Puccini composed Le Villi , but his opera did not win and it wasn’t even mentioned as worth of noticing. However, the opera was staged on May 31st ,1884, at Teatro Dal Verme in Milan, thanks to a group of friends and influential investors. The success was immediate achieving great acclaim from the public and the critics. “The composer that Italy has been waiting for for a long time…”wrote Corriere della Sera, and Marco Sala, wealthy patron of the arts, said” Puccini’s opera is a small precious masterpiece from beginning to the end”. This triumph enabled Puccini to sign his first contract with the great publishing house of Ricordi. His second opera, Edgar (La Scala, Milan, April 1889) did not achieve the level of success he was hoping. However, Ricordi continued to have faith in Puccini, and supported him financially for several years. With his third opera, Manon Lescaut (Teatro Regio, Turin, February 1893), success and fame finally arrived. Puccini was 35. He settled in Torre del Lago with his wife Elvira and his son Antonio. Here on the banks of Lake Massaciuccoli, he wrote most of his operas: La Bohéme (Teatro Regio, Turin, February 1896), Tosca (Teatro Costanzi, Rome, January 1900), Madama Butterfly (Teatro Grande, Brescia, May 1904).

By this time, Giacomo Puccini was famous all over the world and made many trips to assist the performances of his operas in Europe and in America: La Fanciulla del West (Metropolitan Opera, New York, December 1910), La Rondine (Montecarlo, March 1917), Il Trittico (Metropolitan Opera, New York, December 1918), until the last great opera Turandot by the Venetian playwright Carlo Gozzi. Altough he was seriously ill, Puccini worked hard on his Turandot which unfortunately, he could not complete. He underwent surgery for throat cancer in Brussels on November 24th , and died several days later on November 29th , 1924.

Places have a deep significancy for each of us: we feel them as important and we have a particular inner bond towards them. Giacomo Puccini, a great lucchese composer, was a citizen of the world: his operas are located from Japan to west. He spent his life trough Europe but the place he was bond to for all his life was Lucca and its province, from Lucca and Valle di Serchio to Versilia.

The final yearsA 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; uncontrolled bleeding led to a heart attack the day after surgery. 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. Some dispute whether Alfano followed the sketches or not, since the sketches were said to be indecipherable, but he is believed to have done so, since, together with the autographs, he was given (still existing) transcriptions from Guido Zuccoli who was accustomed to interpreting Puccini's handiwork.

When Arturo Toscanini conducted the premiere performance in April 1926, (in front of a sold-out crowd, with every prominent Italian except for Benito Mussolini in attendance), he had chosen 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 opera finishes, because at this point the Maestro died". (Some record that he said, more poetically, “Here the Maestro laid down his pen.”).

Toscanini edited Alfano's suggested completion ('Alfano I'), to produce a version now known as 'Alfano II', and this is the version usually used in performance. However, some musicians (eg Ashbrook & Powers, 1991) consider Alfano I to be a more dramatically complete version.

In 2002 an official new ending was composed by Luciano Berio from original sketches, but this finale has to date been performed only infrequently

OTHER WEBSITES ABOUT GIACOMO PUCCINI

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Puccini

http://www.giacomopuccini.it/

http://www.homolaicus.com/arte/manon/bios.htm

http://opera.stanford.edu/Puccini/

http://www.fondazionegiacomopuccini.it/

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categoria:Opere_di_Puccini

http://www.puccinielasualucca.com/

http://www.pucciniopera.it/

Museo della casa natale diGiacomo Puccini

Puccini.com - Honoring the great Operatic Composer

Giacomo Puccini Centro studi - benvenuti - welcome