The
Festival Puccini (
Puccini Festival) is an annual summer
operaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
festival held in July and August to present the operas of the famous Italian
composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
,
Giacomo PucciniGiacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
.
The Festival is located in
Torre del LagoTorre del Lago is a hamlet of almost 11,000 inhabitants, a frazione of the comune of Viareggio, in the province of Lucca, Tuscany, Italy, between the Lake of Massaciuccoli and the Tyrrhenian Sea....
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
, a town located between the Lake Massaciuccoli and the Tyrrhenian Sea, from the beaches of
ViareggioViareggio is a city located in northern Tuscany, Italy, on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. With a population of over 63,000 it is the main centre of the northern Tuscan Riviera known as Versilia, and the second largest city within the Province of Lucca....
on the Tuscan Riviera and from
PisaPisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the Arno River on the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
and
LuccaLucca is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca...
, Puccini's birthplace.
In presenting four or five performances of up to four operatic productions each season, the Festival attracts about forty thousand spectators to its open-air theater, the
Teatro dei Quattromila (so named for its seating capacity, although fewer seats were actually installed), located very close to the "Villa Museum Puccini", the house which the composer had built in 1900 and in which he lived and worked on his major operas until pollution from the lake forced him to settle in Viarregio in 1921.
The
Festival Puccini (
Puccini Festival) is an annual summer
operaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
festival held in July and August to present the operas of the famous Italian
composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
,
Giacomo PucciniGiacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
.
The Festival is located in
Torre del LagoTorre del Lago is a hamlet of almost 11,000 inhabitants, a frazione of the comune of Viareggio, in the province of Lucca, Tuscany, Italy, between the Lake of Massaciuccoli and the Tyrrhenian Sea....
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
, a town located between the Lake Massaciuccoli and the Tyrrhenian Sea, from the beaches of
ViareggioViareggio is a city located in northern Tuscany, Italy, on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. With a population of over 63,000 it is the main centre of the northern Tuscan Riviera known as Versilia, and the second largest city within the Province of Lucca....
on the Tuscan Riviera and from
PisaPisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the Arno River on the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
and
LuccaLucca is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca...
, Puccini's birthplace.
In presenting four or five performances of up to four operatic productions each season, the Festival attracts about forty thousand spectators to its open-air theater, the
Teatro dei Quattromila (so named for its seating capacity, although fewer seats were actually installed), located very close to the "Villa Museum Puccini", the house which the composer had built in 1900 and in which he lived and worked on his major operas until pollution from the lake forced him to settle in Viarregio in 1921. Along with other members of his family who died later, Puccini is buried in a small chapel inside the Villa in a room transformed into a mausoleum after his death.
Origins
The Puccini Festival was started in 1930 following what is believed to have been Puccini’s comment to friend
Giovacchino ForzanoGiovacchino Forzano was an Italian playwright, librettist, stage director, and film director...
, one of his librettists, in 1924 just before he left for the clinic in Brussels for his throat operation: "I always come out here and take a boat to go and shoot snipes … but once I would like to come here and listen to one of my operas in the open air". The composer was thought to be expressing the hope that his operas would be performed in the extraordinary natural stage offered by the Massaciuccoli Lake. However, this is disputed by his granddaughter, Simonetta Puccini.
Nevertheless, on 24 August 1930, together with
Pietro MascagniPietro Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece, Cavalleria rusticana, caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and singlehandedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...
, who had been fellow-student of Puccini’s, Forzano produced the first performances of a Puccini opera on the lakeshore, in front of the Maestro’s house. In a provisional theater, the
Carro di Tespi Lirico with its stage built on piles stuck in the lake, a traveling opera company performed
La bohèmeLa bohème is an opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger. The world première performance of La bohème was in Turin on February 1, 1896 at the Teatro Regio and conducted by the young Arturo...
directed by Forzano and conducted by Mascagni. The same company came back in 1931 when
Beniamino GigliBeniamino Gigli, was an Italian opera singer. The most famous tenor of his generation, he was renowned internationally for the great beauty of his voice and the soundness of his vocal technique. Critics sometimes took him to task, however, for what was perceived to be the over-emotionalism of his...
and Adelaide Saraceni performed in
La bohème, while Rosetta Pampanini and Angelo Michetti performed
Madama ButterflyMadama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
. This was the beginning of what was to become a major opera festival.
However, in the years before 1949, due to the political and financial climate, there was only one presentation—in 1937—and that was a concert. Returning in 1949 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Puccini's death, the Festival re-opened with
La fanciulla del WestLa fanciulla del West is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, based on the play The Girl of the Golden West by David Belasco...
and continued into the 1950s with many of the composer's most well known works.
