Giacomo Puccini – Critical Editions

The Operas of Giacomo Puccini
Published by Casa Ricordi
General editor:
Gabriele Dotto

Scheduled for many years and with several works already in preparation, the publication of Manon Lescaut (2014), the first volume of the series, started the long-awaited critical edition of Puccini’s operas.

Puccini’s ceaseless penchant for revision led to a quantity of simultaneously available, sometime overlapping “versions” of texts. As a further complication, “performing materials” hired out to opera houses were kept updated with corrections that did not always find their way consistently into full and vocal scores offered to the general public.

The complex nature of the rnultiple available sources requires an innovative approach to textual criticism as part of its editorial philosophy. For instance, in many cases it is not possible to establish a single source as a “primary” text for an entire opera: for certain passages in some operas, two or perhaps several musical sources could occupy positions of a “shifting status”, now primary, now secondary. Further, in keeping with the growing sophistication with which orchestral color was used in Puccini’s time as an integral part of the musical discourse – an aspect in which Puccini was an absolute master – the edition will carefully restore the shades and nuances reflected in the composer’s autograph scores which were later obfuscated in the printed scores.

With unparalleled access to the primary autograph sources and annotated secondary sources, to the publishing records, and to the contemporary documentation, the Critical Edition of the Operas of Puccini will offer the performer, the scholar, and the aficionado a range of information never before available.