Tosca
Just over a year after its world premiere in Rome, Puccini’s Tosca had its first performance in the United States at the Met on February 2, 1901. It was in the same season that La Bohème made its Met debut, and again critical reception was surprisingly reserved. Reviewers were quickly proven shortsighted by the public, who enthusiastically applauded Puccini’s musical gifts and dramatic power. Beloved divas from Geraldine Farrar and Claudia Muzio to Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi to Shirley Verrett and Sondra Radvanovsky have championed the piece over the decades. The Met’s second production in 1917–18 lasted half a century before being replaced, though it was revised in 1955. Franco Zeffirelli’s elaborate 1985 production was replaced on Opening Night in 2009 by Luc Bondy’s controversial staging, which was followed by a return to a more realistic vision by David McVicar in 2017.
Act I, 1910 –11.
Photo: White Studios
Italian soprano Claudia Muzio made her Met debut as Tosca in 1916, launching her American career as one of the great singing actresses of her time. She came by her theatricality naturally, as both of her parents had been members of the Met’s Italian chorus when she was a child.
Photo: Herman Mishkin
Left: From the Met premiere of Tosca in 1901 until his retirement in 1933, Italian baritone Antonio Scotti was synonymous with the role of Baron Scarpia, which he sang 217 times — far more than anyone else in the company’s annals.
Right: When tenor Enrico Caruso first sang the part of Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca at the Met in 1903, the work was contemporary, having premiered only three years earlier. Caruso returned to the role regularly in his career, up to his last Met Tosca in 1919.
Tosca was Italian soprano Renata Tebaldi’s most frequently sung role at the Met, where she was idolized by Met audiences for nearly two decades following her 1955 debut. Here, she sings Tosca on Opening Night of the 1958 season, with bass-baritone George London as Scarpia.
Photo: Louis Mélançon
In 1952, Tosca was still being given in the production from 1917–18, but the sets for Acts I and III had been redesigned and painted by staff scenic artist Joseph Novak. Above, soprano Dorothy Kirsten as Tosca watches the execution of her Mario, tenor Ferruccio Tagliavini.
Photo: Sedge LeBlang
Left: Perhaps no singer of the 20th century has been so identified with the title role of Tosca as the captivating Maria Callas. The legendary soprano sang the role in each of her three Met seasons and is shown here in a 1958 performance opposite American baritone Walter Cassel as Scarpia.
Photo: Louis Mélançon
Right: Known mostly for her searing performances as a mezzo-soprano, Grace Bumbry followed in the footsteps of other great mezzos in taking on the soprano role of Tosca. Her first performance of it at the Met in 1971 featured the company debut of a young conductor from Ohio, James Levine.
Photo: James Heffernan
The first act of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1985 production of Tosca ended in lavish pageantry as an enormous ecclesiastical procession entered the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle singing a Te Deum. Above, bass-baritone Samuel Ramey, at center, portrays Scarpia in a 2004 performance.
Photo: Marty Sohl
Of the 20 roles that tenor Luciano Pavarotti sang at the Met, Cavaradossi was the one he performed most, with 60 total appearances including his company farewell in 2004. He and Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé opened the 1985 season in the lead roles.
Photo: Winnie Klotz
Luc Bondy’s 2009 Tosca production presented Scarpia as extravagantly debauched. Here, Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel sings the villainous police chief in 2010.
Photo: Cory Weaver
Left: American soprano Patricia Racette sang Tosca opposite the Scarpia of Georgian baritone George Gagnidze when the opera was transmitted live in HD from the Met in 2013.
Photo: Ken Howard
Right: Milena Canonero designed costumes for the 2009 production. Above is her drawing for the Act III execution at the Castel Sant’Angelo.
Luc Bondy’s 2009 production, Act II.
Photo: Ken Howard
On New Year’s Eve 2017, the Met gave the premiere of a new production of Tosca directed by David McVicar, with colorful painterly designs by John Macfarlane. Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva sang Tosca and Serbian baritone Željko Lučić was Scarpia.
Photo: Ken Howard
Tosca