Born in the Italian town of Lucca into л family with a strong
musical tradition. Puccini was encouraged to develop an interest
in music from a very early age. His father started him playing the
organ, reportedly by placing shiny coins on the keyboard which
tempted the young boy to grasp them and thus push the keys down.
At school he showed little promise or dedication, preferring the
company of friends and indulging a taste for practical jokes that
were often both complicated and theatrical.
After moving to the local music conservatoire, the Pacini
Institute, Puccini's academic record began to improve, and by the
age of 16 he was showing an increasing interest in composing and
improvising at the organ. In 1876 he walked for seven hours to the
town of Pisa in order to attend a performance of Verdi's Aida,
despite not possessing the price of a ticket. The opera awoke
in Puccini a sense of the power of
theatrical music, and with the help of a scholarship endowed by
none other than the queen of Italy, he was able to enrol at the
Milan Conservatoire in 1880, at that time the country's biggest
and most prestigious music college.
Puccini's first opera, Le villi, was produced in 1884,
but it was not until Manon Lescaut in 1893 that he had a
major success. This work set the tone for his celebrated later
works by concentrating on the psychology of its female heroine. It
was followed in 1896 by one of Puccini's best-loved works, La
boheme (1896), produced in Turin. This tale of the exploits of
aspiring artists in the bohemian world of mid-nineteenth-century
Paris reflects Puccini's experiences in Milan, and subtly marries
sentiment with comedy and tragedy. These qualities, along with its
masterly characterization and what Debussy called the "sheer verve
of the music", have guaranteed its place over the years as one of
the most popular of operas.
The string of successes continued with his next two operas,
Tosca (1900) and
Madama Butterfly (1904). Tosca was first performed in Rome in an
atmosphere of high tension. The work's anti-authoritarian stance
and disrespectful portrait of the clergy fuelled rumours that a
bomb was to be thrown. The premiere passed peacefully, however,
and Tosca achieved great success with the public who
enjoyed the melodramatic, even sadistic plot, and the composer's
unerring sense of timing. In Butterfly, which
rivals La Boheme and Tosca in popularity, Puccini
achieved his most successful psychological characterization. The
part of the heroine — the Japanese geisha who kills herself for
love of the callous American Lieutenant Pinkerton — requires
exceptional vocal and acting skill from the soprano singing the
title role.
Puccini's next opera was La fanciulla del West (The girl
of the Golden West), first produced in New York in 1910. A raw,
rip-roaring drama set in the American Wild West, it was a triumphant success under the guidance of
conductor Arturo Toscanini. La fanciulla was followed by
La rondine (The swallow) and a trio of varied one-act operas —
Il tabarro (The overcoat), Suor Angelica (Sister
Angelica) and Gianni Schicchi, known
collectively as Il trittico — before the composer started
work on his final work, Turandot.
Puccini died of cancer before he was able to complete this
work, the gruesome story of the wooing of Turandot, Princess of
Peking, by an unknown prince who wins her through his courage and
persistence. It is performed in a version completed by Franco
Alfano. In Turandot, as in all the composer's operas, drama
laden with erotic passion, tenderness, pathos, and despair is
combined with music of breathtaking melodic invention. The mixture
has ensured that the works of Puccini, the true successor to
Verdi, continue to occupy a place at the centre of the operatic
repertoire.
