It was so successful that Milan’s La Scala accepted it for the following season. Although it did not win the prize, there was sufficient interest to prompt the management of the Teatro dal Verme in Milan to stage it May 31, 1884. The young composer completed his first opera “Le Villi” (“The Wills”). Ponchielli had a friend, Ferdinand Fontana, provide Puccini with a suitable libretto, urged him to set it to music and submit it in the Sorrogno contest for one-act operas. Actually, it was a performance of Verdi’s “Aida” in Pisa in 1876 that first fired his youthful operatic imagination. He enrolled at the Milan Conservatory where his teachers included Antonio Bazzini, the composer of the violin piece “The Witches’ Dance” and Amilcare Ponchielli, the composer of the opera “La Gioconda.” Ponchielli aroused Puccini’s love for the stage and directed him toward writing opera. Additional funds from a great uncle enabled him to go to Milan in 1880 to continue his studies. That position allowed him to procure a small subsidy from Queen Margherita. Puccini soon became something of a local celebrity. “One of those works was his Messa a Quattro Voci con Orchestra, a five-movement mass for large orchestra, four-part chorus, and tenor and baritone soloists. His musical progress was rapid, and he was soon able to fill the post of organist in nearby churches and to write two choral works that were well received by the townspeople. After his father’s death in 1864, his training was placed in the hands of Carlo Angeloni, one of his father’s pupils. Giacomo received his first musical education from his father, the Inspector of the Institute on Music. They had been employed as church musicians, so much that the Puccini name was associated with church composer in his hometown. The Puccinis were a famously musical family: stretching back through the 19th-century to the 18th century.
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