Festival expansion
Not until 1966, when the Festival site was moved to reclaimed land just just north of and near to the small lake harbor (and the present theater was built to take advantage of the background of Massaciuccoli Lake), did the Puccini Festival became an annual summer event. With its small villages on the opposite shore, whose flickering lights at night provide unforgettable natural scenery to complement the performances taking place on the stage, the location proved a success, although the theater's ultra modern design and size have sometimes been drawbacks.
In over seventy years of the Festival, the stage of Torre del Lago has hosted the most famous and acclaimed names of world opera. Among them was
Tito Gobbi-Biography:Tito Gobbi was born in Bassano del Grappa and studied law at the University of Padua before he trained as a singer. Giulio Crimi , a well-known Italian tenor of a previous generation, was Gobbi's teacher in Rome. He made his operatic debut in Gubbio in 1935 as Count Rudolfo in Bellini's...
, who also debuted as director in
ToscaTosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Victorien Sardou's drama, La Tosca. The work premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on January 14 1900. It is one of the world's most popular operas, a hit with audiences...
;
Mario del MonacoMario Del Monaco was an Italian tenor and is regarded by his admirers as being one of the greatest dramatic tenors of the 20th Century....
, who chose the Festival as his farewell to the stage in
Il TabarroIl tabarro is an opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami, based on Didier Gold's La Houppelande. It is the first of the trio of operas known as Il trittico...
; and many others who began or ended extraordinary careers.
In 2000, 70th anniversary of Forzano and Mascagni’s initiative, the 46th Puccini Festival presented two major new productions,
Madama Butterfly and
Tosca. In addition, the program included Puccini’s first opera,
Le VilliLe Villi is an opera-ballet in two acts composed by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Ferdinando Fontana, based on the short story Les Willis by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. Karr's story was in turn based in the Central European legend of the Willis, also used in the ballet Giselle...
, presented in concert, with performances by
Katia Ricciarelli-Biography:Born at Rovigo, Veneto to a very poor family, she struggled during her younger years when she studied music.She studied at the Benedict Marcello conservatory in Venice, won several vocal competitions in 1968, and made her professional debut as Mimì in La bohème in Mantua in 1969,...
and
Josè CuraJosé Cura is a prominent operatic tenor known for his intense and original interpretations of his characters, notably Verdi’s Otello and Saint-Saëns’ Samson, as well as for his unconventional and innovative concert performances. He is also able to perform high baritone roles with the extended...
. In 2004 the Puccini Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary by a season featuring two great events: one was a new production of
Madama Butterfly celebrating the Centenary of its premiere in Brescia on 28 May 1904. It was conducted by
Plácido DomingoJosé Plácido Domingo Embil , better known as Plácido Domingo, is a Spanish tenor, known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range. In March 2008, he debuted in his 128th opera role, giving Domingo more roles than any other tenor...
with
Daniela DessìDaniela Dessì is an Italian lirico-spinto soprano.Daniela Dessì was born in Genoa and completed her singing studies at the Conservatory of Parma and the Accademia Chigiana of Siena...
and
Fabio Armiliato-Career:Born in Genoa, he has had an impressive career and has being hailed by critics as "the best Chénier of our time".In 1993 he debuted in the Metropolitan Opera House in Il Trovatore, returning later in Aida and Madama Butterfly. Other important debuts include those in the Teatro alla Scala,...
in the leading roles. The second was a special evening dedicated to Puccini's heroines, presenting the most beloved arias from the Maestro's favorite characters, with Plácido Domingo narrating as Puccini.
The 2006 season is unique in that a production of
La fanciulla del WestLa fanciulla del West is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, based on the play The Girl of the Golden West by David Belasco...
was presented rather later in the traditional season with follow-up performances in
MonacoMonaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a small sovereign city-state located in South Western Europe on the northern central coast of the Mediterranean Sea, having a land border on three sides only with France, and being about away from Italy. Its size is just under 2 km² with an...
in October. Many productions originating at the festival have gone on to appear in opera houses throughout the world.
Future plans
After the creation of the
Puccini Festival Foundation in 1990, achieved in order to put the event on a more established financial footing, plans were put in place to create a new open-air theater with up-to-date facilities and acoustics. The town authorities of Viarregio have purchased of land to create the
Parco della Musica (Music Park) and on it is being constructed the
Teatro al Aperto (the Outdoor Theatre) to seat 3,200. In addition other facilities for rehearsals and workshops are to be created, along with a 600-seat covered studio theater.