For the last two days I have been immersed into an unlikely topic: Reading Puccini's life and how each of his operas came into life -- each took 10 years on an average(some 13!), he was a deeply unhappy, melancholic but gentle soul, I think I liked his person much more than his music! Well, I have never been an opera fan, so I am probably one of the last people to apreciate the beauty or hideousness of Tosca, Madame Butterfly, The Girl from The West, Turandot, La Boheme, and his other achievements. I was deeply moved by the utter misery he had to live through until he was 30, when he finally started earning some money to make a living - he was so poor that when he finally bought a bike, he wrote a letter to his boss and publisher, requesting the Publishing House to pay for the bike in installments, and at that time he was well over thirty, had a wife (mistress who abandoned her husband to live with him, to be more accurate), and a kid! His letters are beautiful and the most sorrowful things I have read - he always talks about how lonely and utterly misunderstood he is. The most touching anecdotes in the biography are the result of his down-to-earth character. He was not unapproachable like Verdi, no aristocrat, lived among peasants, communicated with them, and until much later, had no idea how popular he was. In his forties, he had gained world recognitiion, even in America he was announced as the most accomplished and highly paid composer of his time all over the world, all theatres were sold out for astronomical prices, and he had to sign autographs for fans! He was, in short, a celebrity, Giacomo Puccini. Yet when he went to France and met Emile Zola and a few other poets, he was so excited that in his letter to his friend he said--You can't believe what just happened, I met celebrities like Zola and they treated me as their equal. Now, would you expect that from a peasant and a third rate organ player like myself, eh?".