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{en} Arman Schwartz & Emanuele Senici, eds. Giacomo Puccini and His World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.

"Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) is the world's most frequently performed operatic composer, yet he is only beginning to receive serious scholarly attention. In Giacomo Puccini and His World, an international roster of music specialists, several writing on Puccini for the first time, offers a variety of new critical perspectives on the composer and his works. Containing discussions of all of Puccini's operas from Manon Lescaut (1893) to Turandot (1926), this volume aims to move beyond clichés of the composer as a Romantic epigone and to re-situate him at the heart of early twentieth-century musical modernity. This collection's essays explore Puccini's engagement with spoken theater and operetta, and with new technologies like photography and cinema. Other essays consider the philosophical problems raised by "realist" opera, discuss the composer's place in a variety of cosmopolitan formations, and reevaluate Puccini's orientalism and his complex interactions with the Italian fascist state. A rich array of primary source material, including previously unpublished letters and documents, provides vital information on Puccini's interactions with singers, conductors, and stage directors, and on the early reception of the verismo movement. Excerpts from Fausto Torrefranca's notorious "Giacomo Puccini and International Opera", perhaps the most vicious diatribe ever directed against the composer, appear here in English for the first time"--

<Contents> Introduction: Puccini, his world, and ours / Emanuele Senici -- part 1. Essays. Realism and skepticism in Puccini's early operas / Arman Schwartz -- Madama Butterfly between east and west / Arthur Groos -- Laggiù nel Soledad: indexing and archiving the operatic west / Ellen Lockhart -- The swallow and the lark: La rondine and Viennese operetta / Micaela Baranello -- Puccini's things: materials and media in Il trittico / Alessandra Campana and Christopher Morris -- Puccini, fascism, and the case of Turandot / Ben Earle -- Music, language, and meaning in opera: Puccini and his contemporaries / Leon Botstein -- part 2. Documents. Puccini on his interpreters / introduction, translation, and commentary by Emanuele Senici -- The Verismo debate / introduction, translation, and commentary by Arman Schwartz -- Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and modern-realistic opera / by Hans Merian ; introduction by Walter Frisch, translation and notes by Elaine Fitz Gibbon -- Albert Carré's staging manual for Madama Butterfly (1906) / introduction by Michele Girardi, translation by Delia Casadei; staging manual translation by Steven Huebner -- Selections from Fausto Torrefranca's Giacomo Puccini and international opera / introduction by Alexandra Wilson, translation by Delia Casadei -- Index.