Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca on 22th December 1858 to Michele and Albina Magi.

The sixth of nine children in a family that had been chapel masters and organists at the cathedral of Lucca for four generations.

The early death of his father (1865) placed the Puccinis in financial straits, so that Giacomo’s education was entrusted to Fortunato Magi, his maternal uncle and musician, who initially did not see in his nephew a particular artistic predisposition.

However, the child was initiated into organ and choral singing, coping with everything with little success and a fair amount of indolence. It was only when he enrolled in his city’s music institute, under the guidance of Carlo Angeloni, that he began to reveal an unexpected talent.

During his formative years in Tuscany, he devoted himself to compositional trials of little resonance. The turning point came in 1880, when he moved to Milan, where he perfected his studies and met friends and masters from whom he drew stimuli, inspiration and teachings.

After fluctuating years, once he had graduated from the conservatory, his first timid successes began, which then gave rise to an operetta production of great value: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904) and Turandot (performed posthumously in 1926) to name the best known.

A leading figure on the Italian opera scene, Puccini dedicated himself exclusively to music for the theatre. Although his operatic production counts only twelve titles, the meticulous care with which he developed each opera, both musically and dramaturgically, allowed him to create masterpieces that were able to establish themselves firmly in the international repertoire.

Throughout his life, he was deeply attached to Tuscany and, in particular, to Torre del Lago, a hamlet of Viareggio, which was a place of peace and inspiration for him, so much so that he had a villa built there in which several of his works saw the light of day. There he lived together with Elvira Bonturi, who – despite his various liaisons – was his life companion and mother of his only son, Antonio.

Giacomo Puccini, who fell ill with a tumour of the larynx, died in Brussels on 29th November 1924.

You can read his name among the monthly extracts from the baptism registers of the parish of S. Martino in Lucca: Archivio di Stato di Firenze > Stato civile preunitario (1815-1865) > Lucca > 1858 (nr. 2034)

The register is kept at the State Archives of Florence

For more on the figure of Giacomo Puccini, see the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani entry edited by Dieter Schickling.