PUCCINI & THE ITALIAN AND NEAPOLITAN POPULAR SONGS

Concert in the Church of San Giovanni

Giacomo Puccini is no doubt the most distinguished son of the town of Lucca and one of the great Italians famous throughout the world. He was a Lucchese through and through, even though he finally chose to live out elsewhere for purely personal reasons. The deep affection he felt for his hometown stayed with him throughout his life.

The first half of the concert programme is dedicated to the great arias and duets from the main operas composed by Puccini (from "Tosca" to "La Boheme", from "Manon Leascaut" to "Turandot" and "Madama Butterfly"), giving the audience a clear idea of the immense genius of  the composer, who was admired, respected  and even adored by all the intellectual and musical world of his time.

The second half of the concert is a real exploration of the colourful and fascinating world of the Italian and Neapolitan songs which flourished in the late part of the 19th century, side by side with the music of Giacomo Puccini. Great composers loved to express their skills in ‘popular song', usually real operatic arias and couplets based on popular music tunes and with absolutely no connection to any opera or articulate plot. Everyday life, love, betrayal, unrequited love and death were the usual subjects of these often extraordinarily conceived pieces of music. Naples, with its immense music tradition, was in a sense the real motherland of the genre, with no doubt the greatest composers and the greatest melodies which, still today, represent Italy and the Italian musical tradition at all levels.

Giacomo Puccini himself also composed famous and enchanting songs, being an active supporter of this kind of music ‘for the people'. This is why the idea of coupling these different aspects in a single concert really seemed the best idea.