This essay discusses immediate, or “erotic,” aesthetic agency, the first of several stages of the figure of the aesthete in Either/Or. Erotic aesthetic agency consists in an almost naïve, all but nonpurposive pursuit of occasions to exercise the power to overwhelm the wills of others in one’s sheer desire of them, to incorporate them in one’s own terms by operation of simple impulse. The effect of this agency on others is to subject them to desire as such, that is, to desire as a force that binds them to the Don. But the ultimate aim of the agency is its existence: that it be. The conceptual structure of Kierkegaard’s understanding of this starting point in the aesthetic view of the world, as it is presented by a self-professed fictional aesthete, is explored with reference to the figure that organizes much of the portrayal of the erotic aesthete, Don Juan, as he appears in Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera Don Giovanni. Special attention is paid both to details of the opera as Kierkegaard would have experienced it and to the slippage between a reflective aesthete, A, imagining an unreflective aesthete, the Don, as an ideal.

Lovers of opera and classical music will not find it hard to think of scores strongly associated with their authors’ national identity, such as Chopin’s mazurkas (c. 1825–1849), Wagner’s Die Meistersinger (1868), Smetana’s Vltava (The Moldau, 1874), or Sibelius’s Finlandia (1899). The connections between the traditions of art music and nationalism are manifold, and the nineteenth century, the age of musical Romanticism, in particular produced a substantial output of “national works,” the most successful of which are still in the repertory today. As a result, scholars of music have been debating the theme of “music and the nation” since the nineteenth century itself, when the discipline of music historiography first emerged.

Monteverdi’s relationship with Torquato Tasso (1544–95) is typically associated with the Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624; pub. Eighth Book, 1638): a spectacular musical scena drawn from Tasso’s epic Gerusalemme liberata, in which the crusader knight Tancredi battles the Saracen heroine Clorinda. But Monteverdi’s introduction to the musical possibilities of the Gerusalemme began decades before, just as his experiments with the musical lament long predated the opera Arianna (1608). This chapter examines Monteverdi’s earliest settings of Tasso’s epic – the lamentations of Tancredi and Armida in the Third Book (1592) – as musical representations of lament through not the verisimilitude of opera but rather the artifice of five-voice madrigals. Monteverdi’s initial engagement with Tasso’s Gerusalemme catalysed the composer’s early experiments with the musical lament, a topos that occupied an important space both in opera and in madrigals.

This chapter considers recent trends in Puccini staging and direction. It notes that Puccini productions have tended to be ‘safe’ compared with the works of composers such as Wagner, inviting audiences to sit back and enjoy rather than sit back and pay attention: Regieoper has tended to avoid Puccini. Recently, however, Puccini’s operas have been subjected to some more unusual and innovative directorial treatment, in productions that are designed to speak to an audience viewing in cinemas and at home as much as in the theatre. Three productions are discussed as case studies. The first is Richard Jones’s 2007 Covent Garden production of Gianni Schicchi, situated in a kitschily decorated mid-twentieth-century British working-class home. The second is Stefan Herheim’s bleak, resolutely unsentimental 2012 La bohème for the Norwegian National Opera, which flips between a contemporary cancer ward and flashbacks using nineteenth-century-style sets long used at the same theatre. The third is Christophe Honoré’s 2019 production of Tosca for Aix-en-Provence, which also intermingles past and present productions, making intertextual reference to the opera’s earlier performance history.

This chapter discusses the singers who first performed Puccini’s operatic roles, or who were well-known interpreters of them in revivals during his lifetime. Singers discussed include Cesira Ferrani, Rosina Storchio, Giovanni Zenatello, Eugenio Giraldoni, Florence Easton, Giuseppe Cremoni, Evan Gorga, Emilio de Marchi, Giuseppe de Luca, Miguel Fleta, Tito Schipa, Geraldine Farrar, Emmy Destinn, Enrico Caruso, and Rosa Raisa. The author notes that by Puccini’s time, singers had far less agency in creating roles than their predecessors from the early nineteenth-century had had. Nevertheless, Puccini had a clear sense of the type of singer he wanted for a particular role. The author reveals that the singers who took on Puccini’s roles had extensive repertoires and were comfortable interpreting the music of a wide range of composers. Many were also to be found working across continents, travelling between opera houses on either side of the Atlantic and enjoying a degree of celebrity and renown previously unknown, partly because of opportunities in recording and film.

