He's the byword for opera, the shorthand for swooning romance - and oh, those melodies!
You really can’t knock a Puccini aria... Try it, and you’ll be faced with a legion of outraged punters.
While for opera houses, his works all but guarantee a box office bonanza. In an era of constant change, Puccini operas have achieved a kind of timelessness. Antique in their style and structure to modern ears, perhaps, but suffused with visceral emotions - passion, betrayal, loss and regret - which continue to rule our lives.
Puccini himself nailed his formula as: "Poetry, poetry, ardent affections, flesh, searching, almost surprising drama, fireworks finale…"
This year sees the centenary of the death of Giacomo Puccini. His life and art are set to be celebrated in two sell-out gala concerts with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and guest artists, 100 Years of Puccini, in Wexford and Dublin, featuring soprano Celine Byrne and tenor Noah Stewart, and presented by myself.
In addition to arias and duets by Puccini himself, there's also a brief selection from Amilcare Ponchielli, the opera master who mentored a young Puccini at the outset of his career. But neither Ponchielli or any other maestro of his time could come close to what Puccini achieved: as the first and only composer to emerge from the colossal shadow of Giuseppe Verdi.
Puccini was born in the Tuscan city of Lucca, and from the start his life was dedicated to music. For five generations, a Puccini had served as maestro di cappella (music master) at the local cathedral, and young Giacomo was expected to follow suit. However, he sidestepped the family tradition in favour of studies at Milan Conservatory. There Puccini lived the kind of bohemian, impoverished life later enshrined in his opera La Boheme: hunger and cold, and nights of wild excess shared with room mate Pietro Mascagni, another aspiring opera composer.
At this time, Italian opera was at a stalemate. For generations, it had trotted out works after a cookie-cutter format of arias, ensembles, a couple of choruses, and a big finale - bob's your uncle. But then came Verdi, whose innovations and ambition had broadened and breached received form, encompassing French and German influences in a symphonic sweep. As Verdi approached the end of the life, his potential successors - the nuove scuole (new school) of composers such as Puccini - were literally trying to find their voice.
His triumph lies in the packed opera houses: the new generations who come to his works, and fall in love with love, with beauty and art, and above all with the pure glory of the human voice.
For a while, verismo was a new way forward, a style of opera which focused on gritty real life scenarios, often violent and set in a working class milieu. There were several verismo successes: Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, the tragic clown opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, and Andrea Chenier by Francesco Cilea. But each of these masters fell prey to the one-hit wonder syndrome; their other works never achieved the same success.
For Puccini, it’d be different: twelve operas, of which seven - seven! - are still regularly performed around the world. In fact, only the operas of Mozart and Verdi have been performed more frequently during the 20th century.
Three from Puccini’s canon of work - La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly - have transcended the stage to become part of the broader cultural lexicon.
From his last opera Turandot, Nessun Dorma has become one of the great universal cries of aspiration. Vincerò! cries Calaf to the night sky - I shall triumph!
What makes a Puccini opera? What's the hook that reels us in so helplessly to his art? Firstly, there’s the standard subject matter; elemental emotions that speak to us all. Also, there’s the distinctiveness of his composing style, offering supple orchestration beneath these brief arias that strike at the heart, and - above all - that endless, swooning lyricism.
Puccini instructed one of his divas: "Carissima mia, you have to walk on clouds of melody."
As the world swung round to the twentieth century and the adventures of modernism, Puccini still largely stuck to his own, inimitable musical language. What really mattered to the composer was dramatic veracity; he'd hound and harass his librettists during the drafting of a work. Projects were frequently halted and discarded, even at an advanced stage of preparation. In the very structure of Puccini’s arias, you can hear how the music is contoured around the emotions. Take Rodolfo’s aria Che gelida manina (from La Boheme, Act I); so familiar to us today, but listen again, and listen closely.
You literally have three separate musical paragraphs, built around the young man’s shifting moods: a radical premise, made to sound entirely natural and impulsive by Puccini’s meticulous scoring.
And of course, there's the Puccini heroine. A woman who lives and dies for love, and whose sacrifice represents the burning heart of a Puccini drama.
She’s defined by this single passion, and she nearly always has to suffer for it, a pattern that throws a light on the composer’s own relations with women.
Puccini was a self-confessed roué. "A mighty hunter of wild fowl, opera librettos and attractive women," he proclaimed. As a young man, Puccini had eloped with his piano pupil right after the death of his mother. Her name was Elvira Gemignani, a married woman whose husband, ironically, had been a philanderer. She and Puccini would finally marry, but his compulsive infidelities shadowed their lives. He was a well-groomed, handsome man; Puccini once declared that he despised musicians "…who think they have to have dandruff to be geniuses".
But this playboy exterior masked a fervent devotion to the truth of his music, with its focus on women who sacrifice themselves for love: Mimi, Cio-Cio-San, Tosca, Liu… in their forfeit, they become transfigured, purified of background circumstance or any extraneous character.
Admittedly, there's a distinctly dodgy slant to this representation - but just open your ears to the imperishable rapture of their song and all is forgiven. As Puccini observed, "… make people weep, therein lies everything".
Puccini's operas have always had their detractors; those who object to the "click bait" scenarios of easy emotion and perceived low-brow subjects. In particular, Tosca has come under fire for its potent depiction of sexual obsession and sadism, the brilliantly ambivalent dynamic between the singer and police chief. 'A shabby little shocker', it was once labelled. I’ll say it again, just listen! The exultation of Scarpia’s Te Deum, its profane avowal - this is music of epic theatricality and reach.
There was a famous exchange recorded between composers and friends Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten.
Shostakovich: "What do you think of Puccini?"
Britten: "I think his operas are dreadful."
Shostakovich: "No, Ben, you are wrong. He wrote marvellous operas, but dreadful music."
Perhaps Puccini would have laughed. Because he was all about opera - the music was the medium. And his triumph lies in the packed opera houses: the new generations who come to his works, and fall in love with love, with beauty and art, and above all with the pure glory of the human voice.
Vissi d'arte, vissi d’amore/ I lived for art, I lived for love - Tosca
As William Berger once said: "Without Puccini, there is no opera; without opera, the world is an even drearier place than the evening news would have us think."
The RTÉ Concert Orchestra presents 100 Years of Puccini at the National Opera House, Wexford on February 28th, and the National Concert Hall, Dublin on February 29th, 2024 - find out more here and here.
Tune into The Full Score with Liz Nolan on RTÉ lyric fm, every Mon-Thu from 1 pm - 4 pm, and listen back here.
