In Giacomo Puccini and His World, an international roster of music specialists, several writing on Puccini for the first time, offers a variety of new critical perspectives on the composer and his works. Containing discussions of all of Puccinis operas from Manon Lescaut (1893) to Turandot (1926), this volume aims to move beyond cliches of the composer as a Romantic epigone and to resituate him at the heart of early twentieth-century musical modernity.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Permissions
• Introduction: Puccini, His World, and Ours - EMANUELE SENICI
• PART I: ESSAYS
• Realism and Skepticism in Puccini's Early Operas - ARMAN SCHWARTZ
• Madama Butterfly Between East and West - ARTHUR GROOS
• Laggiù nel Soledad: Indexing and Archiving the Operatic West - ELLEN LOCKHART
• The Swallow and the Lark: La rondine and Viennese Operetta - MICAELA BARANELLO
• Puccini's Things: Materials and Media in Il trittico - ALESSANDRA CAMPANA AND CHRISTOPHER MORRIS
• Puccini, Fascism, and the Case of Turandot - BEN EARLE
• Music, Language, and Meaning in Opera: Puccini and His Contemporaries - LEON BOTSTEIN
• PART II: DOCUMENTS
• Puccini on His Interpreters - INTRODUCTION, TRANSLATION, AND COMMENTARY BY EMANUELE SENICI
• The Verismo Debate - INTRODUCTION, TRANSLATION, AND COMMENTARY BY ARMAN SCHWARTZ
• Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Modern-Realistic Opera by Hans Merian - INTRODUCTION BY WALTER FRISCH, TRANSLATION AND NOTES BY ELAINE FITZ GIBBON
• Albert Carré's Staging Manual for Madama Butterfly (1906) - INTRODUCTION BY MICHELE GIRARDI, TRANSLATION BY DELIA CASADEI; STAGING MANUAL TRANSLATION BY STEVEN HUEBNER
• Selections from Fausto Torrefranca's Giacomo Puccini and International Opera - INTRODUCTION BY ALEXANDRA WILSON, TRANSLATION BY DELIA CASADEI
• Notes on Contributors