La bohème

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924)] emerged into the twentieth century music world as the “King of Verismo,” not through the conducting background of Mascagni or through the skilled compositional ability of Giordano, but as a master of theater. 

Puccini wrote solely for the operatic stage and he understood the dramatic intensity and melodic poignancy of real life subject matters. Critics have sometimes dismissed his work as overly impassioned, melodramatic, and sentimental. The composer himself proclaimed, “The only music I can make is that of small things,” although he admired the grander stylistic abilities of Verdi and Wagner.

Despite that admiration, Puccini chose to concentrate on life’s familiar and bittersweet passions and intense emotional storms.

Puccini was born in Lucca, Italy, and descended from a long line of musicians, conductors, and composers. It was assumed he would inherit the talent and interest to continue in his family’s chosen craft.

At the tender age of six, upon his father’s premature death, he fell heir to the position of choir master and organist at San Martino Church and professor of music at Collegio Ponziano. However, plans to preserve these posts for the young Puccini may as well have been canceled the day he hiked thirteen miles to the city of Pisa to witness a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s latest work, Aida. He determined his own future at that moment, falling completely under the spell of opera, never to recover.

A stipend from a wealthy great-uncle and a scholarship from Queen Margherita herself supported Puccini in his education at the music conservatory in Milan. The great composers Antonio Bazzini and Amilcare Ponchielli taught the young musician; Ponchielli eventually encouraging Puccini’s participation in a one-act opera competition sponsored by the publishing house of Sonzogno. Friends of Ponchielli even provided the libretto.

Unfortunately, Puccini’s first opera, La Villi, didn’t take the prize. However, the powerful critic/librettist, Arrigo Boito, raised funds for its performance before appreciative audiences at La Scala and Ricordi published the score. The modest success bolstered Puccini’s confidence but provided little compensation. A second opera, Edgar, failed as the result of a poor libretto.

Puccini’s persistence was rewarded with the production of Manon Lescaut. It premiered in February 1893 in Turin and the opera proved a resounding triumph. Puccini was suddenly established as a wealthy composer and artistic successor to Maestro Giuseppi Verdi.

The two operas that followed, La Boheme and Tosca, achieved success gradually, with Boheme peaking after three productions and Tosca after five years of presentations throughout Europe.

As Puccini acquired substantial wealth, he took on the persona which accompanied him throughout the rest of his life as the “grand seigneur.” He built a reputation as a dedicated game hunter, collector of cars and motor boats, and a great romantic figure. “I am almost always in love!” he declared, and defined himself as “a mighty hunter of wild fowl, operatic librettos, and attractive women.”

His appreciation and compassion for women abounds in the substance of his operatic heroines, their valiant struggles, and, most often, their melancholic demises. He created these elegant, three-dimensional characters with the material of sweet and haunting melody. The innocent Mimi, battled Tosca, abandoned Butterfly, and bittered Turandot—each one a fascinating study in feminine psychology—are each the perfect counterpart to an equally interesting tenor role.

Puccini’s own stormy relationship with Elvira Gignani evoked a certain horror in fans and attracted something of a lurid interest from the general public. A married woman, she eloped with the composer, and they were not married until some time after her husband’s death. Seemingly an uninteresting and strangely unchallenging partner, she is said to have limited Puccini intellectually and emotionally, inexplicably cutting him off from most personal relationships with friends and other artists.

Eventually, she broiled the household in scandal, hounding a young maid unmercifully with accusations of a liaison with her husband. The girl died by suicide and Elvira was jailed for five months. The Puccinis separated, then reconciled, but their relationship was forever damaged. Puccini fought hard to keep his difficult private life private against impossible odds. “What a subject for an opera!” one social columnist exclaimed.

During this tragic episode, despite his obvious emotional turmoil, the composer completed the opera La Fanciulla del West, which met with immediate acclaim.