Opera has been a form of art for many centuries now. Performers belt out high notes for long periods of time and have flowers thrown at them in exchange. When people think of operas though they often don't pay much attention to the people behind them and they should. If you were to look up "famous operas" on Google a few names appear quite often, one of these is Giacomo Puccini. Puccini was raised in a small town and grew up in the church. He eventually got married and had a family. Over his life he wrote many famous pieces that continue to be performed today.
On December 22, 1858 in Lucca, a small town about an hour west of Florence, Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was born. Puccini was the last descendant in a family that had provided the musical directors of the Cathedral of San Martino in Lucca for two centuries. At the age of five Giacomo's father, Michele died. The municipality of Lucca gave the family a small pension and kept the position of cathedral organist open for Puccini until he came of age. As the fifth of nine children he never showed much interest in music. At school he was lazy and unfocused; his mother didn't lose faith in him though. Albina Puccini procured admission to the Conservatorio Musici where Giacomo began to study music (The Famous People, par. 1).
At the age of 14 he began to play to the organ at San Martino where he was also a choir boy. Just three years later at 17 he started composing small works. He also attended a performance of Giuseppe 'Verdi's Aida' in Milan that year. Attending this performance gave him confidence in pursuing a career as an opera composer (The Famous People, par. 3). In the autumn of 1880 he went to study at the Milan Conservatory, where his principal teachers were Antonio Bazzini, a famous violinist and composer of chamber music, and Amilcare Ponchielli, the composer of the opera La gioconda.
Hwang effectively uses the opera Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini as a framework to mold the main character, Rene Gallimard. ... Obviously Gallimard is not happy with himself or his life so he goes in search for his Butterfly or more importantly a new identity. ... When Song reveals her true gender Gallimard confesses I knew all the time somewhere that my happiness was temporary, my love a deception. ...