The most obvious reason why Goldmark's "Konigin von Saba" should be

seen and heard with pleasure lies in its book and scenic investiture.

Thoughtfully considered the book is not one of great worth, but in the

handling of things which give pleasure to the superficial observer it

is admirable. In the first place it presents a dramatic story which is

rational; which strongly enlists the interest if not the sympathies of

the observer; which is unhackneyed; which abounds with imposing

spectacles with which the imagination of childhood already had made

play, that are not only intrinsically brilliant and fascinating but

occur as necessary adjuncts of the story. Viewed from its ethical side

and considered with reference to the sources whence its elements

sprang, it falls under a considerable measure of condemnation, as will

more plainly appear after its incidents have been rehearsed.

The title of the opera indicates that the Biblical story of the visit

of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon had been drawn on for the plot. This

is true, but only in a slight degree. Sheba's Queen comes to Solomon in

the opera, but that is the end of the draft on the Scriptural legend so

far as she is concerned. Sulamith, who figures in the drama, owes her

name to the Canticles, from which it was borrowed by the librettist,

but no element of her character nor any of the incidents in which she

is involved. The "Song of Songs, which is Solomon's" contributes a few

lines of poetry to the book, and a ritualistic service which is

celebrated in the temple finds its original text in the opening verses

of Psalms lxvii and cxvii, but with this I have enumerated all that the

opera owes to the Bible. It is not a Biblical opera, in the degree that

Mehul's "Joseph," Rossini's "Moses," or Rubinstein's "Maccabees" is

Biblical, to say nothing of Saint-Saens's "Samson et Dalila." Solomon's

magnificent reign and marvellous wisdom, which contribute a few factors

to the sum of the production, belong to profane as well as to sacred

history and it will be found most agreeable to deeply rooted

preconceptions to think of some other than the Scriptural Solomon as

the prototype of the Solomon of Mosenthal and Goldmark, who, at the

best, is a sorry sort of sentimentalist. The local color has been

borrowed from the old story; the dramatic motive comes plainly from

Wagner's "Tannhauser."

Assad, a favorite courtier, is sent by Solomon to extend greetings and

a welcome to the Queen of Sheba, who is on the way to visit the king,

whose fame for wealth and wisdom has reached her ears in far Arabia.

Assad is the type (though a milk-and-watery one, it must be confessed)

of manhood struggling between the things that are of the earth and the

things which are of heaven--between a gross, sensual passion and a

pure, exalting love. He is betrothed to Sulamith, the daughter of the

High Priest of the temple, who awaits his return from Solomon's palace

and leads her companions in songs of gladness. Assad meets the Queen at

Gath, performs his mission, and sets out to return, but, exhausted by

the heat of the day, enters the forest on Mount Lebanon and lies down

on a bank of moss to rest. There the sound of plashing waters arrests

his ear. He seeks the cause of the grateful noise and comes upon a

transportingly beautiful woman bathing. The nymph, finding herself

observed, does not, like another Diana, cause the death of her admirer,

but discloses herself to be a veritable Wagnerian Venus. She clips him

in her arms and he falls at her feet; but a reed rustles and the

charmer flees. These incidents we do not see. They precede the opening

of the opera, and we learn of them from Assad's narration. Assad

returns to Jerusalem, where, conscience stricken, he seeks to avoid his

chaste bride. To Solomon, however, he confesses his adventure, and the

king sets the morrow as his wedding day with Sulamith.

The Queen of Sheba arrives, and when she raises her veil, ostensibly to

show unto Solomon the first view of her features that mortal man has

ever had vouchsafed him, Assad recognizes the heroine of his adventure

in the woods on Lebanon. His mind is in a maze; bewilderingly he

addresses her, and haughtily he is repulsed. But the woman has felt the

dart no less than Assad; she seeks him at night in the palace garden;

whither she had gone to brood over her love and the loss which

threatens her on the morrow, and the luring song of her slave draws him

again into her arms.

Before the altar in the temple, just as Assad is about to pronounce the

words which are to bind him to Sulamith, she confronts him again, on

the specious pretext that she brings gifts for the bride. Assad again

addresses her. Again he is denied. Delirium seizes upon his brain; he

loudly proclaims the Queen as the goddess of his devotion. The people

are panic-stricken at the sacrilege and rush from the temple; the

priests cry anathema; Sulamith bemoans her fate; Solomon essays words

of comfort; the High Priest intercedes with heaven; the soldiery, led

by Baal-Hanan, overseer of the palace, enter to lead the profaner to

death. Now Solomon claims the right to fix his punishment. The Queen,

fearful that her prey may escape her, begs his life as a boon, but

Solomon rejects her appeal; Assad must work out his salvation by

overcoming temptation and mastering his wicked passion. Sulamith

approaches amid the wailings of her companions. She is about to enter a

retreat on the edge of the Syrian desert, but she, too, prays for the

life of Assad. Solomon, in a prophetic ecstasy, foretells Assad's

deliverance from sin and in a vision sees a meeting between him and his

pure love under a palm tree in the desert. Assad is banished to the

sandy waste; there a simoom sweeps down upon him; he falls at the foot

of a lonely palm to die, after calling on Sulamith with his fleeting

breath. She comes with her wailing maidens, sees the fulfilment of

Solomon's prophecy, and Assad dies in her arms. "Thy beloved is thine,

in love's eternal realm," sing the maidens, while a mirage shows the

wicked Queen, with her caravan of camels and elephants, returning to

her home.

