PUCCINI, GIACOMO

PUCCINI, GIACOMO (1858–1924), Italian operatic composer.

Giacomo Puccini's popular operas were long dismissed as "ear candy," in contrast to the work of contemporaries perceived to be more serious, such as Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner. Almost a century after his death, Puccini is now widely recognized as a meticulous musical craftsman of the first rank.

Born on 22 December in Lucca, the sixth child and first son of Michele Puccini and Albina Maggi, Puccini was heir to a family tradition of church musicians and composers. His father died on 23 January 1864, when Puccini was five years old. His father's job of maestro di cappella and organist in the parish church was held in trust for the boy until he was old enough to assume the office. At the time of his father's death he was the only male in a family of six females, until three months later when his brother Michele was born. Puccini would be a dedicated womanizer throughout his life, a characteristic that many critics see as influential in his musical career.

After he composed several pieces of religious music, he was admitted to the conservatory in Milan in autumn 1880. His first operatic effort was Le willis, a one-act "opera-ballet" ghost story, written for a competition that he failed to win (perhaps due to his illegible handwriting). The opera, expanded to two acts and its title changed to Le villi, was performed the following year, and its success won him a contract with Giulio Ricordi (of Ricordi and Sons), who would remain his publisher, friend, and sometime collaborator. In 1884 his strong-willed mother, Albina, died, and Puccini eloped with his pupil, a married woman, the equally strong-willed Elvira Gemignani. The couple, whose relationship was stormy, had one son, Antonio, and married in 1904, after the death of Gemignani's husband.

In the summer of 1891 Puccini moved to Torre del Lago, which would be his home for most of the rest of his life. His first enduring hit, Manon Lescaut (1893), based on the novel by Abbé Prévost, was an immediate sensation. By the end of 1893 Puccini set to work on an adaptation of Henri Murger's Scènes de la vie de Bohème, an episodic collection of sketches of love among the desperately poor "Bohemians" of early-nineteenth-century Paris. In Puccini's hands, Murger's stark tales become a paean to the bittersweet joys of youth. La Bohème (1896) would be the first of his trio of greatest hits (with Madama Butterfly and Tosca).

As early as spring of 1889 he had resolved to set Victorien Sardou's lurid melodrama La Tosca to music. It would be more than ten years before the project reached fruition in his powerful depiction of love and death in Napoleonic Rome, Tosca (1900).

The following year he turned to an "American" subject, based on David Belasco's dramatization of a Luther Long story. Madama Butterfly (1904) was the only one of his operas to meet with substantial initial hostility, but a revised, three-act version soon joined his other operas in the standard repertoire of opera houses around the world.

With fame and prosperity assured, he struggled for several years to find the right subject for his next opera. He considered several, including a version of Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame and an opera about the trial and execution of Marie-Antoinette, but finally settled on another Belasco play, Girl of the Golden West, which became his seventh opera, La fanciulla del west (1910).

In 1914, as the world stumbled into a war that he would substantially ignore, Puccini turned to La rondine. More of an operetta in the Viennese style than an opera, this proved to be the least popular of his mature works.

He had long considered composing a trilogy, and as early as 1915 he had begun work on the tragedy Il tabarro, which would become one of three one-act operas to make up his Trittico (1919). The other two are Suor Angelica (a romance) and Gianni Schicchi (a comedy).

puccini's operas

Le villi, libretto by Ferdinando Fontana. Premier: Turin, Teatro Regio, 26 December 1884. A one-act version had its premier in Milan, Teatro dal Verme, 31 May 1884.

Edgar, libretto by Ferdinando Fontana. Premier: Milan, La Scala, 21 April 1889.

Manon Lescaut, libretto by Marco Praga, Domenico Oliva, Luigi Illica, and Giuseppe Giacosa. Premier: Turin, Teatro Reggio, 1 February 1893.

La Bohème, libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Premier: Turin, Teatro Reggio, 1 February 1896.

Tosca, libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Premier: Rome, Teatro Costanzi, 14 January 1900.

Madama Butterfly, libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Premier: Milan, La Scala, 17 February 1904; a revised version had its premier in Brescia, Teatro Grande, 28 May 1904.

La fanciulla del west, libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangari. Premier: New York, Metropolitan Opera House, 10 December 1910.

La rondine, libretto by Giuseppe Adami. Premier: Monte Carlo, Monte Carlo Opera, 27 March 1917.

Il trittico: Il tabarro, libretto by Giuseppe Adami; Suor Angelica, libretto by Giovacchino Foranza; Gianni Schicchi, libretto by Giovacchino Foranza. Premier: New York, Metropolitan Opera House, 14 December 1918.

Turandot, libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni; completed after Puccini's death by Franco Alfano. Premier: Milan, La Scala, 25 April 1926.

His last—and many believe his greatest—opera, Turandot, first appears in his letters early in 1920; it was complete except for the last scene when the composer died of throat cancer, on 29 November 1924.

Puccini's operas are characterized by strong melodic lines, meticulous musical craftsmanship, and plots that usually include a sadomasochistic undercurrent typical of the fin de siècle. His operas are much beloved by audiences and figure prominently in any list of the most popular operas of all time.

See alsoFin de Siècle; Music; Opera; Verdi, Giuseppe; Wagner, Richard.

bibliography

Ashbrook, William. The Operas of Puccini. New York, 1968. Based on his study of the autograph scores as well as the literary sources of the operas.

Carner, Mosco. Puccini: A Critical Biography. 1st U.S. ed. New York, 1959. Still the standard biography of the composer, presenting a complete if sometimes excessively Freudian interpretation of his life and work.

Gara, Eugenio. Carteggi pucciniani. Milan, 1958. The most complete collection of Puccini papers, including more than nine hundred items to, from, and about Puccini.

Hopkinson, Cecil. A Bibliograpy of the Works of Giacomo Puccini, 1858–1924. New York, 1968. A detailed list of published Puccini scores, including nonoperatic works.

Marek, George Richard. Puccini. London, 1952. An earlier, and still valuable, biography.

Weaver, William, and Simonetta Puccini, eds. The Puccini Companion. New York, 1994. Essays on all things Puccinian, including two valuable bibliographic essays.

Susan Vandiver Nicassio