On this date in 1900 Puccini's opera Tosca premièred in Rome. 10 things you might not know about Tosca:
The libretto for Tosca was written by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, who’d also worked on La Bohème and Madama Butterfly.
It took eleven years to write after Puccini first saw the play La Tosca by French playwright Victorien Sardou in 1889 and decided he wanted to turn it in to an Opera. A couple of years later, Puccini and Sardou fell out and the publishers passed Tosca to another composer. In 1895, Puccini changed his mind and took the job back. Even so it took another four years to complete as Puccini, Illica, Giacosa and the publisher kept falling out and threatening to quit.
Tosca is a political thriller and a love story, set in Rome in June 1800 (during the Napoleonic wars and a time of great political unrest). Tosca is a famous singer who is in love with a painter called Cavaradossi. Baron Scarpia, the chief of police, lusts after Tosca and wants her for himself. He arrests Cavaradossi on suspicion of assisting an escaped political prisoner, but the latter escapes. Scarpia manipulates Tosca into telling him where her lover is hiding and tells her that Cavaradossi won’t be executed if she gives herself to him. The execution will be faked and the couple will be granted safe passage out of Rome. Tosca kills Scarpia and goes to watch the fake execution – only it’s not. The bullets are real and Cavaradossi dies. The opera ends with Tosca throwing herself off a parapet.
There’s a myth that in one production, the pile of mattresses put in place for the actress playing Tosca to fall on was a bit too bouncy, and instead of disappearing in a fall to her death, bounced back up over the parapet several times.
Tosca is made up of three acts, and runs for about three hours including two intervals.
Puccini was so keen to make the opera sound authentic to its setting that he extensively researched the sounds of the church bells in the city. For Act III, in which church bells are heard at dawn, he visited the Castel Sant’Angelo, the prison in Rome where Cavaradossi is held, to measure the exact sound of the matins bells as they would be heard from the ramparts. He had bells cast especially to recreate the sound and gave detailed instructions about exactly where each bell should be placed backstage in order to make it sound exactly right. Illica, one of the librettists, thought this was a bit over the top. In a letter to the publisher, he wrote, “the great fuss and the large amount of money for the bells have constituted an additional folly, because it passes completely unnoticed”. Puccini also pitched the music for the Te Deum at the end of Act 1 to match the great bell of St. Peter’s Basilica.
The premier was attended by Queen Margherita, although she didn’t arrive until after the first act, the Prime Minister of Italy, Luigi Pelloux and many more local dignitaries.
Queen Margherita wasn’t the only latecomer. Some other members of the audience arrived after the curtain rose and tried to get in, causing a disturbance. The opera was paused for a few moments while everything was calmed down and carried on without further incident.
The best known music from this opera includes Vissi d’arte (‘I lived for art’), which is sung by Tosca during Act II, E lucevan le stelle (‘The stars were shining brightly’), sung by Cavaradossi as he awaits his execution, and the Te Deum at the end of Act I. Tosca’s score is also full of musical motifs, representing different characters and ideas. The best known is the sequence of three chords representing Scarpia (the interval is an unsettling tritone, known as the ‘devil’s interval’).
Today, Tosca is the fifth most performed opera in the world.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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