The parallel between this story and the immeasurably more poetical and

beautiful one of "Tannhauser" is apparent to half an eye. Sulamith is

Elizabeth, the Queen is Venus, Assad is Tannhauser, Solomon is Wolfram

von Eschenbach. The ethical force of the drama--it has some, though

very little--was weakened at the performances at the Metropolitan Opera

House [footnote: Goldmark's opera was presented for the first time in

America at the Metropolitan Opera House on December 2, 1885. Cast:

Sulamith, Fraulein Lilli Lehmann; die Konigin von Saba, Frau

Kramer-Wiedl; Astaroth, Fraulein Marianne Brandt; Solomon, Herr Adolph

Robinson; Assad, Herr Stritt; Der Hohe Priester, Herr Emil Fischer;

Baal-Hanan, Herr-Alexi. Anton Seidl conducted, and the opera had

fifteen representations in the season. These performances were in the

original German. On April 3, 1888, an English version was presented at

the Academy of Music by the National Opera Company, then in its death

throes. The opera was revived at the Metropolitan Opera House by Mr.

Conried in the season 1905-1906 and had five performances.] in New York

by the excision from the last act of a scene in which the Queen

attempts to persuade Assad to go with her to Arabia. Now Assad rises

superior to his grosser nature and drives the temptress away, thus

performing the saving act demanded by Solomon.

Herr Mosenthal, who made the libretto of "Die Konigin von Saba,"

treated this material, not with great poetic skill, but with a cunning

appreciation of the opportunities which it offers for dramatic effect.

The opera opens with a gorgeous picture of the interior of Solomon's

palace, decked in honor of the coming guest. There is an air of joyous

expectancy over everything. Sulamith's entrance introduces the element

of female charm to brighten the brilliancy of the picture, and her

bridal song--in which the refrain is an excerpt from the Canticles,

"Thy beloved is thine, who feeds among the roses"--enables the composer

to indulge his strong predilection and fecund gift for Oriental melody.

The action hurries to a thrilling climax. One glittering pageant treads

on the heels of another, each more gorgeous and resplendent than the

last, until the stage, set to represent a fantastical hall with a

bewildering vista of carved columns, golden lions, and rich draperies,

is filled with such a kaleidoscopic mass of colors and groupings as

only an Oriental mind could conceive. Finally all the preceding strokes

are eclipsed by the coming of the Queen. But no time is lost; the

spectacle does not make the action halt for a moment. Sheba makes her

gifts and uncovers her face, and at once we are confronted by the

tragical element, and the action rushes on toward its legitimate and

mournful end.

In this ingenious blending of play and spectacle one rare opportunity

after another is presented to the composer. Sulamith's epithalamium,

Assad's narrative, the choral greeting to the Queen, the fateful

recognition--all these things are made for music of the inspiring,

swelling, passionate kind. In the second act, the Queen's monologue,

her duet with Assad, and, most striking of all, the unaccompanied bit

of singing with which Astaroth lures Assad into the presence of the

Queen, who is hiding in the shadow of broad-leaved palms behind a

running fountain--a melodic phrase saturated with the mystical color of

the East--these are gifts of the rarest kind to the composer, which he

has enriched to give them in turn to the public. That relief from their

stress of passion is necessary is not forgotten, but is provided in the

ballet music and the solemn ceremonial in the temple, which takes place

amid surroundings that call into active operation one's childhood

fancies touching the sacred fane on Mount Moriah and the pompous

liturgical functions of which it was the theatre.

Goldmark's music is highly spiced. He was an eclectic, and his first

aim seems to have been to give the drama a tonal investiture which

should be in keeping with its character, external as well as internal.

At times his music rushes along like a lava stream of passion, every

measure pulsating with eager, excited, and exciting life. He revels in

instrumental color. The language of his orchestra is as glowing as the

poetry attributed to the royal poet whom his operatic story celebrates.

Many composers before him made use of Oriental cadences, rhythms, and

idioms, but to none do they seem to have come so like native language

as to Goldmark. It is romantic music, against which the strongest

objection that can be urged is that it is so unvaryingly stimulated

that it wearies the mind and makes the listener long for a change to a

fresher and healthier musical atmosphere.

CHAPTER VI

"HERODIADE"

In the ballet scene of Gounod's most popular opera Mephistopheles

conjures up visions of Phryne, Lais, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Helen of

Troy to beguile the jaded interest of Faust. The list reads almost like

a catalogue of the operas of Massenet whose fine talent was largely

given to the celebration of the famous courtesans of the ancient world.

With the addition of a few more names from the roster of antiquity

(Thais, Dalila, and Aphrodite), and some less ancient but no less

immoral creatures of modern fancy, like Violetta, Manon Lescaut, Zaza,

and Louise, we might make a pretty complete list of representatives of

the female type in which modern dramatists and composers seem to think

the interest of humanity centres.

When Massenet's "Herodiade" was announced as the first opera to be

given at the Manhattan Opera House in New York for the season of

1909-1910 it looked to some observers as if the dominant note of the

year was to be sounded by the Scarlet Woman; but the representation

brought a revelation and a surprise. The names of the principal

characters were those which for a few years had been filling the lyric

theatres of Germany with a moral stench; but their bearers in

Massenet's opera did little or nothing that was especially shocking to

good taste or proper morals. Herod was a love-sick man of lust, who

gazed with longing eyes upon the physical charms of Salome and pleaded

for her smiles like any sentimental milksop; but he did not offer her

Capernaum for a dance. Salome may have known how, but she did not dance

for either half a kingdom or the whole of a man's head. Instead, though

there were intimations that her reputation was not all that a good

maiden's ought to be, she sang pious hosannahs and waved a palm branch

conspicuously in honor of the prophet at whose head she had bowled

herself in the desert, the public streets, and king's palaces. At the

end she killed herself when she found that the vengeful passion of

Herodias and the jealous hatred of Herod had compassed the death of the

saintly man whom she had loved. Herodias was a wicked woman, no doubt,

for John the Baptist denounced her publicly as a Jezebel, but her

jealousy of Salome had reached a point beyond her control before she

learned that her rival was her own daughter whom she had deserted for

love of the Tetrarch. As for John the Baptist the camel's hair with

which he was clothed must have cost as pretty a penny as any of the

modern kind, and if he wore a girdle of skins about his loins it was

concealed under a really regal cloak. He was a voice; but not one

crying in the wilderness. He was in fact an operatic tenor comme il

faut, who needed only to be shut up in a subterranean jail with the

young woman who had pursued him up hill and down dale, in and out of

season to make love to her in the most approved fashion of the Paris

Grand Opera.

