Part 1

GIACOMO PUCCINI

BY WAKELING DRY

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMVI

Printed by BALLANTYNE & CO., LIMITED Tavistock Street, London

LIVING MASTERS OF MUSIC EDITED BY ROSA NEWMARCH

GIACOMO PUCCINI

ILLUSTRATIONS

_To face page_

GIACOMO PUCCINI _Frontispiece_ _From an autographed copy of a photograph by Bertieri, Turin, in the possession of the author_

PUCCINI'S BIRTHPLACE IN THE VIA DEL POGGIO, LUCCA 8 _From a photograph lent by Messrs. Ricordi_

CHURCH OF ST. PIETRO, SOMALDI WHERE PUCCINI WAS ORGANIST 12 _From a photograph lent by Messrs. Ricordi_

PUCCINI AND FONTANA, THE LIBRETTIST AT THE TIME 18 _From a photograph lent by Messrs. Ricordi_

PUCCINI'S VILLA AT TORRE DEL LAGO 22 _From a photograph lent by Messrs. Ricordi_

PUCCINI IN HIS 24-H.P. "LA BUIRE" MOTOR-CAR 24 _From a photograph by R. de Guili & Co., Lucca_

PUCCINI AFTER A "SHOOT" 28 _From a photograph by S. Ernesto Arboco_

PUCCINI IN HIS STUDY AT TORRE DEL LAGO 40 _From a photograph lent by Messrs. Ricordi_

PUCCINI IN HIS MILAN HOUSE 48 _From a photograph specially taken by Adolfo Ermini, Milan_

PUCCINI MANUSCRIPT SCORE. FROM THE SECOND ACT OF "TOSCA" 50 _From a photograph lent by Messrs. Ricordi_

MISS ALICE ESTY AS MIMI IN "LA BOHÈME" 68 _From a photograph lent by Madame Alice Esty_

PUCCINI MANUSCRIPT SCORES. FROM THE LAST ACT OF "LA BOHÈME" 72 _From a photograph lent by Messrs. Ricordi_

*PUCCINI IN "MORNING DRESS" (NATIONAL PEASANT COSTUME) AT TORRE DEL LAGO 82

*PUCCINI SHOOTING ON THE LAKE AT TORRE DEL LAGO 82

*PUCCINI SNOWBALLING IN SICILY 86

*PUCCINI WRESTLING AT POMPEII 86

*PUCCINI DESCENDING ETNA ON A MULE 90

*PUCCINI ON HIS FARM AT CHIATRI 90

PUCCINI AT TORRE DEL LAGO IN HIS MOTOR-BOAT "BUTTERFLY" 96 _From a photograph lent by Messrs. Ricordi_

PUCCINI'S MANUSCRIPT. FIRST SKETCH FOR THE END OF THE FIRST ACT OF "MADAMA BUTTERFLY" 102 _From a photograph lent by Messrs. Ricordi_

PUCCINI'S MANUSCRIPT SCORES. FROM THE FIRST ACT OF "MADAMA BUTTERFLY" 112 _From a photograph lent by Messrs. Ricordi_

* _From a series of snapshots given to the author by Signor Puccini_ (_Copyright reserved_)

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. PUCCINI, AND THE OPERA IN GENERAL 1

II. PUCCINI'S EARLY LIFE 9

III. THE PUCCINI OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 19

IV. "LE VILLI" 30

V. "EDGAR" 40

VI. "MANON" 50

VII. "LA BOHÈME" 68

VIII. "TOSCA" 83

IX. "MADAMA BUTTERFLY" 101

GIACOMO PUCCINI

I

PUCCINI, AND THE OPERA IN GENERAL

A big broad man, with a frank open countenance, dark kindly eyes of a lazy lustrous depth, and a shy retiring manner. Such is Giacomo Puccini, who is operatically the man of the moment.

