Giacomo Puccini

Copyright Michael D. Robbins 2005

Astro-Rayological Interpretation & Charts
Quotes
Biography
Images and Physiognomic Interpretation

to Volume 3 Table of Contents

Giacomo Puccini—Opera Composer

December 22, 1858, Lucca, Italy, 02:00 AM. (Source: Recorded) Died of cancer, November 29, 1984. 



(Ascendant, Libra; Sun very late Sagittarius; Moon, Cancer; Mercury, Capricorn; Venus, Sagittarius; Mars, Aquarius; Jupiter and Uranus in Gemini; Saturn, Leo; Neptune, Pisces, fifth house and trine Moon and MC; Pluto, Taurus).           

Puccini was one of the greatest of the opera composers. He is known for his beautiful, poignant melodies and his orchestral colors and moods. His modal, melodic writing relates him strongly to the fourth ray, and Libra correlates to the sheer beauty of his operas. Many of his stories are exotic and occur in settings distant from Italy—Japan (Madama Butterfly); China (Turando); the United States (the Girl of the Golden West). The correlation with Sagittarius is clear. As well the sixth ray is pronounced—the themes of devoted love are prominent throughout his operas.

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.
(Neptune in Pisces in 5th house)

“Cold calculation, random spots of color, mathematically exact construction (clearly shown or concealed), drawing that is now silent and now strident . . . . Is this not form?”

“Art is a kind of illness.”

Massenet feels it as a Frenchman, with powder and minuets. I shall feel it as an Italian, with desperate passion.
(Mars conjunct North Node square Uranus. Moon in Cancer.)

I'm working, but there is so much still to be done! And it frightens me to think of my weight of years. But on we go, without fear or hesitation! . . . colors like a flourish of trumpets or pianissimo on the violin, great, calm, oscillating, splintered surgances . . . . Is this not form?

 

Giacomo Puccini

Birth name Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini
Born December 22, 1858
Lucca, Italy
Died November 29, 1924
Brussels, Belgium
Genre(s) Romantic
Occupation(s) Composer
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (December 22, 1858 – November 29, 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire.[1] Some of his melodies, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi and "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot, have become part of modern culture. One of the few operatic composers to successfully use both German and Italian techniques of opera, Puccini is regarded as the successor of Giuseppe Verdi.

Early life
Puccini was born in Lucca in Tuscany, Italy into a family with five generations of musical history behind them. His father died when he was five years old, and he was sent to study with his uncle Fortunato Magi, who considered him to be a poor and undisciplined student. Later, he took the position of church organist and choir master in Lucca, but it was not until he saw a performance of Verdi's Aida that he became inspired to be an opera composer. He and a friend walked 18.5 miles (30 kilometers) to see the performance in Pisa.

In 1880, with the help of a relative and a grant, Puccini enrolled in the Milan Conservatory to study composition with Amilcare Ponchielli and Antonio Bazzini. In the same year, at the age of 21, he composed the Messa, which marks the culmination of his family's long association with church music in his native Lucca. Although Puccini himself correctly titled the work a Messa, referring to a setting of the full Catholic Mass, today the work is popularly known as his Messa di Gloria, a name that technically refers to a setting of only the first two prayers of the Mass, the Kyrie and the Gloria, while omitting the Credo, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei. Puccini's work is, in fact, a Messa.

The work anticipates Puccini's career as an operatic composer by offering glimpses of the dramatic power that he would soon unleash on the stage; the powerful “arias” for tenor and bass soloists are certainly more operatic than is usual in church music and, in its orchestration and dramatic power, the Messa compares interestingly with Verdi's Requiem.

While studying at the Conservatory, Puccini obtained a libretto from Ferdinando Fontano and entered a competition for a one-act opera in 1882. Although he did not win, Le Villi was later staged in 1884 at the Teatro dal Verme and it caught the attention of Giulio Ricordi, head of G. Ricordi & Co. music publishers, who commissioned a second opera, Edgar, in 1889. Puccini and Fontana were to become life-long friends.

Puccini at Torre del Lago
From 1891 onwards, Puccini spent more of his time at Torre del Lago, a small community about fifteen miles from Lucca situated between the Tyrrhenian Sea and Lake Massaciuccoli, just south of Viareggio. While renting a house there, he spent time hunting but regularly visited Lucca. By 1900 he had acquired land and built a villa on the lake, now known as the "Villa Museo Puccini". He lived there until 1921 when pollution produced by peat works on the lake forced him to move to Viareggio, a few kilometres north. After his death, a mausoleum was created in the Villa Puccini and the composer is buried there in the chapel, along with his wife and son who died later.

The "Villa Museo Puccini" is presently owned by his granddaughter, Simonetta Puccini, and is open to the public.

Original poster for Puccini's Tosca
Operas written at Torre del Lago
Manon Lescaut (1893), his third opera, was his first great success. It launched his remarkable relationship with the librettests Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, who collaborated with him on his next three operas, which became his three most famous and most performed operas. These were:

La bohème (1896) is considered one of his best works as well as one of the most romantic operas ever composed. It is arguably today's most popular opera.
Tosca (1900) was arguably Puccini's first foray into verismo, the realistic depiction of many facets of real life including violence. The opera is generally considered of major importance in the history of opera because of its many significant features.
Madama Butterfly (1904) was initially greeted with great hostility (mostly orchestrated by his rivals) but, after some reworking, became another of his most successful operas.
After 1904, compositions were less frequent. Following his passion for driving fast cars, Puccini was nearly killed in a major accident in 1903. In 1906 Giacosa died and, in 1909, there was scandal after Puccini's wife, Elvira, falsely accused their maid Doria Manfredi of having an affair with Puccini. The maid then committed suicide. Elvira was successfully sued by the Manfredis, and Giacomo had to pay daimages. Finally, in 1912, the death of Giulio Ricordi, Puccini’s editor and publisher, ended a productive period of his career.

