This chapter is the second of three to consider Puccini’s travels, both for work and leisure. It covers his extensive travels throughout central Europe, primarily throughout Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The author notes that Puccini did not visit Russia, which had been a vital destination for many of his predecessors and indeed some contemporaries. Vienna and Munich were preferred destinations for Puccini, both for business and pleasure, though his reception in the Austrian capital was ambivalent. Budapest gave the composer a warmer welcome. Puccini visited locations around central Europe in order to supervise the performance of his own works (particularly La bohème), or to listen to the works of others – his first trip to Germany was to attend the Bayreuth Festival and hear the works of Wagner. He also keenly followed the career of his contemporary Richard Strauss, attending the premieres of his works in cities around the region. In Vienna, meanwhile, he became friendly with Erich Wolfgang Korngold and his father Julius. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Puccini’s travels for health and leisure, and his interest in the technology of travel.

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.

Puccini’s career coincided with the emergence of the concept of modern baton conducting. This chapter considers the people who conducted the premières of Puccini’s operas, as well as significant revivals during his lifetime. Particular attention is given to Arturo Toscanini, by far the most important of the conductors with whom Puccini worked personally. The two men had a close collaborative relationship, with Toscanini even pencilling revisions on to the score that were later incorporated into printed editions. As well as collaborating with Puccini in Italy, Toscanini was instrumental in getting the composer’s works better known in the USA. Other significant conductors of Puccini’s lifetime who are discussed here include Luigi Mancinelli, Leopoldo Mugnone, and Cleofonte Campanini. The chapter also discusses later conductors – many, though not exclusively, Italian – who specialised in Puccini, as well as others (predominantly German and Austrian) who were critical of the composer and refused to conduct his works. Herbert von Karajan, Zubin Mehta, and Antonio Pappano are among the Puccini specialists discussed at the chapter’s conclusion.

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 the international musical scene of his day and considers the influence of contemporary progressive musical developments on his own musical style. The author considers Puccini’s attitude towards the music of Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner, Georges Bizet, Jules Massenet, Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, and others. He pinpoints where techniques borrowed from these figures can be found at specific moments in Puccini’s scores. In some cases, Puccini imitated aspects of plot or characterisation; in others he borrowed specific musical devices. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the ways in which Puccini drew inspiration for his operas from a variety of different national musical styles: Japanese music for Madama Butterfly, Chinese for Turandot, and American music of various types for La fanciulla del West.

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’.

This chapter is about Puccini’s operas and gender politics. It explains that Puccini’s operas have been read as particularly damaged and damaging in their representation of women, but argues that a nuanced study of gender in these works needs to look beyond a simple ‘body count’. The author examines how male and female deaths are differentiated musically, arguing that the former are contained and lacking in self-expression, whereas the latter tend to be extravagant and extended. The chapter discusses how gender has been considered in the Puccini literature, paying particular attention to Mosco Carner’s Freudian psychoanalytic reading of the works. It also examines Puccini’s own attitudes towards gender, so far as they are known. The chapter closes with a discussion of queer interpretations of Puccini’s oeuvre, a growing criticism of Puccini’s gender politics by feminist musicologists, and the recent casting of transgender and non-binary performers in Puccini’s works.

Although the classical canon seems static, immutable, and attached to the past, the history of the reception of Mozart’s operas in Prague shows that the canon’s social functions are dynamic and dialogic.