Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

La Fanciulla del West
The Girl of the Golden West

Did Puccini Write Arias?

William Yannuzzi

In composing his operas, Puccini, as we all know, did not theoretically observe the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century distinction between arias and rest of the musical fabric. But, like all operas written since that formality was statutorily abandoned, Puccini's works contain passages that are quite properly called arias. These can be identified by a simple description: they are extended solo passages. There are really no other formal requirements.

Butterfly's "Un bel dì," for example, has no thematic unity or development, no format to which it must adhere. Its musical material springs entirely from the dramatic content of the text, and the stringing together of the themes is justified by no other consideration than that of following minutely the changes in Butterfly's narrative. Thus considered, it is correct to call it a recitative. Yet it is universally considered an aria-in fact, one of the most beloved in the repertoire-and is frequently excerpted for concert or recital performance. Tosca's "Vissi d'arte" is another example, although a somewhat different one. Here Puccini has made use of the formal symmetry of the text to construct a simple ABA form, like a pop song, with the unabashed appeal to emotional satisfaction such a construction affords.

The role of Minnie has a number of such passages. We may select two as being arias equivalent to "Un bel dì" and "Vissi d'arte." These are the "Bible Reading" passage in the first act and the final monologue in the last act. There are many others that might have been chosen, and perhaps we can have a look at them later. For now, let's inspect the two we have decided to call arias.

The "Bible Reading" scene is precisely that: the scene soon after Minnie's entrance in the first act, in which she holds a class of her "school" to read and explicate a passage from the Bible. As Minnie picks up the Bible, the orchestra plays the basic thematic material, a four-bar passage of open fifths and octaves, with a dotted-eighth and sixteenth rhythm, but with the "dots" replaced by sixteenth rests. There are no thirds in the chords to identify them. This whole is supported by an ostinato pedal consisting of an open sixth. The short theme creates the required impression of simplicity and innocence with which the pupils regard the words of Scripture. The text is straightforward. First, Minnie finds the place where they had left off reading, probably the day before. She finds the book mark ("il segno") at the 51st Psalm-all this to the little theme in open fifths. She mentions David, the Psalm-writer, and asks Harry (one of the miners) if he remembers who David is. He gives a confused answer in which he manages to introduce Samson's "jawbone of an ass" into the scene with David's slingshot. His answer calls for new musical material, a repetitive theme also in open fifths, but devoid of the rhythmic lilt of the original theme. Once again, the music is markedly apt-the repetition of the open fifths suggests the automatic rote of the incorrect answer as well as the ingenuousness of the man who gives it. Then the reading begins. First, there is a repetition of the original open-fifth theme, during which Minnie announces where she will begin to read, at verse 2:

Sprinkle me with hyssop,
and I shall be cleansed.

She sings this to a little melody which is clearly but mysteriously derived from the music that accompanied Harry's confused answer, but this time with a real tune and with the chords filled in to create a true tonality. She is immediately interrupted by Trin, another miner (perhaps from Trinidad?) who wants to know what hyssop is. The music has lapsed into pure recitative-accompanying chords under simple talk. When Minnie informs them that hyssop is a plant that grows in the East, Joe (another miner) asks if that means it does not grow there (i.e. in the Sierras). Minnie tells him that, on the contrary, each of them nurtures a branch of it in his heart. At this point, the music reverts to the original open-fifth theme, made warmer by a fully harmonized accompaniment. This soon reverts to the first unadorned version of the theme as Minnie continues the reading:

Wash me and I shall be white as snow.
Place in my breast a pure heart,
and renew in me the spirit of the elect.

With the last word, the orchestra plays a clear and obvious perfect cadence. Nothing could be more sincere. Now Minnie gives an interpretation of this beautiful text. As she does so, the orchestra plays the very first theme heard in the opera, a mysterious arch of augmented chords which is used by Puccini throughout the opera to depict almost everything connected with the Sierras-their grandeur, their beauty, their harshness, their remoteness, their inexorability, even their power to corrupt the human spirit with their vast and untamed challenges.

This means, men, that there is in this world
no sinner who cannot find a path of redemption.

Then the orchestra and Minnie's voice acquire a warm glow as she enunciates the moral:

Each one of us must learn to preserve in ourselves
the supreme truth of love.

Precisely with this last word, Puccini repeats, in a lush but not ornate orchestration, the sentimental song about love for the old folks at home which Jake, the strolling singer, had sung to the miners with such moving eloquence. This is followed by a cadence phrased in the original form of the Bible theme, neatly tying the scripture passage to the message of forgiveness and love.

