EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES

Dante's wife, Gemma, was a member of the Donati family, making it (in a way) personal for the 14th-century poet, writer, and philosopher when he consigned the real-life trickster who had, at some point in their family history, cheated them out of money to the Eighth Circle of Hell in his Inferno. In Dante's eyes, there was clearly no redemption for this duplicitous falsifier, who pretended to be a dead man in order to alter a deceased Donati’s will and claim assets to which he had no right. Moreover, it should be noted that Dante harbored disdain for the peasant class to which Schicchi belonged.

Giacomo Puccini and his librettist, Giovacchino Forzano, were more forgiving of the rustic conman when they adapted Dante’s tale for their short comic opera Gianni Schicchi (the third part of Il Trittico, 1918). Instead, they chose to highlight the classist snobbery hubristically directed at Schicchi. In their version, Schicchi cleverly turns the tables on the grasping, materialistic Donatis, teaching them a valuable lesson and exposing their own selfishness.

Puccini himself had peasant ancestors, and while later generations of his family became respected in the Tuscan community for their musical contributions to Lucca, they were never considered wealthy. Notably, a common theme in Puccini's operas is that his protagonists are often societal outsiders—Bohemians, revolutionaries, and bandits—who fight against the established order, whether through writing a poem (La Bohème’s Rodolfo), challenging tyranny (Tosca’s Cavaradossi), or finding redemption as an outlaw (La Fanciulla del West’s Dick Johnson/Ramirez) through the love of a good woman. Even Prince Calaf in Turandot, otherwise known as the "Unknown Prince," emerges from exile to challenge the ruling order of Princess Turandot.

Although a comic character, Gianni Schicchi fits into a similar archetypal pattern as his more heroic predecessors in Puccini’s only comic opera. Here, he represents the spirit of change sweeping into Florence with his rustic cunning, bringing a challenge to the orthodoxy of the city dwellers.

This breaking of social hierarchies also reminds me of Walther von Stolzing in Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, who challenges the old order of the guilds to herald a new age in medieval Nuremberg. Walther, much like the young Rinuccio and the older Gianni Schicchi in Puccini’s one-act opera buffa, embodies the spirit of both revolution and renaissance.

One early scene in Gianni Schicchi captures the essence of the theme of renewal through change: after the Donatis are at a loss over how to resolve the seemingly unresolvable issues of Buoso Donati’s will, Rinuccio—eager to marry Schicchi’s daughter Lauretta—tries to persuade his relatives to enlist Gianni’s help to solve their problems.

SIMONE
A Donati marrying the daughter of a peasant!

ZITA
Someone that’s come up to Florence from the country!
Imagine being related to newcomers!
(emphatically)
I will not have him here! I won’t!

RINUCCIO
You’re wrong. He’s fine! cunning ...
He knows every pitfall of laws and codes.
He jokes … mocks!
Is there a new and rare mockery to be made?
It is Gianni Schicchi who prepared it.
Cunning eyes light up his strange face with laughter,
and his huge nose throws a shadow
just like an old ruined tower!
Is he from the countryside? Well? What do you mean?
Enough of this petty, small-minded prejudice!

(stornello - traditional Tuscan folksong)

Florence is like a flowering tree,
that’s trunk and leaves are in the Piazza dei Signori.
But its roots bring new strength in
from the fresh fruitful valleys.
Florence grows, and solid palaces
and slender towers ascend to the stars!
Before the Arno runs to the sea, singing,
it kisses the piazza Santa Croce.
Its song is so sweet and sonorous
that the streams join it in chorus.
Thus descend thither leaned artists and scientists
to make Florence richer and more splendid.
And from the castles of Val d’Elsa,
Arnolfo was welcomed to come make the beautiful tower!
And Giotto came from wild Mugel,
and Medici, the valiant merchant.
Enough of petty hatred and spite!
Long live the newcomers and Gianni Schicchi!

And, as if to tease Dante himself, the opera ends not with Gianni Schicchi punished in Hell, but with him amusingly breaking the fourth wall to ask the audience’s forgiveness for his actions, having provided them with an evening of great entertainment. This subversion is sublime and serves as a reminder that, in the end, all orthodoxies will inevitably be undermined and reevaluated at some point to prevent cultural, social and spiritual stagnation.

SCHICCHI
The gang of thieves has gone!
(Gianni Schicchi seeing the lovers, is much moved; he
smiles, then, taking off his cap, he turns to the audience.)
(Taking leave of the audience without singing)
Tell me, ladies and gentlemen,
if Buoso’s money
could have had a better end than this.
For this prank
they sent me to hell, and so be it.
But, with the permission of the great old man Dante,
if you’ve been entertained this evening,
allow me
(He claps his hands.)
extenuating circumstances!
(He bows gracefully to the audience.)