Giacomo Puccini
“Almighty God touched me with his little finger and said, ‘Write for the theater. Mind you, only for the theater.’”
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Those beside him ⏳🌊
- TeacherCarlo Angeloni
At the Pacini music school in Lucca, he read opera scores with him and awakened him to music for the stage.
- TeacherAmilcare Ponchielli
His teacher at the Milan Conservatory, who connected him with the librettist of his first opera, “Le Villi.”
- FriendshipPietro Mascagni
A fellow student who shared a room and poverty with him in Milan, and who later became his colleague and rival in the verismo era.
- PatronageGiulio Ricordi
The publisher and adviser who stood by him, paying his living expenses even after the failure of Edgar.
- FamilyElvira Bonturi
His lifelong companion, who became his wife after 18 years of living together; their jealousy and conflict ran as deep as their love.
- RivalryRuggero Leoncavallo
He lent a hand with the libretto of Manon Lescaut, but they parted ways over La bohème, drawn from the same source.
I. Fifth generation in Lucca · 1858–1880 (age 0–22)
(Lineage) He was born in December 1858 in Lucca, in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (today's Italy). His full name was Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini. Ever since his great-great-grandfather Giacomo in the early 18th century, the family had overseen the music of Lucca's Cathedral of San Martino for four generations, and he was the fifth. His father, Michele, and his mother, Albina Magi, had several daughters, and he was the first son born among them. (Loss) He was five when his father died in January 1864. The city authorities resolved to hold the post of cathedral maestro di cappella until he came of age, entrusting it in the meantime to his maternal uncle, Fortunato Magi. That summer the youngest child, Michele, was born after his father's death. Raising the children on a meager pension, his mother never wavered in her resolve that her eldest son, at least, would become a musician. (Drifting) His first lessons with his uncle did not go smoothly. Magi is said to have considered his nephew a pupil without talent. From about the age of ten he sang in the choir and played the organ at nearby churches to help support the household, but his schoolwork was poor. Only when he met Carlo Angeloni at the Istituto Musicale Pacini and read through opera scores with him did his heart truly turn to music. (Aida) In March 1876 he and his friends walked all the way to Pisa to see Verdi's Aida. He later recalled that the performance opened a window onto music for him. Opera, rather than the path of a church organist, became his goal. His Mass for 4 voices, written as his graduation piece in 1880, was premiered on the feast day of his hometown church and warmly received. Yet the breath of the theater already ran all through the Mass, and his gaze was turned toward Milan.
Premiered on the feast day of his hometown church as his graduation piece from the music school, the work already carries within the Mass the dramatic instinct of a young man who had begun to dream of opera after seeing Aida.
- The Gloria is the longest section of the entire Mass, swelling like a festival as a bright, march-like theme returns again and again. Its vitality, closer to an operatic chorus than to church music, gave rise to the work's present-day nickname.
- The 'Cum Sancto Spiritu' at the end of the Gloria is a fugue (a form in which the voices chase one another as in a round), with several voices taking up the same theme in turn. The passage shows off the craft he honed at the music school, so follow the moment each voice enters.
- The 'Crucifixus' ('he was crucified') of the Credo is sung by a solo baritone in a low, dark tone. It is worth hearing against the bright chorus of the Resurrection that follows at once.
- The melody of the Agnus Dei was reused 13 years later as the madrigal (a secular song for several voices) in Act 2 of Manon Lescaut. Hear the two side by side and you can see his habit of carrying over melodies he had saved.
II. A rented room in Milan · 1880–1884 (age 22–26)
(Scholarship) Getting to the Milan Conservatory took money. His mother petitioned Queen Margherita and won a scholarship for one year, and his great-uncle Nicolao Cerù, a physician, made up the rest. Entering in the autumn of 1880, he studied with Antonio Bazzini and with Amilcare Ponchielli, the composer of La Gioconda. (Want) His student years were poor ones. His letters to his mother told of getting by on bean soup and herring and of overdue rent. He shared a room with Pietro Mascagni of Livorno, who entered in 1882, and stories survive of the two secretly cooking behind the wardrobe, which the landlord had forbidden, and dodging their creditors. Cigarettes and café chatter became lifelong habits from this time on. (Le Villi) When his 1883 graduation piece, the Capriccio sinfonico, was well received, Ponchielli introduced him to the librettist Ferdinando Fontana. Together they entered Le Villi in the publisher Sonzogno's competition for one-act operas but won nothing. Arrigo Boito and others, however, raised the funds to stage it at the Teatro Dal Verme in May 1884, and the performance was a success. The publisher Giulio Ricordi bought the rights and commissioned a new opera. In a letter that year Verdi wrote that he heard much good of a young man named Puccini, yet added that the symphonic element seemed to predominate, and that this called for caution. (Mother) The joy was brief. In July 1884 his mother, Albina, died. For a long time he regarded her death as his deepest wound. Around the same time he fell in love with Elvira Bonturi, a married woman who was taking music lessons from him in Lucca. Elvira was the wife of the merchant Narciso Gemignani, and their affair became a great scandal in the small hometown.
