Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Giacomo Puccini

 
Music Encyclopedia: Giacomo (Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria) (ii) Puccini
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Music Encyclopedia

(b Lucca, 22 Dec 1858; d Brussels, 29 Nov 1924). Italian composer, son of Michele Puccini and fifth in a line of composers from Lucca. After studying music with his uncle, Fortunato Magi, and with the director of the Istituto Musicale Pacini, Carlo Angeloni, he started his career at the age of 14 as an organist at S Martino and S Michele, Lucca, and at other local churches. However, a performance of Verdi's Aida at Pisa in 1876 made such an impact on him that he decided to follow his instinct for operatic composition. With a scholarship and financial support from an uncle, he was able to enter the Milan Conservatory in 1880. During his three years there his chief teachers were Bazzini and Ponchielli.

While still a student, Puccini entered a competition for a one-act opera announced in 1882 by the publishing firm of Sonzogno.He and his librettist, Ferdinando Fontana, failed to win, but their opera Le villi came to the attention of the publisher Giulio Ricordi, who arranged a successful production at the Teatro del Verme in Milan and commissioned a second opera. Fontana's libretto, Edgar, was unsuited to Puccini's dramatic talent and the opera was coolly received at La Scala in April 1889. It did, however, set the seal on what was to be Puccini's lifelong association with the house of Ricordi.

The first opera for which Puccini himself chose the subject was Manon Lescaut. Produced at Turin in 1893, it achieved a success such as Puccini was never to repeat and made him known outside Italy. Among the writers who worked on its libretto were Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, who provided the librettos for Puccini's next three operas. The first of these, La bohème, widely considered Puccini's masterpiece, but with its mixture of lighthearted and sentimental scenes and its largely conversational style was not a success when produced at Turin in 1896. Tosca, Puccini's first excursion into verismo, was more enthusiastically received by the Roman audience at the Teatro Costanzi in 1900.

Later that year Puccini visited London and saw David Belasco's one-act play Madam Butterfly. This he took as the basis for his next collaboration with Illica and Giacosa; he considered it the best and technically most advanced opera he had written. He was unprepared for the fiasco attending its first performance in February 1904, when the La Scala audience was urged into hostility, even pandemonium, by the composer's jealous rivals; in a revised version it was given to great acclaim at Brescia the following May. By then Puccini had married Elvira Gemignani, the widow of a Lucca merchant, who had borne him a son as long ago as 1896. The family lived until 1921 in the house at Torre del Lago which Puccini had acquired in 1891. Scandal was unleashed in 1909 when a servant girl of the Puccinis, whom Elvira had accused of an intimate relationship with her husband, committed suicide. A court case established the girl's innocence, but the publicity affected Puccini deeply and was the main reason for the long period before his next opera.

This was La fanciulla del West, based on another Belasco drama; it was given its première at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in December 1910. In all technical respects, notably its Debussian harmony and Straussian orchestration, it was a masterly reply to the criticism that Puccini repeated himself in every new opera. What it lacks is the incandescent phrase, and this is probably why it has not entered the normal repertory outside Italy.

Differences with Tito Ricordi, head of the firm since 1912, led Puccini to accept a commission for an operetta from the directors of the Vienna Karltheater. The result, La rondine, though warmly received at Monte Carlo in 1917, is among Puccini's weakest works, hovering between opera and operetta and devoid of striking lyrical melody. While working on it Puccini began the composition of Il tabarro, the first of three one-act operas (Il trittico) which follow the scheme of the Parisian Grand Guignol - a horrific episode, a sentimental tragedy (Suor Angelica) and a comedy or farce (Gianni Schicchi). This last has proved to be the most enduring part of the triptych and is often done without the others, usually in a double bill.

In his early 60s Puccini was determined to ‘strike out on new paths’ and started work on Turandot, based on a Gozzi play which satisfied his desire for a subject with a fantastic, fairy-tale atmosphere, but flesh-and-blood characters. During its composition he moved to Viareggio and in 1923 developed cancer of the throat. Treatment at a Brussels clinic seemed successful, but his heart could not stand the strain and he died, leaving Turandot unfinished. (It is usually played today with Franco Alfano's ending.) All Italy went into mourning and two years later his remains were interred at his house at Torre del Lago which, after his wife's death in 1930, was turned into a museum.

