Piers Paul Read is one of England's most accomplished novelists, and
Scarpia is among his finest novels. --The Wall Street Journal
It is the late eighteenth century and Sicilian nobleman Vitellio Scarpia
finds himself penniless and in disgrace on the streets of Rome. After
leaving his home in pursuit of a military career, his fiery passion has
seen him expelled from the Spanish royal guard and left to seek his
fortune in Italy; a fortune inseparably bound to the Pope, whose rule is
put in question by the French Revolution.
Scarpia enrolls in the papal army and is soon taken up by a countess
eager to have a handsome young officer at her side. She introduces
Scarpia into Roman society, and he is both enthralled and agitated by
its mix of religiosity, sophistication, decadence, and intrigue. Then,
on a mission to Venice, he meets the gifted, beautiful singer Floria
Tosca. And as the armies of revolutionary France advance into Italy, and
war and revolution engulf the whole peninsula, these two lives become
entwined.
Steeped in factual detail and exploring the lives--part historical, part
fictional--of figures from Puccini's famous opera Tosca, Scarpia
shines a light into dusty corridors of history and dark corners of the
human soul.
