A Second Book of Operas Part 7

[figure: a musical score excerpt setting the words "O Lola, blanca come flor di spino, quando t'affaci ti s'affaccio il sole"]

These sharp contrasts, heightened by the device of surprise, form one of the marked characteristics of Mascagni's score and one of the most effective. We meet it also in the instrumentation--the harp accompaniment to the serenade, the pauses which give piquancy to Lola's ditty, the unison violins, harp arpeggios, and sustained organ chords of the intermezzo.

When the curtain rises it discloses the open square of a Sicilian village, flanked by a church and the inn of Lucia, Turiddu's mother. It is Easter morning and villagers and peasants are gathering for the Paschal ma.s.s. Church bells ring and the orchestra breaks into the eager melody which a little later we hear combined with the voices which are hymning the pleasant sights and sounds of nature:--

[figure: a musical score excerpt setting the words "tempo e si mormori"]

A charming conception is the regular beat and flux and reflux of the women's voices as they sing

[figure: a musical score excerpt setting the words "Gliaranci olezzano sui verdi margini cantando le allo do le tra i mirti in flor . . ."]

Delightful and refreshing is the bustling strain of the men. The singers depart with soft exclamations of rapture called out by the contemplation of nature and thoughts of the Virgin Mother and Child in their hearts. Comes Santuzza, sore distressed, to Mamma Lucia, to inquire as to the whereabouts of her son Turiddu. Lucia thinks him at Francofonte; but Santuzza knows that he spent the night in the village.

In pity for the maiden's distress, Lucia asks her to enter her home, but Santuzza may not--she is excommunicate. Alfio enters with boisterous jollity, singing of his jovial carefree life as a teamster and his love of home and a faithful wife. It is a paltry measure, endurable only for its offering of contrast, and we will not tarry with it, though the villagers echo it merrily. Alfio, too, has seen Turiddu, and Lucia is about to express her surprise when Santuzza checks her.

The hour of devotion is come, and the choir in the church intones the "Regina coeli," while the people without fall on their knees and sing the Resurrection Hymn. After the first outburst, to which the organ appends a brief postlude, Santuzza leads in the canticle, "Innegiamo il Signor non dmorte":

Let us sing of our Lord ris'n victorious!

Let us sing of our Lord ever glorious:--

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

The instrumental ba.s.ses supply a foundation of Bachian granite, the chorus within the church interpolates shouts of "Alleluia!" and the song swells until the gates of sound fly wide open and we forget the theatre in a fervor of religious devotion. Only the critic in his study ought here to think of the parallel scene which Leoncavallo sought to create in his opera.

Thus far the little dramatic matter that has been introduced is wholly expository; yet we are already near the middle of the score. All the stage folk enter the church save Santuzza and Lucia, and to the mother of her betrayer the maiden tells the story of her wrongs. The romance which she sings is marked by the copious use of one of the distinguishing devices of the veritist composers--the melodic triplet, an efficient help for the pushing, pulsating declamation with which the dramatic dialogue of Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and their fellows is carried on. Lucia can do no more for the unfortunate than commend her to the care of the Virgin. She enters the church and Turiddu comes. He lies as to where he has been. Santuzza is quick with accusation and reproach, but at the first sign of his anger and a hint of the vengeance which Alfio will take she abases herself. Let him beat and insult her, she will love and pardon though her heart break. She is in the extremity of agony and anguish when Lola is heard trolling a careless song:--

[figure: musical example setting the word "Fior di giaggiolo . . gli angeli belli stanno a mille in cielo . . ."]

She is about to begin a second stanza when she enters and sees the pair. She stops with an exclamation. She says she is seeking Alfio.

Is Turiddu not going to ma.s.s? Santuzza, significantly: "It is Easter and the Lord sees all things! None but the blameless should go to ma.s.s." But Lola will go, and so will Turiddu. Scorning Santuzza's pleadings and at last hurling her to the ground, he rushes into the church. She shouts after him a threat of Easter vengeance and fate sends the agent to her in the very moment. Alfio comes and Santuzza tells him that Turiddu has cuckolded him and Lola has robbed her of her lover:--

Turiddu mi tolse, mi tolse l'onore, E vostra moglie lui rapiva a me!

[figure: musical example setting the above words]

The oncoming waves of the drama's pathos have risen to a supreme height, their crests have broken, and the wind-blown spume drenches the soul of the listeners; but the composer has not departed from the first principle of the master of whom, for a time, it was hoped he might be the legitimate successor. Melody remains the life-blood of his music as it is that of Verdi's from his first work to his last;--as it will be so long as music endures.

Terrible is the outbreak of Alfio's rage:--

Infami lero, ad esse non perdono, Vendetta avro pria che tra monti il di.

