Il Trittico, Turandot, and Puccini's Late Style

Five Humor and Filmic Effects in the Structure of Gianni Schicchi

138 In some ways Gianni Schicchi is the most musically conventional of the three Trittico panels, but in other important ways this concluding opera is also the most complex, least conventional among the three. Its conventionality results from its comprising no fewer than five closed set pieces (see table 5.1)—as many as were in Tabarro (three) and Angelica (two) combined. But its unconventionality stems from its achieving, very much like Turandot after it, a near-complete integration of conventional formal strategies with the newer, episodic organizational approach : whereas Tabarro and Angelica both had episodic introductions and conclusions but interiors comprising expressive references to formal conventions, in Schicchi the episodic strategy more audibly permeates the entire work. This is largely a result of the way Puccini uses stylistic plurality in Schicchi, a strategy somewhat different from that in the previous two pieces: Tabarro and Angelica each shifted decisively to the Romantic, lyric style only once, but Schicchi, again like Turandot, makes multiple shifts toward the Romantic style, none necessarily linked to a coincident shift in the underlying formal approach. This causes the Romantic style in Schicchi to be relegated to a position we can understand as lying outside the normative formal space of the work—a position from which it interrupts larger, overarching formal processes and engenders multiple levels of expressive meaning almost every time it appears. That Schicchi should be conventional in many respects proves consistent both with the Trittico’s backward progression in time (i.e., toward a more traditional age) and with Schicchi’s underlying themes of old five Humor and Filmic Effects in the Structure of Gianni Schicchi Trittico.indb 138 7/2/10 10:33 AM Humor and Filmic Effects in the Structure of gianni schicchi · 139 social establishments and family aristocracies. What begins as a bargain between the aristocratic Donatis—Zita (La Vecchia), cousin of the wealthy, deceased patriarch Buoso and the oldest of the surviving family; Rinuccio, her nephew; Gherardo (Buoso’s nephew), his wife Nella, and young son Gherardino; Buoso’s cousin Simone (former mayor of Fucecchio , a small township in the Florence city-state); Simone’s son Marco and his wife Ciesca; and Betto, Buoso’s unfortunate brother in law from Signa (another town in Florence)—and social upstart Gianni Schicchi evolves into a morality tale on the risks of unrestrained greed, complete with intrigue and a romantic subplot (the budding love of Rinuccio and Lauretta, Schicchi’s daughter). At least three of its five closed set pieces refer audibly to conventional schema (see table 5.1); almost all, furthermore, are much simpler than those in the previous operas: only two suggest a complete, four-part arrangement with a double kineticstatic cycle, and even in one of these the reference is oblique at best. The other three consist of only one or two kinetic, declamatory movements (perhaps a recitative, or even a recitative plus a tempo d’attacco) followed by a single lyric movement. Two of the latter, moreover, involve only one character, and as such may be categorized generically as “recitative and aria”: one for Rinuccio (“Avete torto,” R28.2, and “Firenze è come un albero fiorito,” R30; the latter was discussed in chapter 2) and another for Schicchi (“Prima un avvertimento,” R62.18, and “Addio Firenze,” R64). Both of these latter two, furthermore, exhibit similarities on global and local formal levels. Globally, each engages with the conventional romanza genre; in each the recitative is in a parlante texture (more parlante armonico in “Avete torto,” more parlante melodico in “Prima un avvertimento ”), with a character presenting a premise (the Donatis have Schicchi all wrong; the punishment for forging a will is physical maiming); in each the aria involves, as might be expected, that same character’s reflecting on the subject of the recitative; and each romanticizes Florence (Rinuccio avers that there is room in Florence for Schicchi; Schicchi warns that failure means banishment from Florence for the Donatis, the same fate suffered by the Ghibellines).1Locally, each aria is delineated structurally by a shift from the recitative’s rhymed scena verse (mostly quinari in “Avete torto,” mostly settenari in “Prima un avvertimento”) to more regular endecasillabi—although Schicchi’s terzina in “Addio” is metrically very loose: the second line is a dodecasillabo, and even the Trittico.indb 139 7/2/10 10:33 AM 140 · il trittico, turandot, and Puccini’s Late Style Ta bl e 5.1...