Giacomo Puccini
Manon Lescaut

On commencing his next opera, Manon Lescaut, Puccini announced that he would write his own libretto so that "no fool of a librettist" could spoil it. Ricordi persuaded him to accept Ruggero Leoncavallo as his librettist, but Puccini soon asked Ricordi to remove him from the project. Four other librettists were then involved with the opera, as Puccini constantly changed his mind about the structure of the piece. It was almost by accident that the final two, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, came together to complete the opera.

Manon Lescaut premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin on 2 February 1893. By coincidence, Puccini's first enduringly popular opera appeared within a week of the premiere of Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, which was first performed on 9 February 1893. In anticipation of the premiere, La Stampa wrote that Puccini was a young man concerning whom "great hopes" had a real basis (" un giovane che è tra i pochi sul quale le larghe speranze non siano benigne illusioni "). Because of the failure of Edgar, however, a failure of Manon Lescaut could have jeopardized Puccini's future as a composer. Although Giulio Ricordi, head of Casa Ricordi, was supportive of Puccini while Manon Lescaut was still in development, the Casa Ricordi board of directors was considering cutting off Puccini's financial support. In any event, " Manon Lescaut was Puccini's first and only uncontested triumph, acclaimed by critics and public alike." After the London premiere in 1894, George Bernard Shaw pronounced: "Puccini looks to me more like the heir of Verdi than any of his rivals."

Manon Lescaut was a great success and established Puccini's reputation as the most promising rising composer of his generation, and the most likely "successor" to Verdi as the leading exponent of the Italian operatic tradition. Illica and Giacosa returned as librettists for Puccini for his next three operas, probably his greatest successes: La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly.
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