'Puccini the Thinker' traces Puccini's development as an opera composer and thinker. The
subject is the composer's ideas as they appear in his operas. The book written for the
operagoer and the admirer of Puccini's operas in addition to the musicologist has chapters on
all of Puccini's operas and divides them into three general categories: myth and vision God
religion and the Roman Catholic Church and economics politics and society. Within these
three subdivisions this study explores the growth of Puccini's thought and dramatic skill. In
this book John DiGaetani analyzes the operas as artistic reflections of Puccini's intellectual
and dramatic development. The book includes translations of many of the composer's own verses
the first translations into English for most of these poems.
