Giacomo Puccini "La bohème" was "Tosca" (1900), arguably Puccini's first foray into "verismo", the realistic depiction of many facets of real life including violence. Puccini had been considering an opera on this theme since he saw the play "Tosca" by Victorien Sardou in 1889, when he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, begging him to get Sardou's permission for the work to be made into an opera: "I see in this "Tosca" the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music." The music of "Tosca" employs musical signatures for
Festival Puccini although 3,200 seats were actually installed), located very close to the "Villa Puccini," the house which the composer had built in 1900 and in which he lived and worked on his major operas until pollution from the lake forced him to settle in Viareggio in 1921. Along with other members of his family who died later, Puccini is buried in a small chapel inside the Villa, in a room transformed into a mausoleum after his death. The Puccini Festival was started in 1930 following what is believed to have been Puccini's comment to friend Giovacchino Forzano, one of his librettists,