Cambridge Opera Journal

  • Cambridge Opera Journal (2001), 13 : pp 29-53
  • Copyright © 2001 Cambridge University Press
  • DOI: DOI:10.1017/S0954586701000295 (About DOI)
  • Published online: 05 March 2002

Table of Contents - 2001 - Volume 13, Issue 01  


Torrefranca vs. Puccini: embodying a decadent Italy

ALEXANDRA WILSON 

Abstract

Puccini reception lay at the heart of a crisis of national identity that gripped Italy between the turn of the century and the First World War. For Puccini's detractors his works were an emblem of decadence; for his supporters they provided a means for regeneration. In his vitriolic monograph, Giacomo Puccini e l'opera internazionale (1912), Fausto Torrefranca associated Puccini with dangerous ‘others’ – women, homosexuals and Jews – in order to instil fear about the ‘feminisation’ of Italian culture. The reception of his book shows that Torrefranca's ‘extreme’ views were widely shared.


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