Puccini and the Girl: History and Reception of "The Girl of the Golden West" (review)

This book tells two stories: one is the most conventional musicological type (newly available documents), and the other is an up-to-date cultural analysis (gender, class difference, imperialism, and cultural Others). The authors tell us which of them wrote which chapters, and it seems to me that the book's most noticeable weakness is that the two voices are very distinct and seem to have different goals for the project as a whole. To put it another way, there remains some question as to the real topic of the book: Rosalind Gray Davis wants to introduce us to some documents, while Annie Randall wants to write critically about the opera, and the two do not fit together into an entirely coherent whole. This is not to deny, however, that each part is of interest in its own right.

The early, expository chapters of Puccini and the Girl are mostly provided by Davis; her voice, unfortunately, is not only musicologically naive but saturated with that hagiographic tone that used to be common in writing about Great Composers. Nonetheless, she has an unusually interesting story to tell. Davis inherited from her father, journalist Marvin Gray, twenty-nine letters from Puccini to his librettist, Carlo Zangarini, concerning the conception and realization of La fanciulla's libretto. Gray had purchased the letters from a New York autograph dealer and had intended to publish them but did not do so before his death. Now his daughter, collaborating with musicologist Annie Randall, takes the opportunity to present them as entirely unknown sources and at the same time to write a larger study of the opera, interweaving information from other documentary sources and adding critical interpretation. As the two authors tell us, "no study of La fanciulla had yet brought together many of the most important Italian and English sources concerning the opera's genesis, premiere and critical reception," and therefore "our objective is to blend the historical with the critical in ways that will invite fresh readings" (8).

The letters themselves have considerable intrinsic interest, as Davis presents them to us in the third chapter; it's fascinating to watch Puccini trying to decide whether he can make anything operatic out of David Belasco's play, how to deal with its innate Americanisms, how to cope with "the California-disease" that the opera became in his own mind (quote from a letter, 59). As Davis explains, "the present discussion . . . adds new information to the standard chronology in the form of newly available letters and other documents from Italian and American sources" (17). She lays out the argument's place in the current state of knowledge about the opera, emphasizing especially the reinstatement of Zangarini as its principal librettist, reclaiming the place frequently credited to Guelfo Civinini, who finished up the work in its last stages.

Davis might have been just a bit more critical, however, and presented us with more context for reading Puccini's letters. For instance, it would be helpful for readers to know whether the cycle of behavior we see here (jolliness, increasing impatience turning to anxiety, carping, threatening with a lawsuit, insisting on a collaborator) is typical for Puccini—or typical for opera composers in general—or whether this is an extraordinary story, and if the latter, why?

More disturbing is the attitude Davis seems to exhibit in her discussion of the greatest tragedy of this period, which became one of the notorious scandals of Puccini's career. Doria Manfredi, a servant in the Puccinis' home, poisoned herself, apparently in response to Elvira Puccini's suspicion that she was involved sexually with Giacomo and to consequent harassment. Davis's narrative rests upon a conventional morality untainted by any feminist insight or sympathy. In her account (76–81), the Genius retains his privilege throughout the affair, which is introduced to the reader in terms of "Elvira Puccini's violent...