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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Alexandra Wilson
Affiliation:
Oxford Brookes University
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Summary

Today there seem to be few composers as central to the popular operatic repertory as Puccini. A perennial favourite of audiences the world over, his most enduring works are staples of opera companies from San Francisco to Sydney. Puccini is, to put it bluntly, a safe bet: at a time when adventurous productions of new works pose considerable financial risks for state-subsidised theatres, even a very run-of-the-mill production of La bohème, for instance, can be relied upon to bring in the mainstream operatic audience and, in the process, balance the books. Puccini also represents to a perhaps unrivalled extent the very essence of Italian opera, at least as it is popularly imagined: tuneful, passionate and emotionally direct. At first glance, then, there would seem to be no composer less problematic than Puccini.

A closer inspection of the reception of this intriguing figure's music, however, reveals a far more complex situation. While Puccini's audiences surely still view him as the Italian opera composer par excellence, his reputation among today's critics and academics is – to say the least – mixed. A long-held cultural distrust of overt, comprehensible artistic sensuality seems to relegate Puccini to the second-class carriage of music history. Puccini, one might speculate, is too popular, too unchallenging, too conservative to win the respect that mainstream modernism has long enjoyed. Joseph Kerman's notorious jibe – that Tosca is a ‘shabby little shocker’ – can stand as emblematic of the hostility that Puccini's operas can provoke.

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Chapter
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The Puccini Problem
Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity
, pp. 1 - 10
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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  • Introduction
  • Alexandra Wilson, Oxford Brookes University
  • Book: The Puccini Problem
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511482045.002
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  • Introduction
  • Alexandra Wilson, Oxford Brookes University
  • Book: The Puccini Problem
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511482045.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Alexandra Wilson, Oxford Brookes University
  • Book: The Puccini Problem
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511482045.002
Available formats
×