Giacomo Puccini's La Fanciulla del West

(Credit: Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera)

I made it to La Fanciulla del West today.

What a show. 

A lot of suspension of disbelief.

 An Italian libretto based on a play by an America author, music by an Italian composer with a story about the American West.

I read the synopsis of the play early in the morning, since I wanted to find out, at the very least, the names of the characters.  And a couple of days ago I googled to find a few of the best known arias and listened to them. So I felt familiar with the baritone’s famous song in the last act.

Ahead of time,  I also learned that Andrew Lloyd Webber used a musical phrase from this opera in “The Music of the Night” from The Phantom of the Opera – enough of the music that the Puccini estate sued Lloyd Webber over and an out of court settlement was made. The phrases are pretty apparent.

“Whoops,” I thought, “have we just slipped into Phantom?”, when I heard them.

The interviews at the intervals featured Eva-Maria Westbroek, Jonas Kaufmann and Ziljko Lucic, as well as the bartender, the Wells Fargo agent and some of the other cowboys. There was a charming interview with the fight director who taught us how to both act and direct fighting as two separate occupations in the same man.

When the conductor, Marco Armiliato, was interviewed and asked if it were true that he doesn’t use a score, that it is all in his head, he seemed to be totally modest about the fact, saying, well, it is true, but it gives him a chance to watch the singers and the orchestra to see if there is anything he can do to help them out.

 Just charming.

Puccini’s most famous works are Tosca, La Boheme, Turandot, Madame Butterfly and Manon Lescaut. Probably one or two of the above are familiar to most people.

The music of La Fanciulla del West is rich in the same symphonic textures and colours. Look for it when it comes as an Encore (Jan 5, 7, 9 and 20, 2019).

I wanted to say something about the costuming. Seeing so may men in the cowboy costumes was spectacular. Every cowboy stereotype seemed to be represented on stage: moustaches, beards, side burns, hats, shirts, vests, I have no idea where such an assortment of costumes came from. The obvious answer is from the costuming department. Faultless.  But this was more than just the costuming.  They seemed to have gathered in the stereotypes from every B-Western movie from the '50's.

The scene where Minnie plays Sherrif Rance a game of poker is so intimate. In the interval we see how that scene was set up, which in retrospect made what happened there while the singing was going on, even more interesting.

I walked the halls of the theatre during
the intermission, stopping only for this selfie.
Still I didn't get in my 10,000 steps today.

Minnie’s costuming was only a suede cowgirl outfit, and then a scene where she was in a flowing flannel nightgown, if flannel can flow.  Which it didn't.

The female character is an enigma: she reads the Bible to her customers at the salong, she holds back a lynching crowd with her gun, she runs the Polka Saloon with only the help of her bar tender, she guards the money that is to go to the bank, she has never been kissed, she lives in a cabin in the hills with two servants, she saves her man from being lyncjed, and she convinces the cowboys to all lay down their arms. A pretty big task for one women, but hey, it is just an opera.

One last word about the people who change the sets. At the first interval, did you see one of the workers fall from the top to the bottom of a porch with a big thud?

I was wondering if he were going to be on his way to a hospital, since that fall came with flailing arms and legs.

For a review that can't say enough good about the tenor, go see this review in OperaWire.

Arta