Giacomo Puccini
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Giacomo Puccini | ||
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Background information | ||
Birth name | Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini | |
Born | December 22, 1858 Lucca, Italy ![]() |
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Died | November 29, 1924 Brussels, Belgium |
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Genre(s) | Romantic | |
Occupation(s) | Composer |
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (December 22, 1858 – November 29, 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire.[1] Some of his melodies, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi and "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot, have become part of modern culture. One of the few operatic composers to successfully use both German and Italian techniques of opera, Puccini is regarded as the successor to Giuseppe Verdi.
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[edit] Early life
Puccini was born in Lucca in Tuscany, Italy into a family with five generations of musical history behind them. His father died when he was five years old, and 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 in Lucca, 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 18.5 miles (30 kilometers) to see the performance in Pisa.
In 1880, with the help of a relative and a grant, Puccini enrolled in the Milan Conservatory to study composition with Amilcare Ponchielli and Antonio Bazzini. In the same year, at the age of 21, he composed the Messa, which marks the culmination of his family's long association with church music in his native Lucca. Although Puccini himself correctly titled the work a Messa, referring to a setting of the full Catholic Mass, today the work is popularly known as his Messa di Gloria, a name that technically refers to a setting of only the first two prayers of the Mass, the Kyrie and the Gloria, while omitting the Credo, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei. Puccini's work is, in fact, a Messa.
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 and, in its orchestration and dramatic power, the Messa compares interestingly with Verdi's Requiem.
While studying at the Conservatory, Puccini obtained a libretto from Ferdinando Fontano and entered a competition for a one-act opera in 1882. Although he did not win, Le Villi was later staged in 1884 at the Teatro dal Verme and it caught the attention of Giulio Ricordi, head of G. Ricordi & Co. music publishers, who commissioned a second opera, Edgar, in 1889. Puccini and Fontana were to become life-long friends.
[edit] Puccini at Torre del Lago
From 1891 onwards, Puccini spent more of his time at Torre del Lago, a small community about fifteen miles from Lucca situated between the Tyrrhenian Sea and Lake Massaciuccoli, just south of Viareggio. While renting a house there, he spent time hunting but regularly visited Lucca. By 1900 he had acquired land and built a villa on the lake, now known as the "Villa Museo Puccini". He lived there until 1921 when pollution produced by peat works on the lake forced him to move to Viareggio, a few kilometres north. After his death, a mausoleum was created in the Villa Puccini and the composer is buried there in the chapel, along with his wife and son who died later.
The "Villa Museo Puccini" is presently owned by his granddaughter, Simonetta Puccini, and is open to the public.
![Original poster for Puccini's Tosca](../../../upload/shared/thumb/6/66/Puccini_Tosca.jpg/180px-Puccini_Tosca.jpg)
[edit] Operas written at Torre del Lago
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. These were:
- 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 verismo, the realistic depiction of many facets of real life including violence. The opera is generally considered of major importance in the history of opera because of its many significant features.
- Madama Butterfly (1904) was initially greeted with great hostility (mostly orchestrated by his rivals) but, after some reworking, became another of his most successful operas.
After 1904, compositions were less frequent. Following his passion for driving fast cars, Puccini was nearly killed in a major accident in 1903. In 1906 Giacosa died and, 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. Finally, in 1912, the death of Giulio Ricordi, Puccini’s editor and publisher, ended a productive period of his career.
However, Puccini completed La fanciulla del West in 1910 and finished the score of La rondine in 1917, 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 (Gianni Schicchi). Of the three, Gianni Schicchi has remained the most popular, containing the popular O mio babbino caro.
[edit] The final years
![Giacomo Puccini with conductor Arturo Toscanini](../../../upload/5/5f/Puccini-Toscanini.jpg)
A habitual cigarette chain smoker, 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 radiation therapy treatment, which was being offered in Brussels, Belgium. Puccini and his wife never knew how serious the cancer was, 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 the day after 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 arranged for the transfer of his father's remains to a specially-created chapel inside the Puccini villa at Torre del Lago.
