Fanciulla is surrounded on many levels by a series of Wagnerian suggestions. There is a narrative line which brings about moral redemption, as in Parsifal, although cleansed of mystic incrustations and of the Wagnerian mythology of purity: in Minnie’s harsh analysis, the men remain “outlaws and cheats”: the “gamemaster” Rance, the true “outlaw” Johnson/Ramerrez, the “mistress of the flophouse and of gambling” Minnie. There is a trace of the union of Sigmund e Siglinde in the embrace of the two protagonists who ignore the gusts of wind that batter their shack, but it is only fleeting. There is the evocation of Minnie in Valkyrie’s clothing the instant she bursts onto the scene of Johnson’s hanging, “on horseback, scantily clad, her hair to the wind,” and heralded by a “savage cry.” And there are musical reverberations that permeate a few key moments in the score. One of these affects Minnie’s motif – the vibrant and fortissimo exclamation that announces her first appearance in Act I – which, due to its beginning interval on a descending seventh as well as its melodic contour, alludes to the leitmotif associated with Gutrune in Gotterdämmerung and, in particular, to the variant thereof categorized in guides (from Hans von Wolzogen onward) as the “theme of the treachery of love.” Another reflects the reiterated use of the opening of the initial motif found in Tristan und Isolde: a commonplace Wagnerism in Italian opera, widely adopted by Puccini in Manon Lescaut, was the use of the related Tristan Chord. The four notes of which it is composed (a, f, e, d-sharp in Wagner’s original), currently classified as a “theme of suffering”, in Fanciulla appear for the first time in the final duet of Act I, at the point when Johnson attempts to mollify Minnie, who is bent on defending the miners’ gold with her life (“Oh, non temete, nessuno ardirà!”). After which, in Act II, with a harmonization structured on the tritone and a messa in sequenza in the ostinato form which reinforces the original intention of the sorrowful motif, it orchestrally highlights Minnie’s anguish over Johnson’s fate: the episode in which she succors the wounded Johnson (“Su, su, su, presto! Su, salvati!…”), the scene in which she pleads with the merciless Rance (“Aspettate, non può”), the dramatic, final bet (“Una partita a poker!”) until the act closes, in the convulsive moment of exuberance mixed with a desperate cry (“Ah! È mio”).