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Salle Eugène Le Roy Réservation : Maison de la Presse Le Bugue 05 53 07 22 83

Giacomo Puccini

LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST

At the time of the Gold Rush, Minnie, the boss of a saloon, falls in love with a stranger, Dick Johnson. She does not know that this is actually the famous bandit Ramerrez wanted by Sheriff Jack Rance. When discovered, Minnie tries everything to save her lover, to play his life during a game of poker.

Accustomed to hero roles, the great tenor Jonas Kaufmann slips into the shoes of a bandit to capture the heart of soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek. Through this Western-style production, La Fanciulla del West strongly portrays the love of freedom.

Conductor Minnie Dick Johnson Marco Eva-Maria Jonas Amiliato Westbroek Kaufmann

soprano tenor

Nick Jack Rance Sonora Carlo Željko Michael Bosi Lučić Todd Simpson tenor baryton Bbryton

Ashby Jake Wallace Matthew Oren Gradus Rose

bass

DATE : Saturday October 27th 2018 Time : 6.25pm Opera in 3 acts by Giacomo Puccini

LA FILLE DU FAR WEST- LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST

World Premiere: Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1910.

Puccini’s “American” opera, based on David Belasco’s play The Girl of the Golden West, had its glamorous and highly publicized world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, with the composer in the audience. The drama is set during the California Gold Rush, and the girl of the title is one of Puccini’s most appealing heroines—a strong, independent woman determined to win the man she loves. Although it fell out of favor with audiences for a few decades following its original success, Fanciulla has rebounded in popularity in recent years and is now counted among Puccini’s best works.

Setting

The opera unfolds in the mountains of California during the Gold Rush in 1849–50. The anachronistic presence of a Pony Express rider and a Wells Fargo agent would indicate a date after 1860, but historical accuracy is not the goal in this tale. Puccini was enchanted with Belasco’s fictional setting, with its combination of mythic and grittily realistic elements.

Music

After securing his international stature, Puccini explored new musical horizons in Fanciulla: there are few arias (the tenor act "Ch'ella mi creda" being a notable exception), and most of the music is based on changes in tone and color. The orchestral sweep, appropriate to the dramatic landscape of the Californian mountains, appears in the first steps of the brief and explosive prelude. As in Tosca and Madama Butterfly, the local musical elements are represented in colors, albeit modestly. The score is marked by a preponderance of male voices, reflecting the isolation of the title heroine in an almost exclusively male world.

A true western opera, "La Fanciulla del West" is probably one of Puccini's best works, but remains relatively unknown. Another paradox for an opera where the orchestra is almost the main character. Full, lush, inventive, colorful, he recalls Debussy as Stravinsky. Abandoning the traditional tunes Puccini is looking for a new language. The opera portrays the difficult life of the pioneers of the Great West and offered the New York public a work as rich in atmospheres as musically sumptuous.

Composer Giacomo Puccini 1858-1924

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Maria Michele Secondo Maria Puccini, was born via di Poggio, in the center of Lucca, in a wealthy but not fortunate family. He is the first boy in a family of seven children, five older sisters and a five-year-old brother, born three months after his father's death. His father Michele Puccini1 is a composer of sacred music, organist and choirmaster at St. Martin's Cathedral in Lucca. His mother Albina Magi2 married Michele in 1848 or 1849. He continues with one or two exceptions the same musical studies as his illustrious ancestors, all church musicians and known by the many compositions Tasches (mini-operas). There are thirty-two works to their credit. After the death of his father in January 1864, he was sent to his maternal uncle Fortunato Magi to study; he introduces him to keyboard and choral singing, but considers him a student with little talent and undisciplined. Fortunato succeeded Michele Puccini as a choirmaster and organist. However, the place having been occupied for several generations by the Puccini, it is specified that Fortunato give way to the young Giacomo when it is old enough to assume this charge. He is ten years old when he enters the choir of the cathedral of Lucca and begins to touch the organ. The inspiration for opera and secular music came only during a performance of Verdi's Aida, which Carlo Angeloni, one of his teachers at the conservatory, introduced to him in Pisa on March 11, 1876. From 1880 to In 1883 he studied at the Milan Conservatory, where he studied with Amilcare Ponchielli and Antonio Bazzini.

