On The Character Depiction Of Female Characters In Puccini's Opera

The portrayal of character personalities is the key medium to mold the character in the opera, and one of the most important factors symbolizing the success of a particular opera. The presentation of female character personalities in Puccini's operas demonstrates typical features, thus makes those characters stand out as one of the most outstanding attributes of his works. This article selectively analyzed some female characters in Puccini's operas, with an attempt to synopsize the artistic features of the female character depiction, and to explore the general issues in rendering opera character personalities.The main body of the article consists of three parts. Part one generalizes the importance and the artistic techniques of character depiction in the field of drama and opera, and then focuses on the specific techniques employed in female character in Puccini's opera. Part two analyzes some most famous female characters in Puccini's leading operas, such as Mimi in La boheme, the leading female character in Tosca, Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly, Turandot and Liu in Turandot. The stages of female character development and the connotation beneath each character pave the path of the overall analysis, which explores and comments on the dramatic and musical techniques that Puccini applied to the female character creation. Part three is the focal part of the article. On the basis of previous character analysis, this part refines and summarizes the dramatic and musical techniques utilized in Puccini's female character creation. The analysis on dramatic techniques focuses on the fundamental factors in Puccini's female character designs, the plot and the logic pattern of character personality presentation, the relationship between the leading female characters and other roles, and the balance principle the Puccini consistently demonstrates in his works. The analysis on musical techniques sums up important factors in operas that can adequately reveal characters' personalities, such as melody, harmony and orchestration. The Conclusion of the article probes into the general issues of character personality presentation in operas, and discusses the general patterns and features of opera character portrayal.The prominent feature of Puccini's presentation of female character personalities, in both dramatic and musical aspects, is that he could develop different patterns in personality presentation based on character differences. Throughout the presentation, Puccini insisted on the contradictoryunity principle, and wedged important forms of expression (like aria and duet) between the key parts. He also contrasted different characters to fully demonstrated different personalities. In the light of the characteristics of female character emotions, Puccini showed keen insights in his production of music that he utilized melodies with powerful lyricism, harmonic vocabularies with the capacity to delve into the character's mind, and orchestration with distinctive styles. This article summarizes the techniques of female character creation in Puccini's operas, and also strives to find a general way to help understand and appraise character personality portrayal in opera.