Page 198 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

196 VERISMO

widely apparent in Puccini’s work. works of fellow composers, such as News of Napoleon’s victory at
This he handled with a greater Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Marengo, pictured here by the
degree of flexibility and far more even Schoenberg, but also made French artist Louis-François Lejeune
technical variety and finesse than modernist musical initiatives of his (1775–1848), reaches Rome in Act II
of Tosca, three days after the battle.
most of his contemporaries. There own, many of which came to the
was also in Puccini’s scores a fore in Tosca.
persistent interest in new musical by this time), seems to prefigure
developments from beyond Italy’s Using music for menace innumerable individuals who,
(or even opera’s) borders, which Puccini premiered Tosca, his fifth over the next century, served
added heightened expressive color opera, in Rome in 1900, a time of cruel, dictatorial regimes,
and richness to his music. He made great uncertainty and instability in including Fascist Italy.
use of the harmonies, rhythms, and Italian politics. Though clothed in Scarpia is introduced in the
orchestral effects displayed in the the theatrical dress of a period 100 concise motif of two chords on
years prior to its opening, the opera lower woodwind, brass, and
dealt with issues and characters strings, followed by an unrelated
that seemed contemporary to its and clashing third chord by the
first audience but would become higher strings and woodwind, and
even more starkly relevant as the a lurid gleam from the cymbals.
20th century progressed. In Every note in this chord sequence
particular, the figure of Scarpia, is accented and marked “fff”
the sadistic police chief, who is a (“extremely loud”). Long before
presence in the opera musically we see him, here stands Scarpia
from its opening bars right through in all his power and brutality.
to the final act (although dead Musically, this tiny (yet
sonically huge) motif also throws
our expectations of standard
At the premiere of Tosca, the lead harmonic progression out of kilter
role was played by the Romanian-born
39-year-old soprano Hariclea Darclée, by landing not only in a key
seen here in Act II holding the knife (E major) unrelated to the first
she will use to kill Scarpia. chord (B-flat) but in a diminished

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