A Singer’s Guide to the Great Composers: Puccini
Today, I thought I would look at the music of Giacomo Puccini (1858- 1924). His music for tenor and soprano is among the wonders of musical history, and his gift for melody and flair for drama are almost unrivalled. He didn’t write a lot for the bass voice, though.
He was born in Lucca in 1858, the sixth of nine children. His four forefathers had been musicians in Lucca, having all studied in Bologna; all had been Maestri di Capella in the Cathedral of St Martin in Lucca, and he was named after each of them, plus a bit extra. He was christened Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini, and so it was not unexpected that the young Giacomo became a musician, although his fame took him far from the local cathedral. He studied at the Milan Conservatoire, and shared a room in Milan with Pietro Mascagni, another titan of the Verismo style, of which more later. As his thesis composition for the Conservatoire, he wrote a Capriccio Sinfonico, which was performed in Milan in 1883, and caused quite a stir. His first two attempts at opera were unsuccessful, and it was largely due to the support of the music publisher, Giulio Ricordi, that he was allowed to produce his first great success, ‘Manon Lescaut’, which premiered at Teatro Regio, Turin on February 2nd 1893, just a week before Verdi’s last masterpiece “Falstaff” opened at La Scala, Milan.
Coincidentally, ‘Manon Lescaut’ was the first Puccini opera I ever sang in, when in 1982 I sang the Sergeant of Archers with Scottish Opera at the Edinburgh International Festival. Based on the 1731 novel of the same name by the Abbé Prévost, it tells the story of a young girl destined for a convent, but whose beauty captivates almost everyone who comes into contact with her. She is being taken to the convent in a public coach by her brother, whose views on morality are dubious to say the least, and at a coach refreshment stop in Amiens, the rich Geronte di Ravoir, an elderly roué, devises a plot to kidnap the young girl. The young Chevalier des Grieux, a student nobleman, is totally captivated by Manon, whom he speaks to outside the inn where refreshments are taken, and cards are being played. She tells him her name, and he sings the wonderful aria ‘Donna non vidi mai’ (I have never seen so beautiful a woman) after she has gone into the inn. Des Grieux, learning of Geronte’s plot, decides to elope with her himself, and the old roué is left fuming at his bad luck. Lescaut, the brother (whose first name we never discover), calms Geronte down by telling him that Des Grieux has no money, and that Manon will soon tire of his poverty.
In Act 2, we discover that Lescaut was correct, and now Manon is living openly as Geronte’s mistress in Paris, surrounded by luxury and wealth. She seems to enjoy the trappings of high society with Geronte and he seems enormously delighted to have such a young and beautiful consort. However, as she explains to her brother, she is bored and finds Geronte unattractive, and still pines for Des Grieux. After a pleasant scene of singing and dancing in Geronte’s salon, the old man leaves with the musicians, allowing Lescaut to smuggle Des Grieux in and the two young lovers declare their love for each other. They are interrupted by Geronte, who reminds Manon of all he has given her, and he storms off to find soldiers to arrest them both. Despite Des Grieux’ frantic efforts to get Manon out, she insists on taking many of her jewels with them, and this delay results in her arrest.
A deeply sad orchestral intermezzo takes us to the port of Le Havre, where Manon has been condemned to deportation to Louisiana. Lescaut and Des Grieux attempt to rescue her, but in vain, and the roll call of the banished courtesans takes place in a wonderful ensemble. The Sergeant of Archers (me in 1982) calls out the names, and the chorus of the local populace comments rudely on their supposed crimes while Des Grieux laments (with lots of high notes) on one side. Unable to restrain himself, he launches forth in a glorious aria, declaring his love for Manon, and the Captain of the ship bound for America consents to take him on board as well.
The final act sees the couple alone in the Louisiana desert (geographically crazy, but dramatically perfect). A murder has been committed in New Orleans and the two lovers have to flee, hopefully to a British colony, but, in a long and fabulous duet scene, Manon eventually succumbs to dehydration, and Des Grieux is left weeping over her corpse.
