Chapter 7Milan, 1925
Yes, Toscanini thought, run up the steps now, all the way to the top. The first chords of Tosca sound a climbing theme. Now the motif followed Floria Tosca to the top of Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo—recreated on the stage of La Scala. As she hurled her final insult at the memory of the murderous, lustful Scarpia—“Oh, Scarpia, avanti a Dio” (“Oh, Scarpia, we meet before God”)—she jumped from the castle’s battlements to the recurring strains of her dead lover Cavaradossi’s theme (“E lucevan le stele”). Or rather soprano Rosa Raisa jumped from the “parapet,” not to be splattered on the pavement of the Parco Adriano, of course, but to be cushioned by a skyscraper of mattresses and pillows behind the set.
Every Tosca made that leap differently. La Raisa—as Toscanini preferre