Puccini's choral, orchestral and instrumental works, dating mainly from his early years, are unimportant, though the Mass in A♭ (1880) is still performed occasionally. His operas may not engage us on as many different levels as do those of Mozart, Wagner, Verdi or Strauss, but on his own most characteristic level, where erotic passion, sensuality, tenderness, pathos and despair meet and fuse, he was an unrivalled master. His melodic gift and harmonic sensibility, his consummate skill in orchestration and unerring sense of theatre combined to create a style that was wholly original, homogeneous and compelling. He was fully aware of his limitations and rarely ventured beyond them. He represents Verdi's only true successor, and his greatest masterpiece and swansong, Turandot, belongs among the last 20th-century stage works to remain in the regular repertory of the world's opera houses.

works:
Operas
  • Le villi (1884)
  • Edgar (1889)
  • Manon Lescaut (1893)
  • La bohème (1896)
  • Tosca (1900)
  • Madama Butterfly (1904)
  • La fanciulla del West (1910)
  • La rondine (1917)
  • Il trittico [Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi] (1918)
  • Turandot (1926), inc.
Vocal music
  • Mass, A♭ (1880)
  • motets, cantatas, songs
Instrumental music
  • orch pieces, chamber music, pf pieces

Search unanswered questions...

Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

Biography: Giacomo Puccini
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Biographies

The Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was the most successful follower of Verdi, continuing the line of Italian operatic composers into the 20th century.

Born in Lucca on Dec. 22, 1858, into a family whose members had composed operas of local success for several generations, 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. A pension in 1880 from Queen Margherita made it possible for him to go to Milan for study at the conservatory. His most important teacher was the composer Amilcare Ponchielli, who encouraged him to write his first opera, Le Villi, in 1884. The work was entered in a competition sponsored by the Teatro Illustrato but received no recognition there; it was performed with such success at one of the smaller Milanese theaters that it was put on the stage at the famous La Scala opera house in 1885.

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. Puccini's 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 Nov. 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.

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.

Music was undergoing dramatic stylistic changes in the last decades of Puccini's life with the works of such men as Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and Béla Bartók. Puccini clung to the harmonic and melodic language of the late 19th century. The problem of reconciliation between radical changes of musical language and the venerable form of opera has been a thorny one, and it should be noted that the last operas to be truly successful in terms of wide acceptance by audiences and retention in the repertory are those of Puccini and Richard Strauss, two men who remained on the periphery of the widespread innovation so characteristic of the first decades of the 20th century.

Further Reading

The Letters of Giacomo Puccini were edited by Giuseppe Adami (1928; trans. 1931). George Marek, Puccini: A Biography (1951), the most extensive work in English, is a subjective and romantic treatment of the composer. Puccini's operas are discussed in Max De Schauensee, The Collector's Verdi and Puccini (1962), and William Ashbrook, The Operas of Puccini (1968). For background material Donald Jay Grout, A Short History of Opera (1947; 2d ed. 1965), is recommended.

Additional Sources

Brown, Jonathon, Puccini, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Carner, Mosco, Puccini: a critical biography, New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1977, 1974.

Greenfeld, Howard, Puccini: a biography, New York: Putnam, 1980.

Jackson, Stanley, Monsieur Butterfly; the story of Giacomo Puccin, New York, Stein and Day 1974.

Marggraf, Wolfgang, Giacomo Puccini, New York: Heinrichshofen: Sole selling agents, C.F. Peters, 1984.

Weaver, William, Puccini: the man and his music, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

(born Dec. 22, 1858, Lucca, Tuscany — died Nov. 29, 1924, Brussels, Belg.) Italian composer. Born into a family of organists and choirmasters, he was inspired to write operas after hearing Giuseppe Verdi's Aïda in 1876. At the Milan Conservatory he studied with Amilcare Ponchielli (1834 – 86). Puccini entered his first opera, Le villi (1883), in a competition; though it lost, a group of his friends subsidized its production, and its premiere took place with immense success. His second, Edgar (1889), was a failure, but Manon Lescaut (1893) brought him international recognition. His mature operas included La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madam Butterfly (1904), and The Girl of the Golden West (1910). All four are tragic love stories; his use of the orchestra was refined, and he established a dramatic structure that balanced action and conflict with moments of repose, contemplation, and lyricism. They remained exceedingly popular into the 21st century. He was the most popular opera composer in the world at the time of his death; his unfinished Turandot was completed by Franco Alfano (1875 – 1954).

