Crisantemi – All Classical Research

Puccini originally Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums) for string quartet in 1890, as an elegy in memory of the Italian duke Amedeo di Savoia, Duke of Aosta¹ and King of Spain.²
This piece premiered in 1890 in a performance by the Campanari Quartet at the Milan Conservatory,³ where Puccini had been a student.⁴
According to a letter Puccini wrote to his brother Michele, he composed this work in one night.⁵
Themes from Crisantemi also appear in Acts III and IV of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (1893).⁶

“Crisantemi, SC 65 (Puccini, Giacomo), IMSLP, accessed December 26, 2019, https://imslp.org/wiki/Crisantemi%2C_SC_65_(Puccini%2C_Giacomo).
Michael Kaye, “The Nonoperatic Works of Giacomo Puccini,” in William Weaver, Simonetta Puccini, eds., The Puccini Companion: Essays on Puccini’s Life and Music (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994) 291.
“Crisantemi, SC 65 (Puccini, Giacomo), IMSLP.
Michele Girardi, “Puccini, Giacomo (ii),” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed December 26, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-6002278242.
Michael Kaye, “The Nonoperatic Works of Giacomo Puccini,” in The Puccini Companion: Essays on Puccini’s Life and Music, 291.
Ibid.

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