The Puccini Companion - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393320529 ISBN 13: 9780393320527

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000

Synopsis

This informative volume offers 27 photographs and drawings, select bibliographies, a chronology of Puccini’s life and works, a dramatis personae of the countless individuals who played a role in Puccini’s career, a list of first performances, and plot summaries of all the operas.

What forces helped shape the output of this high-living, often arrogant, but immensely talented composer? This fascinating collection includes Simonetta Puccini's essay full of intimate details about her family, as well as writings by experts on the racist politics behind the creation of Madama Butterfly; Puccini's fascination with American culture as exemplified in Fanciulla del West; his grappling with twentieth-century musical practices in Trittico and Turandot; and the changes that early recording technology sparked in turn-of-the-century operatic performance style.

About this title

About the Author:

William Weaver is an acclaimed author and translator. Simonetta Puccini is well known for her lectures on her famous grandfather.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Puccini wins the prize for most-maligned great composer. In a fit of depressive self-deprecation, Puccini himself called his own music ``sugary,'' and the persistent popularity of his mature operas at box-offices around the world for nearly a century has too often provoked critical condescension, as if art so well-loved could not possibly be worth much. But that situation, thankfully, is changing, and this much-needed essay collection on Puccini by leading scholars of 19th- and 20th-century Italian opera is worth a good deal more than several new biographies. The volume ranges from a lengthy piece on Puccini's family by his granddaughter (one of the editors) to chapters devoted to Puccini's ``musical world'' and each of his operas by luminaries such as William Weaver, Harvey Sachs, Fedele D'Amico, Verdi heavyweights Mary Jane Phillips-Matz and Julian Budden, and William Ashbrook. A favorite: David Hamilton's expert investigation of the early Tosca recordings, especially the legendary ``Mapelson cylinders'' of live Metropolitan Opera performances from 1902-03, to see what light they shed on Puccini's original interpreters. The editors, perhaps hoping to attract non-musicologist admirers of the Luccan master, issue the disclaimer that ``this is not a work of scholarship'' (even though two of the chapters make a start on an accessible Puccini bibliography). They needn't have worried. Lovers of Puccini and Italian opera at every level of interest and knowledge will want this book. (Photographs--not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0393320529
• ISBN 13: 9780393320527
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 452
• Editor: Weaver William, Puccini Simonetta