For more information on Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini, visit Britannica.com.

Fairy Tale Companion: Giacomo Puccini
Top
Home > Library > Literature & Language > Fairy Tale Companion

Puccini, Giacomo (1858–1924), Italian composer. His opera in three acts, Turandot (libretto by Adami and Simoni), remained uncompleted at his death and was performed, with the last scene completed by another composer, in 1926. Turandot is based on Carlo Gozzi's play of the same name (1762), which in turn was in part adapted from The Arabian Nights. The plot revolves around Princess Turandot's promise to marry whoever can answer three riddles that she poses.

Bibliography

  • Ashbrook, William, Puccini's Turandot: The End of the Great Tradition (1991).

— Nancy Canepa

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Giacomo Puccini
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Columbia Encyclopedia - People
Puccini, Giacomo (jä'kōmō pūt-chē'nē), 1858-1924, Italian composer of operas. He wrote some of the most popular works in the opera repertory. A descendant of a long line of musicians, he studied piano and organ at his Tuscan birthplace, Lucca, and in 1880 entered the Milan Conservatory. He first gained recognition with a one-act opera, Le Villi (1884). His finest operas, Manon Lescaut (1893), La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (produced posthumously in 1926), display his characteristically lyric style and masterful orchestration, evoking strongly dramatic emotional effects. Although the characters in his operas are rather generalized, romantic figures, they come alive through expressive melody. A penchant for exotic settings produced some incongruities in his music, as in La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West, 1910), and some of his works have been criticized for excessive sentimentality. Wit and dramatic vivacity, however, mark his comic opera Gianni Schicchi (1918), and Puccini has remained, with Verdi, a preeminent master of the Italian operatic stage.

Bibliography

See his letters, ed. by G. Adami (tr. 1931, repr. 1973); biographies by V. Seligman (1938), M. Carner (1959), R. Specht (tr. 1933, repr. 1970), and M. J. Phillips-Matz (2002); critical biography by J. Budden (2002); studies by W. Ashbrook (1985) and W. Berger (2005).

Fine Arts Dictionary: Puccini, Giacomo
Top
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Fine Arts Dictionary
(pooh-chee-nee)

An Italian composer of operas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is best known for Madame Butterfly, La Bohème, and Tosca.

Word Tutor: Puccini
Top
Home > Library > Literature & Language > Spelling & Usage
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: n. - Italian operatic composer noted for the dramatic realism of his operas (1858-1924).

Artist: Giacomo Puccini
Top
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Classical Artists
Giacomo Puccini
  • Period: Post-Romantic (1870-1909)
  • Country: Italy
  • Born: December 22, 1858 in Lucca, Italy
  • Died: November 29, 1924 in Brussels, Belgium
  • Genres: Chamber Music, Miscellaneous Music, Opera, Vocal Music

Biography

Giacomo Puccini was the most important composer of Italian opera after Verdi. He wrote in the verismo style, a counterpart to the movement of Realism in literature and a trend that favored subjects and characters from everyday life for opera. On his often commonplace settings Puccini lavished memorable melodies and lush orchestration. It was around the turn of the twentieth century that he reached his artistic zenith, composing in succession his three most popular and effective operas, La Bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly.

Young Giacomo took organ lessons early on from his uncle, Fortunato Magi, and later from Carlo Angeloni. At ten, he sang in local church choirs and by age 14 was freelancing as an organist at religious services. His first compositions were for organ, often incorporating operatic and folk elements. By age 18, under the spell of Verdi's Aida, he decided he would study composition with a view to writing opera. At around this time, he composed his first large-scale work, a cantata, Preludio Sinfonico, for an 1877 competition. Other pieces came in the next few years, but none of significance.

