Scarpia - Softcover

Read, Piers Paul

3.39

122 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408867516 ISBN 13: 9781408867518

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2017

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"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.

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About the Author:

Piers Paul Read is best known for his #1 New York Times bestselling book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which documented the 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 and was later adapted into a film. He has written sixteen novels, for which he has received a Hawthornden Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award, and a James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Most recently he published The Dreyfus Affair, a compelling nonfiction account of the high-profile French case. He lives in London.

From 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. (Mar.)\n

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