

A performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, which he saw in Pisa in 1876, convinced him that his true vocation was opera. He first studied music with two of his father’s former pupils, and he played the organ in small local churches. He was orphaned at the age of five by the death of his father, and the municipality of Lucca supported the family with a small pension and kept the position of cathedral organist open for Giacomo until he came of age. Puccini initially dedicated himself to music, therefore, not as a personal vocation but as a family profession. Puccini was the last descendant of a family that for two centuries had provided the musical directors of the Cathedral of San Martino in Lucca. His mature operas included La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (left incomplete). Giacomo Puccini, in full Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini, (born December 22, 1858, Lucca, Tuscany -died November 29, 1924, Brussels, Belgium), Italian composer, one of the greatest exponents of operatic realism, who virtually brought the history of Italian opera to an end.