What shall we think of the morals of this French opera, after we have

seen and heard that compounded by the Englishman Oscar Wilde and the

German Richard Strauss? No wonder that England's Lord Chamberlain asked

nothing more than an elimination of the Biblical names when he licensed

a performance of "Herodiade" at Covent Garden. There was no loss of

dramatic quality in calling Herod, Moriame, and Herodias, Hesotade, and

changing the scene from Jerusalem to Azoum in Ethiopia; though it must

have been a trifle diverting to hear fair-skinned Ethiopians singing

Schma Yisroel, Adonai Elohenu in a temple which could only be that of

Jerusalem. John the Baptist was only Jean in the original and needed

not to be changed, and Salome is not in the Bible, though Salome, a

very different woman is--a fact which the Lord Chamberlain seems to

have overlooked when he changed the title of the opera from "Herodiade"

to "Salome."

Where does Salome come from, anyway? And where did she get her

chameleonlike nature? Was she an innocent child, as Flaubert represents

her, who could but lisp the name of the prophet when her mother told

her to ask for his head? Had she taken dancing lessons from one of the

women of Cadiz to learn to dance as she must have danced to excite such

lust in Herod? Was she a monster, a worse than vampire as she is

represented by Wilde and Strauss? Was she an "Israelitish grisette" as

Pougin called the heroine of the opera which it took one Italian

(Zanardini) and three Frenchmen (Milliet, Gremont, and Massenet) to

concoct? No wonder that the brain of Saint-Saens reeled when he went to

hear "Herodiade" at its first performance in Brussels and found that

the woman whom he had looked upon as a type of lasciviousness and

monstrous cruelty had become metamorphosed into a penitent Magdalen.

Read the plot of the opera and wonder!

Salome is a maiden in search of her mother whom John the Baptist finds

in his wanderings and befriends. She clings to him when he becomes a

political as well as a religious power among the Jews, though he

preaches unctuously to her touching the vanity of earthly love.

Herodias demands his death of her husband for that he had publicly

insulted her, but Herod schemes to use his influence over the Jews to

further his plan to become a real monarch instead of a Roman Tetrarch.

But when the pro-consul Vitellius wins the support of the people and

Herod learns that the maiden who has spurned him is in love with the

prophet, he decrees his decapitation. Salome, baffled in her effort to

save her lover, attempts to kill Herodias; but the wicked woman

discloses herself as the maiden's mother and Salome turns the dagger

against her own breast.

This is all of the story one needs to know. It is richly garnished with

incident, made gorgeous with pageantry, and clothed with much charming

music. Melodies which may be echoes of synagogal hymns of great

antiquity resound in the walls of the temple at Jerusalem, in which

respect the opera recalls Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba." Curved Roman

trumpets mix their loud clangors with the instruments of the modern

brass band and compel us to think of "Aida." There are dances of

Egyptians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians, and if the movements of the

women make us deplore the decay of the choreographic art, the music

warms us almost as much as the Spanish measures in "Le Cid." Eyes and

ears are deluged with Oriental color until at the last there comes a

longing for the graciously insinuating sentimentalities of which the

earlier Massenet was a master. Two of the opera's airs had long been

familiar to the public from performance in the concert-room--Salome's

"Il est doux" and Herod's "Vision fugitive"--and they stand out as the

brightest jewels in the opera's musical crown; but there is much else

which woos the ear delightfully, for Massenet was ever a gracious if

not a profound melodist and a master of construction and theatrical

orchestration. When he strives for massive effects, however, he

sometimes becomes futile, banal where he would be imposing; but he

commands a charm which is insinuating in its moments of intimacy.

[Footnote: "Herodiade" had its first performance in New York (it had

previously been given in New Orleans by the French Opera Company) on

November 8, 1909. The cast was as follows: Salome--Lina Cavalieri;

Herodias--Gerville-Reache; John--Charles Dalmores; Herod--Maurice

Renaud; Vitellius--Crabbe; Phanuel--M. Vallier; High Priest--M.

Nicolay. The musical director was Henriques de la Fuente.]

CHAPTER VII

"LAKME"

Lakme is the daughter of Nilakantha, a fanatical Brahmin priest, who

has withdrawn to a ruined temple deep in an Indian forest. In his

retreat the old man nurses his wrath against the British invader, prays

assiduously to Brahma (thus contributing a fascinating Oriental mood to

the opening of the opera), and waits for the time to come when he shall

be able to wreak his revenge on the despoilers of his country. Lakme

sings Oriental duets with her slave, Mallika:--

Sous le dome epais ou le blanc jasmin

A la rose s'assemble,

Sur la rive en fleurs, riant au matin

Viens, descendons ensemble--

a dreamy, sense-ensnaring, hypnotic barcarole. The opera opens well; by

this time the composer has carried us deep into the jungle. The

Occident is rude: Gerald, an English officer, breaks through a bamboo

fence and makes love to Lakme, who, though widely separated from her

operatic colleagues from an ethnological point of view like Elsa and

Senta, to expedite the action requites the passion instanter. After the

Englishman is gone the father returns and, with an Oriental's cunning

which does him credit, deduces from the broken fence that an Englishman

has profaned the sacred spot. This is the business of Act I. In Act II

the father, disguised as a beggar who holds a dagger ever in readiness,

and his daughter, disguised as a street singer, visit a town market in

search of the profaner. The business is not to Lakme's taste, but it is

not for the like of her to neglect the opportunity offered to win

applause with the legend of the pariah's daughter, with its

tintinnabulatory charm:--

Ou va la jeune Hindoue

Fille des parias;

Quand la lune se joue

Dans les grand mimosas?

