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Tosca
Opéra Bastille - from 03 September to 26 November 2022
Tosca
Giacomo Puccini
Opéra Bastille - from 03 September to 26 November 2022
2h50 with 2 intervals
Language : Italian
Surtitle : French / English
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Opening night : 3 Sept. 2022
About
In few words:
When Giacomo Puccini saw a performance of Victorien Sardo's play La Tosca, whilst Sarah Bernhardt was touring with it in Milan, he was immediately captivated by the power of the drama. Love, politics, sadism and religion: all these ingredients are brought together in the story of the jealous and impulsive singer Floria Tosca, who is in love with the idealistic Mario Cavaradossi in an Italy fighting for its independence. Eleven years later, in 1900, Puccini’s opera Tosca had its triumphant first performance in Rome. At the summit of his art, the composer struck a powerful note even as the curtain rose with five arresting chords evoking Scarpia, the infamous chief of police, whose desire to possess the diva knows no limits. In Pierre Audi’s production, first performed in 2014 at the Paris Opera, the oppressive shadow of a cross hovers above the stage, symbol of the collusion of political and religious tyranny. An interpretation that skilfully deploys the strands of the drama and lays bare its tragic mechanisms.
CHARACTERS
Mario Cavaradossi: Painter and Floria Tosca’s lover, a republican sympathiser
Baron Scarpia: Rome’s chief of police
Cesare Angelotti: Political prisoner, escaped from the Castel Sant’Angelo
Spoletta: Scarpia’s police agent
- Opening
- First part 45 mn
- Intermission 25 mn
- Second part 45 mn
- Intermission 25 mn
- Third part 30 mn
- End
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Tosca
Melodramma in three acts (1900)
After Victorien Sardou
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Performances
Book your tickets today with the Season Pass
Available in audiodescription
Advantages
Full
Book your tickets today with the Season Pass
Available in audiodescription
Advantages
Full
Gallery
Videos clips
Audio clips
Tosca (saison 22/23) - Acte 2 - Saioa Hernández (Tosca)
Tosca (saison 22/23) - Acte 1 - Chœur - Te Deum
Tosca (saison 22/23) - Acte 1 - Saioa Hernández (Tosca), Bryn Terfel (Scarpia)
Tosca (saison 22/23)- Acte 2 - Joseph Calleja, Saioa Hernández , Bryn Terfel
Backstage
© Vincent Pontet / OnP
08:40’
Video
Behind the scenes of Tosca
Interview with Paolo Bortolameolli, Sandra Westphal, Yves Gautier and Samantha Claverie
To coincide with the revival of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, directed by Pierre Audi, we meet conductor Paolo Bortolameolli, vocal coach Sandra Westphal, and Yves Gautier and Samantha Claverie from the props department. Each of them sheds light on this lyric drama in three acts: the score's Verismo, Floria Tosca's dilemma and the tragedy of her lover Mario Cavaradossi's execution.
© Vincent Pontet / OnP
06:03’
Video
Tosca, at the heart of human passions
Interview with Pierre Audi
Part of the Paris Opera's repertoire since 2014, Pierre Audi's production of Tosca returns to the stage of the Opéra Bastille until 26 November. For this revival, the director explains his intentions and tells us why Tosca remains one of lyric theatre's absolute masterpieces.
© Eléna Bauer/OnP
Article
Tosca’s Cross
Memories of a production
05’
In 2014, Pierre Audi signed a new production of Tosca. Together with set designer Christof Hetzer, he imagined a set with the shadow of a cross hovering above it, thus making the political and dramatic implications of the libretto tangible. Alexandre Gaillard, head of the Set Design Department at the Paris Opera, reveals the genesis of the production's set, which proved to be an adventure worthy of the work.
Alexandre Gaillard is Assistant Head of scenery workshops and Technical Supervisor.
