In opera, the Italian composers used it regularly, and Puccini was a particular master of its expressive and coloristic use.

The Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini used an extract of melody to write the aria " Ovunque al mondo ... ", in 1904 for his work Madama Butterfly.

Puccini used Wagnerian leitmotifs ( short musical statements ) to identify characters, objects and ideas.

Puccini as mentioned before used both Gongs and Tam-tams in his Operas.

The modern cimbasso is most commonly used in opera scores by Giuseppe Verdi from Oberto to Aida, and by Giacomo Puccini in Le Villi only, though the word also appears in the score of Vincenzo Bellini's Norma, which premiered in 1831.

He also wrote the librettos used by Giacomo Puccini in La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly in conjunction with Luigi Illica.

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

Tosca () is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa.

Turandot ( or ; ) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.

* Mario del Monaco: Grandi Voci-DECCA, 19 tracks, all studio-excellent selection of his finest arias ( mostly Verdi and Puccini, but also including ' Vesti la giubba ') plus three popular songs ( including ' Granada ').

She also added the Puccini heroines of Manon Lescaut and Tosca to her repertoire, and recorded Madama Butterfly and the three roles of Il trittico.

La fanciulla del West ( The Girl of the 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 the American author David Belasco.

In particular, he was not known as an interpreter of the Italian opera repertoire ( he conducted no Puccini and only three Verdi works during his music directorship at Covent Garden ).

Edgar is an operatic dramma lirico in three acts ( originally four acts ) by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Ferdinando Fontana, freely based on the play in verse La Coupe et les lèvres ( The Cup and the Lips ) by Alfred de Musset.

Il trittico ( The Triptych ) is the title of a collection of three one-act operas, Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi, by Giacomo Puccini.

Puccini also intended that the three should be performed as a set, and wrote to Casa Ricordi to complain about their giving permission in 1920 to the Royal Opera, London " for Tabarro and Schicchi without Angelica ".

Although on artistic grounds Puccini opposed performing the three operas except as the original triptych, by 1920 he had given his reluctant consent to separate performances.

La rondine ( The Swallow ) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami, based on a libretto by Alfred Maria Willner and.

" There is no established final version of it, Puccini being dissatisfied, as often, with the result of his work ; he revised it many times to the point of making three versions ( 1917, 1920, 1921 ), with two completely different endings, but died before clearly deciding on a final version.

* Il trittico ( The Triptych ), a collection of three one-act operas by Puccini

In spite of their rich musical invention, neither of these operas met with the same success but both exerted great influence on the composers of the rising generation, like Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni and Umberto Giordano.

During these two centuries, it has educated many of Italy's most important musicians, including Marco Stroppa, Luca Francesconi, Stefano Gervasoni, Giacomo Puccini, Arrigo Boito, Giovanni Bottesini, Alfredo Catalani, Riccardo Chailly, Amelita Galli-Curci, Vittorio Giannini, Bruno Maderna, Pietro Mascagni, Gian Carlo Menotti, Francisco Mignone, Riccardo Muti, Kurken Alemshah, Italo Montemezzi, Alceo Galliera, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Mario Nascimbene, Maurizio Pollini, Ludovico Einaudi, Antonino Fogliani, Vittorio Parisi, Riccardo Sinigaglia and Claudio Abbado.

With these musicians, he has pursued an eclectic direction in recording projects that has ranged from jazz standards to Puccini arias, original adaptations from the John Coltrane and Miles Davis repertoires, original compositions in styles ranging from world music to fusion, always maintaining a repertoire that balances the past, present and future.

Michele Girardi, citing a letter from Fontana to Puccini on 3 September 1884, has pointed out that the librettist intended for these to be read by the audience but not actually recited by a narrator.

Puccini was " the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi ".

While studying at the Conservatory, Puccini obtained a libretto from Ferdinando Fontana and entered a competition for a one-act opera in 1882.

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.

On commencing his next opera, Manon Lescaut, Puccini announced that he would write his own libretto so that " no fool of a librettist " could spoil it.

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

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.

This version was in two acts ; after its disastrous premiere, Puccini withdrew the opera, revising it for performances in the USA and Paris.

In 1907, Puccini made his final revisions to the opera in a fifth version, which has become known as the " standard version ".

With the possible exception of Giacomo Puccini, no composer of Italian opera has managed to match Verdi's popularity.

The popularity of opera continued through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Puccini and Strauss in the early 20th century.

La 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.

It is the only recording of a Puccini opera by its original conductor ( see Recordings below ).

Puccini saw Sardou's play when it was touring Italy in 1889 and, after some vacillation, obtained the rights to turn the work into an opera in 1895.

* Manon Lescaut ( 1893 ), an opera by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini

At the nearby town of Torre del Lago, there is a Puccini opera festival every year in July / August.

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 ".

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

The neorealist style was developed by a circle of film critics that revolved around the magazine Cinema, including Luchino Visconti, Gianni Puccini, Cesare Zavattini, Giuseppe De Santis and Pietro Ingrao.

He learned more than 100 roles in his lifetime and was mostly known for his roles in Verdi and Puccini operas, including appearances as Scarpia opposite soprano Maria Callas as Tosca at Covent Garden.

Between 1890 and 1910, a third wave of composers including Dvořák, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Puccini, and Sibelius built on the work of middle Romantic composers to create even more complex – and often much longer – musical works.

In the 1930s, the company presented standard repertoire works including operas by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Puccini, lighter works by Balfe, Donizetti, Offenbach and Johann Strauss, some novelties, among which were operas by Holst, Ethel Smyth and Charles Villiers Stanford, and an unusual attempt at staging an oratorio, Mendelssohn's Elijah.

He made a brief appearance in the 1936 Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald film Rose Marie, singing music from Charles Gounod's Romeo et Juliette and Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, but according to Merchant of Dreams, Charles Higham's biography of Louis B. Mayer, Eddy, who apparently considered Jones a rival and a potential threat, asked that most of Jones's footage in Rose Marie be cut, including his rendition of the great Puccini aria E lucevan le stelle-and MGM agreed to Eddy's demand.

There she sang the premieres of a number of operas by Richard Strauss, including Ariadne auf Naxos in 1916, Die Frau ohne Schatten in 1919, Intermezzo in 1924, and Arabella in 1933, as well as Vienna premieres of several operas by Puccini.

Usually the generazione dell ' ottanta (" generation of ' 80 "), including Casella himself, Malipiero, Respighi, Pizzetti, and Alfano — all composers born around 1880, the post-Puccini generation — concentrated on writing instrumental works, rather than the operas in which Puccini and his musical forebears had specialised.

In the early 20th century, many composers, including Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss, Giacomo Puccini, and Edward Elgar, continued to work in forms and in a musical language that derived from the 19th century.

He conducted a 13-week season in Melbourne and a two-month season in Sydney with Verdi's Aida as the opener in both cities and a balanced selection of the standard repertoire, including Puccini, Wagner and Bizet.

Gencer's repertoire consists of 72 roles including works from composers such as ; Monteverdi, Gluck, Mozart to neo-classical period ; from Cherubini, Spontini, Johann Simon Mayr and the romantic period to Puccini, Prokofiev, Britten, Poulenc, Menotti and Rocca ; from a lyric soprano varying to dramatic colorature.

In addition to his " administrative " duties at London Records he also served as a classical artist orchestrating and conducting a number of classical albums including the works of Puccini, Verdi, Bach, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff.