The life of Giacomo Puccini, composer of many well-loved operas. Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924), composer of such popular operas as La Bohème and Madame Butterfly, is most renowned for his gift as a melodist. With his final opera, Turandot, Puccini composed the last Italian work in the genre to hold a firm place in the international repertoire. The author draws attention to the felicity, daring and extraordinary colour of his music, to counter the view held during Puccini's lifetime that he was a retrogressive composer who aimed to shock. Puccini is shown to have been a dynamic new force in musical drama, and yet was a man who remained insecure about his creative powers. Conrad Wilson's objective book is none the less a polemical, passionate and poignant attempt to set the man from Lucca among the immortal greats.