Covent Garden legend bows out

It was a production that became an operatic legend.

From the ashes of her career, Maria Callas triumphed as Tosca in an opening-night performance that won 27 curtain calls and a 40-minute standing ovation.

The show became The Mousetrap of opera, a staple of the Covent Garden programme and the oldest production in the regular repertoire of any company.

But this week it takes its final bow. After more than 230 performances, the Tosca first mounted by director Franco Zeffirelli in 1964 will grace the stage of the Royal Opera House in London no more.

When Maria Guleghina, one of a string of successors in the title role, throws herself from the theatrical battlements this weekend, the curtain will come down for good on a slice of operatic history.

Yet when, at the end of 1963, Zeffirelli asked Callas whether she would take on the role of Tosca, the success of the project was far from certain.

The 40-year-old diva had not sung on stage for two years. She agreed to return partly because her affair with the shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis was turning sour and partly for a fee rumoured to be an unheard-of fortune of £10,000 for half a dozen performances.

On its first night 40 years ago, queues began five days before curtain-up. More than 120,000 people applied for 12,000 tickets with top-price tickets set at six guineas but changing hands on the black market for £100.

The decision to call it a day has been made as a new version is finally under discussion in London for 2006. It is expected to reunite Antonio Pappano, Covent Garden's musical director, with the Romanian soprano, Angela Gheorgiou, whom he directed in a film version of Tosca three years ago.

All bookable seats are sold out for this week's remaining performances, although BP is sponsoring live big-screen relays from the Opera House.


- INDEPENDENT