Michele doesn't kill Giorgetta does he? Kills her lover, Luigi, of course, and throws her onto his body.

Minnie, in La Fanciulla del West, is a strong female who wins her man - twice - and I like this opera but it's rarely performed. Perhaps this is because it doesn't have the essential Puccini ingredient of tragic, suffering woman doomed to a premature death.

There is some super music in FANCIULLA, and I agree it's a pity that it's so rarely performed.  I think part of the reason we see it so infrequently is the difficulty (and, ehem, cost) of casting it and staging it.  The central Sop-Ten-Bar trio have to be top-of-the-tree pros to get through the extremely dense scoring,  and there's a host of smaller roles that quickly run up a big bill of soloists fees.

I am not really sure "Giorgetta is next"...  I almost see TABARRO as being Michele's tragedy as much as Giorgetta's, because obviously she will leave him after the curtain falls, and most likely he'll be tried for murder.  [Sorry to mention this once again, but we never hear Puccini's original end, and people forget it's there.  The original version of TABARRO has an entirely different aria for Michele ("Scorri fiume eterno!") and in the final bars instead of just the stage-direction "grida" ("she shrieks"), there's a written top c'' that's a mixture of horror and defiance. I don't know any recording which has this ending, although the notes are available on hire from Ricordi if you are very persistent about it).  The Tebaldi recording does have "Scorri fiume eterno" added as a "bonus track" as an appendix.]

Do you really think Puccini's heroines need "reclaiming"?     I feel that instead of being "female victim" pieces, they are a unique set of insights into the female psyche, and they're not always the victims of male oppression...   more often than not they're victims of oppressive societal expectations (not always male-dominated ones).  Is Tosca a victim?  I think she's more of a heroine?  It is, after all, poor ol' Cavaradossi who goes down in the hail of bullets,  and her leap from the battlements is a defiant refusal to be taken for Scarpia's murder.  Let's remember too that Angelotti has also been killed by Scarpia's henchmen, so overall I think TOSCA is a "man-versus-dictatorship" story, in which Tosca succeeds in having done more to harm the dictatorship than either of its two male victims.

Is Angelica a "victim"?  Yes, but only in the sense of having been sent into the convent by a C16th society (that's the libretto's ostensible period - although it's almost never observed in productions) for bearing an illegitimate child. Her tormentor, of course, is female - La Zia Principessa - but in reality it's Fate that deals her the crushing blow (of her child dying of an incurable illness), and the decision to take her own life is self-prompted.  [It's worth noting here - a claim which I gleaned from an ENO Programme, so I can't quote a source for it - that ANGELICA is allegedly based on a real-life story.  In his youth Puccini had a favourite young aunt, in reality nearer the age of an older cousin, who spoiled him mercilessly... and then one day "disappeared", and Puccini was taken aside by his mother and told "never to ask of her, or speak of her".  Decades later the successful composer in his 40's used his influence in tracking her down to the convent to which she'd been sent - although there was not a suicide in his aunt's case.]

We haven't mentioned Manon Lescaut... for whom it's difficult to feel much sympathy?  She's a nasty and manipulative little minx who leads Des Grieux to a grim and remorseless death,  all of which is entirely her making.

Mimi, similarly...  she dies of an incurable disease, for which no-one can really be blamed...  she's already in the early stages of it before she even comes knocking on her neighbours' door.   And Liu... it's hard to see which particular "man" causes her death... you can lay it at Emperor Altoum's door, of course, but only as the highest power in the land...  he is not personally responsible for her suicide.  In fact I often think her death is rather gratuitous and hard to reconcile with the rest of the plot?

It's interesting to compare Puccini with that other (slightly later) composer of "doomed-innocent-girl" operas... Janacek.  The events of KATYA KABANOVA or OSUD could quite easily be Puccini librettos - so could JENUFA, although the twist (like Fanciulla) is that she survives the horrific ordeal.  It's a moot point whether "Aljeja" is a "female" role or not (see the House Of The Dead thread for more on that from Opilec, who knows his Janacek inside-out) but there's another battered character (literally) who somehow survives for a bittersweet unresolved ending...