It is the "Bell song," which has tinkled so often in our concert-rooms.

Gerald recognizes the singer despite her disguise; and Nilakantha

recognizes him as the despoiler of the hallowed spot in which he

worships and incidentally conceals his daughter. The bloodthirsty

fanatic observes sententiously that Brahma has smiled and cuts short

Gerald's soliloquizing with a dagger thrust. Lakme, with the help of a

male slave, removes him to a hut concealed in the forest. While he is

convalescing the pair sing duets and exchange vows of undying

affection. But the military Briton, who has invaded the country at

large, must needs now invade also this cosey abode of love. Frederick,

a brother officer, discovers Gerald and informs him that duty calls

(Britain always expects every man to do his duty, no matter what the

consequences to him) and he must march with his regiment. Frederick has

happened in just as Lakme is gone for some sacred water in which she

and Gerald were to pledge eternal love for each other, to each other.

But, spurred on by Frederick and the memory that "England expects,

etc.," Gerald finds the call of the fife and drum more potent than the

voice of love. Lakme, psychologist as well as botanist, understands the

struggle which now takes place in Gerald's soul, and relieves him, of

his dilemma by crushing a poisonous flower (to be exact, the Datura

stramonium) between her teeth, dying, it would seem, to the pious

delight of her father, who "ecstatically" beholds her dwelling with

Brahma.

The story, borrowed by Gondinet and Gille from the little romance "Le

Mariage de Loti," is worthless except to furnish motives for tropical

scenery, Hindu dresses, and Oriental music. Three English ladies,

Ellen, Rose, and Mrs. Bentson, figure in the play, but without dramatic

purpose except to take part in some concerted music. They are, indeed,

so insignificant in all other respects that when the opera was given by

Miss Van Zandt and a French company in London for the first time in

1885 they were omitted, and the excision was commended by the critics,

who knew that it had been made. The conversation of the women is all of

the veriest stopgap character. The maidens, Rose and Ellen, are English

ladies visiting in the East; Mrs. Bentson is their chaperon. All that

they have to say is highly unimportant, even when true. "What do you

see, Frederick?" "A garden." "And you, Gerald?" "Big, beautiful trees."

"Anybody about?" "Don't know." "Look again." "That's not easy; the

fence shuts out the view within." "Can't you make a peephole through

the bamboo?" "Girls, girls, be careful." And so on and so on for

quantity. But we must fill three acts, and ensemble makes its demands;

besides, we want pretty blondes of the English type to put in contrast

with the dark-skinned Lakme and her slave. At the first representation

in New York by the American Opera Company, at the Academy of Music, on

March 1, 1886, the three women were permitted to interfere with what

there is of poetical spirit in the play, and their conversation, like

that of the other principals, was uttered in the recitatives composed

by Delibes to take the place of the spoken dialogue used at the Paris

Opera Comique, where spoken dialogue is traditional. Theodore Thomas

conducted the Academy performance, at which the cast was as follows:

Lakme, Pauline L'Allemand; Nilakantha, Alonzo E. Stoddard; Gerald,

William Candidus; Frederick, William H. Lee; Ellen, Charlotte Walker;

Rose, Helen Dudley Campbell; Mrs. Bentson, May Fielding; Mallika,

Jessie Bartlett Davis; Hadji, William H. Fessenden.

Few operas have had a more variegated American history than "Lakme." It

was quite new when it was first heard in New York, but it had already

given rise to considerable theatrical gossip, not to say scandal. The

first representation took place at the Opera Comique in April, 1883,

with Miss Marie Van Zandt, an American girl, the daughter of a singer

who had been actively successful in English opera in New York and

London, as creator of the part of the heroine. The opera won a pretty

triumph and so did the singer. At once there was talk of a New York

performance. Mme. Etelka Gerster studied the titular role with M.

Delibes and, as a member of Colonel Mapleson's company at the Academy

of Music, confidently expected to produce the work there in the season

of 1883-1884, the first season of the rivalry between the Academy and

the Metropolitan Opera House, which had just opened its doors; but

though she went so far as to offer to buy the American performing

rights from Heugel, the publisher, nothing came of it. The reason was

easily guessed by those who knew that there has been, or was pending, a

quarrel between Colonel Mapleson and M. Heugel concerning the

unauthorized use by the impresario of other scores owned by the

publisher.

During the same season, however, Miss Emma Abbott carried a version (or

rather a perversion) of the opera, for which the orchestral parts had

been arranged from the pianoforte score, into the cities of the West,

and brought down a deal of unmerited criticism on the innocent head of

M. Delibes. In the season of 1884-1885 Colonel Mapleson came back to

the Academy with vouchers of various sorts to back up a promise to give

the opera. There was a human voucher in the person of Miss Emma Nevada,

who had also enjoyed the instruction of the composer and who had

trunkfuls and trunkfuls and trunkfuls of Oriental dresses, though Lakme

needs but few. There were gorgeous uniforms for the British soldiers,

the real article, each scarlet coat and every top boot having a piece

of history attached, and models of the scenery which any doubting

Thomas of a newspaper reporter might inspect if he felt so disposed.

When the redoubtable colonel came it was to be only a matter of a week

or so before the opera would be put on the stage in the finest of

styles; it was still a matter of a week or so when the Academy season

came to an end. When Delibes's exquisite and exotic music reached a

hearing in the American metropolis, it was sung to English words, and

the most emphatic success achieved in performance was the acrobatic one

of Mme. L'Allemand as she rolled down some uncalled-for pagoda steps in

the death scene.

Mme. Adelina Patti was the second Lakme heard in New York. After the

fifth season of German opera at the Metropolitan Opera House had come

to an end in the spring of 1890, Messrs. Abbey and Grau took the

theatre for a short season of Italian opera by a troupe headed by Mme.