In 1880, Puccini entered the Milan Conservatory, where he studied for three years under Ponchielli and Bazzini. While there, he wrote his first opera, Le villi, which he once more entered in a competition. Though he lost, Arrigo Boito and, more importantly, publisher Giulio Ricordi helped arrange a premiere in Milan on May 31, 1884. The work was enthusiastically received, and Puccini was on his way.

Around this time the composer met Elvira Gemignani, wife of a merchant in Lucca. They carried on an illicit affair, and she gave birth to his son in 1886. When her husband died in 1904, the two were married. Puccini's next opera, Edgar, was poorly received at its 1889 premiere. Subsequent revisions failed to rescue it from its encumbering libretto. His next effort, however, Manon Lescaut, was a sensational success at its 1893 Turin premiere. Subsequent performances in Italy and abroad bolstered the composer's growing reputation.

Puccini's next three operas confirmed his preeminence in Italian opera. La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904) were not immediately as successful as Manon Lescaut, but in time achieved greater acclaim. By the middle of the twentieth century, they had become -- and remain today -- his most often performed and recorded works.

Puccini suffered a creative dry spell for a time and was unable to finish another opera until the moderately successful La fanciulla del West (1910), which premiered in New York with Toscanini conducting and Caruso singing the role of Johnson. His sluggishness of inspiration owed much to charges by his wife he was having an affair with a servant girl, charges that drove the hapless, and as it turned out, innocent young girl to suicide in 1909.

In 1913, Puccini accepted a lucrative commission from Vienna interests, which resulted in La rondine. Received warmly at its 1917 Monte Carlo premiere, it faded under the judgment it was the least of his operatic efforts. Puccini followed this disappointment with his trilogy of one-act operas, Il trittico -- comprised of Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi -- all premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1918. Only the latter work, a comedy, was well received.

While Puccini was working on his last opera, Turandot, he was diagnosed with throat cancer (1923). During radiation treatment in Brussels, he suffered a heart attack and died on November 29, 1924. ~ Robert Cummings, All Music Guide
Actor: Giacomo Puccini
Top
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Actors
  • Born: Dec 22, 1858 in Lucca, Tuscany, Italy
  • Died: Nov 29, 1924 in Brussels, Belgium
  • Active: '50s-'60s, '80s-2000s
  • Major Genres: Music, Theater
  • Career Highlights: Cadillac Man, Aria, The Great Ziegfeld
  • First Major Screen Credit: Madame Butterfly (1932)

Biography

The exquisitely lyrical vocal melodies and rich impressionist orchestrations and harmonies of this late Romantic Italian composer are balanced by his "verismo" sense of life's realities creating an operatic experience of compelling intensity. His music appears in approximately 130 feature-length productions. In Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997), Lauretta's exquisite, gently rolling aria "O mio babbino caro" from Puccini's one-act opera Gianni Schicchi (1918) is heard very much in the background as the villain John Geiger (played by Willem Dafoe) applies (real) leeches from a glass bottle to his chest. He says to them, "You take care of me and I'll take care of this ship." This very popular aria is also quoted at tender moments in Mystery Men (1999), A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (1998), G.I. Jane (1997), A Room With a View (1986), Escalier C (Staircase C, 1985), Les Bons débarras (1980) (aka Good Riddance), and Der Tod der Maria Malibran (The Death of Maria Malibran, 1971). In The Witches of Eastwick (1987), the passionate "Nessun Dorma" from the opera Turandot accompanies a comical movement fantasy as the demon (played by Jack Nicholson) frolics with three women (Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer) among a mass of pink balloons filling the splendid marble entranceway of his country mansion. They glide in different combinations on tables with rollers, as the music is projected from a boom box. The Puccini score segues seamlessly into original orchestral music by John Williams as the three women float above an exotic swimming pool in a nearby room. This wonderful aria and other excerpts from Turandot are also heard in No One Sleeps (2000), The Turandot Project (2000), the television production Turandot -- At the Forbidden City of Beijing (1999), Visions of Italy, Northern Style (TV, 1998), Love Etc. (1996), The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), Aria (1987), Castaway (1987), The Killing Fields (1984), and Serenade (1956). The complete opera received two television productions in 1983 and 1987.