III. Failure, debt, and Manon · 1884–1893 (age 26–35)
(Together) In 1886 Elvira left her husband and came to him, bringing her daughter Fosca. That December their son Antonio was born in Monza. In an age when divorce was not permitted, the two could not marry, and their families did not welcome the relationship either. For more than 17 years afterward they lived together without being legally bound. (Edgar) Edgar, the second opera Ricordi commissioned, met a lukewarm reception at La Scala in 1889. Even within the firm there was talk of giving up on him, but Ricordi stood by him, paying him a monthly allowance. That same year Ricordi sent him to Bayreuth to decide what to cut from Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for its production at La Scala. Wagner's handling of the orchestra and the leitmotif left a lasting mark on his music. (Hardship) His brother Michele, who had left for Argentina in 1889, died of yellow fever in Rio de Janeiro in 1891. He himself was still living on advances from Ricordi. In 1890 his old roommate Mascagni became famous overnight with Cavalleria rusticana, setting off the wave of verismo that portrayed the raw passions of ordinary people. That same year he wrote the string quartet Crisantemi on the death of the Duke of Aosta; its mourning melody would later return in the final act of Manon Lescaut. (Manon) In 1891 he settled in Torre del Lago, a village on the shore of Lake Massaciuccoli near Lucca, and finished Manon Lescaut between bouts of hunting and fishing. Five or more people, Leoncavallo among them, had a hand in the libretto. When it was pointed out that Massenet had already written an opera on the same novel, he replied that Massenet would feel it as a Frenchman, with powder and minuets, but that he would feel it as an Italian, with desperate passion. The premiere at Turin's Teatro Regio in February 1893 was a triumph, and he was at last free of debt.
His first great success, won after the failure of Edgar, his brother's death, and years of debt; his vow to feel it 'with desperate passion' carries through to the final act.
- In Act 1, Des Grieux's aria 'Donna non vidi mai' ('Never have I seen such a woman') paints the moment of love at first sight in a soaring melody.
- The intermezzo before Act 3 (a piece played by the orchestra alone between acts) depicts the journey to Le Havre in the wake of the arrested Manon. He inscribed a passage from the source novel in the score, and a song that begins in the solo cello spreads through the whole orchestra.
- In Act 4, 'Sola, perduta, abbandonata' ('Alone, lost, abandoned') is the aria of Manon dying in the desert; demanding both stamina and dramatic power of the soprano, it often serves as the yardstick for comparing great performances.
- The mourning melody of the string quartet Crisantemi is woven into Act 4. Listen to the quartet first and then the opera, and you will hear where that melody came from.
IV. The bohemians · 1893–1900 (age 35–42)
(Bohème) Ricordi paired Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa as his dedicated librettists. Illica shaped the plot and scenes while Giacosa polished the verse, but he had them revise the libretto (the text) line by line, wearing them both out. Drawn from Henri Murger's novel, La bohème told of poor artists in a Parisian garret. His own days in a rented room in Milan echoed throughout. (Rivalry) In March 1893, when Leoncavallo announced in a newspaper that he was writing a La bohème, Puccini announced the same project in another paper the next day. The friendship of the two men, who had worked together on the libretto of Manon Lescaut, ended there. His La bohème, premiered in Turin in February 1896 under the young Arturo Toscanini, drew mixed reviews but soon spread around the world. Leoncavallo's version, premiered in Venice in 1897, was gradually pushed from the stage. (Lakeside) As his income grew he built a house at Torre del Lago and, with painter friends, set up the 'Club La Bohème' in a hut, where they amused themselves with cards and hunting. Duck hunting remained a lifelong pleasure, and he loved new machines such as automobiles and motorboats. But as Elvira's jealousy collided with his roving eye, the air at home was often heavy. (Tosca) His next work was Sardou's play La Tosca. The rights at first belonged to the composer Alberto Franchetti, but Ricordi persuaded him to give them up. For the dawn scene of Act 3 he looked into the pitches of the bells of Rome's churches and had the shepherd boy's song written in Roman dialect. The premiere at Rome's Teatro Costanzi in January 1900 was cheered by the audience despite the critics' cool notices.
