2024-08-03 12:41:23
Puccini across the Atlantic? Cowboys and other gold prospectors on an opera stage? The adventure of Virgin of the Sun (“Girl from the Wild West”) looks unique to say the least.
At the beginning of 1907, at the invitation of the director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, previously at the head of La Scala in Milan, the composer received a commission for a new work. Seven years later Madame Butterfly, it was also the playwright David Belasco who gave the argument of the libretto attributed to the duo Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini. No more appearing to the geisha, he has time for Minnie, the owner of La Polka trees lost in the fog of the mountains of California. The action takes place in the 1850s, during the gold rush, in a world of simple men and rough feelings.
Western premiers
The American West already had its place in cinema with, in 1903, a first western, Flight of the Great Fast by Edwin Stanton Porter. Puccini brought him to the Met. And what an entry! “The success of the first show was unforgettable: 47 encores for the producer; $16,000 in revenue for one evening; The Met, covered with American and Italian flags, taken by a crowd of curious people, and thousands of people who had to return home in sorrow, for lack of space” (1).
If the fame of the composer explains this incredible passion, the stars on the bill confirm it: Arturo Toscanini, friend and faithful defender of Puccini, in the baton, soprano Emmy Destinn in the title role, baritone Pasquale Amato as the sheriff and tenor Enrico Caruso to catch the bandits and still the hero Ramerrez, alias Dick Johnson.
Guns and card games
All the images of the Great West are invited on the set: guns and card games, fights and nostalgia for the country he left behind to make a fortune, whiskey at the counter, wide open spaces. , tall as well as an enemy… and a woman. of character who knows how to make himself the love and respect of the men around him.
The writer Alessandro Baricco knows them “great success” by Puccini: «the exact understanding of the real world and the imagination, of the west, which the cinema will show later is the best company of dreams for a modern audience.» (2). However, modernity attracts the musician, the lover of cars and any machine that is worth the speed.
Such a subject deserves to be written in accordance with it at the beginning of the 20th century, which marked a cultural turning point to which Puccini could not ignore. “The composition of The girl is contemporary as well Gaspard of the night of Ravel, of the Ninth Symphony of Mahler, of Petrouchka to StravinskyReverend musicologist Chantal Cazaux.For those who want to check the score, it is a festival of complex approaches, polyrhythms, different modes, atonality of ha, rare timbres (3)… »
“Argument, Argument”
As for the true American color, it emerged from the orchestral show with its short fanfare with the sound of ragtime and sounds not yet called jazz. From behind the scenes, we hear a Banjo… Most in demand, the male singers from which emerge powerful supporting roles have launched traditional barriers “Argument, Argument” or sing an Indian melody taken from a collection of popular songs.
Puccini gives these “folkloric” accents a sweet flavor of triumph and sorrow, of great desires and fear of failure. Beneath their hunting bravado, these brave men – some come from Cornwall and even Australia! – find friendship and moral comfort in Minnie. The young woman, a perfect betrothed protected by her holiness, even teaches them catechism. In the second act, another touch of “local color”, when the squaw Wowkle attacks her son while she is crying a cold and sweet vegetable that is said to be the fruit of the ethnographic collection.
Exile was experienced
In his American opera, Puccini recalled that a kind of exile befell his family. In 1889, his brother Michele left Italy for Argentina where he died two years later, in poverty. Did the founder’s glory then take on the scent of revenge, of a Europe celebrated in the New World? In the final act, as the gold diggers prepare to hang Ramerrez, Minnie intervenes and saves him by preaching love and forgiveness: “Brothers, there is no sinner in the world for whom redemption has not been opened! »
The girl ends with a “happy ending”, which some find incredibly unconvincing. Without a doubt. But Puccini’s truth is perhaps elsewhere, in musical innovation and the appearance of great scenes.
(1) Opéra Avant-ScèneNo. 165.
(2) The mind of Hegel and the cows of WisconsinAlbin Michel, 1998.
(3) Puccini, instructions for use, Ed. Premiere Lodges, 2017.
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“La Fanciulla del West”, reference version
Carol Neblett, Placido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes – Orchestra of the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden under the direction of Zubin Mehta, 1977 (Deutsche Grammophon).
A perfect and brilliant cast plays this feature full of life and tenderness led by a director who is just as good with voices and sound balance.
But also, allowed in 1954 in Florence, testimony to the incomparable picture of the director Dimitri Mitropoulos for a magnetic “cast”: Eleanor Steber and Mario del Monaco (Arkadia).
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