It was behind the scenes during the autumn season of opera at Covent Garden in 1905 that I had the privilege of first meeting and talking with him, and about the last thing I could extract from him was anything about his music. While his reserve comes off like a mask when he is left to follow his own bent in conversation, one can readily understand why he adheres, and always has done, to his rule of never conducting his own works.

One thing struck me as peculiarly characteristic about his nature and personality. The success of _Madama Butterfly_--for that was the work in progress on the stage as we passed out by way of the "wings" to the front of the house--was at the moment the talk of the town. Puccini was full, not of the success of his opera, but of the achievements of the artists who were interpreting it. "Isn't Madame So-and-so fine?" "Doesn't Signor So-and-so conduct admirably?" "Isn't it beautifully put on?" The composer was content and happy to sink into the background and think, in the triumph, of all he owed to those who were carrying out his ideas. He has a quiet sense of fun, too. "Let us step quietly," he said--as we came into the range of the scene that was being enacted--"like butterflies."

I have called Puccini the operatic man of the moment. It is not difficult to account for his popularity. His whole-souled devotion to this one form of musical art, in which he has certainly achieved much, has by some been pointed to as defining his limits. Apart from a few early string quartets, which mean nothing more than the usual preliminary studies of a gifted student, Puccini has written absolutely nothing but operas since he started. In this respect his music has a certain well-defined natural characteristic that gives him--if it be necessary in these days to fit any particular composer into his own special niche--a distinct place in the history of the progress and development of the art and science of music making.

Roughly speaking, the opera had its beginnings in the dance, but almost at the same time it travelled along the road of the development of vocal expression by music. As early as the days of Peri and Caccini, who reverted to the old Greek drama as the basis on which to build something anew, and by so doing brought forth the germ which was afterwards to bear fruit through Gluck and Wagner, the feeling for freedom of expression, the desire to snatch music away from the tyranny of a set form--counterpoint, as it was then understood--strove to make itself felt and understood. It must not be taken to mean that the old contrapuntists did not endeavour to combine the adherence to a form with some degree of definite expression; for in the works of one of the greatest of this school, old Josquin des Près, are to be found plenty of emotional touches by which, even in so restricted a pattern as the madrigal form, it was plain that a closer union between words and music--an emotional feeling, in short--was clearly the thing striven for.

Still dealing briefly with beginnings, one may point to the dramatic cantatas--particularly in Italy, but found in France as well--or madrigal plays, by which, in distinction to what may be called little comedies with music, this essential "operatic" feature in the union of the arts of speech and song, comes out with special clearness.

In Italy then, the land which owns Puccini as one of its most distinguished sons, the opera had its rise; and in _Dafne_, the first child of a new art, it is curious to note, it immediately turned aside into one of those many by-paths which led it very far away from the goal of its promise. Curious again is the reason for its first fall--the desire of the leading singer for vocal display, and the introduction of long vocal flourishes, which, having nothing to do with the case, yet pleased the public mightily. In this _Dafne_--the score of which has been lost--it was the great singer Archilei who was the offender. Yet again a strange thing comes down to us after these many years. Peri, the composer, was highly delighted with the interpolations and the vocal gymnastics.

But out of something dead, something very much alive was destined to develop. The old Greek drama was not to be resuscitated by a sort of transfusion of blood--music, the newest and most emotional of the arts, being the medium to carry life into the structure. There is not space here to do more than hint at the various fresh phases--the reforms, as they have been called--each of which, in trying to deal with what was already built up, really brought to an achievement the ideal which had floated before many a worker in the same field.

