BBC History - UK (2022-01)

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Dominic Sandbrook is a historian,

author and broadcaster. His new

series of history books for children,

Adventures in Time (Particular

Books), is available now

14 JANUARY 1900

Tosca premieres

in Rome

Puccini’s dramatic opera

wows the audience – despite

threats from anarchists

T

he genesis of Tosca, often seen as

Giacomo Puccini’s masterpiece, was

a saga in itself. His opera was based

on the 1887 theatrical work La Tosca by the

French playwright Victorien Sardou, who

specialised in historical melodramas. Set

in June 1800 in Rome, when that city was

trapped between the armies of Napoleon and

the kingdom of Naples, the original play was

awash with murder, torture and surging pas-

sion. And since it starred Sarah Bernhardt, the

most glamorous stage star of her day, it was

a colossal international hit.

In May 1889, less than two years after

the play’s original production, Puccini (pic-

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operatic rights. He had already seen the play

at least twice, and was convinced he could

make it work. However, he did not obtain the

rights, and Sardou instead struck a deal with

a rival composer, Alberto Franchetti. Puc-

cini never gave up, though, and in 1895 he

convinced Franchetti to transfer the rights

to him. By some accounts, he achieved this

by persuading Franchetti that the story was

too violent for an opera audience – and then

proved that it certainly wasn’t.

With glorious timing, Tosca’s première

at Teatro Costanzi (now the Rome Opera

House) was scheduled for 13 January 1900

• at the peak of the Holy Year celebrations,

day, Rome was simmering with

rumours of anarchist and anti-

clerical terrorist plots.

Learning that Italy’s queen

consort Margherita of Savoy and

other dignitaries had been invited to

the première, one anarchist group

The police arranged that

the Royal March as a

signal if there was an

emergency; then, as a further precaution, the

event was pushed back a day, to 14 January.

They need not have worried. There was

complained about its brutality,

the audience loved Tosca – and it

has remained at the heart of the

opera canon ever since.

Adolfo Hohenstein’s poster for the

original production of Tosca.

Puccini’s great work opened

more than a decade after he

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