La Tosca

La Tosca is a five-act drama by the 19th-century French playwright Victorien Sardou. It was first performed on 24 November 1887 at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris, with Sarah Bernhardt in the title role. Despite negative reviews from the Paris critics at the opening night, it became one of Sardou's most successful plays and was toured by Bernhardt throughout the world in the years following its premiere. The play itself had dropped from the standard theatrical repertoire by the mid-1920s, but its operatic adaptation, Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, has achieved enduring popularity. There have been several other adaptations of the play including two for the Japanese theatre and an English burlesque, Tra-La-La Tosca (all of which premiered in the 1890s) as well as several film versions.

La Tosca is set in Rome on 17 June 1800 following the French victory in the Battle of Marengo. The action takes place over an eighteen-hour period, ending at dawn on 18 June 1800. Its melodramatic plot centers on Floria Tosca, a celebrated opera singer; her lover, Mario Cavaradossi, an artist and Napoleon sympathiser; and Baron Scarpia, Rome's ruthless Regent of Police. By the end of the play, all three are dead. Scarpia arrests Cavaradossi and sentences him to death in the Castel Sant'Angelo. He then offers to spare her lover if Tosca will yield to his sexual advances. She appears to acquiesce, but as soon as Scarpia gives the order for the firing squad to use blanks, she stabs him to death. On discovering that Cavaradossi's execution had in fact been a real one, Tosca commits suicide by throwing herself from the castle's parapets.

Victorien Sardou's grandfather had served as a surgeon with Napoleon's army in Italy, and Sardou retained a lifelong interest in the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars. In addition to La Tosca, six of his other plays were set against the events of those times: Monsieur Garat (1860), Les Merveilleuses (1873), Thermidor (1891), Madame Sans-Gêne (1893), Robespierre (1899), and Pamela (1898). He was known for the historical research which he used to inform his plays and had a private research library of over 80,000 books including Piranesi's etchings of late 18th century Rome, where La Tosca is set.

Sardou wrote La Tosca specifically for Sarah Bernhardt. She was in her mid-40s by then and France's leading actress. In 1883, she had also taken over the lease on the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, where La Tosca was to premiere. It was the third play Sardou had written specifically for her. Both their first collaboration, Fédora (1882), and their second, Théodora (1884), had been highly successful. Pierre Berton, who played Baron Scarpia, had been Bernhardt's on and off lover for many years and a frequent stage partner. The elaborate sets for the production were made by a team of designers and painters who had worked with Sardou before: Auguste Alfred Rubé, Philippe Chaperon, Marcel Jambon, Enrico Robecchi, Alfred Lemeunier, and Amable Petit. The costumes were designed by Théophile Thomas, who also designed Sarah Bernhardt's costumes for Hugo's Ruy Blas, Sardou's Cléopâtre and Théodora, and Barbier's Jeanne d'Arc.

The period leading up to the premiere was not without problems. As had happened before, once word got out of a new Sardou play, another author would accuse him of plagiarism. In the 1882 caricature of Sardou (left), one of the signs on the wall states, "Idées des autres" ("Ideas of others") and another, "Bien d'auteur" ("Author's rights"). This time Ernest Daudet (a brother of Alphonse Daudet) made the accusation, claiming that four years earlier, he and Gilbert-Augustin Thierry had written a play, Saint Aubin, which takes place in Paris on the day after the Battle of Marengo (roughly the same time-setting as La Tosca) and whose heroine (like Tosca) is a celebrated opera singer. He also claimed that he had read the play to Sarah Bernhardt and Félix Duquesnel, the director of the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. Nevertheless, he said he would "graciously permit" Sardou's play to go ahead, and had brought up the issue solely to avoid being accused of plagiarism should Saint-Auban ever be produced. Sardou, in turn, issued a robust denial in the French papers. As the play neared its premiere, Bernhardt discovered to her fury that Sardou had sold the rights for the first American production of the play to the actress Fanny Davenport and threatened to walk out. Bernhardt was eventually pacified and rehearsals continued.

The Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin was packed for the opening night on 24 November 1887, although many in the audience already knew the ending before the curtain went up. While journalists were usually invited to dress-rehearsals, they were expected not to publish details of the play before the premiere. However, the Parisian journal, Gil Blas, had published a complete description of the plot on the morning of 24 November. (Following the premiere, Sardou brought a successful suit for damages against the paper.) At the end of the performance, Pierre Berton (Scarpia) came on stage for the customary presentation of the author to the audience. As he began his introduction, a large part of the audience interrupted him shouting, "Bernhardt, Bernhardt!" After three failed attempts, he went backstage and asked Bernhardt to come out. She refused to do so until Sardou had been introduced. Berton finally succeeded, after which Bernhardt appeared to thunderous applause and cries of "Vive Sarah!"

Three minor characters in La Tosca are real historical figures: Queen Maria Carolina; Prince Diego Naselli, the Governor of Rome; and the composer, Giovanni Paisiello. However, their treatment in the play is not always historically accurate. On the day the play takes place, Queen Maria Carolina was actually on her way to Austria and staying in Livorno, not Rome. Paisiello was a Neapolitan court composer, but at the time of the play he was under suspicion for anti-Royalist sympathies, making him a highly unlikely candidate for Maria Carolina's gathering in Act 2. According to Deborah Burton, another minor character, Princesse Orlonia, is probably based on Princess Torlonia. Although their names and backgrounds contain historical allusions, the four main protagonists, Cesare Angelotti, Mario Cavaradossi, Floria Tosca, and Baron Scarpia are fictional. Their backgrounds are revealed in the conversations between Angelotti and Cavaradossi in Acts 1 and 3.

Cesare Angelotti had been a wealthy landowner in Naples and defender of the short-lived Neapolitan Republic. When it fell to the British forces and Ferdinand IV was returned as ruler, he fled to Rome where he became one of the Consuls of the equally short lived Roman Republic. He is a wanted man, not only for his revolutionary activities but also for a youthful dalliance in London, where he had an eight-day liaison with Emma Hamilton. In those days she had been a prostitute going by the name of Emma Lyon, but by the time of the play she had become the wife of the British Envoy to Naples, William Hamilton, and was a favourite of Queen Maria Carolina. Determined to avoid a scandal, the Queen demanded that he be returned to Naples and hanged. He was languishing in Rome's Castel Sant'Angelo, when his sister Giulia, the Marquise Attavanti, helped him to escape. According to historian Susan Vandiver Nicassio, Angelotti was partly based on Liborio Angelucci, who had briefly been a Consul of the Roman Republic, although the resemblance in terms of their life histories ends there. Another influence on the choice of surname may have been Nicola Antonio Angeletti (1791–1870), a prominent Italian revolutionary and member of the Carbonari.