Gianni Schicchi - Music

Music

Verdi said of Puccini, early in the latter's career, that "the symphonic element dominates in him", and within the triptych Gianni Schicchi has been compared by later analysts to that of the final presto movement of a three-movement symphony. With the fast-moving pace of the work, the set pieces are given a simpler melodic structure than those in the other two parts of the triptych. On stage, with the commedia dell'arte references, a humorous atmosphere is established from the very beginning. However, the music itself is of the 20th century; Edward Greenfield refers to its "dissonant modernity", with simultaneous clashing chords suggesting that "Puccini was beginning to think in bi-tonal terms". Alongside these dissonant passages are others which opera scholar Julian Budden calls "bland, schoolroom diatonism".

Puccini's score is built around a series of motifs which recur through the opera, generally representing characters, situations and moods though sometimes without specific associations. The opening motif is a rapid burst of rhythmic music, described by Greenfield as of "almost Stravinskian sharpness", which quickly transforms into a mock-solemn dirge depicting the hypocritical grief of the Donati relatives. This juxtaposition of the humorous and the solemn pervades the opera; critic Ernest Newman suggests that it "keeps us perpetually suspended between the comic and the tragic". Other principal motifs include the theme associated with the lovers Rinuccio and Lauretta, introduced in Rinuccio's first solo "Salvati! Salvati!", and a short, formal woodwind statement which represents Donati's will. Rinuccio sings the name "Gianni Schicchi" to a jaunty four-note phrase which becomes Schicchi's personal motif, and it is heard again as Schicchi knocks on the door before his first appearance. The best-known theme in the opera, that associated with Lauretta, is introduced in the second part of Rinuccio's aria "Avete torto". The theme is briefly played on clarinet and violin as Lauretta enters with Schicchi, before its full expression in O mio babbino caro.

Budden dismisses the view that Lauretta's aria, at the midpoint of the opera, was a concession to popular taste; rather, "its position at the turning point of the action is precisely calculated to provide a welcome moment of lyrical repose". Andrew Davis, in his book on Puccini's late style, notes that Lauretta's aria, and the two interruptions by the young lovers ("Addio, speranza bella") as Schicchi mulls over the will, constitute interruptions in the Romantic style, delivered during a lengthy sequence of non-Romantic music. Another interruption, both dramatically and musically, is that provided by the appearance of Doctor Spinelloccio. The doctor's dissonant harmonies contrast sharply with the scena music for Schicchi and symbolise Spinelloccio's place as an outsider to the dramatic action of the opera.

Historian Donald Jay Grout has written that in this opera Puccini's comic skill is "seen at its most spontaneous, incorporating smoothly all the characteristic harmonic devices of his later period." Greenfield remarks on the score's inventiveness, imagination and flawless timing. Several critics have likened Gianni Schicchi to Verdi's Falstaff, similarly a masterpiece of operatic comedy from a composer more usually associated with tragedy. Both composers took the conventions of comic opera into consideration, choosing a baritone for the principal role, setting the tenor-soprano love story against family opposition to the marriage, and constructing a hoax which permits the happy ending. Charles Osborne cites in particular the trio for three female voices, Spogliati, bambolino, as equal to anything in Falstaff, "its exquisite harmonies almost turning the unprepossessing women into Wagnerian Rhine maidens", and its lilting melody reminiscent of Rossini.