Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca in December 1858, the fifth generation of his family to work as church musicians in the city. His father, Michele Puccini, died when he was five; he was educated at the Pacini Institute in Lucca and later, on a scholarship from Queen Margherita, at the Milan Conservatory, where his teachers were Antonio Bazzini and Amilcare Ponchielli. His first opera, *Le villi* (1884), brought him to the attention of the publisher Giulio Ricordi, who shaped the next forty years of his career.

His mature operas — *Manon Lescaut* (1893), *La bohème* (1896), *Tosca* (1900), *Madama Butterfly* (1904), *La fanciulla del West* (1910), *Il trittico* (1918), and the unfinished *Turandot* — extended the Italian operatic tradition with a refined orchestral palette, an instinctive command of theatrical pacing, and a careful attention to the emotional contours of the leading soprano roles. He worked closely with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa on most of the central works, and was deeply attentive to the production and casting of the premieres.

Puccini was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1923 and travelled to Brussels for radiotherapy, where he died in November 1924. *Turandot*, left incomplete at the end of the third act, was completed by Franco Alfano for its 1926 La Scala premiere under Toscanini. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of his operatic work.