Minnesota Opera (a Knight Arts grantee) will celebrate the start of the 2014-2015 season with a free, outdoor simulcast of its opening production, Puccini’s La fanciulla del West. Beginning at 6 p.m. on Saturday, in downtown St. Paul’s Rice Park (just across from the Ordway), a number of food trucks and beverage purveyors will be on hand to help supplement visitors’ picnic baskets; kid-friendly art-making activities and performances will serve to keep the little ones occupied until the main event begins at 8 p.m.

Production photo for “La fanciulla del West” courtesy of Minnesota Opera.

A prototypical spaghetti western, Puccini’s 1910 work debuted when Europe’s fascination with the American West was fresh and keen, thanks to Buffalo Bill’s touring Wild West Show. The Italian opera is based on a play by an American writer, David Belasco: “The Girl of the Golden West.” The tale begins in a California mining camp in 1849 during the Gold Rush. Minnie, “the Girl” (sung by soprano Claire Rutter), runs Cloudy Mountain’s only watering hole, the Polka Saloon, and is the object of many a miner’s unrequited affections. When a mysterious stranger (played by tenor Rafael Davila) comes to town and catches her fancy, Minnie is entangled in both romance and outlawry when it turns out her new beau is none other than the notorious bandit, Ramerrez. He’s on the run from a posse led by one of Minnie’s spurned admirers, Sherriff Jack Rance (bass-baritone Greer Grimsley); the lawman, fueled by jealousy, is all the more determined to bring Ramerrez to the hangman for his crimes.

The score is sweeping, atmospheric and lush; the set is lavish with period details. Puccini’s work here is a precursor of the sort of cinematic orchestration that would become familiar in great Hollywood epics a couple of decades later. If you’re new to opera, this would make a wonderfully accessible introduction to the pleasures of the form.

Minnesota Opera’s production of La fanciulla del West by Giacomo Puccini will be on stage from September 20 through 28 at the Ordway, 345 Washington St., St. Paul. The opening night’s performance will be simulcast live in Rice Park (just across the street from the theater, at 109 West 4th Street). Pre-show activities will begin in the park at 6 p.m. and the screening will start at 8 p.m. (The opera’s run-time is three hours, with two 20-minute intermissions.) Tickets to the outdoor simulcast are free, but reservations are required. For more information, visit www.mnopera.org.