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Giacomo Puccini
A biography of the composer renowned for his gift as a melodist.
Conrad Wilson
Editions:
Price: USD$24.95
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- A polemical, passionate and rational attempt to set the composer of La Boheme and Madame Butterfly among the immortal greats
- Fully explores the contradictions in Puccini's personality, a man who revelled in the worldly success his operas brought him yet remained insecure about his creative powers
- Draws attention to the felicity, daring and extraordinary colouring of Puccini's music
- Paperback
- English
- 220 x 156 mm, 8 5/8 x 6 1/8 in
- 240 pp
- 80 black and white illustrations
- ISBN-13: 9780714832913
- ISBN-10: 071483291X
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), composer of such popular operas as La Bohème and Madame Butterfly, is most renowned for his gift as a melodist.
With his final opera, Turandot, Puccini composed the last Italian work in the genre to hold a firm place in the international repertoire. The author draws attention to the felicity, daring and extraordinary colour of his music, to counter the view held during Puccini's lifetime that he was a retrogressive composer who aimed to shock.
Puccini is shown to have been a dynamic new force in musical drama, and yet was a man who remained insecure about his creative powers. Conrad Wilson's objective book is none the less a polemical, passionate and poignant attempt to set the man from Lucca among the immortal greats.
'Fascinating and fastidiously researched. A fine book, both emotionally profound and waspishly witty.' (The Scotsman)
'A sizzling new biography.' (Herald)
'Thoroughly readable and quietly perceptive.' (Guardian)
'As a series, Phaidon's 20th Century Composers has brought remarkable variety and a welter of information, both necessary and delightfully trivial. Intended both for the general reader and for the more enthusiatically musical...' (The Scotsman)