This chapter considers the ways in which Puccini’s works were staged during his lifetime, with a close focus upon the composer’s own vision of how his operas should look. Puccini was keenly involved with the visual representation of his works on stage and always strove to be as ‘authentic’ as possible in reproducing the locales being depicted. This chapter draws upon the composer’s correspondence to demonstrate how proactive Puccini was in every aspect of the performance of his works. We find Puccini complaining about stage designs for his works and suggesting improvements, as well as suggesting novel scenographic approaches to make a work more effective for the viewer. Puccini was also extremely keen to maintain aspects of staging and direction used in some of the source plays upon which his operas had been based. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the various extant sources that document Puccini’s staging intentions.

Euridice had a poetic text by Ottavio Rinuccini, and music by Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini; its performers included Florentine singers plus others from Mantua and Rome; and its sponsor, Jacopo Corsi, was one of the four instrumentalists who provided the accompaniment. Although it is the “first” opera to have survived complete, it has tended to be treated as an academic exercise, and as a mere forerunner of the seemingly more successful early operas by the likes of Claudio Monteverdi. But having reconstructed the stage, it is now possible to read Euridice in a much more practical light, as something of and for the theatre. Both the text and the music make much more sense in these pragmatic terms, especially given the hitherto unrecognized revisions made to the libretto as decisions needed to be made during the rehearsals leading up to the premiere. Matters of casting, stage movement, costumes, and gesture all come into play, often cued by explicit or implicit directions in the surviving sources. This also offers a more careful way of reading poetic librettos and musical scores that are too often viewed in the abstract without grasping their performative functions.

Ineffective 1363 English sumptuary laws inform comprehension of Geoffrey Chaucer’s costume rhetoric employed throughout his works. These laws, in effect for less than a year, proposed and set standards for socially and economically suitable garments for each social group.Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale portrays a miller’s family, social climbers, who exploit these standards; his General Prologue’s Physician sartorially advertises his prosperous practice; and a stylish Merchant, ‘Flaundryssh’-hatted, proclaims his apparent affluence. Chaucer’s rhetorical expression of contemporary social and moral attitudes and practices illuminate his texts. Items VIII-XIV of these laws list society’s levels and prescribe suitable fabrics, embellishments, and prices for each. Chaucer’s Alison of his Miller’s Tale dresses transgressively when judged by these standards, while Chaucer’s nobles, generally, do not. He realistically portrays his religious figures and the poor. Finally, Chaucer summarises contemporary sartorial sins in his Parson’s Tale.

What is ‘heresy’? One answer would be, ‘that which orthodoxy condemns as such’; though we may also wish to consider when conscious dissent invites such a condemnation. The main ‘heresy’ in late medieval England was that usually termed Lollardy, understood to be inspired by the radical theological thought of John Wyclif (1328-1384), which among other things emphasised the overwhelmingly importance of Scripture, and of lay access to Scripture, through vernacular translation. Orthodox repression of heresy began in the late fourteenth century and developed in various ways in the fifteenth. There are small traces of these much wider battles in Chaucer’s oeuvre, but it would be very hard to say quite how he saw them. We might instead see the fluidity of attitude toward aspects of religion in Chaucer as a sign of his times. ‘Dissent’ can encompass more than that which is solidly decried as heresy, and ‘orthodoxy’ can turn out to be more than one mode of religious thought and expression.