Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Puccini was the fifth generation of a family that had supplied Lucca with church musicians since the eighteenth century. He studied at the Milan Conservatory under Ponchielli, broke through with Manon Lescaut (1893), and became Italy's leading opera composer after Verdi with a run of the repertoire's most enduring works (La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly) in a lyrical, dramatically direct style often linked to verismo. He died in Brussels of throat cancer with Turandot unfinished, completed from his sketches by Franco Alfano. An avid hunter, he was also one of Italy's first car owners.