Seattle Opera’s Legendary Tosca Production

It was the mid-‘60s. Glynn Ross, the dynamic General Director of the brand-new Seattle Opera, wanted to show his employers—the Seattle Opera Board of Trustees—that he could present compelling opera productions while balancing the budget. Before Ross, every attempt to present opera in Seattle had ended in a big deficit, including the Seattle Symphony’s opulent 1962 Aida, presented as part of the World’s Fair. While creating Seattle Center, the city had transformed its vast old Civic Auditorium into the Seattle Opera House. (It would later be transformed into McCaw Hall, which opened in 2003.) It’s nice to have a terrific theater in which to showcase opera. But you still have to have the money to pay for the world’s most expensive art form.

When in Rome

A historian considers the characters of Tosca

by Susan Nicassio

With some operas, the exact setting, in terms of time and place, doesn’t much matter. Not so in Tosca. The historic context of Rome during the Napoleonic wars is as integral to the story as Tosca’s jealousy and Scarpia’s cunning. We meet Tosca on a particular day in history—June 17, 1800—as Napoleon’s army encroaches into Italy and pushes back the Austrians, who were allied with the conservative forces that governed Rome. The fictional characters of Tosca, originally conceived in the play by Victorien Sardou, are as true to their time as any you’ll find on the opera stage. Let’s consider them in the order we’re about to meet them.

Battle of Austerlitz, 2 December 1805, François Gérard, 1810, Palace of Versailles.