Patti. In that season "Lakme" was sung once--on April 2, 1890. Now came

an opportunity for the original representative of the heroine. Abbey

and Grau resumed the management of the theatre in 1891, and in their

company was Miss Van Zandt, for whom the opera was "revived" on

February 22. Mr. Abbey had great expectations, but they were

disappointed. For the public there was metal more attractive than Miss

Van Zandt and the Hindu opera in other members of the company and other

operas. It was the year of Emma Eames's coming and also of Jean de

Reszke's (they sang together in Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette") and

"Cavalleria Rusticana" was new. Then Delibes's opera hibernated in New

York for fifteen years, after which the presence in the Metropolitan

company of Mme. Marcella Sembrich led to another "revival." (Operas

which are unperformed for a term of two or three years after having

been once included in the repertory are "revived" in New York.) It was

sung three times in the season of 1906-1907. It also afforded one of

Mr. Hammerstein's many surprises at the Manhattan Opera House. Five

days before the close of his last season, on March 21, 1910, it was

precipitated on the stage ("pitchforked" is the popular and

professional term) to give Mme. Tetrazzini a chance to sing the bell

song. Altogether I know of no more singular history than that of

"Lakme" in New York.

Lakme is a child of the theatrical boards, who inherited traits from

several predecessors, the strongest being those deriving from Aida and

Selika. Like the former, she loves a man whom her father believes to be

the arch enemy of his native land, and, like her, she is the means of

betraying him into the hands of the avenger. Like the heroine of

Meyerbeer's posthumous opera, she has a fatal acquaintance with

tropical botany and uses her knowledge to her own destruction. Her

scientific attainments are on about the same plane as her amiability,

her abnormal sense of filial duty, and her musical accomplishments. She

loves a man whom her father wishes her to lure to his death by her

singing, and she sings entrancingly enough to bring about the meeting

between her lover's back and her father's knife. That she does not

warble herself into the position of "particeps criminis" in a murder

she owes only to the bungling of the old man. Having done this,

however, she turns physician and nurse and brings the wounded man back

to health, thus sacrificing her love to the duty which her lover thinks

he owes to the invaders of her country and oppressors of her people.

After this she makes the fatal application of her botanical knowledge.

Such things come about when one goes to India for an operatic heroine.

The feature of the libretto which Delibes has used to the best purpose

is its local color. His music is saturated with the languorous spirit

of the East. Half a dozen of the melodies are lovely inventions, of

marked originality in both matter and treatment, and the first half

hour of the opera is apt to take one's fancy completely captive. The

drawback lies in the oppressive weariness which succeeds the first

trance, and is brought on by the monotonous character of the music.

After an hour of "Lakme" one yearns for a few crashing chords of C

major as a person enduring suffocation longs for a gush of fresh air.

The music first grows monotonous, then wearies. Delibes's lyrical

moments show the most numerous indications of beauty; dramatic life and

energy are absent from the score. In the second act he moves his

listeners only once--with the attempted repetition of the bell song

after Lakme has recognized her lover. The odor of the poppy invites to

drowsy enjoyment in the beginning, and the first act is far and away

the most gratifying in the opera, musically as well as scenically. It

would be so if it contained only Lakme's song "Pourquoi dans les grands

bois," the exquisite barcarole--a veritable treasure trove for the

composer, who used its melody dramatically throughout the work--and

Gerald's air, "Fantaisie aux divins mensonges." Real depth will be

looked for in vain in this opera; superficial loveliness is apparent on

at least half its pages.

CHAPTER VIII

"PAGLIACCl"

For a quarter of a century "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci" have

been the Castor and Pollux of the operatic theatres of Europe and

America. Together they have joined the hunt of venturesome impresarios

for that Calydonian boar, success; together they have lighted the way

through seasons of tempestuous stress and storm. Of recent years at the

Metropolitan Opera House in New York efforts have been made to divorce

them and to find associates for one or the other, since neither is

sufficient in time for an evening's entertainment; but they refuse to

be put asunder as steadfastly as did the twin brothers of Helen and

Clytemnestra. There has been no operatic Zeus powerful enough to

separate and alternate their existences even for a day; and though

blase critics will continue to rail at the "double bill" as they have

done for two decades or more, the two fierce little dramas will "sit

shining on the sails" of many a managerial ship and bring it safe to

haven for many a year to come.

Twins the operas are in spirit; twins in their capacity as supreme

representatives of verismo; twins in the fitness of their association;

but twins they are not in respect of parentage or age. "Cavalleria

Rusticana" is two years older than "Pagliacci" and as truly its

progenitor as Weber's operas were the progenitors of Wagner's. They are

the offspring of the same artistic movement, and it was the phenomenal

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

success of Mascagni's opera which was the spur that drove Leoncavallo

to write his. When "Cavalleria Rusticana" appeared on the scene, two

generations of opera-goers had passed away without experiencing

anything like the sensation caused by this opera. They had witnessed

the production, indeed, of great masterpieces, which it would be almost

sacrilegious to mention in the same breath with Mascagni's turbulent

and torrential tragedy, but these works were the productions of mature

masters, from whom things monumental and lasting were expected as a

matter of course; men like Wagner and Verdi. The generations had also

seen the coming of "Carmen" and gradually opened their minds to an

appreciation of its meaning and beauty, while the youthful genius who

had created it sank almost unnoticed into his grave; but they had not

seen the advent of a work which almost in a day set the world on fire

and raised an unknown musician from penury and obscurity to affluence

and fame. In the face of such an experience it was scarcely to be

wondered at that judgment was flung to the winds and that the most

volatile of musical nations and the staidest alike hailed the young

composer as the successor of Verdi, the regenerator of operatic Italy,

and the pioneer of a new school which should revitalize opera and make

unnecessary the hopeless task of trying to work along the lines laid

down by Wagner.

