La Fanciulla del West (2011)

Puccini’s musical vision of the American West is vividly brought to life in the Met’s atmospheric production. Deborah Voigt is Minnie, the “girl of the golden west” and owner of a bar in a Californian mining camp. Marcello Giordani sings Dick Johnson, the bandit-turned-lover hunted by the cynical sheriff Jack Rance (Lucio Gallo), who wants Minnie for himself. Complete with whiskey-drinking cowboys, gunplay, a poker game, and a snowstorm, La Fanciulla del West is Puccini at his most colorful. Nicola Luisotti conducts the work, which the composer told The New York Times in 1910 he considered “the best of [his] operas.”