Sticky Fingers, Mr. Puccini?

From the desk of Ned P. Rauch:

It's funny when you discover something that everyone already knows about. I was listening to Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" this afternoon and, in the opening strains of "Dovunque al Mondo," heard what sounded pretty much exactly like the Star Spangled Banner. I thought, for a second, I'd made a seriously clever find that would have the estates of Puccini and Francis Scott Key suing the socks off each other. A little research showed that the musical reference to our national anthem was a deliberate move that informs the story. These personal discoveries must happen a lot, right? I think the most famous example has to be ol' Christopher Columbus, though I guess it's true that not EVERYONE knew about America, just all the people who lived here when he bumped into it. Or, the islands in its general vicinity, anyway.

Interesting thing I learned about the Star Spangled Banner: If I HAD, in fact, stumbled upon a devious musical heist, it wouldn't have been Key's descendants going after Puccini's descendants. Key only wrote the words. The music comes from a song John Stafford Smith, a Brit, wrote in the 1760s for the Anacreontic Society. What's that? It was a club of amatuer musicians in London, and the ditty Smith came up with evolved into a drinking song before we Americans stole it. Ironic, given that Key wrote about the "rockets red glare" while watching the British bombard Baltimore during the War of 1812, no? They burned the town that would eventually produce Babe Ruth and Spiro Agnew, but we nicked their tune and play it every time we win a gold medal. Did everyone already know all this, too?