Giacomo Antonio Puccini, one of the greatest operatic composers of the Late Romantic era, was born in Lucca, Italy, on December 23, 1858, the son of a successful organist and composer. When his father died in 1864, the five-year-old Giacomo was promised his father’s post when he came of age. In the meantime he studied organ with his uncle and later learned composition from Carlo Angeloni, director of the Instituto Musicale Pacini (of which Giacomo’s father had been director).
By the age of 14 Puccini was the official organ player at several churches in Lucca, and soon began composing his own organ pieces. In 1876, when he saw a performance of Verdi’s Aida in Pisa, Puccini was inspired to become an operatic composer.
In 1880 Puccini became a student at the Milan Conservatory, supported by a one-year scholarship and an allowance from his uncle. There he was taught by the composer Amilcare Ponchielli and became friends with fellow student Pietro Mascagni and with Ruggero Leoncavallo, both destined to become noted operatic composers.
While still a student at the conservatory, Puccini decided to enter a competition to write a one-act opera. Ponchielli’s influence helped secure Fernando Fontana as his librettist, and Puccini’s first opera Le Villi was entered in the competition. When the result was announced, it did not even receive a mention. However, the influential composer and music critic Arrigo Boito heard Puccini play and sing the opera at a party, and raised funds for it to be performed at the Teatro del Verne. It was an instant success, and the music publisher Ricordi bought it and then commissioned a second opera, Edgar.
Puccini chose the subject of his third opera. Manon Lescaut (1893) was based on a novel by Abbé Prévost, which had already been turned into an opera by Massenet. The libretto went through the hands of three different authors before being taken over by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, who were to co-author the libretti of Puccini’s most popular works. Puccini’s next opera, La bohème, conducted by TOSCANINI, was premiered in Turin, Italy, in February 1893, and was not a success at first. The critics were initially hostile as they had expected an opera in the romantic and tragic style of Manon Lescaut La bohème, with its light-hearted scenes of Parisian bohemian life set mainly in a garret, and its conversational style, seemed inconsequential by comparison.
However, the premiere of Tosca in Rome in 1900 was a runaway success, and Puccini’s standing was assured. Serious injury in an automobile accident slowed Puccini’s rate of composition, but in 1904, Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala, in Milan. This now-beloved work was so poorly received that Puccini had to return the theatre’s advance.
Puccini attended the New York debut of Manon Lescaut in 1907, and while there saw David Belasco’s play, The Girl of the Golden West, which appealed to him as the subject for an opera. La Fanciulla del West had its first Metropolitan Opera performance in 1910.
By 1921, Puccini’s health was declining. Although he did not know it, he was suffering from throat cancer. He raced with death to finish the score of Turandot, but before he could do so he died on November 29, 1924. Turandot, completed by the Italian composer Franco Alfano, eventually joined the repertoire of Puccini’s great and enduring operas.
Jane Prendergast
SEE ALSO:
OPERA; PAVAROTTI, LUCIANO; SUTHERLAND, DAME JOAN.
FURTHER READING
Brown, Jonathan. Puccini (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995);
Jackson, Stanley. Letters of Giacomo Puccini, (New York: AMS Press, 1971);
Weaver, William, and Simonetta Puccini. The Puccini Companion (London: W. W. Norton, 1994).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
La bohème; Madama Butterfly; Manon Lescaut; Tosca; Turandot.