With ‘La Tosca,’ which was produced in 1899, Puccini won another success, though for very different reasons from those which made ’La Boheme’ so conspicuous a triumph.  The libretto is a clever condensation of Sardou’s famous drama.  The scene is laid in Rome in the year 1800.  In the first act we are introduced to Mario Cavaradossi, a painter, who is at work in a church, and to Flora Tosca, his mistress, a famous singer, who pays him a visit and teases him with her jealous reproaches.  Cavaradossi befriends Angelotti, a victim of Papal tyranny, who has escaped from the castle of St Angelo, and despatches him by a secret path to his villa in the outskirts of Rome.  Scarpia, the chief of police, who is close upon Angelotti’s heels, suspects Cavaradossi of being implicated in Angelotti’s escape, and uses La Tosca’s jealous suspicions to help him in securing the prisoner.  In the next act Angelotti is still at large, but Cavaradossi has been arrested.  Scarpia, who has meanwhile conceived a violent passion for La Tosca, extracts from her the secret of Angelotti’s hiding-place by putting her lover to the torture in an adjoining room, whence his cries penetrate to her distracted ears.  La Tosca buys her lover’s safety by promising herself to Scarpia.  The latter gives orders that Cavaradossi’s execution shall only be a sham one, blank cartridge being substituted for bullets.  When they are left alone, La Tosca murders Scarpia with a carving-knife when he tries to embrace her.  In the last act, after a passionate duet between the lovers, Cavaradossi is executed—­Scarpia having given a secret order to the effect that the execution shall be genuine after all—­and La Tosca in despair throws herself into the Tiber.

In ‘La Tosca’ we are in a world very different from that of ‘La Boheme.’  Here there is very little scope for grace and tenderness.  All is deadly earnest.  The melodramatic incidents of the story crowd one upon another, and in the rush and excitement of the plot the music often has to take a secondary place.  Whenever the composer has a chance he utilises it with rare skill.  There are passages in ‘La Tosca’ of great lyrical beauty, but as a rule the exigencies of the stage give little room for musical development, and a great deal of the score is more like glorified incidental music than the almost symphonic fabric to which we are accustomed in modern opera.

The history of ‘Madama Butterfly’ (1904), Puccini’s latest opera, is a strange one.  At its production in Milan it was hissed off the stage and withdrawn after a single performance.  No one seems to know why it failed to please the Scala audience, with whom Puccini had previously been a great favourite.  Possibly the unfamiliar Japanese surroundings displeased the conservative Milanese, or the singers may have been inadequate.  At any rate, when it was revived a few months later at Brescia, in a slightly revised form, it won more favour, and its London appearance the following year was a brilliant