There had been a second child, a boy, who had died of diphtheria when ten months old and, after the birth of Francesca, another girl who had died of smallpox aged four. The small tragedies were common and to be expected – a quiet sorrow to be shared. They persuaded Scarpia of the efficacy of inoculation and placed small doubts in Paola’s mind as to the efficacy of prayer. It also seemed to diminish her enjoyment of making love with her husband. After the birth of Pietro, Paola had happily resumed their conjugal routine, but little by little after the further births and deaths that ‘happily’ changed to ‘willingly’ and then to ‘why not?’. Was it that she did not want more children – only to see them suffer and die? Or was it, as she had once told him half jokingly, that in Rome it was considered a little ridiculous for a married couple to go on making love for so long.
5
This view had been put to Paola by Graziella di Pozzo. Paola knew, of course, that no one is as likely to feel envy as one’s closest friend. Graziella’s husband, the Marchese di Ordelaffi, was a dull old stick twelve years her senior and her cicisbeo, the cavaliere Sodano, had bow legs. Compared to both these men, Scarpia was an Adonis – still slim, dark, handsome. Yet Paola, though apparently confident in her own judgements, was sensitive to her reputation among her peers. She talked as if she lived under the judgement of God, but in reality her behaviour was governed less by her confessor than by a notional committee of slightly older women – the arbiters of what was comme il faut and à la mode.
Fashions in clothes and morals had hitherto been dictated by the court at Versailles. After the revolution, all had become confused. There was much blushing and tittering when it was learned that fashionable women in Jacobin Paris now wore dresses so décolleté that their nipples were exposed. No one in Rome would go quite so far, but there was an inexorable raising of the waist and lowering of the décolletage. Roman women were accustomed to a certain latitude in the bestowal of their affections and favours after they were married, but again there was blushing and tittering and little gasps of feigned shock at the news of the open liaisons of the Parisian salonnières like Josephine de Beauharnais or Madame Récamier. The notional committee was emphatic in its disapproval: adultery must be discreet.
Paola’s envoy from this imaginary committee was Graziella. The two young women had grown up together in the convent, and while Paola did not regard her friend as particularly perceptive or imaginative or intelligent, she trusted her as she would a barometer or weathervane to indicate the atmospheric pressure or the direction of the wind. She also relied on Graziella to act as a mirror, enabling her to see herself as others saw her, and just as she had been pleased by Graziella’s envy when she had married the handsome Scarpia, so she became perplexed and annoyed when, soon after the birth of her daughter Francesca, she saw the envy give way to a certain smugness as if, when it came to their husbands, the tortoise, Graziella, had outpaced Paola, the hare.
It was apparently the view not just of Graziella but the notional committee of grandes dames that Graziella’s husband, the Marchese di Ordelaffi, though old and ugly, had a pedigree second to none, while Baron Scarpia di Rubaso remained a parvenu provincial who, however handsome, looked somehow gauche in the fine coats and tunics and seemed a little out of place at receptions and conversazioni. Involuntarily, Paola was affected by this view. The tingling and fluttering she had felt at the thought of being embraced by the wild Sicilian, who was so ready to kill or be killed, had faded as her brooding hero became just another functionary of the papal curia.
Had the time come for Paola to take on a cicisbeo like Graziella? When Paola went into society, she took trouble to look attractive, following the fashion for a lower neckline and higher waist so that her bosom and shoulders were all but naked. Young men clustered around at every conversazione, but the looks Paola directed at her admirers were not inviting: they were rather mocking, as if to say, ‘Do not aspire, you idiots, to possess the body of a Principessa di Marcisano.’ The look was softer with older men, the connoisseurs of beautiful women like Cardinal de Bernis who, although no longer the ambassador of France, remained in Rome. In his case her eyes said: ‘Well, Your Eminence, how does this compare with a statue by Canova or one of your Dresden figurines? Is there not something to be said for flesh and blood over marble and porcelain?’
