A journey through Puccini’s Tuscany

View over Lucca, and towers of San Paolino and Torre delle Ore

Statue of Giacomo Puccini, Lucca

Puccini’s birthplace, Corte San Lorenzo, Lucca (in 1984, before the building was restored)

Puccini’s Steinway, Puccini Museum, Lucca

Puccini’s studio at Torre del Lago

Villa Puccini, Torre del Lago

Caffè di Simo-Caselli, Via Fillungo, Lucca

By Stephen Pritchard, 12 June 2024

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“To walk into the spacious studio in which Tosca was conceived is a head-spinning experience”

Isabella Steppan, 19th September

Soprano Elena Stikhina is in demand at the world's major opera houses. Isabella Steppan meets her in Salzburg to discuss the role of Tosca – which she is currently singing in Amsterdam and Vienna – and the reality of life as an opera singer.

Puccini and the moderns: a composer in the 20th century

Alexandra Wilson, 1st May

2024 marks the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death. Yet his work is often relegated from histories of 20th-century music. Puccini scholar Alexandra Wilson explores the diversity – and modernism – of the composer’s later operas.

Bachtrack top ten: Giacomo Puccini

Mark Pullinger, 22nd December

Giacomo Puccini knew how to pull the heartstrings in his music. He made his soprano characters suffer... but also composed some of his best music for them.

Impostor turned imp: Gianni Schicchi in Dante and Puccini

Isabella Steppan, 17th September

Isabella Steppan explores Giacomo Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, the third and final part of his Il trittico (The Triptych).

Bachtrack top ten: Dante Alighieri

Mark Pullinger & Elisabeth Schwarz, 13th September

Mark and Elisabeth descend to Hell to find the right soundtrack for Dante Week and to mark the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall and beyond

Lawrence Dunn, 10th March

We profile one of the most advanced and best-sounding concert halls in the UK, and take a look further afield at arts and culture across Manchester.

Stephen Pritchard

Stephen Pritchard began singing as a treble at the age of eight and progressed to become a tenor in Portsmouth Cathedral Choir, the Gibbons Consort and now the English Chamber Choir. Writing about music has been at the core of his 40-year career in journalism, chiefly at the Observer. He has been known to play a pretty mean jazz double bass.