I
For those to whom music is an entertainment rather than an art, the idea that Italy is the 'land of music' will always exist. Almost an axiom has this popular notion become among such persons. And there is, indeed, little purpose in discouraging the belief. For what is to be gained by destroying an illusion which, in actual working, does no harm? Italy's musical development and that, for example, of Germany, are diametrically opposed to each other. Yet they both stand to-day for something particular and peculiar to their own natures. Man in his evolution has subconsciously wrought certain changes, certain innovations; he has been guided in doing so not so much by his desires as by his national characteristics.
Taking this into consideration there is nothing that cannot be understood in Italy's musical line from Palestrina to Montemezzi. Perhaps the road has been travelled with fewer halts with a view to an ideal than has that of other nations, but it has been in accordance with those things which not only shape a nation's fate but also its art. The Italian race, descended as it is from the Roman, had traditions. The ideals of that group of men known as the Florentine monodists were high. It was their purpose to add such music to the spoken word as would intensify its meaning and make its effect upon an audience more pronounced. In short, as far back as 1600, when these men flourished, the ambition of Richard Wagner and the music drama, or, if you prefer, the Greek tragedy of Sophokles and Æschylus, was known by Italian musicians who in their composing tried to establish a union between text and music such as the master of Bayreuth only accomplished late in the nineteenth century. With the beginnings of oratorio and opera—they differed little at first—the idea that personal success for the performer was necessary crept in. Had it not, Richard Wagner would not have been obliged to revolutionize the form of production given on the lyric stage. Händel, a German by birth and an Englishman by adoption, wrote florid Italian opera after 1700; he sacrificed the significance of the word to the effectiveness of his vocal writing and produced some things thereby which we of to-day can look upon only as ludicrous. The musical world knows how opera was composed in Italy in the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century. The librettist was not a poet, but a poetaster; a composer of eminence would call upon him to supply words for an aria already composed and especially adapted to the voice of some great and popular singer. The result naturally was an art-form which was neither sincere nor of real value, except from the standpoint of the singer.
The early Verdi followed the form which was known to him by attending the performances of opera given in his youth in Italy. But he saw the error of his ways and his masterpieces, Aida, Otello and Falstaff, more than atone for his early operas, which have little merit other than their facile melodic flow. Was it not to be expected that after him would come men who would emulate the manner of his last works? Was it unnatural to believe that Italy would interest itself in a more faithful setting of words to music? And the direct followers of the composer of Otello gave forth something that called the world's attention to their works. That it maintained Italian opera at a plane equal to the three final works of Verdi cannot be said. It was a passing phase and opened the way for the men who are now raising Italian operatic composition to the highest point in its history. As such it served its purpose.
When Giuseppe Verdi died in 1901 there had already been inaugurated the Realist movement in Italian opera. Italy's 'grand old man' had seen Pietro Mascagni achieve world renown with his Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggiero Leoncavallo follow him with the popular I Pagliacci. What he thought of the 'Veritists' we are not favored with knowing. It would seem safe to say that he could not have been deeply impressed by them; for the soul which gave musical expression to the emotions of the dying lovers Radames and Aïda, to the grief-stricken Otello after his murder of the lovely Desdemona, could have had little sympathy with the productions of men who fairly grovelled in the dust and covered themselves with mire in their attempts to picture the primitive feelings of Sicilian peasantry.
One man who is still alive and whose best work has a place in the répertoire of more than one opera house was a valued friend of Verdi. Arrigo Boïto[73] is his name. It was he who prepared for Verdi the libretti of Otello and Falstaff and produced a highly creditable score himself in his Mefistofele. Time was when this modern Italian's version of the Faust story was looked upon by cognoscenti as music of modern trend. In 1895 R. A. Streatfeild, the English critic, spoke of it as 'music of the head, rather than of the heart.' Hear it to-day and you will wonder how he made such a statement, for we have gone far since Mefistofele and to us it sounds pretty much like 'old Italian opera' in the accepted sense. But in its day it had potency. Boïto is, however, a finer littérateur than he is a musician. Since his success with Mefistofele he has not given us anything else. He has, to be sure, been working for many years on a Nero opera, the second act of which—there are to be five—is now completed. But a few years ago he donned the senatorial toga and matters of state have so occupied his attention that he is permitted now to turn his thoughts to music only at intervals. Further, he is already a man well along in years and the impulse to create is no longer strong. Those who know Boïto have reported that he will not complete Nero and that it will go down as a fragment.
