A Second Book of Operas

by Henry Edward Krehbiel

The between-acts music is retrospective; it comments on the tragic emotions, the pathos foretold in the prologue. Act II brings the comedy which is to have a realistic and bloody ending. The villagers gather and struggle for places in front of the booth. Among them is Silvio, to whom Nedda speaks a word of warning as she passes him while collecting the admission fees. He reminds her of the assignation; she will be there. The comedy begins to the music of a graceful minuet:—

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

Columbine is waiting for Harlequin. Taddeo is at the market buying the supper for the mimic lovers. Harlequin sings his serenade under the window: "O, Colombina, il tenero fido Arlecchin"—a pretty measure! Taddeo enters and pours out his admiration for Colombina in an exaggerated cadenza as he offers her his basket of purchases. The audience shows enjoyment of the sport. Taddeo makes love to Colombina and Harlequin, entering by the window, lifts him up by the ears from the floor where he is kneeling and kicks him out of the room. What fun! The mimic lovers sit at table and discuss the supper and their love. Taddeo enters in mock alarm to tell of the coming of Pagliaccio. Harlequin decamps, but leaves a philtre in the hands of Columbine to be poured into her husband's wine. At the window Columbine calls after him: A stanotte—e per sempre io saro tua! At this moment Canio enters in the character of Pagliaccio. He hears again the words which Nedda had called after the fleeing Silvio, and for a moment is startled out of his character. But he collects himself and begins to play his part. "A man has been here!" "You've been drinking!" The dialogue of the comedy continues, but ever and anon with difficulty on the part of Pagliaccio, who begins to put a sinister inflection into his words. Taddeo is dragged from the cupboard in which he had taken hiding. He, too, puts color of verity into his lines, especially when he prates about the purity of Columbine. Canio loses control of himself more and more. "Pagliaccio no more, but a man—a man seeking vengeance. The name of your lover!" The audience is moved by his intensity. Silvio betrays anxiety. Canio rages on. "The name, the name!" The mimic audience shouts, "Bravo!" Nedda: if he doubts her she will go. "No, by God! You'll remain and tell me the name of your lover!" With a great effort Nedda forces herself to remain in character. The music, whose tripping dance measures have given way to sinister mutterings in keeping with Canio's mad outbursts, as the mimic play ever and anon threatens to leave its grooves and plunge into the tragic vortex of reality, changes to a gavotte:—

[figure: a musical excerpt]

Columbine explains: she had no idea her husband could put on so tragical a mask. It is only harmless Harlequin who has been her companion. "The name! The name!! THE NAME!!!" Nedda sees catastrophe approaching and throws her character to the winds. She shrieks out a defiant "No!" and attempts to escape from the mimic stage. Silvio starts up with dagger drawn. The spectators rise in confusion and cry "Stop him!" Canio seizes Nedda and plunges his knife into her: "Take that! And that! With thy dying gasps thou'lt tell me!" Woful intuition! Dying, Nedda calls: "Help, Silvio!" Silvio rushes forward and receives Canio's knife in his heart. "Gesumaria!" shriek the women. Men throw themselves upon Canio. He stands for a moment in a stupor, drops his knife and speaks the words: "The comedy is ended." "Ridi Pagliaccio!" shrieks the orchestra as the curtain falls.

"Plaudite, amici," said Beethoven on his death bed, "la commedia finita est!" And there is a tradition that these, too, were the last words of the arch-jester Rabelais. "When 'Pagliacci' was first sung here (in Boston), by the Tavary company," says Mr. Philip Hale, "Tonio pointed to the dead bodies and uttered the sentence in a mocking way. And there is a report that such was Leoncavallo's original intention. As the Tonio began the piece in explanation so he should end it. But the tenor (de Lucia) insisted that he should speak the line. I do not believe the story. (1) As Maurel was the original Tonio and the tenor was comparatively unknown, it is doubtful whether Maurel, of all men, would have allowed of the loss of a fat line. (2) As Canio is chief of the company it is eminently proper that he should make the announcement to the crowd. (3) The ghastly irony is accentuated by the speech when it comes from Canio's mouth."

CHAPTER IX

"CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA"

Having neither the patience nor the inclination to paraphrase a comment on Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" which I wrote years ago when the opera was comparatively new, and as it appears to me to contain a just estimate and criticism of the work and the school of which it and "Pagliacci" remain the foremost exemplars, I quote from my book, "Chapters of Opera" [Footnote: "Chapters of Opera," by H. E. Krehbiel, p.223] "Seventeen years ago 'Cavalleria Rusticana' had no perspective. Now, though but a small portion of its progeny has been brought to our notice, we nevertheless look at it through a vista which looks like a valley of moral and physical death through which there flows a sluggish stream thick with filth and red with blood. Strangely enough, in spite of the consequences which have followed it, the fierce little drama retains its old potency. It still speaks with a voice which sounds like the voice of truth. Its music still makes the nerves tingle, and carries our feelings unresistingly on its turbulent current. But the stage-picture is less sanguinary than it looked in the beginning. It seems to have receded a millennium in time. It has the terrible fierceness of an Attic tragedy, but it also has the decorum which the Attic tragedy never violated. There is no slaughter in the presence of the audience, despite the humbleness of its personages. It does not keep us perpetually in sight of the shambles. It is, indeed, an exposition of chivalry; rustic, but chivalry nevertheless. It was thus Clytemnestra slew her husband, and Orestes his mother. Note the contrast which the duel between Alfio and Turiddu presents with the double murder to the piquant accompaniment of comedy in 'Pagliacci,' the opera which followed so hard upon its heels. Since then piquancy has been the cry; the piquant contemplation of adultery, seduction, and murder amid the reek and stench of the Italian barnyard. Think of Cilea's 'Tilda,' Giordano's 'Mala Vita,' Spinelli's 'A Basso Porto,' and Tasca's 'A Santa Lucia'!