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Poor Little Butterfly

Larry Hamberlin

in Tin Pan Opera: Operatic Novelty Songs in the Ragtime Era

Of all operatic characters, the most influential on American popular culture was Cho-Cho-San, the title character of Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly. This chapter surveys the large repertoire of ... More

Of all operatic characters, the most influential on American popular culture was Cho-Cho-San, the title character of Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly. This chapter surveys the large repertoire of Butterfly songs, which, like the opera, allegorize the United States' flexing of imperialistic muscle in the Far East as a love story between a powerful American man and a powerless Japanese woman. Unlike the opera, these popular songs, of which “Poor Butterfly” emerges as the most important, explore a wide range of alternative readings of that allegory, from validating Pinkerton as hero, not villain, to empowering Cho-Cho-San.Less

The Civilizing Process: Music and the Aesthetics of Time-Space Relations in The Girl of the Golden West

Richard Leppert

in Musical Meaning and Human Values

This chapter focuses on the David Belasco work, The Girl of the Golden West. This was seen on its first peformance by Giacomo Puccini in 1907, while he was on his visit to New York. Puccini was ... More

This chapter focuses on the David Belasco work, The Girl of the Golden West. This was seen on its first peformance by Giacomo Puccini in 1907, while he was on his visit to New York. Puccini was searching for his next project when he saw the play of Belasco. Belasco specialized in melodrama emphasizing naturalism. The Girl of the Golden West is about a young woman living in a mining camp mostly populated by men. The setting of Belasco's play and Puccini's opera are situated within the Sierra Nevada mountains. Their works sparked the modernist ideologies which governed the civilizing process. Lastly, the two envisioned the time–space relations.Less

Berio's Turandot: Once More the Great Tradition

Roger Parker

in Remaking the Song: Operatic Visions and Revisions from Handel to Berio

This chapter focuses on Italian composer Luciano Berio's work on the ending of Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot. It compares Berio's composition with that of Franco Alfano who first completed the ... More

This chapter focuses on Italian composer Luciano Berio's work on the ending of Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot. It compares Berio's composition with that of Franco Alfano who first completed the opera which received its first performance in April 1926. It suggests that while Alfano's completion of Turandot can certainly be accused of straying from Puccinian practice, Berio's ending is a much bolder departure at almost every level.Less

“Popolo di Pekino”: Musorgsky's Muscovy in Early Twentieth-Century Europe

Boris Gasparov

in Five Operas and a Symphony: Word and Music in Russian Culture

This chapter examines Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov. It discusses how the opera became a tangible presence in the culture of European modernism. It also explains that it took time for ... More

This chapter examines Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov. It discusses how the opera became a tangible presence in the culture of European modernism. It also explains that it took time for Mussorgsky's innovative dramatic design to be adapted in Western theater and it was Giacomo Puccini's Turandot that introduced a Musorgskian unruly crowd to the Western musical drama.Less

Popularising La bohème

Alexandra Wilson

in Puccini's La Bohème

This chapter considers how the reception of La bohème developed across the course of the twentieth century, focusing in particular on debates about the opera’s status as ‘art’ or ‘entertainment’. It ... More

This chapter considers how the reception of La bohème developed across the course of the twentieth century, focusing in particular on debates about the opera’s status as ‘art’ or ‘entertainment’. It examines hostile responses to Puccini by modernist commentators and Italian nationalists who accused him of ‘decadence’ and pandering to the crowd. It discusses the work’s appropriation by celebrity singers, in spite of the fact that the work was not conceived as a star vehicle. The role of recordings and Bohème films in the opera’s rise to canonical status is considered. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the ways in which music from the opera has been used in films, incorporated into popular songs, and used as the basis for other works of popular culture.Less

Julian Medford Budden 1924–2007

Pierluigi Petrobelli and Roger Parker

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 153 Biographical Memoirs of Fellows, VII

Julian Medford Budden (1924–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was the finest scholar of nineteenth-century Italian opera of his generation. He will be remembered for his achievements as a ... More

Julian Medford Budden (1924–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was the finest scholar of nineteenth-century Italian opera of his generation. He will be remembered for his achievements as a producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), for his broadcasts and reviews, and above all for his books on Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. Indeed, his passing leaves a huge gap in the field of opera studies. Budden was born in Hoylake, near Liverpool, on April 9, 1924, the only child of Lionel Budden and Maud Budden. In 1951 he started at the BBC, where he remained for his entire working life. Budden's first post was as a clerk and script editor; he then rose through the ranks to become a producer, Chief Producer of Opera, and finally External Services Music Organizer. Two aspects of Budden's background were likely to have been fundamental to his scholarly achievement: his exposure to Classics at Oxford University and his career in BBC Radio.Less

