A Marvelous Job in Music & Vision 29 dicembre 2010

A Marvelous Job
Puccini's 'La Fanciulla del West',
heard by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

In the huge Metropolitan Opera House in the West 34th Street of New York, on 10 December 1910, a major world première was scheduled. The House was packed; critics had come, by transatlantic liners, from all over the USA and Europe (including some from very distant Australia). Arturo Toscanini was in the pit; Enrico Caruso, Emmy Destinn and Pasquale Amato sang the leads. Giacomo Puccini, alone in his box, surveyed the scene. That is, until the end of Act I, when the composer and cast appeared on stage for fourteen curtain calls. Similar pandemonium broke out at the end of the other two acts. The opera had been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera House from one of the most famous composers of the time. In turn, Puccini (and the authors of the libretto, Guelfo Civinni and Carlo Zangarini) had molded it to the great vocal capabilities of the three protagonists as well of the fifteen singers in minor roles and of the 'Met' orchestra. The opera itself was based on an American play very successful on Broadway: David Belasco's The Girl from the Golden West.
The première was much awaited. Very few expected such an innovative opera. Not solely for the plot -- love and blood in the Californian mountains at the (then not do distant) times of the 'Gold Rush' -- but for the music score. Puccini maintained his beloved pentatonic scale, but there are no 'arias' or music numbers as such, only two ariosi -- one specifically requested by Caruso -- and a grand concertato (Andante Sostenuto) in Act III when the protagonist, Minnie, addresses the miners to convince them to free her beloved Dick. It anticipated, in a way, the 'chit-chat' operas of Strauss and Janáceck -- it is hard to know if and when the Moravian composer had listened to Puccini operas; they appear to have influenced his last years, eg from Kátia Kabanová on. The orchestral score was extremely complex as it involved about seventy different leitmotifs intertwined and overlapping (with one another) in a manner, however, different from Wagner and similar to Debussy and to Janácek, even though, to the best of my knowledge, whilst Puccini knew Pelléas, he and the Moravian composers never met and hardly knew anything of one another's attempts to change musical theatre. Hence, in 1910, the opera was seen as very modern, nearly experimental: it even includes, in Act II, a re-elaboration of the Tristan chord in E flat minor, not very different from that attempted, in 1899, by Arnold Schoenberg in Verlärkte Nacht. In spite of its innovative nature, the opera become quite soon a major hit and circulated among all the major opera houses of the world. Now, even if it is not one of Puccini's six most staged operas, it is quite often performed.
The Teatro Massimo di Palermo -- one of the rare Italian opera houses balancing its books every year with a small surplus -- has organized a true celebration for the centenary: a two-day international symposium of musicologists (in collaboration with the International Research Center on Puccini in Lucca) and a new production of La Fanciulla del West (the official Italian title of the opera) shared with the San Francisco Opera and the Opéra National de Wallonie in Liège. Recently, a new production was seen at the Puccini Opera Festival in Torre del Lago (see 'Eyes Tight Shut', M&V, 22 July 2010). The Metropolitan Opera House is updating the 15-20 year-old production directed by Giancarlo del Monaco. A brand new production will soon be staged at the Lyric Theatre in Chicago.
For many commentators Fanciulla is pure Italian kitsch -- eg like Spaghetti Western movies, very successful, though, also in the United States. Puccini never visited California and hardly knew anything about the State's colors, environment, population. In my views, for him the West Coast was not only a faraway myth but a very distant place where people, from several lands, had gone both to search gold 'for a better future' and to leave behind, and escape from, difficult personal life-stories. We know about Dick's past. We do have a glimpse about Jack's past and also about those of Sonora, Nick, Trin. Sidd, Bello, Harry, Joe, Happy and some of the other miners. Their memories and recollections are always colored by melancholic shade as well as by the doubts that their hard past was better than the lonely present and even their future prospects. However, we know nothing about Minnie's past and of why and how she ended up there as a virgin Western Brünnhilde.
The staging is more expressionistic than realistic (even though Minnie rides a horse in her Act III arrival when Dick is about to be executed). Set designer Maurizio Balò, conceived a California in red brown rocks as walls. Red brown rocks are the staple in Arizona, not rare in Utah, and few and far between in California; the idea comes from the first sequence of Nicholas Ray's 1954 blockbuster Johnny Guitar. As a matter of fact, there is the flavor of several American and Italian Western movies in the staging by the Italian and American stage director Lorenzo Mariani: the idea of the 'man on the run' is a John Ford special; Minnie's grand Victorian Act II dress to tease Dick recalls the beginning of the second part of Gone With The Wind -- costumes are credited to American designer Gabriele Berry; the mass movements appear to be inspired by Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Finally, when in the last few minutes of the opera the red brown rock wall turns gold, and splits apart revealing a painted drop -- maybe the Sierras -- my memory goes to George Stevens' Shane and to William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion. In my opinion, these quotations are well molded to show California, during the gold rush, not as it was but as imagined by Puccini and others.
In Fanciulla, though, the really hard part is conducting and singing a very complex score. Bruno Bartoletti -- eighty-five years old and about to retire from operatic conducting -- did a marvelous job in showing how modern Fanciulla was in 1910 and still is in 2010. On 10 December -- the date of the performance on which this review is based -- he had a slight difficulty in the very physically tiring conducting of the initial sequence of Act I -- until Minnie's arrival with her rifle -- but from there on, he provided an excellent performance in molding the very many motives (as well some ethnic music: Jake Wallace's song; Wowkley's lullaby) into a single coherent unity. The orchestra of the Teatro Massimo was in great shape. Together, they found the right 'tints' for the score, a real jewel of colors, timbres and unusual sound combinations.
Minnie was a young, attractive and athletic American soprano, Meagan Miller with the physique du rôle. Hers is a very taxing part, often entrusted to Wagnerian singers (the late Birgit Nilsson, Deborah Voigt and Eva-Maria Westbroek) and to soprano assoluto (the late Renata Scotto, Carol Neblett, Magda Oliviero, Giovanna Casolla). She did a first class job of both acting and singing. She emphasized the high register, with high Cs and B naturals, at the expense, however, of the central register and of phrasing. Dick was Salvatore Licitra, an 'idol' of the 'Met', a generous tenor with a big volume and a good legato; he may gain from more discipline and sophistication in emission. Roberto Frontali is a highly experienced Jack, both as singer and actor. The minor parts are a polyphonic mass where Simone Piazzola (as Sonora) stood out.
Copyright © 29 December 2010 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

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