EUROPE IMAGES INTERNATIONAL - M5

Synopsis

Puccini himself tells the story of Puccini. An actor lends him his voice, “una voce bruna”, soft and melodious. A Narrator intervenes to link and introduce events.
Timely appearances from performers, conductors, stage directors and Puccini’s grand-daughter shed a modern, contemporary light on the man and his work. Their living, almost everyday contact with his works brings an insight into his musical and dramatic technique through real-life experience.
Who better than Puccini himself to share with us, through a compilation of his most intimate and significant letters, all the doubts, all the major events of his personal and artistic life?
This is why this film gives Puccini’s voice pride of place. The composer, such a verbose “graphomaniac”, in turn sentimental, sometimes tyrannically demanding, amusing, places himself “in situ”: and the Puccini that springs forth may be rebellious, sensual, epicurean or melancholic depending on the person he is speaking to: the Giacosa, Illica, Toscanini, D’Annunzio or Sybil Seligman…
A record of both his works and his highly individual creative process, this collection of letters in the first person follows this disconcerting character like his shadow. Behind the handsome man, preoccupied by his refined elegance, hides a hedonist, passionate about the countryside, fishing, hunting, cars, speed and modern comforts.
A bashful lover who stole Elvira, the woman of his life, from his classmate Narcisso Gemignani and “lived in sin” with her, braving the rigid prejudices of late nineteenth-century Catholic Italy… A loner clamouring for the company of his friends. A creator who “feels”, more than he can explain, the subjects and characters on which he fixes his choice and which are so to the taste of his contemporaries. An impressionist artist, always in search of a new “climate”, an exotic atmosphere that he strives to translate into perceptible harmonies, capable of seeking out the heart of one and all, yet far from any frills and flounces…
And so, via Milan, Lucca, Celle in Tuscany, Torre del Lago, Viareggio and across the great operatic stages of Italy and worldwide, we follow Puccini for each of his creations, and in particular the four greatest ones, with which he dominated the world of opera: Bohème, Butterfly, Tosca and Turandot and which rank him alongside Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Strauss.