Word: puccini
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...Puccini...
...must to all men, Death came to Giacomo Puccini, famed composer, at Brussels, Belgium, where he had gone for radium treatment for tumor of the throat. Weakened by the treatment, he died of a heart attack. While he lay dying, his opera Madame Butterfly was being presented at the Costanza Theatre, Rome. On the day of his death, his opera La Boheme was presented at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, where, after the third act, Chopin's Funeral March was played by the orchestra. In Italy, Premier Mussolini announced that Puccini's funeral would be paid...
Incomparably the most popular of contemporary composers, Puccini was born at Lucca, Italy, 1858. His father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather had all composed music. He attracted attention when his one-act opera Le Villi was successfully performed at La Scala, Milan. His next work, Edgar, was a failure; but he won note with Manon Lescaut, and international fame with La Bohème. Tosca and Madame Butterfly followed. The Girl of the Golden West, based on a drama by David Belasco, produced at the Metropolitan with Caruso and Emmy Destinn, did not long survive,* nor did the three short...
...agreeable Fontane di Roma. His latest offering, while it has never before been heard in Manhattan, actually was composed before the other, and shows it. It is an effective com- position, but with traces of immaturity and it is unhappily reminiscent. There is Tchaikovsky in it, and Puccini, Strauss and, above all, Wagner. But it was well and carefully delivered and welcomed with enthusiasm by the audience. A little perplexity was caused by the fact that, obviously a piece of program music, no key was given to its meaning. The orchestra itself is better than ever...
...performance; he applauded and I sang. But when he insisted on my singing the Czardas a fourth time-I could not get a single note out." Crowned heads of the world's musical aristocracy are not lacking. There is Caruso, whom the diva kissed; Richard Strauss and Puccini, her intimate friends; Franz Schreker, whose music she loathes ("His stories are morbid and unhealthy; his scores, vocally, are the most terrible ever written") ; Geraldine Farrar, whom she generously admires; Gatti-Casazza, Frances Alda, Marcella Sembrich her teacher, "strict, and, when I sometimes gave her occasion, stern." The choicest bits...