Indeed, when viewed as a whole, Puccini's canon is a cycle of works unified in their passionate exploration of the subject of womanhood. But it was Puccini, and Puccini alone, who devoted his entire career, from Manon Lescaut to Turandot, to exploring the nature of woman through opera.

Between Mozart and Puccini, Bizet created the most fascinating and alluring female in all drama in the heroine of Carmen. In the operatic exploration of woman, he had his predecessors: Mozart and his librettists in the late eighteenth century proved that opera could address the question of 'what is woman?' with a brilliance unobtainable in other art forms. But in terms of sheer fascination, adoration, and artistic understanding of women, no one reaches farther, and speaks more convincingly than Puccini. Feminist? Maybe not in the current sense of the word. Indeed, of all opera composers, Puccini was, regardless of his personal life and despite his predilection for tragic endings, arguably the most pro-woman of all opera composers. With the notable exceptions of Turandot, Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi and Minnie in Fanciulla del West, Puccini's heroines generally meet tragic ends, usually through suicide.

As an old school chauvinist, he felt entitled to indulge constantly in brief romantic liaisons, which he justified as his right as a man and an artist.Īnd it doesn't take much insight to notice that Puccini's heroines are a sickly, suicidal bunch: leading to the obvious conclusion on the part of fans and detractors alike that Puccini, though clearly sexually attracted to women, didn't really like them. It's not hard to label Giacomo Puccini a misogynist: even his biggest fans admit that his personal life was messy at best.

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