In recent years, the Metropolitan Opera has asked artists to respond to the company’s new productions. Their creations are then transferred onto enormous banners that adorn the opera house’s façade. However, between the closing of Ainadamar and the opening of Michael Mayer’s reimagining of Aida due on New Year’s Eve, the Met’s banner on display features a photograph of Giacomo Puccini above the composer’s signature. This outsized tribute commemorates the centenary of the composer’s death on November 29, 1924. In addition to the banner, the Met offered on November 12 an unusually interesting gala performance of Puccini’s Tosca that would prove to be greater than the sum of its very disparate parts.

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Why these extravagant gestures to Puccini? While celebrations connected to an artist’s birth are quite common, making a big fuss over the anniversary of their death happens far less frequently. But opera houses, particularly in the United States, owe much to the Italian composer whose ever-popular works have been programmed more and more frequently as companies continue to struggle to recover from crippling closures caused by the pandemic.

As many of Puccini’s operas are easily accessible and feature poignant stories of tragic love set to memorably soaring melodies, nearly every season of even the smallest opera company contains at least one: La Bohème, Madama Butterfly or Tosca are the most commonly performed with the larger companies also venturing the more demanding Turandot. And, unlike most masterpieces by, say, Mozart or Verdi or especially Wagner, these operas contain around two hours or so of music that novice audiences may appreciate.

The Met, which scheduled nearly sixty performances of four of the composer’s works last season, has long had a special connection to Puccini. That relationship was examined in a dazzling new short film by 59 Productions that was shown before Tosca. Directed by Tony Wexler and........

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