ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the theme of arrival, in both the literal and figurative sense, to discuss both Puccini’s visit to New York City for the final rehearsals and world premiere of La fanciulla del West (December 10, 1910) and the Metropolitan Opera’s Company’s attempt—under the management of Otto H. Kahn and the artistic direction of Giulio Gatti-Casazza—to establish itself as one of the leading institutions in the international opera field. It examines newspaper stories, interviews, letters to the editor, and printed speeches from the period, discovering that many points of evaluation in the La fanciulla del West’s reviews had antecedents in the more general discussions about the perceived lack of an American school of opera and concerns about the degree to which Europeans participated in opera production in the United States. It also compares the reception of Puccini and other Italians working at the Metropolitan Opera Company to the reception of Italian immigrants living in New York. Drawing on John Higham’s theory of nativism, it argues that a tangled web of cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and nativism in New York City explains the mixed reception of the work.
