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Donald Macleod recounts how Puccini's struggles to write 'Manon Lescaut' paid off - the only one of his operas applauded by both audiences and critics alike.

Giacomo Puccini was man of the theatre to his fingertips. Born in Lucca in 1858, into a distinguished family of church musicians, Puccini was never destined to follow in his forebears’ footsteps. His fate was sealed when as a teenager he walked thirty miles to hear Verdi’s Aida. He knew immediately that theatre was his calling and from that point on he wrote almost exclusively for the stage.

A perfectionist and an often unreasonable taskmaster, Puccini agonised over each of his operas. Beginning with Manon Lescaut, the opera that launched Puccini internationally, this week Donald Macleod follows the off and the on-stage dramas of La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La fanciulla del West, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, Il tabarro and the opera he left incomplete at his death in 1924, his final masterpiece, Turandot. The stories on stage are interleaved with events in his personal life, from an early scandal over his affair with a married woman and some very dodgy skulduggery in his business dealings, to the suicide of one of his servants, a tragedy of such proportion, he was plunged in to a deep depression, haunted by the events for the rest of his life.

In a week celebrating a composer whose music expresses every human emotion, there's a host of landmark recordings, including the voices of Jonas Kaufmann, Angela Gheorghiu, Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna. We'll hear Mimì's touching calling card from La Bohème, in the classic Victoria de los Angeles version, while Renato Scotto pours all Madam Butterfly's hopes into the heart-breaking Un bel dì. There's the raw pain of Sister Angelica mourning her dead son, and the dark desperation of a jealous husband in Il tabarro. On Wednesday Callas and Gobbi’s anguished, sadistic torture scene in Tosca still has the power to shock us as much as it did on its first night in 1900. It's high stakes and nail-biting tension in La fanciulla del West as Minnie trades the life of her outlaw lover on the outcome of a card game. Joan Sutherland’s icy Princess Turandot, a magnificent pairing with Luciano Pavarotti’s Prince Calaf comes on Friday along with a certain aria made famous by the 1990 world cup, heard here in the hands of another Puccini specialist, Jussi Björling.

After critics called Puccini's second opera, Edgar, a sin against art, the young composer really needed a hit. To the consternation of his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, what must his protégé do but pick a subject that had already been used for an opera by Massenet most successfully. Could Puccini pull off a winner too?

Manon Lescaut, Act 1
Donna non vidi mai
Jonas Kaufmann, tenor
Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Antonio Pappano, director

Le Villi, Act 1
Preghiera: Angiol di dio
Brian Mulligan, baritone, Guglielmo (Anna’s father)
Ermonela Jaho, soprano, Anna
Arsen Soghomonyan, tenor Roberto
Opera Rara Chorus
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Mark Elder, conductor

Messa di Gloria
Credo
Roberto Alagna, tenor
London Symphony Chorus
Antonio Pappano, conductor

Crisantemi
Navarra String Quartet

Manon Lescaut, Act 2
Dispettosetto questo Riccio!
In quelle trine morbide
Mirella Freni, Manon, soprano
Renato Bruson, Lescaut, baritone
Philharmonia Orchestra
Giuseppe Sinopoli, conductor

Manon Lescaut, Act 4
Sola, perduta, abbandonata
Fra le tue bracce amore
Mirella Freni, Manon, soprano
Placido Domingo, Des Grieux, tenor
Philharmonia Orchestra
Giuseppe Sinopoli, conductor

Producer: Johannah Smith