This chapter examines the topic of Puccini on video – the composer’s appearances as a character in narrative films or television dramas, and versions of his operas conceived expressly for film or television, starting from the arrival of sound cinema. Puccini started being fictionalised as a film character from the 1950s. Detailed attention is paid to Carmine Gallone’s biopic Giacomo Puccini of 1952, a film which takes considerable liberties with historical facts, and the same director’s Casa Ricordi, about the composer’s publishing house. The discussion then moves to the 1980s, to consider Tony Palmer’s Puccini, and to the 2000s, to discuss Paolo Benvenuti’s Puccini e la fanciulla, both of which home in on the Doria Manfredi scandal. The author then discusses transferrals to video of Puccini’s operas, concentrating particularly on Tosca and examining films from the 1940s onwards. Particular attention is paid to a filmed version by Gallone, to the same director’s Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma, and to a series of slightly later film versions made especially for Italian television during the 1960s and 70s. A 2001 film of Tosca by Benoît Jacquot concludes the survey, chosen because it interrogates the tension between televisual or filmic authenticity and operatic artificiality.

This chapter is the first of three to consider Puccini’s travels, both for work and leisure. It covers his travels in western Europe, particularly in France and Great Britain, assessing the importance of Paris and London as key centres for the performance of Puccini’s works. Both cities had had long and vibrant traditions of importing musical works from other European countries; Paris also had a flourishing operatic culture of its own. Puccini visited both cities regularly from the mid-1890s, often to supervise the production of his works. London became particularly important for Puccini when Manon Lescaut was launched at Covent Garden in 1894; a few years later he would visit Manchester for the British premiere of La bohème. Visiting Paris for business allowed Puccini the opportunity to hear new works by other leading European composers of the day, including Debussy and Stravinsky. It was also a place of refuge for him at a time of personal crisis. The chapter records Puccini’s thoughts about these and other European cities, not all of which were flattering. It concludes with a discussion of his death in Brussels in 1924.

This chapter surveys the interaction between Puccini’s works and various forms of popular culture since the mid-twentieth century. The author examines how Puccini’s music quickly came to be widely absorbed into the popular musical memory through a wide variety of genres. It surveys early recordings of Puccini’s arias and their association with particular recording stars such as Caruso. A discussion of the use of Puccini’s music in films from the 1930s to the present follows, analysing the ways in which it has been employed as a device in films ranging from gentle romances to violent Hollywood blockbusters, sometimes symbolising the essence of Italianness. The author then discusses how excerpts from Puccini’s music have been incorporated into popular songs of a wide range of types and how Puccini arias have made their way into the world of popular television via talent shows, sports programming (notably the use of ‘Nessun dorma’ for the Italia 90 World Cup), chat shows, and advertising.

This chapter considers the ways in which Puccini’s works were staged during his lifetime, with a close focus upon the composer’s own vision of how his operas should look. Puccini was keenly involved with the visual representation of his works on stage and always strove to be as ‘authentic’ as possible in reproducing the locales being depicted. This chapter draws upon the composer’s correspondence to demonstrate how proactive Puccini was in every aspect of the performance of his works. We find Puccini complaining about stage designs for his works and suggesting improvements, as well as suggesting novel scenographic approaches to make a work more effective for the viewer. Puccini was also extremely keen to maintain aspects of staging and direction used in some of the source plays upon which his operas had been based. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the various extant sources that document Puccini’s staging intentions.

This chapter considers the complex task of editing Puccini’s works, informed by the production of the Ricordi critical edition (launched in 2008 and ongoing). An abundance of materials exist upon which the editor can draw, including autographs, sketches, printed editions, and correspondence, thanks to Puccini’s close and long relationship with the Ricordi firm. However, some gaps exist in the surviving sources, and some sources disagree with others. The author explains that the editor must choose a text on which to base the edition, drawing on further sources as necessary to make informed interventions, striving to get as close as possible to the composer’s intentions, but mindful of the fact that his intentions and preferences changed over time. In Puccini’s case, second editions usually reflect the works as performed at their premieres, the first edition already becoming obsolete in rehearsal. The chapter discusses the various decisions and interventions that an editor must make in order to make an edition both faithful and usable. Puccini’s working method and process of revising his operas are discussed in detail. The chapter ends by asking whether early recordings, as well as printed and written documents, should inform an edition.

