Giacomo Puccini
Each month we have the chance to interview a composer who has made history through his or her works and influence on the world of music. This allows us to find out a little more about their history, their lives and their ambitions. But that's not all! They also share free sheet music of their most admired works for your Newzik library! This month we're delighted to welcome an Italian composer, Giacomo Puccini.
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Composer of the month: Giacomo Puccini
"You'll see I'm right". This is what I wrote the day after the premiere of Madame Butterfly. Even though I left Milan's Scala to the whistling of spectators who found my opera indigestible, this work remains one of my proudest achievements. The audience didn't deserve my music: during the scene where we hear birdsong, the audience laughed and imitated barnyard cries. Needless to say, I didn't have a very good evening.
Don't take my words as dripping with boastfulness. Whether Tosca or La Bohème, my operas have always been the victims of harsh judgment. Nevertheless, they always found their audience, and in any case, after Verdi, I was the new ambassador of Italian music.
The problem was that I've never really enjoyed working. So when my operas are criticized, the least I can do is revisit them and try to improve them - even if, once again, the critics are often wrong. But that means extra work. Even as a child, I was described as brilliant but a little lazy. As I grew up, I was more at home in the fun places of my hometown, Lucca, than behind the school desk. Then, in Milan, when I began studying composition, I found myself among the best students, but my laziness didn't help. My teacher Amilcare Ponchielli wrote of me: "I'd be totally satisfied if he showed himself to be more regular in his efforts."
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts, based on a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosca, after the play by Victorien Sardou. It took Puccini over ten years to obtain the author's permission for this adaptation.
Puccini is famous in particular for his penchant for verismo. This is an artistic movement comparable to French realism, based on the principle that the author should be inspired by the truth. The plots of the operas produced by this movement are based on everyday situations, and the hero is usually a "simple" man of the people, the antithesis of the mythical Wagnerian hero. Tosca fits rather well into this style, in that there are purely verist elements at its heart. The beginning of Act III is marked by the sound of Rome's city bells. There is also a genuine shepherd's song in Roman dialect, in which the bells of sheep can be heard. The voice of the singer interpreting Tosca is also typically verist: a powerful soprano in the midrange, valiant in the treble and dense in the bass.
Tosca does, however, display certain influences of Wagnerian drama, with its use of leitmotifs and chromatic harmonic writing.
As a student in Milan, I lived a truly bohemian life. It's often said that I walked around with my shirt half-open and my hair a mess, but I was known as a scapigliato (Italian for disheveled) in the figurative sense: I was part of the Scapigliatura intellectual movement. Although many of us came from the bourgeoisie (which was my case), we rejected its conservatism. Each in his own artistic field, we wanted to overturn the codes of creation. The bohemian life, in short.
This movement not only inspired one of my most famous operas, La Bohème. Above all, it enabled me to meet some of my dearest friends and supporters. Arrigo Boito, to name but one, also a composer, enabled me to create my very first opera in 1884, Le Villi.
1884, what a beautiful year! Not content with my bohemian lifestyle, I also had my little seductive side. That year I ran away with Elvira to Torre del Lago, far from the gossip of the city. She was a married woman with two children, and I liked her strong character. Unfortunately, her strength of character and her jealousy didn't make me a faithful companion: our married life wasn't always easy.
Musetta's Walts - La Bohème "Quando Me'n Vo
"Quand Me'n Vo" is a slow waltz sung by the character Musetta in the celebrated opera La Bohême. Musetta sings this aria in the presence of her bohemian friends, hoping to regain the attention of her former lover Marcello.
More generally, the opera is inspired by Henry Murger's Scènes de la vie de bohème and its stage adaptation La Vie de Bohème. The work is an icon of the Scapigliatura movement. In it, Puccini depicts a real love story, with an innate and unconscious romanticism far removed from the marriages of interest conducted by the bourgeoisie. From a musical point of view, Puccini made a decisive departure from traditional Italian lyricism, notably by proposing a new vocal declamation he called "conversation en musique": halfway between the old recitative and the parlato (which he had developed in La fille du Far-West.
