The Tragical Farce Of The Bouncing Tosca

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There are many great stories of embarrassing disasters in rock music live shows and blooper reels on movies gone wrong but you rarely think of such chaos disrupting something as classy as a major opera. One legendary staging disaster in a production of Puccini's Tosca may or may not have happened but some tellings of the tale involve soprano Ljuba Welitsch and allegedly occurred during a Viennese staging conducted by the renowned Herbert Von Karajan in the 1950's. Tosca is full of horror and tragedy, rape, murder and torture. When her lover, an artist, is arrested as a political activist, he is scheduled for execution by firing squad. Tosca is deceived into thinking the shooting will be faked to allow her and Cavaradossi to escape, but the shooting is carried out for real. Witnessing it, Tosca herself now due for arrest as she has killed someone as part of the escape plan, commits suicide by leaping from the castle battlements as the guards try to catch her. It should reduce the audience to tears. However, this production with Ljuba Welitsch ended in hysterical laughter instead. The singer / actress usually falls safely onto soft foam mattresses backstage but Welitsch had been mean to the backstage crew who sought revenge on her last night in the role. They replaced the mattresses with a highly sprung trampoline. The result was that while the soldiers stand in silent lament before the curtain is drawn after Tosca's death, she could be seen rising up and falling down again in a flash of petticoats and bared leg as she was bounced up and down on the trampoline, popping in and out of view of the audience like a human yo-yo. The story may or may not be true, but it is so funny I actually hope it really happened. Karajan and Welitsch probably felt otherwise. Youtube - the ending of Tosca as it should look Arthur Chappell