Built in 86 AD, the Stadium’s arena hosted the first Capitolian games, an event that borrowed its ideas extensively from Greek athletic competition. Tosca at the Stadium of Domitian is history come full circle. He need not have worried: for audiences, it is perhaps the highlight of the entire opera. Given that his compositional style lends so much to the intensity of the story, it is not surprising that Puccini hesitated before including the aria, Vissi d’arte, which despite punctuating the flow of the work, and against the instincts of its creator, does so to great dramatic effect. Tosca bears all the hallmarks of Puccini’s distinctive approach to operatic form, where the themes of the arias and recitative are blended together to create a coherent musical whole. Illica, who was collaborating with Puccini on La Bohème, had been writing the libretti for both composers. The narrative of Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Tosca, harks back to the rules of Greek tragedy as much as it is imbued with the mores of the Romantic tradition a tale which sees the downfall of its protagonists, the catalyst for which is the scorn of a jealous woman.Įnthralled by Sarah Bernhardt’s interpretation of Victorien Sardou’s anti-heroine in his La Tosca, which he saw not just once but twice, Puccini was so determined to set the play to music that, in collusion with Luigi Illica, he persuaded his fellow Italian, Alberto Franchetti, to give up his own commission on the piece.
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