Puccini

Foundation, Inc., donated $1,000 to New Rochelle Opera to cover some of the expenses for one of the performances that the opera company recently gave of Puccini's La Boheme, held at the Mooney-Hancock Arts Center at the Ursuline School in New Rochelle.

Meanwhile, San Francisco Performing Arts Library is toasting the centenary of Giacomo Puccini's classic opera with a new exhibition, Madame Butterfly: From Puccini to Miss Saigon.

Puccini's gift was his ability to dream up beautiful melodies.

Spiced with contemporary jazz and turn-of-the-century Puccini operas, the 2002-2003 season kicks off for three of the nation's largest cultural arts centers this September.

The beautiful sounds of strings encountered in Schubert's Ave Maria, the warm and familiar strains of Pachelbel's Canon in D, the glorious melodic lines of Puccini's O Mio Babbino Caro: The warmth and passion of these pieces and others have been captured and arranged for solo piano by Robert Schultz.

Suor Angel ica by Giacomo Puccini tells the sad story of a woman's desire to find her child, and Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo is the work that turned him into an instant celebrity in Milan.

They sing as sweet as we could hope for and make this La Boheme a warm event; nothing can diminish Puccini's capacity for refined sentimentality and beauty of tone.

"The phone rang continuously for the first three weeks" says Michael Puccini, Near North's co-owner and director.

But there was no trace of Puccini's music, for the artist chose instead to play with the narrative content of the libretto.

AS EARLY AS MAY 1889 Puccini told his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, that he wanted to make an opera out of a melodrama which the highly regarded French playwright Victorien Sardou had written as a sensational acting vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt.

Trainer Bryan Smart and jockey John Stack came up trumps again in a big sales race when Don Puccini landed Saturday's pounds 125,000 Weatherbys Super Sprint, writes Matt Chapman.