By 1900, he had acquired land and built a villa on the lake, now known as the " Villa Museo Puccini.

Puccini had been considering an opera on this theme since he saw the play Tosca by Victorien Sardou in 1889, when he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, begging him to get Sardou's permission for the work to be made into an opera: " I see in this Tosca the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music.

Puccini succeeded in mastering the orchestra as no other Italian had done before him, creating new forms by manipulating structures inherited from the great Italian tradition, loading them with bold harmonic progressions which had little or nothing to do with what was happening then in Italy, though they were in step with the work of French, Austrian and German colleagues.

With his second wife, the actress Carla Maria Puccini, he had a third daughter, Rachele, named after his mother ( Rachele Mussolini ).

That year, he had disputes with Ruggiero Leoncavallo and Giacomo Puccini.

Mascagni had a quarrel regarding the rights of Louise de la Ramée's Two Little Wooden Shoes ( I due Zoccoletti ), that inspired both Puccini and Mascagni.

In 1930, Mascagni conducted La bohème in Torre del Lago, as a homage to Puccini, who had died in 1924.

Puccini had seen La Tosca at least twice, in Milan and Turin.

There are several versions of how Ricordi got Franchetti to surrender the rights so he could recommission Puccini, who had again become interested.

Puccini, however, seems to have had some inkling of the possible seriousness of his condition since, before leaving for Brussels, he visited Toscanini and begged him, " Don't let my Turandot die.

After the severe criticisms by Ricordi and the conductor Arturo Toscanini, he was forced to write a second, strictly censored version that followed Puccini's sketches more closely, to the point where he did not set some of Adami's text to music because Puccini had not indicated how he wanted it to sound.

Ricordi's real concern was not the quality of Alfano's work, but that he wanted the end of Turandot to sound as if it had been written by Puccini, and Alfano's editing had to be seamless.

Puccini had a house there as well.

Some composers, such as Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Serov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Puccini, and Mascagni wrote passages of music without text and subsequently had the librettist add words to the vocal melody lines.

Schonberg surmises that had Bizet lived, he might have revolutionised French opera ; as it is, verismo was taken up mainly by Italians, notably Puccini who, according to Dean, developed the idea " till it became threadbare ".

Apart from Massenet, composers whose works had their first performances at Monte Carlo included: Saint-Saëns ( Hélène, 1904 ); Mascagni ( Amica, 1905 ); and Puccini ( La rondine, 1917 ).

On taking up the conductorship of the Hallé he had less opportunity to work in the opera house, but in the 1950s he conducted productions of works by Verdi, Wagner, Gluck, and Puccini at Covent Garden with such success that he was invited to become the company's permanent musical director, an invitation he declined.

Other critics consider Puccini to have had merely a partial Verismo involvement.

He previously had considered writing a brief operatic piece about the friendship between Giacomo Puccini and Ruggiero Leoncavallo, going so far as to compose the melody that later would become " Memory " for it, but decided it wouldn't fit well with ' the girl's ' saga.

The film had an original score by Sigmund Romberg and reused the popular David Belasco stage plot ( also employed by opera composer Giacomo Puccini for La fanciulla del West ).

Apart from Massenet, composers whose works had their first performances at Monte Carlo included: Saint-Saëns ( Hélène, 1904 ); Mascagni ( Amica, 1905 ); and Puccini ( La rondine, 1917 ).

#[...] it is not his conclusion that is performed in productions of Turandot but only what the premiere conductor Arturo Toscanini included from it ... Puccini had worked for nine months on the following concluding duet and at his death had left behind a whole ream of sketches ... Alfano had to reconstruct ... according to his best assessment ... and with his imagination and magnifying glass " since Puccini's material " had not really been legible.

Puccini was born in Lucca in Tuscany, into a family with five generations of musical history behind them, including the composer Domenico Puccini.

In 1880, with the help of a relative and a grant, Puccini enrolled in the Milan Conservatory to study composition with Stefano Ronchetti-Monteviti, Amilcare Ponchielli, and Antonio Bazzini.

When Edgar failed, they suggested to Ricordi that he should drop Puccini, but Ricordi said that he would stay with him and made him an allowance from his own pocket until his next opera.

Four other librettists were then involved with the opera, as Puccini constantly changed his mind about the structure of the piece.

They remained with Puccini for his next three operas and probably his greatest successes: La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly.

After his death, a mausoleum was created in the Villa Puccini and the composer is buried there in the chapel, along with his wife and son who died later.

In 1906 Giacosa died and, in 1909, there was scandal after Puccini's wife, Elvira, falsely accused their maid Doria Manfredi of having an affair with Puccini.

In 1909, Puccini's wife Elvira publicly accused Doria Manfredi, a maid working for the Puccini family, of having an affair with the composer.

According to documents found in the possession of a descendant of the Manfredi family, Nadia Manfredi, in 2007, Puccini was actually having an affair with Giulia Manfredi, Doria's cousin.

Some music critics and interpreters of Puccini's work have speculated that the psychological effects of this incident on Puccini interfered with his ability to complete compositions later in his career, and also influenced the development of Puccinian characters such as Liu ( from Turandot ), a slave girl who dies tragically by suicide.

Giacomo Puccini with conductor Arturo Toscanini

This was commissioned by, and first performed at, the Metropolitan Opera in New York on 10 December 1910 with Met stars Enrico Caruso and Emmy Destinn for whom Puccini created the leading roles of Dick Johnson and Minnie.

Composers such as Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy, Giacomo Puccini, Paul Hindemith and Hans Pfitzner pushed Wagnerian harmony further with a more extreme use of chromaticism and greater use of dissonance.

In October he was reconciled with Puccini.

Puccini first began working on Turandot in March 1920 after meeting with librettists Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.

Alfano provided a first version of the ending with a few passages of his own, and even a few sentences added to the libretto which was not considered complete even by Puccini himself.

As with Madama Butterfly, Puccini strove for a semblance of Asian authenticity ( at least to Western ears ) by using music from the region in question.

Baron Fassini Camossi, the former Italian diplomat to China, gave Puccini as a gift a music box which played a number of Chinese melodies.

* Ugo Eugenio Puccini Banfi, Bishop of Santa Marta, and former Auxiliary Bishop of Barranquilla, Colombia