Victory! Victory!
The avenging dawn now rises to make the wicked tremble! And liberty returns, the scourge of tyrants!
Giacomo Puccini Tosca (1900), Act II
Few opera-goers will forget Maria Callas as Tosca, eyes blazing and full of contempt, as she brandishes a knife and stabs Scarpia, the sadistic papal chief-of-police in Rome, who is about to seduce her in exchange for the life of her lover, Cavaradossi. Few of them, however, will remember that Cavaradossi’s desperate adieu to life in the last act of the opera actually takes place on 14 June 1800, on the very day of Napoleon’s victory over the Austrian army at Marengo, in northern Italy. In fact, in a powerful scene in Act II of Puccini’s masterwork, the news of the French victory prompts the wounded and tortured Italian protagonist to gather enough strength to proclaim that liberty will dawn in the wake of the victory of the revolutionary general.
This story is from the September/October 2020 edition of Minerva.
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This story is from the September/October 2020 edition of Minerva.
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