Which of these operatic heroines is, in fact, an opera singer?

Floria Tosca, the eponymous heroine of the opera "Tosca" by the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), is a celebrated opera singer. Based on a play by the French writer Victorien Sardou, the opera, which was premiered in Rome in 1900, is based on events taking place exactly a century earlier, in 1800, when Italy was in a state of turmoil, and under the rule of Napoleonic France.

It basically concentrates on a love triangle between Tosca herself, her lover the artist Mario Cavaradossi (Puccini was fond of artists as heroes, Rodolpho in "La Bohème" being another famous example) and the jealous chief of police, Baron Scarpia.

Given both the high emotions and the volatile political situation, things were never going to end well. Tosca stabs Scarpia to death, and steals a safe conduct pass from him, after he had tricked her by saying if she had sex with him, he would free Cavaradossi, who was under sentence of death.

The death sentence is, however, carried out, and contrary to what Tosca has been led to believe, the firing squad have real bullets. Grief stricken, she throws herself off the battlements of the Castel Sant'Angelo.

The opera is in a somewhat atypical style for Puccini, leaning more towards a Wagnerian use of Leitmotivs, and received a mixed reception, with one critic calling it a "shabby little shocker". But history was to be on his side, and it is now one of the staples of the repertoire.