Madama Butterfly

Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini

December 22, 1858 – November 29, 1924

Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La Bohème (1896),  Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904) are among the most frequently performed in the world. He was born 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 a poor and undisciplined student. Later, Puccini 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 his brother, Michele, walked nearly 20 miles 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 musical composition. 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.  The work anticipated 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.

From 1891 onwards, Puccini spent most of his time at Torre del Lago. 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.

After 1904, compositions were less frequent. Following his passion for driving fast cars, Puccini was nearly killed in a major accident in 1903. However, Puccini completed La Fanciulla del West in 1910 and finished the score of La Rondine in 1917.

A habitual cigar 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. 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.

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, he chose not to perform Alfano's portion of the score. The performance reached the point where Puccini had completed the score, at which time Toscanini stopped the orchestra. The conductor turned to the audience and said, “Here the Maestro laid down his pen.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia