Fanciulla

Puccini's La Fanciulla del West is celebrating its 100th anniversary next month, with the Met, home of the opera's prima, reviving its 1991 Giancarlo del Monaco production. There is an excellent website devoted to the anniversary (hat tip to Marion Lignana Rosenberg for introducing me to it) which includes a "virtual museum" of photos from Met productions, posters, and other memorabilia.

Among the contents of the virtual museum are the covers and title pages of two books on Native American lore and music that Puccini owned. If you're curious about these works, you can read them on Google Books: The Indians' Book, edited by Natalie Curtis Burlin; and Indian Story and Song by Alice Cunningham Fletcher. I haven't gotten deep enough in these to discover which melodies, if any, wound up in the score, but these are rich sources for amateur musical detectives.

(The novelization of the play can also be found on Google Books, although I can't find a public-domain edition of the play itself.)