FAMOUS SONG

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 70, 15 December 1933, Page 6 (Supplement)

FAMOUS SONG

his little book of MS. jottings. He came across the air she had liked at Manchester, and worked it up into what the worlds knows as “H ' Bacio.” He then showed the music to a. friend, and asked him to write some words to suit the number. The friend promised to do so, if Arditi would supply a title. It was Mad-

ame Arditi who suggested “The Kiss,” and so was born the number that we hear almost weekly over the air in some form or other.

Composing “Il Bacio” (By H.P.) I was reminded once more of the fact that a good melody lives for ever on hearing the song, “11 Bacio” (The Kiss) played and sung over the air recently. It recalled to the memory the merest chance that it was ever written by that fine song writer and great conductor, Signor Arditi, who was for so long associated with the operatic enterprises of the late Colonel J. H. Jlapleson, the English impresario of the Victorian era. One evening half a dozen members of her Majesty’s Opera Company were assembled in the drawingroom of the Queen’s Hotel at Manchester. Arditi, at somebody’s request, was asked Jo play something on the pianoforte, and was strumming away at snatches of this and that composer, here and there improvising for his own amusement. After one of these little improvisations Piccolomini, the distinguished operatic prima donna, asked him about a certain passage. “Oh, it is nothing,” said Arditi, and went on playing. “It is very charming, maestro,” said Piccolomini, “play it again.” Arditi did so with some difficulty, and then, as they all liked it, he took a note of the subject in his pocket book, and thought no more of the matter. About a year later he was reminded by Piccolomini that he had promised to write a song for her performance at Brighton. Searching for a theme he looked up