195
See also: Orfeo ed Euridice 118 –119 ■ The Barber of Seville 14 8 ■
Der Freischütz 149 ■ La traviata 174 ■ The Wreckers 232–239 ■
Peter Grimes 288–293Carmen talks to the smuggler
Le Dancaïre in a scene from Carmen
by Georges Bizet. The opera, with
its themes of passion, jealousy, and
violence, was an influence on verismo.Giselle (1841). It was followed five
years later by Edgar (1889), an opera
set in a 14th-century world of
medieval knights. Although not
the strictest follower of verismo,
Puccini, once the new style became
established, took its passionate,
heartrending, and cruel elements
and clothed them in daring music
that reached a breathtaking climax
in the tragic opera Tosca.Embracing the realistic
Puccini’s first response to verismo
was the opera Manon Lescaut
(1893), based on an 18th-century
French novel by the Abbé Prévost.
This had already been turned into
several operas, notably Manon
(1884) by the opera specialist, Jules
Massenet. He was one of a number
of French composers whose operas
had been gaining ground in Italian
theatres. These included Faust (1859)
by Charles Gounod and Carmen
(1875), the final masterpiece of
Georges Bizet, which shocked
critics of the time with its earthy
realism and amoral heroine.Giacomo Puccini
Born into a family of church
musicians in Lucca in 1858,
Puccini claimed to have
decided on an operatic career
after watching a performance
of Verdi’s Aida in Pisa in 1876.
After studying at the Milan
Conservatory, he entered his
one-act opera-ballet Le Villi in
a competition. Although it was
rejected for being illegible, it
was staged by the publisher
Giulio Ricordi.
Puccini’s breakthrough
came in 1893 with Manon
Lescaut, which put him at the
forefront of Italian composers.
Thereafter, he produced his
three greatest successes—La
Bohème, Tosca, and Madama
Butterfly. His productivity
slowed in later years, but the
operas La fanciulla del West
(1910), La rondine (1917), Il
trittico (1918), and the
posthumously produced
Turandot displayed increasing
refinement. He died of a heart
attack in Brussels in 1924
following an operation for
throat cancer.Other key works1896 La Bohème
1904 Madama Butterfly
1918 Il tritticoAlthough Manon Lescaut was not
truly a “realist” work, it contained
two scenes in particular that sat
squarely in the new style. In Act III,
the poignant spectacle of the
embarkation of the prostitutes
condemned to transportation and,
in Act IV, the heroine’s lengthy
death scene in an American desert
both provided a focus for some of
the most emotionally powerful
writing in the score, delivered in
a style that epitomized the essence
of musical verismo.
Puccini’s next opera, La Bohème
(1896), set among down-at-the-heels
artists and their girlfriends in
Paris around 1830, was closer to
the true subject matter of verismo.
It also crystallized the intense
sentiment, characterization, and
craftsmanship of the musical
language of verismo that was ❯❯ROMANTIC 1810 –1920
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