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?
II
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, born (1876) of a German mother and an Italian father, presents a problem to us. He is a man whose gifts have not at all times been applied to that which was his ideal, but rather to the immediately necessary. If one looks at him in this light—and it is feasible to do so—one can readily understand some of his artistic indiscretions. The mob knows him as the composer of I Gioielli della Madonna ('Jewels of the Madonna,' 1908), his only essay in operatic realism of the objectionable type. The art-lover hails him as the fine spirit that conceived the little operas Il Segreto di Suzanna, Le Donne Curiose, L'Amore Medico, the oratorio La Vita Nuova, some charming though not important songs and several beautiful pieces of chamber music, among them two sonatas for violin and piano and a quintet for piano and strings.
Wolf-Ferrari is neither Italian nor German; he is a mixture and so it is possible to conceive his thinking music in two ways.[75] By no means is this desirable, but when it exists, what force can alter it? We feel that the 'Jewels of the Madonna'—which those for whom music is an entertainment rather than an art admire so much—is simply a 'bad dream' of its composer's. Before one knows his instrumental music one thinks it was the real Wolf-Ferrari and that the finesse of his other operas was a pose. There are many things which caused the 'Jewels' to be written; persons who know the composer and who were in Munich when it was being written say that the chief one was the need of financial aid. Seeing the shekels pouring into the baskets of composers who did this kind of thing regularly, Wolf-Ferrari 'tried his hand,' thinking that it would be lucrative. That part of the adventure has not been denied him. But it has done him immeasurable harm in the opinions of many who were looking to him for greater things. Its chances are limited—it cannot be sung in Italy on account of its misrepresentation of Neapolitan life—and the Metropolitan Opera House has refused to place it in the répertoire.
What Wolf-Ferrari will do no one can say. His next production may be in his dainty and at all times charming manner. It may quite as readily be a lurid and vulgar thing in the coarse musical style of 'The Jewels.' One can only hope that the widely expressed regrets of cognoscenti on the appearance of this unsavory and uninspired work will have their effect on the composer and that he will give us more in his rococo style, which if not original is at any rate delightful and unique in the music of to-day.
Times change and music develops. There is, in fact, no branch of art in which metamorphoses are so quickly accomplished. Not a decade ago Luigi Torchi wrote that Umberto Giordano (b. 1867) was an ultra-modern composer! This from a man whose knowledge and fairness must be viewed with respect. Giordano an ultra-modern! One hesitates to answer such a fatuous assertion. Were it not generally known that what is new in music to-day is rococo to-morrow the case might be a serious one. Umberto Giordano is inconsequential in the evaluating of Italian music-drama. His achievements are the operas Regina Diaz, Mala Vita, Andrea Chénier, Fedora, Siberia and Mme. Sans-Gêne. For the opera-goer of to-day the list has little meaning. Regina Diaz, an early work, occupies a place in that limbo of the past where Puccini's Le Villi has long been slumbering. Mala Vita was a failure, Andrea Chénier and Fedora mild successes. 'Siberia' had meritorious features, notably the Russian folk-songs which were employed verbatim; had Signor Giordano been a musician who had the power to develop them symphonically and thus make them part and parcel of his score his opera might have taken a place in the repertory of the world's opera-houses. Fedora, based on that wretched example of Sardoodledom, was quickly consigned to oblivion and now his long-awaited Madame Sans-Gêne—which he has been thinking about since the time he went to Giuseppe Verdi and asked him whether it would be possible to write an opera in which Napoleon had to sing—has failed to establish him an iota more firmly in the estimation of musicians and lovers of music-drama. Many years have been required for the composition of Sans-Gêne; Giordano, once looked to as one of the 'younger Italians,' is no longer to be placed in that category. He is nearly fifty and he writes slowly. From him little is to be expected. He remains one of those lesser composers, whose name was brought into prominence by his Andrea Chénier at a time when the interest in Italy's then younger men had been aroused through the unequivocal success of Cavalleria and I Pagliacci.
Giacomo Orefice and Luigi Mancinelli are two men whose activities as composers have resulted in several operas that have had hearings. Orefice has done the operas Mariska, Consuelo, Il Gladiatore, Chopin, Cecilia, Mose, and Il Pane Altri. His Chopin seems to have aroused the most comment; in it he pictured incidents in the life of the great Polish piano composer and in doing so he has employed Chopin's music, setting some of the nocturnes as solos for the voice, etc. He is, however, more of a musical scholar than a composer. Mancinelli, who has divided his time between conducting and composing, has done a 'Hero and Leander,' which had a respectable success when first heard. His other operas are Isora di Provenza and Paolo e Francesca. He has also done two oratorios, Isaia and San Agnese. His musical speech is frankly that of a post-Wagnerian.
III
Fortunately for the Italian music-drama there are two young men living to-day who have achieved art-works which seem to be the creation of individual thought. Riccardo Zandonai and Italo Montemezzi must carry the banner of their land in the music-drama. The world has not taken them into that much cherished household-word condition, but one does note their attracting attention among musicians. And this is the first step.