And this opera was the outcome of a competition based on the frankest

kind of commercialism--one of those "occasionals" from which we have

been taught to believe we ought never to expect anything of ideal and

lasting merit. "Pagliacci" was, in a way, a fruit of the same

competition. Three years before "Cavalleria Rusticana" had started the

universal conflagration Ruggiero Leoncavallo, who at sixteen years of

age had won his diploma at the Naples Conservatory and received the

degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Bologna at twenty,

had read his dramatic poem "I Medici" to the publisher Ricordi and been

commissioned to set it to music. For this work he was to receive 2400

francs. He completed the composition within a year, but there was no

contract that the opera should be performed, and this hoped-for

consummation did not follow. Then came Mascagni's triumph, and

Leoncavallo, who had been obliged meanwhile to return to the routine

work of an operatic repetiteur, lost patience. Satisfied that Ricordi

would never do anything more for him, and become desperate, he shut

himself in his room to attempt "one more work"--as he said in an

autobiographical sketch which appeared in "La Reforme," a journal

published in Alexandria. In five months he had written the book and

music of "Pagliacci," which was accepted for publication and production

by Sonzogno, Ricordi's business rival, after a single reading of the

poem. Maurel, whose friendship Leoncavallo had made while coaching

opera singers in Paris, used his influence in favor of the opera,

offered to create the part of Tonio, and did so at the first

performance of the opera at the Teatro dal Verme, Milan, on May 17,

1892.

Leoncavallo's opera turns on a tragical ending to a comedy which is

incorporated in the play. The comedy is a familiar one among the

strolling players who perform at village fairs in Italy, in which

Columbina, Pagliaccio, and Arlecchino (respectively the Columbine,

Clown, and Harlequin of our pantomime) take part. Pagliaccio is husband

to Colombina and Arlecchino is her lover, who hoodwinks Pagliaccio.

There is a fourth character, Taddeo, a servant, who makes foolish love

to Columbina and, mingling imbecile stupidity with maliciousness,

delights in the domestic discord which he helps to foment. The first

act of the opera may be looked upon as an induction to the conventional

comedy which comes to an unconventional and tragic end through the fact

that the Clown (Canio) is in real life the husband of Columbine (Nedda)

and is murderously jealous of her; wherefore, forgetting himself in a

mad rage, he kills her and her lover in the midst of the mimic scene.

The lover, however, is not the Harlequin of the comedy, but one of the

spectators whom Canio had vainly sought to identify, but who is

unconsciously betrayed by his mistress in her death agony. The Taddeo

of the comedy is the clown of the company, who in real life entertains

a passion for Nedda, which is repulsed, whereupon he also carries his

part into actuality and betrays Nedda's secret to Canio. It is in the

ingenious interweaving of these threads--the weft of reality with the

warp of simulation--that the chief dramatic value of Leoncavallo's

opera lies.

Actual murder by a man while apparently playing a part in a drama is

older as a dramatic motif than "Pagliacci," and Leoncavallo's

employment of it gave rise to an interesting controversy and a still

more interesting revelation in the early days of the opera. Old

theatre-goers in England and America remember the device as it was

employed in Dennery's "Paillaisse," known on the English stage as

"Belphegor, the Mountebank." In 1874 Paul Ferrier produced a play

entitled "Tabarin," in which Coquelin appeared at the Theatre Francais.

Thirteen years later Catulle Mendes brought out another play called "La

Femme de Tabarin," for which Chabrier wrote the incidental music. The

critics were prompt in charging Mendes with having plagiarized Ferrier,

and the former defended himself on the ground that the incident which

he had employed, of actual murder in a dramatic performance, was

historical and had often been used. This, however, did not prevent him

from bringing an accusation of theft against Leoncavallo when

"Pagliacci" was announced for production in French at Brussels and of

beginning legal proceedings against the composer and his publisher on

that score. The controversy which followed showed very plainly that

Mendes did not have a leg to stand upon either in law or equity, and he

withdrew his suit and made a handsome amende in a letter to the editor

of "Le Figaro." Before this was done, however, Signor Leoncavallo wrote

a letter to his publisher, which not only established that the incident

in question was based upon fact but directed attention to a dramatic

use of the motif in a Spanish play written thirty-five years before the

occurrence which was in the mind of Leoncavallo. The letter was as

follows:--

Lugano, Sept. 3, 1894.

Dear Signor Sonzogno.

I have read Catulle Mendes's two letters. M. Mendes goes pretty far in

declaring a priori that "Pagliacci" is an imitation of his "Femme de

Tabarin." I had not known this book, and only know it now through the

accounts given in the daily papers. You will remember that at the time

of the first performance of "Pagliacci" at Milan in 1892 several

critics accused me of having taken the subject of my opera from the

"Drama Nuevo" of the well known Spanish writer, Estebanez. What would

M. Mendes say if he were accused of having taken the plot of "La Femme

de Tabarin" from the "Drama Nuevo," which dates back to 1830 or 1840?

As a fact, a husband, a comedian, kills in the last scene the lover of

his wife before her eyes while he only appears to play his part in the

piece.

It is absolutely true that I knew at that time no more of the "Drama

Nuevo" than I know now of "La Femme de Tabarin." I saw the first

mentioned work in Rome represented by Novelli six months after

"Pagliacci's" first production in Milan. In my childhood, while my

father was judge at Montalto, in Calabria (the scene of the opera's

plot), a jealous player killed his wife after the performance. This

event made a deep and lasting impression on my childish mind, the more

since my father was the judge at the criminal's trial; and later, when

I took up dramatic work, I used this episode for a drama. I left the

frame of the piece as I saw it, and it can be seen now at the Festival

of Madonna della Serra, at Montalto. The clowns arrive a week or ten

days before the festival, which takes place on August 15, to put up

their tents and booths in the open space which reaches from the church

toward the fields. I have not even invented the coming of the peasants

from Santo Benedetto, a neighboring village, during the chorale.

What I write now I have mentioned so often in Germany and other parts

that several opera houses, notably that of Berlin, had printed on their

bills "Scene of the true event." After all this, M. Mendes insisted on

his claim, which means that he does not believe my words. Had I used M.

