100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (66 page)

Thaïs is struck, however, by the appearance of Athanaël. Nicias tells her that his friend has come to convert her to Christianity. Thaïs, attracted in spite of herself, tells Athanaël she believes only in the power of love-her kind of love; but Athanaël, almost literally,
threatens
her with salvation. This angers the actress, and before Athanaël’s eyes she begins to disrobe to portray the love of Aphrodite. Deeply shocked, he rushes from the scene as Thaïs, ending on a high D-flat, cries: “Only dare to come near—you who defy Venus!”

ACT II

Scene 1
finds Thaïs in her own luxurious home. She is beautiful, but she is tired—tired of her life as actress and as courtesan. Her fear, she tells us in a long scene alone, is that she will grow old, she will lose her loveliness; and she prays for eternal beauty to the one deity she acknowledges—the goddess of love, Venus.

The rest of the scene is a duet between her and Athanaël, as he tries to persuade her to give up her evil life for a holy one. In vain, at first, he tells her of the difference between her love and his—between profane and holy love. To this she replies
that she knows only one language of love—kisses. Athanaël, however, persists, and at one point in the duet they pray simultaneously—he to the Christian god, she to Venus.

Suddenly he pulls off the fine robes his rich friend Nicias has given him and stands before her as a monk in a hair-shirt. Now she is afraid, for she feels that eternal life can come only through Athanaël’s religion; and when she hears Nicias singing ardently outside her room, she sends him off. Athanaël, too, is ordered to go, for she must be alone to ponder and to learn. She is still confused; she cannot think; and the scene closes as she is driven to hysterical laughter.

Her thoughts, as she is alone, are suggested in music—the music of the familiar and beautiful
Meditation
, which is played while the scenery is changed.

Scene 2
Athanaël has lain quietly at the doorstep of Thaïs’s house all night long. Soft sounds of the gay music of Alexandrian festivities are heard at the beginning of the scene. But the conversion of Thaïs has been complete. She comes from her home prepared to go with Athanaël, to lead a holy life. He promises to take her to a convent, but first, he says, she must destroy all her evil wealth. One thing alone she would preserve—a little statue of Eros, Love, and she sings a touching aria about it (
L’amour est une vertu rare
—“Love is a precious virtue”). But Athanaël hurls the little pagan statue to the ground, and, obediently, Thaïs prepares to follow him.

Suddenly Nicias and his whole crowd of revelers bursts in. As Thaïs and Athanaël re-enter the house, this crowd sings and dances, and the orchestra plays the ballet music from
Thaïs
. Just at its close Athanaël comes back and is laughingly greeted by his friends. But when Thaïs follows, now dressed in only a woolen tunic, they grow angry. Athanaël take away their great Queen of Beauty into the desert? Never, never—and they drunkenly attack the monk. Nicias, however, rises to the occasion. He distracts the crowd by tossing gold among them; and as Thaïs steals away with her holy mentor, he cries after her: “Adieu! Your memory will ever be perfume to my soul.” He is really a nice, sentimental fellow, this Nicias; and it is only then that he discovers that Thaïs and Athanaël
have put a torch to the house, which starts burning wildly about him.

ACT III

Scene 1
begins at the end of the dusty trip through the desert. As Athanaël and Thaïs reach an oasis, she wishes to rest, for her frail body can take no more punishment. At first Athanaël is harsh with her: a holy life, in his philosophy, demands punishment of the flesh. But soon he relents, and leaves her to find some refreshment. As the orchestra plays some of the music from the
Meditation
, she prays to God, acknowledging the sweetness of His spirit.

When Athanaël returns with fruit and water, they sing a gentle duet as they bathe their hands and lips. Refreshed, they are about to go
on
, when the nuns come up to meet them. They are headed by the Abbess Albine, and they chant the Lord’s Prayer in Latin as they come. Tenderly Athanaël turns his charge over to the Abbess; tenderly Thaïs bids farewell to the man who has saved her soul.
“Adieu, mon père,”
she says—for never once in the opera does she utter Athanaël’s own name. And suddenly—for the first time—Athanaël realizes that he loves Thaïs, and that he may never see her again. He utters a cry of anguish—as the nuns depart, taking Thaïs with them.

Scene 2
Anatole France was a great satirist, a great ironist. The neat point of his story is that the great exponent of profane love—Thaïs—becomes a saint, while the great exponent of self-denying holy love—Athanaël—renounces it for a sinner. In a scene that is almost always omitted as not really necessary, Athanaël struggles with his temptation in his solitary hut; but a vision of Thaïs, dying, makes him rush off to see her one last time.

Scene 3
Athanaël arrives at the convent, barely in time. For three months Thaïs has mortified her flesh, and now she lies dying. Albine and the other nuns mourn her as the most saintly of them all. Athanaël, in anguish, rushes in. The dying Thaïs recognizes him, but it is now in vain that he tries to tell
her that the only true love is love between earthly beings. As the strains of the
Meditation
are heard once more, Thaïs believes she sees two angels and God Himself preparing to take her to heaven. The recusant monk, utterly frustrated, sees his convert die a holy death.

TOSCA

Opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini with
libretto in Italian by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe
Giacosa, based on Victorien Sardou’s play of
the same name

Time: June 1800

Place: Rome

First performance at Rome, January 14, 1900

    Victorien Sardou, king of French melodramatists, wrote
Tosca
as a dramatic vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt. It was enormously successful and was given, according to its author, three thousand times. (Maybe that was only a slight exaggeration: he made the statement twenty years after the premiere.) At any rate, it appealed as a possible source for a libretto not only to Puccini but to Verdi and to Franchetti as well. Franchetti, in fact, secured the rights first, and it was only through a fine bit of skulduggery by Tito Ricordi, both Puccini’s and Franchetti’s publisher, that the rights were transferred from the lesser composer to the greater.

