YMMV / Tosca

• Adaptation Displacement: Puccini's opera has displaced the play (by Victorien Sardou) that it was based on.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • When Tosca appears in act 3 claiming that Cavaradossi's been pardoned, does he believe her or not? Judging by the remark triste ("with sadness") in the score, when he agrees with her instructions about how to fall, he doesn't.
  • The Sacristan can be portrayed as either a malicious and cowardly informer or a kindly if strict priest (in some productions he is visibly shielding the chorus boys so that Scarpia's anger would only fall on him). He can also be played as gluttonous and bumbling (Fernando Corena was famous for this interpretation).
  • Even Scarpia can be a victim of this. Does he merely lust after Tosca or has some sincere feelings towards her? Some Scarpias play up the longing looks and touches, and appear genuinely hurt when Tosca says she wants to leave Rome forever. There was a very unconventional production at the Latvian National Opera^note if the last act looks especially weird, it's because it's meant to take place inside Tosca's subconscious! where Scarpia was portrayed as Tosca's ex-husband, still in love with his estranged wife and trying to win her back at any cost. Believe it or not, it worked.^note Producer Dmitry Bertman said he wanted to create a kind of "chamber" version in order to focus on the characters and story, which he regards as timeless; and he wanted to give Scarpia a motivation beyond his usual "extremely negative, static image. At the same time, Puccini’s opera provides him with very beautiful music, permeated with love and passion. Based on that, in our version, Scarpia and Tosca were once a couple until she left. By all possible means, Scarpia now wants not to conquer the body of Tosca... but to regain her love. He believes that the frivolous Cavaradossi, to whom Tosca has gone, is not able to love so truly. Such absolute trust in Scarpia makes her close and understandable to us." ^note In Piers Paul Read's novel Scarpia, in which Scarpia is portrayed much more sympathetically, he and Floria had had a Friends with Benefits relationship years before.
  • When Tosca proclaims "O Scarpia! Avanti a Dio! ^note  O Scarpia, before God " right before she jumps to her death; is she referring to killing Scarpia or the fact she, a devout Catholic, committed suicide?
• Awesome Music: The whole opera, especially the last ten minutes.
  • The Te Deum that closes out the First Act, when Scarpia is laying out his grand plan to have Tosca all to himself, is no slouch.
• Complete Monster: Baron Vitellio Scarpia is the head of the police who relentlessly hunts down those deemed as "traitors" and subjects them to torture and execution. When he captures the painter Mario Cavaradossi, he decides to use the man as leverage to possess his sweetheart Floria Tosca. He has Mario brutally tortured, and convinces Mario that Tosca betrayed him to drive a wedge between the lovers. He then proceeds to offer Tosca Mario's safety if she sleeps with him, horrifying her. He promises to spare Mario if she does so, seemingly arranging a fake execution. However, even after Scarpia's death it is revealed he had no intention of honoring his word: the execution is real and Mario dies anyway. A venal hypocrite hiding behind his sanctimony, Scarpia glories in the fear he spreads over Rome and believes the best way to possess a woman is by force.
• Ending Fatigue / Padding: The opera doesn't have a lot of plot left after Tosca kills Scarpia at the end of the second act, so the third act begins with a long sequence of nothing but atmospheric, scene-setting music including the voice of a shepherd boy singing in the distance... and even with that, the act runs only a bit over twenty minutes.
• Funny Moments:
  • Because Tosca mostly revolves around just three characters (Tosca, Cavaradossi, and Scarpia), it is one of Puccini's most frequently performed operas, and this has led to some entertainingly Troubled Productions. Several of the most famous examples are probably fictional, but funny nonetheless:
    • In one production, the stage crew put a trampoline behind the parapets over which Tosca jumps in the final scene so that the actress would not hurt herself when she landed. Unfortunately, the parapet wasn't very tall, so the audience were treated to the curious sight of Tosca jumping over the parapet and then re-appearing a moment later, and then disappearing and re-appearing several more times as the curtain fell.
    • This story has been told about numerous sopranos, among them Emma Eames, Zinka Milanov, Eleanor Steber (who says she saw it happen to Lily Djanel), and Dame Eva Turner (who said she herself was the 'bouncer'). The bounce story is also told about Montserrat Caballé, but the truth is she had bad knees and could never jump at all. Using set design and stage blocking, she could slip behind a wall and make it look like she jumped. Another trick is to retain the murder weapon and stab herself at the end instead of jumping (or along with jumping, as Afro-American mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett used to). Today, the giant foam blocks you see in gymnastics practice areas can be used, and a couple of more recent Toscas like Patti Racette have been taking off from the wall like Superman. Cynthia Lawrence, who really was a gymnast in college, likewise appeared to take off and fly. And there's a short clip on Saioa Hernandez' Instagram showing how she jumps into what looks like a simple packing case at the Bavarian State Opera Theater.
