Storiella d’amore (1883)
Sole e amore (1888)
E l’uccellino (1899)
Canto d’anime (1904)
Avanti Urania! (1896)

Storiella d’amore was Puccini’s first published work, printed in the magazine La musica popolare on 4 October 1883, with a note from the publisher proudly announcing that it was ‘a work by the young maestro Giacomo Puccini, one of the most distinguished students to graduate this year from the Milan Conservatory.’ Originally a song for voice and piano, it contains some intriguing pre-echoes of Mimi’s Act One aria from La bohème. 

Sole e amore from 1888 has even more explicit links with the same opera: the tune of this song is identical to that of the Quartet in Act Three. 

The charming E l’uccellino was written in 1899 as a cradle song for the infant son of a friend.  

Canto d’anime has links to Puccini’s lifelong fascination with technology – whether fast cars, speedboats or, in this case, the gramophone: this song, with words by Luigi Illica (librettist of Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly) was commissioned by the Gramophone Company who subsequently issued a recording of it. 

Marked ‘Allegro spigliato’ (‘Fast and breezy’), Avanti Urania! was composed in 1896 to celebrate the acquisition of a handsome steamboat called Urania by Puccini’s friend, the industrialist Marchese Ginori-Lisci. 

© Nigel Simeone