In Italy, as early as Cimarosa's day--he died in 1801--the opera, regarded purely as a musical form, attained as near perfection as possible. It is difficult, even when dealing with a period that, unlike our own, was very much more concerned about the manner than the matter of things, to distinguish between the various styles of opera; but taking the opera seria and the opera buffa as representing two great phases of the art, Cimarosa stands out as one who combined the essential qualities of both into products which had the stamp of individuality. Pergolesi is another shining light who stands out in the long line of illustrious workers whose efforts were entirely cast into the shade by the arrival of Rossini and his followers, Donizetti and Bellini. All this time, during which so-called Italian opera dominated the whole of Europe, nothing was done in Italy in the way of developing orchestral writing, which in Germany had made such marvellous strides. At the psychological moment--for Italy--came Verdi, who, if he took the opera very much as he found it, breathed from the very first a new spirit into its composition. His artistic growth, as seen by his later operas, was one of the most remarkable things in modern musical history. And in the fulness of time we come to Puccini, to whom it is reasonable to point as the successor of Verdi. These two, who may be linked up with reason with Boïto and Ponchielli, present many features of resemblance. Puccini's musical expression, at first purely vocal, has in his later work shown that same growth in artistic development. From the beginning he was concerned with the continuous flow of melody, since he had not, like Verdi, to get away exactly from the old form of the set numbers; but in Puccini's case, the growth referred to is seen in his latest work in the further elaboration of the orchestral portion. Although in England we have had few experiments worked out in the way of the development of opera, it is safe to say that such new modern works as have been taken to our hearts have owed not a little to the orchestral part of the fabric. Tchaikovsky's _Eugen Oniegin_ and Humperdinck's _Hänsel und Gretel_ are at least two notable cases in point.

But in whatever way we view an opera, mere orchestral fulness will not serve to land the work very high up in the esteem of music lovers. Nor will the purely beautiful in music--melody worked out with transparent clearness of form--save a poor, unconvincing or uninteresting dramatic fabric from passing into the great storehouse of the unacted. Puccini's music is dramatic, and by far the greater part of it, by a sort of quick natural instinct, is purely of the theatre. His first and most direct appeal is by the charm and vitality of the vocal expression, while his whole plan is one of movement. From the first--if we except for the moment his _Le Villi_, which was first called a ballet-opera--he called his operas _Dramma per lyrica_--lyric dramas, a term first established, and moulded into a definite art-form, by Wagner. With his first opera, Puccini started something of a new form in the short opera; and two remarkable works of the kind in _Cavalleria Rusticana_ by Mascagni and _I Pagliacci_ by Leoncavallo, which came very soon after, clearly indicate that he had founded a school as it were; and so from Italy to-day, as in times past, this particular fashion spread to other countries. Puccini, still exhibiting, with a strong and in many ways typical national feeling, spontaneous vocal melody as his leading characteristic, did not limit himself to the perfection of the short opera. His subsequent works were of larger calibre. He left the fanciful and imaginative and the old world legends, and turned to everyday life for his subjects. In general form--for one must revert to this not particularly lucid description when dealing with opera--Puccini must be placed among the shining lights who have chosen to deal with what may be called light opera. _Opéra comique_, as translated by our term "comic opera," means something so entirely different, that although "light opera" is but a poor expression, it is one that may perhaps be most readily "understanded of the people."

