Puccini: His International Art. (Books).

Puccini: His International Art by Michele Girardi; trans. Laura Basini University of Chicago Press, 530 pp. $65

The Puccini bookshelf has not lacked for distinguished entries in recent years -- one thinks of William Weaver and Simonetta Puccini's The Puccini Companion or William Ashbrook and Harold Powers's Puccini's "Turandot" The End of the Great Tradition. But Mosco Carner's Puccini: A Critical Biography, first published nearly half a century ago, has generally remained the starting point for English-language readers. Carner's work, highlighting the "refined cruelty" of the "grinding-down process" Puccini inflicts on his female characters, was in many ways ahead of its time. Still, its psychological approach, which imputes the composer's use of harmony, for example, to "the rise and fall of [his] inner tension," is now dated. Many of Carner's conclusions seem questionable, too: e.g., that Puccini's limitations vis-a-vis Verdi can be explained by the former's neuroses and lack of a "fully integrated personality." (Whatever one's views on the overall validity of Carner's methodology, there is no doubt that recent scholarship, in particular Mary Jane Phillips-Matz's biography, has demolished the image of Verdi as a wholesome, uncomplicated rustic.)

Indeed, one of the pleasures of Michele Girardi's Puccini: His International Art is the author's skill in upsetting the Verdi--Puccini binary so clear to opera historians. Girardi brings to light many an intriguing parallel ...