SCARPIA'S KISS begins at the 1946 reopening of La Scala when the star singers, Miranda Baltazar (a Mexican diva) and Samuel Krandall (a married Brooklyn guy), fall passionately in love on stage. Concealing their brief but soul-igniting affair from his family, she seeks seclusion for her pregnancy on a remote Caribbean island, where her aunt is midwife to a Mayan village without phones or electricity. As the baby grows inside her, the lovers pursue separate paths, communicating by letter, examining the past and imagining a future in the light of new love. The romance is knocked askew by the arrival of a charming Swiss adventurer researching Mayan culture. SCARPIA'S KISS is life-affirming, light-hearted, often comic. Though unafraid to touch the soul's dark corners, it celebrates the courage and wisdom born of an erotically wakened life.