GI
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (22 December 1858 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Widely regarded as the greatest and most successful
Family and education#
Born in Lucca in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in 1858; he was the sixth of nine children of Michele Puccini (1813–1864) and Albina Magi (1830–1884). The Puccini family was established in Lucca as a local musical dynasty by Puccini’s great-great-grandfather – also named Giacomo (1712–1781). This first Giacomo Puccini, though often referred to as Jacopo, was maestro di cappella of the Cattedrale di San Martino in Lucca. He was succeeded in this position by his son, Antonio Puccini, there, he studied composition with Stefano Ronchetti-Monteviti, Amilcare Ponchielli, Amintore Galli, and Antonio Bazzini. He shared his dorm with Pietro Mascagni. Later that year, Puccini composed his Mass, marking the culmination of his family’s long association with liturgical music in his native Lucca.
Early career and first operas#
As a thesis piece for the Milan Conservatory, Puccini composed the orchestral Capriccio sinfonico (“Symphonic caprice”). Puccini’s teachers, Ponchielli and Bazzini, were impressed by his work, which was subsequently performed at a student concert at the conservatory on 14 July 1883, conducted by Franco Faccio. The Capriccio was favourably reviewed in the Milanese publication La Perseveranza, and thus Puccini began to build a reputation as a young composer of promise in Milanese music circles.
Le Villi#
Following the première of the Capriccio sinfonico, Ponchielli and Puccini discussed the possibility that Puccini’s next work might be an opera. Ponchielli invited Puccini to stay at his villa, where Puccini was introduced to Ferdinando Fontana. the second competition, in 1889, was notably won by Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana. Despite the defeat in the competition, Le Villi was later staged at the Teatro Dal Verme, premiering on 31 May 1884. Casa Ricordi assisted with the première by printing the libretto without charge. Fellow students from the Milan Conservatory formed a large part of the orchestra. The performance was enough of a success that Casa Ricordi purchased the opera. Revised into a two-act version with an intermezzo between the acts, Le Villi was performed at La Scala in Milan, on 24 January 1885. However, Ricordi did not publish the score until 1887, hindering further performance of the work.
Edgar#
Impressed with Le Villi and its composer, music publisher Giulio Ricordi commissioned a second opera from Puccini, which would result in Edgar. Work begun in 1884 when Fontana began working out the scenario for the libretto. Puccini finished primary composition in 1887, and orchestration in 1888. Edgar premiered at La Scala on 21 April 1889 to a lukewarm response. The work was withdrawn for revisions after its third performance. In a Milanese newspaper, Giulio Ricordi published a defence of Puccini’s skill as a composer, while criticizing Fontana’s libretto. A revised version met with success at the Teatro del Giglio in Puccini’s native Lucca on 5 September 1891. In 1892, further revisions reduced the length of the opera from four acts to three, in a version that was well received in Ferrara and was performed in Turin and in Spain. Puccini made further revisions in 1901 and 1905, but the work never achieved popularity. Without the personal support of Ricordi, Edgar might have cost Puccini his career. Puccini had eloped with his former piano student, the married Elvira Gemignani (), and Ricordi’s associates were willing to turn a blind eye to his lifestyle as long as he was successful. When Edgar failed, they suggested to Ricordi that he should drop Puccini, but Ricordi said that he would stay with him and continued his allowance until his next opera.
Manon Lescaut#
On commencing his next opera, Manon Lescaut, Puccini announced that he would write his own libretto so that “no fool of a librettist” could spoil it. Ricordi persuaded him to accept Ruggero Leoncavallo as his librettist, but Puccini soon asked Ricordi to remove him from the project. Four other librettists were then involved with the opera, as Puccini constantly changed his mind about the structure of the piece. It was almost by accident that the final two, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, came together to complete the opera. Manon Lescaut premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin on 2 February 1893. By coincidence, Puccini’s first enduringly popular opera appeared within a week of the premiere of Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff, which was first performed on 9 February 1893. After the London premiere in 1894, George Bernard Shaw pronounced: “Puccini looks to me more like the heir of Verdi than any of his rivals.”
La bohème#
Puccini’s next work after Manon Lescaut was La bohème (“The bohemian lifestyle”), a four-act opera based on Henri Murger’s La Vie de Bohème (1851). La bohème premiered in Turin in 1896, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Within a few years, it had been performed in many of the leading opera houses of Europe, including in Britain, as well as in the United States. It was a popular success and remains one of the most frequently performed operas ever written. The libretto of the opera, freely adapted from Murger’s episodic novel, combines comic elements of the impoverished life of the young protagonists with tragic aspects, such as the death of the young seamstress Mimí. Puccini’s own life as a young man in Milan served as a source of inspiration for elements of the libretto. During his years as a conservatory student and in the years before Manon Lescaut, he experienced poverty similar to that of the bohemians in La bohème, including a chronic shortage of necessities like food, clothing and money to pay rent. Although Puccini was granted a small monthly stipend by the Congregation of Charity in Rome (), he frequently had to pawn his possessions to cover basic expenses. Early biographers such as Wakeling Dry and Eugenio Checchi, who were Puccini’s contemporaries, drew express parallels between these incidents and particular events in the opera. Puccini’s opera premiered a year before that of Leoncavallo, and has been a perennial audience favourite, while Leoncavallo’s version quickly faded into obscurity.
