puccini

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini 
(22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924)

This post-romantic singer and organist pioneered the verismo style to become one of the greatest Italian operatic composers of all time.   Puccini  came from a long family line that held the position of maestro di cappella of the Cattedrale di San Martino in Lucca for one hundred and twenty-four years.  When his father Michele died, Giacomo inherited his postion; but he was only six years old and unable to fulfill the requirements.  He continued to study music and served in the choir and as a substitute organist; but, after hearing Verdi’s Aida, he decided that he wanted to compose operas.  Along with a few other Italian composers of the time, he embraced  the naturalism of influential writers of the late 19th-century utilizing realistic depictions of lower class everyday life, rejecting the grandiose historical and mythical subjects of Romanticism.   He went on to become one of the greatest composers of opera that Italy has ever seen, second only to Verdi.  When he died from complications of throat cancer a month before his sixty-sixth birthday, he left over four million dollars to his progeny.  Puccini expressed:    "Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements."







Messa di Gloria





Gianni Schicchi  "O mio babbino caro"






Le villi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UaSXO1UeAk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4NqwTF-QaQ





Manon Lescaut
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zebWjbhJvbM






La Bohème  "Che gelida manina"


La Bohème
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHAS7r8Pd0k





Tosca
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPXiwtAcCA4





Un bel dì (One fine day), from Madama Butterfly (Madam Butterfly).






La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West)






Nessun dorma (None shall sleep), from the opera Turandot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idxShlatp_c