This Sunday night at 8 on the Lyric Stage, songs by Puccini, Bellini, Rossini and others. Cecilia Bartoli, Carlo Bergonzi and Kasamira Stoyanova are the soloists in these songs from composers best known for their operas.
In the course of the program, we discover that Giacomo Puccini was a plagirist - of himself, and in the best way possible. For example, Puccini's 1888 song Sole e Amore. That music helped end Act 3 of La Boheme eight years later. Several phrases from Menti al' avviso, another of his songs on our program, found their way into Des Grieux's Dona non vidi mai from Manon Lescaut. There are other examples of Puccini borowing his own music. In his early work Capriccio Sinfonico suddenly the famous first measures of his later La Boheme appear. No one would have cared earlier in the 19th century when the atmosphere was much looser, and recycling an overture here or the complete score of a one-act opera there raised no eyebrows. But by the late 19th century critics scorned the practice of self "plagarism". However, would we really want a different ending to Act 3 of Boheme, or a different beginning other than those iconic notes that start the opera itself?