Giacomo puccini biography boheme houston

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Can an opera be so good you'd perform it without its music?

I was thinking about this question as I prepared for a brand-new production of Giacomo Puccini's 1896 La bohème, which kicks off the Houston Grand Opera season Friday at the Wortham Theater Center.

I had the chance to study up at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, which partnered with the HGO to present King Vidor's 1926 film La Bohème, starring the resplendent silent siren Lillian Gish.

The rage for what was one of Puccini's best-loved operas provoked the desire to cash in on its popularity. Copyright laws prevented the film from using Puccini's music or sticking close to the plot of the libretto, so the studio invented its own silent La Bohème.

Happily the other night, Joseph Li of Rice University's Shepherd School of Music brought Puccini's heavenly music to the world of film when he gave a stirring performance of a piano arrangement of Puccini's score alongside Vidor's much-altered and unintentionally funny but jarringly brutal version.

Vidor, interestingly enough, was born in Galveston and saw his

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Puccini: A Biography - Hardcover

Synopsis

Descended from four generations of distinguished composers and organists, Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was driven by family tradition and an ambitious mother to pursue a career that brought him worldwide recognition as the greatest composer of Italian opera after Giuseppe Verdi. But behind the brilliant creator of such lasting works as La Boh�me, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West, La Rondine, and Turandot, there was a person racked with indecision, self-doubt, bouts of depression, and private misfortunes.In this beautifully written work, Mary Jane Phillips-Matz brings to life both the man and his circle. Setting Puccini's intriguing story within the worlds of his beloved Tuscany and the cutthroat opera business, the author follows the composer from boyhood in his ancestral Lucca, to his struggling student years at the Milan Conservatory, to his early successes and failures, to the artistic triumphs that earned him international celebrity and considerable wealth.Filled with colorful details and anecdotes drawn from extensive primary sources as well as interviews with descendents, family friends, and colleagues, the book chronicles Puccini's personal sorrows and scandals, and recounts his stormy professional rivalri