Puccini, Giacomo 1858-1924

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Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (December 22, 1858 – November 29, 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the history of the genre. Some of his melodies, such as O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi and Nessun Dorma from Turandot, have become recognized in modern culture. One of the few operatic composers to successully use both German and Italian techniques of opera, Puccini was, in Italian Opera, the only true successor of Giuseppe Verdi.

Puccini was born in Lucca , Italy into a family with a long history of music. After the death of his father when he was only five years old, he was sent to study with his uncle Fortunato Magi, who considered him to be a poor and undisciplined student. Later, he took the position of church organist and choir master, but it was not until he saw a performance of Verdi's Aida that he became inspired to be an opera composer. He and a friend walked an entire 18.5 miles (30 Kilometers) to see the performance in Pisa. In 1880, Puccini travelled to the Conservatory of Music in Milan to begin his career by studying composition with Amilcare Ponchielli.

In 1880, at the age of 21, Puccini composed the Messa that marks the culmination of his family's long association with church music in his native Lucca. The work anticipates Puccini's career as an operatic composer by offering glimpses of the dramatic power that he would soon unleash on the stage; the powerful arias for tenor and bass soloists are certainly more operatic than is usual in church music. The Messa, in its orchestration and drama, establishes a dialogue with Verdi's Requiem.

From 1880 to 1883 he studied at the Milan Conservatory under Amilcare Ponchielli and Antonio Bazzini. In 1882, Puccini entered a competition for a one-act opera. Although he did not win, Le Villi was later staged in 1884 at the Teatro dal Verme; it also caught the attention of Giulio Ricordi, head of G. Ricordi & Co. music publishers, who commissioned a second opera, Edgar (1889).

From 1891 on, Puccini passed more and more of his time at Torre del Lago, in the Tuscan countryside. In this place on the border of the Massaciuccoli lake, where he passed lots of time hunting, he found refuge from the crowded city. Later he built a villa and moved there definitively in 1900. It was to remain his home and workplace until the very last years of his life. He is buried in the villa's chapel.

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

* La bohème (1896) is considered one of his best works as well as one of the most romantic operas ever composed. It is arguably today's most popular opera.

* Tosca (1900) was arguably Puccini's first foray into musical verismo, the realistic depiction of life including, in this case, violence. The opera is generally considered of capital importance in the history of opera because it contains many high points.

* Madama Butterfly (1904) was greeted with great hostility (mostly orchestrated by his rivals) but, after some reworking, became another of his most successful operas.

Composition was slow after this. In 1903 Puccini was injured in a near-death automobile accident. In 1906, Giacosa died. 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. And in 1912, Puccini's editor, Giulio Ricordi, who had a very important role in the rising of his career, died.

Nonetheless, in 1910, Puccini completed La fanciulla del West, which he later on thought of as his most powerful opera, and, in 1917, finished the score of La rondine, a piece he reworked from an operetta he had attempted to compose only to find that his style and talent were incompatible with the genre.

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 or farce (Gianni Schicchi). Of the three, Gianni Schicchi is the most popular, and contains the aria O mio babbino caro, which is extremely popular and a favourite among opera fans.

A habitual chain smoker of cigarettes, 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 treatment called radiation therapy, which was being offered in Brussels, Belgium . Puccini and his wife never knew about the degree of serious of the cancer, as the news was only revealed to his son. Puccini died there on November 29, 1924 from complications from the treatment. Uncontrolled bleeding led to a heart attack one day after undergoing surgery. News of his death reached Rome 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 ordered the transfer of his father's remains to the chapel in his house at Torre del Lago where he still lies together with his wife and son. His death marked the end of opera as a popular art form. Turandot, his last opera was left unfinished. The last two scenes were completed by Franco Alfano. When the opera was premiered by Toscanini, in front of a sold out crowd with every prominent Italian in attendance (with the exception of Benito Mussolini), he had chosen not to perform the score by Alfano. The performance progressed to the last measures that Puccini himself completed and orchestrated, and at this point, the orchestra stopped, and the performers froze in position. Toscanini turned to the audience and said: "Here the opera finishes, because at this point the Maestro died". Only in 2001 an official new completion was made by Luciano Berio.

In terms of politics, Puccini was nearly invisible, unlike Wagner and Verdi. However, Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy at the time, claimed that Puccini requested for admission into the National Fascist Party in Italy . This is highly unlikely. There are no records or proof of any application given to the party by Puccini or any form of request by Puccini. As well, one can note that had Puccini asked for admission into the party, his close friend, Arturo Toscanini, who was extremely anti-fascist, would have surely scolded Puccini and wouldn't have been as friendly and warm to Puccini as he was. Mussolini probably made this claim to gain support for his party from the people.

Puccini's style has been one long avoided by musicologists, perhaps due to its complexity. His style of orchestration shows the strong influence of Wagner, as it is heavily integrated and dramatic, having the power and variety to move the plot as if it were a character. His operas contain an unparalleled manipulation of orchestral colors. The orchestra often characterizes the scene or setting's atmosphere. For example, the orchestra at the end of Madama Butterfly reflects the tragedy of Cio-Cio-San's love, the orchestra at the close of Act I of La Bohème describes the love of Rodolfo and Mimi, and the orchestra throughout Act II of Tosca depicts the tensions between Tosca and Scarpia, as well as tragedies (torture of Cavaradossi and Tosca's resort to murder) and Scarpia's evil. At the beginning of Act III of the same opera, Puccini even creates a sense of the atmosphere during dawn in a pastore. One can feel the sun rising, the rings of bells from churches and monasteries, and the activities of a young pastore. Madama Butterfly contains an effect similar to Tosca's dawn in a pastore; after the Intermezzo in Act II, one can hear the rising of the sun, the peace of the early morning, the chirping of birds, and most remarkably, Cio-Cio-San's excitement for the return of Pinkerton.

The structures of Puccini's works are also unique. It is somewhat possible to divide his operas into arias or numbers, like Verdi, but, for the most part, his operas give very strong sense of continuous flow and connectivity, like Wagner. As well, like Wagner, Puccini used leitmotifs to characterize characters. This was extremely apparent in Tosca, where the three chords which signaled the beginning of the opera were used throughout the opera to describe the character and presence of Scarpia. Several motives were also attached to Mimi and the Bohemians in La Bohème and Cio-Cio-San's eventual suicide in Madama Butterfly. Unlike Wagner, though, Puccini's motives are static- they sound identical throughout the opera. Wagner's motives develop into more complicated figures as the characters develop.

Another distinctive quality in Puccini's works is the use of the voice in style of speech. In his operas, characters sing short phrases one after another, as if they were talking to each other. However, of course, Puccini has many melodies in his operas, and they are very easy to recognize and remember. This is because Puccini's melodies are often conjunct melodies: melodies that are created through small jumps in the scale, like nursery rhymes. As well, Puccini's melodies are often made of sequences from the scale. Very distinctive examples of this are Quando me'n vo (Musseta's Waltz) from La Bohème and E lucevan le stelle from Act III of Tosca. It is a rarity not to find at least one Puccini aria in an operatic soprano or tenor single album/recital- the same can be said for perhaps only one other notable composer in opera: Giuseppe Verdi.