Il Postino and the Italian street band tradition

Daniel Catán's Il Postino  opens with a short prologue during which a politician seeking votes makes a campaign speech on the island of Calla di Soto. I'd love to provide a link to this scene, but unfortunately only fragments of the opera are available online. So instead, here's a portion of his vocal line:

It continues in that vein, bouncing merrily along in perky dotted rhythms.

The first thing I notice about this tune is the clear influence of Puccini, specifically the military march played by an onstage band in Act 2 of La bohème:

Meter and dotted rhythms are similar. What distinguishes the two passages is all due to context. The band entertaining revelers in Puccini's Latin Quarter is a snazzy, polished wind ensemble, well-rehearsed and professional. Di Cosimo, on the other hand is accompanied by a rag-tag ensemble of what are evidently volunteers. The political jingle they're tooting along with thus strikes us as banal and unimpressive compared with Bohème.

Before you conclude that Catán is no Puccini, consider another aspect of context: Di Cosimo is the villain of the opera. He's no earnest, sincere "man of the people", though he would have the citizenry think so; he's a sleazy pol who makes empty promises he has no intention of keeping. Thus his unimpressive music aptly characterizes him.

Another aspect of Di Cosimo's song interests me: that ragtag ensemble fits nicely into the long tradition of Italian street bands. Although the composer's main agenda was to create a truly Hispanic opera in an international style, one sung in Spanish and featuring poems with roots in the literature of Chile, Mexico, Spain and Nicaragua, he never lost sight of the actual setting: an Italian village. 

Street bands are an Italian tradition akin to the tradition of street jazz in New Orleans. Examples can be found in opera and literature. Francis Ford Coppola uses repeated scenes of street bands throughout his Godfather trilogy, beginning with the scene in which Michael Corleone marries a local woman while hiding in Sicily As with Di Cosimo's number, this music is clearly played with more enthusiasm than artistry. Similar street bands appear in Godfather II when the young Vito Corleone returns to Sicily and is welcomed as a celebrity by a ragtag street band. Their rough-and ready playing contrasts sharply with the opening scene of the same film, when a professional band plays slick Hollywood-style music to honor the Corleone family in Nevada, a metaphor for Michael's corruption and betrayal of the values he once held.

Even Giuseppe Verdi employed street bands for specific purposes at times. The best example is found in his adaptation of Macbeth. In Act 1, King Duncan visits Macbeth's castle, unaware that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have already decided to murder him. Duncan makes a brief appearance, crossing the stage with a retinue of courtiers upon his arrival. His procession is accompanied not by an actual street band, but by a facsimile of street-band music in the orchestra. It can be heard at the 26:35 mark in this video of Act 1. 

This music, like that given Di Cosimo, is banal and vulgar in comparison with the rest of the opera. Verdi usually gave majestic music to kings, as with King Philip II in Don Carlo. In Macbeth, I've always felt that the trite nature of Duncan's processional represents Macbeth's point of view: in order to commit cold-blooded murder, he must de-personalize and de-humanize his victim, reducing him to a two-dimensional stick figure. 

Yes, Il Postino is a sort of linguistic and cultural melange - an Italian title for a Spanish-language opera; an ancient Judeo-Spanish wedding song assigned to an Italian character; and other anachronisms. But Di Cosimo's prologue music is an example of being true to the setting with an authentic depiction of Italian culture.