Act II. The scene is the same as that of the preceding act. _Tonio

with the big drum takes his position at the left angle of the theatre. _Beppe_ places benches for the spectators, who begin to assemble, while _Tonio_ beats the drum. _Silvio_ arrives and nods to friends. _Nedda_, dressed as _Columbine_, goes about with a plate and collects money. As she approaches _Silvio_, she pauses to speak a few words of warning to him, then goes on, and re-enters the theatre with _Beppe_. The brisk chorus becomes more insistent that the play begin. Most of the women are seated. Others stand with the men on slightly rising ground.

A bell rings loudly. The curtain of the tent theatre on the stage rises. The mimic scene represents a small room with two side doors and a practicable window at the back. _Nedda_, as _Columbine_, is walking about expectantly and anxiously. Her husband, _Pagliaccio_, has gone away till morning. _Taddeo_ is at the market. She awaits her lover, _Arlecchino_ (_Harlequin_). A dainty minuet forms the musical background.

A guitar is heard outside. _Columbine_ runs to the window with signs of love and impatience. _Harlequin_, outside, sings his pretty serenade to his _Columbine_, "O Colombina, il tenero" (O Columbine, unbar to me thy lattice high).

The ditty over, she returns to the front of the mimic stage, seats herself, back to the door, through which _Tonio_, as _Taddeo_, a basket on his arm, now enters. He makes exaggerated love to _Columbine_, who, disgusted with his advances, goes to the window, opens it, and signals. _Beppe_, as _Harlequin_, enters by the window. He makes light of _Taddeo_, whom he takes by the ear and turns out of the room, to the accompaniment of a few kicks. All the while the minuet has tripped its pretty measure and the mimic audience has found plenty to amuse it.

_Harlequin_ has brought a bottle of wine, also a phial with a sleeping-potion, which she is to give her husband, when opportunity offers, so that, while he sleeps, she and _Harlequin_ may fly together. Love appears to prosper, till, suddenly, _Taddeo_ bursts in. _Columbine's_ husband, _Pagliaccio_, is approaching. He suspects her, and is stamping with anger. "Pour the philtre in his wine, love!" admonishes _Harlequin_, and hurriedly gets out through the window.

_Columbine_ calls after him, just as _Canio_, in the character of _Pagliaccio_, appears in the door, "Tonight, love, and forever, I am thine!"--the same words _Canio_ heard his wife call after her lover a few hours before.

_Columbine_ parries _Pagliaccio's_ questions. He has returned too early. He has been drinking. No one was with her, save the harmless _Taddeo_, who has become alarmed and has sought safety in the closet. From within, _Taddeo_ expostulates with _Pagliaccio_. His wife is true, her pious lips would ne'er deceive her husband. The audience laughs.

But now it no longer is _Pagliaccio_, it is _Canio_, who calls out threateningly, not to _Columbine_, but to _Nedda_, "His name!"

"Pagliaccio! Pagliaccio!" protests _Nedda_, still trying to keep in the play. "No!" cries out her husband--in a passage dramatically almost as effective as "Ridi, Pagliaccio!"--"I am _Pagliaccio_ no more! I am a man again, with anguish deep and human!" The audience thinks his intensity is wonderful acting--all save _Silvio_, who shows signs of anxiety.

"Thou had'st my love," concludes _Canio_, "but now thou hast my hate and scorn."

"If you doubt me," argues _Nedda_, "why not let me leave you?"

"And go to your lover!--His name! Declare it!"

Still desperately striving to keep in the play, and avert the inevitable, _Nedda_, as if she were _Columbine_, sings a chic gavotte, "Suvvia, così terribile" (I never knew, my dear, that you were such a tragic fellow).

[Music]

She ends with a laugh, but stops short, at the fury in _Canio's_ look, as he takes a knife from the table.

"His name!"

"No!"--Save her lover she will, at whatever cost to herself.

