with the same face. Their servants should be automata scattered through every chamber, and ready at a touch to fly to master or mistress like genii of the Arabian Nights, but instantly relapsing after service into their first stony insensibility. Of much more Vergilia whispered such as at times frenzied in Tosca the knowledge of his impotence to win her upon her terms. ”

“ We tried everything—remedies, travel, and even several specialists. But the only thing we found able to bring her out of her spells, to end quickly the delusion which would sweep her, was to let her have her own way for a while. Father discovered that if he indulged her for a few minutes and played the part of the Baron, if he let her dress herself as Tosca, the Floria obsession would collapse of itself. And particularly if I were present and watching. Otherwise the delusion would last for hours—even days. ”

“ That same spring, before sailing, Toscanini had asked me to sing Puccini's "Manon" with the Metropolitan Company during its Paris season. But the rôle was unfamiliar to me, and as I had monopolized the more popular Massenet's "Manon," I felt I could not undertake its preparation in six days of ocean travel, together with my promised performances of Tosca at another theater. Toscanini quite understood this, made no further insistence, and the charming Lucretia Bori was introduced to the Parisian public and later came to delight her New York admirers. ”

“ In it Puccini has saturated almost every page of the-60- music with his own extremely vivid personality: a personality that is exceedingly impressive in its crude strength and directness; he has, in this score, exploded the strange critical legend that his style is little more than a blended echo of the later Verdi, Ponchielli, and Massenet. The music of "Tosca" is not often distinguished, but it is singularly striking, potent, and original; no one save Puccini could possibly have written it. But since then this composer has, artistically speaking, visited Paris. ”

“ In Madame Sans-Gêne she is often comic, but she does not suggest a bourgeoise Frenchwoman; in the court scenes she is more like a graceful woman trying to be awkward than an awkward woman trying to be graceful. Her Tosca is lacking in dignity; it is too petulant a performance, too small in conception. In failing to find adequate pleasure in her Carmen I am not echoing popular opinion.
I do not think Mme. Farrar has appeared in La Traviata more than two or three times at the Metropolitan Opera House, although she has probably sung Violetta often in Berlin. ”

“ Scarpia orders the window to be thrown open, and borne on the evening air comes the sound of a gavotte from the orchestra which is playing in one of the lower rooms at an entertainment given by Queen Caroline. Very skilfully is this graceful little melody, just sufficiently archaic in its mould to be characteristic of the period, used as a background for the clever dialogue which follows, from which we learn that Tosca is to be lured to the Palace in the hope of seeing Cavaradossi. ”

“ Without such palliation the vileness, the horror, the hideousness of a play like "Tosca" is more unpardonable in an operatic form than in the original. Its lust and cruelty are presented in their nakedness. There is little or no time to reflect upon the workings of perverted minds, to make psychological or physiological studies, to watch the accumulation of causes and their gradual development of effects, except in the moments, so plentiful in Puccini's operas, in which music becomes a hindrance and an impertinence. ”

“ In its lyric portions his music is almost invariably banal, without distinction, without beauty or restraint—when the modern Italian music-maker dons his singing-robes he becomes clothed with commonness and vulgarity. Thus in its scenes of amorous exaltation the-46- music of "Tosca," of "Madame Butterfly" (recall, in the latter work, the flamboyant commonness of the exultant duet which closes the first act) , is blatant and rhetorical, rather than searching and poignant. ”

“ Before finally deciding on a site at Torre del Lago—the Tower of the Lake—Puccini stayed for a time at Castellaccio, near Pescia, where a good deal of La Bohème was put to paper. Tosca was begun at Torre del Lago, and finished during a visit at the23 country house, Monsagrati, not far from Lucca, of his friend the Marquis Mansi. ”

“ Tosca and Cavaradossi join in a finely expressive duet, in which the latter learns of her devotion, and how for him she killed Scarpia. Towards the close the voices are unsupported, and the whole number has a very characteristic force and movement.
PUCCINI AT TORRE DEL LAGO IN HIS MOTOR BOAT "BUTTERFLY"
The sky has gradually been getting lighter, and the passage of time is marked by the striking of the hour of four by the church clock. Then Tosca gives the97 final instructions to the condemned man. "As soon as they fire, fall down." ”

“ Its first American production in English was by Henry W. Savage's company, at the Teck Theatre, Buffalo, and cast as follows, Emanuel being the conductor:
In the music of Tosca Puccini reveals, more powerfully perhaps than anywhere, that quick instinct of the theatre which may be called dramatic, or merely a very clever fitting of music to the mood of the moment. ”

“ When he is gone Angelotti comes forward, and the painter recognizing in the prisoner the Consul of the late Roman Republic who is at the same time an intimate friend of his own, puts himself at his disposal, but hearing the voice of his fiancée Tosca, who demands entrance he begs the prisoner, a victim of the vile Scarpia, to retire into the chapel, giving him the refreshments, which the sacristan has left. ”