The Romantic World of Puccini
Researched Bibliographic Dossier
Verified edition data and a musicological research note prepared specifically for this work.
- Title
- The Romantic World of Puccini
- Subtitle
- A New Critical Appraisal of the Operas
- Author
- Iris J. Arnesen
- Publisher
- McFarland & Company
- Place
- Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
- Year
- 2009
- Extent
- 308 pages
- ISBN
- 9780786444823
- Language
- English
- Type
- Opera studies / critical monograph
SCOPE & CONTENT
Arnesen offers a deliberately revisionist reading of Puccini’s operas, treating the composer not as an isolated master of theatrical instinct but as an artist whose dramatic language was shaped by nineteenth-century Romanticism, French and Italian theatrical traditions, and the continuing prestige of Wagner. The book moves opera by opera from Le Villi and Manon Lescaut through La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly to the later works, asking how recurring dramatic situations, musical symbols and patterns of characterization form a coherent artistic world. Particular attention is given to the interaction between libretto, musical motive, orchestral colour and stage action.
RESEARCH VALUE
Its research value lies less in being a neutral handbook than in making a sustained interpretive case. Arnesen groups several works through recurring romantic and symbolic ideas, discusses Wagnerian influence without reducing Puccini to imitation, and gives the less frequently discussed operas a place within the same developmental narrative. The study is useful for readers interested in dramaturgy, thematic association and Puccini reception, while individual analytical claims are best compared with modern source studies and critical editions.
STRUCTURE AND REPERTOIRE
The monograph combines introductory chapters on genre and Puccini’s cultural inheritance with individual studies of the operas. Its sequence encompasses Le Villi, Manon Lescaut, La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West, La Rondine, Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Turandot. This breadth allows early, central and late repertory to be compared rather than treating the canonical trio of Bohème, Tosca and Butterfly as the whole story.
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL POSITION
The book belongs to the modern reassessment of Puccini that moved beyond older accusations of sentimentality or commercial theatricality. It is particularly revealing as a document of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Puccini criticism, when scholars increasingly examined compositional technique, intertextuality, theatrical semiotics and the relation of Italian opera to European modernism.
- Format
- File size
- 1.3 MB
- Subjects / people
- Books & Essays · Composers · Works & Analysis · Giacomo Puccini · Critical Studies · Essays & Reception · Opera & Music Drama
- Catalogue completeness
- 9 / 10 core bibliographic fields