LITERATURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19347, 6 December 1924, Page 4

LITERATURE.

GIACOMO PUCCINI.

A MQDEBN MUSICIAN. By Constant Reader. The death of Giacomo Puccini removes from the scene of action one who may be regarded os tho founder of the young Italian School of Opera or music drama, a school which was the direct result of the Wagnerian aftermath. Opera, which had its beginnings in tho dance and travelled along tho road of vocal expression by music, had its original home in Italy, the land that gave Puccini birth. Puccini, who, save for his very early work, wrote nothing but operas, called his work “Dramma per Lyrioa,” lyrio dramas, a term first established and moulded into a definite art form by Wagner. It has been asserted by a competent critic, Mr Laurence Gilman, tlxt, at his best, Puccini was a Wagnerian in the truest sense, “a far more consistent Wagnerian than was Wagner himself.” Tho reason for this judgment is succinctly stated:—

Puccini, in common with the rest of the Neo-Italians, is at his best in the expression of dramatic emotion and movement, and at his worst in his voicing of purely lyrio emotion, meditative or passionate. In its lyrio portions his music is almost invariably banal, without distinction, without beauty or restraint when the modern Italian music-maker dons his singing robes he becomes clothed with commonness and vulgarity. Thus m ita scenes of amorous exaltation the music of “Tosca,” of “Madame Butterfly (recall in the latter work the flamboyant commonness of the exultant duet which closes the first act) is blatant and rhetorical, rather than searching and poignant. Puccini’s strength lies in the truly impressive manner in which ho is able to intensify and underscore _ the more dramatic momenta in tho action. At such times his music possesses an uncommon sureness, swiftness, and incisiveness; especially in passages of tragic foreboding, of mounting excitement, it is gripping and intensive in a quite irresistible degree. Often at such moments, it has an electric quality of vigour, a curious nervous strength. That is its cardinal merit; its spare, lithe, closely-knit, clean-cut, immensely energetic orchestral enforcement of those portions of the drama where the action is tense, cunvulittivo, rather than of sentimental or amorous connotation. Puccini has, indeed, an almost unparalleled capacity for a kind of orchestral commentary which is both forceful and succinct. He wastes no words, he makes no superfluous gestures; he is masterfully direct, pregnant, expeditious, compact. Gould anything be more admirable, in what it attempts and brilliantly contrives to do, than almost the entire second act of "Tosca,” with the exception of the sentimental and obstructive Prayer? How closely, with what unswerving fidelity, the musio elmga to the contours of the play, and with what an economy of effort its effects are made! Puccini founded the modern “light opera’’ as distinguished from “comio opera or “musical comedy” when he composed L Villi.” This was first produced at the Dal Verme Theatre” in Milan on May 31, 1884, but did not see the. English stage untd 1897 and then only m Manchester, ihe composer called the work a ballet-opera, and together with the Cavallena of Mascagni and the “I Pagliaoci” of Leoncavallo, it may be said to have inaugurated the reign of young Italy in contemporary opera. Puccini followed Le Villi i( With "Edgar,” designated a “lyric drama. It was staged at La Scala, Milan, on April 21, 1889. but the vocal score was not published until 1905. The Abbe Provost’s famous romance “ Manon Lescaut ” was the nest theme to engage Puccini’s attention. Auber had already composed an opera on the subject, but it never attained any popularity. Massenet’s “Manon,” produced in 1884, was, however, a creditable piece of work. Puccini's “Matron” was produced at the Regio Theatre, Turin, on February 1, 1893, and it was given the next year—on May 14 at Covent Garden, London, under the management of Sir Augustus Harm La Bohorne,” Puccini’s fourth and most popular opera, was composed partly at the delightful villa which the composer had built for himself at Torre del Lago—the Tower of the Lake—and partly at a villa which Puccini leased for a while at Castellucio, near Pescia. It was given for the first time at the Teatro Regio, Turin, on February 1 1896, and was produced in Manchester on April 22, 1897, by the Carl Rosa Opera Company. This production was notable from the fact that not only was ,a new opera by a young Italian composer given within a year of its first perfonnance in its native land but that an English company was the first to render it and in the English language. It was produced during tho same year at Covent Garden. In “Tosca,” his next opera, Puccini reversed tho process adopted with “La Boheme.” He had treated Henri Murger’s famous French story from the Italian point of view. Ho now derived from Sardou’s drama of “ La Tosca” an Italian story dressed in French fashion. In “Tosca” Puccini fully sustained tho popularity won with “La Boheme,” his new opera being presented at the Costanzi Theatre, Rome, on January 14, 1900. It was first seen m London at Oovent Garden in July of the some year, and in New York in Italian in February, 1901. It was produced in English in America at Buffalo. As is well known, the scene of “Madame Butterfly” is set in Japan, but the plot is no more Japanese than that of “La Boheme” is French. The opera was written for tho most part while Puccini was suffering from a fractured leg, the result of a motor oco dent. and it was produced at La Scala, Milan, on February 17, 1904, with a result as disastrous as when “Tannhauser” was first performed in Paris. "The audience simply howled in derision,” the storm of disapproval beginning after the first few bars of tho opening act. There was consequently no second or subsequent performance in Milan. The opera quickly came to London, however, and was produced with success at Covent Garden on July 10, 1905. Its subsequent performance in Dunedin, together with “La Boheme,” with a dual cast, Madame Bel Sorol and Miss_ Amy Castles respectively sustaining the title role, will bo within the memory of many. Puooini’a last work, “The Girl of the Golden West,” was produced in New York in December, 1910, under the composer’s personal direction. In his book on “Musio and Life,” Mr W. J. Turner criticises this opera somewhat caustically: “The Girl of the Golden West” is a good entertainment, which is more than I can say for Puccini’s other operas. Musically it is beyond the pale; it has no feeling or imagination, nothing but the shallowest artifice, the most transparent trickery. Yet, if trickery, it is not the most offensive trickery. Puccini does not besmirch everybody and everything with treacle, and though it is as easy to be sloppy in musio as in words, and Minnie’s Bible Class gives him a great opportunity, ho never descends to the depths of “The Professor’s Love Story.” what is so striking is tho complete absence of sincerity in tho music. It is all gesture, with a hand on the heart and an eye on tho box office. There is a note on the programme by Puccini’s publishers repeating the old tag that tho music is a “continuous commentary on the action.” This orchestral commentary habit has become the worst feature in modern opera. It has degenerated into a mere formula to save original thinking, and its main use now seems to be to palm off long stretches of dullness by continually whisking before your ears one or two of what the composer thinks to bo his best tunes. Tho first two acts of “Louise” offer one of the worst examples of this trick, but I almost defy anyone to tell mo tho meaning of the orchestral commentary in (he first act of “The Girl of tho Golden West” during the dialogue between tho Sheriff and Minnie. Tho orchestra would be just as well employed in shuffling their chairs about. The play is an amusing melodrama well performed. The Sheriff, well acted, is a delightful creation—the sort of thing Dickens might have done if he had written cowboy tales. Then there is the cowboy who reads aloud a letter from homo! “Your poor old grandmother is no more—Whisky I” And the heroine who sits on a barrel full of gold at the end of the first act and murmurs “O Hell I” os tho curtain falls. All this is quite charming, and no doubt there is more of it if we could hear it. Tho libretto makes no largo demands on our sympathy. All tho material for a plain, poignant tale is there, and a composer of genius could make it real and intensely moving. But these Italian composers have no heart and no imagination; they simply thump their chests and are full of gesticulations. Whatever opinion may bo hold regarding (he quality of Puccini’s music and his place as a composer—and tho subject has given rise to a good deal of controversy—the story