Turandot, his final opera, was left unfinished and the last two scenes were completed by Franco Alfano based on the composer's sketches. When Arturo Toscanini conducted the premiere performance in April 1926, (in front of a sold-out crowd with every prominent Italian with the exception of Benito Mussolini in attendance), he had chosen not to perform Alfano's portion of the score. The performance reached the point where Puccini had completed the score, at which time Toscanani stopped the orchestra. The conductor turned to the audience and said: "Here the opera finishes, because at this point the Maestro died". (Some record that he said, more poetically, “Here the Maestro laid down his pen”).
In 2001 an official new ending was composed by Luciano Berio from original sketches, but this finale is performed infrequently.
[edit] Politics
Unlike Wagner and Verdi, Puccini did not appear to be active in the politics of his day. However, Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy at the time, claimed that Puccini applied for admission to the National Fascist Party. This appears to be highly unlikely. There appear to be no records or proof of any application given to the party by Puccini. In addition, it can be noted that had Puccini done so, his close friend, Arturo Toscanini, (an extreme anti-fascist), would have sufficiently influenced Puccini, and would not have been as friendly to the composer as he was.
[edit] Style
Puccini's style has been one long avoided by musicologists; this avoidance can perhaps be attributed to the perception that his work, with its emphasis on melody and evident popular appeal, lacked "seriousness" (a similar prejudice beset Rachmaninoff during his lifetime). Despite the place Puccini clearly occupies in the popular tradition of Verdi, his style of orchestration also shows the strong influence of Wagner, matching specific orchestral configurations and timbres to different dramatic moments. His operas contain an unparalleled manipulation of orchestral colors, with the orchestra often creating the scene’s atmosphere.
The structures of Puccini's works are also noteworthy. While it is to an extent possible to divide his operas into arias or numbers (like Verdi's), his scores generally present a very strong sense of continuous flow and connectivity, perhaps another sign of Wagner’s influence. Like Wagner, Puccini used leitmotifs to connote characters (or combinations of characters). This is apparent in Tosca, where the three chords which signal the beginning of the opera are used throughout to announce Scarpia. Several motifs are also linked to Mimi and the Bohemians in La Bohème and to Cio-Cio-San's eventual suicide in Butterfly. Unlike Wagner, though, Puccini's motifs are static: where Wagner's motifs develop into more complicated figures as the characters develop, Puccini's remain more or less identical throughout the opera (in this respect anticipating the themes of modern musical theatre).
Another distinctive quality in Puccini's works is the use of the voice in the style of speech: characters sing short phrases one after another, as if they were talking to each other. Puccini is celebrated, on the other hand, for his melodic gift, and many of his melodies are both memorable and enduringly popular. These melodies are often made of sequences from the scale, a very distinctive example being Quando me'n vo' (Musetta's Waltz) from La Bohème and E lucevan le stelle from Act III of Tosca. Today, it is rare not to find at least one Puccini aria included in an operatic singer's CD album or recital.
[edit] Music
Although Puccini is mainly known for his operas, he also wrote some orchestral pieces, sacred music, chamber music and songs for voice and piano.
[edit] Puccini's operas
![Puccini's statue in the piazza close to his birthplace in his hometown of Lucca.](../../../upload/shared/thumb/7/72/Puccini_statue.jpg/200px-Puccini_statue.jpg)
- Le Villi, 1884.
- Edgar, 1889.
- Manon Lescaut, 1893.
- La bohème, 1896.
- Tosca, 1900.
- Madama Butterfly, 1904.
- La fanciulla del West, 1910.
- La rondine, 1917.
- Il Trittico: Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, 1918.
- Turandot, left unfinished in 1924 by the time of the composer's death, it was premiered in 1926 in a version completed by Franco Alfano.
