This chapter discusses the Italian critics who wrote about Puccini’s music during his lifetime. Though dilettante writers showered Puccini with praise, more rigorous music critics of his era took a rather more sceptical view of his compositional merits. Puccini’s career coincided with the development of professional music criticism in Italy and also with the rise of musicology as an academic discipline. Significant critics discussed in this chapter include Amintore Galli, Filippo Filippi, Luigi Torchi, and Luigi Alberto Villanis. Particular attention is paid to Fausto Torrefranca, the author of a denunciatory and scathing text called Giacomo Puccini e l’opera internazionale, which blamed Puccini for many of the ills of the modern musical world. Many young critics of the era, such as Torrefranca, Giannotto Bastianelli and Ildebrando Pizzetti, associated Puccini with a backward-looking bourgeoisie and were keen to promote avant-garde Italian music, as well as non-commercial music from the more distant past. Puccini found approval amongst a new generation of pro-Fascist critics during the 1920s. Time and again, Puccini found himself dragged into debates about politics and national identity that went far beyond music.

This chapter considers how Puccini has been commemorated through biographies and obituaries. It begins with a discussion of biographies or studies of the composer published during his own lifetime, in Britain, Italy, and Germany – some flattering, some decidedly hostile. The author then discusses international responses to Puccini’s death, via press obituaries, remembrance ceremonies, and other tributes. Puccini’s memorialisation in Italy was effusive; that abroad somewhat less so, with some French obituaries verging on the disparaging. Obituarists attempted to weigh up Puccini’s significance within music history and to assess the extent to which he represented a quintessentially Italian style. The chapter then discusses books of various types that were published about Puccini after his death, including biographies and collections of letters. It considers how Puccini was remembered on the occasion of various significant anniversaries and how Puccini’s reputation was reappraised over the century since his death.