Girl of the Golden West: Chicago Lyric Opera
Deborah Voigt and Marco Vratogna Star
By: Susan Hall - Feb 15, 2011
Girl of the Golden West
by Giacomo Puccini
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Conducted by Sir Andrew Davis
Original production staged by Harold Prince
Minnie Deborah Voight
Dick Roy Cornelius Smith
Jack Rance Marco Vratogna
Sonora Daniel Sutin
Stage Director Vincnt Liotta
Set Eugene Lee Franne Lee
New scenery and costumes Scott Marr
Lighting Jason Brown
Chorus Master Donald Nally
Photos courtesy Lyric Opera of Chicago
Continues February 18 and 21
The Girl of the Golden West often sounds like a film, and the plot is spaghetti western opera. It is wonderful in its current production at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
"In 1908 Puccini is composing La Fanciulla del West. In front of his villa in Torre del Lago, the "Chalet da Emilio" looms above the water - it is a refuge built on piles used by fishermen and poachers. Behind the counter the beautiful Giulia is serving wine and smiles. The Maestro has become a frequent visitor to these premises - he drinks a glass of wine, plays a game of cards, smokes a cigarette and then goes back to his music. Giulia is Doria Manfredi's cousin, a young maid in Puccini's home…and so on." So goes this film about Puccini presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2008.
Deborah Voigt as Minnie “The Girl” is a spunky bartender in a spot like 'Chalet da Emilio' but located in a Western mining town where she is the only female resident. The men respect her, partly because she is forthright, and partly because she packs a mean, accurate pistol. Only the sheriff, Jack Rance, is so smitten that he loses his Scarpia-like swagger. His confidence melts in her presence, so he has to take "Nope" for an answer.
Marco Vratogna, an Italian baritone, steals the show as Rance. He sings in a bold, strong voice as he develops a rounded character. He is dressed not like Sheriff Will Kane in High Noon, but like the Roman chief of police.
Puccini typically whitewashes lovers and blackens the villains. But Rance is truly smitten with Minnie and Scarpia clearly only wants to dominate a resistant Tosca.
Is this Puccini’s Western Tosca? You do hear some echoes of his earlier opera. Scenes like blood dripping from the ceiling and the poker game evoke Scarpia's boudoir.
Singing the role of Ramerrez alias ‘Dick Johnson,’ Roy Cornelius Smith (in for Marcello Giordani) comported himself well, especially in the top registers.
The stage is chock a block full of miners and has the energy and excitement of a Broadway musical, perhaps because the staging is based on the original by Harold Prince. Donald Nally has his men's chorus singing together, but acting as impulsive individuals to give variety.
The premier of Fanciulla at the Metropolitan Opera was thrilling. Toscanini conducted. The composer himself was in the audience and received a reported 13 curtain calls after the first act and over 50 after the last. This was the first world premier to be staged by the Met. It was so successful that the old house doubled ticket prices for the next day.
At the time Puccini composed “The Girl” Wagner's music became the standard by which all other music was judged. As Puccini spread his wings and the works were being produced abroad, he was thought to be un-Italian. The Girl’s premier in New York did not help matters on the home front.
While the American and Italian national flags fluttered side by side at the premier, the work was attacked as an unsatisfactory hybrid and, for whatever reason, has not appeared often in the repertory. Voight's assumption of the title role in San Francisco, New York and Chicago helped revive the opera for its 100th anniversary this season.
The orchestra drives the opera. While some critics at the time noted Puccini's interest in modern music, others thought the work contaminated. Yes, we hear Debussy, and as Idea Nazionale reported, "a rather tedious medley of Viennese operetta with a dash of Wagner and authentic North American film." Critic Torrefranca said it was 'Esperanta like."
Just sit back for the ride. Fascinating the mickey-mousing before there was mickey mousing in film. Action is driven by musical themes. Some recent critics have even heard the musical equivalent of film cuts and dissolves. Puccini was thinking like a filmmaker as he set the stage for Fanciulla, his Girl.
Critics noted that "the crucial quality of Italian lyricism is missing", but this is simply not so. There are lovely arias and duets on stage. They do not dominate. The orchestra does.
Sir Andrew Davis brought the many threads of music together with authority and beauty. He makes it clear that the score is not a collage of music past, present and future, but an orchestration carefully constructed with references, which are integrated. This Puccini under Davis' baton builds large blocks from spaced out repetitions of a single motif.
A swaying, yearning theme which opens the opera is echoed in Nick's Act I line "Certo: ho capito", during Larken's breakdown and in Minnie's Bible scene. The descending whole tone scale is irresolute, strange and unpredictable. This phrase and others are used as musical markers in a fast-moving work.
Arias in the opera are shorter than Puccini's previous creations, but arias they are. Caruso had asked to record "Ch'ella mi creda," and the publisher refused. Too bad, because with that rendition up on YouTube people would be less quick to dismiss the music as unmemorable.
Critics began to divide music between good and popular. That Puccini was popular does not make him bad. (Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber had to pay the Puccini estate for music he plagiarized).
It is fun listening to the opera at the Lyric today. Minnie is no victim. She is in charge of her life and asks poignantly in Act III, what she would have made of herself had she been educated. Still she runs a saloon and gets along in the Wild West where, as far as we can see, she is the only woman.
Of course she falls in love with a bandit, but one who's looking for redemption. Minnie knows a lot about redemption because she teaches a Bible class. Puccini wrote this scene himself. In a letter to his publisher, he insists "that the class di asen (Donkey's Class, the phrase is Milanese and the title of a comedy in dialect) must remain."
Puccini did not like his librettists' ending, and put his 'brain through a ringer' to come up with a theme to fit. Given his taste for westerns and crypto-religious entertainments, 'redemption' does not surprise.
The exodus of Dick and Minnie from town is more like Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden than a "lived happily ever after" scene. We sense the gun-toting, Bible-quoting, booze-slinging, card-cheating, unkissed saloon keeper will survive.
The Lyric production suggests that Puccini's hopes for Fanciulla may be realized in the 21st century. "The Girl promises to become a second Boheme, but stronger, bolder and more spacious," he wrote.
Anton Webern, Jack Zimmerman of the Lyric points out, enjoyed the opera very much. In a letter to Schoenberg he noted, "a score with an original sound throughout, splendid, every bar a surprise...Not a trace of kitsch...Am I wrong?"
No, he was not. Go and enjoy.
The Canadian encore of the Metropolitan Opera's HD production of this opera is scheduled for Saturday, February 19