TOSCA

 

“This drama involves a quite different challenge to La Boheme. Tosca’s mood is not romantic and lyrical, but rather passionate, torturous and grim. Here, we not only have to deal with pleasant, good people, but also with cunning scoundrels like Scarpia and Spoletta. And our heroes this time around will not become sentimentally soft like Rudolfo and Mimi, but rather decisive and brave. In a word, another style is required  here. With La Boheme, we wanted to reap tears; with Tosca we want to shake up the sense of justice in people and wear on their nerves a bit. Up until now we were soft; now we want to be horrid.”
                                   (A quote from Puccini in a letter to Giacosa)

The stuff of conflict between brutally instrumented power, and the naïve belief in an illusory world. The players are caught up in a net which has been dispersed and extended over the years. The spider is hiding behind every façade, the victim cannot get out of its path and will be stung by making the slightest false move.

We are in the year 1800. In wars of coalition, the new French republic must defend itself against heavy attacks made by older European kingdoms. Napoleon Bonaparte is a symbol of the new republic. The Italians are on the side of France as this offers them a guarantee against Austria for a claim of national freedom. Only the peasants---energized by the nobility and clerics---are fighting bitterly against the French.

Napoleon’s bitterest enemy is Maria Carolina, daughter of Maria Theresia and spouse of the weak Ferdinand IV. Her battle is set not only against the military opponent. Everything having to do with republican enthusiasm, with Voltaire’s spirit awakening her Italian subjects, is shamelessly suppressed by her.

Maria Carolina is forced to flee to Sicily with her court. In 1799, Rome falls back into the hands of the royal Neapolitan troops after hefty battles. Carolina returns and takes account. As usual, it starts with a horrendous “cleansing”, the hunt for traitors and collaborators. Tens of thousands languish in jail without even  a hearing. Thousands are killed following horrific torture.

Carolina’s instrument of murder here is Scarpia.

“Scarpia (a de Sade-like figure) is not sadistic because he is a policeman, but rather a policeman because he is a sadist and can reap pleasure in the suffering and hate of his object of desire...”
                          (Bovier-Lapierre: Tosca – Revolt at the opera…?)

In this piece no one has a chance of escape The strands have long entangled the events, even before the opera curtain goes up. The political botch---stubborn and deadlocked---colorless and horrendous, shows itself here in its black and white form. People become animals without feelings and logic. The power-hungry and the followers! The thirst for power is laid in the cradle. They learn how to manipulate and function and adapt themselves like puppets. One’s own will and ideas, of rebelling and running against the current, has serious repercussions, and the fear of mere survival leads them to become lifeless and insensitive. The true faces are hidden behind masks which change according to a given quest for survival.

We are confronted with ice-cold reality and yet everything is hidden under a mantle of falsehood. The church---ideally a calming pole of love and belief---is manipulated and misused for power-political purposes. Even the “Angelus”---a sacristan who appears so very devout on the outside---hides only the hate dozing within him. A façade, which immediately collapses. Truth is nowhere. Scarpia’s bigoted piousness is exposed through his greedy realization “Tosca, you make me forget God”, which leads to a Te Deum. Sexuality and religiosity mingle together.

Even the love between Tosca and Cavadarossi seeks escape in illusory worlds and thus does not have the power to withstand the terror. Jealousy and distrust reign between them. Tosca, an opera diva, knows only the language of the stage. She lives in her powerful emotions and mood shifts and is ruled by them. She is aware of her desirability and passion. She manages to create dream worlds and relinquish herself to them. First in complete desperation, as the beast Scarpia tries to satisfy his lust with her tears and hate, does she begin to find herself little by little. But she can only seize reality for moments at a time. Then, the diva plays another theatrical piece for herself and her surroundings. Caught up in her world, she does not see beyond the borders and cannot see through the game that she herself has arranged. Thus, her naivete has fatal results, set free by an untested love.

…It is a brigand and soldier’s game by which she succeeds in duping the gendarme. The little girl uses cunning to get past the young man who is older than she. She wants to share her chocolate with the young boy who was excluded from the game. Hey, do you want to play? And they play. There, on this ancient platform at the feet of a dragon, they rehearse death. Don’t laugh, this is a serious game. Both children laugh innocently. Bursting with inner laughter, Mario climbs the steps, which lead to the execution platform. The children however do not know that their parents have cheated in the game. The chocolate is poisoned. Mario climbs up….”
            (Catherine Clement:  “La Sua Voce”)

The stage setting shows a spider’s web from whose perspective vanishing point everything depends. Only the triangle in the middle, the steps leading to the catalyst of the fiasco, are juxtaposed. Self-contained and yet not firm, it sways above the ground and the spider’s arms have long since stretched the fibers. Cavadarossi considers himself free. He lives in a world of art and love. He flirts with the new thought of freedom yet submits his labours to the disposition of the empowered. Women and their beauty, nature, the perfection of creation invite him to dream and not recognize the danger of the political reality. He begins too late to see through the perfidious game. He too can only escape into a world of illusions in order to tolerate the last hours of his life.

The shepherd in the third act brings both worlds clearly into focus. The world of peace, feelings and indulgence next to the icy reality of a motionless apparatus of murder and power. Transported by the voice and music, Cavadarossi once again gives himself up to the dream of unending peace and the carelessness of childhood. He seeks the purity of love yet is repeatedly brought back into destructive reality by the application of the drama. Not even the sham world can cover reality. The spider is omnipresent.

The opera is set in 1800, but the theme is unfortunately still quite alive. We do not have to revert to period costumes to show what occurs on a daily basis.

Scarpia lives, even though Tosca killed him. The spider has many hatcheries and new Scarpias will always arise. The web draws itself in and even if one destroys it, it will be re-spun the next day.