Il Trittico, Turandot, and Puccini's Late Style

Note on Scores, Librettos, and Translations

xi Published editions for each of Puccini’s last four operas are widely available ; as such I have assumed throughout the book that readers have access to the scores, and I have not provided musical examples for all passages discussed in the text. For Il trittico, all score references, including references to rehearsal numbers, are to Il trittico in Full Score: Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi (Mineola, New York: Dover, 1996). This publication contains reprints of the following full orchestral scores: Il tabarro: opera in un atto. Partitura: nuova edizione riveduta e corretta. Milan: Ricordi, 1956 (© 1918, 1917; plate no. P.R. 118; Schickling 85.E.3C). This is itself a reprint of the second edition of the full score: Milan: Ricordi, 1927; © 1927; plate no. 120480; Schickling 85.E.3B. The second edition is a reprint, with Michele’s new monologue (“Nulla! . . . Silenzio! . . .” replaces “Scorri, fiume eterno!”), of the first: Milan: Ricordi , 1919; © 1918; plate no. 117710; Schickling 85.E.2A. Suor Angelica: opera in un atto. Partitura: nuova edizione riveduta e corretta. Milan: Ricordi, 1958 (© 1918; plate no. P.R. 115; Schickling 87.E.3C). Reprint of the second edition of the full score: Milan: Ricordi, 1927; © 1927; plate no. 120481; Schickling 87.E.3A. The second edition is the first full score printed without Angelica’s “Amici fiori.” Gianni Schicchi: opera in un atto. Partitura: nuova edizione riveduta e corretta. Milan: Ricordi, 1957 (© 1918; plate no. P.R. 114; Schickling 88.E.2G). Reprint of the second edition of the full score: Milan: Ricordi, Note on Scores, Librettos, and Translations Trittico.indb 11 7/2/10 10:32 AM xii · Note on Scores, Librettos, and Translations 1927; © 1927; plate no. 120482; Schickling 88.E.2D. The second edition is a reprint of the first: Milan: Ricordi, 1918; © 1918; plate no. 117712; Schickling 88.E.2A. For Turandot, all score references are to Turandot: Dramma lirico in tre atti e cinque quadri. Partitura: nuova edizione riveduta e corretta . Milan, Ricordi, 1958; reprint Milan: Ricordi, 2000 (© 1926; plate no. P.R. 117; Schickling 91.E.2H). This is the fourth edition of the full score and essentially a reprint of the first: Milan: Ricordi, 1926; ©1926; plate no. 119761; Schickling 91.E.2A. All the full scores have the Alfano II (revised) ending. The first piano-vocal edition has Alfano I (Milan: Ricordi, 1926; ©1926; plate no. 119772; Schickling 91.E.1), as does the first German piano-vocal edition (Milan: Ricordi, 1926; ©1924, 1925, and 1926; plate no. 120150; Schickling 91.E.1A); all other piano-vocal scores were printed with Alfano II. Unless otherwise indicated, all libretto citations are to the Ricordi first editions: Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi (Milan: Ricordi, 1918; Ricordi plate no. 116999); and Turandot: Dramma lirico in tre atti e cinque quadri (Milan: Ricordi, 1926; Ricordi plate no. 119773). I have used these as my source material because they are the closest approximations we have to the librettos for the first performances, even though in reality this is somewhat of an oversimplification: various librettos were often published specifically for particular performances, to satisfy requirements of copyright law, or for other reasons; they exist in numerous forms, published and unpublished, and almost none of these correspond exactly to the texts in the scores. As such, it remains nearly impossible to identify a libretto’s definitive version, or even the version that Puccini set to music.1 Note also that the only way of ascertaining the first-edition texts is to view a copy of the first edition itself: numerous publications claim to reproduce the first editions, but so far I have found none that do so reliably, especially with regard to textual-formal issues such as line length and stanzaic structure. A good example is Ricordi’s own Puccini: Le Prime, in the series Le Prime: Libretti della prima rappresentazione, which claims to reproduce “the original versions of the librettos” Puccini set to music (Milan: Ricordi, 2002: 5), but the text in this publication does not agree completely with that of the first edition (plate no. 116999), even though Trittico.indb 12 7/2/10 10:32 AM Note on Scores, Librettos, and Translations · xiii nowhere is there citation of another source for the text. The Garzanti edition edited by Enrico Maria Ferrando (Tutti i libretti di Puccini, Milan: Garzanti, 1984) also contains problematic discrepancies, despite citing as its source...