📍Corte San Lorenzo 9, 55100 Lucca LU, Tuscany, Italy
1858 – 1924“I was born Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini on the 22nd of December 1858 in Lucca, a walled Tuscan city of extraordinary beauty. The Puccini family had provided the cathedral organist for four generations, and the musical vocation was as natural as breathing. I studied in Lucca and then Milan, struggled financially for years, and achieved success with Manon Lescaut in 1893. After that came La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, which I left unfinished when I died. I built a villa at Torre del Lago on Lake Massaciuccoli near Lucca, and it was there that I composed most of my mature work — hunting in the marshes in the mornings, composing in the afternoons. The Lucca childhood, the Tuscan landscape, the cathedral music — these were the foundation of an Italian lyrical tradition I tried to extend.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Budden, J. Puccini: His Life and Works (2002), Oxford University Press; Carner, M. Puccini: A Critical Biography (1958), Knopf