There was one man whom Paola could envisage as a lover – a man she had never seen and knew only by repute. He was the same age as she was and, as in a cheap romance, she had initially loathed him when, five years before, she had read in the gazettes of the 23-year-old French brigadier general, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had successfully driven the English out of Toulon. She had loathed him because he served the Jacobin cause, but had nonetheless felt a twinge of admiration for the achievement of one so young. After that, the name of Bonaparte had disappeared until now, five years later, he was named as the outstanding commander of the French armies that had defeated those of Sardinia and Austria in Lombardy and had captured Milan. Here was a new military genius, an Alexander the Great, and Paola, like many other women throughout Europe, forgave him his Jacobinism and dallied with him in her thoughts.
Scarpia was no Bonaparte and, in the eyes of the committee of matrons whose opinion mattered to Paola, he also suffered because of his connection with Treasurer Ruffo – loathed by the nobility for curbing their feudal powers and making them pay taxes. Paducci, Spinelli and Letizia di Comastri started to refer to him as ‘Ruffo’s sbirro’: Graziella passed this on to Paola. No open disrespect was shown to Scarpia when he appeared in society; no one wished to fight a duel with a cut-throat Sicilian or incur the displeasure of the Marcisanos. Ludovico remained loyal to his brother-in-law; he even felt some responsibility for his present position; but, after he himself was married to Fulvia di Cardandini, he saw less of him, and Scarpia was not asked to act as godparent to any of his children.
Paola’s parents, too, continued to put a brave face on the awkward situation in which their difficult daughter had placed them. Scarpia was always there to remind them of the mésalliance; and, however afraid their servants might be of incurring the wrath of the Princess Paola, they were, as servants always are, aware of Scarpia’s standing as the bought plaything of their mistress and in waiting on him started to show a subtle disdain.
*
It was much the same at Rubaso, the estate in the Sabine hills that had been settled on Scarpia by the Pope. The estate was not large and the house was not grand, but both were pleasant and productive and Scarpia set out to be on good terms with those who cultivated his land. Rubaso was a two-hour ride from Rome, and at first Paola would accompany him on his visits, but, since the house had been given over with all its furnishings to the Pope, and by the Pope to Scarpia, it always seemed that they were merely guests in another’s house.
The last owner, Alberto d’Angelo, had been a devout, benevolent old man, melancholy after the death of both his wife and daughter from smallpox, preserving his house and contents as they had always been, so that the furnishings were now threadbare and out of fashion, but at the same time seemed so much part of the place that it would be sacrilegious to change them. At one time Paola had plans for a refurbishment, but she never put them into effect. After the birth of Pietro, she rarely went to Rubaso. She was preoccupied with running her own household, and, when she wished to leave Rome, there were the several properties of the Marcisanos that were not only more agreeable but were staffed by servants who had been devoted to her since she was a child.
Scarpia did not complain, and went to Rubaso alone. He liked to be there precisely because it was not a property belonging to the Marcisanos; but nor was it in reality a property that belonged to him. The old major-domo, the gardeners, the footmen, the housemaids all treated him correctly; they were polite and went to some trouble to open and air the villa and serve up the best produce of the estate at his table; but the servants seemed to see him not as their master but as an honoured guest of the dead Don Alberto d’Angelo. I
f Scarpia suggested some improvements to the way the estate was run, the major-domo, or the gardener, or the gamekeeper would say either ‘Yes, I think Don Alberto would have done the same had God given him a few more years’ or ‘Yes, Don Alberto considered that but decided against it’; and it was said in such a gentle but definitive manner that Scarpia could not bring himself to assert his authority and override decisions already made.
6
Treasurer Fabrizio Ruffo, with many urgent matters pressing on his mind, was nonetheless aware that all was not well with his protégé, Baron Scarpia. His friend, the Oratorian Simone Alberti, though scrupulous not to break the seal of the confessional, intimated that all the worldly benefits that the cardinal had bestowed on the young Sicilian had not made him content. Both men agreed that Scarpia’s ennui was an unintended consequence of the Treasurer’s benevolence: that by asking the Pope to give him a title and a property to make him a less degrading match for a Principessa di Marcisano, he had denied his protégé the sense of achievement that would have come had he won the advantages for himself; and had laid him open to the kind of derision that he knew was being orchestrated by Letizia di Comastri and her circle of friends.
