Giacomo Puccini
1858-1924

Eclectic as he was, Puccini was very consistent in one regard: evoking the most intense emotional response possible from his audience. In order to achieve this in his unique way, he needed more time, more bars of music than are found in the typical one-act verismo opera. To make his listeners ascend those emotional peaks that are so exhilarating Puccini had to subtly (and often not-so-subtly) build up an exquisite kind of tension in the music that ultimately begged for a release. He did this organically, in a grand mosaic of melodic fragments repeated frequently, some of which would blossom into rhapsodic climaxes, others that would merely tease the ear, leading to a "blind alley" as it were. Inherent in this approach, which one critic unkindly labeled a "bag of tricks," is the composer's willingness to produce many bars of "low energy" music, in order to both provide a distinct contrast to the fireworks to come, and to lull the listener into a kind of repose which would make the musical orgasms all the more intense.

Not quite the youthful prodigy that Verdi was, Puccini nevertheless displayed the kind of musical talent at an early age that seemed to promise a brilliant career. Like all successful people, Puccini enjoyed his

Albina Magi Puccini

This premiere was so successful that Ricordi bought the rights to it and had the opera produced in a two-act version in Turin in December. He

Thus Puccini began a string of operas that were both named after women and musically and dramatically focused squarely on the heroine of each (all but two subsequent Puccini operas, both one-acts, Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi). This is not really against the grain of Italian opera tradition, but it has given psychology- oriented critics a great deal of material in their analyses of Puccini, who was raised by a woman and had lasting relations with several of his sisters. He also had a

Ricordi, who was so active in Puccini's professional career, always believed that Elvira was no good for the composer and encouraged him to spend as much time as possible away from home. The publisher would have been very happy if Puccini had fallen in love with another woman, but the composer, who did have the inclination to stray, only seemed to take up with maids, waitresses and the like, not the kind of women with whom he was likely to get serious. While it is arguable that Elvira was really good for

Elvira with Puccini

After the fiasco of Edgar, and when Puccini had settled on the Manon Lescaut subject, the composer was determined that no "idiot librettist" would ruin his next opera and made it known that he would write the libretto himself. Not nearly as confident of Puccini's literary ability as his musical talent, Ricordi dissuaded the composer from this course and recommended Ruggiero Leoncavallo as librettist. (Leoncavallo had not yet produced I pagliacci.) Leoncavallo studied the subject and made some preliminary suggestions on act/scene structure which Puccini rejected. After summarily dismissing Leoncavallo, Puccini acquired the services of poet Marco Praga (1862-1929), who wrote a complete libretto which did not satisfy the composer either, so another poet, Domenico Oliva (1860-1917), was hired. But Oliva failed to please and Puccini once again turned to Ricordi for help.

Sensing a success, Ricordi still did not want the premiere of Manon Lescaut staged at La Scala for the 1893 season, especially because it would have to compete with Verdi's last opera, Falstaff. The publisher was also fully aware of Puccini's volatile emotional makeup, and did not want to risk shattering the composer's self esteem with another failure in Milan, so the premiere for Manon Lescaut was staged at the Teatro Regio in Turin on February 1. It was a decisive triumph, an international hit that marked the turning point in the composer's career. It also helped that Ricordi made it mandatory for any company interested in Falstaff to produce Puccini's opera as well. From this point on, Puccini could dictate his own terms with any aspect of opera composition.

Although many critics, then and now, have considered La bohème to be too sentimental, it has always been a hit with the public and remains to this day Puccini's most popular opera. Part of the reason for this is that audiences identify so closely with the characters. (After all, how many of us have not had our own "Bohemian period" in our lives?) Puccini himself, with his roommate Mascagni, sometimes dodged the landlord during their impoverished student days in Milan. Some of this experience surely gives the opera some extent of freshness and credibility.

such a plum as Tosca to the composer so soon after the disastrous premiere of Edgar. But just a few years later, after Illica had even written a libretto for Franchetti, it was clear to Ricordi that Puccini could compose far better than anyone, so the publisher and librettist convinced Franchetti to relinquish the rights to a subject that would not be right for an opera. Imagine Franchetti's surprise, when just a day after he gave them up, the rights to Tosca were awarded to Puccini!