    • In another production, the actors for the firing squad were hastily recruited from local university students, and the director had no time to rehearse them before the performance, so he told them to enter in formation, fire when signalled to do so, and exit with the principals. However, they weren't quite clear on which character was supposed to be shot, so when they pointed their guns at Cavaradossi and he looked uneasy, some of them thought "Well, the opera is called Tosca...", and soon they were all pointing their guns at Tosca. Misinterpreting her frantic gestures as appropriate for a condemned person about to be shot, when the signal came, they shot Tosca instead of Cavaradossi, and were understandably confused when Cavaradossi fell down dead. And then, when Tosca ran up to the parapets and jumped off, they remembered, "Exit with the principals." So as the curtain fell, the audience were bewildered to see the firing squad jumping over the parapets after Tosca, one by one... In his World of Italian Opera, Tito Gobbi says he hopes this story is true. "Mass suicide by the firing squad makes an enchanting finale to Tosca."
    • Shooting Tosca was intentionally done in an English production of Sardou's original play, because audiences protested that suicide was immoral.
    • In another production, a young and inexperienced assistant director put a real (and quite sharp) knife on Scarpia's dinner table. Noticing this, the baritone playing Scarpia politely asked for the knife to be removed. The assistant did this for the rehearsals but put the knife back for the opening night. The baritone, understandably worried for his good health, stealthily put the knife away while singing... and when the moment came, the soprano who played Tosca was left with no weapon to stab Scarpia with. The woman was quick-thinking, though, and grabbed a fork. And so, possibly for the first time in the opera history, the villain was stabbed with a fork (a blunt end of it).
    • In a performance in Italy in the 1990s, the guns did not go off properly for the execution. Cavaradossi had to fall down pretending to be shot anyway, leading to the following headline in next day's paper: 'Cavaradossi dies of a heart attack'.
    • At a Met production in 1999, soprano Eva Marton landed on the feather mattress after her suicide jump, just to have it explode around her. Luckily, nothing was seen by the audience, until she came out for her curtain call – covered in feathers from head to foot.
    • During the famous 1965 Covent Garden performance starring Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi, Callas' hair caught fire because she got too close to the candelabra during the confrontation. With quick thinking, Tito Gobbi put out the flames in Callas' hair while making it look like part of Scarpia's harassment of Tosca. And as she stabbed him, Callas whispered to Gobbi, "Grazie, Tito."
    • More than once, a baritone has been stabbed for real (though thankfully not fatally so). Back in the 1920's at the Old Met, an impetuous Maria Jeritza accidentally stabbed Antonio Scotti with the prop knife. Scotti's exclamations of (real) pain made for convincing acting.^note Antonio Scotti was not the first Scarpia, that honor went to Eugenio Giraldoni; but he was one of the greatest. He was a basso cantante (closer to Ezio Pinza or George London) with a lot of subtlety and a magnetic stage presence. He made the role his own, as Tito Gobbi did later. Similarly, many years later, it was Callas who stabbed Gobbi in the chest when her prop knife failed to retract, and Gobbi did a convincing death scene with real blood. In a 1978 interview with Cornell MacNeil, Gobbi verifies that that indeed happened to him.^note After Scarpia dies, Tosca is supposed to put two lit candles beside him on the floor. Maria whispered as she did this, "Oh my God, Tito, are you all right?". She tried to be careful but you could hear her in the front rows.
    • In his World of Italian Opera, Gobbi recalls what was thankfully a rehearsal when the Sciarrone of the production slightly muddled up the few lines he had. When Scarpia asked "What does the cavalier say?", instead of replying "Nothing", Sciarrone answered "Everything!" The conductor immediately said that in that case, everyone could just go home^note A bit later in the libretto, Scarpia orders Sciarrone to untie Cavaradossi, to coax Tosca to speak out. Sciarrone asks "Tutto?", which means "completely" here but can also mean "everything"..
  • Right after Cavaradossi is taken away to be imprisoned, Scarpia, after everything that's happened in Act Two thus far — torturing Cavaradossi, interrogating Tosca and forcing her to betray her lover and his friend — starts putting the moves on Tosca and offers her some wine. Tosca cuts through all his bullshit and demands "How much???" and when Scarpia 'innocently' (depending on the production) repeats her in surprise, she pushes to know how much it's going to cost to free her lover.
