A Life with Puccini—
Maestro DeRenzi on the Enduring Appeal of Puccini’s Music By Marina Harss, writer and journalist Maestro DeRenzi, and Sarasota Opera, have a long history with the music of Giacomo Puccini. The first opera by Puccini DeRenzi conducted was Tosca in New York City back in 1969. His first Puccini opera at Sarasota Opera was Il tabarro, in 1987. Since then, the company has performed every Puccini opera, multiple times, with the exception of the composer’s two youthful works, Le villi and Edgar. (However, we’ll be hearing music from those two operas in this concert.) In fact, DeRenzi has conducted more than 300 performances of Puccini’s operas over the course of his long career. Like Verdi’s operas, Puccini’s music is essential to Sarasota Opera’s repertoire, as it is to the repertoire of almost every opera company around the world. In fact, it has become almost synonymous with opera itself. Recently, DeRenzi reflected on why Puccini has become so ingrained in our idea of what an opera should be, as well as on his own trajectory through the music and dramatic imagination of the composer who brought us La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, and other great works. Marina Harss: Why did you decide it was the right time for a Puccini Concert, and how did you think about the pieces to include in the program?
Victor DeRenzi: It is never difficult choosing to perform Puccini since I love his music as much as our audience does. We’re coming to the 100th anniversary of Puccini’s death, next year, but we do not have a complete Puccini opera in our season. What I think is interesting about this program is that it’s an overview of his professional life. You’re going to hear music that Puccini wrote when he was a young man, as well as music from the score he was working on when he died. When you see an opera, you’re seeing the product of a particular period in that composer’s life. But this concert gives us look at how his music progressed throughout his life.
Puccini’s Turandot, Sarasota Opera, 2019 Photo by Rod Millington Marina: You’ve included music from Edgar and Le villi, Puccini’s first two operas, in the concert. Why are they never performed? DeRenzi: I don’t think you can have a great opera unless you have a great libretto. Some people think that Puccini was a slow composer because it took him more time to compose than the generation of Italian composers before him. But much of his work was spent finding the right story and making sure he was happy with the libretto. That’s what he learned from Edgar and Le villi, where the problems tend to lie with the drama of the work. Marina: How did you first encounter Puccini’s music? DeRenzi: I came to Puccini very early in my life, around the same time I discovered Verdi. Puccini’s operas were performed often in the mid 60s, when I first became interested in opera,
not only at big companies like the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera, but also at the smaller companies that were plentiful in New York. I started singing chorus in a small company on Staten Island, where I grew up. My first experience conducting was the backstage chorus of Tosca, as a teenager. Marina: Do you remember when and why you fell in love with his music? DeRenzi: I think when you truly love opera, you also come to love certain singers, and the repertoire of those singers influence which operas you listen to and learn about. Having loved the voice of Renata Tebaldi meant that I was inclined to appreciate all the Verdi and Puccini and Italian romantic repertoire that she sang. I listened to her many Puccini recordings and saw her live in various Puccini roles. Marina: Was there a particular Tebaldi performance that really marked you? DeRenzi: The first time I heard her live was in a performance of Tosca in 1964, when I was fourteen. I had saved my money to buy a box seat. The tenor was supposed to be Barry Morell, who became sick, so it ended up being Franco Corelli along with Tito Gobbi as Scarpia. What made that performance so memorable for me was the way she expressed her humanity, and the humanity of the character, through her singing, as well as her gorgeous, beautiful, voluptuous, full voice. Hearing that kind of voice as it filled the theater and enveloped you was something that isn’t heard often these days. Marina: What did it illustrate for you about Puccini’s music? DeRenzi: What I loved then, and still love about that opera and all of Puccini’s operas, is what a compelling dramatic composer he is. He brings you into the lives of the characters through the way he tells the story using great music. It’s very much about the individuals and how they react within their group and their society. I’ve always felt that if a person wants to be a playwright, one of the ways to study playwriting would be to study Puccini and how he created his operas. It's not surprising that here we are after COVID, and the way people have brought audiences back to the theater is by performing Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and La bohème. Marina: Why do you think Puccini is probably the most beloved opera composer? DeRenzi: First of all, he has dramatic cohesion in his music; he ties a piece together beautifully with a series of themes that are sometimes obvious and sometimes not. His storytelling has the pacing of a modern play. From the first notes you’re in a completely different world. He writes beautiful melodic themes, and audiences love melody. They want to hear something they can remember as they’re leaving the theater. There is a reason so many movies include Puccini’s music, like Room with a View, Moonstruck, and Serpico. His music is very much part of the popular consciousness. Marina: His operas are incredibly popular with the audience, but he hasn’t always gotten the respect he deserves from the musical community. Why is that?
