Giacomo Puccini - Biography
Giacomo Puccini the celebrated composer of Italian Opera was born on December 22nd 1858 in Lucca in Northern Italy and died in Brussels on November 29th 1924. Puccini came from a well known family of musicians including his father Michele who died when Giacomo was only five. Initially as a boy he showed a reluctance to follow the family tradition. His studies with his uncle did not go well. Puccini good looking and charming always had a problem with discipline. He eventually acquired enough knowledge to become a church organist in Lucca at the age of seventeen. His life changed when a year later he walked to Pisa a distance of twenty miles to see a performance of Verdi’s Aida which inspired him to become an opera composer. His youthful works mainly consisted of sacred choral music that he composed for his church choir the best known of which is the Messa di Gloria .When Puccini was 21 he enrolled at the Milan Conservatory for additional study where he studied under the well known composer of La Giaconda Ponchielli. For his graduation exercise he wrote an orchestral work Capriccio Sinfonica (which has been unearthed, recorded and is a fine piece). Puccini in 1882 entered a competition with a one act opera Le Villi which did not win the competition but brought him to the attention of Giulio Ricordi the head of house of Ricordi the most important of Italian publishers. Le Villi was eventually performed in 1884. Puccini was commissioned to write his first full scale opera Edgar by Ricordi in 1889. Both Le Villi and Edgar are only on the periphery of the repertoire and if Puccini had died at 31 the same age as Schubert he would be only a footnote in musical history.
Puccini in 1891 moved from Lucca to a nearby village Torre Del Lago where he was to live for the balance of his life. His first great opera was written in 1893 Manon Lescaut. The libretto which is based on the French novel by Abbey Prevost was the first of a four written for him by the team of Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. There was already a famous opera of Manon written by the French composer Massenet ten years previously but Puccini’s became a great success throughout Italy. Puccini three years later wrote what may be the most popular opera ever written La Boehme. The opera was premiered in Teatro di Regio in Turin conducted by a young Arturo Toscanini who was not quite 29. The story of the Parisian Bohemians of the 1830’s became a great hit around the world. The wealth he accumulated from Boheme enabled him to build a large Villa in Torre Del Lago where he lived with his temperamental and jealous wife Elvira. He was also an early and avid lover of fine cars (a serious accident in 1903 nearly took his life).
On January 1900 Puccini was to introduce his next opera in Rome that was to become another great hit Tosca based on the French play by Sardou written for Sarah Bernhardt. The opera which takes place in the Rome of a 100 years earlier is a tight melodrama built around the love of Tosca for a painter Cavaradossi who is a political revolutionary and both are manipulated by the cruel Roman police chief Scarpia.
Puccini’s next mega hit was to have a much more difficult entry into the world Madama Butterfly on February 17th 1904 at La Scala. The opera was initially in two very long acts. The plot taken from American playwright and theatre magnet David Belasco’s play about the tragic seduction of a Japanese girl by an American Naval Officer was hooted at. The notoriously difficult Scala audience ridiculed the first Butterfly Rosina Storchio was rumored to be Toscanini’s mistress when Butterfly appeared on stage with her little boy the audience howled ’Toscanini’s bambino’. Puccini was crushed by the failure but tightened the score and made it into a three act opera, The new version was premiered in Brescia on May 28th 1904 where it had great success and was to go on to triumph in all the theatres of the world.
Puccini was to go to the Metropolitan Opera in 1907 where he was to supervise the American premiere of Madama Butterfly sung by the beautiful Geraldine Farrar and his favorite tenor Caruso. According to Farrar in her memoirs, Puccini’s romantic advances were rejected. It can’t be emphasized enough how the early acoustic recordings on 78’s by stars like Caruso brought quick worldwide fame to Puccini. The next few were difficult ones, his librettist Giacosa died and his wife in 1909 falsely accused their maid of having an affair with him. The young lady Dora Manfredi was hounded by Elvira and committed suicide. The autopsy confirmed Manfriedi’s virginity Elvira was nearly sent to jail and Puccini had to pay a huge settlement.
Puccini’s old friend Toscanini went to the Metropolitan in 1908 along with La Scala’s managing director Gatti- Casazza who was now to manage the Met one of their first acts was to commission Puccini to write an opera for the 1910 season. The opera was to be based another Belasco play The Girl of the Golden West. The plot about California Gold Rush miners is more like a silent film western then an opera. The premiere was to star Emmy Destinn in the soprano lead and Caruso in the male lead. Even though the plot is silly there is a lot of superb music some of which shows the surprising influence of Debussy.
Puccini enjoying his wealth and leisure and probably finding it more difficult to be musically inspired wrote fewer operas in the remaining fifteen years of his life. An operetta that was intended for Vienna La Rondine but could not be performed there because Italy entered World War One on the side of the allies in 1916 against Austria and Germany had a subdued premiere in Monte Carlo on March of 1917. The next year he was to present his next opera Il Trittico. This work is actually three different one act operas. The first is a powerful melodrama Il Tabarro with a plot of lust, jealousy and murder, the second Suor Angelica the sad tale of young women who was committed to a nunnery after she gave birth to a child out of wedlock; the third Gianni Schicchi is comic and based on episode from Dante. Trittico was slow to enter the repertoire but since the 1950’s is widely performed.
Puccini in the 1920’s became fascinated by the 18th Century playwright Gozzi’s “Chinese” play about a cruel Empress Turandot who beheads all her suitors who can’t answer her riddles. Puccini worked feverishly on the score but was having difficulty writing the final love duet between Turandot and the Prince Calaf who melts her icy heart (with famed aria Nessun Dorma that the Three Tenors made wildly popular). In 1924 Puccini a chain smoker developed throat cancer the doctors didn’t tell him it was terminal, they tried experimental radiation treatment in Brussels but the strain cause a heart attack and he died on November 29th 1924. Turandot was unfinished and the opera finale was completed from sketches by Franco Alfano. Toscanini led the premiere at La Scala and laid down his baton at the point where Puccini stopped composing, turned to the audience and said ‘here the Maestro laid down his pen’.
Puccini from the midpoint of his career on was one of the most famous composers who ever lived. Critics of an intellectual bent particularly German have derided the sentimental plots what they felt was cheap salon music. The music and the stories have never failed to move the vast majority of listeners. His heroines fragile like Mimi and Butterfly or heroic ones like Tosca and Turandot have proved to be especially fascinating. While popular as ever with the general public Puccini has now moved up greatly in critical acclaim in the last forty years. Puccini has had many magnificent recordings done by such greats as Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Renata Scotto, Victoria de los Angeles, Mirella Freni just to name a few, We even have a recording of Toscanini conducting Boheme fifty years after its premiere.
