“He loved dissolute companies. Lazy and brilliant, neurotic, arrogant and shy, goliardic and primitive: he loved being in company and, at the same time, he  needed loneliness; he was bonded  almost in a morbid way to the mists of his lake of Lucca, he loved the raids, the breaking of the quiet of a wild nature, the gunshots, the cursing and the cursing of his people - and yet he dreamed of escaping as soon as possible, going to Milan, where he could make a career , where fame and glory, wealth and beautiful women awaited him. Women and cigars, a constancy of his life ... Sensitive and cynical, extroverted and distressed (sudden and noisy joy, often boorish, followed by melancholy and restlessness, gloom), imaginative but discontinuous worker, willing to to love and suffer with a shameless passion, almost always above the rules, like his female characters, but shamelessly a liar, boastful and infidel. This was Giacomo Puccini. " 

  From “Puccini e le sue donne“ by Augusto Benemeglio