atddta: The Girl of the Golden West (Puccini)

[Dave Monroe]

On 5/18/08, grladams at teleport.com <grladams at teleport.com> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_fanciulla_del_West

>From Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux,
2007), Ch. 1, "The Golden Age" (pp. 3-32) ...

   "Puccini came up with an especially crafty solution to the Wagner
problem.  Like many of his generation, he rejected mystic subjects of
the Parsifal type: instead, he followed ... into the new genre of
verismo, or opera verite, where popular tunes mingled with
blood-and-thunder orchestration and all manner of contemporary
characters--prostitutes, gangsters, street urchins, a famously jealous
clown--invaded the stage.... gives mythic dimension to a rattily
charming colection of bohemians." (pp. 12-13)

   "Puccini was keen to write something for his American fans ... he
floated the idea of an opera set in the Wild West.  'I have read Bret
Harte's novels,' he said, 'and I think there is great scope in your
Western life for operatic treatment.' ...
   "Puccini returned to Italy with the plan of making an opera out of
The Girl of the Golden Wserm by the playwright-showman David Belasco,
who had also written the play on which [Madame] Butterfly was
based....  The most remarkable thing about the work is that a
fearless, independent woman occupies the center of it; in an age when
women in opera almost invariably came off as diseased and deranged,
Puccini's Minnie is a bringer of peace, a becaon in a darkening
world."  (pp. 28-9)

http://us.macmillan.com/therestisnoise
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/what_is_this.html

Cf. ...

Manon Lescaut

91; Opera by Puccini which Porpentine attends when he is murdered;
premiered February 1, 1893 in Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy;

http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=M
http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/m.html
http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/extra/manon.html

Madame Butterfly (opera)
567;

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=M
http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_557-587#Page_567

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/info.html#beethoven