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Scarpia turned on her in a fury. "I will show you. Your Mario shall pay the price. Arrest him. men."
LA TOSCA
The immortal romance of Floria Tosca, songbird of Naples
By Felix Baird
tLORIA TOSCA! La Tosca! La Tosca!" The paean rose from thousands of throats. Hats were thrown in the air, people wept or embraced each other in ecstacy, flowers and gold coins and jewels were thrown with reckless prodigality at the feet of the young singer who stood on the stage of the great Roman theatre, arms outstretched, trembling with joy at the ovation given her. A little Roman peasant girl, educated by kind hearted priests who had trained her exquisite voice for the pleasure it gave them to hear its musical rendering of their Latin hymns, was Floria Tosca. But Floria Tosca no longer — La Tosca, after this, her opening night, when all Rome paid tribute to her marvelous singing. La Tosca the singer, the idol of the populace, the pet of the court of Naples. The good fathers had lost their songbird. La Tosca belonged to the world.
The month was June, the year 1800, immediately after the final overthrow of the Jacobins, as the followers of Robespierre were called. The troops and police were
occupying Rome after the fall of the Parthenopean Republic, as the French called the Kingdom of Naples during the five months they had ruled it. It was a bloody and corrupt time — and also a time of almost incredible gallantries. Cannibals with powdered hair, barbarians in silk stockings — these were the products of the decade.
La Tosca was both pious and patriotic, and stood in high favor with the Court. Her early training by the priests had made her devout. But the religious customs of the time were illogical, to say the least, as compared with ours of the twentieth century. One speared his enemy at noon and prayed at sunset. A fair devotee offered flowers to the Madonna to gain indulgence for amatory peccadilloes, or perhaps scolded her lover for his lack of piety, as did La Tosca, while she twirled his moustache in the very shadow of the altar.
For it was in the church of St. Andrea that La Tosca met the young painter. [Mario Cavaradossi. Although Mario was only half Italian, his mother being French, and was regarded with considerable suspicion by the political authorities because of a suspected sympathy with Jacobinism, so great was his skill as an artist, that he was em