PUCCINI

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27035, 9 May 1953, Page 3

PUCCINI

[Reviewed by (■mortal Bohemian. By Dante del Florentino. Victor Goliancz, 232 PP. English biographies of Puccini are not numerous, and this one, with its enphasis on the man rather than the music or the musician, remedies the deficiency in a limited way only. It is a volume of reminiscent gossip by an unabashed admirer. Dante del Fiorentino, a Catholic priest, was curate in the parish to which Puccini belonged in his later life. His knowlege of the household was intimate. With his gift for piquant observation he has been able to mould this period into an unusually sympathetic study, pie intense activity of Puccini, the hedonism, the almost seasonal moodiness all underlie and illuminate the Incidents which Father Dante describes so well. His unfailing enthusiasm for the maestro is nowhere more clearly in evidence than in the account of numerous love affairs. The author almost blames Mrs Puccini for her lack of understanding and furious jealousy! As a musician, Puccini was orthodox in method, hard-working and acutely self-critical. He lived by cycles, each comprising a long and impatient search for a libretto followed by months and years of labour over the score. As for the man, bohemianprevailed—in fact, the life at Toore del Lago where one Stinchi di Merlo managed an unprofitable, but congenial, cafe, produced the essence of La Scheme, one of his greatest works. Puccini’s success rests solely on his operas. There is a story, worth telling, behind each of them. Father Dante shows how exotic elements appealed to the composer. France, Japan and America, in turn, stimulated him to originality. His interest in libretti dealing with Africa and China clinch an attractive theory. The publishing house of Ricordi figures prominently, and one gathers the impression that this firm was as responsible for Puccini’s healthv finances as the music itself. For Toscanini he had nothing but admiration in the field of music, and nothing but abuse elsewhere. His visits abroad, his first automobile, his hunting, and his view of Schoenberg’s »usic, “a shipwreck in a tonal storm,” •ujfive colour and vitality to the por-

Father Dante has relied on secondhand information for his account of Puccini’s early life. The anecdotes, consequently, suffer in the telling. It * as though the author, having set his heart on writing a biography, has used ®e opening chapters to establish which rtyle will suit best. Not until we read ®e result s of personal experience and observation do we feel that authenticity replaces romantic reconstruction. Puccini threatening a friend with, “Get tile words for me or I'll become a ProJestant” is much more in character tirnn some of the commonplaces, which Boito may have said a generation before.

In all, it is fair to say, however, that “iis book leaves the reader convinced that he has known the musician in per*°P- Between author and subject, the Relationship equals that which made ’enby’s study of Delius so successful