[figure: musical example setting the above words]

Upon this storm succeeds the calm of the intermezzo--in its day the best abused and most hackneyed piece of music that the world knew; yet a triumph of simple, straightforward tune. It echoes the Easter hymn, and in the midst of the tumult of earthly pa.s.sion proclaims celestial peace. Its instrumentation was doubtless borrowed from h.e.l.lmesberger's arrangement of the air "Ombra mai fu" from "Serse," known the world over as Handel's "Largo"--violins in unison, harp arpeggios, and organ harmonies. In nothing artistically distinguished it makes an unexampled appeal to the mult.i.tude. Some years ago a burlesque on "Cavalleria rusticana" was staged at a theatre in Vienna.

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

It was part of the witty conceit of the author to have the intermezzo played on a handorgan. Up to this point the audience had been hilarious in its enjoyment of the burlesque, but with the first wheezy tones from the grinder the people settled down to silent attention; and when the end came applause for the music rolled out wave after wave. A burlesque performance could not rob that music of its charm. Ite missa est. Ma.s.s is over. The merry music of the first chorus returns. The worshippers are about to start homeward with pious reflections, when Turiddu detains Lola and invites his neighbors to a gla.s.s of Mamma Lucia's wine. We could spare the drinking song as easily as Alfio, entering, turns aside the cup which Turiddu proffers him. Turiddu understands. "I await your pleasure." Some of the women apprehend mischief and lead Lola away. The challenge is given and accepted, Sicilian fashion.

Turiddu confesses his wrong-doing to Alfio, but, instead of proclaiming his purpose to kill his enemy, he asks protection for Santuzza in case of his death. Then, while the violins tremble and throb, he calls for his mother like an errant child:--

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

He has been too free with the winecup, he says, and must leave her. But first her blessing, as when he went away to be a soldier. Should he not return, Santa must be her care: "Voi dovrete fare; da madre a Santa!"

It is the cry of a child. "A kiss! Another kiss, mamma! Farewell!"

Lucia calls after him. He is gone, Santuzza comes in with her phrase of music descriptive of her unhappy love. It grows to a thunderous crash.

Then a hush! A fateful chord! A whispered roll of the drums! A woman is heard to shriek: "They have killed Neighbor Turiddu!" A crowd of women rush in excitedly; Santuzza and Lucia fall in a swoon. "Hanno ammazzato compare Turiddu!" The tragedy is ended.

CHAPTER X

THE CAREER OF MASCAGNI

It would be foolish to question or attempt to deny the merits of the type of Italian opera established by Mascagni's lucky inspiration. The brevity of the realistic little tragedy, the swiftness of its movement, its adherence to the Italian ideal of melody first, its ingenious combination of song with an illuminative orchestral part--these elements in union created a style which the composers of Italy, France, and Germany were quick to adopt. "Pagliacci" was the first fruit of the movement and has been the most enduring; indeed, so far as America and England are concerned, "Cavalleria rusticana" and "Pagliacci" are the only products of the school which have obtained a lasting footing. They were followed by a flood of Italian, French, and German works in which low life was realistically portrayed, but, though the manner of composition was as easily copied as the subjects were found in the slums, none of the imitators of Mascagni and Leoncavallo achieved even a t.i.the of their success. The men themselves were too shrewd and wise to attempt to repeat the experiment which had once been triumphant.

In one respect the influence of the twin operas was deplorable. I have attempted to characterize that influence in general terms, but in order that the lesson may be more plainly presented it seems to me best to present a few examples in detail. The eagerness with which writers sought success in moral muck, regardless of all artistic elements, is strikingly ill.u.s.trated in an attempt by a German writer, Edmund von Freihold, [Footnote: I owe this ill.u.s.tration to Ferdinand Pfobl's book "Die Moderne Oper."] to provide "Cavalleria rusticana" with a sequel.

Von Freihold wrote the libretto for a "music drama" which he called "Santuzza," the story of which begins long enough after the close of Verga's story for both the women concerned in "Gavalleria rusticana" to have grown children. Santuzza has given birth to a son named Ma.s.simo, and Lola to a daughter, Anita. The youthful pair grow up side by side in the Sicilian village and fall in love with one another. They might have married and in a way expiated the sins of their parents had not Alfio overheard his wife, Lola, confess that Turiddu, not her husband, is the father of Anita, The lovers are thus discovered to be half brother and sister. This reminder of his betrayal by Lola infuriates Alfio anew. He rushes upon his wife to kill her, but Santuzza, who hates him as the slayer of her lover, throws herself between and plunges her dagger in Alfio's heart. Having thus taken revenge for Turiddu's death, Santuzza dies out of hand, Lola, as an inferior character, falls in a faint, and Ma.s.simo makes an end of the delectable story by going away from there to parts unknown.

