When, in his intoxicating reverie at the end of Act I, Scarpia imagines himself in Tosca's arms (and Cavaradossi's head through a noose), the stirring and even noble music tells us that this cad, this monster, holds in his heart yearnings not so dissimilar to our own. Puccini takes particular care to give Scarpia, as isolated and sociopathic as he is, a human side of sorts. Then again, some of the tenderness in 'Tosca' is found where we don't initially think to look for it. The relationship between Cavaradossi and Tosca, ostensibly healthy, inspires the opera's least memorable music.Īnd when the imprisoned revolutionary barks out his principled and defiant anthem to victory in Act II, the effect is one of almost tiresome virtuousness, a kind of Dudley Do- Right intrusion with which we quickly grow impatient because it interrupts the infinitely more titillating dynamic unfolding between Tosca and Scarpia.

The tenderness in 'Tosca' is admittedly not always easy to locate. The composer himself seems to have recognized his own dark side, more than once confessing to a certain unworthy fondness for scenes that blended 'tenderness with pain.'

Tosca opera scenes