The First Volume in Ricordi’s Puccini Edition

Abstract

THE FIRST VOLUME IN RICORDI'S PUCCINI EDITION Puccini. Manon Lescaut. Dramma lirico in quattro atti di Luigi Illica, Domenico Oliva, Parco Praga. Edizione critica a cura di = Critical Edition edited by Roger Parker. Tomo 1: Introductory materials and acts 1 and 2. (Le opere di Puccini, edizione critica = The of Puccini, critical edition, vol. III.) Milan: Ricordi, 2013. [Pref. by Gabriele Dotto in It. and Eng., p. vii-xiii; historical introd. and acknowledgments in It. and Eng., p. xv-xxxiii; sigla in It. and Eng., p. xxxv; characters, p. xxxvi; instruments, p. xxxvii; score, p. 1-405. ISMN 979-0-04139071-0; ISBN 978-88-7592-954-1. i308.65.]Giacomo Puccini. Manon Lescaut. Dramma lirico in quattro atti di Luigi Illica, Domenico Oliva, Marco Praga. Edizione critica a cura di = Critical Edition edited by Roger Parker. Tomo 2: Intermezzo, acts 3 and 4; appendices, sources, critical notes. (Le opere di Puccini, edizione critica = The of Puccini, critical edition, vol. III.) Milan: Ricordi, 2013. [Score, p. 407-550; appendices, p. 553-603; sources in Eng., p. 605-12; crit. notes in Eng., p. 613-24. ISMN 979-0-041-39071-0; ISBN 978-88-7592-954-1. i308.65.]Although Puccini's operas have been staples of the repertoire since their creation, his music has traditionally occupied a marginal position in academic discourse. Puccini's centenary (1958) inspired the first generation of modern academic research; a second wave of scholarship, lasting from the late 1980s through the mid1990s, brought Puccini's music closer to the mainstream. Between 1991 and 1996, two major monographs (William Ashbrook and Harold Powers, Puccini's Turandot: The End of the Great Tradition [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991]; Michele Girardi's analytical survey of the operas, Puccini: L'arte internazionale di un musicista italiano [Venice: Marsilio, 1995]), and three dissertations on Puccini appeared (Helen Greenwald, Dramatic Exposition and Musical Structure in Puccini's Operas [Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1991]; Deborah Burton, An Analysis of Puccini's Tosca: A Heuristic Approach to the Unifying Elements of the [Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1995]; Linda Fairtile, Giacomo Puccini's Operatic Revisions as Manifestations of his Compositional Priorities [Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1996]), followed by several important reference works (Linda Fairtile, Puccini: A Guide to Research [New York: Garland, 1999]; Dieter Schickling, Puccini: Catalogue of the Works [Kassel: Barenreiter, 2003]). In the millennium, these earlier works were complemented by Alexandra Wilson's The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism and Modernity ([Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], winner of the American Musicological Society's Lewis Lockwood Award, 2008) and by theoretical analyses of Puccini's music (Andrew C. Davis, Il trittico, Turandot, and Puccini's Late Style [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011]; Nicholas Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions & Puccini: Compositional Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Opera [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011]). Currently, Puccini enjoys more widespread acceptance among musical scholars than ever before.Although the second wave of Puccini studies coincided with the new movement, the connection is less significant than it might at first seem. New musicology critiqued the academic canon of great works, great composers, and even the making of editions. The movement certainly created an environment in which it became harder to sneer at Puccini, and in which he became a logical subject for research.Yet emerging research on Puccini was less focused on critiquing the canon than on adding him to its ranks. Most of the landmarks of second-generation Puccini scholarship were chiefly committed to analyzing Puccini seriously through traditional approaches, such as composers' working habits, compositional strategies, or reevaluations of his life and works. …