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Puccini<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s love of fast cars could easily have led to us marking the centenary of his death 21 years ago rather than this month \u2013 a spectacular crash<\/a><\/strong> in 1903 nearly ensured that the likes of Madam Butterfly<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (1904), La fanciulla del West<\/em> (1910) and Il trittico<\/em> (1918) never saw the light of day. The Lucca-born composer\u2019s racy lifestyle was funded by the huge success of Manon Lescaut<\/em> (1893), La boh\u00e8me <\/a><\/strong><\/em>(1896) and Tosca<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (1900), a notable contrast to the preceding Edgar <\/em>(1889), which had failed to capture the public imagination. His later years saw him enjoy international celebrity, though his roots remained firmly in Tuscany.<\/p> As we remember Puccini at the centenary of his death, it is worth giving particular thought to the opera<\/a><\/strong> with which he was preoccupied at the time. Turandot<\/em>, in many respects the composer\u2019s most ambitious and adventurous work, consumed his efforts for the final four years of his life and was proving most troublesome.<\/p> The 1910s had been a decade of experiment for Puccini, as he turned his back on the crowd-pleasing formula he had developed around the turn of the century in La boh\u00e8me, Tosca <\/em>and Madam Butterfly, <\/em>and began to emulate his contemporaries north of the Alps. His works of this decade were the unusual American-themed, Debussy<\/a><\/strong>-inspired La fanciulla del West<\/em>, the light, operetta<\/a><\/strong>-like La rondine<\/em> and Il trittico<\/em>, a trio of contrasting one-act operas. No two works from this period were the same and by 1920 Puccini had lost none of his appetite for innovation.\u00a0<\/p>
Turandot<\/em>: Puccini’s final, unfinished, work<\/h2>