ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 places La fanciulla del West within the context of other theatrical works depicting the American frontier, drawing on the reception theory of Hans Robert Jauss. It examines how the opera adhered to and diverged from the character types and other conventions typical of frontier melodramas, with special attention paid to the opera’s source—David Belasco’s sensational play The Girl of the Golden West (1905). Portions of the opera violating the conventions of frontier melodramas drew strong criticism from the New York musical press. Critics saw detrimental transformations to the characters and to the local-color dialect. Puccini violated the convention of authorship, wherein writers and artists typically crafted a public image that they had had a first-hand, personally transformative experience with the West. That experience gave their works authenticity, regardless of how tenuous the real connection may have been. Puccini publicly admitted he had never been west and learned all he needed to know from his books and other sources (given to him by Alice Warder Garrett and others). New York City critics claimed that Puccini’s lack of personal experience prevented him from fully capturing the West, or that his Italian identity prevented him from fully understanding the subject matter. Belasco’s stage management and influence in set design, scenery, lighting, and staging—which remained very close to the original play, received nearly unanimous praise, though some found the amount of spectacle in the opera troubling.
