Crossword-Solution: SCARPIA 7 letters, 4 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

Signor Mancinelli conducted, and the parts were distributed as follows: Floria Tosca, Ternina; Cavaradossi, Cremonini; Angelotti, Dufriche; Il Sacristano, Gilibert; Spoletta, Bars; Sciarrone, Viviani; Un Carceriere, Cernusco; Scarpia, Scotti.

Tosca can sing of her love, her jealousy, her hate, her hope; she cannot sing her frantic efforts to escape the lustful arms of Scarpia; she cannot sing his murder (though she might have chanted its gory glory, if so she held it, after the fact); nor can she sing her own destruction.

Thus the first finale has a pompous church office as its background, with tolling of bells, the booming of cannon, the pealing of a great organ, through all of which surges a stream of orchestral melody bearing the declamatory shrieks of Scarpia.

Therefore, it must be accepted gratefully like the dance tune over which Scarpia and his associates declaim before the dreadful business of the second act begins, and the piteous appeal to the Virgin which Tosca makes before she conceives the idea of the butchery which she perpetrates a few minutes later.

Scarpia, the chief of police, who is close upon Angelotti's heels, suspects Cavaradossi of being implicated in Angelotti's escape, and uses La Tosca's jealous suspicions to help him in securing the prisoner.