Alberto Franchetti, born in 1860 in Turin, has composed Asrael, Cristoforo Colombo and Germania, three long, unimportant works, tried and found wanting. It was Luigi Torchi, the distinguished Italian critic, who, in discussing Asrael called it 'the most fantastic, metaphysical humbug that was ever seen on the stage.' (Torchi wrote this before Charpentier compelled himself to complete his 'Louise'!) Franchetti's leaning is toward the historical opera à la Meyerbeer, his method is Wagnerian. Originality he has none.
Our Realists are before us: Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Giordano, Puccini and Wolf-Ferrari. We have purposely omitted the names of men like Smareglia, Cilea, Tasca and Spinelli. Their music has long since been relegated to oblivion even in their own land. Little of it ever got beyond the Italian boundary. Spinelli's A Basso Porto reached New York in 1900 and was thus described by Mr. W. J. Henderson, music critic of the New York Sun: 'The story is so repulsive, the personages so repellent, the motives so atrocious and the whole atmosphere of the thing so foul with the smell of the scums and stews of life, that one is glad to escape to the outer air.... As to the music, ... there is not a measure of it which proclaims inspiration. There is not an idea which carries with it conviction.' Mr. Henderson does not even condemn our American operas so ruthlessly! From all of which the nature of Spinelli's opera may be understood.
We in America have for a number of years looked upon Giacomo Puccini as the greatest of living Italian opera composers. His devotees call him the greatest living creator of operatic music. Already his position is becoming insecure, for younger, more inspired and more learned men are appearing on the horizon of Italy's music. The Italians have never held Puccini in the same esteem as have Americans. Despite his many failures Pietro Mascagni has been the pride of Italian musicians and music-lovers. They will grant you that his L'Amico Fritz, Guglielmo Ratcliff and Iris have failed somewhat ignominiously. They will admit that the story of Iris is one of the most revolting subjects ever chosen for treatment upon the stage. Yet you will have difficulty in proving to the contrary when they challenge you to find them a more powerful piece of orchestral writing by an Italian up to 1910 than the 'Hymn to the Sun' from that opera. We know of nothing in modern Italian music so moving as this marvellously conceived prelude, a piece of imaginative writing of the first rank.
Mascagni[74] found himself famous after his Cavalleria. The youthful vigor of that music, crude and immature, gripped his countrymen and the inhabitants of other lands and made them believe that a new voice had appeared whose musical message was to be noteworthy. Here was a composer who had the training, who possessed definite musical ideas, who understood the stage—by far the most important thing for a composer of opera—but who has failed to add one iota to his reputation though he has worked laboriously since the early nineties to do so. His Ysabeau, which we were promised a few years ago, has achieved perhaps more success in his native land than any of his operas since Cavalleria; some call it a masterpiece, others decry its style as being unnatural to its composer. A hearing in America would do much to clarify the situation. Unfortunately Mascagni is a man who has disputes with publishers, who disappoints impresarios who desire to produce his works and whose domestic relations rise to turbulent climaxes from time to time. This has played a large part in his failure to receive hearings. And it is indeed lamentable to think that his chances for success have been spoiled by such matters.
His musical style is realistic, but it is never extreme. It was Cavalleria and the success gained by it that gave men like Tasca and Spinelli the idea that they, by carrying verismo further, would be received as composers of note. Mascagni has melodic fluency, he writes well for the voice and his management of the orchestra in Iris is proof positive that he has learned how to avoid that ill-balance of instrumental departments which occurs constantly in Cavalleria.
A smaller spirit is Leoncavallo (b. 1858). I Pagliacci, to be sure, remains one of the most popular operas of the day. But that is no proof of greatness. It must be granted that in it he touched a responsive chord; that his music has warmth and emotional force. But what is there in this little tragedy that lifts one up? What is there of thematic distinction? Signor Leoncavallo, like Mascagni, has pursued the muse and written a dozen or two operas since the world approved of his I Pagliacci. He has written Chatterton, I Medici, Maia, a La Bohème after Murger, I Zingari more recently, and he is now writing an opera called Ave Maria. They represent in toto a vast amount of work, but little of achievement. Those who have heard his recent operas agree unanimously that they lack the spark which Pagliacci possesses, that they are honest works by a man who has little to say and who tries to say that little in an imposing manner.
Perhaps the place of Giacomo Puccini will be determined alone by time. He is one of those creators to whom success in overwhelming measure comes, to whom the praise of the masses is granted during his life-time. Signor Puccini has seen his operas made part and parcel of virtually every operatic institution, large and small, that pretends to have a respectably varied repertory. He has witnessed triumphs, he has the satisfaction of knowing that such a singer as Enrico Caruso in one of his operas can fill the vast auditorium of New York's Metropolitan Opera House. His work, now almost completed, if we are to believe those reports which are divulged as authentic, is the achievement of a successful composer. His early operas Edgar and Le Villi are not in the reckoning. Let us pass them by. But he has given us a La Bohème, Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly and La Fanciulla del West. All of them have been accepted, though there may be some dispute as to the place of the last named. Puccini is now fifty-seven years old. He was born in 1858 at Lucca. He has enjoyed worldly possessions as the result of having written music; he is the idol of the public. Has he won the respect of discerning musicians? Has his music been accorded a place alongside that of the great living masters, such as Richard Strauss, Jean Sibelius and Claude Debussy?
