![]() “Certainly there are historical events that drive the plot of Tosca-principally the false news of the victory of the Allied Forces against Napoleon at the Battle of Marengo-but other details are pure fantasy.” The libretto teems with historical inaccuracies: from small details like the lack of a full moon on the night of June 17, 1800, contrary to Tosca’s musings in Act I, to the far more important fact that the Papacy had yet to return to the city after a two-year-long exile. “ Tosca is a very interesting piece because it’s history, but it also isn’t history,” comments Sir David McVicar, director of the Met’s production. And while Puccini and his librettists-Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica-were very specific about the dates and times of the opera’s three acts, they favored dramatic emphasis over factual accuracy. By Christopher BrownerĪs is true for many masterpieces of the operatic repertoire, the story of Tosca, based on an 1887 play by French dramatist Victorien Sardou, sets the rather intimate, private struggles of its main characters against a sweeping backdrop of political conflict-in this case, Rome in 1800, a place of warring empires, radical ideologies, and the inescapable influence of the Catholic Church. ![]() In his new production of the classic melodrama, Sir David McVicar transports audiences to the gritty, glittering, and gripping world of Rome in 1800. During the Met’s 2017–18 season, Sonya Yoncheva, one of opera’s most exciting artists, took on the riveting title role of Puccini’s Tosca for the first time in her career.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |