Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

La Bohème
The Bohemians

About the Composer – Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Puccini once described himself as “a mighty hunter of wild fowl, opera librettos and attractive women.” He composed three of the most popular operas ever written; died worth an estimated $4 million (still in dispute by his grand-daughter Simonetta); and still had plenty of opportunity to play poker, hunt ducks at his lake lodge, and indulge his passions for fast boats, fast cars and fast women.

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was the last in a line of five generations of respected musicians. From birth, he was expected to be a composer. The young Giacomo was anything but a prodigy, however. His early teachers were frustrated by his laziness. He showed enough talent to earn a scholarship to the Milan Conservatory (the same Conservatory that denied entrance to Giuseppe Verdi) and studied there with Amilcare Ponchielli, composer of La Gioconda .

His first success as a composer came with Le Villi in 1884, a work that brought him to the attention of Giulio Ricordi, head of the powerful Ricordi publishing firm. Ricordi championed the talented Puccini and “stuck with [him] through everything, and never made a better investment.” It was just as well that Ricordi had made the commitment, for Puccini's next opera, Edgar (1889), was a failure. Manon Lescaut brought moderate success in 1893. In 1896, Puccini became rich (and Ricordi even richer) with the success of La Bohème , certainly one of opera's most beautiful and popular works. Always, however, Ricordi had his hands full fighting Puccini's laziness.

Puccini was never particularly interested in the music scene, nor did he care much about other composers. He took little part in politics or the world around him and had few (if any) close friends. His marriage was a stormy and unhappy one, and his extramarital affairs were chiefly loveless recreation. Yet his operas are full of emotion, tender and sensuous melody of which Puccini was master. The characters that populate his operas are also very real and all too human, especially his heroines. The stories are straightforward and easy to follow, and audiences react with empathy to the problems the characters encounter. Puccini knew how to stir the emotions of his audiences and he did so unabashedly.

Most of Puccini's operas were immediate successes. One notable exception was Madama Butterfly , another of his enduring masterpieces, which met with a rare reception at its opening at La Scala in February, 1904. It was a fiasco, with the audience reacting with shouts and whistles. Puccini, believing it to be his best and most technically advanced opera yet, withdrew it after the premiere performance. He carefully revised it and opened it in May of the same year to great acclaim.

Turandot , Puccini's last opera, was to be his grandest. He envisioned an exotic and fairytale atmosphere, but with characters of real humanity. He poured himself into this composition like no other before. He was unable to complete the work, however; Puccini died during treatment for throat cancer, leaving sketches for the final two scenes. These sketches were used by Franco Alfano to finish the work. At the premiere of Turandot at La Scala on April 25, 1926, conductor Arturo Toscanini turned to the audience during the third act and said, “Here the master laid down his pen.” The performance ended there. On the following evening Toscanini conducted the opera with Alfano's ending.

Maria Jeritza, Puccini's favorite Tosca , related a story that reflects what she believed to be Puccini's musical philosophy. “Carissima mia,” he said to her, “you have to walk on clouds of melody.” Giacomo Puccini, a true master of beautiful tune, gave us a heaven full of melody on which to walk.

Susan Fahrig

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