The term "light" is associated practically entirely with the music. The subjects of Puccini's operas are all of them tragic, but the expression of the theme, the working out along the already roughly defined paths, is not by the heavy, the big, or the strongly moving in music. One may point almost to Bizet, as shown in _Carmen_, as the special point from which Puccini started. Furthermore, Puccini stands almost unrivalled in his own particular way in giving us, by means of operatic music, something very near akin to the comedy of manners in drama. Much might with advantage be deduced from the success of Puccini in this country, and the same result applied to the question of our national opera; or, seeing that such a thing does not exist, to the crying need for some encouragement to be given to native composers. Puccini, it may be, has become the vogue simply because he is light and lyrical, not so much here in the dramatic, but in the musical sense. No one, it is safe to say, at this time of day desires to go back in any shape or form to the old "set-number" sort of piece. Such a reversion may fittingly form the ideal towards which a follower of Sullivan--who in his _Yeomen of the Guard_ gave us unquestionably the best definite "light" opera of the last generation--may strive to bring to perfection. Puccini has by the general mould of his work made his place and found his following on the operatic stage, and it is surely by the vocal strength and vocal continuity of his work that this place of his has been achieved and maintained. It is easy, of course, to point to the simplicity of the achievement when one sees the fruit of the labour: but without urging any one to copy an accepted model, or to merely repeat what has been already designed, one may wonder why, with so many gifted melodists among contemporary British musicians, no one has given us definite light opera. It is a direction in which our composers have never moved. If a reason for Puccini's greatness--or popularity, if you will--is wanted, it may be found in this extremely clever use of the light lyrical style. And lest there be any misunderstanding, let it be said that hardly one of Puccini's songs or dramatic numbers can be pointed to as making this or that opera an accepted favourite. "Che gelida manina" from _La Bohème_ is trotted out by not a few budding tenors, and it may be occasionally heard at a ballad concert, but even this is not sung one-tenth as many times as, say, the prologue to _I Pagliacci_, leaving out of the question the extreme popularity, as an instrumental piece, of the Intermezzo from _Cavalleria_. Puccini's melodies, if they do not actually fall to pieces away from their surroundings, at least very quickly lose their full significance, and not a little of their charm. And it is for this reason, therefore, that Puccini stands as the most definitely operatic composer of the moment. He has had great opportunities, it is true, but he has had great struggles. Like Wagner, he is concerned, and ever has been, with just one phase of art. To those that come after may be left the task of deciding as to his exact place in the roll of fame. By the oneness of his endeavour, by the sincerity of his expression, by the spontaneity of his vocal melody, does Puccini stand worthily among the living masters of music.

II

PUCCINI'S EARLY LIFE

In Lucca in 1858, in a house in the Via Poggia, Giacomo Puccini was born. The family originally came from Celle, a typical mountain village on the right bank of the Serchio. From the earliest times the family was one devoted to the art of music, and while the world knows only of the musician who is the subject of this book, the achievements of his musical ancestors were of no mean order.

It will be sufficient to trace back the family to one of the same name, a Giacomo Puccini, who, born in 1712, studied with Caretti at Bologna. During his student days he was the friend of Martini, and thus from very early days the Puccini family have had intimate connection with those musicians whose names will live as long as musical history. On returning to Lucca this Puccini was appointed organist of the cathedral and subsequently _maestro di capella_. His compositions were entirely in the domain of ecclesiastical music, and include a motet, a Te Deum, and some services.

His son, Antonio, also proceeded to Bologna for his musical training, and in process of time succeeded to the post at Lucca. Antonio's chief composition was a Requiem Mass, which was sung at Lucca on the occasion of the funeral of Joseph II. of Tuscany.

The first of the family to turn his attention to opera was Domenico Puccini, the son of the foregoing, who, like his father and grandfather, after studying at Bologna, and under the famous Paisiello at Naples, also held the post at Lucca. Of his several operas, _Quinto Fabio_, _Il Ciarlatano_, and _La Moglie Capricciosa_ had a certain vogue in his day, but have passed into oblivion. Dying at the age of forty-four, he left four children, of whom Michele was the father of the Puccini with whom we are dealing.

The grandfather Antonio helped this young Michele and sent him to study at Bologna, where he came under the influence of Stanislaus Mattei, the teacher of Rossini. Later on he proceeded to Naples, where he was taught by Mercadente and Donizetti. Returning to Lucca he married Albina Magi, and was appointed Inspector of the then newly formed Institute of Music. Some masses and an opera, _Marco Foscarini_, stand to his credit, but it was as a teacher that this Puccini did his best work. Among his pupils were Carlo Angeloni and Vianesi, who afterwards won distinction as a conductor, not only in Italy but at Paris and Marseilles.

