LELELELE BUGUE BUGUEBUGUEBUGUE 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.