Scarpia
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- 15,99 лв.
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- 15,99 лв.
Publisher Description
'Marvellously comic, superbly inventive … One of the most arresting British novelists' The Times
'Undoubtedly one of the most talented novelists of his generation' Sunday Telegraph
Based on one of the central figures from Tosca, Puccini's classic opera, Scarpia is a powerful story of love, lust and political intrigue set in Rome after the French Revolution
Man is a delicate mechanism… he can easily be set off course.
It is the late 18th century and a young Sicilian nobleman, Vitellio Scarpia, finds himself penniless and in disgrace on the streets of Rome. After leaving his home to pursue a military career, his impulsive and undisciplined nature has led to his expulsion from Spanish royal guard, and he must now seek his fortune in Italy; a fortune inseparably bound up with the ruler of the Eternal City, the Pope.
Scarpia enrols in the Papal army and becomes the lover of an alluring countess who introduces him into Roman society with its blend of religiosity, sophistication and intrigue. Half-enthralled, half-appalled, Scarpia enjoys the life of the decadent city, learning in due course that as an unsophisticated provincial he is no match for the worldliness of Rome.
Patronized by a powerful Cardinal, Scarpia is sent on a mission to Venice, where he encounters the beautiful, exquisitely gifted singer, Floria Tosca. As the armies of revolutionary France invade Italy, and war and revolution engulf the whole peninsula, the lives of the two become fatefully entwined.
Piers Paul Read brilliantly reimagines the infamous villain of Puccini's opera, Tosca, telling a story that shines a light into the dusty corridors of history and the dark corners of the human soul.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Read's galloping story follows the history of Italy and the rest of Europe during the time of the French Revolution. The plot hangs lightly on the tale told in Giacomo Puccini's renowned opera Tosca. But Puccini's work was based on a play by an anti-clerical sympathizer to the French, and Read sets out to correct what he believes is a mistaken characterization of Tosca's Baron Vitellio Scarpia, a Sicilian soldier in the papal army. Expositions of historical fact are interrupted by brief forays into the dramatic story of Scarpia's slow rise to fame and fortune in his service to church and king. Scarpia lands on his feet in Rome, a favorite of more than one cleric with influence. Taken under the wing of the Roman aristocracy, he becomes the cicisbeo of a contessa, then marries the willful Paola, Principessa di Marcisano. In Read's view, Scarpia is steadfast and noble in his defense of his principles, which happen to align with the brutal and vengeful King Ferdinand of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, while the craven Roman aristocrats, including his unfaithful wife, throw their lot in with the French who have momentarily conquered the Papal States. The book is an excuse for immersion into the past and history, more than Scarpia, is Read's most compelling character.