M° Emanuele Mazzola
Puccini sketched the score from 1901 and completed multiple versions in 1904–07, in an originally two-act (later expanded to three) structure. The score mixes Puccini’s late-Romantic lyricism with exoticising Japanese color, intimate domestic scenes and sweeping orchestral moments. Though Puccini reworked the piece repeatedly, the “standard” version that most companies perform stems from revisions completed… Continue reading Madama Butterfly (Puccini)
La Bohème, Giacomo Puccini’s masterpiece of youthful love and loss, adapts Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème, portraying the bittersweet lives of struggling artists in 1830s Paris. At its heart is the romance between poet Rodolfo and seamstress Mimì, whose delicate love is shadowed by poverty and illness. Puccini’s music, tender and emotionally… Continue reading La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini
Gianni Schicchi, the only comic opera by Giacomo Puccini, is based on a brief episode from Dante’s Inferno. The opera, written as the final installment of Puccini’s triptych Il Trittico, tells the story of a cunning Florentine commoner who outwits greedy aristocrats to secure a future for his daughter. Despite its brevity—under an hour—Gianni Schicchi… Continue reading Gianni Schicchi by Puccini
Musical Beam 