I happen to like Puccini

I couldn't help but notice some animosity towards Giacomo Puccini this year at grad school.  His name always seems to bring some comment from someone (usually a certain instructor) about the "low-brow, pop music" of his that for some reason isn't worth consideration. 

I don't see it.  His "low-brow, popular music"-ness, I mean.  Granted, he may not be in the ranks of Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms (the 3 Big Bs), but he wrote some wonderful melodies.

Puccini (pronounced Poo-chee-nee) was born December 22, 1858 in Lucca, Tuscany, Italy, to a family with a long history in music.  He died November 29, 1924.  Best known for his operas, the most famous of these are La Boheme, Turandot (mentioned in a previous post; where the aria Nessun Dorma comes from), Madame Butterfly, and Tosca.  A Broadway musical, Miss Saigon, is based on Madame Butterfly, and Rent (hugely popular Broadway show and, hugely popular movie based on the Broadway show) is based on La Boheme. 

One of his arias I really enjoy (and persistantly try to play the piano) is O mio babbino caro (Oh My Dear Papa) is a soprano aria from the opera Gianni Schicchi.  It is a beautiful melody sung by Lauretta to her father.  In it, she is trying to tell him that, even though their marriage is forbidden (sort of a Romeo and Juliet thing) because the man she wants to marry (Rinnucio) is now poor (because no money was left for him from a recently deceased relative's will), she will marry him anyway, or will kill herself. 

Want to know what happens after the aria?  Well, Lauretta's father, G. Schicchi, impersonates the dead relative (because only a few know that he's dead) from behind a screen.  He impersonates him so well that he persaudes the attending doctor to return later with a notary public to dictate a (new) will.  When this is done, Schicchi re-allocates the relative's wealth to the rest of the family and many valuable items to himself.  These valuable items can be his daughter's dowry and she is now free to marry Rinnucio. 

A man named Gianni Schicchi also appears in Dante's Inferno.  Virgil and Dante find him in the Circle of Impersonators, in the Eighth Circle of Hell.  It's a good chance that this is where Puccini got his idea for the opera.

I would like to talk about the Rent/La Boheme relationship too, but that would be more than a nibble.  Maybe another time!