Wagnerian Influences on La Fanciulla Del West

Peter Bassett

La fanciulla del West, Giacomo Puccini’s Californian gold rush opera of 1910, will be returning to Opera Australia’s stage next July in a new production commissioned by the Opera Conference. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘borrowings’ from Puccini’s score are well documented, but it has to be said that the maestro of Torre del Lago himself drew more than a little inspiration from the ‘old magician’ of Bayreuth.

Puccini was introduced to the music of Richard Wagner at the Milan Conservatory, and he attended the Bayreuth Festivals of 1888 and 1889. He once observed: ‘Nothing of Richard Wagner has died: his opera is the yeast of all contemporary music, and there is yet something to germinate, later, in happier artistic times.’ In fanciulla he made his own use of leitmotivs, notably in relation to Minnie and the miners, and he used a form of ‘endless melody’ instead of set ‘numbers’ – something that admirers of his earlier operas did not necessarily welcome.

Of special significance from a musical point of view, is a four-note motive that appears in the orchestra when Minnie decides to hide the wounded Johnson. This is repeated a number of times. It is a reference to the famous chromatic motive that opens Tristan und Isolde, through which Wagner expresses the inter-relationship of suffering and desire. Now harmonized in E-flat minor, Puccini uses it to describe the pain of Minnie and Johnson that is part and parcel of their love.

There are other parallels too: in the theme of the destructive consequences of a lust for gold, the redemptive role of a woman (Puccini deliberately strengthened this aspect of Minnie’s character over Belasco’s model); the awakening of the shared past of Minnie and Johnson à la Siegmund and Sieglinde; Rance’s Hunding-like involvement; the symbolism of a door suddenly blowing open as an expression of the coming of love; Minnie’s Act 2 response to the wounding of Johnson, reminiscent of Sieglinde’s Act 2 delirium; Puccini’s direction for ‘eight to ten’ horses in Act 3 paralleling Act 3 of Die Walkure, and Minnie’s Valkyrie-like cry as she rides to Johnson’s rescue. The radiant ending offers more than a nod to Parsifal, one of Puccini’s favourite operas, an association reinforced by Minnie’s words: ‘Brothers, there isn’t a sinner in the world to whom the path of redemption is not open!’ Now there’s a thought

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