‘The most delightful’: the enduring appeal of Tosca | Opera

GConstitution Mahler he hated it. His publisher was sure it would be a commercial disaster. Critics complained that it was often “noisy” and predicted it would be quickly forgotten. But more than 125 years since Tosca debuted in January 1900, Giacomo Puccini’s fifth opera remains one of the biggest returns in the business.

We love a great success story in classical music. Think about the stories of tragedy that are still happening Beethoven’s life and worksand their happy ending to our Beethoven centrism. Or there is Wagner’s Tannhäuser kicked off the stage in 1861, before finding his way to the surgical team. Or the riot it allegedly caused Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at its first performance in 1913before everyone calmed down and the goal was applauded with great skill.

in the case of Toscait is difficult to imagine today how a work full of beautiful music – some of the most famous figures in opera, at least – would have left the first critic muttering that “music is missing”. But Mahler’s own rejection of the new opera as “a papal festival with endless bells” is revealing. The problem in 1900 was precisely that Puccini wove the “real world” of bells and whistles, cannons and religious music right into his scale. It was an impressive example of sound depth. But for some of Puccini’s contemporaries, the sounds were not prominent in the artistic work.

This is where Tosca shares the most precious treasure of classical music: opera is still in doubt. 1950s US pop star Joseph Kerman he dismissed Tosca as “a bit of a distraction”. More recently, in 2010 the famous opera critic Rupert Christiansen described it as a “complicated but irresistible melodrama”. To put it bluntly, Tosca’s problem that cannot be solved elsewhere is its popularity: the overwhelming appeal of the music, combined with the plot of sex and death.

“This is also a lesson in evil,” the United States official Ted Huffman he says, “which we find very interesting in a bad way.” Huffman is talking to me between his rehearsals a new production of Tosca at Glyndebourne in East Sussex. The The summer festival has been held since 1934but this is the first time that he has set up an opera. “I associate this role with the greatest actors,” says Huffman. “It’s a pleasure to perform Tosca on this scale, which is more intimate than opera houses like the Royal Opera House (in London) or the Met (in New York), where Tosca is a major part.” The small size of Glyndebourne and its auditorium means that “people will see it as a bit of a different place,” he says – one full of “small conversations and aspects and little points that are really important”. In theory, the size of the Glyndebourne theater means “you don’t have to explain too much about the audience”.

Yet for over 100 years, manufacturers have been reproducing the same things on a much larger scale. As explained by Puccini and his interpreters, Tosca is in three real places in Rome in 1800: the Sant’Andrea della Valle church, and Farnese Palace and Castel Sant’Angelo. Today’s productions don’t really follow history – who in the Netflix generation wants to go back to painted flats, slow-moving tours and stilted hands? However, many of the Toscas are still in Rome monumentally real with priests in cassocks, heroes working on oil paints, and heroines who wear red, put candelabras on both sides of the corpse of the villain and jump at the end (as in the gags of sopranos and trampolines) from the Castel Sant’Angelo Warriors.

As Huffman emphasizes, Tosca is “a piece about government brutality and resistance and courage”. Such topics may not be very relevant today. Then there’s Tosca’s daring attitude – similar to Jonathan Miller’s iconic 1950s, Little Italy-set Rigoletto or Claus Guth’s great move from La Bohème to space? Huffman has risen to fame as a daring director working in a new opera. On Tosca, however, he is cautious, admitting that the role seems “more settled than most”. You can change time and place, he says, but Puccini’s “little details” remain important.

Opera critic Tim Ashley observes that “Rome, Catholicism and the complex relationship between church and state are so entrenched in Tosca that many directors fail to think again.” The Te Deum that closes one act (a real religious song that accompanies the hero’s common fantasy) or the volley of bells at the beginning of the third act – all followed according to the study of Puccini’s place – are signs of the composer’s commitment to a new, authentic beauty. It is not surprising that the directors have recorded the content of the work that reflects the needs of today’s movies and TV.

Among the billions of productions that keep Tosca on stage around the world, Ashley can name only two major departures from tradition: Barrie Kosky’s “opéra noir” treatment for the Dutch National Opera (think minimalist chic and wicked sushi maker – even Tosca still wears red) and Photo by Martin Kušej for Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. Forget Rome – this is a post-apocalyptic wasteland of creepy caravans, legless bodies and lots of industrial snow.

Back to GlyndeborneHuffman’s production is inspired, he tells me, by 1940s Italian neorealist film. “Not in a literal way,” he is quick to add, but as a reality check, which “returns sometimes when we need to examine what is wrong in our world”. Meanwhile, he laughs, “People keep asking me if there are two candelabras at the end of game two. Spoiler: there isn’t. I’m sorry.”