Another popular Puccini aria is "Un bel di vedremo" (usually simply referred to as "Un bel di...") from the richly romantic and dramatic opera Madama Butterfly. This aria appears in the thriller Second Skin (2000), Das Geschriebene Gesicht (The Written Face, 1995), Heavenly Creatures (1994), Household Saints (1993), Hsi yen (The Wedding Banquet, 1993), Jennifer Eight (1992), Peter's Friends (1992), Il Maestro (1989), Opera (1987) (aka Terror at the Opera), Fatal Attraction (1987), the charming English gay romance and drama of cultural clashes My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), the thriller Hopscotch (1980), My Geisha (1962), Mitchell Leisen's Tonight We Sing (1953), I'll Take Romance (1937) (uncredited), and One Night of Love (1934). The complete opera received a film and TV production in 1995, TV productions in 1986, 1982, and 1974, and a film version in 1955. Puccini's Tosca was first realized in film in 1922, and has since had many film and television productions (2001, 1990, 1985, 1984, 1982, 1978, 1976, 1956, 1941). An interesting and musically excellent Italian television production by Brian Large placed Tosca: In the Settings and at the Times of Tosca (1992). The well-known aria "E lucevan le stelle" from Tosca occurred in Nostradamus (2000) and The Man Who Cried (2000). Puccini's La Bohéme and Manon Lescaut have likewise received many varied productions. Aspects of the composer's life have been covered in the 1984's Puccini (TV) and the 1952 film Puccini (aka Two Loves Have I). ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Movie Guide
Wikipedia: Giacomo Puccini
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire.[1][2] Some of his arias, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, "Che gelida manina" from La bohème, and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of popular culture.

Contents

Early life

Puccini's birthplace, seen in 1984

Puccini was born in Lucca in Tuscany, into a family with five generations of musical history behind them, including composer Domenico Puccini. His father died when Giacomo was five years old, and he was sent to study with his uncle Fortunato Magi, who considered him to be a poor and undisciplined student. Later, Puccini took the position of church organist and choir master in Lucca, but it was not until he saw a performance of Verdi's Aida that he became inspired to be an opera composer. He and his brother, Michele, walked 18.5 mi (30 km) to see the performance in Pisa.

In 1880, with the help of a relative and a grant, Puccini enrolled in the Milan Conservatory to study composition with Amilcare Ponchielli and Antonio Bazzini. In the same year, at the age of 21, he composed the Messa, which marks the culmination of his family's long association with church music in his native Lucca. Although Puccini himself correctly titled the work a Messa, referring to a setting of the full Catholic Mass, today the work is popularly known as his Messa di Gloria, a name that technically refers to a setting of only the first two prayers of the Mass, the Kyrie and the Gloria, while omitting the Credo, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei.

The work anticipates Puccini's career as an operatic composer by offering glimpses of the dramatic power that he would soon bring forth onto the stage; the powerful "arias" for tenor and bass soloists are certainly more operatic than is usual in church music and, in its orchestration and dramatic power, the Messa compares interestingly with Verdi's Requiem.

While studying at the Conservatory, Puccini obtained a libretto from Ferdinando Fontana and entered a competition for a one-act opera in 1882. Although he did not win, Le Villi was later staged in 1884 at the Teatro Dal Verme and it caught the attention of Giulio Ricordi, head of G. Ricordi & Co. music publishers, who commissioned a second opera, Edgar, in 1889.

Puccini at Torre del Lago

Original poster for Puccini's Tosca

From 1891 onwards, Puccini spent most of his time at Torre del Lago, a small community about fifteen miles from Lucca situated between the Tyrrhenian Sea and Lake Massaciuccoli, just south of Viareggio. While renting a house there, he spent time hunting but regularly visited Lucca. By 1900 he had acquired land and built a villa on the lake, now known as the "Villa Museo 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 Puccini" is presently owned by his granddaughter, Simonetta Puccini, and is open to the public.

