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Tosca & the Queen
of Naples
If you are a Protestant music-lover
with no knowledge of history, you might just let that
mention of a queen slide. (Uh, sure…queen of Rome…sounds
right…I guess.) If you are an opera-loving Roman
Catholic, however, you may think, “Now hold on just a
minute. Queen of Rome? I know we've had some scoundrel
popes, but…” (Actually, Peter and a few others were married—before
they became pope.) No, you can relax. The queen in
question in Tosca
is not Mrs. Pope, but rather Maria Carolina, the queen
consort of King Ferdinand of the Kingdom of Naples. She,
the queen of Naples, was briefly “Queen of Rome.” The background is convoluted and
violent—totally normal for Europe around 1800: —In February of 1798, forces of the French Republic enter Rome and proclaim the Roman Republic. This is in line with the French Republic’s setting up of client states, “sister” republics, in the territory under French control, including the Neapolitan (aka “Parthenopean”) Republic in January of 1799. The French demand that Pope Pius VI renounce his temporal authority; that is, that he abdicate as king of the Vatican States. He refuses. He is arrested and removed to Valence in south-eastern France. He dies in captivity in August of 1799. —There is an immediate attempt by the
Kingdom of Naples to overthrow the Roman Republic in
1798. It fails miserably. Shortly thereafter, the
republic in Naples is proclaimed and King Ferdinand and
queen Caroline flee to Sicily. —While Napoleon is off in Egypt,
Austrian-Russian forces cross into northern Italy;
between April and August of 1799 they defeat and
dissolve various republics previously set up by the
French. At the same time, Bourbon royalists under Cardinal Ruffo come back,
overthrow the republic in Naples in June of 1799 and
reinstall Ferdinand and Caroline. Palazzo Farnese in Rome (print
by
—Queen Caroline to the rescue. She appoints herself “regent” (for the absent Pope) of Rome, and she rules as such from September 1799 to July 1800, when the new pope (Pius VII, elected in Venice a few months earlier) reenters the Eternal City. —But before that, in June 1800,
Napoleon (who has really just been warming up all this
time) crosses the Alps and invades Italy again, winning
a major battle at Marengo on June 14. The battle is
see-saw for a while and the events in Tosca revolve
around a celebration in honor of Napoleon’s anticipated
defeat, a celebration at which Tosca is to sing. That
never happens, of course. News trickles in of
Bonaparte’s victory at Marengo. Tosca, herself,
then…well, go see the opera. Caroline’s non-fictional behavior as
the “queen” of Rome has not been the subject of a lot of
literature. At least one book (Le Palais Farnese:
Ambassade De France, by Raoul De Broglie.
1953, Paris: Henri Lefebvre Editor),
in describing the Bourbon property, the Palazzo Farnese in
Rome (illustration, above) where Queen Caroline held
court and where the events of Tosca take place, speaks of mass
arrests of Roman republicans and executions. No numbers
are given, but it is an obvious comparison with
Caroline's behavior in Naples after she and her husband
retook the throne there. That she was vindictive and
vicious is a matter of record, but claims that she was a
wholesale butcher in Naples responsible for "thousands
of executions" (as some claim) are exaggerated. In The
Bourbons of Naples by
Harold Acton (London: Prion Books, 1957), the
author says: Of 8,000 political prisoners 105 were condemned to death, six of whom were reprieved, 222 were condemned to life imprisonment, 322 to shorter terms, 288 to deportation, and 67 to exile, from which many returned: a total of 1,004. The others were set at liberty. The author
has a Bourbon axe to grind in his book, yes, but
he is a reliable historian, and it is not likely
that he simply made up those numbers. Thus, I
suspect that there were certainly some
anti-Republican reprisals in Rome and that Maria
Carolina was responsible for them. Beyond that, I
don't know.
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Giacomo Puccini’s
opera, 
—The exiled Pope Pius VI then dies in
August of 1799. Now you have the still extant Roman
Republic surrounded by crumbled or crumbling “sister”
republics. The Roman Republic teeters and finally falls
in September of 1799 when Neapolitan forces occupy Rome.
Thus, the republics are gone and the pope/king can
return to Rome to reclaim his temporal throne. But—there
is no pope; he died, remember?