Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini ( Italian  Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini ; December 22 , 1858 , Lucca  - November 29 , 1924 , Brussels ) is an Italian opera composer, organist and choirmaster, one of the brightest representatives of the " verismo " direction in music.

Some researchers believe that he is the largest Italian opera composer after Verdi ^[5] .

Puccini was born in Lucca , into a musical family, one of seven children. The dynasty of musicians in the Puccini family was founded in Lucca by Giacomo's great-great-grandfather (1712-1781) and his namesake ^[6] [7] . After the death of his father, Michele Puccini (1813-1864), the five-year-old Puccini was sent to study with his uncle Fortunato Maggi , who considered him a bad, undisciplined student and, according to a contemporary biographer of the composer, rewarded him with a painful kick in the shin for every false note, after why Puccini had a reflex pain in his leg all his life from false notes ^[8]. Subsequently, Puccini received a position as church organist and choirmaster. He wanted to become an opera composer when he first heard a performance of Giuseppe Verdi 's Aida in Pisa .

For four years, Puccini studied at the Milan Conservatory . In 1882 he participated in the competition of one-act operas. Not winning first prize, his opera The Willis was staged in 1884 at the Dal Verme ^[it] theater . This opera attracted the attention of Giulio Ricordi , head of an influential publishing house specializing in publishing scores. Ricordi ordered Puccini a new opera. It became " Edgar " .

His third opera, Manon Lescaut , completed in 1893 , was a huge success. Despite the clear influence of Richard Wagner , Puccini's talent was shown in this opera in almost its full brilliance. This same opera marks the start of Puccini's work with librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa .

Puccini's next opera, La bohème ( based on the novel by Henri Murger ), brought Puccini worldwide fame. At the same time, an opera with the same name and based on the same novel was written by Ruggero Leoncavallo , as a result of which a conflict arose between the two composers, and they stopped communicating.

La Boheme was followed by Tosca , which premiered at the turn of the century, in 1900 . Under pressure from the prima donna La Scala Darkle , who played the main role in this opera, and insisting that the main character have an aria that could be performed in concert, Puccini supplemented the second act of the opera by writing the now famous "Vissi d'arte". He also allowed Darkle, a blonde, not to wear a wig (in the text of the libretto, Tosca is a brunette).

February 17 , 1904 at Milan's Teatro alla Scala , Giacomo Puccini presented his new opera Madama Butterfly (Cio-chio-san) ("Madama Butterfly", based on the play by David Belasco ). Despite the participation of prominent singers Rosina Storchio , Giovanni Zenatello , Giuseppe de Luca , the performance was a failure. The maestro felt crushed. Friends persuaded Puccini to rework his work, and invite Solomeya Krushelnitskaya to the main part . May 29 at the Grande Theater in Bresciathe premiere of the updated "Madama Butterfly" took place, this time - triumphant. The audience called the actors and the composer to the stage seven times.

After that, new operas began to appear less frequently. In 1903, Puccini, an avid motorist, had an accident. In 1909, a scandal erupted when the composer's wife Elvira, suffering from fits of jealousy, accused the housekeeper Doria Manfredi of having an affair with Puccini, after which the housekeeper committed suicide. (Whether there really was a connection is unknown). Manfredi's relatives sued, and Puccini paid the court-appointed sum. In 1912, Puccini's publisher, Giulio Ricordi, who had played a huge role in the composer's rise to fame, died.

Nevertheless, in 1910, Puccini finished the opera " The Girl from the West ", which he later spoke of as his strongest opus. An attempt to write an operetta (obviously due to the incredible popularity of the genre at that time, which was then dominated by Franz Lehar and Imre Kalman ) ended in failure. In 1917, Puccini finished reworking his operetta into an opera (" The Swallow ").

In 1918, the premiere of the opera Triptych took place . This piece consists of three one-act operas (in the Parisian style known as grand guignol : horrors, sentimental tragedy and farce). The last, farcical part, called " Gianni Schicchi ", gained fame and is sometimes performed on the same evening with Mascagni's opera Rural Honor , or with Leoncavallo 's opera Pagliacci .

In late 1923, Puccini, who was a great lover of Tuscan cigars and cigarettes, began to complain of chronic sore throats. He was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx , and doctors recommended a new experimental treatment, radiotherapy , offered in Brussels . Neither Puccini himself nor his wife were aware of the severity of the disease, this information was only passed on to their son.

Puccini died in Brussels on November 29, 1924. The cause of death was complications caused by the operation - uncontrolled bleeding caused a myocardial infarction the day after the operation. The last act of his last opera (" Turandot ") was left unfinished. There are several versions of the ending, with the version written by Franco Alfano being the most commonly performed . At the premiere of this opera, the conductor, a close friend of the composer Arturo Toscanini , stopped the orchestra at the place where the part written by Alfano began. Putting down his baton, the conductor turned to the audience and said: "Here death interrupted the work on the opera, which the maestro did not have time to complete."

Shortly before his death, Puccini remarked in one of his letters that "opera has ended as a genre, because people have lost their taste for melody and are ready to tolerate musical compositions that do not contain anything melodic" [source not specified ^{3673 days ]} .