DeRenzi: There were many musicologists and theoreticians who did not have a very positive view of Puccini. I used the word great above to describe his music, which I think it is. However, his music was never studied in conservatories. The people who decided what was to be studied in American universities were more inclined toward German music. Their system of theory was built around Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, as well as Schoenberg and Berg. There is no question as to their greatness and importance, but Puccini’s operas are also great and have survived because people took his music to heart and his operas were never out of the repertoire. I still think he’s not given enough credit. For instance, his orchestration should be studied in conservatories, because it is brilliant.
Mark Walters and Kara Shay Thomson in Puccini’s Tosca, Sarasota Opera, 2015 Photo by Rod Millington Marina: Do you see a great evolution in his music from Le Villi, his first opera, to Turandot, his last? DeRenzi: I see an evolution, but I don’t know if it’s a great evolution. His evolution happened very slowly and was very much connected to the atmosphere and dramatic needs of the work he was writing. The sounds of the Japanese-themed Madama Butterfly are of necessity different from his next opera La fanciulla del West, which has to express the emotions of the California gold rush. But moving on to La rondine Puccini had to turn toward another musical world. He
knew a lot about his musical contemporaries and studied their works. He went to performances by composers working in very different styles from his own, and that knowledge influenced him, but he was always true to the Italian idea that the voice and melody are primary. Marina: Is there an opera that is closest to your heart? DeRenzi: I think there is a youthfulness in Manon Lescaut that is totally uninhibited, and I love it for that reason. I also saw Manon Lescaut very early on and fell in love with it in my teens. When you get into his middle operas, the way they’re constructed is so beautiful; that musical and dramatic form certainly speaks to me. I find that people who are a little bit apprehensive about La fanciulla del West unfailingly end up thinking it’s one of his best operas when they get to know it. Il tabarro shows us that the sadness of the character is really the sadness of the entire human condition. I guess you can figure out it is hard for me to choose one. I’m glad I don’t have to. Marina: What is significant about this group of singers who will be performing in the Puccini concert? DeRenzi: I was trying to bring together people who’ve been with us for a while, people who are completely new to us and people who have just come to us recently. We have the tenor Rafael Dávila, who’s been performing with Sarasota Opera for 20 years. The soprano Hanna Brammer, who started out as an Apprentice and Studio Artist and has done many various roles with us as a principal singer. Erica Petrocelli (soprano) and Christopher Oglesby (tenor) sang here for the first time last season. And the baritone Jean-Carlos Rodrìguez is debuting with us in this concert. Marina: What makes a good Puccini singer? DeRenzi: The ability to express the text. There’s story being told through the words. That’s why someone like Licia Albanese was such a great Puccini singer even though her voice may not be to everyone’s taste. Every time the emotion of the text changed, she changed her voice. You didn’t need to look at the words to understand what she was saying. Marina: A final thought? DeRenzi: I would have enjoyed spending time with Puccini as a person. I love Verdi, but he was a little austere. There was a sense of formality about him, probably because of his background and the time in which he lived. But not Puccini. In reading his letters I find him very approachable and a person who made friends easily.
