# Puccini Fans



## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

You just can't leave out Puccini! Your favorite scene or moment.

Mine is the Poker Scene in _Fanciulla del West_


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

Thinking of what hits best live in the opera house, nina's choice is certainly a good one.

I'm going to choose one where everthing falls silent amidst the turmoil of the *Tosca* and Scarpia scene, waiting for... *Vissi d'arte*.


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## Diminuendo (May 5, 2015)

I tried to think of one, but there are so many that choosing is very difficult. Well perhaps the Tosca act two murder scene from the Callas 1964 filmed performance.


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## DonAlfonso (Oct 4, 2014)

Vogliatemi bene from Butterfly. As soon as I hear that violin play the first few bars I melt.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Having just listened to the Callas *Madama Butterfly*, I'd have to say from Butterfly's re-entry into the final act to the end. Particularly in this recording, it's one of the most shatteringly moving 20 minutes I've ever come across. I defy anyone to listen without shedding a tear.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

"In Questa Reggia" to the end of the act in Turandot.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Dame Joan Sutherland : "In Questa Reggia "


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

So many fine moments...

Everything from Ch'ella mi creda to the end of the Fanciulla. Brilliant writing, most likely Puccini's best.


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

There are so many . . . But I always find the scene in _Madama Butterfly_ where Sharpless reads (or tries to read) Pinkerton's letter to Butterfly absolutely heartbreaking.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

The second act of Madama Butterfly


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

The lve duet in Butterfly. Pity we know Pinkerton doesn't mean it!


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Rodolfo and Mimi meet in _La Bohème_:


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Che tua madre from Butterfly (I must get the Callas set out and give it a listen).

N.


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

One of the greatest moments in opera:


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## graziesignore (Mar 13, 2015)

Michele and Giorgetta's duet near the end of Il Tabarro is literally the only opera scene that has ever actually made me cry. Beautiful, sad and bitterly realistic... I also love how their conversation just trails off the way real "long talks" do at night.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

If Callas and Gobbi are performing it, the second act of _Tosca._ If not, then the poker scene from _Fanciulla,_ or maybe _Il __Tabarro._ What a murder!

I like my Puccini rugged.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

nina foresti said:


> You just can't leave out Puccini! Your favorite scene or moment.
> 
> Mine is the Poker Scene in _Fanciulla del West_


The whole _Turandot_ or at least up to where Puccini left off incomplete. _Turandot_ was his best opera.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

HumphreyAppleby said:


> One of the greatest moments in opera:


Sublime performance also. :tiphat:


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

I’m unsure about Puccini, to me he’s like a Chocolate éclair. You know it’s manufactured and not wholesome, but while you’re consuming it you forget everything else. Every so often I just succumb.


30 years ago I had a ticket in the gods at the Palais Garnier. I doubt I’ve ever been so transfixed by sheer beauty in music as I was during the humming chorus that night.


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## anmhe (Feb 10, 2015)

La Fanciulla deal West is my favorite, too. Perhaps it's just that it's not as over-referenced in popular culture, but I really love this work.

No, I know what it is. The music subverts my expectations for the setting and keeps me engaged the whole time.


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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

I love Suor Angelica. I know it's not a popular one in general standards, but I don't care. I adore those lovely singing nuns. The brevity is actually nice because it's one of the few operas I can listen to straight through in one shot. And Senza Mama...I heard this aria just months after becoming a mother. It's gorgeous and packs a lot of emotional impact for me.


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

Belowpar said:


> I'm unsure about Puccini, to me he's like a Chocolate éclair. You know it's manufactured and not wholesome, but while you're consuming it you forget everything else. Every so often I just succumb.


Hogwash. In what sense are his works "manufactured" that those of other composers aren't? I've often heard something like that said, but I've never seen evidence given for it other than personal opinion of the sort that critics give that goes, I think it, and I have good taste, therefore etc.



> I doubt I've ever been so transfixed by sheer beauty in music as I was during the humming chorus that night.