I arrived at the Paris Opera in 2003 in the post of assistant to the supervisor of the scenery design department. In 2007, the head of the scenery workshops asked me to oversee all the technical side, a post I’ve occupied ever since. In this job, I follow the entire process of creating the sets: firstly the initial designs with our artists, then, when the plans are ready, I supervise the construction in collaboration with the heads of the different workshops concerned. My mission is to guarantee that every set fully answers the requirements of the stage directors and scenographers, whilst taking our own constraints into account. This also means sometimes modifying the choices made by scenographers or working with them to reach a compromise.
The set for Tosca underwent several adjustments
between the initial presentation of the drawings and its final realisation at
the time of its creation in 2014. When the drawings were submitted, the design
consisted of just a single cross: in Act I it was on the stage. To show us its position
in Act II, Christof Hetzer took hold of it, put two strings round it and there
it was suspended above his set. To the problems of a cross on the stage were
therefore added the difficulty of suspending it. For us, these problems
required completely different technical solutions prompting us straightaway to
envisage two different crosses. However, the illusion that the cross is the
same before and after the interval remains intact for the audience.
The hanging cross is the one that required most thought. First of all, we reconsidered its shape and dimensions with the scenographer. It required three motors to suspend it and it had to be mobile which provided an additional challenge. We had to consider how to construct a metallic skeleton for the cross as well as the best way of covering it, that is to say, its exterior panels and their decoration. We had to recalculate the dimensions three times before we found the best structural solution: a framework in aluminium tubing reinforced at strategic points with steel elements. Next, we had to find the best solution for the exterior: it was made mostly out of a composite of polystyrene, carbon fibre and resin which allowed for very rigid but also very light panels. The Scenery Workshop had one last challenge to face: making the material as light as possible. When the first samples were shown to the scenographer, the decorative layer weighed 1.5kg per m2. After a series of tests, the decorators managed to reduce the weight by half and still produce the same visual effect. Our combined efforts resulted in an overall weight of 2.7 tons and a maximum of 960kg at the leverage points (the limit was 1 ton per motor). Rarely had a set demanded such an investment on the part of the technical and artistic workshops and the Design Department.
The first time we suspended the cross in the workshop it looked so intimidating that we hardly dared walk underneath it. It’s a marvellous piece of opera scenery in that it is full of paradoxes: it’s a highly monolithic object, the rock-like appearance of its outer covering reinforces the impression of density and contributes to the oppressive quality of its presence on stage, although in fact it was made as light as possible and is largely hollow, composed of emptiness.
I was trained as an
engineer and have a diploma from the Arts & Métiers school. For me, working
at the opera really is “engineering” in the fullest sense of the term. Over and
above technical realism, it requires creativity, ingenuity and perseverance to
go the extra mile and come up with the bright ideas that will allow you to
bring the artist’s vision to life on stage.
Interview by Milena Mc Closkey
01:19’
Video
Draw-me Tosca
Understand the plot in 1 minute
A Pasolinian landscape over which hovers the overwhelming image of a cross, symbol of the collusion between political and religious oppression: Pierre Audi’s reading divests the work of its ceremonial dress and strips bare its perfectly regulated tragic mechanism, the cogwheels of its drama which, from the raising of the curtain to the tragic downfall, operate with pitiless efficiency. With its transition from theatre to opera, Victorien Sardou’s play becomes the very symbol of operatic art. Is that because Tosca portrays a prima donna whose jealousy has weighty consequences for the destiny of her lover? The music overflows the drama to reveal the sensuality of its immortal heroine.
© plainpicture/Anzenberger/Eugenia Maximova
Article
An analysis of Tosca
A conversation with Pierre Audi and Henri Peña-Ruiz
13’
In Tosca, Pierre Audi has chosen to place religion and its complex relationship with political power at the centre of his production: a choice that continues to have an impact today. The director talks to philosopher Henri Peña-Ruiz, a specialist in secularism.
