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{poo-chee'-nee}
Giacomo Puccini, the composer of some of the world's best-loved
operas, was born into the fifth generation of a family of
musicians in Lucca, Italy, on Dec. 22, 1858. As a child Puccini
showed unusual musical aptitude, so his mother, deciding that
he should continue in the family tradition, sent him to the
Instituto Musicale. When he was 18 years of age he entered
his cantata Juno in a Lucca competition; he lost the prize
but presented the work in performance and enjoyed enough success
among his friends and neighbors to spur his ambition.
Inspired by Verdi's Aida, Puccini turned his attention to
the Italian dramatic traditions. Financial aid from family
members and a scholarship from Queen Margherita of Italy allowed
him to enroll at the conservatory in Milan, where he spent
three years (1880-83) working under Antonio Bazzini and Amilcare
Ponchielli. Ponchielli introduced the young composer to the
writer Ferdinando Fontana, the librettist of Le Villi, Puccini's
first opera. Like Juno, Le Villi failed to win prizes but
commanded public acclaim when it was produced in Milan in
1884. That success led the publisher Ricordi to commission
a new opera from Puccini; five years later, the composer delivered
Edgar, again on a text by Fontana, but to no great applause.
With his third and fourth operas, Manon Lescaut (1893) and
La Boheme (1896), both first presented in Turin, Puccini won
fame and fortune. His next two operas, Tosca (1900) and Madama
Butterfly (1904), were greeted with less enthusiasm by opening-night
audiences. But the critics who damned Tosca were eventually
outvoted by the public, and after Puccini revised Madama Butterfly
in the weeks following its La Scala premiere, that work, too,
met with success. With this pair of operas, both notable for
their beautiful and memorable melodies as well as for a heightened
tension, the composer was hailed as the successor to Verdi--the
highest acclaim he could have asked from Italian audiences.
Puccini was not the musical or dramatic innovator that Verdi
was, but he nevertheless continued to enjoy tremendous international
success. His next opera, La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of
the Golden West), was written for the Metropolitan Opera and
first presented there in 1910. There followed La Rondine (1917),
Il Trittico (three one-act operas: Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica,
and Gianni Schicchi, 1918), and, finally, Turandot, the last
act of which was completed by Franco Alfano after the composer's
death in Brussels, Nov. 29, 1924. Turandot received its premiere
at La Scala, Milan, in 1926.
Puccini's gifts were primarily theatrical; he had a great
feeling for the stage and the sound of instrumental colors,
combined with a well-developed melodic sense. His work, along
with that of Verdi, continues to define Italian opera for
audiences around the world.
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