Friday, March 18, 2016

Review of Scarpia by Piers Paul Read, a reworking of Puccini's Tosca and its infamous villain

Readers will take away different things from Read’s newest novel, depending on their familiarity with the source material. Newcomers to Puccini’s Tosca will find themselves following a dramatic tale of love, war, honor, and women’s fickleness while learning about the political circumstances of late eighteenth-century Italy, a land where monarchies and Catholicism are threatened by the rising tide of republican thought emanating from revolutionary France. Those with prior knowledge of the opera will also recognize how shrewdly its heartless villain, Baron Scarpia, has been refashioned into a tragic hero.

Vitellio Scarpia is a flawed protagonist, a hotheaded Sicilian adventurer “possessed by the spirit of vendetta.” Following some youthful recklessness, he loses his fortune but later ascends to become a loyal, trusted officer in the pontifical army. Scarpia’s background is richly imagined, and Floria Tosca, a young woman with a glorious singing voice, is mostly a minor character whose story interweaves with his. There are numerous nonfiction digressions from Scarpia’s story, some of which are fairly dry, but they illuminate the context of his turbulent times.

Scarpia was published this month by Bloomsbury USA ($27, hb, 384pp).  This review first appeared in Booklist's November 15th issue; I actually read it last September.  I'm a reader who wasn't already familiar with Tosca, but I read over a synopsis after finishing this book (not beforehand, as I wanted to avoid spoilers!).

7 comments:

  1. Well, I've seen Tosca many times, including once when the tenor collapsed in the dressing room at intermission and the understudy was dragged on, much to his surprise(his wife, a fellow opera singer who wasn't on that night, burned dinner waiting for him). I must admit, this does sound intriguing!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oops - I hope the tenor was okay, and that the understudy got over the shock! From what I've read of Tosca, this novel has a lot of historical and character backstory that's not part of the opera. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts if you read it.

      Delete
  2. Sarah, did I tell you that one of my unpublished novels is based on Tosca? :-) I set it aside to write the one I'm working on now, about Beatrice Cenci, but I will get back to it one of these days. Anyway, this sounds very different from mine. My novel is written mostly from Tosca's point of view, even though I do have a few chapters from Scarpia's point of view as well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, that does sound familiar! :) Tosca herself doesn't appear as much as I would have expected in Read's version, although she's a memorable character from her first appearance.

      Delete
  3. There's also a novel by an Italian author, Paola Capriolo, called Floria Tosca, which I believe was written in the 1990s. I read it when it first came out in English. It was also told from Scarpia's point of view, but I remember thinking it was a very strange novel. It was more like a very long monologue than a novel, and quite disturbing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the info - I hadn't heard of the book before. From your description, I don't think I'd care for it much!

      Delete
    2. No, I didn't care for it much. :-)

      Delete