From the climax of Puccini’s Fanciulla del West at the Metropolitan Opera (Ken Howard)

My latest Jaywalking has the usual political blather — some of it important — and some music, including by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Or Puccini? Or both? “The Music of the Night” is a beautiful song. It has a h/t, as we’d say today, to Puccini, composer of La fanciulla del West, among many other operas. I reviewed a performance of Fanciulla last week, which is why the subject is on my mind. Lloyd Webber reproduces certain strains from the opera in his song.


Plagiarism? Borrowing? Homage? Unconscious influence? Coincidence? It’s very hard to say. I don’t see any malicious intent. At any rate, Puccini’s heirs saw dollars, or liras, or whatever the currency was, and they sued. There was a settlement: terms undisclosed.

The Phantom of the Opera (from which “The Music of the Night” comes) is a lot better-known than La fanciulla del West. That is “a whole ’nother” problem, which we can take up another time. (I touch on some of these issues in a recent interview, conducted by an official of the Smithsonian.)