You can’t get very far in a vocal music daily special without featuring the genius of Giacomo Puccini, and that’s what this week is all about on Voices Carry.
But what makes Puccini so good?
Without a doubt, the easiest answer to this question is his unmatched lyricism. Every aria you’ll listen to this week is big, beautiful, unabashedly romantic, and is – perhaps most importantly – instantly memorable. These are melodies that the Germans call ohrwurms (earworm is the literal translation, which, as gross as it sounds, is a great metaphor for how a melody gets stuck in your head!)
There’s another reason Puccini used these super-memorable melodies. He, like Richard Wagner, employed a technique called leitmotif in his operas. These are little musical moments that return each time a character is on stage, so the audience has an almost subconscious connection to each singer.
The other thing that makes Puccini’s operas so amazing is that he allows us, the listeners, to easily imagine ourselves in the lives of his characters. Before Puccini, most operas were based on Gods or mythical creatures. With Puccini, we see fairly normal people falling in love, navigating heartbreak, dealing with illness, facing financial struggles, etc. The opera singers are navigating unbelievable olympic-level tasks, but they are singing about day-to-day life, the same things you and I experience in our own worlds. What’s more relatable than a break-up? Than worrying about money?
La Boheme is an opera which returns again and again to the struggle between art and financial freedom (or lack thereof…) One of the most poignant arias from the show is when Rodolfo begins to fall in love with Mimi, and charmingly explains to her that he has a wealth of words in his poetry, but no money to speak of.
Puccini, not satisfied with one absolutely outstanding aria in the scene, turns around and allows Mimi to introduce herself with this:
Sometimes, Puccini keeps his most tragic characters in the dark about what’s on the horizon, and shows us through the orchestra that we know more, too. Take Cio-Cio San, the title character of Madame Butterfly. In her aria Un bel di vedremo, she sings of her certainty that her lover will return to her and they will be reunited forever. The vocal line is vulnerable and earnest, the text optimistic… but the orchestra? That’s where we hear that all is not well.
Giacomo Puccini wasn’t well-respected during his lifetime. He achieved fame, he achieved wealth, but critics were cold toward his work. They thought he was overly sentimental, that his music lacked intellectualism. A look at any opera theater’s season however makes it clear that Puccini’s heart-on-the-sleeve take on life continues to move audiences even a century later.
Listen to Puccini arias all this week with me on Voices Carry, every weekday at 2pm.
