“God touched me with his little finger, and said ‘Write for the theater — mind, only for the theater,’” said Puccini. And essentially, he did as he was told. Few of his compositions are remembered today except for his operas, three of which — La Bohème, Tosca, and Madame Butterfly — remain among the most popular ever written.
He claimed that he was unable to write if the libretto did not inspire him. Except for his first two operas (which did not do well) he chose the subjects himself. He nagged his friends to keep an eye out for suitable material. When he found a story he liked, he would lavish attention on it, refining it until it met his exacting standards — or rejecting it if he discovered it lacked the potential he sought.
Grove Music Online describes the methodical, step-by-step approach by which he worked, with collaborators, to develop La Bohème from its origins in a novel by Henri Murger. Puccini’s collaborators were Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa.
1. Outline of the drama: Illica, Puccini
2. Musical sketches, with indications for verse: Puccini
3. Versification: Giacosa
4. Composition, orchestration: Puccini
5. Revision of drama: Illica, Puccini
6. Revision of verse: Giacosa, Illica, Puccini
7. Revision of music: Puccini
As the plan suggests, everything — the verse, the arias, the orchestration — depends on, and supports, the dramatic structure of the piece. Again from Grove: “Puccini generally delineated from the opening bars of his operas the atmosphere in which the action was to develop….”. He then would establish “a dramatic cohesion using interwoven melodies, a technique which, from Manon Lescaut onwards, was to characterize Puccini’s compositions.“
Born in Lucca, Italy, Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) seemed destined for a life in service to the San Martino Cathedral there, where his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great grandfather had each, in turn, held the post of Maestro di cappella. Giacomo’s interest lay elsewhere, though, and although he sang in the Cathedral choir at age 10 and became its organist at age 14, it was the experience of hearing Verdi’s Aïda, when he was 18, that decided his career. He had walked 20 miles, to Pisa, in order to hear it, and when the curtain had come down, he had made up his mind.
He attended the Milan Conservatory on a scholarship, and, for a time, shared a room with the budding composer Pietro Mascagni. They lived la vie de boheme, eating on credit at the Aida restaurant and protecting each other from creditors. (One account has it that they burned some of Puccini’s manuscript pages to keep warm!) By the time Puccini had graduated from the conservatory, he had caught the attention of the powerful music publisher Giulio Recordi, who would end up publishing all of Puccini’s operas.
Puccini’s first enduringly popular opera, Manon Lescaut, premiered in Turin in 1893. Three years later, La Bohème premiered there, with the 29-year-old Arturo Toscanini conducting. (Toscanini, who had been conducting operas for a decade — his first was Aida — had not yet to conducted a symphony.) Puccini found Toscanini to be “a highly intelligent and a very sweet, kind man.” The critics found La Bohème sub-par, predicting that it would have a short life. But the audience found it to their taste: twenty-three performances were given.
Puccini never lacked for money again.