What are your favorite “small” Puccini moments?
By this I mean basically anything other than his big climaxes or famous arias. Something smaller that is rarely appreciated, even though not lacking in brilliance at all.
To start off, I would say Spoletta’s entrance in Act 2 of Tosca where he tells scarpia of the raid. The way those repeated chords feel like his heartbeat as he’s talking to Scarpia, and the way they get rhythmically displaced when Scarpia gets angry about them not finding Angelotti, as if his heart would literally “skip a beat”. Pure Brilliance!
Also in the very opening of act 2, the way Puccini mixes the Angelotti and Tosca motif to show how Scarpia’s thoughts are drifting between the two. There are so many small moments like this in Tosca!
Also, to mention another opera, that little (oboe?) scale before the “Dimmi perche” duett in Il Tabarro! So simple yet so effective!