La bohème’s Paris

Alexandra Wilson

in Puccini's La Bohème

This chapter analyses the ways in which La bohème was influenced by popular romantic representations of Paris and the ways in which it, in turn, helped shape them. It discusses the late ... More

This chapter analyses the ways in which La bohème was influenced by popular romantic representations of Paris and the ways in which it, in turn, helped shape them. It discusses the late nineteenth-century Italian fascination with French culture and the way in which Puccini’s opera was nostalgically depicting an old Paris that had been swept away by Baron Haussmann’s regeneration of the city. The chapter considers Puccini’s conception of Bohemianism, demonstrating that it had Italian as well as French roots. It examines the composer and his librettists’ reading of certain archetypal Bohemian figures, such as the good-hearted demimondaine, and of symbolic Parisian locations, such as the pavement café. The chapter concludes with a consideration of Puccini’s representation of ‘picturesque poverty’ and discusses the ways in which directors have attempted to make the work more or less gritty through their stagings.Less

La bohème in context

Alexandra Wilson

in Puccini's La Bohème

This chapter provides a brief overview of the genesis of La bohème, discussing Puccini’s relationship with his librettists and publisher, and where the work sat in his career. It considers the place ... More

This chapter provides a brief overview of the genesis of La bohème, discussing Puccini’s relationship with his librettists and publisher, and where the work sat in his career. It considers the place of the opera within the nineteenth-century Italian operatic tradition (including its relationship to the verismo movement), as well as the extent to which Puccini was influenced by foreign composers. It identifies the opera’s key stylistic hallmarks and explains the relationship between music, characterisation, and dramatic pacing. The chapter then examines how Puccini treats the opera’s core dramatic themes of love, friendship, death, and nostalgia, as well as considering his representation of male and female characters.Less

La bohème’s travels

Alexandra Wilson

in Puccini's La Bohème

This chapter, on La bohème’s international reception, considers initial responses to the work in Italy, across Europe, and in North and South America. It reveals that at the outset the opera was ... More

This chapter, on La bohème’s international reception, considers initial responses to the work in Italy, across Europe, and in North and South America. It reveals that at the outset the opera was often performed by minor troupes in secondary theatres and took some time to establish itself in the operatic canon. Certain responses to the work’s music and drama were common whatever the national context; others were coloured by specific local considerations and preoccupations. Puccini’s opera was, variously, held up against the standard of Wagnerian music drama, criticised for its episodic structure, chastised for breaking the harmonic rulebook, and even considered immoral. The sheer popular appeal of the opera also prompted varying responses in different countries. Some unusual early performance practices are also discussed here.Less

Coffee and Chocolatefrom Bach to Puccini

Pierpaolo Polzonetti

in Feasting and Fasting in Opera: From Renaissance Banquets to the Callas Diet

Coffee and chocolate are the two distinctive soft drugs of the Enlightenment. Coffee was historically associated with Turkey, as still apparent in Rossini's Il turco in Italia, and chocolate with ... More

Coffee and chocolate are the two distinctive soft drugs of the Enlightenment. Coffee was historically associated with Turkey, as still apparent in Rossini's Il turco in Italia, and chocolate with America. The chapter contextualizes the consumption of these drinks in the culture of the Enlightenment, showing also how coffee was associated with the public sphere and chocolate with private, domestic spaces. The chapter offers a reading of Johann Sebastian Bach's Coffee cantata and Mozart's Così fan tutte. The musical representation of the effects of caffeine is apparent in both operas, as well as in Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West. In Bach, Mozart, Rossini, and Puccini, coffee does not retain a consistent denotative function, but the effect of caffeine is consistently dramatized musically, used to stir excitement and emotions. In Rossini and Puccini, sharing food or drink has also the effect of establishing or strengthening an intimate bond and excluding those who do not share. This is indeed the main use of gastronomic signs in nineteenth-century opera.Less

Setting the scene

Alexandra Wilson

in Puccini's La Bohème

This chapter introduces Puccini’s La bohème as a much-loved work that sits at the apex of the operatic canon. It explains that the following chapters will explore the opera’s not uncomplicated ascent ... More

This chapter introduces Puccini’s La bohème as a much-loved work that sits at the apex of the operatic canon. It explains that the following chapters will explore the opera’s not uncomplicated ascent to this position, investigating landmarks in its reception history as well as its musical, dramatic, and emotional appeal. The introduction sets out the book’s remit as a cultural history of the opera, examining its characterisation and treatment of particular dramatic themes, its representations of place and gender, its international reception, its connections with popular culture, and the varied ways in which it has been staged.Less

Gong

Gundula Kreuzer

in Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera

First imported to Europe in the 1780s, Chinese gongs (or tam-tams) are shown in this chapter to have migrated between commerce, science, theater, orchestra, technology, and stage prop. Their novel ... More

