Rome Celebrates 125 Years Of ‘Tosca’
The exhibition “Tosca 125: oltre la scena” will be on display at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in the Italian capital until May 13. The occasion is the 125th anniversary of the world premiere of Giacomo Puccini’s famous opera “Tosca” at that very opera house. The Archivio Storico Ricordi in Milan, which is part of Bertelsmann, is supporting the exhibition with a number of exhibits.
On January 14, 1900, Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca”, one of the most famous operas in music history, had its world premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Last Tuesday, 125 years to the day later, the opera house, now called the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, presented a reconstructed version of the premiere of the masterpiece. Further to the anniversary, the opera house is showing an exhibition on “Tosca” to which the Archivio Storico Ricordi in Milan contributed numerous exhibits. Like so many other famous operas of the time, “Tosca” was published by the former music publisher Casa Ricordi. The Archivio Storico Ricordi has been part of Bertelsmann since 1994. Since its reorganization in 2011, its numerous activities have become an important cornerstone of Bertelsmann’s cultural work, for which Karin Schlautmann is responsible within the Corporate Communications department.
Bertelsmann and the Archivio Storico Ricordi also dedicated the exhibition “Puccini – Opera Meets New Media” to Giacomo Puccini, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death last November. As reported, the exhibition has already been shown with great success at Bertelsmann Unter den Linden in Berlin and at La Scala Museum in Milan.
The exhibition “Tosca 125: oltre la scena” (“Tosca 125: Beyond the Stage”), which is on view in Rome until May 13, sheds light on the genesis of the work, which tells a tragic love story against the backdrop of the Napoleonic campaigns in Italy in the early 19th century. The exhibition includes documents, sketches, and photographs, stage and costume designs from the Archivio Storico Ricordi and the theater’s own collections. The exhibition takes visitors through seven stations that elaborate on the origins of “Tosca.” They lie in the eponymous drama by Victorien Sardou, which was extremely popular in its time and inspired Puccini. The exhibition also sheds light on lesser-known aspects of Puccini’s work, as well as that of his librettists and his publisher Giulio Ricordi, and shows how the stage sets, costumes, and props by Adolf Hohenstein were created.
Audiovisual material in the exhibition also documents how the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma reconstructed and brought back to life the original production of “Tosca” in its workshops and on stage with the help of the Archivio Storico Ricordi as long ago as 2015. This version, which is based on the original stage sets and designs, has been performed regularly at the opera house ever since. The next performances of “Tosca” will be from March 1 to 6, conducted by Daniel Oren, with the famous singer Anna Netrebko in the title role.
The Ricordi Archive is considered one of the most important music collections in the world. Its holdings include a wealth of unique testimonies from 200 years of Italian opera history, including 7,800 handwritten scores, more than 31,000 letters, 6,000 photographs, magazines, 10,000 libretti and many other documents. Bertelsmann is aware of the responsibility that ownership of this valuable cultural asset entails. The company is funding the indexing of the archive holdings in accordance with the latest standards. This will make thousands of documents, stage and costume designs, libretti, and business correspondences accessible online.
