Puccini’s Soundscapes: Realism and Modernity in Italian Opera

by Arman Schwartz

From the bells in Tosca and the birdcalls in Madame Butterfly to the horns and sirens in Il tabarro and the music box melodies that inspired Turandot, Puccini’s operas rely to an unprecedented degree on realistic and seemingly unmediated acoustic objects. Focusing on this pervasive if little discussed aspect of the composer’s art, Puccini’s Soundscapes uses the twin categories of sound and realism to rethink the shape of Puccini’s career, and to offer new interpretations of many of his major works, as well as those of his contemporaries. It asks how Italian composers responded to some of the fundamental transformations of auditory culture during the fin-de-siècle, and resituates their works within the discourses (aesthetic, political, and technological) of Italian modernity. Proposing a dialogue between musicology and sound studies, Puccini’s Soundscapes offers new ways of listening to major artistic movements from Naturalism to Futurism, and asks how late Romantic opera might contribute to a broader statement of the values of musical modernism.

180 pages, Paperback

Published October 9, 2018

About the author

Arman Schwartz received his AB from the University of Chicago and his MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Before arriving at King's, he served as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania (2009-11), an ACLS New Faculty Fellow at Columbia University (2011-13) and a Birmingham Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham (2013-17). Major awards and honours include a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, the Premio Rotary Giacomo Puccini and the Royal Musical Association’s Jerome Roche Prize. Schwartz is a member of the scientific committee of the Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini, and Executive Editor of The Opera Quarterly.