  • Tosca usually brings down the house with her aria Vissi d'arte...which sometimes leads to Scarpia giving a clap or two when the applause dies down.
  • In yet another Crosses the Line Twice moment, when Scarpia sends Spoletta away and tells Tosca he has upheld his end of the bargain, while Tosca replies "Not yet", Scarpia often rolls his eyes or sighs in exasperation, as if to say: "What now?"
• Inferred Holocaust: A somewhat positive example. Scarpia may have gone back on his word to release Cavaradossi, and indeed, all three principals are dead, but the fact that Napoleon has won the Battle of Marengo and is soon to occupy Rome has rendered the anti-Napoleonic Scarpia's posthumous victory over Napoleon's supporters utterly meaningless in the end.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Even when he's being brutally tortured, Cavaradossi refuses to give up Angelotti's location.
  • Tosca giving Scarpia her 'kiss' and screaming at him to die as he drowns in his own blood.
  • Scarpia has an evil awesome moment in the Te Deum where he gets to do Evil Gloating talking about his Evil Plan, to some of the most drop-dead-gorgeous music in the whole thing.^note Cute moment at 02:11, as Scarpia's assistant Spoletta leaves, his hat collides with the brass lamp overhead.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Luc Bondy's unconventional, Regietheater production of this opera for the Met Opera, which premiered in 2009 and replaced Franco Zeffirelli's beloved and incredibly traditional production, turned out to be this. Even before it premiered, there had already been hostility, which only grew worse when it actually premiered.
  • There were several directorial choices that were roundly hated, for example:
    • Tosca is portrayed as a sacrilegious brat, with her slashing her lover's painting of a topless Mary Magdalene (which itself is another scandalous choice).
    • Scarpia writhes against a statue of the Virgin Mary during the "Te Deum", and generally being Anviliciously portrayed as a lustful molester who is clearly a slave to his base desires (he's even receiving fellatio from a topless prostitute during Act II!).^note Zeffirelli had arranged the set design for the second act so that it was clear Scarpia brought women there without your actually seeing any. The New Yorker reviewer reminded modern readers that Tito Gobbi had conveyed Scarpia's entire character with his eyes. In fact, the staging itself was seen as incredibly crude and sexed-up in general.
    • Tosca normally includes one of the most intensely dramatic moments in all of grand opera. It is from the original play, and has figured in many promotional posters. Tito Gobbi calls it "a moment of half-superstitious forgiveness." She is supposed to take the two candle holders off the table and put them on the floor on either side of Scarpia's head; she then puts the crucifix from the wall on his chest, before leaving. Puccini wrote specific musical cues for these actions. ^note Maria Callas used to hold the crucifix until the loud drumrolls from the courtyard below startle her into dropping it. The Bondy production omitted this entirely and had her just sit on the couch doing nothing until it was time for her to leave.
    • The set pieces were cold and austere, showing exposed brick instead of the familiar interiors of the Church of Sant'Andrea Della Valle, the Palazzo Farnese, and the Castel Sant'Angelo. One reviewer said you couldn't tell if this was some kind of social commentary or budgetary concerns.
  • Both critics and audiences were united in their unanimous hatred, and the whole production is seen to have considerably weakened Karita Mattila's debut in the title role. While the singers and conductor had been greeted with applause at the curtain call, Bondy and his team were greeted with a cacophony of booing, something that rarely happens at the Met. The stage direction was toned down for future presentations, and the entire production was scrapped after only about forty shows and replaced with a reasonable set design modeled on the real places.^note General Manager Peter Gelb stepped before the curtain before the first of the replacement shows, to give a public apology: "this will be a relief to those of you who were miffed that we replaced Franco Zeffirelli’s extravaganza with the 2009 reimagining by the late Luc Bondy."
    "...it was beyond awful. Just ridiculous 'contrary' effects... UNFORGIVEABLE Eurotrash! Bondy came onstage during curtain calls and he was loudly booed." "I couldn't help but think how Tebaldi, Callas, Milanov and others would have kicked Bondy into the pit before storming out." - Comments on Parterre, opera fans/experts dissecting the Bondy production in detail.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Vissi d'arte. Vissi d'amore.
  • E lucevan le stelle hits you much, much worse.
    • On top of that, when Cavaradossi is portrayed as knowing Scarpia will not let him live, he decides to calmly accept Tosca's advice on how to fake his death with a smile on his face.
  • Arguably, the entire opera is a tragedy about two lovers who will never be able to be together because of the oppressive regime they live in.
• The Woobie: Tosca and Cavaradossi are basically trapped in a sadistic officer's game bent on destroying their relationship in order to have Tosca just for himself.

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