“Good gracious! Why didn’t you tell me that immediately? Come along!”
I grabbed my hat and we drove to the Borghese Gardens, where a crowd of several thousand people were gathered around the bandstand and where Maestro Vecella was conducting his band in a beautiful rendition of the Prelude to Wagner’s “Parsifal.” It was a wonderful performance. His clarinets played the opening unison phrase with a vibrant and singing quality that I have rarely heard equalled, and I was struck by the rapt silence with which the huge audience of Italians listened to it. I, unfortunately, arrived too late to hear the rendition of Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony,” which Vecella himself had arranged for military band and which my musicians afterward told me had been beautifully performed. The concert came to a close with a selection of airs from one of the popular modern Italian operas. To my astonishment and delight, as the band began to play this or that air, evidently well known to the audience, groups of men around the bandstand joined in singing it with the orchestra mezza voce, but with that perfect quality of tone which is inborn in the Italian race. And then, as the sounds of one group would die out, another from the other side would take it up, and this continued until the end of the number. It was a delightful demonstration of the innate musical genius of the Italian people.
I forgot temporarily that the sun was blazing down with a fierceness almost unendurable, but after I had thanked Maestro Vecella for this truly wonderful concert, I begged Molinari and Tommasini to take me back to my hotel.
“Stay a little while longer,” said Tommasini.
“Impossible!” I answered. “I am melting away and there will be nothing left of me if I do not get to some shaded spot soon.”
“Oh, but you will,” he said. “The Banda Communale are now going to present you with the gold medal of the society, with a special inscription.”
“Why in heaven’s name did you not tell me this sooner?” I said to my friend, but he simply smiled his inscrutable Italian smile and lit another cigarette. With the resolve to do or die, I marched along with them to a private room in a restaurant adjoining the Gardens and there ices and vermuth were served to the members of the two musical organizations, and I was presented with the gold Roman medal, which I treasure very highly as coming from so remarkable a body of players as the Banda Communale di Roma.
For some years I have been interested in the new musical development that is going on in Italy. There had been a period when her church music led the world in the variety and beauty of its form. Later on, especially in the eighteenth century, she had produced many composers of distinction in instrumental music, but from then on and until very recent times, opera had almost completely monopolized her writers. The splendid opera-houses which are to be found in her smallest towns are eloquent testimony to the important place which that form of art occupies in the hearts of the Italian people. Every Italian can sing, and the critics and lovers of opera are to be found just as much among the poorer classes as among the aristocracy.
But all the testimony of older musicians with whom I have spoken and who have travelled through Italy is to the effect that her orchestras formerly were of a very poor quality. Their playing was slovenly and rehearsals few and insufficient. Many of the players in the opera-houses of even the larger cities followed some other calling in the daytime, and there was many a tailor or shoemaker who played his violin in the evening at the opera.
Within the last twenty-five years, however, a complete and almost miraculous change has come over musical conditions throughout Italy. Its conservatories in Rome, Milan, Bologna, and Naples turn out excellent players, and several of her conductors rank with the best of other countries. Signor Mancinelli, for instance, who was my colleague during the years that I conducted at the Metropolitan for Maurice Grau, was a first-class musician and conductor, well versed in more than Italian music. He was a great lover of Mozart and gave beautiful performances of the “Magic Flute” at the Metropolitan. He envied me my job of conducting the Wagner operas and later on conducted many of them in Italy and Spain.