This chapter is the first of three to consider Puccini’s travels, both for work and leisure. It covers his travels in western Europe, particularly in France and Great Britain, assessing the importance of Paris and London as key centres for the performance of Puccini’s works. Both cities had had long and vibrant traditions of importing musical works from other European countries; Paris also had a flourishing operatic culture of its own. Puccini visited both cities regularly from the mid-1890s, often to supervise the production of his works. London became particularly important for Puccini when Manon Lescaut was launched at Covent Garden in 1894; a few years later he would visit Manchester for the British premiere of La bohème. Visiting Paris for business allowed Puccini the opportunity to hear new works by other leading European composers of the day, including Debussy and Stravinsky. It was also a place of refuge for him at a time of personal crisis. The chapter records Puccini’s thoughts about these and other European cities, not all of which were flattering. It concludes with a discussion of his death in Brussels in 1924.

This chapter considers the music publishing industry in Puccini’s Italy, with a particular focus on Puccini’s principal publisher, the Casa Ricordi. The chapter examines the role that publishers played within the wider operatic industry, which by Puccini’s time included managing contracts between composers and opera houses and influencing casting, as well as the more traditional business of printing, publishing, and promoting scores. The particular musical specialisms of the Sonzogno and Ricordi publishing houses are discussed. The author shows how Ricordi elevated Puccini to the position of national-composer-elect towards the end of Verdi’s lifetime and constructed a ‘Puccini myth’. Expensive, sophisticated publicity tools and marketing strategies were used to promote Puccini’s works, not only in Italy but in territories across the globe. The chapter discusses how Puccini’s relationship with the firm changed as a result of the succession of power from Giulio to Tito Ricordi upon the former’s death, as well as the firm’s management of Puccini’s works after his own death.

This chapter considers how Puccini was represented visually, predominantly through the still fairly new medium of photojournalism. The author discusses the marketing strategies devised by the Ricordi publishing house in order to promote Puccini to the readers of its various illustrated magazines as the successor to Verdi. Initially portrayed as a rather Bohemian young student, Puccini soon came to be depicted as the epitome of stylish Italian manliness. Visual representations of the composer – not only photographs but also paintings and sketches – exploited his connections to the Tuscan landscape of his native region, as Puccini was increasingly co-opted into the project of forging a national identity for the recently unified country. Care was taken to represent Puccini as an emblem of modernity and dynamism, and this was an image of the composer that was presented not only at home in Italy but all around the world.

This chapter examines Puccini’s relationship with the other young Italian composers of his generation – who came to be known as the giovane scuola italiana – and demonstrates how they were forced into a sometimes antagonistic rivalry with one another. All of these young men were in competition to attract the attention of the major Milanese publishing houses of the day, Ricordi and Sonzogno, and all wanted to be crowned successor to Verdi as Italy’s new national composer. The chapter discusses the composition competition launched by the Sonzogno firm, Puccini’s unsuccessful entry with his opera Le Villi, and Mascagni’s triumph with Cavalleria rusticana. The chapter examines how many of the young composers of the day turned to the verismo genre of opera and discusses the careers of figures including Catalani, Franchetti, and Leoncavallo. Puccini’s process of selecting literary sources to set is considered, with the author showing the importance of rivalry as a creative stimulus for the composer.

This chapter considers the life and works of Puccini’s various librettists and their working relationships with the composer. It also examines the literary sources that provided the inspiration for, or formed the basis of, the various libretti. Ferdinando Fontana, a member of the Scapigliatura movement, collaborated with Puccini on Le Villi and Edgar. Manon Lescaut was a team effort, worked on variously by Marco Praga, Domenico Oliva, Giuseppe Giacosa, the composer Ruggero Leoncavallo, and the publisher Giulio Ricordi. With La bohème, Puccini settled into a regular partnership with Giacosa and Luigi Illica, whose writing careers are expanded upon here at length, and with whom he would collaborate again on Tosca and Madama Butterfly. For La fanciulla del West, Puccini collaborated with more inexperienced writers, Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini. La rondine, written as a commission for a Viennese operetta venue (though ultimately premiered in Monte Carlo because of the outbreak of war), brought him into collaboration with Giuseppe Adami, who would also work with Puccini on Il tabarro and Turandot (with Renato Simoni). Gianni Schicchi and Suor Angelica were written by the Florentine writer Giovacchino Forzano.

This chapter examines Puccini’s relationship with Milan, the city that was most important to his career. It begins with a detailed discussion of the Milan of the composer’s student years, outlining its importance as both an industrial and a cultural centre characterised by cosmopolitanism and modernity. Milan was also the capital of the nineteenth-century operatic world, where many singers, publishers, and critics were based, and with several leading opera houses, most notably La Scala. The chapter discusses how Puccini launched his career in Milan, securing a premiere at La Scala at a very early stage (Edgar). The ill-fated first performance of Madama Butterfly is also discussed, as is the posthumous premiere of Turandot. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the importance of Puccini’s oeuvre at La Scala since his death and the ways in which Puccini came, in a sense, to symbolise the city’s self-image.

This chapter examines Puccini’s relationship with early film. The composer’s career coincided with nearly the first thirty years of the cinematic art form, and it was a form of technology with which Puccini had an ambivalent relationship. The chapter begins with an account of Puccini’s known thoughts about film and cinema going. There follows an extensive discussion of Puccini’s and Ricordi’s legal efforts to prevent the use of his music as film accompaniment, and of the difficulty in recouping royalties. By the 1920s, however, Ricordi was including a clause about film usage in opera contracts, including that for Turandot. From the 1930s, with the arrival of the ‘talkies’, commercial opportunities became apparent and the company pursued a more liberal course. The chapter also considers how Puccini’s operas were brought to the screen during his lifetime and shortly after – there was a particular vogue for Tosca films – and discusses the ways in which the composer’s works might be considered ‘cinematic’.