Ruffo was aware that this same circle also put about scurrilous rumours as to the source of his affection for the handsome young Sicilian. Certainly, the dark good looks, the slim figure and the expressive eyes made him a man that another man might love, but Ruffo was confident in his conscience that his feelings for Scarpia were not the sublimated desire of a sodomite but rather those of a father for a son. And a father can quite legitimately look for ways to further the interests of a son.
Treasurer Ruffo’s talent was for administration. Day in, day out, his mind applied itself to getting things done. On his desk there was a list of tasks and projects and another with the names of those who could perform the tasks and promote the projects. His responsibilities were vast, and that of matching expenditure with income perhaps the most intractable; but he was also responsible for the defence of the Papal States and he had become aware, like the Pope he served, that the expenditure on fortifications had been largely wasted. Allies rather than ramparts were now the best protection against the French.
Strictly speaking, relations with other governments were a matter for the Secretary of State, Cardinal Zelada, but, inevitably, as the man responsible for the Pope’s armed forces, and with the French now occupying Milan, Treasurer Ruffo had an interest in the question of military pacts and alliances. If the papal estates were attacked, which powers could be counted on to join in their defence? To the south was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which had been frightened into recognising the French Republic. To the north, bordering the papal legations, was the Republic of Venice. Venice and Rome had much in common. Both had existed in more or less their present condition for over a thousand years. Neither was the property of a dynasty: both had elected heads of state. Both had an Inquisition. Both passed strict laws on moral conduct that were universally and cheerfully ignored. Both were well past their moment of greatest glory; both were inescapably in decline; yet both still had armies, and was it possible that if the two combined they might be a match for an army sent by the French? What was the state of the Venetian army? What was the morale of its officers and men?
The Venetian army. Scarpia at a loose end. In the mind of Ruffo the administrator, the two things converged on a project. He sent for Scarpia. He explained that, while he had intelligence about the condition of the Venetian army, it came from unreliable sources. The clergy were no judge of military matters; and the patriarch was not wholly to be trusted. He would therefore like Scarpia, posing as a gentleman of leisure, to go to Venice and draw up a report on the preparedness and likely efficacy of any force that the Serene Republic might put in the field.
Eight
1
The Prince General Alberigo di Belgioioso d’Este, the first lover of Tosca, had in his youth fought in the Seven Years War, distinguishing himself in the Battle of Rosbach; but for most of his life his duties had been largely diplomatic and ceremonial and, like many a man later in life, he had grown weary of his main role as viceroy of the Austrian emperor and was more taken with his ancillary activities – the collecting of rare manuscripts, beautiful works of art and pretty women.
Again, like many men later in life, he recognised the limitations placed by nature in the satisfaction of appetites: he ate frugally, mixed water with his wine and, having asserted his droit de seigneur over the lovely Floria Tosca, and enjoyed her favours over a number of months, moved her from the Palazzo Belgioioso into comfortable quarters of her own. All this was done with exquisite politeness and, though Tosca made a show of regret at leaving Princess Carlotta and her kind papa, she understood perfectly that having been given a princely start in her career, she must now rely on her own talent to conquer the world.
Tosca had made her debut at La Scala in Cimarosa’s La ballerina amante. In 1793 she had returned to the same stage in Zingarelli’s Artaserse. The opera was repeatedly interrupted by tumultuous applause and by the end of the evening Tosca was famous. In the year which followed, she sang in Parma, Modena, Turin, Ferrara and at La Fenice in Venice. The strength and purity of her voice, the beauty of her face and figure, the poignant expressions she could come up with when playing tragedy, the twinkling wit that showed in comic roles, won her fanatical admirers in every city where she sang. She was importuned by would-be lovers and, of course, impresarios who quickly discovered that Tosca on the billboard would sell every seat in the house.
Tosca did not let her triumphs go to her head. A measure of peasant canniness made her realise that, while her talent might be a gratuitous gift, its development had come from the diligent teaching of her tutors in Golla and the Palazzo Belgioioso. She was willing to flirt with the rich young men who took her to supper after the performance, but she bided her time when it came to choosing a new lover. Her closest friend was the castrato Crescentini, whose fifteen years of experience she could draw on and who was happy to teach her what he knew. He advised her on what engagements she should accept, what roles she should take and what avoid. He also warned her that her success had provoked envy. Supporters of rivals could resort to dirty tricks – eating lemons, making catcalls and, if they outnumbered her admirers, booing her off the stage.