In Cilea's "Tilda" a street singer seeks to avenge her wrongs upon a faithless lover. She bribes a jailor to connive at the escape of a robber whom he is leading to capital punishment. This robber she elects to be the instrument of her vengeance. Right merrily she lives with him and his companions in the greenwood until the band captures the renegade lover on his wedding journey. Tilda rushes upon the bride with drawn dagger, but melts with compa.s.sion when she sees her victim in the att.i.tude of prayer. She sinks to her knees beside her, only to receive the death-blow from her seducer. There are piquant contrasts in this picture and Ave Marias and tarantellas in the music.

Take the story of Giordano's "Mala Vita." Here the hero is a young dyer whose dissolute habits have brought on tuberculosis of the lungs. The princ.i.p.al object of his amours is the wife of a friend. A violent hemorrhage warns him of approaching death. Stricken with fear he rushes to the nearest statue of the Madonna and registers a vow; he will marry a wanton, effect her redemption, thereby hoping to save his own miserable life. The heroine of the opera appears and she meets his requirements. He marries her and for a while she seems blest. But the siren, the Lola in the case, winds her toils about him as the disease stretches him on the floor at her feet. Piquancy again, achieved now without that poor palliative, punishment of the evil-doer.

Tasca's "A Santa Lucia" has an appetizing story about an oysterman's son who deserts a woman by whom he has a child, in order to marry one to whom he had previously been affianced. The women meet. There is a dainty brawl, and the fiancee of Cicillo (he's the oysterman's son) strikes her rival's child to the ground. The mother tries to stab the fiancee with the operatic Italian woman's ever-ready dagger, and this act stirs up the embers of Cicillo's love. He takes the mother of his child back home--to his father's house, that is. The child must be some four years old by this time, but the oysterman--dear, unsuspecting old man!--knows nothing about the relation existing between his son and his housekeeper. He is thinking of marriage with his common law daughter-in-law when in comes the old fiancee with a tale for Cicillo's ears of his mistress's unfaithfulness. "It is not true!" shrieks the poor woman, but the wretch, her seducer, closes his ears to her protestations; and she throws herself into the sea, where the oysters come from. Cicillo rushes after her and bears her to the sh.o.r.e, where she dies in his arms, gasping in articulo mortis, "It is not true!"

The romantic interest in Mascagni's life is confined to the period which preceded his sudden rise to fame. His father was a baker in Leghorn, and there he was born on December 7,1863. Of humble origin and occupation himself, the father, nevertheless, had large ambitions for his son; but not in the line of art. Pietro was to be shaped intellectually for the law. Like Handel, the boy studied the pianoforte by stealth in the attic. Grown in years, he began attending a music-school, when, it is said, his father confined him to his house; thence his uncle freed him and took over his care upon himself.

Singularly enough, the man who at the height of his success posed as the most Italian of Italian masters had his inspiration first stirred by German poetry. Early in his career Beethoven resolved to set Schiller's "Hymn to Joy"; the purpose remained in his mind for forty years or so, and finally became a realization in the finale of the Ninth Symphony. Pietro Mascagni resolved as a boy to compose music for the same ode; and did it at once. Then he set to work upon a two-act opera, "Il Filanda." His uncle died, and a Count Florestan (here is another Beethovenian echo!) sent him to the Conservatory at Milan, where, like nearly all of his native contemporaries, he imbibed knowledge (and musical ideas) from Ponchielli.

After two years or so of academic study he yielded to a gypsy desire and set out on his wanderings, but not until he had chosen as a companion Maffei's translation of Heine's "Ratcliff"--a gloomy romance which seems to have caught the fancy of many composers. There followed five years of as checkered a life as ever musician led. Over and over again he was engaged as conductor of an itinerant or stationary operetta and opera company, only to have the enterprise fail and leave him stranded. For six weeks in Naples his daily ration was a plate of macaroni. But he worked at his opera steadily, although, as he once remarked, his dreams of fame were frequently swallowed up in the growls of his stomach, which caused him more trouble than many a millionaire suffers from too little appet.i.te or too much gout. Finally, convinced that he could do better as a teacher of the pianoforte, he ran away from an engagement which paid him two dollars a day, and, sending off the ma.n.u.script of "Ratcliff" in a portmanteau, settled down in Cerignola. There he became director of a school for orchestral players, though he had first to learn to play the instruments; he also taught pianoforte and thoroughba.s.s, and eked out a troublous existence until his success in compet.i.tion for the prize offered by Sonzogno, the Milanese publisher, made him famous in a day and started him on the road to wealth.