What could possibly be more wholesome?


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

Pugg said:


> Sublime performance also. :tiphat:


Isn't it? That film is my favorite opera film, and has to be one of the greatest vocal performances on record.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

HumphreyAppleby said:


> One of the greatest moments in opera:


Puccini a la Ponelle. Heartbreaking! No wonder Domingo runs through the wall!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Belowpar said:


> I'm unsure about Puccini, to me he's like a Chocolate éclair. You know it's manufactured and not wholesome, but while you're consuming it you forget everything else. Every so often I just succumb.
> 
> 30 years ago I had a ticket in the gods at the Palais Garnier. I doubt I've ever been so transfixed by sheer beauty in music as I was during the humming chorus that night.


Can't see this point at all. All music is 'manufactured' in the composer's mnd.


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

DavidA said:


> Puccini a la Ponelle. Heartbreaking! No wonder Domingo runs through the wall!


The background of crows just seems so right. It gives the suicide the right atmosphere: something from a Greek tragedy by Euripides or Sophocles. That's the stature of character that Butterfly is, after all.


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## Dongiovanni (Jul 30, 2012)

Very much under the influence of Boheme now.... Act 3, Mimi breaks up with Rodolfo and sings 'Donde lieta usci'. Very touching indeed, and the inevitable is yet to come.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Corelli/Calaf (tenderly): "Il mio nome non sa, dimmi il mio nome. Dimmi il mio nome, prima dell'alba, e all'alba morirò (diminuendo on "morirò").


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Puccini a la Ponelle. Heartbreaking! No wonder Domingo runs through the wall!


Too bad Ponelle missed the fact that Sorrow is blond.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Personally I love all those composers dismissed as "decadent" or "kitsch" by those Modernists who prefer rigorous Puritanism: Puccini, Richard Strauss, Korngold, Rachmaninoff, Offenbach, Johann Strauss II, Lehar, etc... 

I also like éclairs. :devil:


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## graziesignore (Mar 13, 2015)

I think I understand Belowpar's chocolate eclair analogy, though. It's not as if Puccini operas are very sophisticated dramatically. They seem to me to be more influenced by Impressionism than anything else (remember, Impressionists were also derided for painting non-heroic subject matter, which I suppose corresponds to verismo in opera). Puccini is splashes of paint on a canvas depicting (mostly) "realistic" scenes, but it's not empty feelings.


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## jflatter (Mar 31, 2010)

Up to a year or so ago I always respected Puccini but did not love him. Tosca was the first opera I loved and still do but I wasn't sure about the rest of his work. Then I saw Turandot conducted by Luisotti and then it finally clicked. I have since feasted on many recordings plus I saw a brilliant La Bohème a couple of weeks ago. 

I really think that Turandot is a horrible story but has wonderful music and is certainly influenced by Strauss and others.