None of this intimidated Tosca. She knew that her fellow countrymen, unwilling to fight foreigners over such unimportant matters as Liberty, Equality and Fraternity or the Divine Right of Kings, were only too ready to do battle over their favourite diva. Italians at the time cared more about music than anything else. In Venice, the year 1792 was known universally as the anno Todi because of the triumph of the Portuguese soprano Louisa Todi. One day there would be an anno Tosca, and it was for this that she worked so hard.
Tosca was not wholly immune from thoughts about love. A woman who could so convincingly portray Giulietta in Zingarelli’s opera Giulietta e Romeo could envisage romantic passion. But her practical bent led her to understand, like Stendhal, that there were loves of different kinds. She did not categorise in the systematic manner of the Frenchman, but in her own mind, beyond the elusive grande passion that she could imagine, there was amour d’avantage – the love for someone like Prince Belgioioso who could further one’s career – a kind of tender bartering of influence for pleasure; and what Stendhal called amour goût – the enjoyment of a night in the arms of a particularly handsome young man. Such loves, being of a different nature, could be concurrent, though given Tosca’s understanding of the nature of men, it was better that each imagined that she bestowed her favours only on him at the time.
Tosca remained devout, and confessed her sins to priests who on the whole regarded those of the flesh as venial peccadillos. Only Jansenists thought that love outside marriage would jeopardise a young woman’s salvation. The ordinary abate to whom she confessed was so much part of the culture from which he came that he accepted that it was unreasonable to expect an a
ctress or an opera singer to keep to the same rules as a chaste wife or celibate nun. The buttress of Christian morality had always been the reluctance of the parish to provide for children born out of wedlock: that was why stigma was reserved for the transgressions of unmarried girls rather than their lovers. However, once a woman was married and had a husband who would pay for her offspring, whether he was the father or not, the parish became more tolerant; and it was tolerant too of actresses and divas who, should they have children out of wedlock, could provide for them out of their fees.
Therefore Tosca’s laxity was quite compatible with custom and with her faith, and she saw nothing incongruous in rising early after a night of love to go to Mass, or spend lavishly on flowers to be put at a shrine to the Virgin or a favourite saint. She prayed a decade of the rosary before every performance, and never doubted that her success was due to the intervention of her patron saint, one of two girls martyred in Córdoba by the emir Abdur Rahman II. She revered all the virgins and martyrs who had died for the Catholic faith – or simply, like St Philomena, to protect their virtue from some lascivious pagan; but their values were not hers, which was hardly surprising since all the dramas she enacted were about the sexual love of a woman for a man or a man for a woman, not about the love of either for God. Cimarosa, Granacci, Paisiello, Zingarelli – all composed sacred music to be sung in churches; but when they wrote for the opera they wrote about love.
2
Tosca took one false step when, ignoring the advice of Crescentini, she became infatuated with the tenor Panfilo de Lorenzi, who played Romeo to her Giulietta at La Fenice. The expression in her eyes in their duets was so full of feeling that not only was the audience overwhelmed, but Lorenzi too. Lorenzi, small with blond hair and a wispy beard, was the lover of the 22-year-old soprano, Teresa Bertinotti – but she was singing at La Scala in Milan while he was with Tosca in Venice. There started an intense affair. Lorenzi was besotted: their liaison became not just known but notorious. La Bertinotti in Milan was humiliated. Lorenzi begged Tosca to marry him, but Tosca had no intention of marrying anyone, least of all a man who made his living on the boards. Lorenzi became importunate; Tosca became irritated: nothing is more tiresome for a woman than a lover who wants more than she is willing to give. He became possessive, then jealous, and all at once Tosca found that she no longer loved him. She told Lorenzi that their liaison was over, and thereafter put a touch of mockery in her rendering of the arias in which Giulietta assured Romeo of her undying love.