symmetries

As the curtain opens on Act I of Victorien Sardou's play La Tosca (1887), we see the interior of the Church of Saint-Andréa des Jésuits with a young man stretched out, apparently asleep, upon artist's scaffolding. Immediately, the Sacristan Eusèbe enters, approaches the horizontal Gennarino and awakens him. To appreciate the significance of this moment, let us remember the final moments of the play: then too a body (Cavaradossi's) is laid out. But is the artist really dead, or can he be awakened? The first audiences of La Tosca did not know that answer.

And, precisely at the central point of the drama (in the middle of the third of five acts), Sardou's Tosca comes to knowledge: “Ah! My God, and to think that I did this!” [Ah! Dieu, et c'est moi qui ai fait cela!] After this moment, she is doomed, and all of her subsequent “choices” are useless. For example, to save Cavaradossi, Tosca decides to reveal the whereabouts of Angelotti, but her lover is still arrested (as is Tosca herself in this version). She must also choose whether or not to accept Scarpia's sexual bargain; but again, the outcome will be unaffected by her choice. The symmetrical placing of these visual/ dramatic images reveals something of Sardou's vision of the play— one that he tried to communicate to the young composer Puccini, to whom he finally entrusted with the task of making it into an opera.

The opening that Puccini chose for his musical setting of the work is a violent, three-chord opening that defies traditional diatonicism; he even composed it without a key signature. [Ex. 8.0] As noted in the Introduction to this volume, in one gesture, all the pitch-spaces needed are introduced: the upper line D-E-flat-E is chromatic; the bass line, B-flat-A-flat-E, is whole-tone based; and the chords that rest upon it are diatonic. As noted previously, it is an example of direct conflation. Further, the opening bass gesture outlines a tritone, B-flat-E, which breaks the octave in two symmetrical halves.