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

I would agree that Puccini isn't dramatically sophisticated if we understand dramatic sophistication to be complex plotting. This is certainly absent in Puccini's work. But I don't actually think that means that there isn't sophistication to his dramas. Take Butterfly. The characterization of Butterfly, both textual and musical, is sophisticated, and there is foreshadowing (Un bel di is simply a long and perverse prophecy of what's going to happen at the end of the opera), symbolism (deflowering the garden, anyone?), beautiful poetry (in particular, her line "Noi siamo una gente avezza alle piccole cose/umile e silenziose/ad una tenerezza sfiorante eppur profonda come il cielo/come l'onda del mare" has to be one of the most beautiful lines of poetry in any opera libretto), characterization (it is discussed quite frequently in the literature on Puccini that the love duet, beyond simply being impossibly gorgeous, does a superb job of showing the contrasting intentions of Butterfly and Pinkerton through text, dynamics, melody, orchestration etc.), mirroring (Butterfly dies a little death at the end of act one that is a lie, and a big death at the end of act two that is brutally honest, each death and act ending with an unresolved chord (the sixth in both cases) etc. These standard devices of literature are employed by Puccini in many of his operas, as are plenty of highly original ones (the use of so many objects endowed with life and melody or the mock heroic phrases of characterization in _La boheme_, the meta-theatre and in _La rondine_, the modern twist of the _Commedia_ in _Il trittico_ etc.). On top of all of this, _Butterfly _ uses leitmotivic development and Puccini's standard network of melodic references, forming connections between seemingly disparate moments in the opera. And in all his operas there are brilliant musical devices that comment on or express the drama and its themes (the barge noise, out of tune organ grinder, schizophrenic phrasing of La frugola's cat-lady rantings, tone clusters musically suggesting the lines "Domeniche chiassose", and bitonality depicting Michele's seething anger and the two lovers' ecstasy at "Bocca di rosa fresca" in _Il tabarro_, the use of out-of-time waltzes to suggest memory and nostalgia in _La rondine_, the joke on the Rhinemaidens and the Queen of the night's maidens that is the trio "Spogliate bambolino"). Puccini was quite sophisticated musically and dramatically. Unfortunately, directors and conductors often don't know that these nuances are in the operas, and so they can be easily missed in performance. Puccini's operas originally became successful when he oversaw their production.


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

There a so many special moments for me but...

"Quale occhio al mondo mai puo star di paro 
al limpido ed ardente occhio tuo nero"

Act one of Tosca....What a smooth taking git! so well recovered, so Italian..

The Quartet act three Of Boheme...comes second. One couple making up one couple breaking up! Gets me every time, but then Im a mess thoughout the whole opera!


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Giacomo Puccini (Lucca, *22 December 1858* - Brussel, 29 November 1924),


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## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

Tosca used to be my no.1 favourite for a long time (thanks to Callas and Gobbi, I grew up on the De Sabata recording). I kind of drifted away from Puccini in the last decade but I still love him. His characters feel like actual people as opposed to Operatic Heroes, and the stories are quite well-crafted (no "whoops wrong baby in the fire" shenanigans).

Still need to properly watch Il trittico sometime, I have only seen Il tabarro once.


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## Taplow (Aug 13, 2017)

_Olà Pang! Olà Pong!_ … the entire first half of act 2 of Turandot, up to _In questa reggia_. So thoroughly enjoyable, I get all weepy and goosebumpy!

Also love a good poker scene. Damned Australians!!


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

nina foresti said:


> You just can't leave out Puccini! Your favorite scene or moment.
> 
> Mine is *the Poker Scene in Fanciulla del West*


That one, and two from Tosca:

When Tosca stabs Scarpia and when she jumps from the parapet wall saying, "Scarpia, we will meet before God."


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Let us not forget a non-Puccini spine-chilling last 5 minutes of "Dialogues des Carmelites." (Shudder!!!)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Fritz Kobus said:


> That one, and two from Tosca:
> 
> When Tosca stabs Scarpia and when she jumps from the parapet wall saying, "Scarpia, we will meet before God."


It's even better when she hits the trampoline and bounces back into view.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Rogerx said:


> Giacomo Puccini (Lucca, *22 December 1858* - Brussel, 29 November 1924),


Echoing Toscanini in another context: "To Puccini the composer I take my hat off; to Puccini the man I put it back on again!"


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

The Finale of Fanciulla Act III - you cry from feeling so happy and heartbroken at the same time
Te Deum from Tosca Act I
Finale of La Rondine Act II
The whole romantic scene of La Boheme Act I
Finale of Suor Angelica
The whole Act II of Turandot
..and everything inbetween.

I wasn't impressed with Edgar but most everything Puccini wrote is pure gold, including Le Villi and La Rondine of course.

Aaand.... Short. Simple. Fiendishly difficult.
Not for Callas.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Echoing Toscanini in another context: "To Puccini the composer I take my hat off; to Puccini the man I put it back on again!"


To Toscanini the conductor I take my hat off; to Toscanini the man...


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