However, Puccini completed La fanciulla del West in 1910 and finished the score of La rondine in 1917, a piece he reworked from an operetta he had attempted to compose, only to find that his style and talent were incompatible with the genre.

In 1918, Il Trittico premiered in New York. This work is composed of three one-act operas: a horrific episode (Il Tabarro), in the style of the Parisian Grand Guignol, a sentimental tragedy (Suor Angelica), and a comedy (Gianni Schicchi). Of the three, Gianni Schicchi has remained the most popular, containing the popular O mio babbino caro.

The final years

Giacomo Puccini with conductor Arturo ToscaniniA habitual cigarette 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, Belgium. 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. When Arturo Toscanini conducted the premiere performance in April 1926, (in front of a sold-out crowd with every prominent Italian with the exception of 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 Toscanani 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”).

In 2001 an official new ending was composed by Luciano Berio from original sketches, but this finale is performed infrequently.

Politics
Unlike Wagner and Verdi, Puccini did not appear to be active in the politics of his day. However, Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy at the time, claimed that Puccini applied for admission to the National Fascist Party. This appears to be highly unlikely. There appear to be no records or proof of any application given to the party by Puccini. In addition, it can be noted that had Puccini done so, his close friend, Arturo Toscanini, (an extreme anti-fascist), would have sufficiently influenced Puccini, and would not have been as friendly to the composer as he was.

Style

Giacomo PucciniPuccini's style has been one long avoided by musicologists; this avoidance can perhaps be attributed to the perception that his work, with its emphasis on melody and evident popular appeal, lacked "seriousness" (a similar prejudice beset Rachmaninoff during his lifetime). Despite the place Puccini clearly occupies in the popular tradition of Verdi, his style of orchestration also shows the strong influence of Wagner, matching specific orchestral configurations and timbres to different dramatic moments. His operas contain an unparalleled manipulation of orchestral colors, with the orchestra often creating the scene’s atmosphere.

The structures of Puccini's works are also noteworthy. While it is to an extent possible to divide his operas into arias or numbers (like Verdi's), his scores generally present a very strong sense of continuous flow and connectivity, perhaps another sign of Wagner’s influence. Like Wagner, Puccini used leitmotifs to connote characters (or combinations of characters). This is apparent in Tosca, where the three chords which signal the beginning of the opera are used throughout to announce Scarpia. Several motifs are also linked to Mimi and the Bohemians in La Bohème and to Cio-Cio-San's eventual suicide in Butterfly. Unlike Wagner, though, Puccini's motifs are static: where Wagner's motifs develop into more complicated figures as the characters develop, Puccini's remain more or less identical throughout the opera (in this respect anticipating the themes of modern musical theatre).

Another distinctive quality in Puccini's works is the use of the voice in the style of speech: characters sing short phrases one after another, as if they were talking to each other. Puccini is celebrated, on the other hand, for his melodic gift, and many of his melodies are both memorable and enduringly popular. These melodies are often made of sequences from the scale, a very distinctive example being Quando me'n vo' (Musetta's Waltz) from La Bohème and E lucevan le stelle from Act III of Tosca. Today, it is rare not to find at least one Puccini aria included in an operatic singer's CD album or recital.

Giacomo Puccini
Puccini 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 matter. 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 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 years, 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 . Premiered in February 1893 in Turin, 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 Bohème and Tosca, achieved success gradually with Bohème 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, melancholy demise. He created these elegant, three-dimensional characters with the material of sweet and haunting melody. The innocent Mimi, embattled Tosca, abandoned Butterfly, embittered Turandot - each one a fascinating study in feminine psychology, each the perfect counterpart to an equally interesting tenor role. Puccini's own stormy relationship with Elvira Gemignani 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 embroiled the household in scandal, hounding a young maid unmercifully with accusations of a liaison with her husband. The girl committed 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.

In general, Puccini seems to have lived in artistic isolation. Even a productive relationship with Arturo Toscanini blew hot and cold. In one comic exchange, Puccini forgot he and Toscanini were currently estranged and sent a Christmas pannetone. Realizing the error, Puccini wired Toscanini with an explanation:

PANNETONE SENT BY MISTAKE, PUCCINI.

Toscanini immediately replied:

PANNETONE EATEN BY MISTAKE, TOSCANINI.

It was Toscanini who conducted the famous opening night of Madama Butterfly , which ran in its original form for that one performance only. After serious reworking, including changing the basic framework from two acts to three and replacing some objectionable arias with more melodic ones, Butterfly triumphed in a new opening under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.

In the single decade before his death, Puccini completed La Rondine , and the trilogy of Il Tabarro , Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi . He was in the process of finishing Turandot , the opera he considered his crowning achievement, when a persistent throat ailment was diagnosed as cancer. He died a few days after surgery and completion of the work was left to colleague, Franco Alfano. Shortly before his death, Puccini wrote that the music audience had lost its taste for melody and tolerated music devoid of logic and sensibility. He predicted "the end of opera" and, in fact, Turandot , was the last opera to rank as an internationally accepted standard repertory piece. No one since Puccini has enjoyed such a following.