In this poignant, musically effective and dramatically moving passage, Puccini shows us exactly what his strengths are. His inspiration creates music, even the simplest kind, which can evoke dramatic elements of any description. He also is able to venture perilously close to maudlin sentimentality where necessary without actually letting his foot slip into it. Then he can show you the truly beautiful and simple truths on which the sentiments are based and which save the music from descending to the level of the maudlin and the mawkish. He does all of this in these lovely and sincere pages of Minnie's first aria.

Minnie's other aria, which occurs at the end of the opera, is much more straightforward in both text and musical material. The textual material is Minnie's plea to the miners to spare Johnson's life on the grounds that he has repented and has been cleansed. The first material is a sinuous curve which rises upward more than an octave in seven notes, then on the eighth falls again to the note on which it began. It is supremely feminine, supremely emotional, supremely direct, supremely sincere-supremely Minnie. It is a sign of Puccini's fecundity that he can create so beautiful a piece of material and lavish it carelessly on just one page of a work. The aria continues in almost recitative fashion, i.e. without a regular motivic tune, but following the declamatory needs of the text until it reaches the point at which Minnie is apparently convinced that her appeal has been successful. Here there are hints of the first theme of the opera, the one made up of augmented chords. When Minnie reminds the miners of the lesson she drew from the Bible reading, the lesson of forgiveness and love, we might expect that we will hear once again the unforgettable music that accompanied the lesson. Puccini surprises us. Instead we hear a theme made up of groups of three notes in a rocking motion, the music which, at the very beginning of the opera, constituted conclusion of the augmented-chord figure. It has the great advantage that it was designed, even in its first appearance on the first page of the opera, to build to a big climax. This is exactly the reason it was chosen for this moment and exactly the use to which it is put here, providing Minnie's aria with a spectacular ending.

While listening to the opera, it might be well to be on the alert for the other passages in Minnie's part which almost qualify for the status of arias. In the first act, there is an arioso immediately after Jack Rance's (the sheriff's) aria. It is dramatically an answer to Rance's aria. In it, Minnie counters his cynical view of love by describing, in quite naive terms, the love that her parents felt for each other. Musically, this passage has the virtue of culminating in a high C.

There are several passages in the grand duet from the first act with Dick Johnson which are also candidates for the honor. Notable is the passage in which Minnie, surprisingly (at least to me), reveals that she considers herself a humble and unworthy girl. Where this idea can have originated we are left to guess-perhaps Dick Johnson purveys such an air of sophistication and cultural polish that Minnie is awed. Another powerful passage is that in which Minnie declares that she would give her life to protect the miners' gold from thieves. This is totally in line with our earlier view of her as a strong, no-nonsense, protective woman, capable of the utmost sacrifice for those she loves.

In the second act, there is an extended passage in which Minnie describes her exciting life of horseback rides through the mountains. It is characterized by a rhythmic vivacity not entirely typical of Puccini. Its power to limn the inner life of the heroine is, however, completely typical. We are not surprised to learn that Minnie, apparently a native of the area, is an outdoors girl who is thrilled deep within her soul by the grandeur and beauty of her natural surroundings, and by the opportunity to experience them. (Perhaps the noticeable vivacity of the music here can be attributed to the fact that Puccini was emotionally in total agreement with Minnie. He disliked urban life and all its trappings, preferring the countryside, even the wilderness, and all its activities.)

Both the sheriff, Jack Rance, and the tenor, Dick Johnson, have effective arias and, like Minnie, arioso passages of some stature as well. Rance's aria in the first act, in which he exposes to Minnie the bitterness and bleakness of his view of love, is one of the best passages in the opera. The music-colored in every beat with an unmistakable ring of truth-is almost unbearably intense and unrelenting, matching the sheriff's emotional profundity as he bares his soul and gazes unflinchingly into it, perhaps for the first time. Johnson has two arias. The first occurs in the second act, after Minnie has discovered that he is the bandit Ramerrez. He explains, to music of an impressive degree of declamatory power, the exact circumstances which forced him to adopt that career. The second aria, in the last act, is a very successful one, quite frequently excerpted by dramatic tenors for recital and concert performances. This is vintage Puccini, a melody full of beauty that fully exploits the scope of the tenor voice (don't forget that it was written for Caruso). It embodies a content which is a complex mix of tenderness, passion, resignation, and even despair, as Johnson appeals to the miners never to tell Minnie that he ended up being hanged, but to let her believe, in fulfillment of the dramatic theme of the opera, that he was redeemed by repentance and forgiveness, and has gone far away to begin a new life.

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