of his life, as related by Mr Wakeling Dry, presents many points of interest. Giacomo Puccini was born in 1658 in Lucca, in a house in the Via Poggia. The family, which from the earliest times was devoted to the art of music, hailed from Celle, a typical mountain Italian village on the right bank of the Serchio. Giacomo’s father was Michele Puccini, a teacher of music and inspector of the then newly-formed Institute of Music at Luoca. Ho died in 1864, at tho ago of 51. leaving his wife, a woman of 33, to provide and care for his seven children. This mother did a noble work in bringing up a largo family on an exceedingly small share of this world’s goods; and especially in recognising the musical talent of her fifth child, for Giacomo Puccini was only six years of ago when his father died. Ho was a restless child, with a desire for travel. He hated arithmetic, and his curious irresponsible nature and dislike of guidance and restraint made him a difficult child to teach Ho was a failure as a scholar, and his uncle essayed to train him as a singer, but without success. His mother was convinced that Giacomo was destined to carry on the family’s musical tradition, and, by dint of pinching and scraping, she managed to send him to the Institute of Music at Lucca. Ho developed into a fair player, and he was given charge of tho music at a couple of churches in tho neighbourhood. While engaged in his church duties he formed the habit of improvising from which sprang the spirit of composition. In 1877 a musical competition was announced in Lucca, tho subject being a setting of a cantata, “Juno,” and young Puccini entered his name, but bis work was rejected as not conforming in any way to the accepted canons of music. Discontented with his work as a church organist, he witnessed a performance at the theatre of Verdi’s “Aida,” and at once he made up his mind to go to Milan, the Mecca of all young Italian musicians. His mother seconded her son’s efforts, and, besides herself making the necessary sacrifices, she enlisted the sympathy of relatives and friends with tho result that the cost of a three years’ course at the Conservatory' of Music at Milan was provided for the embryo composer.