The audience is beginning to suspect that this is no longer acting. The women draw back frightened, overturning the benches. _Silvio_ is trying to push his way through to the stage.

_Nedda_ makes a dash to escape into the audience. _Canio_ pursues and catches up with her.

"Take that--and--that!" (He stabs her in the back.) "Di morte negli spasimi lo dirai" (In the last death agony, thou'lt call his name).

"Soccorso ... Silvio!" (Help! Help!--Silvio!)

A voice from the audience cries, "Nedda!" A man has nearly reached the spot where she lies dead. _Canio_ turns savagely, leaps at him. A steel blade flashes. _Silvio_ falls dead beside _Nedda_.

"Gesummaria!" shriek the women; "Ridi _Pagliaccio_!" sob the instruments of the orchestra. _Canio_ stands stupefied. The knife falls from his hand:

"La commedia è finita" (The comedy is ended).

There are plays and stories in which, as in "Pagliacci," the drama on a mimic stage suddenly becomes real life, so that the tragedy of the play changes to the life-tragedy of one or more of the characters. "Yorick's Love," in which I saw Lawrence Barrett act, and of which I wrote a review for _Harper's Weekly_, was adapted by William D. Howells from "Drama Nuevo" by Estébanez, which is at least fifty years older than "Pagliacci." In it the actor _Yorick_ really murders the actor, whom in character, he is supposed to kill in the play. In the plot, as in real life, this actor had won away the love of _Yorick's_ wife, before whose eyes he is slain by the wronged husband. About 1883, I should say, I wrote a story, "A Performance of Othello," for a periodical published by students of Columbia University, in which the player of _Othello_, impelled by jealousy, actually kills his wife, who is the _Desdemona_, and then, as in the play, slays himself. Yet, although the _motif_ is an old one, this did not prevent Catulle Mendès, who himself had been charged with plagiarizing, in "La Femme de Tabarin," Paul Ferrier's earlier play, "Tabarin," from accusing Leoncavallo of plagiarizing "Pagliacci" from "La Femme de Tabarin," and from instituting legal proceedings to enjoin the performance of the opera in Brussels. Thereupon Leoncavallo, in a letter to his publisher, stated that during his childhood at Montalto a jealous player killed his wife after a performance, that his father was the judge at the criminal's trial--circumstances which so impressed the occurrence on his mind that he was led to adapt the episode for his opera. Catulle Mendès accepted the explanation and withdrew his suit.

There has been some discussion regarding the correct translation of "Pagliacci." It is best rendered as "Clowns," although it only is necessary to read in Italian cyclopedias the definition of _Pagliaccio_ to appreciate Philip Hale's caution that the character is not a clown in the restricted circus sense. Originally the word, which is the same as the French _paillasse_, signified a bed of straw, then was extended to include an upholstered under-mattress, and finally was applied to the buffoon in the old Italian comedy, whose costume generally was striped like the ticking or stuff, of which the covering of a mattress is made.

The play on the mimic stage in "Pagliacci" is, in fact, one of the _Harlequin_ comedies that has been acted for centuries by strolling players in Italy. But for the tragedy that intervenes in the opera, _Pagliaccio's_ ruse in returning before he was expected, in order to surprise his wife, _Columbina_, with _Arlecchino_, would have been punished by his being buffetted about the room and ejected. For "the reward of _Pagliaccio's_ most adroit stratagems is to be boxed on the ears and kicked."

Hence the poignancy of "Ridi, Pagliaccio!"

Giacomo Puccini

(1858- )

This composer, born in Lucca, Italy, June 22, 1858, first studied music in his native place as a private pupil of Angeloni. Later, at the Royal Conservatory, Milan, he came under the instruction of Ponchielli, composer of "La Gioconda," whose influence upon modern Italian opera, both as a preceptor and a composer, is regarded as greater than that of any other musician.