Premiered in Rome in January of 1900, Tosca marked another triumph for Puccini, but the road to success was not smooth nor uneventful. There was the usual squabbling, of course, between the composer and his librettists, and a bomb scare caused the opera's first few moments to be repeated on opening night. But what was indeed unusual was Ricordi's initial negative reaction to Tosca's third act as Puccini composed it, and additionally, the composer's determination to stick to exactly what he had written despite his benefactor's uneasy misgivings. The main problem that Ricordi had with the act was Puccini's use of some music from Edgar, which was inserted in the duet passage that begins with Cavaradossi's "O dolci mani." In a long and passionate letter that spelled out his motives and methods in composing the way he did, Puccini pointed out that it would be truly remarkable if anyone recognized the music's original source and, even if they did, the music fit perfectly with the situation. Think what you might about many aspects of Puccini's character, but in this case the composer displayed tremendous courage and artistic brilliance at the same time. To his great credit, Ricordi signed off on the project and the entire opera was performed as written.

In preparation for composing, Puccini studied every scrap of authentic Japanese music he could get his hands on so he could give his score an oriental flavor. He also incorporated the opening bars of the Star Spangled Banner in the first tenor aria-duet. These were musical-dramatic touches that were so typical of Puccini's

David Belasco

approach to opera composition. With these devices and his signature development of melodic fragments that intensify the almost unbearable pathos of the drama, Madama Butterfly can arguably be considered his ultimate masterpiece.

Puccini came a hair's breadth from never finishing the opera when he ran his flashy new automobile off the road on a foggy night near Lucca in February, 1903. Fortunately, he crashed near the home of a physician who attended the composer immediately. Although Puccini suffered a compound fracture of the leg, which was not set right initially and had to be broken again and reset, leaving him with a permanent limp, he recovered from the accident and resumed working on Butterfly.

Bolstered by a string of successes and his unshakable belief that he had produced his absolutely finest work, Puccini broke with a personal tradition based on superstition and brought Elvira (whom he had recently married) and Tonio to the La Scala premiere of Madama Butterfly on February 17, 1904. Puccini, however, was horrified when what he thought would be his greatest triumph to date disintegrated into a monstrous fiasco that caused him to pull the production from the stage after the first night. He again exhibited a formidable strength of character when he quickly shook off his considerable embarrassment, made a few, but significant, revisions and had the opera produced at Brescia several months later. This time it was a tremendous hit, and has been one of opera's all time favorites ever since.

As anticipated, the star-studded premiere of La fanciulla del West was a huge success, but after its eagerly awaited initial productions in the world's great opera houses, the work faded from the repertoire. Although this opera lacks the melodic catchiness of the most popular Puccini works, and can not really be appreciated from purely audio recordings, La fanciulla is an outstanding and emotionally compelling theatrical experience with a brilliant musical score. The same cannot be said, however, about the next few Puccini operas.

Giuseppe Adami

Giovacchino Forzano

Dante

Also neglected for their lack of musical and dramatic interest are the authentically verismo opera Il tabarro and the all-female Suor Angelica. These works are the first two of a group of three one-act operas that was produced as Il trittico for the first time at the Met in 1918. The third one-act in the group, Gianni Schicchi, is a hilarious comic opera, with a libretto by Giovacchino Forzano (1884-1970) ingeniously derived from just a few lines about one of the denizens of the Eighth Circle of Hell in the Inferno by Dante Alighieri (1265-1331). It is also a superb and fresh piece of music that features the

When opera was created in 1597, the idea was to resurrect Greek tragedy. From Aristotle's Poetics the Renaissance Italians knew that music was an element of tragedy but they didn't know how important the music was vis-a-vis the drama. They also could not comprehend the meaning of catharsis, which Aristotle says is the main point of Greek tragedy - that is, to purge the emotions of pity and terror. It took three centuries, but Puccini seems to have found how to combine the proper proportions of music and drama to achieve catharsis in opera.

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