Restless and constantly on the move was Italy's greatest twentieth-century composer. The composer was not content to stay long in one place, she tells us. He had a house here, a house there; he didn't like this one, he longed to be at yet another one....this was no laboratory musician! Through the sharing of Puccini's letters (and he wrote unceasingly, it seems), Phillips-Matz offers us glimpses into the continual torment the composer faced, either from his own high standards and inabilities to finish projects to the endless revisions of present and past operas on which he was working. Puccini seemed to be under perpetual pressure. The author is careful not to be judgmental about her subect; in fact she includes a surprising number of revealing interviews that she, herself, conducted with singers who had performed Puccini operas and had worked with him in his later life.
Phillips-Matz's book is not so much a book about Puccini's music as it is about process. How did the composer go about choosing texts? What was he feeling when he composed? How did he envision the final outcomes of his operas? The relationships with those who were closest to him are perhaps the best aspects of this book, especially those with his wife and Toscanini. The author almost seems to be encouraging the reader by saying this: "here is what Puccini was like; now go hear his music and see what connections you can make."