Giuseppe Giacosa

Giuseppe Giacosa (1847-1906) was an Italian poet, playwright and librettist active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He wrote in Italian. Today he is remembered mainly for his partnership with Giacomo Puccini, but in his own time he was regarded as one of the country's leading playwrights.

He was born in Colleretto Parella, near Turin, a village that later took his name and is now called Colleretto Giacosa in his honour. The son of an attorney, he earned a law degree at the University of Turin and worked for a time in his father's office. His first theatrical successes, however, led him to devote himself fully to the stage. His first real fame came in 1871 with Una partita a scacchi, known in English as A Game of Chess.

His plays are usually set in Piedmont and deal with the values of the contemporary middle class, written with insight and a plain style. Around 1880 he moved toward naturalism and, alongside Giovanni Verga, became the most important figure of verismo on the Italian stage. In the 1880s and early 1890s he held teaching and directing posts in Turin and Milan, while often retreating to Ivrea, near his birthplace, for periods of concentrated work.

In 1891 he toured America with Sarah Bernhardt, who performed his five-act play La Dame de Challant, which he had written for her in French. His best-known work came later, when he worked with Luigi Illica on the librettos for Puccini's La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. Giacosa usually supplied the poetry and polished verse, while Illica shaped the plot. Toward the end of his life he edited the literary magazine La Lettura, connected with the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Outside Italy he is best known as a librettist. In his lifetime he was valued chiefly as a dramatist, especially in Germany and Austria. His play Tristi amori was adapted for the cinema twice.