Belasco & Puccini
This is an excerpt from the paper...
When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California in the mid-1800s, a sudden tide of adventurous miners headed for the West coast. Survival in California during these frontier days demanded industry, moral fiber, and depth of character. Great sums of money, the possibility of instant riches, saloons with poker, drink, and gunfights, and only a few attractive women made such an existence perfectly suited for melodrama. The myths spawned by tales of gold miners, saloon girls, and gunfights did not escape the attention of theater impresario David Belasco. Belasco had written Madame Butterfly in 1900, a play that inspired Puccini to compose his opera of the same name. Belasco was known for his innovative stage techniques, large crowd scenes, and his drive to bring more realism to the stage. Almost single-handedly he reinvigorated melodrama through these devices and with his production of The Girl of the Golden West in 1905, he firmly established the Western as a form of drama. Like Madame Butterfly, Puccini would also compose an opera based on The Girl of the Golden West, known as La Fanciulla del West in Italian. Belasco’s play revolves around the exploits of two characters that show the industry, moral fiber, and depth of character needed to survive existence on the California gold fields. Even though the “girl” is a saloon keeper and the “stranger” is a desperado, they still exhibit these q
. . .
This is required because of opera’s extended vocalizations and musical interludes that make it a basically slow-moving vehicle. The material must be condensed as in this case or the final curtain would fall before the story was told in its entirety. Yet, opera’s reduction of material is counterbalanced by the fact that mood-setting in opera will not work to demonstrate the emotions of characters. For example, it is not enough for a hero or heroine to his express his or her grief or joy in abstract terms. The causes of the emotions and rationale for character behavior have got to be clearly drawn that mandates details of the plot are made specific.
In Puccini’s opera we see such specific plot details to show emotions and rationale for character behavior. For example, at the end of Act I when the bandit masquerading as Johnson agrees to come to Minnie’s place for dinner, the bandit whistles to Johnson who does not return the whistle and instead tells Minnie that she has “the face of an angel”. Later that evening at the end of Act II, Minnie pretends to have a fainting spell in order to cheat at a game of poker whose stakes involve the life of Ramerez. The melodrama is heightened in the opera when it comes to the near-deat
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
La Fanciulla, Golden West, Fanciulla Puccinis, II Minnie, Placido Domingos, BODY Belascos, Yeah Minnie, Survival California, Minnie Ramerez, Madame Butterfly, girl golden, golden west, girl golden west, la fanciulla del, la fanciulla, del west, fanciulla del, fanciulla del west, play opera, puccini compose, belascos play, emotions rationale character, rationale character behavior, madame butterfly, compose opera,
Approximate Word count = 1444
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
