A comprehensive guide to Puccini's TOSCA, featuring insightful and in depth Commentary and Analysis, a complete, newly translated Libretto with Italian/English side-by side, and over 20 music highlight examples.

Tosca, one of Puccini's greatest and most popular operas, is a supreme example of music's power to enthral the audience. In his introductory essay to this guide, Bernard Williams discusses the enduring quality of its appeal. Bernard Keeffe, in his article, analyses different aspects of the score, noting Puccini's special genius for orchestration and the subtle effects that give the opera its irresistible vitality, while Stuart Woolf's survey of the historical background reveals its political and nationalistic undertones.Enriched by twenty-five archive photographs, a detailed thematic analysis, the original libretto with the facing literal translation and a section containing up-to-date discographical and bibliographical information, this guide will prove an invaluable companion for opera-goers and anyone wanting to delve deeper into the genesis, history and significance of Puccini's work.Contains:Manifest Artifice, Bernard WilliamsThe Music of Puccini's Tosca, Bernard KeeffeHistorical Perspectives on Tosca, Stuart WoolfTosca: Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica after the play La Tosca by Victorien SardouTosca: English translation by EMI Classics

A timeless tale of love, lust, and politics, Tosca is one of the most popular operas ever written. In Tosca's Rome, Susan Vandiver Nicassio explores the surprising historical realities that lie behind Giacomo Puccini's opera and the play by Victorien Sardou on which it is based. By far the most "historical" opera in the active repertoire, Tosca is set in a very specific time and place: Rome, from June 17 to 18, 1800. But as Nicassio demonstrates, history in Tosca is distorted by nationalism and by the vehement anticlerical perceptions of papal Rome shared by Sardou, Puccini, and the librettists. To provide the historical background necessary for understanding Tosca, Nicassio takes a detailed look at Rome in 1800 as each of Tosca's main characters would have seen it—the painter Cavaradossi, the singer Tosca, and the policeman Scarpia. Finally, she provides a scene-by-scene musical and dramatic analysis of the opera. "[Nicassio] must be the only living historian who can boast that she once sang the role of Tosca. Her deep knowledge of Puccini's score is only to be expected, but her understanding of daily and political life in Rome at the close of the 18th century is an unanticipated pleasure. She has steeped herself in the period and its prevailing culture-literary, artistic, and musical-and has come up with an unusual, and unusually entertaining, history."—Paul Bailey, Daily Telegraph "In Tosca's Rome, Susan Vandiver Nicassio . . . orchestrates a wealth of detail without losing view of the opera and its pleasures. . . . Nicassio aims for opera fans and for historians: she may well enthrall both."—Publishers Weekly "This is the book that ranks highest in my estimation as the most in-depth, and yet highly entertaining, journey into the story of the making of Tosca."—Catherine Malfitano "Nicassio's prose . . . is lively and approachable. There is plenty here to intrigue everyone-seasoned opera lovers, musical novices, history buffs, and Italophiles."—Library Journal

A translation of La Tosca, the play that inspired the Puccini opera, complete with annotations and critical comments. This work seeks to give a well-rounded picture of Sardou as a playwright who imbued his pieces with a wealth of historical knowledge.

Tosca's première in Rome in January 1900 was nearly disrupted by a terrorist threat to blow up Italy's King Umberto. Victorien Sardou had written the melodrama for the great actress Sarah Bernhardt. Giacomo Puccini's popular opera is a tale of sadism and brutality, torture, attempted rape, murder, an execution and two suicides. 'Realism' was in vogue: Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana had been a great success, as had Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. With sharp practice, the publisher Giulio Ricordi obtained 'Tosca' for Puccini, who had already composed Manon Lescaut and La Bohème. The story, set in the Napoleonic, era was ideal for Puccini, a chain-smoker who enjoyed women, shooting birds, and high-speed motor cars. A political prisoner seeks sanctuary in the church where prima donna Floria Tosca's lover Cavaradossi, a role associated with Pavarotti, is painting a picture of Mary Magdalen. In Va, Tosca! the police chief Scarpia fantasises about Tosca during a Te Deum celebrating Napoleon's victory. Tosca stabs Scarpia following the famous operatic aria, Vissi d'arte, immortalised by Maria Callas on stage and in the film produced by Franco Zeffirelli. Awaiting death before dawn in the Castel Sant'Angelo, Cavaradossi sings the well-known arias E lucevan le stelle and O dolci mani. Tosca's attempt to save him comes to nothing. Written by Michael Steen, author of the acclaimed The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, 'Short Guides to Great Operas' are concise, entertaining and easy to read. They are packed with useful information and informed opinion, helping to make you a truly knowledgeable opera-goer, and so maximising your enjoyment of a great musical experience. Other 'Short Guides to Great Operas' that you may enjoy include La bohème, Madama Butterfly and Carmen.

A guide for opera goers to Tosca, which includes a synopsis of the plot and discussions on style.

The first book to validate the meaningful dreams and visions that bring comfort as death nears. Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love and grace. Beyond the physical realities of dying are unseen processes that are remarkably life-affirming. These include dreams that are unlike any regular dream. Described as "more real than real," these end-of-life experiences resurrect past relationships, meaningful events and themes of love and forgiveness; they restore life's meaning and mark the transition from distress to comfort and acceptance. Drawing on interviews with over 1,400 patients and more than a decade of quantified data, Dr. Kerr reveals that pre-death dreams and visions are extraordinary occurrences that humanize the dying process. He shares how his patients' stories point to death as not solely about the end of life, but as the final chapter of humanity's transcendence. Kerr's book also illuminates the benefits of these phenomena for the bereaved, who find solace in seeing their loved ones pass with a sense of calm closure. Beautifully written, with astonishing real-life characters and stories, this book is at its heart a celebration of our power to reclaim the dying process as a deeply meaningful one. Death Is But a Dream is an important contribution to our understanding of medicine's and humanity's greatest mystery.

(Amadeus). An idealistic artist, a celebrated opera singer, and a corrupt police chief engage in a fierce battle of wills in this tempestuous tale of passion, intrigue, cruelty, and deception. Puccini's great melodrama may be set in 1800, amid the Napoleonic wars, but the conflicts between love and loyalty, the state and the individual, and hypocrisy and principle are anything but dated. Floria Tosca, the beautiful, glamorous singer who has all of Rome at her feet, is one of the iconic soprano roles in the Italian repertoire. She's caught between two men: her lover, the handsome painter Cavaradossi, who defies the law to hide a rebel friend; and the villainous Baron Scarpia, Rome's all-powerful chief of police, who will stop at nothing to crush the rebels and conquer Tosca for himself. This gripping story of torture, attempted rape, murder, suicide, and general mayhem is as thrilling and dramatic as anything seen on the operatic stage.

Distinguished musicologists, historians, theater professionals, and luminaries of the operatic stage reflect on European history in 1800, 1900 and 2000 through the prism of Puccini's Tosca.

Julian Budden, one of the world's foremost scholars of Italian opera, here offers music lovers a major biography of Giacomo Puccini--a volume in the esteemed Master Musicians series. Blending astute musical analysis with a colorful account of Puccini's life, Budden providess an illuminating look at some of the most popular operas in the repertoire, including Manon Lescaut, La Boheme, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot. Budden also paints an intriguing portrait of Puccini the man--talented but modest, a man who had friends from every walk of life: shopkeepers, priests, wealthy landowners, fellow artists.