La Fanciulla del West

Puccini's most underrated opera is set in a California gold mining camp in 1849. Minnie runs the local saloon with a rifle and a Bible — loved by the miners, wanted by the possessive Sheriff Rance, who has money and authority and intends to use both. When a charming stranger arrives calling himself Dick Johnson, Minnie falls fast. Johnson is a wanted outlaw. Rance knows it. What follows is one of opera's great poker games: Minnie stakes a man's life on three hands of cards and cheats when she has to. Puccini's score here is more orchestrally complex than anything else he wrote — harmonically dense, cinematic, and relentless — and the story ends, unusually for Puccini, with love surviving. Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky takes the role of Minnie in this new production, one of the most anticipated Met debuts of the season.