Milan, the chief operatic centre of opera-loving Italy, is full of music schools, agencies, restaurants and cafés, whose reason for existence, practically, is found in the fact that half the population is in one way or another connected with the operatic stage. Milan is even more Bohemian than Paris in this respect, and it is not difficult to understand why the subject of unconventionality, as treated by Puccini in La Bohème, should have come to him with such force. He had, in fact, gone through the whole thing completely, so far as living on nothing and making all sorts of shifts for existence were concerned. Milan's social atmosphere is almost completely that of theatrical Bohemianism, and all the students come very intimately into contact with its essence and spirit.
There are many little stories of Puccini in his early days, which, after all, only represent the common lot of many a struggling genius the wide world over. He and his companions at the time Edgar was in the process of making rented one little top room in the Via Solferino, for which, according to Puccini's friend Eugenio Checchi, who has recorded the history of these early days, they paid twenty-four shillings a month. Puccini kept a diary, which he called "Bohemian Life," in 1881. It was little more than a register of expenses. Coffee, bread, tobacco and milk appear to be the chief entries, and there is an entire absence of anything more substantial in the way of food. In one place there was a herring put down; and on this being brought to Puccini's recollection, he laughingly said: "Oh, yes, I remember. That was a supper for four people."
As will be seen in the chapter on La Bohème, this incident was made use of by the librettists in the third act of that opera.
From the Congregation of Charity at Rome, Puccini was in receipt at this time of £4 per month. The sum used to come in a registered letter on a certain day, and he and his companions usually had to suffer the landlord to open it and deduct, first, his share for the rent. Many were the scenes they had with this worthy possessor of real estate. He had forbidden them to cook in the room, and even with the marvellously cheap restaurants, where at least the one national dish of spaghetti could be indulged in for the merest trifle, our group of young strugglers found it even cheaper to do their cooking at home. As the hour of a meal drew near, the landlord used to go into the next room, or prowl about the landing, to listen and to smell. The usual stratagem was to place the spirit lamp on the table and over it a dish in which to cook eggs. When the frizzling began, the others would call out to Puccini to play "like the very devil," and going over to the piano he would start on some wild strains which stopped when the modest omelette—two eggs between three—was ready to turn out.
The material for firing was another source of expense. Their modest order did not warrant the coal-merchant sending up five flights of stairs to deliver it in whatever receptacle took the place of the usual cellar: so Michael Puccini, the brother, used to dress up in his best clothes, including a valuable relic in the shape of a "pot-hat," and take with him a black-bag. The others said, "Good-bye, bon voyage," with some effusion on the door-step to let the neighbours imagine he was going away for a visit; and off Michael would go, to return in the dusk with the bag full of coal.
There is something infinitely pathetic in recording that Puccini, when fortune smiled upon him, wrote to this brother in great glee to tell him of the success of Manon, and to say that he was able to buy the house in Lucca where they were born. But Michael, who had departed to South America to mend his own fortunes, was then lying dead of yellow fever, to which he had succumbed after three days' illness.
Edgar being completed, the work brought him in about six times the amount he had obtained for Le Villi, while with Manon, which followed, his position became practically assured for the future. Always of a shy, retiring disposition, he had often longed to get away from the cramped conditions of town life, and Torre del Lago, on a secluded lake not far from Lucca, lying in beautiful country, surrounded by woods, and connected by canals with the sea—into which it flows just by the spot where Shelley's body was washed ashore and afterwards burned—was an ideal spot to which his thoughts had often turned. He went there to reside first in 1891, about the time he was writing La Bohème; but some time before that he had found a partner of his joys in Elvira Bonturi, who, like himself, came from Lucca, and whom he married. Their only son, Antonio, was born in the December of 1886. It was not until 1900 that Puccini built the delightful villa at Torre del Lago to which he is so devotedly attached, and to which he always refers as a Paradise.
PUCCINI'S VILLA AT TORRE DEL LAGO
Before finally deciding on a site at Torre del Lago—the Tower of the Lake—Puccini stayed for a time at Castellaccio, near Pescia, where a good deal of La Bohème was put to paper. Tosca was begun at Torre del Lago, and finished during a visit at the country house, Monsagrati, not far from Lucca, of his friend the Marquis Mansi. At the time of Madama Butterfly he was back at Torre del Lago, to which he was taken after his motor accident, but he was at this time the possessor of another country villa at Abetone, in the Tuscan Appenines, and in this latter place a good deal of his latest opera was set down. He has more recently built yet another country villa on the opposite side of the lake to Torre del Lago, on the Chiatri Hill. It is a charming example of the Florentine style of architecture, in which brick and marble are most skilfully blended. But Puccini told me, when last I saw him, that so far he had only spent a week-end in it.