PUCCINI'S EARLY OPERAS

Abstract

WITH the first performance of his' Manon Lescaut ', on February Ist 1893, Puccini not only completely fulfilled the expectations he had aroused in his compatriots, but far surpassed them. The mere fact that a young composer, hitherto unknown outside his own country, had laid hands on a subject Massenet had treated with such success nine years or so before said much for Puccini's artistic daring. With ' Manon Lescaut' he placed himself in the first rank of Italian opera composers after Verdi. In it we can see the stylistic foundations on which his later work was built. Although much of it still bears the stamp of Sturm und Drang, and although the dramatic sureness and technical mastery of the later works is reached only in part, ' Manon Lescaut' nevertheless contains in nuce practically all the traits characteristic of Puccini's mature style. This opera marks the decisive turn in his development towards the form of lyric drama prepared in France chiefly by Gounod and Thomas and developed by Massenet, which was to find in Puccini its outstanding Italian exponent. Naturally this change did not take place suddenly. I have already spoken of the expectations aroused by him. These expectations were the consequence of two operas that preceded ' Manon Lescaut' by several years: 'Le Villi' and 'Edgar '. These two early works are interesting and enlightening in more ways than one. They were written at a time when traditional Italian opera was passing through a stylistic crisis brought about by the fight for and against the principles of Wagnerian music-drama; ' Le Villi' and ' Edgar' are in a sense documentary records of the tendencies noticeable in Italian opera in general during the last third of the nineteenth century. They are also important for the study of Puccini's own operatic style, for they show the outside influences which he later threw off altogether or else transformed into his own personal media of expression. At the same time these two operas show definite traits, particularly in melody, which are typically Puccinian and in later works,