Act I. The church of Sant'Andrea della Valle. To the right the

Attavanti chapel; left a scaffolding, dais, and easel. On the easel a large picture covered by a cloth. Painting accessories. A basket.

Enter _Angelotti_. He has escaped from prison and is seeking a hiding place. Looking about, he recognizes a pillar shrine containing an image of the Virgin, and surmounting a receptacle for holy water. Beneath the feet of the image he searches for and discovers a key, unlocks the Attavanti chapel and disappears within it. The _Sacristan_ comes in. He has a bunch of brushes that he has been cleaning, and evidently is surprised not to find _Cavaradossi_ at his easel. He looks into the basket, finds the luncheon in it untouched, and now is sure he was mistaken in thinking he had seen the painter enter.

The Angelus is rung. The _Sacristan_ kneels. _Cavaradossi_ enters. He uncovers the painting--a Mary Magdalen with large blue eyes and masses of golden hair. The _Sacristan_ recognizes in it the portrait of a lady who lately has come frequently to the church to worship. The good man is scandalized at what he considers a sacrilege. _Cavaradossi_, however, has other things to think of. He compares the face in the portrait with the features of the woman he loves, the dark-eyed _Floria Tosca_, famous as a singer. "Recondita armonia di bellezze diverse" (Strange harmony of contrasts deliciously blending), he sings.

Meanwhile the _Sacristan_, engaged in cleaning the brushes in a jug of water, continues to growl over the sacrilege of putting frivolous women into religious paintings. Finally, his task with the brushes over, he points to the basket and asks, "Are you fasting?" "Nothing for me," says the painter. The _Sacristan_ casts a greedy look at the basket, as he thinks of the benefit he will derive from the artist's abstemiousness. The painter goes on with his work. The _Sacristan_ leaves.

_Angelotti_, believing no one to be in the church, comes out of his hiding place. He and _Cavaradossi_ recognize each other. _Angelotti_ has just escaped from the prison in the castle of Sant'Angelo. The painter at once offers to help him. Just then, however, _Tosca's_ voice is heard outside. The painter presses the basket with wine and viands upon the exhausted fugitive, and urges him back into the chapel, while from without _Tosca_ calls more insistently, "Mario!"

Feigning calm, for the meeting with _Angelotti_, who had been concerned in the abortive uprising to make Rome a republic, has excited him, _Cavaradossi_ admits _Tosca_. Jealously she insists that he was whispering with someone, and that she heard footsteps and the swish of skirts. Her lover reassures her, tries to embrace her. Gently she reproves him. She cannot let him kiss her before the Madonna until she has prayed to her image and made an offering. She adorns the Virgin's figure with flowers she has brought with her, kneels in prayer, crosses herself and rises. She tells _Cavaradossi_ to await her at the stage door that night, and they will steal away together to his villa. He is still distrait. When he replies, absent-mindedly, he surely will be there, her comment is, "Thou say'st it badly." Then, beginning the love duet, "Non la sospiri la nostra casetta" (Dost thou not long for our dovecote secluded), she conjures up for him a vision of that "sweet, sweet nest in which we love-birds hide."

For the moment _Cavaradossi_ forgets _Angelotti_; then, however, urges _Tosca_ to leave him, so that he may continue with his work. She is vexed and, when she recognizes in the picture of Mary Magdalen the fair features of the Marchioness Attavanti, she becomes jealous to the point of rage. But her lover soon soothes her. The episode is charming. In fact the libretto, following the Sardou play, unfolds, scene by scene, an always effective drama.

_Tosca_ having departed, _Cavaradossi_ lets _Angelotti_ out of the chapel. He is a brother of the Attavanti, of whom _Tosca_ is so needlessly jealous, and who has concealed a suit of woman's clothing for him under the altar. They mention _Scarpia_--"A bigoted satyr and hypocrite, secretly steeped in vice, yet most demonstratively pious"--the first hint we have in the opera of the relentless character, whose desire to possess _Tosca_ is the mainspring of the drama.

A cannon shot startles them. It is from the direction of the castle and announces the escape of a prisoner--_Angelotti_. _Cavaradossi_ suggests the grounds of his villa as a place of concealment from _Scarpia_ and his police agents, especially the old dried-up well, from which a secret passage leads to a dark vault. It can be reached by a rough path just outside the Attavanti chapel. The painter even offers to guide the fugitive. They leave hastily.

The _Sacristan_ enters excitedly. He has great news. Word has been received that Bonaparte has been defeated. The old man now notices, however, greatly to his surprise, that the painter has gone. Acolytes, penitents, choristers, and pupils of the chapel crowd in from all directions. There is to be a "Te Deum" in honour of the victory, and at evening, in the Farnese palace, a cantata with _Floria Tosca_ as soloist. It means extra pay for the choristers. They are jubilant.

_Scarpia_ enters unexpectedly. He stands in a doorway. A sudden hush falls upon all. For a while they are motionless, as if spellbound. While preparations are making for the "Te Deum," _Scarpia_ orders search made in the Attavanti chapel. He finds a fan which, from the coat-of-arms on it, he recognizes as having been left there by _Angelotti's_ sister. A police agent also finds a basket. As he comes out with it, the _Sacristan_ unwittingly exclaims that it is _Cavaradossi's_, and empty, although the painter had said that he would eat nothing. It is plain to _Scarpia_, who has also discovered in the Mary Magdalen of the picture the likeness to the Marchioness Attavanti, that _Cavaradossi_ had given the basket of provisions to _Angelotti_, and has been an accomplice in his escape.

_Tosca_ comes in and quickly approaches the dais. She is greatly surprised not to find _Cavaradossi_ at work on the picture. _Scarpia_ dips his fingers in holy water and deferentially extends them to _Tosca_. Reluctantly she touches them, then crosses herself. _Scarpia_ insinuatingly compliments her on her religious zeal. She comes to church to pray, not, like certain frivolous wantons--he points to the picture--to meet their lovers. He now produces the fan. "Is this a painter's brush or a mahlstick?" he asks, and adds that he found it on the easel. Quickly, jealously, _Tosca_ examines it, sees the arms of the Attavanti. She had come to tell her lover that, because she is obliged to sing in the cantata she will be unable to meet him that night. Her reward is this evidence, offered by _Scarpia_, that he has been carrying on a love affair with another woman, with whom he probably has gone to the villa. She gives way to an outburst of jealous rage; then, weeping, leaves the chapel, to the gates of which _Scarpia_ gallantly escorts her. He beckons to his agent _Spoletta_, and orders him to trail her and report to him at evening at the Farnese palace.

Church bells are tolling. Intermittently from the castle of Sant'Angelo comes the boom of the cannon. A Cardinal has entered and is advancing to the high altar. The "Te Deum" has begun. _Scarpia_ soliloquizes vindictively: "Va, Tosca! Nel tuo cuor s'annida Scarpia" (Go, Tosca! There is room in your heart for Scarpia).

He pauses to bow reverently as the Cardinal passes by. Still soliloquizing, he exults in his power to send _Cavaradossi_ to execution, while _Tosca_ he will bring to his own arms. For her, he exclaims, he would renounce his hopes of heaven; then kneels and fervently joins in the "Te Deum."

This finale, with its elaborate apparatus, its complex emotions and the sinister and dominating figure of _Scarpia_ set against a brilliant and constantly shifting background, is a stirring and effective climax to the act.