The days of sharing poverty with Mascagni in a rented room in Milan were carried over into the laughter and tears of Parisian artists.
- In Act 1, the high C at the end of Rodolfo's 'Che gelida manina' ('Your tiny hand is frozen') is a proving ground for tenors. Some customarily sing it a semitone lower, so it is worth comparing from one performance to the next.
- Mimì's 'Sì, mi chiamano Mimì' ('Yes, they call me Mimì') calmly recounts her everyday life of embroidery, then the melody blossoms broadly at the words about the sunshine becoming hers when spring comes.
- At the opening of Act 3, flute and harp paint the Paris toll gate at a snowy dawn with a hollow sonority stripped of its middle note (bare fifths). Listen for the cold stillness, like falling snowflakes.
- In Act 4, after Mimì breathes her last, Rodolfo cries out 'Mimì!', and the orchestra sounds her melody again very loudly (fortissimo) as the curtain falls.
A tenacity that checked even the bells and the dialect of Rome brought to the stage, as vividly as life, a single day in which love, power and death are entangled.
- The three heavy chords that sound the moment the curtain rises are the leitmotif (a short piece of music that represents a character) of Scarpia, the chief of police. Chords from distant keys collide one after another, creating a sense of menace.
- In the 'Te Deum' at the end of Act 1, over the cathedral chorus, the organ and the boom of cannon, Scarpia sings of his desire for Tosca. It is a passage where the sacred and the evil overlap in a single scene.
- Act 2's 'Vissi d'arte' is a prayer in which the drama stops and Tosca questions God. Puccini is said to have wanted to cut this aria, complaining that it interrupted the flow of the drama.
- At dawn in Act 3, after a shepherd boy's song mingles with bells from all over Rome, the clarinet sings the melody of Cavaradossi's 'E lucevan le stelle' before he does.
V. Accident and marriage, Madama Butterfly · 1900–1908 (age 42–50)
(Butterfly) In the summer of 1900, having gone to London to see Tosca, he saw David Belasco's play Madame Butterfly. Though he knew hardly any English, he was deeply moved by what he saw on stage. To learn about Japanese music he gathered scores and recordings, and he met Hisako Ōyama, wife of the Japanese minister to Italy, who sang for him and answered his questions about names and customs. The melodies and pentatonic scales gathered this way seeped into every corner of the work. (Accident) In February 1903, on a night drive back from Lucca, his car tumbled off the road. With a broken leg, he spent months bedridden, and in the search for why his injury healed so slowly, diabetes was discovered. At almost the same time, Elvira's husband, Gemignani, died. In January 1904, after 18 years together, the two were formally married. (Jeers) The premiere of Madama Butterfly at La Scala in February 1904 was the most disastrous night of his life. The house was filled with shouts and whistles, and there was talk of an organized campaign of disruption. He withdrew the work at once and revised it. A version that split the overlong second act in two and reworked a number of passages was a great success in Brescia that May. He called it the most sincere and expressive opera he had ever written. (Friendship) In London in 1904 he met Sybil Seligman, a banker's wife. The acquaintance soon became a lifelong friendship. He confided in Sybil about plans for his works and worries at home, and Sybil became his most trusted confidante, recommending English-language sources and receiving his letters. Even after his success he always feared he would fail to find a subject for his next work, and Sybil was the one who heard most often about that anxiety.
Having passed through a car crash, a sickbed and the jeers of La Scala, the work was reborn in Brescia and became his most cherished opera.
- Japanese melodies, such as the Japanese national anthem Kimigayo, are woven in throughout. Listen for the passages built on the pentatonic scale, which fills an octave with only five notes.
- Around Pinkerton, the US Navy officer, the opening phrase of the American national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, rings out. Set against the Japanese melodies, this quotation foreshadows the distance between the two.
- Act 2's 'Un bel dì vedremo' is an aria in which she pictures the day her husband returns; it begins very softly and bursts out at the end.
- In the scene of her all-night wait for her husband, the 'Humming Chorus' is sung offstage by a chorus with closed lips. A song without words creates the stillness of waiting.
