GIACOMO PUCCINI
IS ETERNAL, MADAMA BUTTERFLY A PUCCINIAN GEM AND A 2004 MET
PERFORMANCE FASCINATING TO LISTEN!
In the book “Giacomo
Puccini”, author Conrad Wilson's first line of the preface
is: “Puccini, even if we refuse to admit it, is the
composer through whom we learn to love opera.” How right
Wilson is.
 Puccini
was handsome, elegant and a celebrity acclaimed by the whole
world. He had an ardent entente with the opposite
sex. In a remarkable list of mistresses, his predilection
for sopranos is evident. In 1904, he had a brief love affair
in London with the cultured and beautiful Sybil Seligman,
married to a banker, then kept a lifelong friendship and letter
correspondence with her. In 1911, he met the German baroness
Josephine von Stangel at Viareggio and started a passionate
liaison with her, lasting six years. He enjoyed life, pursued
motoring and hunting. He admired Wagner's Parsifal and Verdi's
Aida. Of all his contemporaries, he showed affinity for Mahler,
Lehár and felt that Richard Strauss was his most serious
competitor. Of sopranos, he was impressed by Jeritza
and Darclee, of tenors by Caruso, Gigli and Lauri-Volpi.
He could have been
one of the greatest operatic composers in the world. He had
an unmatched talent for melody, great knack for drama and
ability to orchestrate as well as Wagner or Verdi, from modernistic
and stylistic viewpoints. It is an awful pity that innate
melancholia, pessimism and an insecure marriage to Elvira
afflicted him.
He spent considerable
time revising his own scores and wasted precious time searching
for and rejecting tens of subjects for opera. The end-result
was an ephemeral sequence of only 12 operas in 40 years,
However, half of
the operas he wrote are true, precious gems and in popular
eternal demand. Madama Butterfly, one of the greatest lyrical-tragic
operas of all times and in the composer's own words: The
most felt and suggestive opera I have ever conceived ,
marks a return to psychological drama, intimacy, attentive
description of feelings and le piccole cose . Belasco's
play and its exquisite Japanese hero bowled Puccini over.
He did considerable
research to ensure that the opera's musical idiom was authentic,
studying even the score of The Mikado. In a unique lyrical
style, Puccini perfectly assimilated authentic Japanese melodies,
used the pentatonic scale and various exotic instruments admirably.
The technical level of the opera is very high due to melodic
plasticity, harmony, orchestral colour and measured use of
Leitmotiv as a function of expressive requirements.
The opera premiere
was a colossal fiasco mainly due to a hostile audience. Puccini
revised the opera by cutting the long second act into two
and making other changes. When presented at the Teatro Grande
di Brescia three months later, in May 1904, the revised opera
scored a triumphant success, which launched it to a rapid
conquest of the world major opera theatres.
In the opera, Pinkerton,
the handsome philandering American navy officer, is to be
damned on moral principles but is very original in terms of
role characterisation. He drinks whisky and toasts with Sharpless,
the American consul, to the forthcoming nuovissimi legami
. He plays up with Cio-Cio-San known as Butterfly, a
vulnerable hero, insensibly. Pinkerton means no good, vehemently
and irresponsibly in pursuit of a futile marriage to satisfy
his erotic impulses in contrast with Cio-Cio-San's wishful
sentiments and frailty of a geisha in love.
In the love scene
of act I, the spouses express contrasting feelings but seal
them with a long kiss under a starry sky of a night serena,
dove dorme ogni cosa. The love scene has an
ebb and flow of ardour and sentiment, is the most perfectly
structured, atmospheric, melodious and longest of all Puccini's
love scenes. In the second act, Pinkerton's conspicuous absence
throws Butterfly down an empty spiral of pain and despair.
In the arioso "Addio fiorito asil" of the third
act, Pinkerton is late and excruciatingly remorseful for having
negated Butterfly's faithfulness and love. They stand for
a Puccini's artistic invention without precedent.
Madama
Butterfly act I – The bridal party encounter with Pinkerton
and Sharpless
The
admirable soprano lirico-drammatico Veronica Villarroel sings
Cio-Cio-San
Audio
Files
The
love scene duet part 1 sung by Cio-Cio-San (soprano Veronica
Villarroel) and Pinkerton (tenor Marco Berti) – Madama
Butterfly act I
The
love scene duet part 2 sung by Cio-Cio-San (soprano Veronica
Villarroel) and Pinkerton (tenor Marco Berti) – Madama
Butterfly act I
Both files were
extracted from a January 2004 performance of Madama Butterfly
at the Met, radio broadcast under the auspices of The Chevron
Texaco and Metropolitan Opera. The Companies present an opera
performance on the air each Saturday, from December to April,
to millions of people around the globe.
Legal
Disclaimer
(j.f.)
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