Mendes's ideas I would not have hesitated to open correspondence with

him before the first representation, as I have done now with a well

known writer who has a subject that I wish to use for a future work.

"Pagliacci" is my own, entirely my own. If in this opera, a scene

reminds one of M. Mendes's book, it only proves that we both had the

same idea which Estebanez had before us. On my honor and conscience I

assure you that I have read but two of M. Mendes's books in my

life--"Zo Hur" and "La Premiere Maitresse." When I read at Marienbad a

little while ago the newspaper notices on the production of "La Femme

de Tabarin" I even wrote to you, dear Signor Sonzogno, thinking this

was an imitation of "Pagliacci." This assertion will suffice, coming

from an honorable man, to prove my loyalty. If not, then I will place

my undoubted rights under the protection of the law, and furnish

incontestable proof of what I have stated here. I have the honor, etc.,

etc.

At various times and in various manners, by letters and in newspaper

interviews, Leoncavallo reiterated the statement that the incident

which he had witnessed as a boy in his father's courtroom had suggested

his drama. The chief actor in the incident, he said, was still living.

After conviction he was asked if he felt penitent. The rough voice

which rang through the room years before still echoed in Leoncavallo's

ears: "I repent me of nothing! On the contrary, if I had it to do over

again I'd do it again!" (Non mi pento del delitto! Tutt altro. Se

dovessi ricominciare, ricomincerei!) He was sentenced to imprisonment

and after the expiration of his term took service in a little Calabrian

town with Baroness Sproniere. If Mendes had prosecuted his action,

"poor Alessandro" was ready to appear as a witness and tell the story

which Leoncavallo had dramatized.

I have never seen "La Femme de Tabarin" and must rely on Mr. Philip

Hale, fecund fountain of informal information, for an outline of the

play which "Pagliacci" called back into public notice: Francisquine,

the wife of Tabarin, irons her petticoats in the players' booth. A

musketeer saunters along, stops and makes love to her. She listens

greedily. Tabarin enters just after she has made an appointment with

the man. Tabarin is drunk--drunker than usual. He adores his wife; he

falls at her feet; he entreats her; he threatens her. Meanwhile the

crowd gathers to see the "parade." Tabarin mounts the platform and

tells openly of his jealousy. He calls his wife; she does not answer.

He opens the curtain behind him; then he sees her in the arms of the

musketeer. Tabarin snatches up a sword, stabs his wife in the breast

and comes back to the stage with starting eyes and hoarse voice. The

crowd marvels at the passion of his play. Francisquine, bloody, drags

herself along the boards. She chokes; she cannot speak. Tabarin, mad

with despair, gives her the sword, begs her to kill him. She seizes the

sword, raises herself, hiccoughs, gasps out the word "Canaille," and

dies before she can strike.

Paul Ferrier and Emanuel Pessard produced a grand opera in two acts

entitled "Tabarin" in Paris in 1885; Alboiz and Andre a comic opera

with the same title, music by Georges Bousquet, in 1852. Gilles and

Furpilles brought out an operetta called "Tabarin Duelliste," with

music by Leon Pillaut, in 1866. The works seem to have had only the

name of the hero in common. Their stories bear no likeness to those of

"La Femme de Tabarin" or "Pagliacci." The Spanish play, "Drama Nuevo,"

by Estebanez, was adapted for performance in English by Mr. W. D.

Howells under the title "Yorick's Love." The translation was made for

Mr. Lawrence Barrett and was never published in book form. If it had

the denouement suggested in Leoncavallo's letter to Sonzogno, the fact

has escaped the memory of Mr. Howells, who, in answer to a letter of

inquiry which I sent him, wrote: "So far as I can remember there was no

likeness between 'Yorick's Love' and 'Pagliacci.' But when I made my

version I had not seen or heard 'Pagliacci.'"

The title of Leoncavallo's opera is "Pagliacci," not "I Pagliacci" as

it frequently appears in books and newspapers. When the opera was

brought out in the vernacular, Mr. Frederick E. Weatherly, who made the

English adaptation, called the play and the character assumed by Canio

in the comedy "Punchinello." This evoked an interesting comment from

Mr. Hale: "'Pagliacci' is the plural of Pagliaccio, which does not mean

and never did mean Punchinello. What is a Pagliaccio? A type long known

to the Italians, and familiar to the French as Paillasse. The

Pagliaccio visited Paris first in 1570. He was clothed in white and

wore big buttons. Later, he wore a suit of bedtick, with white and blue

checks, the coarse mattress cloth of the period. Hence his name. The

word that meant straw was afterward used for mattress which was stuffed

with straw and then for the buffoon, who wore the mattress cloth suit.

In France the Paillasse, as I have said, was the same as Pagliaccio.

Sometimes he wore a red checked suit, but the genuine one was known by

the colors, white and blue. He wore blue stockings, short breeches

puffing out a la blouse, a belted blouse and a black, close-fitting

cap. This buffoon was seen at shows of strolling mountebanks. He stood

outside the booth and by his jests and antics and grimaces strove to

attract the attention of the people, and he told them of the wonders

performed by acrobats within, of the freaks exhibited. Many of his

jests are preserved. They are often in dialogue with the proprietor and

are generally of vile indecency. The lowest of the strollers, he was

abused by them. The Italian Pagliaccio is a species of clown, and

Punchinello was never a mere buffoon. The Punch of the puppet-show is a

bastard descendant of the latter, but the original type is still seen

in Naples, where he wears a white costume and a black mask. The

original type was not necessarily humpbacked. Punchinello is a shrewd

fellow, intellectual, yet in touch with the people, cynical; not

hesitating at murder if he can make by it; at the same time a local

satirist, a dealer in gags and quips. Pagliacci is perhaps best

translated by 'clowns'; but the latter word must not be taken in its

restricted circus sense. These strolling clowns are pantomimists,

singers, comedians."

