Puccini's days at his beloved Torre del Lago are divided between sport and work. The beginning of his house, by the way, was a keeper's lodge, a mere hut, on the edge of the wood. It is so white that in the distance it looks like marble, but as a building it is quite unpretentious. There is a little garden leading down to the lake, while at the back stretches the fine open country. He is usually up and away early in the morning, accompanied by his two favourite dogs, "Lea" and "Scarpia." He goes to and fro from his shoots in his motor-boat "Butterfly." The place abounds with wild duck, wild swans and all sorts of water-fowl, the principal quarry from the sportsman's point of view being coots, hares, and wild boar. Puccini has been frequently snowed up while away shooting as late as April.
To the south of the lake, in the plain, are some remains of a bath attributed to Nero, with undoubted traces of a Roman road and a fosse. One can hardly move a yard in Italy without coming across villas of Lucullus, roads of Hannibal, or fields of Cataline, but this particular place, not only from the traces of buildings which remain, but from the result of excavation, by which many Roman remains were brought to light, is of great antiquity.
Coming in from a "shoot" Puccini often allows the best part of the day to pass in more or less what seems like idleness, preferring to put down his music at night—the one relic, one may say, of his old wayward restless ways. He works chiefly on the ground floor of his house at Torre del Lago, in a spacious apartment which is a sort of dining-room, study and music-room all in one. The ceiling is crossed with large wooden beams, and he calls the Venetian blinds, which are outside the many and large windows, "mutes" for the sun, using the word, of course, in its sense of a device for softening the tone of a musical instrument. The walls of the room are decorated with some quick impulsive designs, dashed on by his friend the artist Nomellini, representing the flight of the hours from dawn to night. For the rest, the room is full of photographs of all sorts of distinguished people, from Verdi downwards, and stuffed birds.
When the desire for work is upon Puccini, "it catches him," as an Italian would say, "by the scalp," and he works at a thing continuously. During the recovery from his motor accident he was wheeled to the piano each day and planned out Madama Butterfly, although the actual writing down of the melodies and the general work of construction was done, of course, away from the instrument. He makes a rough sketch of the whole score as a rule, which he subjects to all sorts of weird alterations only intelligible to himself, and from this makes a clean copy embodying all the process of polishing and finishing to which the original idea was subjected.
PUCCINI AFTER A "SHOOT"
Photo. by S. Ernesto Arboco
It is difficult to get from Puccini any particulars of his ideas and aims. He much prefers to do things rather than to talk about them. He has on one or two occasions, however, given a hint of his views which may be worth putting down again. One is on the interesting question as to dramatic instinct in music. Puccini maintains that it is a question not of instinct but experience. He says himself that his early works were lacking in dramatic quality, but he does not agree that if it is not inborn it cannot be developed. He maintains that the choice of librettos has more to do with it than anything else, and from the first he has worked a good deal in this way by more than the usual amount of consultation and exchange of ideas that goes on between a composer and the writer of the book. Marie Antoinette, at the time when I had the pleasure of talking with him, was the subject for an opera which was, at least, uppermost in his mind. "But I have thought of many subjects and stories," he said. "La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret and the Tartarin of Daudet are two well-known ones. The latter is pure fun, but I have always thought, when coming to the point, that I should be accused, if I set it, of copying Verdi's Falstaff. The former, I believe, Zola promised to Massenet. I have also thought of Trilby; and several excellent themes for plots could be gathered from the stories of the later Roman Emperors." One statement at least was very characteristic of Puccini. "My next plot must be one of sentiment to allow me to work in my own way. I am determined not to go beyond the place in art where I find myself at home."
Puccini is very fond of the theatre, and when last in London enjoyed the production of Oliver Twist—he is specially fond, in our literature, of Dickens—and The Tempest.