CHAN 3000 FRONT.qxd 22/8/07 1:07 pm Page 1 CHAN 3000(2) CHANDOS O PERA IN ENGLISH David Parry PETE MOOES FOUNDATION Puccini TOSCA CHAN 3000(2) BOOK.qxd 22/8/07 1:14 pm Page 2 Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) Tosca AKG An opera in three acts Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica after the play La Tosca by Victorien Sardou English version by Edmund Tracey Floria Tosca, celebrated opera singer ..............................................................Jane Eaglen soprano Mario Cavaradossi, painter ..........................................................................Dennis O’Neill tenor Baron Scarpia, Chief of Police................................................................Gregory Yurisich baritone Cesare Angelotti, resistance fighter ........................................................................Peter Rose bass Sacristan ....................................................................................................Andrew Shore baritone Spoletta, police agent ........................................................................................John Daszak tenor Sciarrone, Baron Scarpia’s orderly ..............................................Christopher Booth-Jones baritone Jailor ........................................................................................................Ashley Holland baritone A Shepherd Boy ............................................................................................Charbel Michael alto Geoffrey Mitchell Choir The Peter Kay Children’s Choir Giacomo Puccini, c. 1900 Philharmonia Orchestra Brad Cohen assistant conductor David Parry 3 CHAN 3000(2) BOOK.qxd 22/8/07 1:14 pm Page 4 COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page Act I 2 ‘Richer far is the flavour’ 2:25 084 1 Opening – ‘Ah! Here in safety!’ 2:08 068 Scarpia, Sciarrone, Spoletta Angelotti 3 ‘It seemed wise to arrest him…’ 4:22 085 2 ‘I don’t believe it…’ 3:31 068 Spoletta, Scarpia, Choir, Cavaradossi, Tosca Sacristan, Cavaradossi 4 ‘Now you and I can talk’ 5:15 088 3 ‘Give me my palette!’ 5:45 069 Scarpia, Tosca, Sciarrone, Cavaradossi Cavaradossi, Sacristan, Angelotti, Tosca 5 ‘Enough. Tosca, your answer’ 3:49 090 4 ‘Mario! Mario! Mario!’ 3:01 071 Scarpia, Tosca, Cavaradossi, Spoletta, Sciarrone Tosca, Cavaradossi 6 ‘Floria!’ 4:28 093 5 ‘Our little house in the country’ 4:27 072 Cavaradossi, Tosca, Scarpia, Sciarrone Tosca, Cavaradossi 7 ‘How much?’ 4:41 095 6 ‘What eyes in all the wide world’ 9:34 074 Tosca, Scarpia Cavaradossi, Tosca, Angelotti, Sacristan 8 ‘Life has taught me singing and loving’ 7:15 097 7 ‘All the choir in here at once!’ 1:16 077 Tosca, Scarpia, Spoletta Sacristan, Choir 9 ‘Which route have you chosen?’ 6:55 099 8 ‘You make the church a fairground!’ 1:28 078 Scarpia, Tosca Scarpia, Sacristan, Spoletta Act III 9 ‘Mario?! Mario?!’ 7:12 080 10 ‘No words can cheer me’ 10:12 101 Tosca, Sacristan, Scarpia A Shepherd Boy, Jailor, Cavaradossi 10 ‘Three agents, go in a carriage…’ 4:48 083 11 ‘All the stars shone in heaven’ 5:58 101 Scarpia, Spoletta, Choir Cavaradossi, Tosca TT 46:10 000 12 ‘Oh, hands of mercy’ 8:35 103 COMPACT DISC TWO Cavaradossi, Tosca, Jailor 13 ‘What a time they are taking!’ 4:04 105 Act II Tosca, Spoletta, Sciarrone, Soldiers 1 ‘Tosca, my falcon’ 3:27 084 TT 71:34 000 Scarpia, Sciarrone 4 5 CHAN 3000(2) BOOK.qxd 22/8/07 1:14 pm Page 6 Puccini of this development. In the meantime, composers in the subject. It is only at this Giacomo Puccini: Tosca Puccini had composed Manon Lescaut even point that Alberto Franchetti (1860–1942) though Massenet’s popular setting of that enters the picture. It was in 1889 that the thirty-five-year-old fat profits for Casa Ricordi and generous subject was not a decade old. In his efforts to A number of writers who have participated Giacomo Puccini saw Sarah Bernhardt in royalties for the composer. Fired with the further Puccini’s career, Giulio Ricordi even got in the once-popular game of Puccini-bashing Victorien Sardou’s vintage 1887 melodrama, conviction that Sardou’s La Tosca was most possession of the Italian rights to Massenet’s have maintained that Puccini’s interest in the La Tosca, twice, and recognised it as a subject promising material for an opera, in the autumn Manon with the intention of preventing its Tosca subject was aroused only when he heard he much wanted to convert into an opera. The of 1890 Puccini persuaded Ricordi to discover performance in Italy until Puccini’s Manon Franchetti was working on it, and that Puccini play, designed as a vehicle for Bernhardt, from Sardou’s agent in Paris on what terms Lescaut could establish itself in the repertoire. and Ricordi deceived Franchetti about its offered the actress ample opportunities for Sardou would sell the rights for adapting his Brought out at Turin’s Teatro Regio in February suitability, thereby leaving the ground free for high-powered histrionics. With a pseudo- play as an opera. In January 1891, when an 1893, Manon Lescaut