Composer
Giacomo Puccini
Italian opera's last great Romantic melodist, writing straight through the turn of the century.
Giacomo Puccini picked up the Italian opera tradition that Verdi had dominated and carried it into the 20th century, writing some of the genre's most enduringly popular works - La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, and Tosca remain fixtures of opera houses worldwide, prized for melodies that land with almost immediate emotional force.
Life in brief
Puccini was born in 1858 in Lucca, in Tuscany, into a family that had supplied the town's church musicians for generations, and he was expected to follow them. Instead, as a teenager he reportedly walked some twenty miles to Pisa to see a performance of Verdi's Aida - and decided to write operas. He studied at the Milan Conservatory and was taken up by the powerful publisher Giulio Ricordi, who backed him through early struggles.
Manon Lescaut (1893) was his breakthrough, and La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904) made him the most successful opera composer in the world. Not every premiere went smoothly: Madama Butterfly was hissed off the stage at La Scala on its first night, then revised and relaunched to triumph a few months later. Success brought wealth, a villa on the lake at Torre del Lago, and a passion for hunting and fast cars.
His later works ranged widely, from the American "Wild West" opera La fanciulla del West, premiered at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1910, to the triple bill Il trittico, which includes the comedy Gianni Schicchi. He died in Brussels in 1924, after treatment for throat cancer, leaving Turandot unfinished.
Music and style
Puccini's operas are built on ravishing, soaring melody, but he was also a master of the theater, with a superb sense of pace and atmosphere. His orchestration is rich and modern - he admired Debussy and Wagner - and he often weaves recurring themes through a score to connect characters and emotions. He's associated with verismo ("realism"), the movement that put ordinary people and raw emotion on the operatic stage, and his heroines - often fragile young women destroyed by love - are among the most famous roles in opera.
Key works
- La Bohème (1896) - following young bohemian artists in Paris, it is often recommended as a first opera for exactly that directness.
- Tosca (1900) - a political thriller set in Rome, with the aria "Vissi d'arte."
- Madama Butterfly (1904) - a Japanese bride abandoned by an American naval officer, with the aria "Un bel dì."
- Gianni Schicchi (1918) - a one-act comedy with the beloved aria "O mio babbino caro."
- Turandot (1926) - his final work, left incomplete at his death and finished by Franco Alfano using his sketches - a fitting echo of Mozart's own unfinished Requiem over a century earlier. It contains "Nessun dorma," one of the most famous tenor arias ever written. At the premiere, the conductor Arturo Toscanini laid down his baton at the point where Puccini's music stopped.
Legacy
Puccini's melodic instincts and orchestration influenced film composers directly, and his work is frequently cited as a bridge between 19th-century Italian Romanticism and the emotionally direct scoring that later powered film music. His operas are among the most performed in the world, and his arias have crossed over into pop culture - Luciano Pavarotti's recording of "Nessun dorma" reached number two in the British pop charts after it became the theme of the BBC's 1990 World Cup coverage.
Where to start listening: "Nessun dorma" from Turandot is the most famous single aria in his output; La Bohème is the friendliest full opera to start with. "O mio babbino caro" is two minutes of pure Puccini melody.