Prokofiev was one of the giants of 20th-century music. His seven symphonies, five piano concertos, nine piano sonatas, the opera War and Peace, ballets, chamber music, piano compositions and various shorter orchestral works are among the most significant contributions made in our time to music. The highly personal way of writing melodies, his unusual progressions, his harmonic vocabulary are all present in the few lighter and simpler works with which he made a significant contribution to the contemporary repertory of semi-classics.
The March so familiar to radio listeners throughout the United States as the theme music for the program “The F.B.I. in Peace and War” comes from the opera The Love for Three Oranges (1921). The libretto by the composer based on a tale of Carlo Gozzi is a charming fantasy in which a prince saves himself from death through gloom by means of laughter, and who then goes at once to rescue a princess from her prison in an orange. The march occurs in the second act where an effort is being made to get the Prince to laugh, for which purpose a festival is being arranged. The march music is played as the court jester drags the reluctant Prince to these festivities. The quixotic skips in the melody, the grotesquerie of the musical style, and the pert discords are all typical of Prokofiev’s creative manner.
Peter and the Wolf, a “symphonic fairy tale” for narrator and orchestra op. 67 (1936) was intended by the composer to teach children the instruments of the orchestra. But the music is so consistently delightful for its sprightly lyricism and wit that it has proved a favorite at symphony and semi-classical concerts. The story here being told is about a lad named Peter who turns a deaf ear to his grandfather’s warning and goes out into the meadow. There a wolf has frightened, in turn, a cat, bird, and duck. But Peter is not afraid of him. He captures the wolf, ties him up with a rope and takes him to the zoo.
The composition opens with the following explanation by the narrator: “Each character in the tale is represented by a different instrument in the orchestra: the bird by a flute; the duck by an oboe; the cat by a clarinet in the low register; grandpapa by the bassoon; the wolf by three French horns; Peter by the string quartet; and the hunter’s rifle shots by the kettledrums and bass drums.” Then, as the story of Peter and the wolf unfolds, little melodies appear and reappear, each identifying some character in the story. Peter’s theme is a lyrical folk song with a puckish personality for strings. Vivid and realistic little tunes represent the cat, bird, and duck, each tune providing an amusing insight into the personality of each of these animals.
Summer Day, opp. 65a and 65b (1935) is another of the composer’s compositions for children which makes for delightful listening. It started out as a suite of twelve easy piano pieces for children called Music for Children. Later on the composer orchestrated seven of these sections and called the new work Summer Day. In the first movement, “Morning,” a whimsical little tune is heard in first flute against a contrapuntal background by other woodwinds, strings, and bass drum. Midway a secondary melody is given by bassoons, horns and cellos. “Tag,” the familiar child’s game, is represented in a tripping melody for violins and flutes; the music grows increasingly rhythmic in the intermediary section. In the “Waltz,” a saucy waltz tune with an unusual syncopated construction is presented by the violins, interrupted by exclamations from the woodwind with typical Prokofiev octave leaps. “Regrets” opens with a tender melody for cellos, but is soon taken over by oboes, and then the violins. This melody is then varied by violins and clarinets. “March” offers the main march melody in clarinets and oboes. “Evening” highlights a gentle song by solo flute, soon joined by the clarinet. As the violins take over the melody the pensive mood is maintained. The concluding movement, “Moonlit Meadows” is dominated by a melody for solo flute.
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca, Italy, on December 22, 1858, to a family which for several generations had produced professional musicians. As a boy, Giacomo attended the Istituto Musicale in his native city, played the organ in the local church, and wrote two choral compositions. A subsidy from Queen Margherita enabled him to continue his music study at the Milan Conservatory with Bazzini and Ponchielli. The latter encouraged Puccini to write for the stage. Puccini’s first dramatic work was a one-act opera, Le Villi, given successfully in Milan in 1884, and soon thereafter performed at La Scala. On a commission from the publisher, Ricordi, Puccini wrote a second opera that was a failure. But the third, Manon Lescaut—introduced in Turin in 1893—was a triumph and permanently established Puccini’s fame. He now moved rapidly to a position of first importance in Italian opera with three successive master-works: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904). Puccini paid his first visit to the United States in 1907 to supervise the American première of the last-named opera; he returned in 1910 to attend the world première of The Girl from the Golden West which had been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Puccini’s subsequent operas were: La Rondine (1917), Il Trittico, a trilogy of three one-act operas (1918), and Turandot (1924), the last of which was left unfinished but was completed by Franco Alfano. Operated on for cancer of the throat, in Brussels, Puccini died of a heart attack in that city on November 29, 1924.
Though Puccini was an exponent of “Verismo,” a movement in Italian opera which emphasized everyday subjects treated realistically, he poured into his operas such a wealth of sentiment, tenderness, sweetness of lyricism, and elegance of style that their emotional appeal is universal, and he has become the best loved opera composer of the 20th century. Selections from his three most popular operas are basic to the repertory of any semi-classical or “pop” orchestra.
La Bohème was based on Murger’s famous novel, Scènes de la vie de Bohème adapted into an opera libretto by Giacosa and Illica. When first introduced (Turin, February 1, 1896) the opera encountered an apathetic audience and hostile critics. It had no big scenes, no telling climaxes, and most of its effects were too subtle emotionally to have an instantaneous appeal. But the third performance—in Palermo in 1896—received an ovation. From that time on it never failed to move opera audiences with its deeply moving pathos and its vivid depiction of the daily problems and conflicts of a group of Bohemians in mid 19th-century Paris. The central theme is the love affair of the poet, Rodolfo, and a seamstress, Mimi. This love was filled with storm and stress, and ended tragically with Mimi’s death of consumption in Rodolfo’s attic. The following are some of the episodes heard most often in potpourris or fantasies of this opera: Rodolfo’s celebrated narrative in the first act, “Che gelida manina,” in which he tells Mimi about his life as a poet; Mimi’s aria that follows this narrative immediately, “Mi chiamano Mimi,” where she tells Rodolfo of her poignant need for flowers and the warmth of springtime; the first act love duet of Mimi and Rodolfo, “O soave fanciulla”; Musetta’s coquettish second-act waltz, “Quando m’en vo’ soletta,” sung outside Café Momus in the Latin Quarter on Christmas Eve, informing her admirers (specifically Marcello the painter), how men are always attracted to her; Rodolfo’s poignant recollection of his one time happiness with Mimi, “O, Mimi, tu più” in the fourth act; and Mimi’s death music that ends the opera.
Madama Butterfly—libretto by Illica and Giacosa based on David Belasco’s play of the same name, which in turn came from John Luther’s short story—was first performed in Milan on February 17, 1904 when it was a fiasco. There was such pandemonium during that performance that Puccini had to rush on the stage and entreat the audience to be quiet so that the opera might continue. Undoubtedly, some of Puccini’s enemies had a hand in instigating this scandal, but the opera itself was not one able to win immediate favor. The exotic setting of Japan, the unorthodox love affair involving an American sailor and a geisha girl ending in tragedy for the girl, and the provocatively different kind of music (sometimes Oriental, sometimes modern) written to conform to the setting and the characters—all this was not calculated to appeal to Italian opera lovers. But three months after the première the opera was repeated (with some vital revisions by the composer). This time neither the play nor the music proved shocking, and the audience fell under the spell of enchantment which that sensitive opera cast all about it. From then on, the opera has been a favorite around the world.