[lit-ideas] Re: The Golden West
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 08:42:34 EST
In a message dated 12/6/2010 2:10:28 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"I keep looking around for a historian of the American West"
Thanks, D. R. That was most illuminating.
"As I understand it, gold goes like this: discovery in California, everyone
chases there."
As Zangarini et al write in the note to the libretto: Coloma, Jan. 1848, by
Marshall (excerpted below).
Yes, there are controversial bits. If you look at photographic evidence of
the thing, it is an extra thing. Of the opera production, I mean. There are
just TWO female roles: Minnie, and the lover of Billy Jack Rabbit --
another "native American": a mezzosoprano. Minnie keeps suggesting that they
(Billy and her lover) get married. I don't think they do. They have a baby.
Billy Jack Rabbit is displayed as stealing cigars and being drunk most of
the time.
In his study "Puccini", Carner indicates that they (the Native-American
pair) is "introduced to show the demoralising effect which ... camp life has
had on the natives". Like Dizikes, Carner can simplify things.
----------
On top of that there seems to be a reference to minstrel shows ("De Camp
Town Races") which may also seem interesting vis a vis the portrayal of
"African-Americans".----.
------ I'll keep an eye if there are press reports about the _current_
staging (opening today) at the Met vis a vis this or that portrayal.
--- The lynching scene (or would be lynching scene -- since the "Girl" ar
rives just in time to avoid it) was Puccini's own brilliant idea. In
Belasco's play there is a 'trial' set in the saloon itself. In any case,
critics
soon came to observe that the 'lynching' scene could only give America a bad
'promotion', if that's the word. And indeed, 'caricature' was the word
used.
Anglo-Saxon critics (to generalise) tend to be "over-literal" (as Grice and
Griceans sometime) and indeed they may fail to detect an 'implicature' on
the part of an operatic score. As Ritchie has it, life is not a caricature,
neither is opera. This is the final passage in "Whisky per tutti", the
chapter on the opera in Dizikes's book:
"One critic said dismissively: "Whiskey per tutti and andiamo Minnie were
not the language of the Wild West." But it wasn't the Wild West on the stage
of the Metropolitan, with miners singing, "Whiskey for everyone" or "Let's
go Minnie". It was make-believe. It was art. It was opera".
At one point, Rance gives a little speech in Italian. He is the Sheriff. He
refers to the 'damned' "Occidente d'oro" -- 'damned Golden West'. Puccini
had troubles with the TITLE of the opera. Belasco's is "The Girl of the
Golden West", and I have NOT checked to see if "Golden West" qua expression
occurs in the text of BELASCO's play, but it does, in this derogatory manner,
in Puccini's libretto. It was the Englishwoman Mrs. Seligman (married to
the London banker) who suggested "La fanciulla del West" and it stuck with
Puccini -- perhaps not very complete (since for Belasco it is _Golden_ and
not just "West") but it was thought that a word-by-word translation would be
a mouthful: "La fanciulla [or figlia] dell'occidente d'oro". Puccini
considered the mere "L'occidente d'oro". He thought that "L'Occidente della
Fanciulla" would trigger one unintended double entendre or two.
In any case, the patrons liked it. Puccini had a reception at the
Vanderbilts after the show. There is a reference to the Transport Agency Wells
Fargo, and other topical points which must have amused the audience -- and of
course Belasco was in care of the 'stage directions'. The Italians in the
cast loved him and thought he looked (as he did) as a curate, which added to
his charm. Apparently, his stage directions (keep your hands in your pockets
-- his point that miners are phlegmatic) soon wore off, and soon enough
(Krehbiel notes) the cast was behaving again like brigands of the Abruzzi.
Ricordi added a 'note' to his bilingual edition of the libretto making a
reference to the very first nugget of gold ever found on the Golden West,
especifically on what mine -- and Minnie has some good lines about the
'sociology' as it were underlying it all.
The note to the libretto by Zangarini (whose mother was from Colorado) and
a second librettist goes: "The action takes place in that period of
California history which follows immediately upon the discovery made by the
miner
Marshall of the first nugget of gold, at Coloma, in January, 1848. An
unbridled greed, an upheaval of all social order, a restless anarchy followed
upon the news of this discovery. The United States, which in the same year,
1848, had annexed California, were engaged in internal wars; and, as yet
undisturbed by the abnormal state of things, they were practically outside
everything that occurred in the period of this work; the presence of their
sheriff indicates a mere show of supremacy and political control. An early
history of California, quoted by Belasco, says of this period: "In those
strange days, people coming from God knows where joined forces in that far
Western land, and, according to the rude custom of the camp, their very names
were soon lost and unrecorded, and here they struggled, laughed, gambled,
cursed, killed, loved, and worked out their strange destinies in a manner
incredible to us of to-day. Of one thing only we are sure — they lived!".
Cheers.
Speranza
----
"but in the absence of one, I'll clear my throat and, knowing that you know
I trained as a European intellectual historian, add a few words. As I
understand it, gold goes like this: discovery in California, everyone chases
there. Discovery in Oregon's south, we run up there. Discovery in
Oregon's east, better git over. Then there's Dakota's Black Hills, and the
Rosebud river, in which Randolph Hearst's father was I think involved--hence
the
sled ref. in the movie, I believe--and then there's Alaska. I'm struck by
the idea of an opera...and you'll remember our earlier exchanges about how
gold mining and opera houses coexisted...in which a Native American is put in
charge of legal justice. I understand the implication that Puccini just
didn't understand the material, but what if he did? What if he was working,
as people did, from contemporary tales, taken from say an illustrated
journal? In my understanding of the evidence, it was not "unthinkable" to
"allow" a Native American to do this or that. The category "Native American"
is of course anachronistic, but "Indians" were not employed by the U.S.
army merely as scouts. I can understand views of the Eastern audience,
particularly after Little Big Horn and the Modoc Wars, imagining that it would
be
wrong to empower an Indian, but in the real West? No, I can imagine such
a scene."
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