The Complete Opera Book Part 74

A man leans over the wall. He calls in a low voice, "Nedda!"

"Silvio!" she cries. "At this hour ... what madness!"

He a.s.sures her that it is safe for them to meet. He has just left _Canio_ drinking at the tavern. She cautions him that, if he had been a few moments earlier, his presence would have been discovered by _Tonio_. He laughs at the suggestion of danger from a clown.

_Silvio_ has come to secure the promise of the woman he loves, and who has pledged her love to him, that she will run away with him from her husband after the performance that night. She does not consent at once, not because of any moral scruples, but because she is afraid.

After a little persuasion, however, she yields. The scene reaches its climax in an impa.s.sioned love duet, "E allor perche, di', tu m'hai stregato" (Why hast thou taught me Love's magic story). The lovers prepare to separate, but agree not to do so until after the play, when they are to meet and elope.

The jealous and vengeful _Tonio_ has overheard them, and has run to the tavern to bring back _Canio_. He comes just in time to hear _Nedda_ call after _Silvio_, who has climbed the wall, "Tonight, love, and forever I am thine."

_Canio_, with drawn dagger, makes a rush to overtake and slay the man, who was with his wife. _Nedda_ places herself between him and the wall, but he thrusts her violently aside, leaps the wall, and starts in pursuit. "May Heaven protect him now," prays _Nedda_ for her lover, while _Tonio_ chuckles.

The fugitive has been too swift for _Canio_. The latter returns.

"His name!" he demands of _Nedda_, for he does not know who her lover is. _Nedda_ refuses to give it. _Silvio_ is safe! What matter what happens to her. _Canio_ rushes at her to kill her. _Tonio_ and _Beppe_ restrain him. _Tonio_ whispers to him to wait. _Nedda's_ lover surely will be at the play. A look, or gesture from her will betray him. Then _Canio_ can wreak vengeance. _Canio_ thinks well of _Tonio's_ ruse.

_Nedda_ escapes into the theatre.

It is time to prepare for the performance. _Beppe_ and _Tonio_ retire to do so.

_Canio's_ grief over his betrayal by _Nedda_ finds expression in one of the most famous numbers in modern Italian opera, "Vesti la giubba"

(Now don the motley), with its tragic "Ridi, Pagliaccio" (Laugh thou, Pagliaccio), as _Canio_ goes toward the tent, and enters it. It is the old and ever effective story of the buffoon who must laugh, and make others laugh, while his heart is breaking.

[Music]

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 a.s.semble, 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 pa.s.sage 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, cos 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 e 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 Estebanez, 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 Oth.e.l.lo," for a periodical published by students of Columbia University, in which the player of _Oth.e.l.lo_, 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 Mendes, 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 inst.i.tuting 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--circ.u.mstances which so impressed the occurrence on his mind that he was led to adapt the episode for his opera. Catulle Mendes 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 _pailla.s.se_, 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- )