Puccini ’Tosca’ - Scarpia & Tosca, with Michael Aspinall, the Surprising Soprano

The heroine of Puccini’s “Tosca“ is a prima donna. In this Act 2 scene, her lover, Mario Cavaradossi, is being tortured off-stage by the Rome police chief, Baron Scarpia, so as to reveal the whereabouts of an escaped political prisoner called Angelotti. Tosca cannot bear her lover’s anguished cries, so she reveals to Scarpia that Angelotti is hiding in the well of her garden. Scarpia has lustful designs on Tosca and tells her that he will only release Cavarodossi if she gives herself to him. In horrified de