Gianni Schicchi: O mio babbino caro

At a glance

• What it isthe aria sung by the soprano Lauretta in Puccini's one-act opera Gianni Schicchi.
• Who, when, whyit premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in December 1918 as the last of the three operas in Il trittico.
• What to listen forthe gentle melody wrapped in strings, the one great swell, and the quiet ending.

Listen for

• The openingafter a brief string introduction, Lauretta gently sings "O my dear daddy."
• The climaxthe melody swells where she says that if she can't marry the man she loves, she'll throw herself into the Arno.
• The endingshe pleads, "father, please," and fades quietly. When the song ends, the stage returns to comedy.

When it was written

Puccini was the Italian composer who won worldwide fame with tragic operas such as La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. Around the First World War he conceived a set of three short operas of contrasting character to be staged in one evening. Gianni Schicchi closed the set with laughter.

The story comes from a thirteenth-century Florentine swindler who appears briefly in Dante's Divine Comedy. At its center, this aria shines with a lyricism quite different from the comedy around it, and has come to be widely loved on its own, beyond the opera.