Music: Tosca Recast

For 32 years Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera Company had a villain without peer. He seemed kindly enough backstage but when he strode before an audience as Baron Scarpia, Chief of the Roman Police in Puccini's Tosca, he became so sinister and malevolent that he set an all-time standard for that melodramatic role. Antonio Scotti was stabbed by 17 different Toscas from the time the opera had its U. S. premiere in 1901 until he sang his farewell (TIME. Jan. 30, 1933). Last week when the Metropolitan revived Tosca for the first time in three...

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