The emotional world of real life

Musicologist Thomas Erlach on the composer Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Puccini died 100 years ago in Brussels. With which compositions did he go down in music history?

Erlach: Nowadays, Puccini is practically only known as an opera composer, especially for his particularly popular stage works such as Tosca, La Bohème and Madame Butterfly. The fact that he also composed orchestral works, chamber music, choral works and songs is of more interest to musicologists and particularly enthusiastic fans.

He is considered a representative of verismo. What does that mean?

Erlach: The term verismo refers to a striving for greater verisimilitude on the operatic stage. From 1890 onwards, Italian composers in particular had a tendency to depict the emotional world of ordinary people, the "people", directly and drastically on stage. This meant turning away from Wagner's tragic heroes and gods as well as Verdi's operatic characters from high society. In one of the first veristic operas, The Bajazzo by Ruggero Leoncavallo, this concept is explained at the beginning by a singing prologue figure who declares that he now wants to paint a picture of real life, with people "of flesh and blood" who enable the audience to identify with them. Puccini largely followed this direction. In his operas, for example, no superhuman powers intervene in the plot. He certainly works with material from the past (e.g. in Tosca), but is primarily interested in its relational aspects, i.e. the emotional side of the story, which is accessible to all people.

At the premiere of La Bohème on 1 February 1896, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, there were whistles and boos. The press wrote, among other things: "Thus it will also leave no significant trace in opera history." Barely two months later, however, the same opera celebrated a huge success in Palermo. How can that be explained?

Erlach: The reactions at the premiere were mixed. Puccini was called to the curtain several times after each act, so the piece didn't flop, but it wasn't a spectacular spontaneous success either. Perhaps people were irritated by this new type of musical theatre. The plot is not entirely stringent; the audience is presented with a sequence of different scenes, which also ends very sadly with Mimi's death from consumption, i.e. tuberculosis. The tonal language is also new - the whole piece is held in a kind of "conversational tone", the moods and musical motifs change frequently and the tempo of the dialogue is often relatively fast. The audience's reception of the piece quickly improved, but Puccini later regarded the premiere as a failure.

Today, "La Bohème" is considered his masterpiece. Why do you think that is?

Erlach: Firstly, there is the plot, which begins in a flat-share of four young artists in an attic flat in Paris. They may be poor, but they are self-determined, feel free and happy, even if a freshly written drama has to go into the oven due to a lack of firewood. They easily evict their landlord without paying the rent, and Rodolfo finds a partner in his own house as if by magic, with whom he immediately begins a beautiful love duet - this awakens longings in a society determined by many constraints and material goods. The further development of the play is then characterised by relationship conflicts that everyone is familiar with, as well as the tragic death of Mimi at the end, which brings tears to the eyes of many in the audience in view of the loyalty of her friends. Puccini only shows individual situations on stage, while he shifts the logical connections to the pauses between the acts, i.e. leaves them out. This allowed him to concentrate musically on what he was best at: setting interpersonal situations to music. When they first meet, Rodolfo introduces himself to Mimi with a melody, which she then adopts after her individual, different-sounding response - thus creating the love duet with which the first act concludes. The second act takes place on Christmas Eve in the Latin Quarter, where there is a colourful hustle and bustle that Puccini depicts with a kind of musical collage. And his orchestra offers a colourful variety of shimmering tone colours. There are also traditional arias in places, but they are skilfully woven into the plot.

Puccini was primarily built up by the publisher Giulio Ricordi, who also wanted to influence his work. In a letter, for example, he tried to prevent a decisive duet between Tosca and Cavaradossi in the third act of the opera Tosca because he feared "disastrous consequences". What worried him so much?

Erlach: In and of itself, Puccini had a good relationship with his publisher, who financed him as a "house composer". However, Ricordi believed that Puccini used music for this duet that he had composed for an earlier opera, Edgar, but then cancelled. He considered this approach unworthy of Puccini and informed him of this in a rather brusque letter. Puccini was completely surprised by this and replied the same day that he was of a different opinion. Nobody would notice the takeover; he regarded this approach as a "labour-saving principle". He also emphasised that this duet had to have a "fragmentary character" because it was no ordinary love duet. The scene takes place shortly before Cavaradossi's execution, which he believes is only a pretence, but which is not the case - a rather crazy constellation. This settled the matter and the duet was left standing.

The première in Rome in 1900 was a great success, although it was briefly interrupted. Why was that?

