Giacomo Puccini is the greatest heir of Verdi and one of the most beloved opera composers of all time. He brought Italian lyric opera to perfection, combining the realism of verismo with an endless stream of sumptuous, “flowing” melodies that seize the soul.
His operas — “La Bohème,” “Tosca,” “Madama Butterfly,” “Turandot” — are among the most popular in the world and never leave the stages of the leading theatres. Puccini was an unsurpassed master of the theatre: he sensed the stage precisely and knew how to create living, suffering heroes and climaxes that leave no one indifferent. It was the Ukrainian singer Solomiya Krushelnytska who, in Brescia in 1904, led the revised “Madama Butterfly” to triumph after its failed premiere. Puccini's melodies are the summit of operatic lyricism, a symbol of the beauty and tragedy of human feeling.
