Puccini: A Biography

by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz and William Weaver

Descended from four generations of distinguished composers and organists, Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was driven by family tradition and an ambitious mother to pursue a career that brought him worldwide recognition as the greatest composer of Italian opera after Giuseppe Verdi. But behind the brilliant creator of such lasting works as La Boh me, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West, La Rondine, and Turandot, there was a person racked...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555535305
• ISBN13: 9781555535308
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Northeastern University Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.9"

Customer Reviews

NOT "DEFINITIVE," BUT A VERY VALUABLE WORK

Mary Jane Phillips-Matz had written a magisterial biography of Verdi (Verdi: A Biography); this work is far less thorough, but is nevertheless fascinating for Puccini fans (including such details as "every few yards, he would come to a complete standstill, pausing to light one of his eternal cigarettes"). After the success of Madame Butterfly, "By any standard, Puccini was rich, and his operas were astoundingly successful." However, this very success "left him dissatisfied with his own work. Believing that audiences had begun to tire of what he called his 'sugary music,' he changed direction and embarked on years of anguish as he sought to create works of greater resonance." He considered the opera Edgar "a blunder," and wrote on a copy of the score that belonged to a friend, "May God protect you from this opera." She also notes that Mahler and Britten both intensely disliked Puccini's work. It's not an extensive treatment, but it's an excellent one, and well worth reading for Puccini fans.

Puccini: a restless visionist and revisionist

Having sung in "Tosca" and "Madama Butterfly", my interest was piqued when I first heard about Mary Jane Phillips-Matz's wonderful new biography about Giacomo Puccini. Using his operas as chapter divisions, the author gives a firm basis on which to look at Puccini's life as he struggled with his music, his collaborators, his family, his publisher, his singers, Arturo Toscanini and himself.Restless and constantly on the move was Italy's greatest twentieth-century composer. The composer was not content to stay long in one place, she tells us. He had a house here, a house there; he didn't like this one, he longed to be at yet another one....this was no laboratory musician! Through the sharing of Puccini's letters (and he wrote unceasingly, it seems), Phillips-Matz offers us glimpses into the continual torment the composer faced, either from his own high standards and inabilities to finish projects to the endless revisions of present and past operas on which he was working. Puccini seemed to be under perpetual pressure. The author is careful not to be judgmental about her subect; in fact she includes a surprising number of revealing interviews that she, herself, conducted with singers who had performed Puccini operas and had worked with him in his later life.Phillips-Matz's book is not so much a book about Puccini's music as it is about process. How did the composer go about choosing texts? What was he feeling when he composed? How did he envision the final outcomes of his operas? The relationships with those who were closest to him are perhaps the best aspects of this book, especially those with his wife and Toscanini. The author almost seems to be encouraging the reader by saying this: "here is what Puccini was like; now go hear his music and see what connections you can make."

Solid biography

Not as good--or as long--as her Verdi, Phillips-Matz's new bio of Puccini is solid and competent. She is at her best with scenery, at her weakest with the music. Though this biography will not soon replace Mosco Carner, it's worth the purchase price and the reader's time.