Giacomo Puccini died 100 years ago of throat cancer, on November 29, 1924. Almost every opera he wrote was an instant hit, so he hardly bothered to write anything else – other than some church music, a string quartet and a fistful of drawing-room songs that get little attention. I don’t think I have seen a complete album of them before. His thumbprint is recognisable throughout. A ‘Storiella d’amore’ in his early 20s sounds like a sketch for a Mimi aria in La Bohème a decade later. The title song, ‘A te’, written when he was just 16, sounds like…