Puccini's favourite opera in Bologna: Minnie was the star of the evening
Italian soprano, Carmen Giannattasio, embodied Minnie’s swaggering authority.
When the first chords of Puccini’s opera set in the Californian gold rush – La fanciulla del West – rang out in Bologna you could be forgiven for thinking you had turned up at a Broadway musical. Drum roll, moody descending chords, then a blaze of lush violins in exciting, rising five-note phrases reaching an explosion of sound.
Then, hang on! Puccini’s stolen Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Music of the Night song from his 1986 musical Phantom of the Opera. What a cheek! But of course, it’s the other way round.
The Lloyd Webber song is so engrained in the psyche that the head spins. This is music as grand larceny, on a Baroque scale. When composers regularly filched each other’s works. Less easy to steal a tune from Philip Glass.
On Wednesday, November 16th, 1910, the most famous Italian composer in the world came to America for the first time. He descended the gangplank of the SS George Washington to the shores of New York and was mobbed by adoring fans.
He was in town for the world premiere of his second ‘American’ opera. Based on a David Belasco play, Il fanciulla del West was essentially a wild west story of hard-drinking mining men, Mexican bandits, and a saloon owner called Minnie with a heart of gold, the miners couldn’t get their picks into.
It was to become the template for American TV black and white westerns of the 1950’s. Bonanza and The High Chaparral spring to mind. They share La fanciulla’s DNA. Rootin’ tootin’ cowgirl who rules the menfolk. Long before women’s lib. The second Belasco play was about Americans but set in Japan. It was, of course, Madama Butterfly.
At the Metropolitan Opera House, then at 39th Street and Broadway, a packed house replete with Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, Astors, with the J.P. Morgans seated plumb centre in Box 35, the audience unleashed a chorus of approval for Puccini’s latest work.
Perhaps above all it marked the coming of age of American opera. The small detail that it had been written by an Italian composer could be overlooked. This was an American opera, set in America, with its moral roots and all its contradictions, planted deep in American soil.
An opportunity to see Puccini’s favourite opera – he claimed it was his best, which it isn’t - played in the heart of Italy, Bologna, was irresistible. Not least because I wondered what an Italian audience more attuned to Tosca jumping off the Castel St Angelo in familiar Rome, would make of Minnie the gun-toting saloon owner.
I was looking forward to my visit to the 1763 Teatro Communale in the heart of historic Bologna. Oops! Undergoing elements of refurbishment. We were re-housed in the Comunale Nouveau. In the boondocks of the Fiera area. My worst disappointment since attending Idomeneo in an industrial warehouse in Cologne.
An auditorium with all its air conditioning ducting on show, pale-green, unflattering, cushioned seating that deadened sound, was not inspiring. Still, the Teatro put its best foot forward. They’re not to blame for the seemingly endless delays caused by the contractors.
The scenery was courtesy of Gary McCann, the Northern Irish set designer currently based in Brighton. Making the most of a wide stage, the set was elegantly traditional, saloon in Act 1, Minnie’s Airbnb in Act II, and a cleverly equivocal modernistic set in Act III that accommodated all the settings required without interrupting the flow of the action.
McCann created atmosphere. We were in California. No mean feat as backstage conditions were probably not ideal.
Director, Paul Curran, a fellow Glaswegian whose first outing to the opera was a Scottish Opera Wozzeck in 1980, has built an impressive international career. La fanciulla is difficult to stage as the extensive chorus almost all have distinctive roles. Keeping the action flowing while bringing forward the “miner of the momeny” is quite an accomplishment.
So, what happens? In ACT I, we are in a miner’s camp in California circa 1849–50. At sunset at the Polka Saloon, Nick, the bartender, is setting them up. It’s clear from the get-go that mining has its psychological hazards. Jake Wallace, a traveling minstrel, sings a sentimental song that causes Jim Larkens to break down in tears. He wants to go home to his beloved sister. Bizarrely, to Cornwall. The men collect money for his passage back home.
Soon becomes apparent that everyone’s in love with Minnie. Trin and Sonora both bribe Nick to help them win her over. Nick is onto a good thing.
Sid is caught cheating at cards, and Jack Rance, the camp’s cynical sheriff, makes him an outcast. A Wells Fargo agent, Ashby arrives with news of the imminent capture of the Mexican bandit Ramerrez and his band.
An argument breaks out between Rance and Sonora, each claiming Minnie will be his wife. No-one’s asked Minnie. Things almost get out of hand. Then Minnie makes her grand entrance. And this is where the plot, until now hanging on to a semblance of credibility, launches from a precipice and takes a tumble into absurdity.
The men calm down and sit to listen to Minnie’s bible teaching. She’s a teacher with a Colt 45, making her way through the Old Testament and has only reached Ezekiel. What do I know? Possibly hard-bitten Californian miners were clamoring to learn about Ezekiel.
