Puccini's Wagnerisimo

Dr. Deborah Burton, Associate Professor of Music at Boston University, discusses Wagner’s influence on Puccini!

Opera lovers may think of Wagner’s Isolde and Puccini’s Turandot as living in different operatic universes.  But the truth—long hidden—is that Puccini’s was a devoted Wagnerian and emulated the German maestro throughout his career.

The antagonistic cultural milieu that pitted Verdi against Wagner (and, by extension, Italy against Germany) into which Puccini stepped at the start of his career has been well documented. Verdi, a national hero of the Italian Risorgimento, saw his competition with Wagner in patriotic terms: in Autumn 1892 Verdi wrote, “the public wants Italian music and not imitations or travesties of German music.  We need other stuff than ‘the Music of the Future.’” Since Puccini’s mentor was Giulio Ricordi, Verdi’s publisher and champion, and an anti-Wagnerian—at least until his firm acquired the Italian rights to the Wagner operas—the younger composer kept his affinities disguised.

This talk traces the many ways that Puccini “secretly” showed his admiration for Wagner, from his earliest opera to his last, Turandot, which was left unfinished at his death.  On one “deathbed“ sketch that Puccini intended for the finale of that opera, he wrote “poi Tristano” – or “then Tristan.” We will see how he could have used a theme from Tristan und Isolde at that point.

Deborah Burton, Associate Professor of Music at Boston University, specializes in opera analysis and the history of music theory, emphasizing Italian sources. In 2022, she completed the finale to Turandot, Puccini’s opera left unfinished at his death, using previously un-accessed autograph sketches. Dr. Burton’s monograph, Recondite Harmony: Essays on Puccini’s Operas (2012) examines all of the composer’s operas from an analytic point of view. She has organized events at the Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere in December 2010 for the centenary of Puccini’s Fanciulla del West, with a website www.fanciulla100.org, She taught a course on Puccini at the University of Rome, co-edited Tosca’s Prism: Three Moments of Western Cultural History (2004); and has published articles in Theoria, Studi Musicali, Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana, Opera Quarterly, Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale, The Opera Journal and other publications. Dr. Burton was president of the New England Conference for Music Theory from 2006-2008 and was an originator of and participant in the interdisciplinary conference “Tosca 2000” in Rome, honoring the centennial of Puccini’s opera.

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