First imported to Europe in the 1780s, Chinese gongs (or tam-tams) are shown in this chapter to have migrated between commerce, science, theater, orchestra, technology, and stage prop. Their novel sound effect was adopted into opera in London and Paris for a range of music-dramatic situations that are discussed here as “gong topoi.” Yet the tam-tam’s unusually loud, non-pitched resonance challenged conceptions of musical tone, while its European dissemination required either costly imports or metallurgical experiments. By midcentury, Berlioz and Wagner were experimenting with more subtle playing techniques that might enhance their orchestration while masking the instrument’s metallic timbre. Less nuanced, the chapter proposes, were the theater practitioners who gratuitously struck the gong to enhance climaxes or cover stage noises, rendering it an all-purpose sound technology. Puccini’s Turandot consummated the tam-tam as audiovisual prop. Its loudness was subsequently reconciled with musical aesthetics in twentieth-century music, both popular and avant-garde.Less

La bohème reimagined

Alexandra Wilson

in Puccini's La Bohème

This chapter examines the various ways in which directors have staged La bohème, and analyses what such productions have to tell us about perceptions of the opera in various historical periods and in ... More

This chapter examines the various ways in which directors have staged La bohème, and analyses what such productions have to tell us about perceptions of the opera in various historical periods and in various different cultures. It considers the politics of operatic updating and Regietheater, and the economic factors that sometimes condition conservative approaches to staging. The chapter analyses some extremely successful, long-running traditional productions as well as wide range of updated productions. It considers the new meanings that might be brought to the opera through productions that shift the action to eras and places drastically different from those stipulated by Puccini and his librettists.Less

“A Plot to Live Around”: La Vie Bohème in Fiction, City Sketches, and Memoir

in Bohemia in America, 1858-1920

This chapter examines the stock Bohemian settings and plots in American literature and art. It explores how novels, dramas, and city sketches recycled and recontextualized Henri Murger's Scenes, ... More

This chapter examines the stock Bohemian settings and plots in American literature and art. It explores how novels, dramas, and city sketches recycled and recontextualized Henri Murger's Scenes, which culminated in the “Trilbymania” of the 1890s and the revival of Murger in Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème, performed for the first time in New York in 1898. All of these narratives imply that living in Bohemia is like living with the utmost intensity and spirit. Moreover, they reveal the different social conflicts that “Bohemia” continued to chart and negotiate: Bohemian plots often deal with overlapping tensions between artists and “Philistines,” propriety and license, wealth and poverty, men and women, art and life, “feminine Bohemianism” and traditional womanhood, and America and Europe. The chapter highlights these conflicts and analyzes canonical texts such as Henry James's The Ambassadors (1903), along with numerous stories, sketches, and popular novels.Less

Work in Spain

Maya Plisetskaya

in I, Maya Plisetskaya

In this chapter, Maya Plisetskaya focuses on her time in Spain, where she worked as head of the National Ballet of Madrid's classical troupe. Prior to the invitation, Maya danced Anna Karenina and ... More

In this chapter, Maya Plisetskaya focuses on her time in Spain, where she worked as head of the National Ballet of Madrid's classical troupe. Prior to the invitation, Maya danced Anna Karenina and Carmen Suite in Spain with the Odessa Theater and then The Seagull, Lady with the Dog, and solo numbers with a splinter group of the Bolshoi Ballet. Her Spanish ballet was successful in Spain and earned her a second invitation. When José Manuel Garrido, deputy minister of culture of Spain, came to Moscow, he asked Maya if she wanted to lead the classical troupe of the National Ballet of Madrid. In Spain, she was attracted by the works of José Granero and danced the opera-ballet Le Villi by Giacomo Puccini.Less

Il Rodolfo Nero, or The Masque of Blackness

George Shirley

in Blackness in Opera

In this chapter, the author reflects on the issue of race in opera and its impact on black singers. He first recounts his European operatic debut in Milan in 1960, singing the role of Rodolfo in ... More

In this chapter, the author reflects on the issue of race in opera and its impact on black singers. He first recounts his European operatic debut in Milan in 1960, singing the role of Rodolfo in Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème, and how his performance prompted numerous references to “il Rodolfo nero”(“The black Rodolfo”) in many Italian newspapers. The author reveals how blackness has figured in his theater performances since he entered the singing profession, including those with the Scottish Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. He notes that black singers of opera remain minorities in the profession numerically and racially; they are rarely, if ever, selected to interpret white roles in operas that focus on life in contemporary white society. He concludes by saying that he will not discourage young black singers from following their dreams of singing the great roles, and that the profession must respect what the artist brings vocally, musically, and dramatically as well as the opera-loving public's voracious appetite for great singing.Less