Operas written at Torre del Lago
"Donna non vidi mai"
From Manon Lescaut, Act I. Sung by Enrico Caruso in 1913.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.
"O soave fanciulla"
From La bohème, Act I. Sung by Enrico Caruso and Nellie Melba in 1906.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.
"O mio babbino caro"
From Gianni Schicchi, sung by Frances Alda in 1919.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Manon Lescaut (1893), his third opera, was his first great success. It launched his remarkable relationship with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, who collaborated with him on his next three operas, which became his three most famous and most performed operas. These were:

  • Tosca (1900) was arguably Puccini's first foray into verismo, the realistic depiction of many facets of real life including violence. The opera is generally considered of major importance in the history of opera because of its many significant features.
  • Madama Butterfly (1904) was initially greeted with great hostility (mostly organized by his rivals) but, after some reworking, became another of his most successful operas.

After 1904, compositions were less frequent. Following his passion for driving fast cars, Puccini was nearly killed in a major accident in 1903. In 1906 Giacosa died and, in 1909, there was scandal after Puccini's wife, Elvira, falsely accused their maid Doria Manfredi of having an affair with Puccini. The maid then committed suicide. Elvira was successfully sued by the Manfredis, and Giacomo had to pay damages. Finally, in 1912, the death of Giulio Ricordi, Puccini's editor and publisher, ended a productive period of his career.

However, Puccini completed La fanciulla del West in 1910 and finished the score of La rondine in 1917.

In 1918, Il trittico premiered in New York. This work is composed of three one-act operas: a horrific episode (Il tabarro), in the style of the Parisian Grand Guignol, a sentimental tragedy (Suor Angelica), and a comedy (Gianni Schicchi). Of the three, Gianni Schicchi has remained the most popular, containing the popular O mio babbino caro.

The final years

Giacomo Puccini with conductor Arturo Toscanini

A habitual Toscano cigar and cigarette chain smoker, Puccini began to complain of chronic sore throats towards the end of 1923. A diagnosis of throat cancer led his doctors to recommend a new and experimental radiation therapy treatment, which was being offered in Brussels. Puccini and his wife never knew how serious the cancer was, as the news was only revealed to his son.

Puccini died there on 29 November 1924, from complications from the treatment; uncontrolled bleeding led to a heart attack the day after surgery. News of his death reached New York during a performance of La bohème. The opera was immediately stopped, and the orchestra played Chopin's Funeral March for the stunned audience. He was buried in Milan, but in 1926 his son arranged for the transfer of his father's remains to a specially-created chapel inside the Puccini villa at Torre del Lago.

Turandot, his final opera, was left unfinished, and the last two scenes were completed by Franco Alfano based on the composer's sketches. Some dispute whether Alfano followed the sketches or not, since the sketches were said to be indecipherable, but he is believed to have done so, since, together with the autographs, he was given (still existing) transcriptions from Guido Zuccoli who was accustomed to interpreting Puccini's handiwork.

When Arturo Toscanini conducted the premiere performance in April 1926 (in front of a sold-out crowd, with every prominent Italian except for Benito Mussolini in attendance), he chose not to perform Alfano's portion of the score. The performance reached the point where Puccini had completed the score, at which time Toscanini stopped the orchestra. The conductor turned to the audience and said: "Here the opera finishes, because at this point the Maestro died." (Some record that he said, more poetically, "Here the Maestro laid down his pen.")

Toscanini edited Alfano's suggested completion ('Alfano I'), to produce a version now known as 'Alfano II', and this is the version usually used in performance. However, some musicians (eg Ashbrook & Powers, 1991) consider Alfano I to be a more dramatically complete version.

In 2002, an official new ending was composed by Luciano Berio from original sketches, but this finale has to date been performed only infrequently.

Politics

Unlike Wagner and Verdi, Puccini did not appear to be active in the politics of his day. However, Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy at the time, claimed that Puccini applied for admission to the National Fascist Party. While it has been proven that Puccini was indeed among the early supporters of the Fascist party at the time of the election campaign of 1919 (in which the Fascist candidates were utterly defeated, earning a meagre 4,000 votes), there appear to be no records or proof of any application given to the party by Puccini. In addition, it can be noted that had Puccini done so, his close friend Toscanini (an extreme anti-Fascist) would probably have severed all friendly connection with him and ceased conducting his operas.