proved an inspiriting Puccini to use it. That this impression is false historical setting the plot allowed her to play agreement about the rights seemed secure, success. has been conclusively demonstrated by the part of an opera singer: temperamental, Ricordi, at Puccini’s suggestion, set the On 29 July 1893 Ricordi wrote to Sardou’s Deborah Burton, who has thoroughly jealous, amorous, imperilled, murderous, grief- librettist Luigi Illica the task of converting agent that Puccini, still in the dark about researched the Ricordi archives for materials stricken, and, in a final theatrical gesture, Sardou’s five-act melodrama into a three-act Sardou’s opinion, was offended by the long pertaining to the composition of Tosca. In July suicidal, as she leaps to her death from the opera text. On 13 December 1891 an silence and had completely withdrawn from 1894 Illica’s libretto was turned over to the ramparts of the Castel Sant’Angelo. announcement that Puccini would compose the project. But by October 1893, Sardou, who wealthy Franchetti, who purchased the rights Seeing the drama acted in French, a Tosca appeared in Ricordi’s house organ, the had obviously heard good reports about the from Sardou for 25,000 lire. language he scarcely knew, Puccini grasped La Gazzetta Musicale. launching of Manon Lescaut, informed Ricordi Franchetti had made something of a splash Tosca’s potential as a subject well adapted to the These prospects suddenly evaporated in that, after all, Puccini should be the man to in 1892, when on Verdi’s recommendation he lyric stage, as operas do not communicate by December 1892 when Sardou, who had a compose Tosca. Buoyed by the enthusiasm with had won a commission from Genoa’s Teatro words alone. At this point Puccini had thoroughly practical side to his nature, having which his Manon Lescaut had been received, Carlo Felice to write an opera about Columbus composed two operas, Le Villi and Edgar, heard some of Puccini’s music, decided it was Puccini interpreted Sardou’s sudden shift of to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of neither of which had been unconditionally not as promising as Ricordi had tried to opinion as a crass gesture and a personal insult. that navigator’s sailing the ocean blue and successful. Yet both had shown sufficient persuade him it was; but most likely, the Puccini’s change of heart left Ricordi with discovering what proved to be the Western promise for the Milanese music publisher playwright, who had demanded a share in the Illica’s libretto of Tosca on his hands. (By the hemisphere. Giulio Ricordi to continue to pay Puccini a receipts of the operatic Tosca, was disappointed way, the opera’s title omits the play’s definite Franchetti’s success with his Cristoforo modest retainer in the hope that he would at the negligible earning power demonstrated article ‘La’.) And now the canny publisher set Colombo demonstrated that his talents were produce a genuine success, one that would earn by Le Villi and Edgar. Ricordi did not inform about trying to interest another of his stable of more advantageously displayed in a pageant- 6 7 CHAN 3000(2) BOOK.qxd 22/8/07 1:14 pm Page 8 like spectacle than in the dramatic interaction and Ricordi were there, they paid a ceremonial none of them lasting more than about three They recur in altered form when Tosca’s lover, of characters. It was Franchetti himself who visit to the sixty-seven-year-old Sardou, and it minutes, as they are designed not to disrupt the painter Cavaradossi, tells the fugitive decided that Tosca was not a subject suited to was on this occasion that Puccini’s enthusiasm the momentum. Besides these solos, the Angelotti where to hide from Scarpia. And his particular abilities, and in March 1895 he for Tosca was definitely rekindled. Illica, in soprano and the tenor participate in two later in Act I, when Scarpia himself enters the was arguing with Illica about modifying the conjunction with Giacosa, reworked the libretto effective love duets: one in the first act and church having trailed Angelotti there, these libretto. Two months later he had definitely to suit the composer’s exigent sense of theatre. the other in the last, shortly before the ominous chords serve as his calling card. After relinquished the project because, as he later Puccini even contributed to the libretto himself, not-so-mock execution. he has exposed his hypocritical, lecherous explained it, ‘I did not feel the music in it’. supplying the words for one of the most The character of the sadistic Baron Scarpia nature during the Te Deum, the act ends with Meanwhile, Puccini was composing La popular moments in the score, the tenor’s Act has his solo moments as well, but granting his the ‘Scarpia’ chords blaring menacingly. At the bohème (Turin, 1896) to a libretto by Illica and III aria, ‘All the stars shone in heaven’ (E evil nature the moments of this baritone’s end of Act II, when Tosca places the candles Giuseppe Giacosa, a work which would prove lucevan le stelle).