Oeuvre: La fanciulla del West

Puccini, who died 100 years ago this year, had a lasting fondness for his native Tuscany – and despite his wealth and fame in later life never moved far from his birthplace in Lucca.

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.

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.