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Which composer held the rights to turn La Tosca into an opera before Puccini received the project?

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Art Nouveau poster by Adolfo Hohenstein for Puccini's opera Tosca, showing a woman in a gold dress standing over a fallen figure, with dramatic red and black background and bold title text. — Tosca Poster by Adolfo Hohenstein for Giacomo Puccini's opera *Tosca*, 1906.

Before Giacomo Puccini received the project, the rights to adapt Victorien Sardou’s play La Tosca into an opera were held by the Italian composer Alberto Franchetti.

Puccini’s publisher, Giulio Ricordi, had originally secured the rights for Franchetti. Although Franchetti and the librettist Luigi Illica began working on the project, they eventually ceded it to Puccini for reasons that remain unclear.1