Giacomo Puccini

Italian composer Giacomo Puccini was born on this date in 1858. One of the world’s most famous composers of opera, he is best known for his tragic love stories: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904). Puccini was close to the end of his last opera, Turandot, when he succumbed to cancer in 1924. News of his death reached Rome during a performance of La Bohème. The performance was halted and the orchestra moved to playing Frédéric Chopin’s Funeral March.Turandot was completed by fellow composer, Franco Alfano, and was first played in 1926 at La Scala, with Arturo Toscaniniconducting. 

Quote: “Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man’s faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.” — Giacomo Puccini

(source: Answers.com)

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Dear students, parents & friends,

I wish you all a merry, merry Christmas!

As you are probably aware, I am taking 2 weeks off for the holidays. Lessons will resume in the New Year, week of January 5th.

See you then!

Georges Seurat

Neoimpressionist painter Georges Seurat was born on this date in 1859. Leader of the movement that used pointillism to create richer colors, Seurat applied his interest in science to his art. He used a method that he referred to as “chromoluminarism,” dabbing short strokes of contrasting colors on the canvas so that, from a distance, they would appear as a fuller palette of colors.

Seurat’s masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, took two years to complete. Today, it hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Quote: “Some say they see poetry in my paintings; I see only science.”— Georges Seurat

(source: Answers.com)