Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was born in Lucca, Italy, on 22 December 1858. He was the sixth of nine children by Michele Puccini and Albina Magi, and his birthplace was on the second floor of the historic

Talk about a strange story. Calaf is one of three suitors for the hand of the prickly Princess Turandot. Her suitors must solve three riddles, with any single wrong answer resulting in execution. Calaf manages to solve all three riddles

Without doubt, Giacomo Puccini scored an all-time hit with his aria “O mio babbino caro.” Just about everybody knows this famous melody, and it has been performed by some of the most illustrious singers of our time, not to mention

We often regard vocal music and instrumental music as quite separate. We know the limitations of the voice, such as a limited range, and we know the freedom of an instrumental performance, which can cover a range of sound music

When the original two-act version of Madama Butterfly premiered in Milan on 17 February 1904, the audience was not impressed. Puccini had struggled to complete the score, and there simply wasn’t enough time for proper rehearsals. Despite notable singers Rosina

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) called his opera La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the West) his “greatest work.” Puccini must certainly have felt a sense of accomplishment as the opera was seven years in the making, and originated during a

When Arturo Toscanini raised his arms at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 25 April 1926, he was getting ready for the premier of an unfinished opera. Turandot, the operatic adaptation of an originally 12th-century Persian epic filtered through

Here is the trivia question for today. Can you name the Puccini opera that the composer himself desperately wanted to forget? The answer is Edgar, and despite revising it repeatedly, Puccini eventually declared the work irredeemable. Edgar was Puccini’s second