@walterolson Ah, the button said Don’t Get Me Started, but he pressed it!
If it had been Napoleon or the “spenta repubblica romana” and not the Queen of Naples signing the checks, there’d have been ppl like Scarpia willing to do the work, just as the Bolsheviks relied on tsarist bureaucrats
If it had been Napoleon or the “spenta repubblica romana” and not the Queen of Naples signing the checks, there’d have been ppl like Scarpia willing to do the work, just as the Bolsheviks relied on tsarist bureaucrats
@walterolson (those they hadn’t killed), and the early Sandinistas depended on old Somocistas. The Cheka picks up where the Okhrana leaves off.
I’m sure Cavaradossi and Angelotti have good patter about how free ppl were under their “repubblica.” Ask Bernanos’s & Poulenc’s Carmelites
I’m sure Cavaradossi and Angelotti have good patter about how free ppl were under their “repubblica.” Ask Bernanos’s & Poulenc’s Carmelites
@walterolson how that works out.
But what if Scarpia, from a lad, worked for the Counter-Revolution bc he wanted to? He has a story arc, tho we don’t know what we’d like to know about it. Speculatively - when you get praised for defending the Church’s external interests, and there’s so much
But what if Scarpia, from a lad, worked for the Counter-Revolution bc he wanted to? He has a story arc, tho we don’t know what we’d like to know about it. Speculatively - when you get praised for defending the Church’s external interests, and there’s so much
@walterolson praise for doing that no one rebukes you for what you do behind the barn, then what we call “the interior life” is, to put it very mildly, not cultivated. Scarpia, McCarrick....
@walterolson I’ve had occasion to ask various Scarpias: “‘Tosca, mi fai dimenticare Iddio!’ - ironic, or sincere?” They all say sincere. To some extent this may be the character seducing the performer. The Duke of Mantua does this to tenors: they all think “Parmi veder” is on the level.
@walterolson But I think the baritones all see a spark of the Sicilian altar boy beneath the priapic police chief. And not unreasonably. The end of Act 2 makes so much more sense that way. There are two events there that IMO we don’t often enough think of as linked: Scarpia, dying, cries out
@walterolson “Soccorso! Muoio!”; and, Tosca places his desk crucifix on his chest. What does Scarpia mean by calling for help? He can’t think he’s within the medical aid of that era. But what help *can* he want? An outward sign of last-minute repentance (as to which see Purgatorio) - yes,
@walterolson that dang desk-crucifix! I mean he either dies repentant or un-, and the crucifix is not a sacrament that can change that - but it’s a “sacramental,” and he knows all about those: “Non per gallantería, ma, per offrirvi l’aqua bendedetta.” Tosca is on his wavelength on this: she
@walterolson comes by her peasant piety honestly, and I think he does too and the “Baron” is strictly honoris causa. There’s an understanding that she and Scarpia share, that distances each from Cavaradossi, and that explains why the opera ends with an anticipated divine judgment involving
@walterolson only the two of them. /fin
@walterolson Maybe, or maybe it’s *good* propaganda, the kind that is fair to other side when examined closely. Like “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” which - I’m here to tell you - is fair to the other side even when not examined so closely.
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