"Tosca" was first performed on January 14, 1900 at the Teatro Costanzi, now the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, symbolically on the spot. The evening was a major social event, and in addition to the Prime Minister and the Queen, the composers Pietro Mascagni and Francesco Cilea were also present. With his "Tosca" Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) entered a new century and, with his highly theatrical and effective scenes, he committed himself to Verist opera on the one hand and to the tragic-heroic grand opera on the other.
After seeing the drama of the same name by Victorien Sardous, which was a huge international success with Sarah Bernhardt in the leading role, the composer successfully applied to Sardou for the rights to create a libretto. The wealth of musical ideas (more than 60 themes appear as leitmotifs) and the breathless sequence of events are largely responsible for the immense tension and drama of the opera. By focusing on the main character, the work is considered a "prima donna opera" par excellence. Although it has always been suspected that a historical figure is behind Tosca, the characters and plot are freely invented.
However, the background against which the plot unfolds is historically determined by the Second Coalition War and the Battle of Marengo in 1800 between French and Austrian troops. Napoleon’s supposed defeat and his final victory over the coalition troops are reported in the first and second act of the opera.
Today "Tosca" is one of the most popular and most performed operas of all.

After the great success of Jules Massenet’s opera of the same name, Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) also set the well-known material of Abbé Prévost to music in 1892: compared to the French-language version, he wanted to write the opera in the Italian manner, full of passion and with great despair. That he succeeded in this was attested to by an enthusiastic audience that attended the premiere at the Teatro Regio in Turin. Even today, critics attest Puccini’s masterpiece an enormous power of suggestion. With "Manon Lescaut" Puccini had also cemented his international reputation as a recognized composer. For the dramatic death scene in the finale, he created a somber and harrowing emotional world that he was never to achieve again on such a high scale. In addition, "Manon Lescaut" is characterized by an abundance of new melodies and motifs that have eternal value in their ingenuity and musical beauty. The six extremely varied solo pieces for Des Grieux alone are among the most demanding tenor parts Puccini ever wrote. The characteristically immature figure of Manon contrasts with his later title heroines in that she lacks inner stability and is guided not only by love but also by base motives such as greed, avarice and ostentation.