Puccini himself is considered the most important figure in the operatic world of Italy today, the successor of Verdi, if there is any. For while Mascagni and Leoncavallo each has one sensationally successful short opera to his credit, neither has shown himself capable of the sustained effort required to create a score vital enough to maintain the interest of an audience throughout three or four acts, a criticism I consider applicable even to Mascagni's "Lodoletta," notwithstanding its production and repetitions at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, which I believe largely due to unusual conditions produced by the European war. Puccini, on the other hand, is represented in the repertoire of the modern opera house by four large works: "Manon Lescaut" (1870), "La Bohème" (1896), "Tosca" (1900), and "Madama Butterfly" (1904). His early two-act opera, "Le Villi" (The Willis, Dal Verme Theatre, Milan, 1884), and his three-act opera, "La Fanciulla del West" (The Girl of the Golden West), 1910, have been much less successful; his "Edgar" (La Scala, Milan, 1889), is not heard outside of Italy. And his opera, "La Rondine," has not at this writing been produced here, and probably will not be until after the war, the full score being the property of a publishing house in Vienna, which, because of the war, has not been able to send copies of it to the people in several countries to whom the performing rights had been sold.

LE VILLI

"Le Villi" (The Willis), signifying the ghosts of maidens deserted by their lovers, is the title of a two-act opera by Puccini, words by Ferdinando Fortuna, produced May 31, 1884, Dal Verme Theatre, Milan, after it had been rejected in a prize competition at the Milan Conservatory, but revised by the composer with the aid of Boïto. It is Puccini's first work for the lyric stage. When produced at the Dal Verme Theatre, it was in one act, the composer later extending it to two, in which form it was brought out at the Reggio Theatre, Turin, December 26, 1884; Metropolitan Opera House, N.Y., December 17, 1908, with Alda (_Anna_), Bonci (_Robert_), Amato (_Wulf_).

Of the principal characters _Wulf_ is a mountaineer of the Black Forest; _Anna_, his daughter; _Robert_, her lover. After the betrothal feast, _Robert_, obliged to depart upon a journey, swears to _Anna_ that he will be faithful to her. In the second act, however, we find him indulging in wild orgies in Mayence and squandering money on an evil woman. In the second part of this act he returns to the Black Forest a broken-down man. The Willis dance about him. From _Wulf's_ hut he hears funeral music. _Anna's_ ghost now is one of the wild dancers. While he appeals to her, they whirl about him. He falls dead. The chorus sings "Hosanna" in derision of his belated plea for forgiveness.

Most expressive in the score is the wild dance of the Willis, who "have a character of their own, entirely distinct from that of other operatic spectres" (Streatfield). The prelude to the second act, "L'Abbandono," also is effective. Attractive in the first act are the betrothal scene, a prayer, and a waltz. "Le Villi," however, has not been a success outside of Italy.

"Manon Lescaut," on the other hand, has met with success elsewhere. Between it and "Le Villi" Puccini produced another opera, "Edgar," Milan, La Scala, 1889, but unknown outside of the composer's native country.

MANON LESCAUT

Opera in four acts, by Puccini. Produced at Turin, February 1, 1893. Covent Garden, London, May 14, 1894. Grand Opera House, Philadelphia, in English, August 29, 1894; Wallack's Theatre, New York, May 27, 1898, by the Milan Royal Italian Opera Company of La Scala; Metropolitan Opera House, New York, January 18, 1907, with Caruso, Cavalieri, and Scotti. The libretto, founded on Abbé Prévost's novel, is by Puccini, assisted by a committee of friends. The composer himself directed the production at the Metropolitan Opera House.

CHARACTERS

MANON LESCAUT _Soprano_ LESCAUT, sergeant of the King's Guards _Baritone_ CHEVALIER DES GRIEUX _Tenor_ GERONTE DE RAVOIR, Treasurer-General _Bass_ EDMUND, a student _Tenor_

_Time_--Second half of eighteenth century.

_Place_--Amiens, Paris, Havre, Louisiana.