Puccini: Messa Di Gloria / Preludio Sinfonico

Description

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)Messa di Gloria • Preludio Sinfonico • Crisantemi Giacomo Puccini, christened with the forenames Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria in 1858, inherited with these names the long musical traditions of his family. Resident in Lucca, the earlier Giacomo Puccini, born there in 1712, served as organist at San Martino and directed the Cappella Palatina until his death in 1781, when he was succeeded by his son Antonio, born in 1747, who had assisted his father also at San Martino and, like his father, was a member of the distinguished Bologna Accademia Filarmonica. His son Domenico, born in 1772, directed the Cappella di Camera from 1806, after the disbanding of the earlier Cappella Palatina by Napoleon’s sister, Elise Baciocchi, who became Regent of Lucca in 1805. Domenico Puccini died suddenly in 1815 and was outlived by his father, who died in 1832. Domenico Puccini’s son Michele, born in 1813, was taught by his grandfather Antonio and served in Lucca as a teacher and later director at the Istituto Musicale Pacini and as organist at San Martino. It was his son Giacomo who brought much wider fame to the family. Earlier generations of the Puccini family had been largely concerned with church music, although they had also composed movements for dramatic Tasche, composite choral and instrumental works to mark the biennial elections in Lucca. Domenico, while continuing the tradition of church music and Tasche, also turned his fuller attention to opera, a form attempted only briefly by his son Michele. Tradition suggested that Giacomo Puccini should follow family example in the restricted musical world of Lucca, but his ambitions were to turn into another direction, when he moved to Milan to pursue his operatic ambitions. The position of organist at San Martino was generally regarded as the hereditary right of the Puccini family and in 1864, after his father’s death, it was decreed by the city fathers that Puccini’s uncle Fortunato Magi, a pupil of Michele Puccini, should hold the position until Giacomo was old enough to assume it. His early studies were with Magi, before he found at the Istituto Musicale Pacini a more stimulating teacher in another of his father’s old pupils, Carlo Angeloni, who also inspired in his pupil an abiding interest in hunting and shooting. Puccini had been a chorister at San Martino and San Michele from the age of ten and began to undertake duties as an organist when he was fourteen. These last led him to write music for the organ, but it was a visit to Pisa in 1876 to attend a performance of Verdi’s Aida that finally changed the direction of his future career. In 1880 he completed his studies in Lucca, graduating with his Messa di Gloria. In the autumn of that year he began his three years of study at the Milan Conservatory. In 1884 his opera Le Villi won some success, but it was with Manon Lescaut in 1893 that his reputation seemed finally estab