Or indeed "redeeming" her man for love.... (Senta, Kundry etc).   It marked quite a step forward from the operatic heroines of the C18th, who are all most inert...   Donna Anna, the Countess, etc...   and simply fret whilst the men create the "action".  The move to "action-heroines" is recently innately bound-up in "Romanticism", I think...  the first woman who clearly establishes her own fate, rather than relying on a man to do it for her must be Leonore in FIDELIO?   I'm always struck what a shock that must have been, just 20 years after Donna Anna was sitting waiting for the whole of DON GIOVANNI for Ottavio to "do something"...  and then suddenly a woman pulls a gun on a Minister of State?   

You can hire the top C? Does it come with soprano attached? 

 Don Basilio, I agree with you (Britten and Shostakovich too) whole heartedly.
Strangely enough I like his music more as I got older.
Usually people discover Bach when they get older. I discovered Puccini. This is very odd.

The other point is: there are more sopranos than mezzo sopranos. May be this is why Puccini uses sopranos more for his ladies.
This way he has more chance to be staged by Musical Societies in the middle of no where.
May be he is a smart businessman. I don't know really.

Anyone's arias can be badly sung. Poor old Puccini - he must be sobbing and wobbling in his grave.

Yes, but her dress is extra (XL) and she requires her own personal dressing room with a meringue-pie delivery service 24/7.  


'Scuse me,  may I add Minnie and Manon to that list?  Two more formidable Puccinian heroines I wouldn't like to cross  Great come-back line from Shostakovich, I'd never heard that one before  

One thing which does rather annoy me about Puccini is that I often feel I've been morally and emotionally manipulated.  The magnificent quality in Verdi is that he is unjudgemental,  and very often his characters are full of human flaws,  flaws which make them credible as real people...   but Puccini's glass-crystal flawless saints are a bit hard to take.  I believe Puccini once said "If they don't cry, then I've failed!",  and I'm sure he meant it - he works in a relentless psychological onslaught to wrench those tears out of you,  and rather annoyingly it works, too.   For example,  he realised in BOHEME that what would crack the hardest of hearts wasn't the moment of Mimi's death...   but the moment when Rodolfo realises she's dead.  So he false-foots an audience who've been expecting a histrionic farewell to the world from Mimi with the opposite... a few mumbles about "mia cuffetta", and then she slips away unnoticed  (except, ehem, that Puccini inserts an enormous into the score at the exact point where she dies).  Then he plays with the awfulness of the moment, that no-one knows how to tell Rodolfo, and the ghastly moment where Michele gives Musetta back the money for the earrings.  And finally, to ensure total emotional collapse, he pulls-out all the orchestral accompaniment and singing, makes Rodolfo speak the line "What's the matter? Why are you all looking at me like that?  What's happened?".  And THEN he socks you with the B-Minor ff chord (complete with cymbals) and Kleenex shares gain a few points on the NasDaq.


Do you really think so?  It's absolutely true that Puccini always favoured the soprano voice,  but I think it's because it sounds more frail and exposed...   note that despite the high-intensity action,  he frequently casts a lyric-soprano or spinto (Mimi, Cio-Cio-San, Angelica, Liu, Lauretta) because the sound will be more emotionally disturbing...   how could the world be so howibbly cwuel to such a sweet little angel?   The ones who fight back a bit (Giorgetta, Minnie, Tosca, Turandot) are dramatic sopranos,  and singers very rarely sing both kinds of role (although a few Butterflys become Toscas).    And look at the mezzo roles!   Yes, there are some...  Suzuki is a huge role, she's practically never off-stage (although she hasn't an aria), and her "She will weep tears of bitterness!" - the only moment when her decorum breaks - presages the final debacle.   My favourite mezzo role is the Principessa - because she's not cardboard, she's the way she is because she's had an utterly horrible life.  "Spiare! Spiare!" ("Repent! Repent!") - what a blood-curdling cry that is...


Hang until Act III of Butterfly, and you will certainly get it, Don B    A lifetime's unlocked bitterness unleashed...  I never understand why "Un Bel' Di" is the warhorse aria,  when the second one is a much greater test of the soprano's mettle...  especially because up to that point any ol' lyric soprano could sing the role...  then you have to mount Grane and ride into the flames