Adaptations
The most famous adaptation of La Tosca was Giacomo Puccini's Italian opera Tosca which premiered in Rome on 14 January 1900 with Hariclea Darclée in the title role and went on to successful premieres in London, New York, and Paris. The Paris premiere at the Opéra-Comique in 1903 was performed in a French translation by Paul Ferrier with Sardou himself taking charge of the rehearsals. Unlike Sardou's play, Puccini's opera has achieved an enduring popularity. More than 100 years after its premiere, Tosca ranks sixth in the list of most frequently performed operas worldwide, and has over 100 commercial recordings as well as several film versions (see Tosca discography). Puccini had seen La Tosca in Italy when Bernhardt toured the play there and asked his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, to negotiate with Sardou for the adaptation rights. Before Puccini obtained the rights, the composers Alberto Franchetti and Giuseppe Verdi had both expressed interest in turning La Tosca into an opera, although Verdi thought the ending had to be changed. Puccini's librettists, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, likewise tried (unsuccessfully) to convince Sardou to accept a new ending, with Tosca going mad rather than committing suicide. The Sardou ending stayed, but Illica and Giacosa did make several significant changes to the play, primarily to tighten the action.
Earlier, La Tosca had been adapted into an English novel by Arthur D. Hall in 1888, and had two adaptations for traditional Japanese theatre, both performed in 1891. In the Japanese adaptations, the famed story-teller, Sanyutei Encho, set the work during the period of the 1837 rebellion by Oshio Heihachiro, while Fukuchi Genichiro adapted the play for Kabuki theatre. There were at least four silent film adaptations. A hand-coloured version starring Sarah Bernhardt was made in 1906 by Le Film d'Art, a French film company run by André Calmettes and Charles Le Bargy. Bernhardt was so displeased with her performance that she refused to allow its release and tried to buy up and destroy all the negatives. Le Bargy and Calmettes then re-filmed the work, this time with Cécile Sorel as Tosca, and released it in 1908. The Bernhardt version re-surfaced and was released in 1912 by Universal Pictures. There was also a 1918 version by Paramount Pictures with Pauline Frederick as Tosca. Only fragments remain of the Italian film made the same year starring Francesca Bertini. Later films tended to be adaptations of Puccini's opera rather than Sardou's play with the notable exception of Carl Koch's 1941 Italian film Tosca starring Imperio Argentina as Tosca and Rossano Brazzi as Cavaradossi. Jean Renoir originally worked with Koch on the adaptation, but had to leave Italy at the outbreak of World War II. The film was released in the US in 1947 as The Story of Tosca.
Shortly after the first London performances of La Tosca, Francis Burnand and the composer Florian Pascal wrote a musical parody of the play entitled Tra-la-la Tosca or The High-Toned Soprano and the Villain Bass. In their burlesque version, Tosca murders Scarpia in the "Cafe Romano allo Strando", stabbing him with a huge rolled-up restaurant bill and then places one of the dish covers over his face. Cavaradossi, instead, is executed by a phalanx of photographers. The show premiered at London's Royalty Theatre in January 1890 and ran for 45 performances, with the critic Cecil Howard pronouncing it one of Burnand's finest efforts. Burnand had previously parodied Sardou's Féodora as Stage-Doora (1883) and Théodora as The O'Dora (1885), both of which ran at Toole's Theatre in London. In 2004, Lucio Dalla composed an Italian musical, Tosca, Amore Disperato (Tosca, Desperate Love), based largely on the structure of Puccini's opera, but with elements from Sardou's play. The setting was updated to modern times with costumes by Giorgio Armani. Tosca, Amore Disperato continues to be performed in Italy and was broadcast on RAI television in June 2010.
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