VI. Past the tragedy · 1908–1918 (age 50–60)
(Doria) In the autumn of 1908, Elvira came to suspect that Doria Manfredi, the young maid who had helped in the household for several years, was having an affair with her husband, and went around the village denouncing her openly. In January 1909 Doria took poison and died; an autopsy proved her innocent. Her family brought charges, and that year Elvira was sentenced to prison. He paid the family 12,000 lire, and the complaint was withdrawn before the appeal. For months he could barely compose, and a deep rift opened in the marriage. (The West) The work he completed after that period, La fanciulla del West, was again based on a Belasco play. It premiered in December 1910 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, conducted by Toscanini with Enrico Caruso singing. In 1906 in Graz he had seen Richard Strauss's Salome for himself, and he had also been listening closely to Debussy's harmonies. The orchestration of this work grew bolder, and its ending, in which a criminal is forgiven and redeemed, was not unrelated to his state of mind at the time. (War) In 1913 a Vienna theater commissioned an operetta, but when Italy went to war with Austria the contract became entangled. In the end he turned the piece into the opera La rondine and premiered it in Monte Carlo in 1917. The French press attacked him for collaborating with the enemy, and his lukewarm attitude toward the war led to a falling-out, for a time, with Toscanini, an ardent patriot. (Triptych) In December 1918 the Metropolitan premiered Il trittico, a set of three one-act operas. Because of the war he could not cross the Atlantic. The three were Il tabarro, a crime of passion among Seine boatmen; Suor Angelica, a convent tragedy; and Gianni Schicchi, a comedy drawn from Dante's Divine Comedy. He visited the convent of his sister Iginia, who had become a nun, and played Suor Angelica for the sisters on the piano; it is said the nuns wept.
In a dark stretch marked by the Doria affair, the war and the rift with Toscanini, he wrote, of all things, his most lighthearted comedy.
- Lauretta's 'O mio babbino caro' is a short song of just over 2 minutes, yet it became his most famous melody. It is fun to hear it as a song that is half sincere and half performance, as she pleads with her father to let her marry.
- Rinuccio's 'Firenze è come un albero fiorito' praises the newcomers from outside who brought glory to Florence, invoking Giotto and the Medici. It is a song that defends Schicchi, a man from the countryside.
- As Schicchi, impersonating the dead Buoso, dictates the will, the phrase 'Addio, Firenze,' warning that anyone caught will have a hand cut off and be banished, returns again and again to frighten the greedy relatives.
- At the end, Schicchi stops singing and addresses the audience. Dante consigned him to hell, he says, but if you have enjoyed yourselves, please grant him extenuating circumstances.
VII. The unfinished duet · 1919–1924 (age 61–66)
(Viareggio) In 1921, when a peat factory went up near Torre del Lago, he moved to the seaside town of Viareggio to escape the noise and smoke. Around this time he often confided his fear that the world's music was passing him by. In April 1924 he traveled as far as Florence to listen closely to Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, and he exchanged greetings with the composer. (Turandot) His last work was Turandot, drawn from a fable play by Carlo Gozzi. He demanded endless revisions from his librettists, Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. To learn about Chinese music, he transcribed tunes from a Chinese music box owned by his friend Baron Fassini. But the work stalled at the final duet, in which the icy princess melts into love. Again and again he wrote letters saying the duet would not come. (Illness) From late 1923 he suffered persistent throat pain and coughing. A lifelong smoker, he was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in the autumn of 1924. That same year he was named a senator for life. In November he went with his son Antonio to Brussels, Belgium, for radium treatment; at first he seemed to withstand the operation well, but on November 29 he died of a heart attack. He was 65. He left behind 36 pages of sketches for the final scene. (Completion) Franco Alfano completed the ending from the sketches. At the La Scala premiere in April 1926, Toscanini stopped conducting at the scene of Liù's death and told the audience that here the maestro had laid down his pen. That same year his remains were laid to rest in the chapel of his house at Torre del Lago. Elvira died in 1930 and Antonio in 1946, and until then Antonio guarded his father's legacy.
He fell ill before he could finish the final duet, and the scene of Liù's death remained the last music he completed.
- The children's chorus in Act 1 uses the melody of the Chinese folk song Mo Li Hua (Jasmine Flower), taken from Baron Fassini's music box, and the tune returns throughout the opera as the theme representing Princess Turandot.
- In the riddle scene of Act 2, the princess poses three riddles and Calaf answers each in turn, the tension rising one step at a time. Listen to how the chorus and orchestra respond to each riddle.
- Act 3's 'Nessun dorma' is famous for the high note on the final 'Vincerò (I will win)'. Many tenors hold this note longer than written, so it varies from performance to performance.
- Everything up to Liù's Act 3 aria 'Tu che di gel sei cinta' and her death is Puccini's own hand. Compare how the texture of the orchestra differs in the part Alfano added afterward.
