On 17th June 1800, at noon, the famous prima donna Floria Tosca twice visited the holy temple of Sant' Andrea della Valle in Rome. The first time to act out her usual scene of jealousy with her lover Mario and the second so as to fall in the trap of the lewd chief of police, baron Scarpia. How could she have imagined, that within the next sixteen hours, she was to suffer from attempted rape, witness the torture and shooting of Mario, stab Scarpia and put an end to her life by leaping off Castel Sant' Angelo?