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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 depicts graphic scenes of torture, murder and suicide, yet it contains some of Puccini's best-known lyrical arias, and has inspired memorable performances from many of opera's leading singers. 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. 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. (more...)

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August 7: Assyrian Martyrs Day (1933); Independence Day in Côte d'Ivoire (1960)

• 1461 – Ming Chinese general Cao Qin staged a failed coup against the Tianshun Emperor.
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• 1794 – U.S. President George Washington invoked the Militia Law of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.
• 1927 – The official opening ceremony of the Peace Bridge between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York at the east end of Lake Erie was held two months after it opened to the public.
• 1933 – Many of an estimated 3,000 Assyrians were slaughtered by Iraqi troops during the Simele massacre in the Dahuk and Mosul districts.
• 1942 – World War II: U.S. Marines initiated the first American offensive of the Guadalcanal campaign with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.
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• 1998 – Car bombs simultaneously exploded at the United States embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing over 200 people and injuring over 4,500 others.

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