Lesser-known stories
(Title) The Mass known today as the Messa di Gloria was not given that name by its composer. After its premiere in 1880 he never published it, transplanting only some of its melodies into Edgar and Manon Lescaut. The complete work lay forgotten until the early 1950s, when the priest Dante del Fiorentino found a copy in America and had it performed again, and it acquired its present name. (Bells) The bells in Act 3 of Tosca were no guesswork. He wrote to Pietro Panichelli, a priest in Rome, asking the exact pitch of the great bell of St. Peter's Basilica and the hour of the dawn prayers. The exchange survives in a memoir Panichelli later published, which is why the story turns up more often in footnotes than in the main text of biographies. (Ending) The ending of Turandot usually heard is not what Alfano first wrote. Toscanini and the house of Ricordi judged Alfano's original ending too long and too far from the sketches and had him cut it heavily, and the shortened version became the standard. The original ending was not performed·recorded again until the 1980s, and in 2002 Luciano Berio wrote a new ending from the same sketches. (Manfredi) The Doria affair has a sequel, too. In the late 2000s the film director Paolo Benvenuti examined documents handed down in the Manfredi family and raised the possibility that the person Puccini actually had an affair with was not Doria but her cousin Giulia. Because the family papers had been kept private for nearly a century, this interpretation could not have appeared in earlier biographies.
Glossary notes 📚🔎
Mass
(Meaning) The Latin missa takes its name from the words the priest says at the end of the rite: "Go, you are sent forth (Ite, missa est)." (In music) A large choral work setting the unchanging prayers of the Catholic liturgy—Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei. Because the text is fixed, it is fascinating to compare how differently each composer expresses the same words. It is a bit like every class singing the same school song, yet each sounding different depending on the mood of the class. (Elsewhere) In everyday use, Mass refers not to a musical work but to the service of worship itself, held in a church.
Aria
(Meaning) Italian for 'air, breeze,' from which came the sense of 'tune, song.' (In music) A solo song in an opera in which a character pauses the action to sing at length about their feelings. Unlike the passages that move the plot along quickly, it lingers on a single emotion. It resembles the scene in a TV drama where the hero's inner monologue plays out at length in close-up.
Libretto
(Meaning) Italian for 'little book.' The name comes from the small booklets sold so that audiences could follow the words during a performance. (In music) The script of an opera, that is, the text setting out the lyrics and the story. The person who writes it is called a librettist. Puccini was famous for relentlessly demanding that his librettists rewrite line after line. It follows the same order as preparing a school play: you write the script first, then set songs to it.
Verismo
(Etymology) From the Italian vero ('true'), meaning 'realism.' (In music) An operatic trend in late 19th-century Italy that vividly portrayed the love, jealousy and violence of ordinary people in place of myths and kings. Mascagni's “Cavalleria rusticana” and Leoncavallo's “Pagliacci” are its signature works, and Puccini's “Tosca” and “Il tabarro” also touch this current. It is a bit like watching a drama about something that could happen in your own neighborhood instead of a fantasy film. (Elsewhere) In literature, it refers to the realist fiction of Italian writers such as Giovanni Verga.
Leitmotif
(Etymology) From the German Leitmotiv, meaning 'leading (leiten) motive.' (In music) A short musical fragment that recurs whenever a particular character, object or emotion appears. Wagner developed it extensively, and Puccini used the technique as well, as in the Scarpia chords of “Tosca.” It is like a video game where the same music plays every time the boss appears, announcing 'he's here' before you see him. (Elsewhere) In everyday speech, it is used figuratively for a central theme that recurs in someone's life or work.
5-note pentatonic scale
(In music) A scale that uses only five notes within an octave. Play just the black keys of a piano in order and you have a pentatonic scale. Because it is common in East Asian folk songs, Puccini used it in “Madama Butterfly” and “Turandot” to evoke Japan and China. The Korean folk song “Arirang” is also largely built on this kind of scale, so you can play a close version of it on the black keys alone.
Fugue
(Etymology) Latin and Italian for 'flight, running away.' The name comes from the image of one voice fleeing while another gives chase. (In music) A form in which several voices take up a single subject in turn, layering it ever more densely. It resembles a round, in which later singers come in with the same melody after a delay, but in a fugue the following voice takes it up at a different pitch. Because it showcases compositional skill, it often featured in conservatory graduation pieces. (Elsewhere) In psychiatry, 'fugue' refers to a state in which a person forgets who they are, leaves home and wanders.