Week 721: “Intermezzo” by Giacomo Puccini

Beautiful Song Of The Week

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No, it’s not a glitch with your device and you’re not having some kind of Bill Murray-esque Groundhog Day experience. We’re doing another intermezzo, from the same compilation album as last week’s. I’m not usually into this type of repetition, but as we’re about to see, doing something over again is occasionally a good idea.

First performed in 1893, the opera Manon Lescaut was Puccini’s first big hit…but it almost wasn’t. His publisher was against the idea of using the story (from a 1731 novel by French author Abbée Prévost) because it had just been given the operatic adaptation treatment less than a decade earlier by French composer Jules Massenet.

Puccini’s response to his publisher’s hesitation, as noted in The Opera Lover’s Companion, was: “Manon is a heroine I believe in and therefore she cannot fail to win the hearts of the public. Why shouldn’t there be two operas about Manon? A woman like Manon can have more than one lover. Massenet feels it as a Frenchman, with powder and minuets. I shall feel it as an Italian, with a desperate passion.”

Puccini’s passion must have been just desperate enough for audiences, because his Manon Lescaut propelled him to superstardom.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The lonely cello at the opening.

2. The other strings who join in, tentatively at first, and then with more conviction.

3. After the louder middle section, which might accurately be described as “desperately passionate” things settle down, and the strings wrap things up way up high.

Recommended listening activity:

Scrolling through your photos to see what you did this time last year, and doing it again.

Buy it here.

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