Giacomo Puccini - Tosca - 1899

Very rare Tosca opera libretto, a lyric drama in three acts by Giuseppe Giacomo Puccini, with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on the drama by Victorien Sardou.

This is the first original libretto of the premiere, published by Edizioni Ricordi in 1899, on the occasion of the opera's debut, which took place on January 14, 1900 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
This edition is considered the First Edition of the libretto, preceding the dissemination of subsequent reissues.

Original Ricordi typographic cover with copyright notice 1899, Italian printing, layout and typefaces coherent with the first nineteenth-century editorial issues of the Milanese music house.

An authentic period specimen, of great historical and collectible interest, particularly sought after by opera librettists collectors, Puccini enthusiasts and materials related to the history of Italian melodrama.

General conditions consistent with the age of the object (over 120 years), with signs of wear, patina of time and fragility of the paper, which confirm its originality and era.

Giacomo Puccini was one of the greatest composers along with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Schubert, Fryderyk Chopin, Franz Joseph Haydn, Giuseppe Verdi, Georg Friedrich Händel, Johannes Brahms, Gioachino Rossini, Antonio Vivaldi, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, Igor Stravinsky, Igor Stravinsky, Čajkovskij, Ennio Morricone, Gustav Mahler, Niccolò Paganini, Richard Strauss