Michele Puccini died at the age of fifty-one in 1864, leaving his wife, who was then thirty-three, to provide and care for his seven children. It is interesting to record that the famous Pacini, the composer of _Saffo_, which is still regarded as perhaps the chief classic of the purely Italian school, conducted the Requiem sung at his funeral.

Puccini's mother and her noble work in bringing up her large family--for she was left with no great share of this world's goods--deserves infinitely more than this bare mention of her excellence. In the present instance, it is her patient care in making her fifth child, our Giacomo Puccini, a musician, that we have to recognise. But for this patience, the way of the man who was destined to achieve his own place in the annals of fame must have been still more rough. All praise then to the patient mother whose memory is still so lovingly cherished by her distinguished son.

Giacomo Puccini was only six when his father died, and as a child was remarkable for a restless nature and a keen desire to travel. He was sent to school at the seminary of S. Michele, and afterwards to San Martino. Arithmetic appears to have been his chief stumbling-block, but in everything, his curious irresponsible nature, his strong dislike to anything like guidance and restraint, made the acquisition of knowledge a hard task. Failing to acquire any sort of distinction in any branch of scholarship, an uncle of his, on his mother's side, tried to make him a singer; but the future musician, whose triumph was gained, curiously enough, in the display of the very art he despised, added, in this particular subject, one more to his many failures. The mother, in spite, doubtless, of a good deal of well-meant advice as to wasting time and money on a singularly unpromising youth, stuck to her conviction that Giacomo was destined by his gifts to carry on the long line of family musicians; and with many real sacrifices in the way of pinching and scraping, sent him to Lucca, where, at the Institute of Music, founded by Pacini, he came first under the influence of Angeloni, who, it will be remembered, was a pupil of his father. Infinite patience seems to have been the chief quality possessed by Angeloni, and by dint of great tact and sympathy, he infused an interest and something of a passion for music into his wayward young pupil. Giacomo became a fair player, and was sent off to take charge of the music at the church of Muligliano, a little village three miles from Lucca, and in a short time he had the church of S. Pietro at Somaldi added to his responsibilities. It was during the exercise of his church duties that the spirit of composition seems to have descended upon him, and certainly, if not in actually a novel way, a rather disconcerting one. During the offertory, and at other places in the Mass, it was the custom of the organist to improvise a more or less extended _pièce d'occasion_, a custom which still obtains. The officiating priests were more than occasionally startled by hearing, mixed up with these spirited improvisations of their young organist, certain plainly recognisable themes from operas, old and new.

There is no definite record of any specific continuation of studies while Puccini was contributing in a questionable way to the dignity of the church's service; but in 1877 there was an exhibition at Lucca, and a musical competition was announced, a setting of a cantata _Juno_, and young Puccini entered. As happened with Berlioz, so too the young composer's work was rejected, as not conforming in any way with the accepted canons of the art of music. Puccini at this point gave an early indication of that doggedness of purpose, a quiet pursuance of his own aims and working out his own ideas, which marked his later career, and which must have come as rather a surprise to his family, who regarded him in all probability as a lazy wayward youth. He did not take the refusal of the Lucca authorities to accept his work the least to heart, but arranged for a performance of it, and the public found it very much to their taste. About this time another early composition, a motet for the feast of San Paolina, was performed. With these successes, Lucca and its restricted area, with the evidently uncongenial work of a church organist, soon became entirely distasteful to him, and after hearing Verdi's _Aïda_ at the theatre, his mind was made up. To Milan, the Mecca of the young Italian musician, he must go.

His mother still was his best friend; and although the cost of living and studying in Milan was sufficient to daunt the courage of any one far less hampered with domestic difficulties than she was, she bravely set about making the necessary sacrifices. Through a friend at Court, the Marchioness Viola-Marina, she enlisted the kindly sympathy of Queen Margherita, who generously agreed to be responsible for the expense of one of the necessary three years, while an uncle of hers came to her assistance by defraying the cost of the other two.