The dramatic force of Tosca and its characters continues to fascinate both performers and audiences, and the work remains one of the most frequently performed operas. While critics have often dismissed the opera as a facile melodrama with confusions of plot-musicologist Joseph Kerman famously called it a 'shabby little shocker' -the power of its score and the inventiveness of its orchestration have been widely acknowledged. Puccini used Wagnerian leitmotifs to identify characters, objects and ideas. Musically, Tosca is structured as a through-composed work, with arias, recitative, choruses and other elements musically woven into a seamless whole. Despite indifferent reviews from the critics, the opera was an immediate success with the public. Tosca premiered at a time of unrest in Rome, and its first performance was delayed for a day for fear of disturbances. Turning the wordy French play into a succinct Italian opera took four years, during which the composer repeatedly argued with his librettists and publisher. Puccini saw Sardou's play when it was touring Italy in 1889 and, after some vacillation, obtained the rights to turn the work into an opera in 1895. It contains depictions of torture, murder, and suicide, as well as some of Puccini's best-known lyrical arias.

The work, based on Victorien Sardou's 1887 French-language dramatic play, La Tosca, is a melodramatic piece set in Rome in June 1800, with the Kingdom of Naples's control of Rome threatened by Napoleon's invasion of Italy. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900.

Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa.

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