Puccini Opera _ The Unique Artistic Charm of Puccini Opera

Puccini is considered as the last great figure in the field of Italian opera. The extraordinary talent of this composer has been vividly displayed in his opera works, and the Excellence and uniqueness of his opera art have also been recognized by future generations. Puccini's full name is very long ―― giacomo? Antonio? Dominic. Michelle II? Maria? Giacomatotonio domenicomiele secondomariapuccini was born in Lucca, Italy on February 22nd, 1958, and died in Brussels, Belgium on February 29th, 1924, at the age of 66. Puccini was born into a musical family that has been handed down for five generations. His father was a choir conductor and organist. However, due to his early death, he completed his studies under the hard training of his mother. /kloc-entered Lucca Music School at the age of 0/4, studied harmony and counterpoint with Angeloni, and was later hired as the chorus leader and organist of a village church. He lives in poverty. At the age of 65,438+07, he walked 65,438+03 miles to Pisa to listen to Verdi's opera Ayida, which made him very moved and determined to become an opera composer. Puccini entered Milan Conservatory of Music in 1880 with the support of Queen Margaret, and studied composition with composers Bazzini and Poncelli for three years. All this seems a little late, but with Puccini's efforts, he began three periods of his opera creation.

In the early days of Puccini's opera creation, he showed his unique views on opera art. Although he encountered difficulties and setbacks, he persisted in his creation as always, laying a solid foundation for his future achievements in opera. The works of this period mainly followed the style of traditional opera creation, with myths, legends and fables as the theme, and Puccini's unique creation in music. Once the script is in his hands, it will be accompanied by a melody that makes people cry at any time, and the characters will be vividly and meticulously portrayed, and it will be true and touching.

Puccini's first opera "Dancing around the Devil" was based on the folklore in Southeast Europe. After it was staged in Milan in 1884, it immediately got the order of Scala Theatre, which brought the composer career success and economic income. Unfortunately, the second opera Edgar suffered a terrible failure, and his mother's death brought him a great blow. After three years of ideological struggle, he wrote the opera Mistress Manon? Leiskow, in music, is expressed by bright, strong and powerful colors. For example, the parallel use of the fifth tone, the fixed bass, the melodious melody enhanced by the stringed instruments, and the subtle and incisive motives can all be found in this opera. A newspaper at that time commented: "This is a work of genius." He is aware of his own strength. He is the master of art ―― creator and perfecter. This opera has created opportunities for his success. It seems that from the beginning, Puccini's difficulties were an inspiration to him, and his peculiar nature of challenging obstacles and desperate situations was reflected in his creation. In the demands of the playwright, his uncompromising and intolerant side is constantly revealed. It is precisely because of these characteristics that he succeeded in the future, making his traditional Chinese opera art outstanding and unique. Since then, Puccini has entered a mature stage of creation and established his reputation at home and abroad.

In the mature period of Puccini's creation, he created three most successful works in his life. Puccini himself is a romantic and beautiful man. At that time, countless women loved the young composer. Although suspected of being a playboy, Puccini has always loved his wife deeply. More interestingly, the protagonists in his operas are single-minded and mostly innocent women. This also laid the foundation for his works in this period, which mainly took innocent women as heroines, and the musical depiction also mainly showed the characteristics and sadness of women. This creative period is the most prosperous stage of realism, and Puccini stands out. His operas are often based on the fate and life of the people at the bottom of the real society, rather than pursuing eternal and epic themes. The protagonist in opera is often not a tall and perfect hero, but a small person in a weak position; Opera music does not pursue the reproduction of real life sounds, but absorbs the advantages of romantic operas, pays attention to depicting people's psychology and emotions, strengthens the performance of music on the drama process, and adds exotic feelings from time to time to maintain freshness. Puccini is not a real realistic composer. His operas are not set in the present tense, and many of them are in unusual environments. But strengthening people's emotional state in realism is a major feature of his works.

Bohemian (also known as the artist's life), written in 1896, describes the love tragedy between embroidered honey and poet Rudolph, and reflects the mood of poor artists in the Latin quarter of Paris. It is a touching work. The two arias in the play, Cold Hands and People Call Me Mimi, are the most famous. This work has established his status as a master and is also a leap. In this work, he completely got rid of all external influences and spoke in his own voice for the first time. Tosca, written in 1900, is a sad and gloomy work based on the original French tragedy, in which the farewell song "Starry Bright" has become Puccini's most famous and unique genius. In this book, he used cognitive motivation more clearly than before. The introduction of the work, three hard chords B, A-flat and E, is the symbol of Spica Pia. In this way, the creepy ghost of the police chief runs through the whole play. Tosca represents a peak of Puccini's opera art. Madame Butterfly, written in 1904, is a world-famous and well-known novel, which tells the love tragedy between a geisha in Nagasaki, Japan and an American naval officer. In the play, seven folk songs, such as Edo Japanese Bridge and Sakura, are directly used to render Japanese sentiment in music and try exotic sentiment for the first time. Among them, there are countless wonderful places, and they are absolutely wonderful. The symphony prelude of the opera, a fast fugue, like a beautiful watercolor painting, brings the audience into the charming and refreshing world of Japan's small bamboo building, which is Puccini's most wonderful inspiration flash. A sunny day in the play is the most famous aria. These three operas have long been welcomed by Europe and even the world. Puccini is not a real realistic composer. His operas are not set in the present tense, and many of them are in unusual circumstances. But strengthening people's emotional state in realism is indeed the biggest feature of his works in this period.

