Critics find that out of all opera composers Puccini had the most precise feeling for timing plot, for setting length of each scene. Numerous minor characters from the plot were excluded from the libretto, less significant scenes were also abandoned, and finally the plot was organised into three acts. Sardou had some reservations towards Puccini at the beginning, but after long and complicated negotiations, Puccini could finally start working. After having heard that composer Franchetti had started working on Illica’s libretto after Sardou’s play, he managed to persuade his publisher Ricordi to have his opponent abandon working on the piece, and then Puccini himself started writing the music to Illica and Giacosa’s libretto. After success of La Boheme, Puccini was searching for a suitable libretto and he again paid attention to Tosca. However, it seems that Verdi appreciated the plot of Tosca as a basis for an opera libretto, since he allegedly stated that he would gladly produce it as an opera, if he only had had the time. Since he could merely follow the plot, because he did not speak French, he quickly abandoned the idea to write a score for an opera with this plot, which would be produced as a film later on. Puccini watched the performance of Sardou’s Tosca in Milan in 1889, with unique Sarah Bernhardt in the title role. It seems that the clear, comprehensible and yet exciting plot, placed in a suitable historical era, and two tenor and one soprano arias, together with two grand soprano and tenor duets, provide permanent success, although many considered its contents non-operatic. Writers and reviewers keep giving new hypotheses for reasons of its popularity, while the music publishers keep issuing new recordings of the opera. Puccini’s Tosca belongs to a group of favourite and most performed operas in general.
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