While awaiting his execution by firing squad, the painter Cavaradossi sings, “I die in despair, and never before have I loved life so much!” It’s an aria of reverie, lament, and implicit protest against his captors. In this opera, Puccini’s “Tosca” (1900), power and evil aren’t abstractions: the chief of secret police has arrested and tortured Cavaradossi, both to punish him for aiding an escaped political prisoner and to terrorize Cavaradossi’s lover, Tosca.
Chains Are My Reward
State violence and resistance in opera
