Puccini: A Biography

Rating:
Summary: Puccini: a restless visionist and revisionist
Review: Having sung in "Tosca" and "Madama Butterfly", my interest was piqued when I first heard about Mary Jane Phillips-Matz's wonderful new biography about Giacomo Puccini. Using his operas as chapter divisions, the author gives a firm basis on which to look at Puccini's life as he struggled with his music, his collaborators, his family, his publisher, his singers, Arturo Toscanini and himself.

Restless and constantly on the move was Italy's greatest twentieth-century composer. The composer was not content to stay long in one place, she tells us. He had a house here, a house there; he didn't like this one, he longed to be at yet another one....this was no laboratory musician! Through the sharing of Puccini's letters (and he wrote unceasingly, it seems), Phillips-Matz offers us glimpses into the continual torment the composer faced, either from his own high standards and inabilities to finish projects to the endless revisions of present and past operas on which he was working. Puccini seemed to be under perpetual pressure. The author is careful not to be judgmental about her subect; in fact she includes a surprising number of revealing interviews that she, herself, conducted with singers who had performed Puccini operas and had worked with him in his later life.

Phillips-Matz's book is not so much a book about Puccini's music as it is about process. How did the composer go about choosing texts? What was he feeling when he composed? How did he envision the final outcomes of his operas? The relationships with those who were closest to him are perhaps the best aspects of this book, especially those with his wife and Toscanini. The author almost seems to be encouraging the reader by saying this: "here is what Puccini was like; now go hear his music and see what connections you can make."

Rating:
Summary: Puccini: a restless visionist and revisionist
Review: Having sung in "Tosca" and "Madama Butterfly", my interest was piqued when I first heard about Mary Jane Phillips-Matz's wonderful new biography about Giacomo Puccini. Using his operas as chapter divisions, the author gives a firm basis on which to look at Puccini's life as he struggled with his music, his collaborators, his family, his publisher, his singers, Arturo Toscanini and himself.

Restless and constantly on the move was Italy's greatest twentieth-century composer. The composer was not content to stay long in one place, she tells us. He had a house here, a house there; he didn't like this one, he longed to be at yet another one....this was no laboratory musician! Through the sharing of Puccini's letters (and he wrote unceasingly, it seems), Phillips-Matz offers us glimpses into the continual torment the composer faced, either from his own high standards and inabilities to finish projects to the endless revisions of present and past operas on which he was working. Puccini seemed to be under perpetual pressure. The author is careful not to be judgmental about her subect; in fact she includes a surprising number of revealing interviews that she, herself, conducted with singers who had performed Puccini operas and had worked with him in his later life.

Phillips-Matz's book is not so much a book about Puccini's music as it is about process. How did the composer go about choosing texts? What was he feeling when he composed? How did he envision the final outcomes of his operas? The relationships with those who were closest to him are perhaps the best aspects of this book, especially those with his wife and Toscanini. The author almost seems to be encouraging the reader by saying this: "here is what Puccini was like; now go hear his music and see what connections you can make."

Rating:
Summary: Solid biography
Review: Not as good--or as long--as her Verdi, Phillips-Matz's new bio of Puccini is solid and competent. She is at her best with scenery, at her weakest with the music. Though this biography will not soon replace Mosco Carner, it's worth the purchase price and the reader's time.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing as a Biography
Review: Puccini was reviewed as a wonderful account of Puccini's life and, while the author does tell us the events of his life, this account is less readable than most biographies I've read. She covers the facts of his life in a disjointed fashion. She will bring up a point and then say she will cover it in a later chapter, or she will say she covered it earlier. She arranges the chapters according to the operas he wrote, which is chronological, but the information she writes jumps around so much that it's distracting. The best biographies read as interestingly as the best fiction, and unfortunately this did not measure up. Puccini's life was certainly very interesting and this could have been a great book. Perhaps her editor should have done a better job.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing as a Biography
Review: Puccini was reviewed as a wonderful account of Puccini's life and, while the author does tell us the events of his life, this account is less readable than most biographies I've read. She covers the facts of his life in a disjointed fashion. She will bring up a point and then say she will cover it in a later chapter, or she will say she covered it earlier. She arranges the chapters according to the operas he wrote, which is chronological, but the information she writes jumps around so much that it's distracting. The best biographies read as interestingly as the best fiction, and unfortunately this did not measure up. Puccini's life was certainly very interesting and this could have been a great book. Perhaps her editor should have done a better job.