This chapter considers the relationship between Puccini and politics. It shows that Puccini was an admirer of Mussolini at the beginning of the Fascist period, speculates how his political allegiances might have developed had he lived longer, and asks whether Turandot can be read as a ‘fascist’ opera. It discusses the politicisation of high culture during the composer’s lifetime but shows there is no evidence that the work was intended as a political allegory. Much of the chapter is devoted to a consideration of the issue of politics in Tosca, ranging across themes such as anti-clericalism and whether the figure of Scarpia anticipates a specifically fascist brutality. The author uses Carmine Gallone’s film Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma as a lens through which to consider these issues. The chapter also considers stagings of the opera that put an explicitly political slant on the work, as well as discussing a variety of political (and purportedly ‘anti-political’) readings of the opera in the Puccini literature.

This chapter opens with a consideration of the parallels in the careers of Puccini and Rachmaninoff, both disparaged as conservative throwbacks to an earlier era and purveyors of a cloying sentimentality who reached larger audiences than any of their contemporaries. The author shows, however, that these stereotypes have been reconsidered in recent years, before proceeding to consider Puccini’s influence on the composers who followed him, including both composers of art music and the creators of mid-twentieth-century musical theatre. He argues that Puccini’s works came to be seen as having established the dominant rhetorical conventions of how music expresses human emotion, and argues that in Puccini’s hands, music rather than text becomes the primary driver of storytelling (an approach the author contrasts with that of Richard Strauss). The emotions in Puccini’s works have a universality to them, which has been a key factor in their global success. The author argues, however, that Puccini’s hegemony is now under threat, partly because contemporary popular music now diverges so sharply from the classical tradition and partly because the idea of universal human emotions and experience is being challenged in an era of identity politics.

This chapter considers the music publishing industry in Puccini’s Italy, with a particular focus on Puccini’s principal publisher, the Casa Ricordi. The chapter examines the role that publishers played within the wider operatic industry, which by Puccini’s time included managing contracts between composers and opera houses and influencing casting, as well as the more traditional business of printing, publishing, and promoting scores. The particular musical specialisms of the Sonzogno and Ricordi publishing houses are discussed. The author shows how Ricordi elevated Puccini to the position of national-composer-elect towards the end of Verdi’s lifetime and constructed a ‘Puccini myth’. Expensive, sophisticated publicity tools and marketing strategies were used to promote Puccini’s works, not only in Italy but in territories across the globe. The chapter discusses how Puccini’s relationship with the firm changed as a result of the succession of power from Giulio to Tito Ricordi upon the former’s death, as well as the firm’s management of Puccini’s works after his own death.

This chapter examines Puccini’s early life in the Tuscan town of Lucca. Puccini came from a long line of church musicians and was expected to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfathers as maestro di cappella at the Cattedrale di San Martino. The chapter briefly outlines the careers of these musical forebears and their influence upon the young Puccini, whose musical career would ultimately take a very different course. It examines Puccini’s musical training and the family members and other figures who provided funding for his education. The composer’s move to study at the Conservatorio in Milan is briefly considered, with a particular emphasis on the composers and critics who were his teachers and mentors. These figures played a vital role in helping him gain a foothold in the Italian operatic world of the 1880s, setting him on the path to musical greatness.

This chapter is the third of three to consider Puccini’s travels, both for work and leisure. It examines Puccini’s travels beyond Europe, primarily to South and North America. South America was a vital outpost of Italian operatic culture, with a large expatriate Italian population. The chapter discusses how Puccini’s works were exported to the major opera houses of the region and his travels to supervise performances in Argentina and Uruguay. Drawing upon Puccini’s correspondence, the author pays detailed attention to the life Puccini would have experienced on board ship, travelling in some luxury, unlike the many poor Italians who were migrating to the Americas for economic reasons – including the composer’s own brother, Michele Puccini. The chapter also discusses Puccini’s travels to New York, where he could not speak the language and was troubled by the weather. The author argues that the vast hotels and ships encountered by Puccini on these trips had a bearing on the sense of epic space in some of his later operas, notably La fanciulla del West. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Puccini’s tour of Egypt in 1908.

