Full Description
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) is the world's most frequently performed operatic composer, yet he is only beginning to receive serious scholarly attention. In Giacomo Puccini and His World, an international roster of music specialists, several writing on Puccini for the first time, offers a variety of new critical perspectives on the composer and his works. Containing discussions of all of Puccini's operas from Manon Lescaut (1893) to Turandot (1926), this volume aims to move beyond cliches of the composer as a Romantic epigone and to resituate him at the heart of early twentieth-century musical modernity. This collection's essays explore Puccini's engagement with spoken theater and operetta, and with new technologies like photography and cinema. Other essays consider the philosophical problems raised by "realist" opera, discuss the composer's place in a variety of cosmopolitan formations, and reevaluate Puccini's orientalism and his complex interactions with the Italian fascist state.
A rich array of primary source material, including previously unpublished letters and documents, provides vital information on Puccini's interactions with singers, conductors, and stage directors, and on the early reception of the verismo movement. Excerpts from Fausto Torrefranca's notorious Giacomo Puccini and International Opera, perhaps the most vicious diatribe ever directed against the composer, appear here in English for the first time. The contributors are Micaela Baranello, Leon Botstein, Alessandra Campana, Delia Casadei, Ben Earle, Elaine Fitz Gibbon, Walter Frisch, Michele Girardi, Arthur Groos, Steven Huebner, Ellen Lockhart, Christopher Morris, Arman Schwartz, Emanuele Senici, and Alexandra Wilson.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii Permissions viii Introduction: Puccini, His World, and Ours 1 EMANUELE SENICI PART I: Essays Realism and Skepticism in Puccini's Early Operas 29 ARMAN SCHWARTZ Madama Butterfly Between East and West 49 ARTHUR GROOS Laggiu nel Soledad: Indexing and Archiving the Operatic West 85 ELLEN LOCKHART The Swallow and the Lark: La rondine and Viennese Operetta 111 MICAELA BARANELLO Puccini's Things: Materials and Media in Il trittico 133 ALESSANDRA CAMPANA AND CHRISTOPHER MORRIS Puccini, Fascism, and the Case of Turandot 159 BEN EARLE Music, Language, and Meaning in Opera: Puccini and His Contemporaries 183 LEON BOTSTEIN PART II: Documents Puccini on His Interpreters 229 INTRODUCTION, TRANSLATION, AND COMMENTARY BY EMANUELE SENICI The Verismo Debate 261 INTRODUCTION, TRANSLATION, AND COMMENTARY BY ARMAN SCHWARTZ Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Modern-Realistic Opera 273 by Hans Merian INTRODUCTION BY WALTER FRISCH, TRANSLATION AND NOTES BY ELAINE FITZ GIBBON Albert Carre's Staging Manual for Madama Butterfly (1906) 291 INTRODUCTION BY MICHELE GIRARDI, TRANSLATION BY DELIA CASADEI; STAGING MANUAL TRANSLATION BY STEVEN HUEBNER Selections from Fausto Torrefranca's Giacomo Puccini and International Opera 323 INTRODUCTION BY ALEXANDRA WILSON, TRANSLATION BY DELIA CASADEI Index 337 Notes on Contributors 347
