THE MAIDEN OF THE WEST

Opera in three acts
Libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini
from the play The Girl of the Golden West by David Belasco

Eventually he breaks in on his horse, rescues the love of his life, and together they set off free and happy. He is not Prince Charming, however: her name is Minnie and she rescues the redeemed bandit Dick Johnson from the gallows. She lives alone, runs a saloon frequented by rough miners, guards their gold, and cannot be a frail, helpless damsel. To the saloon’s customers she is a friend, a confidante, a mother, a teacher, but she is also a girl who dreams of true love. It will not be the one she expected, but a wanted and frequenter of women of ill repute, for whom she will know how to become a heroine and even offer herself, in exchange for his life, as a stake in a poker game against the sheriff, defeated by cheating.
Minnie, not victim but redeemer, is one of Puccini’s most fascinating and complex women. In 1910, at the Metropolitan in New York, she debuted this no less multifaceted and fascinating opera, whose fast-paced action will yield only to the aria dedicated by the doomed man to his beloved. And she will save him.