Background

Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca, Italy on December 22, 1858, into a family whose members had composed operas of local success for several generations; the son of Michele Puccini and Albina Magi.

Education

Giacomo Puccini learned the rudiments of music from the best local teachers, served as a church organist, and composed sacred choral works while still in his teens. He was given a general education at the seminary of San Michele in Lucca, and then at the seminary of the cathedral. One of Puccini's uncles, Fortunato Magi, supervised his musical education. Puccini got a diploma from the Pacini School of Music in Lucca in 1880, having studied there with his uncle Fortunato, and later with Carlo Angeloni, who had also instructed Alfredo Catalani. A grant from Queen Margherita, and assistance from another uncle, Nicholas Cerù, provided the funds necessary for Puccini to continue his studies at the Milan Conservatory, where he studied composition with Stefano Ronchetti-Monteviti, Amilcare Ponchielli, and Antonio Bazzini. Puccini studied at the conservatory for three years, sharing a room with Pietro Mascagni.

Career

Puccini's Edgar, done at La Scala in 1889, was a failure, but Manon Lescaut, performed in Turin in 1893, was favorably received and soon became a popular work throughout Italy and abroad. His first spectacular triumph came in 1896 with La Bohème, to a libretto by Giacosa and Illica, premiered in Turin. Its touching portrayal of episodes in the lives and loves of students in Paris and the simplicity and accessibility of the music in gay, romantic, and pathetic scenes excited and moved audiences from the first performance on, and its popularity has continued to the present day in all countries that enjoy opera.

Tosca, again to a libretto by Giacosa and Illica, which was given in Rome in 1900, was a more serious and melodramatic work, with relatively few moments of lyricism, but it was almost as successful and has also become a mainstay of the standard repertory. Madama Butterfly, set in Japan, was the first work in which Puccini used scales and melodies of non-Western music. It was poorly received at the first performance at La Scala in 1904 but has since become every bit as popular as La Bohème and probably for the same reasons: there are long passages of lush and sentimental music, tunes that are easy to remember, effective scenes of pathos, and well-calculated bits of stage business. Madama Butterfly was also his last completely successful work.

Welcoming the opportunity to visit America, Puccini wrote a new work for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City: The Girl of the Golden West (La fanciulla del West). The first performance, in 1910, was received with the expected enthusiasm, but the opera was not so well received later and is rarely performed today. He endeavored to capture the local color of the American West; there are scenes of gambling and saloons and an attempted lynching, and some of the tunes try to sound like American songs. But in the end the music sounds just like Puccini, and not Puccini at his best.

A comic opera, La Rondine, given in Monte Carlo in 1917, has not held the stage. The following year Puccini wrote three one-act operas, Il trittico, designed to be done together as an evening's entertainment, and premiered in New York. The first, Il tabarro, is melodramatic, much in the style of parts of Tosca; Suor Angelica, set in a convent and written for women's voices, is lyric and subdued; and Gianni Schicchi, the most successful and often done separately, is his best comic work, rapid-paced with some fine moments of contrasting lyricism.

Death took Puccini before he could complete his last work, Turandot. He was nearing the end of the work when he was stricken by throat cancer and taken for an operation to Brussels, where he died on November 29, 1924. The opera was completed by Alfano and first performed at La Scala, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, in 1926. It has some fine lyric moments and unusually effective dramatic ones, and in some places it makes more effective use of such pseudo-Oriental devices as pentatonic scales than did Madama Butterfly, but the work as a whole lacks some cohesion and has not been as perennially popular as some of his earlier operas.

Achievements

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  Puccini had a prominent place in Italian music during his time. His strength was his melody and dramatic effect which is second to none. The excellent mass appeal and audience rapport which he created through his operas were tremendous. The operas for which is famous for, remains as a yardstick in present-day catalogue.

Works

More photos

• music

  • Le Villi; Maazel Sco
  • Edgar
  • Tosca
  • La Fanciulla del West
  • Madama Butterfly
  • La boheme
  • Gianni Schicchi
  • The Best of Giacomo Puccini
  • Turandot
  • Messa di Gloria
  • La sua voce

Politics

Puccini was not active in politics. Puccini biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz wrote: "Throughout this entire period [of World War I and its immediate aftermath], Puccini's interest in politics was close to zero, as it had been all his life, so far as one can judge. He seemed almost indifferent to everything from mayoral elections in Viareggio to cabinet appointments in Rome." Another biographer speculates that Puccini may have been - if he had a political philosophy - a monarchist.

Puccini's indifference to politics caused him problems during World War I. Puccini's long-standing and close friendship with Toscanini was interrupted for nearly a decade because of an argument in the summer of 1914 (in the opening months of the war) during which Puccini remarked that Italy could benefit from German organization. Puccini was also criticized during the war for his work on La rondine under a 1913 commission contract with an Austrian theater after Italy and Austria-Hungary became opponents in the war in 1914 (although the contract was ultimately canceled). Puccini did not participate in the public war effort, but privately rendered assistance to individuals and families affected by the war.

In 1919, Puccini was commissioned to write music to an ode by Fausto Salvatori [it] honoring Italy's victories in World War I. The work, Inno a Roma (Hymn to Rome), was to premiere on 21 April 1919, during a celebration of the anniversary of the founding of Rome. The premiere was delayed to 1 June 1919, when it was played at the opening of a gymnastics competition. Although not written for the fascists, Inno a Roma was widely played during Fascist street parades and public ceremonies.

At the time Puccini met with Mussolini, Mussolini had been prime minister for approximately a year, but his party had not yet taken full control of the Italian Parliament through the violence and irregularities of the 1924 general election. Puccini was no longer alive when Mussolini announced the end of representative government, and the beginning of a fascist dictatorship, in his speech before the Chamber of Deputies on 3 January 1925.

Views

Puccini's strengths are his delicate and sensitive handling of both voices and orchestra in lyric and pathetic scenes and occasionally in lively scenes as well and his ability to write melodies that audiences learn quickly and apparently never tire of hearing. His best scenes are those for one or two characters; ensemble writing in his operas rarely approaches the excitement common in the works of such predecessors as Gioacchino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi.

Quotations: “Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.”

"Art is a kind of illness."

Personality

Puccini was known to be a playboy.

Interests

• hunting

Connections

In the autumn of 1884, Puccini began a relationship with a married woman named Elvira Gemignani (née Bonturi, 1860–1930) in Lucca. Elvira's husband, Narciso Gemignani, was an "unrepentant womanizer", and Elvira's marriage was not a happy one. Elvira became pregnant by Puccini, and their son, Antonio (1886–1946), was born in Monza. Elvira left Lucca when the pregnancy began to show, and gave birth elsewhere to avoid gossip. Elvira, Antonio and Elvira's daughter by Narciso, Fosca (1880–1968), began to live with Puccini shortly afterwards. Narciso was killed by the husband of a woman that Narciso had an affair with, dying on 26 February 1903, one day after Puccini's car accident. Only then, in early 1904, were Puccini and Elvira able to marry, and to legitimize Antonio.

Father:

Michele Puccini

Mother:

Albina Magi

Wife:

Elvira Gemignani

Son:

Antonio Puccini

teacher:

Giovanni Paisiello

References

• Giacomo Puccini and His World
• Giacomo Puccini: A Guide to Research
• Puccini Without Excuses: A Refreshing Reassessment of the World's Most Popular Composer
• Puccini: A Biography
• Giacomo Puccini - Secrets of the Maestro of Music and Freemasonry
• Giacomo Puccini: A Discography