Polar opposite orchestration, laughs and jabs within the music

A :11, Scarpias's line "non vale quella prova? Allora..ripigliamo!" has an eerie silence in the orchestra. It emphasizes the terror of the sudden entrance of it  on Scarpia's "ripigliamo!". At :28, Tosca enters with her screams. The violins are high but not  in the stratosphere. We don't hear a lot of bass and the orchestration remains in the treble clef area. When Scarpia enters though at :39, we hear everything in the strings moved up a 6th..the same line Tosca sings is therefore transposed up. But Puccini adds a dark bass line, thanks to the brass. The listener therefore gets a huge auditory difference in register when Scarpia comes in. The large difference is like a smothering over Tosca's line..a gaping chasm in textures: very high and very low, like Scarpia opening up his arms to grab her or a monster opening up his jaws to eat his prey. The running 6ths seen in figure 1 underneath this section is like a description of how Tosca is feeling..she just wants to run away from all of this. At :47 the brass line moving up (figure 2) is like a laugh that Scarpia actually has written in his staging here. Audio is Renata Scotto, Placido Domingo, and Renato Bruson. Conductor is James Levine, MET.