Such a problem presents itself in the case of this popular composer for the stage. We would not deny Puccini a claim to respect; he deserves that, if for no other reason than for his having achieved international approval. But when one comes to a wholly serious investigation one fears that he will not be among the elect of his time. And there is this to be considered in arriving at an evaluation of his achievement. He has written music in every case to stories that the world has taken to its heart, witness Manon, La Bohème, Butterfly, Tosca and 'The Girl.' It mattered little to him whether they were dramas or novels. He waited until the public had judged and then set himself to putting them into operatic form. Such a procedure is, of course, any composer's right. And it shows keen insight of, however, a very obvious kind. If the story of one's opera is already popular and admired by the world, half the battle for approval is already won. The big men were often less wise. Weber wrote music to stories that were not only unknown, but that had no especial appeal; and he wrote his inspired music to libretti that were shamefully constructed and amateurishly written.
Modern Italian Composers:
Giacomo Puccini Riccardo Zandonai
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari Pietro Mascagni
Men of the first rank, who are artists in everything they do, do not choose their subjects in the way Puccini has. For Wagner the writing of a Tristan und Isolde was life—it was as necessary that he work on that particular drama as that he breathe. And to deal with the 'Parsifal' legend when he did was likewise inevitable. Call 'Parsifal' art or twaddle—it matters little which—you must admit that it reflects the master in his almost senile period, interested in just such an absurd conglomeration as Kundry, Amfortas, Klingsor and its other dramatic materials compose. The greatest composers of opera have written because they had to express certain things and because they found a drama which dealt with it. Puccini has been led by what the world approved.
Puccini has been fortunate, indeed. His La Bohème is artistically his best work. In it there is a finer sense of balance and proportion than in anything that he has done. He has done what few Italians are able to do, namely, he has interpreted the French spirit. This little opera—whose libretto, effective as it is, is in no wise an adequate reduction of Murger's great novel—is replete with comic and tragic moments that amuse and thrill by turns. The fun-making of the jolly Bohemians, Rodolphe, Marcel, Schaunard and Colline, is capitally pictured in music that is as care-free as the souls of the inhabitants of the Quartier Latin. And the death of little Mimi makes a musical scene that has potency to-day,—yes, even though Puccini has since learned to handle his orchestral apparatus with a firmer grip and a mightier sweep.
La Fanciulla del West, which had its world-première in America in 1911, is Puccini's biggest, if not his best, production. We care not a farthing whether his music be typical of California in 1849—we do wish that the carpers who claim that it is not, would enlighten us by telling just what kind of music is typical of it—nor does it matter whether one hear echoes of his earlier operas in it. It suffices that in it he has written with a sweep and a command of his forces such as he exhibits nowhere else and that he has written gorgeously in more than one scene in the work. We have heard that there is not as much melody in it as in his other operas. But, as a matter of fact, Puccini's melodies in 'The Girl' are quite as good as those in his other operas. What is more, they have a pungency which he has attained nowhere else.
But we fear that it is music of our time and that only. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that audiences of 1975 will find in Puccini anything that will interest them. Works that depend, to a large extent, on the appearance of a certain singer in the cast—and Puccini's operas do—will scarcely exert a hold on the public of a day when those singers shall have passed from this world. Antonio Scotti has made Scarpia in Tosca so vital a histrionic figure, Mr. Caruso sings Cavaradossi so beautifully that only the most blasé opera-goer fails to get real enjoyment from their personations. And so it is to a large degree with his other operas. Puccini bids fair to become another Meyerbeer when fifty years shall have rolled away. He has enjoyed the same shouts of approval from a public no more discerning than was that of Paris of the early nineteenth century; he has been called the most popular operatic composer of his day. Meyerbeer was, too. Yet to-day we can only find him tiresome and boring; we can but wonder how any public listened to his banalities, his deadly fustian, his woeful lack of inspiration, and express approval. Already the music of the future is dawning on our horizon. Those of us who have given it attention know that it is a very different thing from what music has been in the past. What we know of it now may only be a shadow of what is to come. Will it, when it does come and has been accepted, allow a place to the long-drawn phrases of Giacomo Puccini?