"Celebrating Puccini" Exhibition

The Morgan Library & Museum

poster for "Celebrating Puccini" Exhibition

This event has ended.

The life and music of one of opera's iconic figures, composer Giacomo Puccini, is the subject of "Celebrating Puccini." On view are approximately forty items related to Puccini's career, including rarely seen original sketches for his acclaimed operas Madama Butterfly and La Bohème. The exhibition celebrates the 150th anniversary (2008–09) of Puccini's birth in Lucca, Italy, on December 22, 1858. In addition to original manuscripts, the exhibition also includes a display of first-edition librettos, personal letters, a period poster and playbills, souvenir postcards, and rare material linked to Puccini's relationship with such legends as Enrico Caruso and Arturo Toscanini. The exhibition is drawn almost exclusively from the Morgan's extensive music holdings, including the Cary, Heineman, and Fuld collections, as well as the Robert Owen Lehman Collection, which is on deposit at the Morgan. Visitors have the rare opportunity to view manuscripts for five Puccini works: Le Villi, Edgar, La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, and La Fanciulla del West. A display of first-edition librettos constitutes a chronology of Puccini's operatic output, augmented by information about premieres, casts, and first performances in cities throughout the world during the composer's lifetime.

[Image: Giacomo Puccini "La Bohème, Sketches for Act IV" (1895)]

Media

Schedule

from September 11, 2009 to January 10, 2010

Artist(s)

Giacomo Puccini et al.

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