The story is par for the course for most Puccini operas, as he seemed to respond wonderfully well to seriously tragic tales but there is enough light and shade in the score to make ‘Manon Lescaut’ a fabulous opera to sing in and to watch. I have been lucky enough to appear several times in different productions over the years as Geronte (the old roué – titter ye not!), and I have been fortunate indeed to have some fabulous colleagues and conductors (Sir Alec Gibson firstly, then Armin Jordan and Richard Farnes). The role of Des Grieux is notoriously high and difficult, but, with the right tenor, it can be a most thrilling evening. My first Des Grieux, Peter Lindroos, was I think the best, as he gave everything to the part, and could really sing it! Manon herself is a tricky part, as she has to be glamorous but irritating as well. No “Fat Ladies” in this opera! Mine have been Nelly Miricioiu, Nuccia Focile and Natalia Dercho, wonderful all.
I see Geronte as a man of wealth, who expects good things to happen to him by right. He gets into a tizz after Des Grieux and Manon elope before he can kidnap her himself, but is a very generous benefactor in Paris, who simply cannot understand why Manon would want to run off with the penniless Des Grieux. His wrath at the end of Act 2 is understandable. One of our Opera North reviewers wanted me to be more sinister as Geronte, but surely the point is that he is not sinister at all, other than being a man of substance who thinks he can buy everything, including love. His plans are thwarted, but we can imagine him moving on to the next ingénue. Hardly heroic, but real.
This brings me neatly to ‘Verismo’, the movement which swept opera, particularly Italian opera, at the end of the 19th Century. Verismo means, roughly, Realism, and started originally in literature, as authors sought to portray ordinary life, especially the lives of the poor. The first recognised Verismo opera was based on a play by the Italian writer, Giovanni Verga, ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’, set to music by Puccini’s old roommate, Pietro Mascagni, and premiered in 1890. The verismo composers wanted their characters to be recognisable as human beings, with love lives, rivalries and petty jealousies. Some, like ‘Andrea Chenier’ (Giordano), related stories based on historical characters while others dealt with the problems of working people.
Perhaps the most perfect example of Verismo is ‘La Bohème’, which Puccini wrote between 1893 and 1895, to a libretto by Illica and Giacosa, itself based on a novel by the French writer, Henri Murger, ‘Scènes de la Vie de Bohème’. It tells the tale of a poor seamstress and her artist friends, and her sad demise from TB. The opera was premiered in the Teatro Regio, Turin (the same venue as Manon Lescaut) in February 1896, conducted by the young Arturo Toscanini, and was not instantly a hit. Very soon though, it was playing throughout the world, and was recognised as a masterpiece, with some of the most beautiful music ever written for the voice. It was the first opera I ever heard on record, when still at school, in an old recording with Beniamino Gigli, and I loved it. I appeared in it only once, with Scottish Opera in the early 80s, as Colline, the student philosopher, and I remember we had enormous fun rehearsing it. We were all young singers, and mostly company artists – there was Marie Slorach as Mimi, Maria Moll as Musetta, with Alan Watt as Marcello, Alan Oke as Schaunard and me as Colline. The only import was the Spanish/Italian tenor Jose Todaro, who was not Pavarotti but decent, and looked the part. Bizarrely, SO had engaged the English Strauss specialist Norman Del Mar to conduct, who was by this time rather elderly and hardly sparkling. However, it was a great show, with the old stager Norman White as Alcindoro and Benoit. Norman’s major problem was corpsing on stage (collapsing into fits of giggling), and we found ways every night to get him helpless with laughter. Soon, he was corpsing at the idea of being corpsed! It had originally been a Peter Ebert production, but was restaged by former singer John Lawson-Graham, assisted by a very young Richard Jones. Puccini works his magic with the story. It’s high comedy then super-romantic in the first act, brilliant fun in the second act, sad and gloomy in the third act and finally, deeply melodramatic and tragic in the final act. Colline gets to sing an aria to his old coat (the nearest the bass gets to a love scene!), and the final death scene is very touching. If you can’t cry at the end of Boheme, either you are weird, or the production has failed.