In 1882, Puccini participated in a writing competition launched by the Sonzogno music publishing house in 1883, for an opera in one act. Although he did not win the prize with Le Villi, his first opera was represented in 1884 at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan, thanks to Ponchielli and Ferdinando Fontana, and helped to attract the attention of the publisher Verdi Ricordi who commissions a new opera, Edgar. It was at this time that Puccini met Elvira Gemignani (born Bonturi, 1860-1930) who became his wife and gave him a son, Antonio (1886-1946). She is married to another, which does not prevent Puccini from trying his luck. The husband, not very suspicious and often absent, is not wary of the young man who gladly accepts to give piano lessons to the wife when she asks him (Puccini, after the success of the Villi, begins to make an excellent reputation). The two "lovebirds" do not conceal their affair, so that all Lucca is aware of the scandal, except the deceived husband. The climate becoming heavy however, Puccini buys a villa in Torre del Lago (now owned by the granddaughter of the composer), where he will reside most of his life, accompanied by Elvira.

Also, the criticism will be quite ironic when Edgar, his second opera, will be represented (with success), since the plot has much in common with this adventure vaudevillesque.

His third opera, Manon Lescaut, was not only a success, but also the starting point for a fruitful collaboration with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, who worked with him on the following three operas. In 1896 he composed an opera, La Bohème adapted from the scenes of the bohemian life of Henri Murger. It is considered one of the best romantic operas. Although it contains some of the most popular tunes of his repertoire, his harmonic and dramatic audacities, cutting with the sentimentality of Manon Lescaut, did not manage to seduce the audience of the first, on February 1 (despite the irreproachable direction of Arturo Toscanini). The following performances, however, assured the composer a worldwide success (except with critics who preferred the following year the version, however very good, of Leoncavallo today supplanted by that of Puccini), which was not denied.

In 1900, Tosca represents for Puccini the first approach to verism; the work is marked by patriotic fervor, but it tells a love drama without engaging on the ideological ground like the operas of Verdi. The contrast between La Bohème and Tosca is such that Puccini suffers a scathing setback. Fortunately, when Toscanini resumes the work, success is at the rendezvous. The composer's activity slowed down and in 1903 he was injured as a result of a car accident that would make him lame. In 1904, Madame Butterfly (on a play by David Belasco) was greeted by a scathing fiasco at the premiere at La Scala in Milan, although it was remarkably orchestrated and directed by Cleofonte Campanini and directed by Adolfo Hohenstein . In particular, during the scene where birdsong is heard, the audience laughed and heard barking cries of all kinds. That will not prevent him from becoming, three months later, another of his great successes, after a drastic revision. In 1906, one of his librettists, Giacosa, died. In 1909, broke a scandal: her servant commits suicide by poisoning for being accused by Elvira Gemignani, having had a relationship with him. Apparently it is the sister of the maid who had a relationship with Giacomo Puccini. The servant served as mediator, she committed suicide so as not to betray the secret. Similar to Act III of Turandot where Liù commits suicide so as not to reveal the secret. In 1910 he composed La Fanciulla del West, the first opera premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; the work, considered as the first spaghetti western7, is directed by Toscanini; it presents an unparalleled orchestral and harmonic richness in Puccini's work. The immediate success with the public (and, rare, also critics) is not confirmed: the theme of the Wild West, the audacity of his writing and, strangely, his "happy end", baffling the public and critics. It will take all the will of artists like Dimitri Mitropoulos, Plácido Domingo, and musicologists eager to go beyond the clichés, to bring out this remarkable work of oblivion.

It trittico is created in 1918. This triptych is composed of three operas united by the style Grand Guignol Paris: an episode of horror Il Tabarro, a sentimental tragedy Suor Angelica and a farce or comedy Gianni Schicchi. Of the three, Gianni Schicchi becomes the most popular. His last opera Turandot, written in 1924, remains unfinished; the last two scenes will be completed by Franco Alfano. This final is very controversial nowadays because Puccini had dreamed for the final duet of something new and fantastic, comparable to a big Wagnerian scene (we measure, when we hear Nessun dorma or the last tune of Liù Tanto amore, segreto , the extent of the loss caused by the illness of the composer). Alfano, a good composer nevertheless, does not have the genius of his master, so it is understandable that one does not today leads a shortened version of the finale. In 2001, a new final is written by Luciano Berio.

