The first volume of the Critical Edition of the Operas of Giacomo Puccini is now available. After a long period of preparation, the edition of Manon Lescaut will be presented to the public in Milan on 27 February 2014. A performance of the critical edition of the 1893 version of Manon Lescaut already met great acclaim in 2008 at the Leipzig Opera (Photos: Tom Schulze).

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) is one of the most popular of all opera composers. Yet Puccini’s enormous success, combined with his tendency toward experimentation, contributed in a unique way toward creating a complicated legacy of musical sources. Interest in the operas of this great composer has continued to increase in recent decades, but so has the realization that the currently available scores are inadequate to allow a new generation of performers and scholars to accurately study and interpret these ground-breaking works of fin-de siècle musical language.

Puccini published his operas almost exclusively with Casa Ricordi, whose large editorial staff and state-of-the-art printing operations allowed it to rapidly issue different editions of full scores and vocal scores. Yet Puccini’s ceaseless penchant for revision (he revised each of his operas, with the inevitable exception of the unfinished Turandot) led to a quantity of simultaneously available, sometimes overlapping versions of the texts. 

In addition, performance materials hired out to theatres were kept updated with corrections that did not always make their way into the published scores that were offered to the general public. Over time, this produced a confusing, sometimes conflicting array of documents.

Furthermore, in an effort to make sense of some of these conflicting readings, editors inserted numerous changes into “new editions” published long after the composer’s death. A critical edition of his operas has been long overdue. Yet such an edition is a uniquely complicated operation.

The Critical Edition of the Operas of Giacomo Puccini, many years in the planning and with several works already in preparation, is a landmark initiative, not only for the importance and familiarity of the repertory being studied, but also because of the path-breaking approach to textual criticism that is a necessary part of its editorial philosophy.

For instance, in some cases it is not possible to establish a single master text as a primary source for an entire opera; in some operas, two or perhaps several musical sources may occupy positions of a shifting status, now primary, now secondary. Furthermore, the typical approach toward standardization of layers of performance indications in the scores, adopted in many editions as a way of resolving incomplete or conflicting readings, cannot always apply to much of the music of Puccini’s time and milieu. Layered dynamics, non-unified phrasing, differentiated articulation of reprised passages, etc., were all part of the more sophisticated orchestral palette of the composers of the 1890s and the early 20th century, but were obfuscated in later printed scores. The critical edition must carefully consider the shades and nuances reflected in the opera’s earliest sources.

Each opera published in the series will seek to identify a final or, in some cases, an ideal version as the base text. Sections of other versions, and/or suppressed passages, will appear in appendices. Where entire, distinct versions can be reconstructed, separate volumes will be published. Each volume will include an apparatus of commentary on the most pertinent issues, as well as a Historical Introduction describing the genesis of the opera and the development of the libretto, staging and casting issues that directly involved the composer, the process of revision that led to subsequent versions, as well as a summary discussion of the choices the editor made in establishing the base text that appears in the score.

With unparalleled access to the primary autograph sources and annotated secondary sources in the Ricordi Historical Archive, to the publishing records, and to other contemporary documentation, The Critical Edition of the Operas of Giacomo Puccini will offer the student, the performer, and the aficionado a range of information never before available.

As with other critical editions of Italian opera published or co-published by Casa Ricordi, each edition will have the benefit of performances before the text is finalized for publication. Indeed, recent productions based on the initial volumes in the series have already made an important contribution to our knowledge of early Puccini. A performance of the critical edition of the 1893 version of Manon Lescautmet with great acclaim in 2008 at the Leipzig Opera where it will be revived this season for four performances in from March until May 2014), and the production of the 1889 four-act version of Edgar(Turin, 2008), using the rediscovered autograph of the final act four, was hailed as one of the most significant musicological events of recent years.

The Critical Edition of the Operas of Giacomo Puccini promises to be a fundamental resource for anyone approaching this magnificent repertory for study or for performance.

Plan of the critical editions:

I Le Villi (I.a one act, II.b two acts) 

II Edgar (II.a four acts, II.b three acts)

III Manon Lescaut

IV La bohème

V Tosca

VI Madama Butterfly (VI.a two acts, VI.b three acts)

VII La fanciulla del West

VIII La rondine

IX.1 Il tabarro

IX.2 Suor Angelica

IX.3 Gianni Schicchi

X Turandot (to be published as an unfinished work) 

Editorial Board

Gabriele Dotto (general editor), Francesco Cesari, Linda B. Fairtile, Roger Parker, Jürgen Selk, Claudio Toscani