Meanwhile he had been working on an ambitious triptych of contrasted one-act operas: the earthy and veristic Il tabarro set on a barge on the river Seine near Paris Suor Angelina, the story of an unmarried mother in an Italian convent and Gianni Schicchi, a masterly comedy after Dante celebrating renaissance Florence. A commission to write an operetta for Vienna transmuted into the charmingly bitter-sweet La rondine, first performed in Monte-Carlo in 1917. The death of Giulio Ricordi in 1912 and the outbreak of World War One, in which Puccini remained neutral but confined to Italy, furthered his sense of isolation. The Girl of the Golden West received a high profile premiere at the New York Met in 1910. This time it was about the American Gold Rush, its wildwest mining community and the feisty proprietress of their local bar, Minnie. Eventually, he adapted another drama by David Belasco, author of the original Butterfly play. One of his faithful librettists, Giuseppe Giacosa, died, and he struggled to find a subject for his next opera. The girl’s suicide, for which Elvira was held responsible, led to a temporary estrangement. His wife Elvira became jealous and wrongly accused their servant Doria Manfredi of having an affair with him. The early years of the new century proved difficult for Puccini. Puccini was an early enthusiast for the motor car, but was injured in an accident in 1903, the same year as he was diagnosed with diabetes. Still more wounding to his esteem was the initial failure of his next opera Madama Butterfly at its Milan premiere, his first at La Scala since Edgar 15 years before. He had been confident of his creation, even and unusually inviting his family to the performance: it was a work ‘into which I have poured my heart and soul’. It was immediately withdrawn but won over the public after revisions first in Brescia, later in Paris. Despite or because of its chequered beginning, it was Puccini’s favourite among his operas, the one of which he never tired hearing. Its popular success cemented Puccini’s reputation as a master of melodrama. At the beginning of the new century, it was followed by the premiere in Rome of Tosca, specifically set in Roman locations and political events of 100 years earlier, and telling the fictitious story of an opera singer and her republican lover, both pursued by a sadistic chief of police. La bohème conquered the world, which recognised Puccini as Verdi’s successor as the torchbearer of Italian opera. Its skill lies in treating its universal theme with such precise accuracy.

Though set in 1830s Paris, it might as easily depict the loves and struggles of young artists living in Milan fifty years later or indeed of those in any age who have experienced what it is to be young and poor. Despite struggling to work with seven different librettists, Puccini captures the intensity of the doomed affair between the capricious young Manon and her infatuated lover des Grieux with a passion he never subsequently equalled.īut it is La bohème, premiered three years later also in Torino, which defines Puccini’s genius.

His second opera Edgar had been performed at La Scala and he was working on Manon Lescaut, which premiered in Torino in 1893 and was to become his first enduring success. The couple moved to Torre del Lago, beside Lake Massaciùccoli and not far from Lucca, in 1891. The 1880s were his ‘bohemian’ years, a heady mixture of love and poverty. Puccini was joined in Milan by Elvira Gemignani, who abandoned her husband to live with the composer.

Albina, worn out by poverty and hard work, died that year and was mourned by her devoted son for the rest of his life. His first opera Le Villi was successfully performed in 1884 and it won him a contract with Italy’s leading music publisher Giulio Ricordi, who became both mentor and surrogate father. Puccini entered the Milan Conservatory in 1880, subsidised by his mother and a scholarship from Queen Margherita, and took his diploma three years later.

Puccini opera