GIACOMO PUCCINI

Puccini emerged into the twentieth century music world as the "King of Verismo," not through the conducting background of Mascagni or through the skilled compositional ability of Giordano, but as a master of theater. Puccini wrote solely for the operatic stage and he understood the dramatic intensity and melodic poignancy of real life subject matter. Critics have sometimes dismissed his work as overly impassioned, melodramatic, and sentimental. The composer himself proclaimed, "The only music I can make is that of small things," although he admired the grander stylistic abilities of Verdi and Wagner. Despite that admiration, Puccini chose to concentrate on life's familiar bittersweet passions and intense emotional storms.

In January 1909 there occurred a great tragedy in the Puccini household the consequences of which affected the composer to such a extent that for some time to come his creative power and desire to work was seriously impaired. Their maid Dora, completely unnerved and made distraught by the persecution of Puccini's wife who suspected her, wrongly, of being the composer's mistress, committed suicide. After his latest opera, Puccini wanted to turn his back on tragédie larmoyante and attempt something of a harder more virile fibre such as he had done in Tosca. This he found in Belasco's wild west melodrama, The girl of the golden west, which plays among the miners in the Californian gold rush round 1849. Its mixture of stark realism and sentimentality appealed to the composer, and since the opera takes place in America it was appropriately first produced at the Metropolitan N.Y in December 1910. Caruso and Destinn sang the leading roles and Toscanini conducted, it was a success with the public but not with the critics. In all technical respects, notably in its Dubussian harmony and Straussian Orchestration, the opera is a masterpiece in which Puccini also made pointed use of American and Native American tunes. But it lacks sufficient lyrical incandescence, which is probably the reason that outside Italy it has never established itself in the regular repertory.