Pierre Audi, when the curtain rises on your Tosca, one is struck by the crucifix looming over the entire stage. How did you come to imagine that monumental cross—a symbol which you use to represent the Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle in Act I, the Palazzo Farnese in Act II and the Castel Saint-Angelo in Act III?
The huge cross is a sign of the importance that religion has in your production – and more specifically, the collusion between religious authority and political power that is personified in the character of Scarpia…
In his opera, Puccini effectively seems to distinguish two aspects of religion: one which falls within the scope of personal faith and hope, and the other which is based on exploiting religion and using it as a tool of domination and oppression. In this way, Scarpia persecutes the republicans with the blessing of the Pope, yet, just before Tosca jumps to her death, she vows to meet him before God, which is a way of dreaming of a religion free from the corruption of political power. Henri Peña-Ruiz, when we were preparing for this interview, you told me that, for you, Puccini’s distinction was fundamental…
Tosca is one of the great heroines of the repertoire. And yet, as a woman, we get the impression that she is the first victim of the collusion between religion and politics...
Henri Peña-Ruiz: Yes, and, to some extent, it’s scarcely surprising that the oppression that Scarpia subjects Tosca to, the threat of rape that he keeps hanging over her, is carried out with the tacit approval of the clerical authorities. When the Church involves itself in society’s mores, it is often to the detriment of women. Think of Molière’s Tartuffe and his famous phrase:
Cover that breast which I may not behold.
Such a sight is harmful to the soul;
for it will beget impure thoughts.
Men endeavour to
exert control over the bodies of women—be it in France, Italy or in Spain—in
societies long marked by patriarchy and sexist domination. From that
perspective, most religions codify such domination by sacralising it and
presenting it as ordained by God. From Molière to Puccini, one of the tasks
artists attributed to themselves was to denounce the hypocrisy of such a
position.
In your production, Tosca doesn’t leap to her death. In a scene which is more fantastical than realistic, she seems to dissolve into the landscape. Is this a way of saving a heroine who has been given a rough ride by Puccini by sparing her from punishment?
Aside from religion, art plays a central role in your production. In the first act, you have chosen to replace the portrait of Mary Magdalene which Cavaradossi paints in the church, with an erotic painting by Bouguereau: Les Oréades, which depicts a group of nymphs fleeing the concupiscent glances of the satyrs…
And yet lip service is paid to the pious: in the reproduction of Bouguereau’s portrait which Cavaradossi is painting, black veils cover the bodies of the nude Oriads…
In recent years, a number of productions have made the headlines by provoking violent reactions from more conservative sections of the public: On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God by Romeo Castellucci or Golgotha Picnic by Rodrigo Garcia… The issue of censorship, blasphemy, or the confrontation between artists and religious morality is still relevant today. Do you think that the theatre is a favoured venue of emancipation?
Henri Pena Ruiz: That’s a complex question which touches on the very purpose of art! Does art serve another purpose other than itself? Philosophy has often answered no to that question. Art is its own end because it is that wonderful activity by which man expresses a creativity that produces beautiful works that we enjoy for and in themselves. Kant asserts that “art is an endless finality”. Even so, it is clear that this has never stopped artists from taking an emancipating, demystifying, critical position relative to a given historical situation. History has shown us that when human beings are suffering, or demanding and fighting for their liberty, artists cannot remain unmoved. Earlier, I cited Victor Hugo. I could also evoke the films of Bernardo Bertolucci, Ettore Scola and even Arturo Toscanini in the domain of opera... Those are artists I admire.
Would you go so far as to use the word “sacred”?
Pierre Audi: Personally, I find that the notion of sacred is very useful: the form, the setting. That doesn’t mean that I stage masses for the public [laughter], of course, that's not what I mean. For me, the sacred is a form. It is like a circle or a square, a shape inside which I can set up my production. It’s a prism through which I can have a dialogue with the public.
Interviewed by Simon Hatab
© Svetlana Loboff / OnP
07’
Podcast
Podcast Tosca
"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" - by France Musique
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