Volume 50, Number 5 · March 27, 2003
The Case for Puccini
By Philip Gossett
Puccini: A Biography
by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz
Northeastern University Press, 343 pp., $30.00
Puccini: His Life and Works
by Julian Budden
Oxford University Press, 527 pp., $40.00
Puccini: His International Art
by Michele Girardi, translated from the Italian by Laura Basini
University of Chicago Press, 530 pp., $65.00
The history of Italian opera throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was directly tied to the fortunes of the publishing house founded in 1808 by Giovanni Ricordi. Casa Ricordi of Milan issued the work of composers of Italian opera from Rossini through Puccini to Luigi Nono and continued its efforts until the firm was acquired in 1994 by Bertelsmann (BMG). Bertelsmann's pursuit of immediate profit took precedence over the cultural pride and long-term investment that had characterized the old Ricordi company; the restructured BMG Ricordi largely stopped publishing contemporary music. True, commercial interests had also been important for the earlier generations of the family. Yet Giulio Ricordi was able to tolerate the fiascos and partial successes of the young Giacomo Puccini during the 1880s because he believed the composer would ultimately develop a voice that would bring honor to Italian culture and lire to the company's purse.
Review, 4412 words
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