LA VOIX HUMAINE - Seattle Opera

Puccini Seeks
New Adventures
After the success of La bohème, Puccini was
on top of the world. But by the time he wrote
Madama Butterfly, eight years later, the musical
intelligentsia, particularly hungry for novelty
in those watershed days of “modern” music,
were accusing him of resting on his laurels and
repeating past successes. (It’s true that Butterfly
first steps onstage to a slowed-down version of
Musetta’s Waltz!) So following Butterfly, Puccini
was indeed on the lookout for projects that
would stretch him in new directions.
In 1907, he was invited to New York to supervise
performances of his operas at the Metropolitan
Opera. Puccini ended up writing an opera for
the Metropolitan: La fanciulla del West, a very
American story about a plucky, can-do barmaid
in a California mining town. During World War I,
Puccini tried his hand at writing a Viennese-style
operetta, La rondine, which premiered in Monte
Carlo. And as the war ended, he put together Il
trittico, a series of three one-act operas which
also premiered at the Metropolitan. Together they
form an almost Dantesque progression through
hell, purgatory, and paradise; but because they
make vast demands on an opera company, it’s
rare nowadays to see all three on the same
evening. Il tabarro is a gritty story of jealousy
and murder among low-lifes, set on a barge on
the Seine; Suor Angelica, one of the few operas
to feature an all-female cast, contains some
of Puccini’s most breathtaking, and certainly
his most mystical, music; and Gianni Schicchi,
his only comedy, rounds out this magnificent
triptych with laughter and love.
Puccini and His
Suffering Women
In Act III of Manon Lescaut, Puccini’s first operatic
triumph, a parade of “undesirable women” (i.e.,
prostitutes) are brought onstage one by one,
publically humiliated by having their hair cut
off, and then forced to board a ship headed for
the new world—deported for their sins. In a way,
this scene foreshadowed what Puccini was to do
for the rest of his career. In opera after opera,
he makes his audience cry by showing them the
pathetic suffering of a beautiful woman whose
only crime is love. In La bohème, Mimì dies of
Top: In Madama Butterfly, Cio-Cio-San kills herself when Kate Pinkerton asks her to give up her child. Bottom:
In Turandot, Liù kills herself so Turandot will give Calaf her love.
tuberculosis, a disease associated with sinful
lifestyles in the nineteenth-century imagination.
Puccini heroines who kill themselves after
psychological torture—and losing whomever they
most love— include Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Suor
Angelica, and Liù. Puccini was well aware of the
sadistic streak to his creativity, and even made his
peace with it. As he died of throat cancer, Puccini
joked that the seven radium crystals inserted into
his neck were the revenge of the seven sopranos
who die in his operas.
But it’s an oversimplification to think that all
Puccini heroines are pathetic victims who endure
heartless cruelty and then kill themselves. There’s
another kind of woman in Puccini’s operas, an
assertive, powerful goddess who knows what
she wants and goes after it. She may be sympathetic,
like Musetta in La bohème or Minnie in
La fanciulla del West, or not, like the Princess in
Suor Angelica; but she always stands tall among
all the strong women you’re likely to encounter
on the opera stage. Turandot, Puccini’s final
masterpiece, features both archetypes in its
fearsome princess and suicidal slave girl.
These two characters are eerily reminiscent of
two real women in Puccini’s life. An avid sports
car enthusiast, Puccini was in a car accident in
1903. He hired a live-in nurse to help him regain
Seattle Opera, 2012, (Elise Bakketun photo)
Turandot, Pittsburgh Opera, 2011 (David Bachman photo)
32 2012/13 Season at Seattle Opera