2024-04-20 12:24:03
210 million euros. That was – based on today’s purchasing power – the fortune of Giacomo Puccini at the time of his death on November 29, 1924 in a Brussels hospital after failed radiation therapy for his throat cancer. Tylor Swift or Lady Gaga may hardly be able to get out of bed for the money, but 100 years ago the Italian was the richest musician of his time.
And he had achieved this with only three operas that were performed worldwide, but also reproduced as sheet music in the original or in adaptations, also recorded for the gramophone and even brought to the camera in the silent film era: “La Bohème” (1896), which describes the lives of poor artists in the Latin Quarter of Paris; “Tosca” (1900) about a jealous opera diva, at the end of which all the protagonists are dead; “Madama Butterfly” (1904), now reviled as cultural appropriation, back then surfing the wave of exoticism success, about an underage Japanese woman who believes that a fake wedding binds her and her child to a heartless American naval officer.
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The two early works “Le Villi” (1894) and “Edgar” (1889) were already forgotten at the time; his breakthrough piece, “Manon Lescaut” (1893), only slowly became a repertoire work about 50 years ago. The actually very modern titles “La fanciulla del West” (1910) designed for the New York Metropolitan Opera as an anticipation of the Western in the cinema and the experimental “Il tratico” (1918) as a collection of three very different one-act plays were too new and not popular Enough, both titles have actually only been seen regularly for around 30 years.
“La rondine”, originally commissioned for Vienna in 1917 and then premiered in Monte Carlo, is still considered a failed operetta with a thin performance history. And “Turandot”, which immediately opens up the triumphal triad, another Far Eastern opera (nightmare) from fairytale China, was only premiered posthumously in 1926 with a conclusion by someone else.
Three operas, as melodious as they are tearful – 210 million euros. Even Puccini’s greatest competitor, Richard Strauss, who is much more productive in opera and with orchestral works and songs, would have been jealous. The Bavarian was at least as enterprising as the Italian. But Puccini had an even more enterprising publisher: Giulio Ricordi. Both men wanted one thing above all else with music – to make money. They succeeded.
Act of exemplary entrepreneurship
The concentrated exhibition “Opera Meets New Media”, which was designed by Bertelsmann for a tour that will probably run until 2026 and is now being shown at its Berlin headquarters Unter den Linden as the first stop, was also successful, although it is overwhelming in its virtual abundance. To a certain extent, the topic was obligatory: After all, the media giant also wants to increase the wealth of the founding family as well as the shareholders. Sometimes also with music.
The traditional Casa Ricordi was sold in 1956 and belonged to Bertelsmann between 1994 and 2006. But while the publishing rights are now owned by Universal, the Bertelsmanns still own the historical archive located in the Brera Palace in Milan, which, as an Italian cultural heritage of the highest importance, is not allowed to leave the country.
In an act of exemplary entrepreneurship, this 200-year-old music collection, one of the most important in the world, with more than 5,000 original scores and 15,000 letters, was digitally prepared and has been presented to the public thematically ever since. This is where the memory of Italian opera lies. And what Giuseppe Verdi meant to Giulio Ricordi’s father Tito, Puccini became – after a laborious and expensive beginning – to his successor: a close friend, but also a source of money that was optimized together.
Jonas Kaufmann sings Puccini
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Puccini was a man of his time, interested in fast cars and technical toys. And he is keen to see his intellectual products not only reserved for the opera audience, but also to bring them to the people as buying customers as piano reductions, arrangements, aria records, postcards and other advertising materials.
He cared just as carefully about his librettists, the motives for his music, the dramatic effectiveness (not only “Butterfly” only really became a success when it was revised), as he also monitored the balance sheets and royalties, and took care of exploitation rights and their protection ( quite inadequately in the USA at the time) took care and litigated when, for example, his hits were illegally played in cinemas to accompany silent films.
And so not only were twenty opera adaptations of his works legally brought to the cinemas during his lifetime, including “Tosca” eight times, which in turn was cleverly calculated based on a stage order by Victorien Sardous for the theater diva Sarah Bernhardt. There was merchandise designed by famous graphic artists such as Adolfo Hohenstein, often in a pointed Art Nouveau look (called “Liberty” in Italy), based on the original templates of the stage equipment prescribed by the publisher, as is the case with musical blockbusters today – calendars, ribbons, candies, even entire porcelain collection sets. Theater characters became brands and were given branding.
A room of “Opera Meets New Media”
Source: Bertelsmann
It was clear to everyone that Giacomo Puccini’s operatic work was a perfect example of the work of art in the age of its beginning technical reproducibility. And it was exploited as such. And it is still the case today, even though the author’s rights expired 70 years after Puccini’s death: “Tosca” perfume and “Nessun’ dorma” as a tenor-sweaty football stadium hit with a high B-climax, “La Bohème” as “Moulin Rouge” -Mutation from movies to musicals.
Some time ago, the Puccini opera logos even returned to the Scala in Milan as the coat decoration of a glamorous Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda show. It’s a shame that none of this can be seen in the clever and compact show. At the beginning she plays with a 3D head of Puccini, which looks at us in a very direct and thoughtful way. AI has transformed “Turandot” scenes into supposedly real vedutas from ancient China: there is smoke in the temples, the leaves are falling, the birds are fluttering and the paper lanterns are swinging in the wind. Puccini – the last opera emperor.
And in the final room you can see how Franco Alfano invented a “Turandot” ending from the very last 23 sheets of sketches from the dying maestro, some of which look like modern art in their cross-hatched ring of ideas, which are now stored in a red leather folder with a silk bow. Because the opera show had to go on. And not as a torso. The first complete opera broadcast on the new radio was a “Turandot” from the Berlin State Opera, also the first complete opera recording in 1938 on 16 shellac records.
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Giulio Ricordi had already died in 1912, but his son Tito (who only managed the house for seven years) knew how to do it. He sent “Madama Butterfly” on a six-month tour of the USA and organized successful trips for Giacomo Puccini to Buenos Aires and New York.
And its successors also fueled the “Turandot” hype. The dead creator himself was portrayed as its figurehead in all media. With his mustache, white suit and straw hat in a fast car, he is also an icon. Til today. While the saleswomen continue to cry about the fate of the little woman Butterfly.
Opera Meets New Media – Puccini, Ricordi and the rise of the modern entertainment industry; Unter den Linden 1, until May 16, 2024
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