Giacomo Puccini

Born in Lucca in 1858 into a family of church musicians, he studied at the Milan Conservatory; Le Villi won him the backing of the publisher Giulio Ricordi, and Manon Lescaut brought him international success. He kept experimenting to the end, in La fanciulla del West and in the three one-act operas of Il trittico. Turandot was unfinished when he died in 1924; it was completed from his sketches by Franco Alfano, and much later, differently, by Luciano Berio. La bohème, drawn from Henri Murger's scenes of bohemian life, was drafted from 1893 and completed in 1895, with the librettists Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica; Arturo Toscanini conducted the premiere in Turin on 1 February 1896. Manon Lescaut came from Abbé Prévost's novel, taken up in the years when he had begun to live with Elvira Bonturi, who was already married. His operas also include Tosca and Madama Butterfly.