Who was Giacomo Puccini?
Since 1990, everyone has known at least one aria by Giacomo Puccini. Nessun dorma then became the theme song of the Football World Cup in Italy. This year, on November 29, we celebrate the centenary of the death of the last great Italian opera composer. The National Opera will be available from Friday Trittico to see, after Tosca and Turandot the third Puccini collaboration between chief conductor Lorenzo Viotti and director Barrie Kosky.
In certain circles, the creator of popular tearjerkers like La boheme considered a musical lightweight, a dealer in cheap sentimentality. But Puccini is so popular precisely because he was able to translate emotions into music like no other. And because his operas are great plays.
Puccini was born in Lucca in 1858. His father was the organist of the cathedral there and died when Puccini was 5 years old. Benefactors sponsored his musical education, but Puccini would make his breakthrough with Manon Lescaut are permanently short of cash.
Contemporaries describe him as amiable and charming. He was a bon vivant who loved good cigars, beautiful women, fast cars and motorboats, the countryside and hunting. He enjoyed a joke, but could also wallow in self-pity.
Puccini was not an intellectual. At the conservatory in Milan he found secondary subjects such as aesthetics boring. Politics and social issues did not interest him. But he did obsessive research for his operas, for example into the correct pitch of the church bells in Rome Tosca. And after a premiere he often continued to refine and perfect.
His operas brought him success and wealth and he never had to do extra work, for example as a conductor. He died at the age of 65 in Brussels, where he was being treated for throat cancer.
Why do his operas appeal to so many people?
Attending a Puccini opera is a compelling journey into the emotional lives of his characters. See for example Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly, who continues to hope in vain for the return of her American naval officer. Or the lovers Rodolfo and Mimì, who in La boheme struggling with poverty and illness.
Puccini is also a master at painting the musical setting. It only needs a few bars to capture the peaceful atmosphere of a monastery or a moonless night.
And then there are the unforgettable arias. The orchestra often plays a fragment of it well before the aria begins, as a kind of teaser. Many Puccini arias start with a descending melody and end on an ever-rising line. It is typical of Puccini to use a thick layer of strings just before the climax that sing along with the soloist.
Which music movement does he belong to?
Puccini belonged to the ‘giovane scuola’ (young school), Italian composers who came after Giuseppe Verdi and who were strongly influenced by the great musical dramas of Richard Wagner. One of them, Pietro Mascagni, inaugurated in 1890 Cavalleria rusticana into ‘verismo’, an opera movement that showed the rougher sides of life through stories about ordinary people.
Puccini’s operas have veristic characteristics, but he developed his own style, a kind of poetic realism. Like Wagner, he uses rich harmonies and leitmotifs, recurring themes linked to a character or an idea. But no matter how lush the orchestra becomes, with Puccini the sung melody remains leading.
Which of his operas do you absolutely need to know?
His seven masterpieces: Manon Lescaut, La boheme, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, La fanciulla del West, Il Trittico and Turandot. Parts of his first two operas, Le Villi and Edgar, are interesting, but Puccini still had to become Puccini. The operetta-like one La Rondine suffers from a weak final act.
Puccini’s oeuvre is compact, partly because he traveled extensively to attend his premieres, as far as New York and Buenos Aires, and partly because he demanded a lot from his librettists. He canceled several projects because he was dissatisfied with the text after numerous adjustments.
Where goes Il Trittico about?
Always looking for innovation, Puccini had long had the idea of composing three contrasting one-act plays for an evening. Il Trittico (The Triptych) premiered in New York in December 1918.
Il tabarro (The Mantle), the first opera, is pure verismo, a pitch-black drama that takes place on a barge on the Seine. In Suor Angelica a nun cannot bear the death of her illegitimate child. The evening ends with the comedy Gianni Schicchiin which the cunning Schicchi outsmarts the greedy heirs of a deceased rich man.
The aria O mio babbino caro, a favorite with advertisers and film directors, comes from this last opera. A clever piece of emotional blackmail from Schicchi’s daughter. “Daddy, if I can’t marry him, I’ll jump into the river.” Schicchi melts. How could it be otherwise, with such music?
Giacomo Puccini died a hundred years ago, but as far as his operas are concerned, every year is an anniversary year. They remain as popular as ever, especially the top three blockbusters: La boheme, Tosca and Madame Butterfly.
The less frequently performed triptych Il Trittico This season, in addition to the National Opera & Ballet in Amsterdam (May 3 to 19), it can also be seen across the border at the Aalto Theater in Essen. The Brussels Mint will present a new production of this in June Turandot.
