ABSTRACT
The operas of Giacomo Puccini were written in the post-Ibsen era, when realistic reactions and interactions were dramatically the norm. Drama had not yet reached the psychodrama stage of Freudian-based works, but it was certainly a far cry from the dramatic style Verdi had chosen as the basis for his operas. The major sources Puccini chose for his operas were Murger, Belasco, and Sardou. As with Verdi (except in Verdi’s Shakespeare operas), he chose the newest plays and novels of the era and transformed them into great dramas. Where Verdian characters could take time to wax poetic or take a stance and blatantly trumpet their resolve to the rafters, Puccini’s characters are more natural, acting in an almost normal time frame and with little real bombast. They take time for poetic utterances, but they also act in a real way to real dramatic situations. This was the style and era known as verismo.
