This chapter considers recent trends in Puccini staging and direction. It notes that Puccini productions have tended to be ‘safe’ compared with the works of composers such as Wagner, inviting audiences to sit back and enjoy rather than sit back and pay attention: Regieoper has tended to avoid Puccini. Recently, however, Puccini’s operas have been subjected to some more unusual and innovative directorial treatment, in productions that are designed to speak to an audience viewing in cinemas and at home as much as in the theatre. Three productions are discussed as case studies. The first is Richard Jones’s 2007 Covent Garden production of Gianni Schicchi, situated in a kitschily decorated mid-twentieth-century British working-class home. The second is Stefan Herheim’s bleak, resolutely unsentimental 2012 La bohème for the Norwegian National Opera, which flips between a contemporary cancer ward and flashbacks using nineteenth-century-style sets long used at the same theatre. The third is Christophe Honoré’s 2019 production of Tosca for Aix-en-Provence, which also intermingles past and present productions, making intertextual reference to the opera’s earlier performance history.

This chapter is the first of three to consider Puccini’s travels, both for work and leisure. It covers his travels in western Europe, particularly in France and Great Britain, assessing the importance of Paris and London as key centres for the performance of Puccini’s works. Both cities had had long and vibrant traditions of importing musical works from other European countries; Paris also had a flourishing operatic culture of its own. Puccini visited both cities regularly from the mid-1890s, often to supervise the production of his works. London became particularly important for Puccini when Manon Lescaut was launched at Covent Garden in 1894; a few years later he would visit Manchester for the British premiere of La bohème. Visiting Paris for business allowed Puccini the opportunity to hear new works by other leading European composers of the day, including Debussy and Stravinsky. It was also a place of refuge for him at a time of personal crisis. The chapter records Puccini’s thoughts about these and other European cities, not all of which were flattering. It concludes with a discussion of his death in Brussels in 1924.