Puccini’s La Fanciulla Del West is definitively modern in its fusion of two theatrical styles, one steeped in tradition and the other modern for its time- opera and country western. The story revolves around a mining camp at the foot of the Cloudy Mountains (California) and a girl with whom the entire camp is smitten with- the girl of the golden west, Minnie.
While complicated love triangles hardly push the boundaries of operatic tradition, doing so in cowboy boots certainly does. Throughout our class, modernization has been realized in an incorporation of the present (the modern) into existing traditional art form. Hopper’s address of new subject matter represents modernity just as Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder does.
N’ero certo! Han trovato il bandito! Una buona giornata per Wells Fargo!
Hearing English phrases interpolated into the Italian libretto can be strange. Several times throughout the opera, the audience broke into laughter hearing terms like “Wells Fargo” amidst lyric Italian.
Sometimes, pushing boundaries by incorporating modernity results in the creation of something beautiful. Though thinking about dying children is not how I usually spend my Friday nights, I enjoyed Kindertotenlieder a great deal.
source: http://www.thsh.co.uk/view/ades-conducts-ades-and-reich
However, a 2008 concerto accompanied by video that evoked the sophistication of a 1970 PSA? I found Thomas Adès’ In Seven Days to be completely obscured by the accompanying video footage that aimed to simulate different stages of the story of creation.
With that, Buona sera, Mister Johnson!
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