Even so, life at Torre del Lago suited me quite well. On the one hand, I'm someone who's rather uncomfortable in society, even anxious. People used to say I was a bit of a "bear". There was also the financial argument, for it's worth remembering that at the time I hadn't yet had my first successes: my opera Manon Lescaut didn't arrive until 1893. However, even with the fame and wealth I'd acquired with La Bohème, Tosca and Madame Butterfly, I remained well ensconced in Torre del Lago, far from the city, in the warmth of my hermit's life. I could compose with peace of mind, and that didn't stop me from welcoming journalists with open arms who wanted to discover my world.
I think this desire to distance myself from society has something to do with my childhood. I was born in 1858 into a family of seven children. I was the first boy of my siblings: five older sisters and a younger brother. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were already important local composers - so I was immersed in music from the very start. Then, in January 1864, my father died. In spite of myself, I found myself the last heir to the Puccini line of composers, not least because of my pronounced aptitude for the art. Family pressure was felt very quickly, and I think that leaving the hustle and bustle of Milan for Torre del Lago was my way of escaping this pressure.
Manon Lescaut
Another lyric drama that brought Puccini his first real success. This is his third opera, in 4 acts, based on L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut.
It's important to remember that Puccini was tackling a task that had already been tackled by Massenet before him. His aim was to set himself apart from his French colleague, and in this respect he succeeds. Even if he does allow himself archaic elements reminiscent of 18th-century French style, these remain very occasional. More generally, the musical treatment of the story focuses on highlighting the tragic impossibility of love between Manon and Des Grieux. Compare this work with Massenet's or Daniel Aubert's treatment of it, to understand the depth and originality of Puccini's creation.
By 1903, my fame was well established. Even so, I was deeply unhappy. Always proud and elegant, I was haunted by dark thoughts and painful questions. "I need a friend so badly, but I don't have any. I'm the only one who understands me, and that makes me suffer enormously," I wrote to my librettist Luigi Illica. That same year, a car accident left me lame, and the thought of dying terrified me.
I faced many failures. Even if I keep a straight face, being booed at the premiere of Madame Butterfly touched me deeply. Then, in 1906, one of my dear librettists, Giacosca, died. I then embarked on a project for a "lyric western" which, despite an initial success, was quickly dismissed. Then my operetta La Rondine didn't help matters - a rather mediocre work in fact. Then I composed Le Triptyque, a suite of operas featuring a horror episode, a sentimental tragedy and a farce, which met with mixed success.
Nessun Dorma
Nessun Dorma is an aria from Giacomo Puccini's last opera, Turandot. It is sung by the character of Calaf, a tenor, at the beginning of the third act. Riddled with loneliness, the character impatiently awaits the day when he can win Turandot's love.
The tenor's lyrical soaring ends on two "Vincero!", the first on a B, the second on an A, two rather high notes for a tenor that will resonate in your mind long after the first listen. As the singer's passion grows with repeated notes, the orchestra launches into a poignant counterpoint of bitter harmonies. This celebrated aria is an essential part of Puccini's music, a true testament to his immense compositional talent, and a melody that easily finds its way into the heart of the listener.
Today is 1924, and I have been diagnosed with throat cancer. As I write these words, I am struggling to finish my opera Turandot: a tragic tale based on a Chinese legend in which death is overcome by love. I know that this will be my last work, and that I won't finish it. So I grab a sheet of paper and write a letter to conductor Arturo Toscanini. My hand trembling, I squeak out my pen and write the words: "My opera will be given unfinished. Someone will then come up on stage and say to the audience: this is the end of the Maestro's work, he was there when he died".
In 1926, at the premiere of Turandot, Arturo Toscanini granted Giacomo Puccini's last wish. The hall, overwhelmed by emotion, fell silent for a few long seconds. Then, swallowing back their tears, the audience rose to their feet and gave Puccini a final standing ovation for his entire body of work. "You'll see I'm right," he said. He hadn't lied. Even if his works were not always unanimously acclaimed, Puccini's compositions deserve their place in the pantheon of major works, and today he is an essential reference in classical music.
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