Tosca 2000 Conference, Rome

Most opera lovers know that the year 2000 marks the centennial of the premiere of one of the world's most popular operas, Giacomo Puccini's Tosca (first performed on January 14, 1900 in Rome). Fewer people may realize that this year also marks the bicentennial of the events which the opera purports to represent: the arrival in the Eternal City of the news that Napoleon Bonaparte had won the battle of Marengo, thus changing the destiny of Italy.

The centennial and the bicentennial were both celebrated at a major international and interdisciplinary conference, Tosca 2000, which was held in Rome on June 16 through June 18, 2000. These dates were chosen because they were the exact days, two centuries later, on which the events of the opera occur.

Tosca 2000 was organized in the United States by Harvard University Lecturer and noted Puccini scholar Deborah Burton and by me, Susan Vandiver Nicassio, University of Louisiana Professor of History and author of Tosca's Rome: The Play and the Opera in Historical Perspective (University of Chicago Press, 2000). On the Italian side the organizers were Guido Salvetti, director of the Conservatorio di Musica "G. Verdi" and Agostino Ziino, Professor of Musicology at the Universitá di Roma "Tor Vergata."

Among the special events at Tosca 2000 was the modern premiere, on the evening of June 17, of a very special Te Deum. The first act of Tosca ends with a Te Deum sung in the Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle. In the real world at just about the same time, there was another Te Deum being celebrated this one written not by Giacomo Puccini for an opera, but by the composer's grandfather, Domenico Puccini, to celebrate the victory over the armies of the French Revolution at Genoa (June 4, 1800). This was the victory that would have been celebrated in Rome on June 17 (when the action of the first Act of the opera is set), not Marengo. Domenico Puccini's Te Deum, in a new edition by musicologist and conductor Herbert Handt, will be performed for the first time in two hundred years at the Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle "Tosca's church." Domenico's composition will be paired with the Te Deum that ends Act I of the opera written by his grandson, Giacomo Puccini (performed by kind permission of the composers granddaughter, Simonetta Puccini).

The following details the program for the conference. Academic titles have been omitted for purposes of space.

TOSCA 2000 Program

Other invited guests and participants included Licia Albanese, Paolo Cattani, Rodolfo Celletti, Giuseppe di Stefano, Francesco Ernani, Gioacchino Lanza-Tomasi, Giovanni Melandri, Magda Olivero, Carlo Mandelli Roscioni, Guido Salvetti, Matteo Sansone, Roman Vlad, and Agostino Ziino.

A complete list of guests and events is available on our conference website: www.ToscasRome.com