What is "tosca"

Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900. 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 contains depictions of torture, murder and suicide, as well as some of Puccini's best-known lyrical arias.

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. Turning the wordy French play into a succinct Italian opera took four years, during which the composer repeatedly argued with his librettists and publisher. Tosca premiered at a time of unrest in Rome, and its first performance was delayed for a day for fear of disturbances. Despite indifferent reviews from the critics, the opera was an immediate success with the public.

Musically, Tosca is structured as a through-composed work, with arias, recitative, choruses and other elements musically woven into a seamless whole. Puccini used Wagnerian leitmotifs (short musical statements) to identify characters, objects and ideas. While critics have frequently 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. 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. Many recordings of the work have been issued, both of studio and live performances.

Tosca is an electronic music project of Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber formed 1994 in Vienna. It is Dorfmeister's second such project, the first being Kruder & Dorfmeister. Tosca's first album, Opera, was released in 1997 by G-Stone Recordings.

Tosca may refer to:

Tosca is a genus of moth in the family Gelechiidae.

The 1953 EMI recording of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca conducted by Victor de Sabata, with Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano and Tito Gobbi, is considered by many opera critics to be one of the most notable opera recordings of the 1950s. It was recorded in August 1953 by the EMI subsidiary Columbia Records and released to critical acclaim. It was a commercial success from the start and continues to be one of the best-selling opera recordings.

An anecdote regarding the recording sessions relates that de Sabata, who was generally pleased with Callas's performance, was not satisfied with her reading of the line "". Producer Walter Legge wrote that de Sabata put Callas through the "grinding mill" for half an hour to get it just right, though in Legge's view it was time well spent.

The work of all three lead singers, Callas as Tosca, Tito Gobbi as Scarpia and Giuseppe Di Stefano as Cavaradossi has been nearly universally praised, as has the "spaciously lyrical" conducting of de Sabata. Walter Legge's production and "superbly balanced" mono recording have also been noted as aspects that have made this Tosca one of the most celebrated of classical recordings. Soprano Leontyne Price and justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg named Callas' Tosca as their favourite recording. When Herbert von Karajan was making his own recording of Tosca in 1962, he would often ask his producer John Culshaw to play selections from the de Sabata/Callas recording to him. Culshaw reports that "One exceptionally tricky passage for the conductor is the entry of Tosca in act 3, where Puccini's tempo directions can best be described as elastic. Karajan listened to de Sabata several times over during that passage and then said, 'No, he's right but I can't do that. That's his secret.'"

Tosca is a 2001 French drama film directed by Benoît Jacquot based on the opera by Giacomo Puccini.

Tosca is a 1956 Italian musical film directed by Carmine Gallone and starring Franca Duval, Afro Poli and Franco Corelli. It is based on the opera Tosca by Giacomo Puccini. It was made at Cinecittà in Rome.