In the next 20 years, Puccini persistently created four operas, but none of them could surpass his previous artistic achievements. Girl in the West is an opera with a pure American theme. This work fully realized the composer's creative intention and incorporated the elements of "modern music". Therefore, the melody as sweet as a song and the scene of the melody were consciously abandoned by him. 19 18 He created a trilogy of one-act dramas with different tastes, namely Sister Angelica, Coat and Jenny? Schicci. Sister Angelica describes a completely unique music picture, which shows strange static and depressing colors, the warm timbre of soprano embedded in soft and gorgeous orchestration, the exotic color of harmony, the artistic style of theme music melody sliding down and so on. The creation of The Coat shows the most authentic and outstanding Puccini: compact structure, detailed description of characters and scenes. And "Jenny? Schicci is the most Italian of his works. Music is full of vitality and vigor in the Mediterranean region, emitting warm and lively emotions and harsh music pictures like military music, among which "My Dear Dad" is his famous aria. In addition, there is Swallow, in which Puccini incorporated many of his life philosophies. But this is only an exploration in Puccini's creative process, and it has not become a reserved track in the world music scene. Puccini was depressed for most of the last 20 years of his life, but this is definitely not caused by the changes in the music field, but a depressed nature that intensifies with age, showing a morbid fear and fear of getting old. In his later creation, he kept swinging between strong creative impulse and "fatal indifference", which made it more difficult to choose the theme of the new opera.

Turandot is Puccini's last opera and the most familiar opera in China. It is adapted from the story about China written by the Italian playwright Gozzi, which reproduces Puccini's brilliant moment. This opera describes a beautiful but heartless princess. In retaliation for the insult of foreign invaders to her motherland, she gave three riddles for foreign suitors to guess. If she can't guess, she will be beheaded, but she was finally conquered by Calaf, the prince of Tatar. In the whole opera, progress and retrogression, obsolescence and novelty are mixed together in an amazing way, which can be said to be a great spectacle in the history of opera. Novelty and progress are manifested in pure music, and its orchestration art and harmony development have reached the peak, mainly focusing on the application of oriental melody and harmony. The use of pentatonic scale has disrupted the large and small sound systems. For example, in the sound of gongs and drums in the first scene, C minor and C flat major sounded simultaneously. In the minister's trio "My Home is Far Away in Henan", there are four tones superimposed, and dissonance and colorful orchestral music are used in many places. The simplification techniques of musical language appear again and again in this rich work. The portrayal of characters in the play is also remarkable, which strengthens the portrayal of characters' psychology, especially the new role Liu Er. She is the opponent of the proud and cruel princess; The embodiment of deep affection, the persistence of love, is juxtaposed with the extremely opposite princess image. With the development of the plot, they all experienced a fundamental change: Turandot changed from a cold woman who refused to love to a loving woman, and Liu Er, who was gentle and submissive, became as tall as a hero at the moment of his death.

The composer created five pentatonic melodies in this work, among which Liu Er's aria "Master, please listen to me! Is one of them. It's about Liu Er pleading with Calaf not to risk his life and expressing his affection to him. This aria is sung in adagio, G flat major and 4/4 time. The melody is beautiful and sad. Harmony is mainly the national mode of China, and there is no clear direction of major and minor modes. When singing, you should pay attention to rendering the atmosphere in a sad tone. From the first sentence, she told how painful she was and her heart was broken, especially this sentence.

It is necessary to sing truly and touching, and truly express Liu's inner feelings. Next, I went slow, telling Calaf's position in Liu's heart, and expressing Liu's disappointment, showing a kind of anxiety, hoping to convince my master. "Your name is hope, your name is strength!" How convincing, showing dependence on him. Don't be blunt or too gentle when singing, just express your inner disappointment and despair. These two sentences are repetitive and patterned in melody, but they should be distinguished when singing and have different emotional expressions. The climax of this work consists of a big jump of several notes.

Finally, emphasize the theme and end with a B flat key. The last few high notes can't pass. Be faithful to the original score and lend it. This aria seems simple, but it takes a lot of effort to really master it. Another aria by Calaf, No One Sleeps Tonight, is also a representative of pentatonic melody. It adopts the melody of China and Jiangsu folk song Jasmine, which makes the melody unique. Deeply expressed Calaf's longing for the princess and strong confidence in winning love:

Turandot makes people realize that Puccini's artistic energy is far from exhausted, and people can almost get the impression that this work marks the beginning of a brand-new creative stage. Throughout his life, he only wrote twelve operas, but except for the first two, the other ten operas were performed frequently before and after his death, which was unparalleled in the history of opera. Such a small number of works can occupy such an important position in the world opera stage, which makes us think about what kind of talent Puccini has and what kind of unique artistic charm his opera art has. Puccini has a special talent of actively absorbing and integrating other musicians' musical languages and techniques, with keen thinking and innovative spirit. He combined realism with romanticism, boldly combined the free melody in Italian tradition with the new elements of modern music, and created a colorful, delicate and euphemistic orchestra. His works are compact in plot, attractive to the audience and powerful in shock. Therefore, its opera melody is smooth and cordial, and it depicts the joys and sorrows of the world delicately with unique lyric techniques, which has touching dramatic effect and attracts people's attention. He also writes exotic works from time to time, which makes his music always fresh. Bernard Shaw called it "the direct successor of Verdi's creative tradition". But I think he is not only the best successor of Italian opera since Verdi, but also an opera master who can keep pace with it.

(Author: Music Department of Hunan University of Science and Technology)

Editor in charge: Xiao Fang