My next acquaintance with Puccini was in ‘Tosca’ at the Paris Opera in the Bastille. I was able to share a stage with the great Placido Domingo singing Cavaradossi and Carol Vaness as Tosca, but here we can perhaps look a little at the strange affinity that the composer appears to have had with the cruel and vicious. ‘Tosca’, ‘Madama Butterfly’ and ‘Turandot’ all have stories which mix tragedy with cruelty and have characters who are either horrible and cruel or fatally unlucky or feeble. The music is wonderful, but the plots are often horrific. The famous aria “Nessun dorma” from Turandot, although fabulous vocally, basically says that Calaf doesn’t care if all the citizens are slaughtered in Turandot’s quest to determine his name, as long as he lives until the dawn when he can marry the Queen. It’s not exactly romantic hero time! Tosca and Cavaradossi are strong characters, but happy endings are in short supply. Poor Butterfly commits suicide when she discovers Pinkerton’s betrayal. Scarpia tortures Cavaradossi in front of Tosca, to get her into bed, and even in death, gets his revenge by having the tenor shot when she expects him to have been pardoned. ‘Il Tabarro’ is another grim story, as is ‘Suor Angelica’, and even the comic opera, ‘Gianni Schicchi’ is about a trickster who tricks an even more disreputable family out of their dodgy inheritance.
I have been lucky enough to appear in two fabulous productions of ‘Schicchi’, as the patriarch of the family, Simone, once at Opera North and once at Covent Garden, and as Il Talpa in ‘Il Tabarro’ at Lyon Opera. None of these roles are major, but at least I had fun in the Opera North ‘Schicchi’, as I spent the whole production in a wheelchair, whizzing about a steeply raked stage. The brakes were good! The only decent role that Puccini gives to a bass (apart from Geronte in ‘Manon Lescaut’) is Timur in ‘Turandot’, which I have not yet sung. The good news is that he is an extremely old blind man, and would be excellent casting for me, except the blind bit, obviously! We live in hope! Puccini died before completing ‘Turandot’, so perhaps Timur would have had a revenge aria. We’ll never know, but it seems unlikely!
Puccini also offers an unusual choice of plot timescale in his operas. ‘Tosca’ and ‘Turandot’ both take place in an almost continuous thread, as each act follows on the from the other in a recognisable chronology over the period of a day and night. ‘Manon Lescaut’ moves from act to act over a considerable period of time, as does ‘Madam Butterfly’ and a lot of time passes between acts 2 and 3 in his strange “Wild West” opera, ‘La Fanciulla del West’. One of the most difficult leaps of time occurs between acts 2 and 3 of ‘La Bohème’ where we move from the hilarity of the Café Momus to the grim outskirts of Paris three months later, during which time much has happened in the lives of the young protagonists. The main thing to remember in Puccini’s operas is that each act moves quickly. Nothing is wasted and there is minimal recapitulation, compared to, for example, Wagner. The whole of ‘La Bohème’ lasts as long as some of Wagner’s acts! Chacun à son goût!
Another interesting feature of Puccini’s writing differs as much as possible from my last subject, Berlioz. Whereas the French composer was obsessed with the lower female voice, the mezzo-soprano, Puccini wrote almost nothing of interest to the mezzo. Suzuki in ‘Butterfly’ and the Princess and the Abbess in ‘Suor Angelica’ are OK but minor. Other than those roles, there is as little for mezzo as for bass. Naughty Giacomo!
Actually, Giacomo was rather naughty, as his love life was complicated to say the least. However many other writers have gone on at great length about his private life, and you are welcome to read more elsewhere!
Recordings are notoriously subjective things, but I love Pavarotti singing Puccini, certainly on record, and I like Mirella Freni very much in this repertoire. Other readers will have their own favourites. Whatever you think about his plots, Puccini was a master of vocal style and some of his arias, particularly for soprano and tenor are truly sublime.
