Giacomo Puccini (1858 - 1924) was an Italian opera composer, generally regarded as the leading figure in Italian opera after Giuseppe Verdi. [1] Born into a long line of church musicians in Lucca, he wrote twelve stage works, including La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly, that combine melodic directness with a refined orchestral palette and a strong instinct for theatrical effect. His operas have remained staples of the international repertory since their premieres. [2]
Early life and training
Puccini was born on 22 December 1858 in Lucca, then part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, into a family that had supplied the city's cathedral with organists and choirmasters for five generations. [1] He was expected to continue the tradition and trained first as an organist, but a performance of Verdi's Aida that he attended as a teenager is traditionally credited with turning his ambitions toward the stage.
With the help of a scholarship and financial support from a relative, he entered the Milan Conservatory in 1880, where he studied composition under Amilcare Ponchielli. His graduation piece, the Capriccio sinfonico, attracted favourable notice and led to his first opera, the one-act Le Villi, staged in Milan in 1884. [2]
Rise to prominence
After the qualified failure of his second opera, Edgar, Puccini achieved his first major success with Manon Lescaut in 1893. It established his partnership with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, with whom he produced the three works on which his popular reputation chiefly rests.
La bohème (1896), a study of young artists in Paris drawn from Henri Murger's sketches, was received coolly by some critics but rapidly became one of the most performed operas in the world. [3] Tosca (1900), a taut political melodrama set in Rome in 1800, and Madama Butterfly (1904), a tragedy of a Japanese girl abandoned by an American naval officer, followed. Madama Butterfly failed disastrously at its La Scala premiere but succeeded after Puccini revised it.
Later works
Puccini's later career was more deliberate. La fanciulla del West, set in the California gold rush, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1910. La rondine followed in 1917, and the triptych Il trittico, comprising Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and the comedy Gianni Schicchi, in 1918.
His final opera, Turandot, set in a legendary China and marked by a harder, more dissonant harmonic language, was left unfinished at his death. [4] Puccini had been diagnosed with throat cancer and travelled to Brussels for radiation treatment; he died there on 29 November 1924 following complications. The opera was completed by Franco Alfano from the composer's sketches and first performed at La Scala in 1926 under Arturo Toscanini.
Legacy
Puccini is closely associated with verismo, the movement toward realistic subjects in Italian opera, though his work draws on a wider range of sources and is distinguished by its orchestral colour and its careful pacing of climaxes. [2] Arias such as "Nessun dorma," "O mio babbino caro" and "Che gelida manina" have entered general popular culture, and his major operas continue to rank among the most staged works in the world.