[edit] Puccini's works and versions
(with dates of premieres and locations)
- Messa (wrongly known as Messa di Gloria, Mass, Lucca, 1880)
- Preludio Sinfonico in A major (Milan, 1882)
- Capriccio Sinfonico (Milan, 1883)
- Le Villi (31-May-1884, Teatro dal Verme, Milan)
- Le Villi [rev] (26-Dec-1884, Teatro Regio di Torino)
- Edgar (21-Apr-1889, Teatro alla Scala, Milan - 4 acts)
- Crisantemi (String Quartet, 1890, "Alla memoria di Amadeo di Savoia Duca d'Aosta")
- Edgar [rev] (5-Sep-1891, Teatro del Giglio, Lucca - 4 acts)
- Minuetto n.1 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "A.S.A.R. Vittoria Augusta di Borbone, Principessa di Capua")
- Minuetto n.2 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "All'esimio violinista prof. Augusto Michelangeli")
- Minuetto n.3 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "All'amico maestro Carlo Carignani")
- Edgar [rev 2] (28-Feb-1892, Teatro Comunale, Ferrara - 3 acts)
- Manon Lescaut (1-Feb-1893, Teatro Regio di Torino)
- La bohème (1-Feb-1896, Teatro Regio, Turin)
- Tosca (14-Jan-1900, Teatro Costanzi, Rome)
- Madama Butterfly (17-Feb-1904, Teatro alla Scala, Milan)
- Madama Butterfly [rev] (28-May-1904, Teatro Grande, Brescia)
- Edgar [rev 3] (8-Jun-1905, Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires - 3 acts)
- Madama Butterfly [rev 2] (10-July-1905, Royal Opera House,Covent Garden, London)
- Madama Butterfly [rev 3] (28-Dec-1905, Opéra Comique, Paris)
- La fanciulla del West (10-Dec-1910, Metropolitan Opera, New York)
- La rondine (27-Mar-1917, Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Monte Carlo)
- Il trittico (14-Dec-1918, Metropolitan Opera, New York):
- Il tabarro
- Suor Angelica
- Gianni Schicchi
- Turandot (25-Apr-1926, Teatro alla Scala, Milan)
[edit] Media
- Preludio Sinfonico (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- Problems playing the files? See media help.
- Giacomo Puccini "E lucevan le stelle" from "Tosca", sung by Romeo Berti, 1906
- Giacomo Puccini, "Boheme"
[edit] See also
Festival Puccini; the annual Festival of Puccini's operas in Torre del Lago.
[edit] Books
Puccini : a biography (William Weaver, Mary Jane Phillips-Matz), Northeastern University Press [2002]
[edit] References
- ^ Source: OPERA America, "Most Frequently Produced Operas" in the 2005/2006 season shows "Madama Butterfly", "Tosca" and "La Bohème" appearing with "The Magic Flute", "The Marriage of Figaro", "Carmen", "The Barber of Seville", "La traviata", "Rigoletto", and "Don Giovanni" at http://www.operaamerica.org/pressroom/quickfacts2006.html Another survey in 1995 shows "Tosca" as Number 1 and "La boheme" as No.2 (http://opera.stanford.edu/misc/Dornic_survey.html)
- Lynn, Karyl Charna, Italian Opera Houses and Festivals, Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2005. ISBN 0-8108-5359-0
- Puccini, Simonetta, (ed.), Giacomo Puccini in Torre del Lago, Viareggio, Tuscany: Friends of Giacomo Puccini's Houses Association, 2006.
[edit] External links
- http://www.bohemianopera.com/puccini.htm
- http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/puccini.html
- http://www.r-ds.com/opera/pucciniana/
- http://www.operapaedia.org/Home.aspx
- Centro Studi di Giacomo Puccini
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, Giacomo Puccini
- Puccini cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
- Free scores by Giacomo Puccini in the Werner Icking Music Archive
- Manon Lescaut MP3 Creative Commons Recording
- Puccini's music in movies
- Free MP3 Puccini's operas
- WorldCat Identities page for 'Puccini, Giacomo 1858-1924'
- Free scores by Giacomo Puccini at the International Music Score Library Project (Public domain)
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