Inside the characters of Tosca: 1. Cavaradossi

Virginia Opera starts off the 2019-2020 season with a bang: Puccini's ever-popular Tosca. (When I say "bang", by the way, I mean literally: this opera is filled with cannon-fire and rifle shots in addition to gorgeous music.)

Enrico Caruso as Cavaradossi

My plan for the next few weeks is to take a moderately deep dive into the arias assigned to Tosca, her lover Cavaradossi and the villain Scarpia. Let's see what the music is revealing about the respective characters, as well as what it reveals about the composer's craftsmanship. We'll start with our favorite artist-cum-revolutionary, Mario Cavaradossi.

At it's core, this opera is about the conflict between Art, Beauty, and Liberty (the latter represented by Napoleon Bonaparte) and oppressive tyranny, represented by the twin forces of the Bourbon monarchy and the Catholic church.

While this conflict will eventually pit Cavaradossi against Scarpia, it's actually foreshadowed in the opening aria of Act 1, Cavaradossi's "Recondita armonia". Let's examine this character's first scene in a little detail.

When Cavaradossi (hereafter to be called by his given name "Mario" because it's tedious to type out his last name...) enters the church of Sant'Andrea delle Valle to resume painting his work in progress, the bumbling old Sacristan is kneeling in prayer, reciting the Angelus in something of a going-through-the-motions monotone. Mario's first words are directed to him: "Che fai?" ("What are you doing?}

This is significant. This simple question tells us that Mario is so disinterested in religion and the life and rituals of the church that he fails to recognize the Sacristan's mumbling as prayer. The logical question would be: "Hey Mario, he's an ordained holy man, kneeling in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary, and the Angelus bell just rang. What did you think he was doing, ordering a pizza?"

So in just two words, it's established that this painter is a secular artist, to be judged as a heathen by Church and State. This is borne out by the obvious contempt the Sacristan has for Mario; he keeps up a judgmental commentary all through the aria: "Jest with knaves and neglect the saints". Once the aria is concluded, the Sacristan will continue a private tirade during which he calls Mario (to whom he is obsequiously compliant when face to face) "an agnostic dog" and an "enemy of the Holy Government".

As for Mario, the Holy Government is the farthest thing from his mind: he's busy comparing the beauty of his subject, the Mary Magdalene, to his lover Floria Tosca.

The orchestral introduction is full of meaning, and it's an advancement in Puccini's approach to a tenor aria. (You can refer to this video of Placido Domingo's performance.) Consider the introductions to tenor arias in Puccini's previous two works. In Manon Lescaut, de Grieux's "Donna non vidi mai" has an introduction that is a winding-down of the busy theme assigned to the chorus of students; it has no meaning specific to des Grieux. In La bohème, the introduction describes the physical action on stage: Rodolfo surreptitiously edging closer and closer to Mimi until he can grasp her hand simultaneously with a note from the French horn.

In Recondita armonia, however, the orchestral introduction is a mini tone-poem characterizing Mario. It's suave, graceful and above all sensuous. It's the polar opposite of, say, the macho intro to Manrico's "Di quella pira" in Verdi's Il Trovatore. Now we have some insight into who this man is.

And what follows, as Mario begins to sing, is a paean to Female Beauty in which the artist rhapsodizes about the contrasting beauties of Tosca and the "unknown beauty" who has been serving, unaware, as his model for Mary Magdalene. Mario has recently had several appreciative eyefuls of a blue-eyed blond who has been frequenting Sant'Andrea in an apparently devout period of several days' daily prayer. (She's not really been coming to pray, but that's another topic...)

Later in Act 1, Tosca will erupt into a jealous rage when she recognizes this woman as a prominent local citizen: the Marchesa Attavanti. Mario will allay her suspicions with a combination of amused denial (he does a lot of denying in this opera!) and ardent sweet-talking.

I think we too often dismiss Tosca's jealousy as a quirk of her personality; we assume Mario is true-blue and would NEVER betray her. But that might be a hasty assumption!

Listen to the aria: Puccini is clearly telling us that Mario is fully appreciative of the physical charms of the Marchesa. Yes, he concludes by declaring that his sole thought is of Tosca, but I read him as a young man with an eye for attractive women at all times. Perhaps Tosca has noticed that when they're together on the streets of Rome, he'll incline his head slightly when a beautiful female passes them. Has he been unfaithful to Tosca? I doubt it, mostly because everything about their scenes together suggests that they've not been in love for very long. Their love duets have the blissful heady affect of infatuation. My guess: they've been together for no more than a few weeks. A man still sexually enthralled to a woman will happily resist temptation from all quarters, even when acknowledging such temptation.

Another significant bit of information we garner from the vocal writing in this solo: Mario has had a life of privilege. He's young, handsome, gifted, and supremely optimistic. He's full of self-confidence: the world is his oyster. He's never experienced any serious adversity in his life. This is what I hear in the soaring, sweeping, yet fundamentally relaxed phrases that pour out of him. The dramatic significance of this affect is this: the character begins his journey with no problems in his life. From this point he'll encounter a "series of unfortunate events" that will lead to his doom.

Another bit of proof that Mario is hyper-aware of the Marchesa's charms: the orchestral postlude consists of the theme that Puccini assigned to her, not to Tosca.

He just declared his preference for the dark-haired, dark-eyed Tosca, but it's the music of the blond goddess-model that seems to linger in his consciousness.

Final note: this aria is part of a structural design for Act 1 that will be duplicated in Act 3, thus giving the opera the sort of symmetry that is useful in expressing tragic irony. The design has three elements:

1. a tenor aria in which Mario  expresses his desire for Tosca;
2. a love duet for the two of them, followed by
3. the intrusion of Scarpia's malevolence, splitting them apart.

In Act 1, Scarpia's interference is done in person when he bursts into the church; in the final scene it's his evil scheme that intrudes on the happiness of the lovers; a scheme that survives his death at Tosca's hands.