Not being an Italian copyright lawyer, I don’t know why the Italian government still claims and will enforce a copyright on Puccini’s work. According to copyright law, the copyright for Puccini’s work was valid until Nov 1994 and if the Italian government owns the copyright it would only be until Nov 1944 at the latest. Am I missing something in the Italian law? Are the notices out of date? Are these incorrect (i.e. scare) copyright notices?
EU member states are now subject to a blanket copyright protection period of 70 years after death. Tosca and La Boheme are now in the public domain, and have been since 1994. However, a number of Puccini’s works were not published during his lifetime, or were completed postmortem by others (such as Turandot) and are subject to copyright protection based on the dates of the other contributors’ deaths or the first publication date.