Giacomo Puccini

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Born: 22 December 1858, Lucca
Died: 29 November 1924, Brussels

Life

When Puccini was a boy he was a chorister, and later organist and choir master in his home town of Lucca. A performance of Verdi’s Aida in Pisa in 1876 inspired him to thoughts of composing opera and he went to study at the Milan Conservatory in 1880. While still a student Puccini entered his Le villi into a competition for a one-act opera which he failed to win but which, in a later two-act version, impressed the publisher Giulio Ricordi enough for him to arrange a production. This was the start of Puccini’s lifelong association with the publishing house of Ricordi.

Puccini’s second opera, Edgar, was not well received but Ricordi continued his support and the third, Manon Lescaut, was a success from its first performance in Turin in 1893. It marked Puccini’s first collaboration with the librettists Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, who he went on to work with on La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly.

Success allowed Puccini to indulge in his passion for driving fast cars (he nearly killed himself in a car accident in 1903) and hunting, both of which pursuits he followed from his home in Torre del Lago, near Viareggio. His affair with the already-married Elvira Gemignani resulted in a son, Antonio, born in 1896. Puccini and Elvira eventually married but scandal was unleashed again when, in 1909, their maidservant, Doria Manfredi, committed suicide. Elvira had falsely accused her of having an affair with her husband and the resulting court case and publicity affected Puccini deeply.

There was a long gap before Puccini produced La fanciulla del West, based on a story set in the California gold rush and given its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1910. New York also saw the first performances of Puccini’s ‘trittico’ operas – Il tabarro, Gianni Schicchi and Suor Angelica – in 1918.

An earlier foray into operetta with La rondine, written for Vienna, but first performed in Monte Carlo in 1917, had a mixed reception. Puccini’s last opera, Turandot, was never completed. An habitual cigar smoker, Puccini was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1923. He underwent experimental radiation therapy at a clinic in Brussels but died of heart failure after surgery, in 1924. Toscanini conducted the premiere performance of Turandot at La Scala, Milan in 1926. Stopping the orchestra after the final bars written by Puccini, it is reported that he turned to the audience and said ‘Here the opera finishes, because at this point the Maestro laid down his pen.’

Henrietta Bredin

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