7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7

Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky.
From this study emerged Il trittico (The Triptych; New York
City, 1918), three stylistically individual one-act operas—
the melodramatic Il tabarro (The Cloak), the sentimental
Suor Angelica, and the comic Gianni Schicchi. His last opera,
based on the fable of Turandot as told in the play Turandot
by the 18th-century Italian dramatist Carlo Gozzi, is the
only Italian opera in the Impressionistic style. Puccini did
not complete Turandot, unable to write a final grand duet
on the triumphant love between Turandot and Calaf.
Suffering from cancer of the throat, he was ordered to
Brussels for surgery, and a few days afterward he died with
the incomplete score of Turandot in his hands.
Turandot was performed posthumously at La Scala on
April 25, 1926, and Arturo Toscanini, who conducted the
performance, concluded the opera at the point Puccini
had reached before dying. Two final scenes were completed
by Franco Alfano from Puccini’s sketches.
Solemn funeral services were held for Puccini at La
Scala in Milan, and his body was taken to Torre del Lago,
which became the Puccini Pantheon. Shortly afterward,
Elvira and Antonio were also buried there. The Puccini
house became a museum and an archive.

Gustav Mahler

(b. July 7, 1860, Kaliště, Bohemia, Austrian Empire [Austria]—d. May
18, 1911, Vienna, Austria)

A

ustrian-Jewish composer and conductor Gustav
Mahler is noted for his 10 symphonies and various
songs with orchestra, which drew together many different
strands of Romanticism. Although his music was largely
ignored for 50 years after his death, Mahler was later
regarded as an important forerunner of 20th-century
techniques of composition and an acknowledged