This notwithstanding, Fascist propaganda appropriated Puccini's figure, and one of the most widely played marches during Fascist street parades and public ceremonies was the "Inno a Roma" (Hymn to Rome), composed in 1919 by Puccini to lyrics by Fausto Salvatori, based on these verses from Horace's Carmen saeculare:

Alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui / Promis et celas alius que et idem / Nasceris, possis nihil urbe Roma / Visere maius. (O Sun, that unchanged, yet ever new, / Lead'st out the day and bring'st it home, / May nothing be present to thy view / Greater than Rome!)

Style

Puccini7.jpg

The subject of Puccini's style is one that was once treated dismissively by musicologists; this can be attributed to a perception that his work, with its emphasis on melody and evident popular appeal, lacked "depth." Despite the place Puccini clearly occupies in the popular tradition of Verdi, his style of orchestration also shows the strong influence of Wagner, matching specific orchestral configurations and timbres to different dramatic moments. His operas contain an unparalleled manipulation of orchestral colors, with the orchestra often creating the scene's atmosphere.

The structures of Puccini's works are also noteworthy. While it is to an extent possible to divide his operas into arias or numbers (like Verdi's), his scores generally present a very strong sense of continuous flow and connectivity, perhaps another sign of Wagner's influence. Like Wagner, Puccini used leitmotifs to connote characters (or combinations of characters). This is apparent in Tosca, where the three chords which signal the beginning of the opera are used throughout to announce Scarpia. Several motifs are also linked to Mimi and the bohemians in La bohème and to Cio-Cio-San's eventual suicide in Butterfly. Unlike Wagner, though, Puccini's motifs are static: where Wagner's motifs develop into more complicated figures as the characters develop, Puccini's remain more or less identical throughout the opera (in this respect anticipating the themes of modern musical theatre).

Another distinctive quality in Puccini's works is the use of the voice in the style of speech: characters sing short phrases one after another as if they were talking to each other. Puccini is celebrated, on the other hand, for his melodic gift, and many of his melodies are both memorable and enduringly popular. These melodies are often made of sequences from the scale, a very distinctive example being Quando me'n vo' (Musetta's Waltz) from La bohème and E lucevan le stelle from Act III of Tosca. Today, it is rare not to find at least one Puccini aria included in an operatic singer's CD album or recital.

Unusual for operas written by Italian composers up until that time, many of Puccini’s operas are set outside Italy – in exotic places such as Japan (Madama Butterfly), gold-mining country in California (La fanciulla del West), Paris and the Riviera (La rondine), and China (Turandot).

Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Lloyd Schwartz summarized Puccini thus: "Is it possible for a work of art to seem both completely sincere in its intentions and at the same time counterfeit and manipulative? Puccini built a major career on these contradictions. But people care about him, even admire him, because he did it both so shamelessly and so skillfully. How can you complain about a composer whose music is so relentlessly memorable, even — maybe especially — at its most saccharine?"[3]

Music

Although Puccini is mainly known for his operas, he also wrote some other orchestral pieces, sacred music, chamber music and songs for voice and piano.

Puccini's operas

  • Le Villi, libretto by Ferdinando Fontana (in one act – premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme, 31 May 1884)
    • second version (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro Regio, 26 December 1884)
    • third version (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro alla Scala, 24 January 1885)
    • fourth version (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro dal Verme, 7 November 1889)
  • Edgar, libretto by Ferdinando Fontana (in four acts – premiered at the Teatro alla Scala, 21 April 1889)
    • second version (in four acts – premiered at the Teatro del Giglio, 5 September 1891)
    • third version (in three acts – premiered at the Teatro Comunale, 28 January 1892)
    • fourth version (in three acts – premiered at the Teatro Colón di Buenos Aires, 8 July 1905)
  • Manon Lescaut, libretto by Luigi Illica, Marco Praga and Domenico Oliva (premiered at the Teatro Regio, 1 February 1893)
    • second version (premiered at the Teatro Coccia, 21 December 1893)
  • La bohème, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (premiered at the Teatro Regio, 1 February 1896)
  • Tosca, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (premiered at the Teatro Costanzi, 14 January 1900)
  • Madama Butterfly, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro alla Scala, 17 February 1904)
    • second version (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro Grande di Brescia, 28 May 1904)
    • third version (premiered at Covent Garden, London 10 July 1905)
    • fourth version (premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, 28 December 1906)
    • fifth version (premiered at the Teatro Carcano, 9 December 1920)
  • La fanciulla del West, libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini (premiered at the Metropolitan, 10 December 1910)
    • second version (premiered at the Teatro alla Scala, 29 Decembre 1912)
  • La rondine, libretto by Giuseppe Adami (premiered at the Opéra of Monte Carlo, 27 March 1917)
    • second version (premiered at the Opéra of Monte Carlo, 10 April 1920)
    • third version (possible premier at the Teatro Verdi, 11 April 1924); orchestration of the third act completed in 1994 by Lorenzo Ferrero (premièred at Teatro Regio, 22 March 1994)
  • Il trittico (premiered at the Metropolitan, 14 December 1918)
Il tabarro, libretto by Giuseppe Adami
Suor Angelica, libretto by Giovacchino Forzano
Gianni Schicchi, libretto by Giovacchino Forzano

