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The centenary I will talk
about is probably the first one of the year 2000. On January 14th 1900
it was staged for the first time one of the most famous operas of the
history of the: the "Tosca" by Giacomo Puccini, on the libretto
of Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, drawn from the homonymous drama
of Victorien Sardou.
It's right to remember that the representation was at the Costanzi Theatre
of Rome, that the conductor was Leopoldo Mugnone and that the three
main personages were interpreted by the Haricklea Darcléé (Tosca), the
tenor Emilio De Marchi (Cavaradossi) and the baritone Eugenio Gilardoni
(Scarpia).
How it was that afternoon in January 14th 1900? The curtain calls were
fourteen: five at the end of the first act, two at the end of the second
and seven at the end of the opera. Nevertheless after the first night
things did not go on so well: the twenty repeat performances proved
that Puccini won once more.
The critic was not too much benevolent as it happened on February 1896
for "La Bohème". It puzzled the tragic and terrible "dark
hue" of the new opera, its three violent dead on stage: Scarpia
stabbed, Cavaradossi shot, Tosca suicide". A critic wrote: "All
is dark, tragic, terrible and so less varied, less striking and light
as regard to the previous works of Puccini".
But there were even more hard opinion in 1903, when the "Tosca"
was represented at the Opéra-Comique of Paris.
A hardness almost pitiless it is read in a letter that Gustav Mahler
the supreme addressed to his wife Alma: "Yesterday evening I went
to see the 'Tosca' of Puccini. In the first act a solemn procession
and a no stopping pealing (bells must come from Italy). In the second
act a man is tortured among awful yells and another is stabbed with
a sharp bread knife. In the third act, once more the huge pealing and
a sight of Rome from the top of the town and someone is shot by a firing
squad. Before the shooting I got up and I left ".
Passing years, those negative opinions have been amended by other experts.
"The love affairs between Tosca and Cavaradossi - it has been
written - are not those of a Verdi or Wagner couple. Their senses burn,
that's the matter; and burn according to the nature of the Puccini song"
and furthermore: " In 'Tosca' Puccini did not stage persons in
music, but only feelings: love, jealousy, anxiety, terror, magnanimity,
love for freedom, sadism, finding immediate expression in the song ".
As it always happens to me when I write about certain events, it is natural
for me to remember when those events entered first my life. It's a bad
habit, all considered, but it is harmless featuring my not anymore green
years. So it happens for "Tosca" too. Helped by old papers
I jealously keep, I can say that I saw the "Tosca" the evening
on August 1st 1937 at the Arena of Verona.
I was a boy a little strange that found in the drawers of his grandfathers
a collection of opera librettos along with Salgari and Verne, the poems
of Francesco Maria Piave, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica.
Accompanied by a so-loved uncle, I entered the Arena while they were
still mounting the scene of the first act of the "Tosca",
inside the roman church of Sant' Andrea della Valle. As the sun set,
on the big stage it came up altars, gates, noble chapels, statues, banisters
and confessionals. The expectation was great. "Tosca" has
never been in the in the playbill of the Arena and it has never had
during his glorious history a public of eighteen thousand spectators.
To all that it must add another and maybe even more determining reason
of interest: the debut at the Arena of the tenor Giuseppe ("Bepi"
for the natives of Veneto) Lugo.
Born in 1899 in a little village of the province of Verona, "Bepi"
Lufo had an biography enviable by an American writer of the thirties:
son of farmers, he had been tram driver, employee at the post office,
miner in Belgium, he was discovered by a maestro named Gaudier while
he sang Italian songs in a café of Charleroi.
The career of Lugo was sudden. When the Italian impresarios discovered
him he was almost forty and then it was the war to reduce his interpretations.
He made his debut at the Scala with the "Tosca" on January
21st 1937.
The critic of the main Italian newspaper wrote: "Peculiar the freshness
of his voice, but it's even more peculiar the freedom with which he
draws from it the treasures of timbre and pastiness, mainly detected
in the execution of the two romances of the first and third act".
But let's get back to the stone steps of the Arena, to that far evening
on August 1937. "Bepi" Lugo was really a "prophet in
his own country ". He must give an encore of "Recondita armonia",
and raised an endless ovation after the singing top of the "Vittoria"!
For the romance "E lucevan le stelle" the encore seemed to
be not enough to the enthusiastic public that required another one.
I remember that I applauded with such strength that my hands hurt me.
I joined the invocation of the crowd, crying me too "Bepi! Bepi!
Bepi!" For me since then the "Tosca" superimposes the
Cavaradossi sung by Giuseppe Lugo. And still now, as if the memory started
off an invisible long-disc, just I hear the great romance of the third
act humming, it's as I were a boy in a night in August, under a cloudless
sky where "stars bright ", sung by the voice of "Bepi"
Lugo.
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