“Tosca” by Giacomo Puccini

Notes on the Libretto

Tosca is unusually rich in language that moves between tenderness and violence with scarcely a pause. One small example occurs in the first act, when Tosca, reconciled with Cavaradossi, is described as “rapita, appoggiando la testa alla spalla di Cavaradossi.” Here rapita is more than simply “won over”: “enraptured” better preserves the sense of being emotionally carried away, and the warmth of the stage direction before the darker action begins.

More consequential is Tosca’s account in Act III of her encounter with Scarpia. The Italian “Sei mia?” Sì. Alla sua brama mi promisi contains Scarpia’s stark question: “Are you mine?” In the English text examined for LibrettoArchive, this had become the puzzling “Is it yes? He asked,” obscuring both the syntax and the dramatic force of the exchange. The passage has been corrected and realigned with the Italian: “‘Are you mine?’ ‘Yes.’ To his desire I promised myself.”

Preparation of the side-by-side text also revealed numerous smaller scars of transmission and OCR: Bonapar te for Bonaparte, soffer to mar tir for sofferto martir, and un ora for un’ora. Individually slight, such errors can disturb Puccini’s exceptionally rapid dramatic pacing; corrected together, they restore something of the libretto’s deliberate precision.