Towards the West and East: The 'International Melodrama' of G. Puccini



During the 19th and 20th centuries, Giacomo Puccini embodied/represented a new development to the melodrama with new themes and sensibility, seen both in the theatrical and musical aspects of his masterpieces. What emerges is the capacity for characters and events to unfold in an emotional and psychological manner. The music, in parallel, is fluid and becomes soft. Almost spiritual, liberty enters the musical theater of Puccini and makes it sensitive to curved line, the symbolism, the dimension of dreams. There is thus a sense of the exotic, of a foreign culture, which can become a source of attraction or inspiration: the East with its load of myths and ancient rituals, but also the dynamic and younger West.