But there were others who thought, and perhaps still think, that the play is just too strong dramatically to serve as an ideal libretto. Some of the opening-night critics said just that. Mascagni thought so too. He said: “I have been victimized by poor librettos. Puccini is the victim of a libretto that is too good.”

Whether or not these critics are right, the facts remain that the opera is a huge success, that Sardou’s play virtually died after Bernhardt gave it up, and that Puccini’s opera continues a vigorous life over sixty years after its premiere, after much more than three thousand performances, after hundreds of sopranos have taken that final jump over the parapet.

Puccini well understood the value of Sardou’s drama, its speed and intensity. He objected strongly when his librettist, Illica, wanted to give the tenor a long farewell oration and compromised with the short but extremely moving aria
E lucevan le stelle
. He refused to write an old-fashioned quartet with the tortured tenor off-stage while Scarpia, Tosca, and Spoletta made comments on-stage. He even disliked the famous aria
Vissi d’arte
because it held up the action; and when, one day in rehearsal, Maria Jeritza accidentally rolled off the couch just before the first notes and sang the aria from the floor, the composer said: “That’s good. It gives the aria some life.” Jeritza always sang it that way thereafter.

Yes, Puccini was very much a man of the theater. Not that he lacked appreciation for a fine voice. One time, when the scheduled tenor was unable to keep an engagement to sing Cavaradossi, Ricordi sent for an audition a young tenor who, said the publisher with no show of originality in phrase, had “a voice of gold.” The unknown’s name was Enrico Caruso; and after Puccini had accompanied him in a run-through of
Recondita armonia
, he turned around on the piano stool and asked: “Who sent you to me? God?”

ACT I

Three crashing chords, always used to suggest Scarpia, Rome’s sinister chief of police, open the opera. He is the
grim and elegant figure who epitomizes the reactionary forces of Italy, in 1800, when Napoleon was regarded as an apostle of freedom. Immediately after those opening chords the curtain rises on the interior of the church of Saint’Andrea della Valle. In rushes a disheveled man. He is Angelotti, an escaped political prisoner, and he hides in the chapel of the Attavanti on the right. A moment later comes the sacristan of the church, busily talking to himself and fussing over a painter’s dais on the left of the stage. Now enter our hero, Mario Cavaradossi, a painter, who starts working on a portrait of the Magdalen that stands half finished on the easel. He sings the aria
Recondita armonia
, in which he compares the features of his picture with those of his beloved, the celebrated diva, Floria Tosca.

After the sacristan has left, Cavaradossi discovers Angelotti, whom he thrusts back into the chapel as the voice of Tosca is heard outside demanding entrance. Tosca is a strikingly handsome, fashionably dressed prima donna, and, as so many beautiful women are said to be, is easily aroused to jealousy. This time she is jealous of the picture her lover is painting, and he has some difficulty calming her. He succeeds, however; and at the end of their love duet they plan a rendezvous in his villa for that same night, after she has sung a performance at the Farnese Palace. When she has left, Angelotti emerges once more, and Cavaradossi goes off with him, to hide him in his own house.

Now comes news of the defeat of Napoleon in the north. Preparations are made for a special service in the church. But in the midst of these preparations in comes Scarpia, who, as chief of police, is searching for the escaped Angelotti. With his evil-looking assistant Spoletta, he finds a number of clues, including a fan. This he uses cleverly to arouse the jealousy of Tosca, whom he desires for himself.

The services begin. A great procession comes into the church; and while the
Te Deum
of victory is sung, Scarpia stands to one side expressing his hope of disposing of his rival, Cavaradossi, through Tosca’s jealousy. If his plot succeeds, Cavaradossi should end on the scaffold and Floria Tosca in
Scarpia’s arms. Just before the curtain falls, with these evil thoughts still in his mind, he kneels in prayer with the others.

ACT II

That night, in the Farnese Palace, the victory over Napoleon is being celebrated, and music is heard through the windows of Scarpia’s office in that building. Scarpia, alone, ruminates on the events of the day; he sends, via the gendarme Sciarrone, a message to Tosca; and he receives a report from Spoletta. That vulture had searched Cavaradossi’s house, failed to find Angelotti, but had seen Tosca there. He had arrested Cavaradossi and brought him to the palace, a prisoner. As Tosca’s voice is heard below, singing the solo part in a victory cantata, her lover is brought in and questioned, but to no avail. When Tosca arrives, he manages to whisper to her that Scarpia knows nothing as yet and that she should tell of nothing that she had seen at his villa. He is then ordered into the next room accompanied by guards, including the executioner Roberti.

Scarpia then begins to question Tosca, who maintains a fine poise until she begins to hear Cavaradossi’s screams of anguish under torture from the next room. Unable to bear this, she tells Scarpia that Angelotti is hidden in the well in the garden.

Cavaradossi, considerably the worse for wear, is brought in and learns that Tosca has betrayed his friend. A moment later news comes that Napoleon has won a victory at Marengo. The painter sings a triumphant paean to liberty, and is contemptuously ordered out, to be executed in the morning.

Then Scarpia politely and fiendishly recommences his interview with the distraught Tosca, and it is during this very uncomfortable interview that she sings her aria
Vissi d’arte
, passionately apostrophizing love and music, the two great forces to which she has devoted her life. Finally, she agrees to sacrifice herself for her lover’s life.

Now Scarpia explains that, as he has already ordered Cavaradossi’s execution, a mock execution at least must be arranged. He summons Spoletta to give these orders, and he makes out
passes for Tosca and her lover to leave the city. But as he turns to take his victim in his arms, she plunges a knife into him, crying at the same time: “Thus it is that Tosca kisses!” (The orchestra plays those three Scarpia chords—but this time pianissimo.)