Tosca#
Puccini’s next work after La bohème was Tosca (1900), arguably Puccini’s first foray into verismo, the realistic depiction of many facets of real life including violence. Puccini had been considering an opera on this theme since he saw the play Tosca by Victorien Sardou in 1889, when he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, begging him to get Sardou’s permission for the work to be made into an opera: “I see in this Tosca the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music.” The music of Tosca employs musical signatures for particular characters and emotions, which have been compared to leitmotivs, and some contemporaries saw Puccini as thereby adopting a new musical style influenced by Richard Wagner. Others viewed the work differently. Rejecting the allegation that Tosca displayed Wagnerian influences, a critic reporting on the Torino premiere of 20 February 1900 wrote: “I don’t think you could find a more Puccinian score than this.”
Automobile crash and near-death#
On 25 February 1903, Puccini was seriously injured in a car crash during a nighttime journey on the road from Lucca to Torre del Lago. The car was driven by Puccini’s chauffeur and was carrying Puccini, his future wife Elvira, and their son Antonio. It went off the road, fell several metres, and flipped over. Elvira and Antonio were flung from the car and escaped with minor injuries. Puccini’s chauffeur, also thrown from the car, suffered a serious fracture of his femur. Puccini was pinned under the vehicle, with a severe fracture of his right leg and with a portion of the car pressing down on his chest. A doctor living near the scene of the crash, together with another person who came to investigate, saved Puccini from the wreckage. The injury did not heal well, and Puccini remained under treatment for months. During the medical examinations that he underwent it was also found that he was suffering from a form of diabetes. The accident and its consequences slowed Puccini’s completion of his next work.
Madama Butterfly#
The original version of Madama Butterfly (“Madam Butterfly”) premiered at La Scala on 17 February 1904 with Rosina Storchio in the title role. It was initially greeted with great hostility (probably largely owing to inadequate rehearsals). When Storchio’s kimono accidentally lifted during the performance, some in the audience started shouting: “The butterfly is pregnant” and “There is the little Toscanini”. The latter comment referred to her well-publicised affair with Arturo Toscanini. This version was in two acts; after its disastrous premiere, Puccini withdrew the opera, revising it for what was virtually a second premiere at Brescia in May 1904 and performances in Buenos Aires, London, the US and Paris. In 1907, Puccini made his final revisions to the opera in a fifth version, which has become known as the “standard version”. Today, the standard version of the opera is the version most often performed around the world. However, the original 1904 version is occasionally performed as well, and has been recorded. Puccini incorporated elements of Japanese music into his score and “tried to make B. F. Pinkerton sound like an American.”
Later works#
After 1904, Puccini’s compositions were less frequent. In 1906 Giacosa died and, in 1909, there was a scandal after Puccini’s wife, Elvira, falsely accused their maid Doria Manfredi of having an affair with Puccini. Finally, in 1912, the death of Giulio Ricordi, Puccini’s editor and publisher, ended a productive period of his career. Giorgio Polacco recalled the tempestuous relationship between Puccini and Toscanini. Puccini sent Toscanini some panettone. The composer recalled that they were not on speaking terms and wired him “PANETTONE SENT BY MISTAKE. PUCCINI.” The conductor wired back: “PANETTONE EATEN BY MISTAKE. TOSCANINI.”
La fanciulla del West#
Puccini completed La fanciulla del West (“The Damsel of the West”), based on a play by David Belasco, in 1910. This was commissioned by, and first performed at, the Metropolitan Opera in New York on 10 December 1910 with Met stars Enrico Caruso and Emmy Destinn, for whom Puccini created the leading roles of Dick Johnson and Minnie. Toscanini, then the musical director of the Met, conducted. This was the first world premiere of an opera at the Met. The premiere was a great success. However, the compositional style employed in the opera, with few stand-alone arias, was criticized at the time. Some contemporaries also criticized the opera for failing to achieve an “American” tone. However, the opera has been acclaimed for its incorporation of advanced harmonic language and rhythmic complexity into the Italian operatic form. In addition, one aria from the opera, Ch’ella mi creda, has become a staple of compilation albums by operatic tenors. It is said that during World War I, Italian soldiers sang this aria to maintain their spirits. The 2008 Italian film Puccini e la fanciulla (Puccini and the Girl), is based on the period of his life when he was composing the opera. Puccini studied American folk music “in order to get the atmosphere.”