Puccini's other works and versions

(with dates of premieres and locations)

  • A te (c.1875)
  • Preludio a orchestra (1876)
  • Plaudite populi (Lucca, 1877)
  • Credo (Lucca, 1878)
  • Vexilla Regis (1878)
  • Messa a 4 voci con orchestra (Lucca, 1880) Published in 1951 as Messa di Gloria
  • Adagio in A major (1881)
  • Largo Adagetto in F major (c.1881-83)
  • Salve del ciel Regina (c.1882)
  • Mentìa l’avviso (c.1882)
  • Preludio Sinfonico in A major (Milan, 1882)
  • Fugues (c.1883)
  • Scherzo in D (1883)
  • Storiella d’amore (1883)
  • Capriccio Sinfonico (Milan, 1883)
  • Sole ed amore (1888)
  • Crisantemi (String Quartet, 1890, "Alla memoria di Amadeo di Savoia Duca d'Aosta")
  • Minuetto n.1 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "A.S.A.R. Vittoria Augusta di Borbone, Principessa di Capua")
  • Minuetto n.2 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "All'esimio violinista prof. Augusto Michelangeli")
  • Minuetto n.3 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "All'amico maestro Carlo Carignani")
  • Piccolo valzer (1894)
  • Avanti Urania! (1896)
  • Scossa elettrica (1896)
  • Inno a Diana (1897)
  • E l'uccellino (1899)
  • Terra e mare (1902)
  • Canto d’anime (1904)
  • Requiem (27 January 1905, Milan)
  • Casa mia, casa mia (1908)
  • Sogno d'or (1913)
  • Pezzo per pianoforte (1916)
  • Morire? (c.1917) - This song was transposed by a half step (into G-flat major) and set to different text in the 1st revision of his work La Rondine called "Parigi è la città dei desideri" which is sung by Ruggero in the 1st act. Besides the key and text changes, it is the exact music to the aria.
  • Inno a Roma (1 June 1919, Rome)

Centres for Puccini Studies

Founded in 1996 in Lucca, the Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini embraces a wide range of approaches to the study of Puccini's work.

In the USA, the American Center for Puccini Studies specializes in the presentation of unusual performing editions of composer's works and introduces many neglected or unknown Puccini pieces to the music loving public. It was founded in 2004 by a leading Puccini artist and scholar, Dr. Harry Dunstan.

Detailed information about both organizations exists on their websites.

Samples

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Quick Opera Facts 2007". OPERA America. 2007. http://www.operaamerica.org/pressroom/quickfacts2006.html. Retrieved 2007-04-23. 
  2. ^ Alain P. Dornic (1995). "An Operatic Survey". Opera Glass. http://opera.stanford.edu/misc/Dornic_survey.html. Retrieved 2007-04-23. 
  3. ^ "Lorca without Lorca". The Phoenix. October 30, 2007. http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid50274.aspx. Retrieved 2007-11-18. 

References

External links

Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Giacomo Puccini


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Misspellings: Puccini
Top
Home > Library > Literature & Language > Common Misspellings

Common misspelling(s) of Puccini

  • Pucini

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Fairy Tale Companion. The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales. Copyright © 2000, 2002, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Fine Arts Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.  Read more
Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved.
eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial.  Read more
Artist. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Actor. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Giacomo Puccini".  Read more
Answers Corporation Misspellings. © 1999-2009 by Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more