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Some stories you don’t quite know how to take – especially when they begin to crop up in reference to different circumstances. One such story is that of the bouncing Tosca, that goes more or less like this: I don’t think I’m spoiling anything if I say that, at the end of the third Act, Tosca escapes conviction and unhappiness by the drastic means of jumping off the ramparts of Castel Sant’Angelo…
Stage-wise, this is accomplished by having the soprano jump off the suitable piece of scenery to land on a mattress beneath. Except, for some reason, at one point a trampoline is substituted for the mattress, and poor, suicidal Tosca bounces up again and again, spoiling somewhat the mood of what should be a considerably tragic ending.
I first came across this story in a book by Gerald Durrell, who sets it in Corfu, in the august presence the King of Greece. According to Hugh Vickers, though, this happened in far more recent years, somewhere in the United States… It can’t have happened twice, can it?
Well, on second thoughts, perhaps it could. After all, Tosca seems to have a long tradition of mishaps, according to this amusing article by Max Kellogg. I could add a little tale of a Third Act firing squad marching into place and taking position. Then the first line kneels down, at the officer’s order they all raise their rifles and… knock all the tricorn hats off the heads of the kneeling men, with a graceful and simultaneous precision they would never have achieved in weeks of rehearsals. Poor Cavaradossi: it must be hard to die before a giggling audience…
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I think as soon as the story gets around – maybe an invented story, mind you – the probability of it happening for real actually increases.
The story provides inspiration. “Hey, let’s do it!”
It would not be the first time that something starts as a story, gets put in practice, and later is dismissed because “oh, that’s a story that’s been going around forever…”
I saw at least two “urban legends” about university and teachers happen, only to be told a few weeks later that what I had witnessed was just a story that had been around for ages, “it never actually happened”.
And we all know why Tosca has that bad reputation…
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Well, actually the unlucky one, the true Scottish Tragedy of opera, should be Verdi’s La Forza del Destino. Tosca… yes, well, not one single main character makes it to the final curtain alive, and when you consider the offstage suicide, you reach a mortality rate of two thirds… But that’s opera for you. There is the fact that poor Cavaradossi gets it in the ribs through no great fault of his own. In fact, for an opera tenor, he is a remarkably nice and sensible man – although the merit resides for the most part with Sardou – and dies all the same.
And I’m fascinated by the theory of urban legends coming to life on the strength of imitation… Still, the thought of someone substituting a trampoline for the mattress because of how great Durrell’s story sounded, is a tad disturbing. One has to wonder: did the diva earn it by throwing one temper tantrum too many?
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No, what I meant is Tosca is sort of “designed” to be unlucky because it is a small opera – only three main characters, not much mise-en-scene, so it normally gets the end of the season… when people are tired and all that.
Accidents are likelier to happen on end-of-season productions, statistically.
As for the reasons for the substitution, in the case I heard about (New York?) it was supposed to be a prank on a particularly irritating director – and the soprano actually had a laugh, and executed some in-flight poses as she jumped up and down over Castel Sant’Angelo’s wall.
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I’m not sure this is the case in Italy, production-wise. In fact, Tosca tends to be an event here, often the high point of a season, with lavish – and not always overly practical – costumes and scenery. Often a good deal of effort is put into making the thing look huge – and perhaps this, if anything, is likely to bring on accidents.
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That, too!
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