It was but natural that, after "Cavalleria rusticana" had virulently affected the whole world with what the enemies of Signor Mascagni called "Mascagnitis," his next opera should be looked forward to with feverish anxiety. There was but a year to wait, for "L'Amico Fritz" was brought forward in Rome on the last day of October, 1891. Within ten weeks its t.i.tle found a place on the programme of one of Mr. Walter Damrosch's Sunday night concerts in New York; but the music was a disappointment. Five numbers were sung by Mme. Tavary and Signor Campanini, and Mr. Damrosch, not having the orchestral parts, played the accompaniments upon a pianoforte. As usual, Mr. Gustav Hinrichs was to the fore with a performance in Philadelphia (on June 8, 1892), the princ.i.p.al singers being Mme. Koert-Kronold, Clara Poole, M. Guille, and Signor Del Puente. On January 31, 1893, the Philadelphia singers, aided by the New York Symphony Society, gave a performance of the opera, under the auspices of the Young Men's Hebrew a.s.sociation, for the benefit of its charities, at the Carnegie Music Hall, New York. Mr.

Walter Damrosch was to have conducted, but was detained in Washington by the funeral of Mr. Blaine, and Mr. Hinrichs took his place. Another year elapsed, and then, on January 10, 1894, the opera reached the Metropolitan Opera House. In spite of the fact that Madame Calve sang the part of Suzel, only two performances were given to the work.

The failure of this opera did not dampen the industry of Mascagni nor the zeal of his enterprising publishers. For his next opera the composer went again to the French authors, Erckmann-Chatrian, who had supplied him with the story of "L'Amico Fritz." This time he chose "Les deux Freres," which they had themselves turned into a drama with the t.i.tle of "Rantzau." Mascagni's librettist retained the t.i.tle. The opera came out in Florence in 1892. The tremendous personal popularity of the composer, who was now as much a favorite in Vienna and Berlin as he was in the town of his birth which had struck a medal in his honor, or the town of his residence which had created him an honorary citizen, could not save the work.

Now he turned to the opera which he had laid aside to take up his "Cavalleria," and in 1895 "Guglielmo Ratcliff," based upon the gloomy Scotch story told by Heine, was brought forward at La Scala, in Milan.

It was in a sense the child of his penury and suffering, but he had taken it up inspired by tremendous enthusiasm for the subject, and inasmuch as most of its music had been written before success had turned his head, or desire for notoriety had begun to itch him, there was reason to hope to find in it some of the hot blood which surges through the score of "Cavalleria." As a matter of fact, critics who have seen the score or heard the work have pointed out that portions of "I Rantzau" and "Cavalleria" are as alike as two peas. It would not be a violent a.s.sumption that the composer in his eagerness to get his score before the Sonzogno jury had plucked his early work of its best feathers and found it difficult to restore plumage of equal brilliancy when he attempted to make rest.i.tution. In the same year, 1895, his next opera, "Silvano," made a fiasco in Milan. A year later there appeared "Zanetto," which seems like an effort to contract the frame of the lyric drama still further than is done in "Cavalleria." It is a bozzetto, a sketch, based on Coppee's duologue "Le Pa.s.sant," a scene between a strumpet who is weary of the world and a young minstrel. Its orchestration is unique--there are but strings and a harp. It was brought out at Pesaro, where, in 1895, Mascagni had been appointed director of the Liceo Musicale Rossini.

As director of the music-school in Rossini's native town Mascagni's days were full of trouble from the outset. He was opposed, said his friends, in reformatory efforts by some of the professors and pupils, whose enmity grew so virulent that in 1897 they spread the story that he had killed himself. He was deposed from his position by the administration, but reinstated by the Minister of Fine Arts. The criticism followed him for years that he had neglected his duties to travel about Europe, giving concerts and conducting his operas for the greater glory of himself and the profit of his publisher. At the time of the suicide story it was also said that he was in financial straits; to which his friends replied that he received a salary of 60 lire ($12) a day as director, 1000 lire ($200) a month from Sonzogno, and lived in a princely dwelling.

After "Zanetto" came "Iris," to which, as the one opera besides "Cavalleria rusticana" which has remained in the American repertory, I shall devote the next chapter in this book. "Iris" was followed by "Le Maschere," which was brought out on January 17, 1901, simultaneously in six cities--Rome, Milan, Venice, Genoa, Turin, and Naples. It made an immediate failure in all of these places except Rome, where it endured but a short time. Mascagni's next operatic work was a lyric drama, ent.i.tled "Vistilia," the libretto of which, based upon an historical novel by Racco de Zerbi, was written by Menasci and Targioni-Tozzetti, who collaborated on the book of "Cavalleria rusticana." The action goes back to the time of Tiberius and deals with the loves of Vistilia and Helius. Then came another failure in the shape of "Amica," which lived out its life in Monte Carlo, where it was produced in March, 1905.