Erlach: The audience was very nervous that evening because there was a bomb threat in the theatre, but it turned out to be unfounded. The Queen and several ministers were present in the theatre and there was a huge crowd at the sold-out performance. The conductor Leopoldo Mungone had the performance temporarily interrupted due to the loud noise, but continued once everyone had calmed down.

In 1904, the world premiere of another well-known opera "Madame Butterfly" took place and turned into a disaster. What had happened?

Erlach: That was Puccini's greatest artistic failure in his life. We can only speculate about the exact reasons for the rejection of Butterfly at the premiere. At the time, the audience at La Scala in Milan was considered conservative and particularly critical. After Bohème and Tosca, the theme of the opera was possibly perceived as too exotic, too far removed from the reality of life: An American officer marries a local geisha, Cho-Cho-San, called Butterfly, during an assignment in Japan, but then leaves her behind with their child, only to marry again later in America, then return and take the child with him, whereupon Cho-Cho-San kills herself in ritualistic fashion. In a time of colonialism, this could be seen as criticism and provocative. Furthermore, this first version of Butterfly only had two acts, with the second in particular being very long. The tenor part is also not as dominant as it usually is in Puccini's works, and the appearance of the child on stage was considered offensive.

Why did it nevertheless become one of his most frequently performed operas?

Erlach: Both the exoticism and the plot, with its theme of cultural imperialism, ultimately proved to be interesting, even for later generations. The East Asian-sounding elements in the music, such as pentatonicism (pentatonicism or five-note music refers to scales and tone systems consisting of five different notes, editor's note), are more of a decorative addition in the sense of local colour. In addition, Puccini fundamentally reworked the opera immediately and then several times. For example, the long second act was split. In the meantime, however, theatres are returning to the original version because it expresses Cho-Cho-San's personal tragedy in a more concentrated way.

In contrast to Giuseppe Verdi or Richard Wagner, women dominate the titles of Puccini's works. Why is that?

Erlach: Even if it is difficult to draw parallels between works of art and artists' biographies: You might think that Puccini liked women. The female characters in his operas are drawn in a very differentiated way and are therefore the centre of attention. Even if there are great similarities in the plots of his operas, each of these women is individualised. In contrast to the villains (who are always male in Puccini's operas), the main female characters usually start out with a simple purity of heart, but then grow into enormous characters in the course of the plot - this applies to Mimi, Tosca, Minnie (in Fanciulla del West), Butterfly and Suor Angelica - but not to Turandot, who, due to her harshness (she executes all men interested in her who do not solve her riddles), is truly not a sympathetic character.

Puccini was a bon vivant, loved fast cars, occasionally lived in a lighthouse and smoked like a chimney. The fact that he finally married his long-term lover Elvira, with whom he already had a son, did not please his publisher at all and he said of her: "She sucks out his spirit, blood and life." How did he come to that conclusion?

Erlach: Puccini was what a psychologist once called a "crypto-single". Although he was married to Elvira, he lived as if he were alone. This applied to both his work and his private life - he was constantly travelling, met friends, was alone a lot and had numerous affairs, including long-term ones, with other women. On the other hand, he was very attached to Elvira throughout his life and constantly complained about her weaknesses and moods. As he was prone to self-doubt and even depression, a separation was never an option for him. One can imagine that this also absorbed energy which, in Ricordi's opinion, would have been better invested in his work.

Which Puccini opera impresses you the most?

Erlach: I particularly like the pieces that are not performed so often. I find the three-part cycle Il trittico, which premiered in 1918, very interesting. The three short, one-act pieces(Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi) have little to do with each other in terms of content and also belong to different genres, but the composition is appealing and shows a very innovative concept at the time, which also inspired Paul Hindemith, for example, to compose a similar three one-act work in 1921. The tonal language here is much more modern than in Bohème, for example, where the orchestra often doubles the singers' melodies and much is designed to be catchy. I am also always fascinated by Turandot because of the harsh subject matter, the resistance of the characters and the more modern tonal language in places. I also find (as an operetta fan) La Rondine (The Swallow) very appealing, a piece that is unfortunately very rarely heard, which was premiered in 1917 and straddles the border between opera and operetta. You can hear that Puccini and Franz Lehár knew and appreciated each other, but that Puccini was an opera composer after all.

Uwe Blass

Prof Dr Thomas Erlach has been Professor of Music Education at the University of Wuppertal since 2014.