Given this opportunity, Pucoini showed grit and stuck to his studies. He passed his entrance examination with flying colours, coming out with top marks over all his competitors. His actual work as a student commenced on December 16. 1880, just 44 years before death claimed him. All through his student days ho lived a simple life, and he kept all his good resolutions in a remarkable way. It was in an exercise prepared for an examination corresponding to tho British degree of Bachelor of Musio that Puccini made his first mark as a rising composer, but his hand writing, more particularly his way of setting down music on paper, was a trial both to his teachers and examiners. But "fho black beetle like splotches on the untidy manuscript” did not prevent the quality of the music being appreciated. It was when engaged in competing for tho Sozogno prize that Puccini first conceived tho idea of writing an opera. He did not win the prize, but the idea was born of “Le Villi” for which he received £BO, nearly half that sum going to the restaurant keeper who had allowed him credit. Puccini was very poor, living on the scale of the students and artists pictured in “La Boheme.” Indeed, it was the remembrance of his early experiences which lent such zest to the composition of that opera.

His devoted mother did not live to witness the triumph of her son. Puccini sought consolation for his bereavement in hard work, and his second opera “Edgar” was written in Milan during a period of anxiety while lacking almost the means to live. When “Edgar” was completed it brought him six times as much as “Le Villi,” and with the production of “Manon” his financial position was assured. Mr Wakelink Dry says:— Always of a shy, retiring disposition, he had often longed to get away from the cramped conditions of town life, and (Lorre 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 wag washed ashore and afterwards burned—was an ideal spot to which his thoughts had often turned. Ho went there to reside first in 1891, about the time he was writing "La Boheme”; but some time before that he had found a partner of, his joys in Elvira Benturi, who, like himself, came from Lucca, and whom he married. Tneir only son, Antonio, was bom 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 ho always refers as a Paradise. Puccini visited London for the first time when he supervised the production of “Manon” at Covont Garden in 1894. He was in England, again three years later in connection with the production of “La Boheme” in English at Manchester by tho Carl Rosa Opera Company. He has left on record nis impressions of those two cities and also of Paris:— Manchester, land of the smoke, cold, fog, rain, and —cotton 1 London has six million inhabitants, a movement which it is as impossible to describe as tho language is to acquire. A city of splendid women, beautiful amusements, and altogether fascinating. In Paris, the gay city, there is loss traffic than in London, but life there flies. My chief friends were Zola, gardou, and Daudot.

Puccini was very fond of the theatre, and when in London he enjoyed the production of “Oliver Twist” —he was especially fond of Dickens’s novels and of " The Tempest.” Of Puccini as a composer Mr Laurence Gilman says:— In “ Madame Butterfly ” one misses the salient characterisation, the gripping intensity, tho sharpness and boldness of outline that mrko “Tosca” so notable an accomplishment. “Tosca,” for all its occasional commonness, its melodic, banality is a work of immense vigour and unquestionable individuality. In it Puccini has saturated almost every page of tho music with his own intensely vivid .personality; a personality that is exceedingly impressive in its crude*' strength and directness; ho has, in this score, exploited tho strange, critical legend that his style is little more than a blended echo of the later Verdi, Ponchielli, and Massenet. The musio of " Tosca ” is not often distinguishable, but it is singularly striking, potent, and original; none save Puccini could possibly have written it But since then this composer has, artistically speaking, visited Paris. Ho has appreciated the value of certain harmonic experiments which such adventurous Frenchmen ns Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and others are making; he has appreciated them so sincerely that certain pages in “ Madame Butterfly,” as, for instance, the lovely interlude between the second and third acts, sound almost as if they had been continued by Debussy himself—a Latinised Debussy, of course. Puccini, in short, has become intellectually sophisticated, and ho has learned gentler artistic manners, in tho interval between the composition of "Tosca” and “ Madatne Butterfly.” Tho musio of the latter work is far more delicately structured and subtle than anything he has previously given us, and it has moments of conquering beauty, of groat tenderness, of superlative sweetness. It is beyond question a charming and brilliant score, exceedingly adroit in workmanship, and almost invariably effective. Yet after such excellencies have been gladly acknowledged, on© is disturbinglv conscious that tho real, the essential P'uccini, has for tho most part evaporated. There are other voices speaking through this music, voices that for all their charm and distinction of accent, seem alien and a little insincere. Has the vital, if crude imagination which gave issue to the music of “Tosca” acquired finesse and delicacy at a cost of independent impulse?