This chapter explores Puccini’s relationship with the Italian spoken theatre of his time. Stage plays were often adapted as operas during this period and there are plentiful examples in Puccini’s oeuvre. Puccini preferred to adapt foreign plays, rather than Italian ones (even sometimes, as in the case of Madama Butterfly, selecting a subject whose original text was in a language he did not understand), and he ranged across a wide variety of different theatrical genres. The chapter considers developments in Italian theatre during the nineteenth century, and the emergence of key native playwrights, as well as the national penchant for foreign works in translation, such as the plays of Shakespeare. The author examines changes in acting technique that took place in Italy and more broadly during this period and considers the careers of leading actors of the time such as Eleonora Duse. Puccini’s choice of dramatic subjects – the sorts of themes that attracted him and stimulated his musical imagination – is discussed in detail, as is the range of dramatic devices that he borrowed from a variety of different theatrical traditions.

This chapter examines the representation of race in Madama Butterfly and Turandot and the controversies that surround the performance of these works today. It shows how casting, design, and other elements in contemporary productions of the two operas become entangled with the fraught racial politics inherent in their scores and librettos. The chapter makes a particular note of the participation of musicians, directors, set designers, costume designers, and critics of Asian descent whose active presence adds an additional layer of complexity to the discussion. Madama Butterfly began to be discussed in Japan soon after its première and by the mid-twentieth century companies were beginning to seek out experts from Japan to lend enhanced cultural credence of their productions. More recent productions, however, have moved away from striving for ‘authenticity’ and begun to re-envision Puccini’s text in radical ways. Productions of Turandot have either staged the opera in authentically Chinese fashion or drawn on the abstract modernist impulses inherent in the work. Chinese audiences have been far less exposed to the work and Chinese artists less involved in its rethinking, at least until the late twentieth century. The advent of social media has broadened the questioning of the ethics of these works.

This chapter describes the literary milieu of nineteenth-century Italy and considers the influence of a range of different literary schools on Puccini’s artistic practice. It endeavours to understand exactly what is meant by operatic verismo – a contested term – and to trace the term’s relationship to literary verismo. Some of the key Italian literary movements of the nineteenth century, such as neo-classicism, had little impact on Puccini’s oeuvre; others were far more influential, such as the Scapigliatura movement, which appeared in northern Italy in the 1860s. Key figures involved in this movement were connected with the circles in which Puccini moved. The literary verismo movement – centred on the Italian south – is discussed in detail and direct connections are drawn between this movement and Puccini’s style in works such as Il tabarro. The author also traces the relevance for a consideration of Puccini’s oeuvre with such movements as decadentism, crepuscolarismo, hermeticism, modernism, and futurism.

This chapter considers Puccini complicated relationship with the musical canon, or rather with two canons. The author argues that while Puccini’s works stand at the apex of the performing canon, they have been denied entry to the scholarly canon, a body of works deemed historically significant and of high artistic worth. The chapter traces how Puccini’s operas established their place in the international operatic repertory (observing different regional patterns), via stage performances, publisher promotion, and recordings, to the point where they became pre-eminent. The author then turns to examining Puccini’s critical fortunes and evolving reputation among music historians across the course of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. She explains how Puccini has been castigated as a derivative, overly sentimental composer who appealed to ‘the wrong people’ and did not deserve a place in the history books, though his reputation was to some extent rehabilitated by the end of the twentieth century, finally regarded as worthy of serious scholarly analysis. In recent years, however, Puccini has become the target of calls to dismantle the canon and his works have been criticised for their treatment of gender, sexual violence, race, and class.

This chapter considers the treatment of religion in Puccini’s operas, with a strong focus on the two works with particular ecclesiastical themes, Tosca and Suor Angelica. It shows how Puccini drew upon the example of earlier models of religious representation in opera, by composers including Boito and Verdi. It considers the changing relationship between the Church and the state during Puccini’s lifetime, and the ongoing (though evolving) role of censorship laws. The use of liturgical scenes by Puccini and his contemporaries within the giovane scuola is discussed, with close analysis of stock techniques that are employed. The author concludes that Puccini’s works are made particularly effective by their habit of contrasting the secular and the sacred, using a more nuanced characterisation than is found in the works of his contemporaries.