Later, alone with her, Rance confesses his love to Minnie. But she is not interested and, recalling her happy childhood, gives the sheriff the brush off.
A stranger appears in the bar, introducing himself as Dick Johnson from Sacramento. Minnie recognizes him as a man she once met on the road. The jealous Rance orders Johnson to leave town, but when Minnie declares that she knows him, the others welcome Johnson. If Minnie trusts him, that’ll do.
As he and Minnie perform an impromptu waltz, the miners drag in a man named Castro, one of Ramerrez’s band. Castro pretends that he will lead them to their hideout. He then whispers to Johnson - who is in fact Ramerrez - that he let himself be captured to lure the miners away from the saloon, so Johnson could rob it.
The men depart with Castro, and Minnie and Johnson are left alone. She tells him about her simple life and that she is still waiting for her first kiss, an odd admission for a simple soul to make to a stranger.
When she shows him the hiding place where the miners keep their gold, he replies that as long as he is nearby, nobody will harm her or touch the gold. Ramerrez/Johnson, we are asked to believe, is reformed by Minnie’s goodness. Nothing to do with “never being kissed”. She shyly invites him to visit her in her cabin later that evening.
Act II is set in Minnie’s cabin in the mountains. An Indian woman, Wowkle, sings a lullaby to her baby and bickers with the child’s father, Billy Jackrabbit. Minnie arrives and excitedly prepares for her meeting with Johnson.
Alone with him - you’re ahead of me - she gives in to his declarations of love and they kiss. Johnson, full of doubt as to how to fess up about his true identity, is about to leave, but she asks him to stay for the night as it has begun to snow.
When several shots are heard, Johnson hides in the closet. Rance appears with some of the men and tells Minnie that they are concerned for her safety. They have discovered that Johnson is Ramerrez. Minnie claims to know nothing and the men leave.
She then angrily confronts Johnson, who makes excuses about his past, the mother, father, sister hardship trope, and declares that when he met her, he decided to give up his former life. Deeply hurt, Minnie sends him away.
Another shot rings out. Johnson, wounded, staggers back into the cabin and Minnie hides him in the attic. Rance returns, certain he has found his man, and demands to search the room. Minnie refuses and the sheriff is about to give up when a drop of blood falls on his hand from above. Johnson is forced to surrender, but Minnie has an idea.
She challenges Rance to a game of poker. If he defeats her, she will give herself to him. If he loses, Johnson goes free. Minnie cheats in the most blatant way, and wins. Rance leaves.
Act III finds Johnson, nursed back to health by Minnie, again on the run from Rance and his men. He is eventually captured in the forest.
As the miners prepare to hang him, Johnson asks for one last mercy: that Minnie believe him free and far away. Rance is enraged, but the men hesitate. They are having a moral crisis. The noose is about to tighten.
When Minnie rides in, wielding a pistol. Her pleas to spare Johnson prove fruitless, then she reminds the men how much they owe her. Ezekiel comes into his own.
The miners shrug, say “fair enough” and release Johnson. He and Minnie walk away to start a new life together, never to return to California. Pure hokum.
And shorn of much of the explanatory detail of the Belasco play. At least Puccini’s fixation with tubercular heroines seems to have found a cure in the pure Californian air!
Maestro Riccardo Frizza set a lively pace and the orchestra Coro e Tecnici del Teatro Comunale do Bologna seemed excellent, but they were struggling under the burden of those acoustics.
Standout principals. Minnie, Carmen Giannattasio, Italian soprano has twenty years of experience on the international stage. And it shone through. She was the star of the evening, embodying Minnie’s swaggering authority and with a voice certain and true.
Angelo Villari, an Italian tenor, who as Dick Johnson, was uncertain at the start but warmed up considerably, in time for the only aria worth speaking of, Ch’ella mi creda, when he’s about to be hung and pleads to “let her believe” he has suffered a different fate.
Puccini by then had mostly ceased the long-established practice of stand-alone arias and opted for flow of sound. When Ch’ella mi creda strikes up the world stands still. Worth turning up for that moment.
Jack Rance, the cynical – and often threateningly abusive - sheriff is sung by Claudio Sgura, a suitably dark Italian baritone, who towered menacingly over proceedings. Highly satisfactory person to hate, especially during his poker game for Minnie.
The audience was receptive, not ecstatic. They seemed to all know each other. Difficult crowd to place if you had dropped in from outer space. A complete mix reflecting the 150 nationalities that make up the city’s 400,000 population. With its very own silk road – they bypassed the Chinese as early as the 15th century – Bologna is the crossroads of Italy.
Minnie’s voice of tolerance and generous spirit won the day. Persuading even rough tough miners to see the best in each other. I wonder what became of her, post California? Too bad she isn’t standing for election anywhere, anytime soon.