Puccini died in Brussels in 1924, of cardiac consequences due to his cancer of the throat. His funeral is celebrated at the Royal Church of St. Mary of Schaerbeek. His villa is now a museum dedicated to his memory.

Synopsis

ACT I

A miners’ camp in California, 1849–50. At sunset at the Polka Saloon, Nick, the bartender, prepares for the miners’ return from the hills. Jake Wallace, a traveling minstrel, sings a sentimental song that causes Jim Larkens to break down in tears. The men collect money for his passage back home. Trin and Sonora both bribe Nick to help them win the heart of Minnie, the owner of the bar, with whom all the men are in love. Sid cheats at cards, and Jack Rance, the camp’s cynical sheriff, marks him as an outcast. The Wells Fargo agent Ashby arrives with news of the imminent capture of the Mexican bandit Ramerrez and his band. An argument breaks out between Rance and Sonora, each claiming Minnie will be his wife. Things almost get out of hand when Minnie herself appears. The men calm down and sit to listen to Minnie’s bible teaching. Later, alone with her, Rance confesses his love to Minnie (“Minnie, della mia casa”). But she is not interested and, recalling her happy childhood, paints a different picture of her ideal love (“Laggiù nel Soledad”).

A stranger appears in the bar, introducing himself as Dick Johnson from Sacramento. Minnie recognizes him as a man she once met on the road. The jealous Rance orders Johnson to leave town, but when Minnie declares that she knows him, the others welcome Johnson. As he and Minnie dance, the miners drag in a man named Castro, one of Ramerrez’s band. Castro pretends that he will lead them to their hideout. He then whispers to Johnson—who is in fact Ramerrez—that he let himself be captured to lure the miners away from the saloon, in order for Johnson to rob it. The men depart with Castro, and Minnie and Johnson are left alone. She tells him about her simple life and that she is still waiting for her first kiss. When she shows him the hiding place where the miners keep their gold, he replies that as long as he is nearby, nobody will harm her or touch the gold. She shyly invites him to visit her in her cabin later that evening.

ACT II

In Minnie’s cabin in the mountains, the Indian woman Wowkle sings a lullaby to her baby and bickers with the child’s father, Billy Jackrabbit. Minnie arrives and excitedly prepares for her meeting with Johnson. Alone with him, she gives in to his declarations of love and they kiss. Johnson, full of doubt as to how to tell her about his true identity, is about to leave, but she asks him to stay for the night as it has begun to snow. When several shots are heard, Johnson hides in the closet. Rance appears with some of the men and tells Minnie that they are concerned for her safety—they have discovered that Johnson is Ramerrez. Minnie claims to know nothing and the men leave. She then angrily confronts Johnson, who makes excuses about his past and declares that when he met her he decided to give up his former life. Deeply hurt, Minnie sends him away. Another shot rings out. Johnson, wounded, staggers back into the cabin and Minnie hides him in the attic. Rance returns, certain he has found his man, and demands to search the room. Minnie refuses and the sheriff is about to give up when a drop of blood falls on his hand from above. Johnson is forced to surrender, but Minnie has an idea—she challenges Rance to a game of poker. If he defeats her, she will give herself to him; if he loses, Johnson goes free. Minnie cheats and wins. Rance leaves.

ACT III

Johnson has been nursed back to health by Minnie. Again on the run from Rance and his men, he is eventually captured in the forest. As the miners prepare to hang him, Johnson asks for one last mercy—that Minnie believe him free and far away (“Ch’ella mi creda”). Rance is enraged, but the men hesitate. At that moment, Minnie rides in, wielding a pistol. When her pleas to spare Johnson prove fruitless, she reminds then men how much they owe her. The miners finally give in and release Johnson. He and Minnie ride away to start a new life together.

Prochaine diffusion du Metropolitan Opera New York

MARNIE (Inspiré du thriller haletant d’Alfred Hitchkock) Compositeur Nico Muhly

10 Novembre 2018 18h25