La rondine#
Puccini completed the score of La rondine (“The Swallow”) to a libretto by Giuseppe Adami in 1916 after two years of work, and it was premiered at the Grand Théâtre de Monte Carlo on 27 March 1917. The opera had been originally commissioned by Vienna’s Carltheater; however, the outbreak of World War I prevented the premiere from being given there. Moreover, the firm of Ricordi had declined the score of the opera – Giulio Ricordi’s son Tito was then in charge and he described the opera as “bad Lehár”. It was taken up by their rival, Lorenzo Sonzogno, who arranged the first performance in neutral Monaco. The composer continued to work at revising this, the least known of his mature operas, until his death. La rondine was initially conceived as an operetta, but Puccini eliminated spoken dialogue, rendering the work closer in form to an opera. A modern reviewer described La rondine as “a continuous fabric of lilting waltz tunes, catchy pop-styled melodies, and nostalgic love music,” while characterizing the plot as recycling characters and incidents from works like La traviata and Die Fledermaus.
Il trittico: Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi#
In 1918, Il trittico (“The Triptych”) premiered in New York. This work is composed of three one-act operas, each concerning the concealment of a death: a horrific episode (Il tabarro; “The Cloak”) in the style of the Parisian Grand Guignol, a sentimental tragedy (Suor Angelica; “Sister Angelica”), and a comedy (Gianni Schicchi).
Turandot#
Turandot, Puccini’s final opera, was left unfinished at the composer’s death in November 1924, and the last two scenes were completed by Franco Alfano based on the composer’s sketches. The libretto for Turandot was based on a play of the same name by Carlo Gozzi. The music of the opera is heavily inflected with pentatonic motifs, intended to produce an Asiatic flavour to the music. Turandot contains a number of memorable stand-alone arias, among them “Nessun dorma”.
Librettists#
The libretto of Edgar was a significant factor in the failure of that opera. Thereafter, especially throughout his middle and late career, Puccini was extremely selective, and at times indecisive, in his choice of subject matter for new works. Puccini was deeply involved in the process of writing the libretto itself, requiring many iterative revisions of his libretti in terms of both structure and text. Puccini’s relationships with his librettists were at times very difficult. His publisher, Casa Ricordi, was frequently required to mediate disputes and impasses between them. Puccini explored many possible subjects that he ultimately rejected only after a significant amount of effort—such as the creation of a libretto—had been put into them. Among the subjects that Puccini seriously considered, but abandoned, were: Cristoforo Sly, Anima Allegra (based on the play El genio alegre by Serafín and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero), Two Little Wooden Shoes (I due zoccoletti) (a short story by Maria Louise Ramé, a.k.a. Ouida), the life of Marie Antoinette, Margherita da Cortona, and Conchita (based on the novel La Femme et le pantin – The Woman and the Puppet, by Pierre Loüys). Some of these abandoned subjects were taken up and turned into operas by other composers. For example, Franco Vittadini made an opera of Anima Allegra, Mascagni’s opera Lodoletta is derived from Two Little Wooden Shoes, and Riccardo Zandonai eventually wrote Conchita.
Torre del Lago#
From 1891 onwards, Puccini spent most of his time, when not travelling on business, at Torre del Lago, a small community about fifteen miles from Lucca situated between the Ligurian Sea and Lake Massaciuccoli, just south of Viareggio. Torre del Lago was the primary place for Puccini to indulge his love of hunting. “I love hunting, I love cars: and for these things, in the isolation of Torre del Lago, I keep the faith.” (“Amo la caccia, adoro l’automobile: e a questo e a quella nelle solitudini di Torre del Lago serbo intera la mia fede.”) By 1900, he had acquired land and built a villa on the lake, now known as the “Villa Puccini”. He lived there until 1921, when pollution produced by peat works on the lake forced him to move to Viareggio, a few kilometres north. After his death, a mausoleum was created in the Villa Puccini and the composer is buried there in the chapel, along with his wife and son who died later. The Villa Museo was owned by his granddaughter, Simonetta Puccini, until her death, and is open to the public. An annual Festival Puccini is held at Torre del Lago.
Marriage and affairs#
In the autumn of 1884, in Lucca, Puccini began a relationship with a married woman named Elvira Gemignani (), a former piano student of his. Elvira’s husband, Narciso Gemignani, was an “unrepentant womanizer”, and Elvira’s marriage was not a happy one. Some music critics and interpreters of Puccini’s work have speculated that the psychological effects of this incident on Puccini interfered with his ability to complete compositions later in his career, and also influenced the development of his characters such as Liù (from Turandot), a slave girl who dies tragically by suicide. In 2007, documents were found in the possession of Nadia Manfredi, a descendant of the Manfredi family, which indicated that Puccini was actually having an affair with Giulia Manfredi, Doria’s cousin. Upon the discovery of these documents, the press began to allege that Puccini had fathered Giulia Manfredi’s son Antonio, which would make Nadia a granddaughter of Puccini.
- Era
- Late Romantic
- Lived
- 1858–1924
- From
- Kingdom of Italy (now Italy), Grand Duchy of Tuscany (now Italy)
- Born in
- Lucca · died Brussels
- Known as
- opera composer, composer, politician, conductor, organist
- Instruments
- organ
- Genres
- classical music, opera, verismo, religious music