At the first performance of "Pagliacci" in Milan the cast was as

follows: Canio, Geraud; Tonio, Maurel; Silvio, Ancona; Peppe, Daddi;

Nedda, Mme. Stehle. The first performance in America was by the

Hinrichs Grand Opera Company, at the Grand Opera House, New York, on

June 15, 1893; Selma Kronold was the Nedda, Montegriffo the Canio, and

Campanari the Tonio. The opera was incorporated in the Metropolitan

repertory in the season of 1893-1894.

Rinuccini's "Dafne," which was written 300 years ago and more, begins

with a prologue which was spoken in the character of the poet Ovid.

Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" also begins with a prologue, but it is spoken

by one of the people of the play; whether in his character as Tonio of

the tragedy or Pagliaccio of the comedy there is no telling. He speaks

the sentiments of the one and wears the motley of the other. Text and

music, however, are ingeniously contrived to serve as an index to the

purposes of the poet and the method and material of the composer. In

his speech the prologue tells us that the author of the play is fond of

the ancient custom of such an introduction, but not of the old purpose.

He does not employ it for the purpose of proclaiming that the tears and

passions of the actors are but simulated and false. No! He wishes to

let us know that his play is drawn from life as it is--that it is true.

It welled up within him when memories of the past sang in his heart and

was written down to show us that actors are human beings like unto

ourselves.

An unnecessary preachment, and if listened to with a critical

disposition rather an impertinence, as calculated to rob us of the

pleasure of illusion which it is the province of the drama to give.

Closely analyzed, Tonio's speech is very much of a piece with the

prologue which Bully Bottom wanted for the play of "Pyramus" in

Shakespeare's comedy. We are asked to see a play. In this play there is

another play. In this other play one of the actors plays at

cross-purposes with the author--forgets his lines and himself

altogether and becomes in reality the man that he seems to be in the

first play. The prologue deliberately aims to deprive us of the thrill

of surprise at the unexpected denouement, simply that he may tell us

what we already know as well as he, that an actor is a human being.

Plainly then, from a didactic point of view, this prologue is a

gratuitous impertinence. Not so its music. Structurally, it is little

more than a loose-jointed pot-pourri; but it serves the purpose of a

thematic catalogue to the chief melodic incidents of the play which is

to follow. In this it bears a faint resemblance to the introduction to

Berlioz's "Romeo and Juliet" symphony. It begins with an energetic

figure,

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

which is immediately followed by an upward scale-passage with a saucy

flourish at the end--not unlike the crack of a whiplash:--

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

It helps admirably to picture the bustling activity of the festa into

which we are soon to be precipitated. The bits of melody which are now

introduced might all be labelled in the Wolzogen-Wagner manner with

reference to the play's peoples and their passions if it were worth

while to do so, or if their beauty and eloquence were not sufficient

unto themselves. First we have the phrase in which Canio will tell us

how a clown's heart must seem merry and make laughter though it be

breaking:--

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

Next the phrase from the love music of Nedda and Silvio:--

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

The bustling music returns, develops great energy, then pauses,

hesitates, and makes way for Tonio, who, putting his head through the

curtain, politely asks permission of the audience, steps forward and

delivers his homily, which is alternately declamatory and broadly

melodious. One of his melodies later becomes the theme of the

between-acts music, which separates the supposedly real life of the

strolling players from the comedy which they present to the mimic

audience:--

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

At last Tonio calls upon his fellow mountebanks to begin their play.

The curtain rises. We are in the midst of a rural celebration of the

Feast of the Assumption on the outskirts of a village in Calabria. A

perambulant theatre has been set up among the trees and the strolling

actors are arriving, accompanied by a crowd of villagers, who shout

greetings to Clown, Columbine, and Harlequin. Nedda arrives in a cart

drawn by a donkey led by Beppe. Canio in character invites the crowd to

come to the show at 7 o'clock (ventitre ore). There they shall be

regaled with a sight of the domestic troubles of Pagliaccio and see the

fat mischief-maker tremble. Tonio wants to help Nedda out of the cart,

but Canio interferes and lifts her down himself; whereupon the women

and boys twit Tonio. Canio and Beppe wet their whistles at the tavern,

but Tonio remains behind on the plea that he must curry the donkey. The

hospitable villager playfully suggests that it is Tonio's purpose to

make love to Nedda. Canio, half in earnest, half in jest, points out

the difference between real life and the stage. In the play, if he

catches a lover with his wife, he flies into a mock passion, preaches a

sermon, and takes a drubbing from the swain to the amusement of the

audience. But there would be a different ending to the story were Nedda

actually to deceive him. Let Tonio beware! Does he doubt Nedda's

fidelity? Not at all. He loves her and seals his assurance with a kiss.

Then off to the tavern.

Hark to the bagpipes! Huzza, here come the zampognari! Drone pipes

droning and chaunters skirling--as well as they can skirl in Italian!

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

Now we have people and pipers on the stage and there's a bell in the

steeple ringing for vespers. Therefore a chorus. Not that we have

anything to say that concerns the story in any way. "Din, don!" That

would suffice, but if you must have more: "Let's to church. Din, don.

All's right with love and the sunset. Din, don! But mamma has her eye

on the young folk and their inclination for kissing. Din, don!" Bells

and pipes are echoed by the singers.

Her husband is gone to the tavern for refreshment and Nedda is left

alone. There is a little trouble in her mind caused by the fierceness

of Canio's voice and looks. Does he suspect? But why yield to such

fancies and fears? How beautiful the mid-August sun is! Her hopes and

longings find expression in the "Ballatella"--a waltz tune with twitter

of birds and rustle of leaves for accompaniment. Pretty birds, where

are you going? What is it you say? Mother knew your song and used once

to tell it to her babe. How your wings flash through the ether!

Heedless of cloud and tempest, on, on, past the stars, and still on!

Her wishes take flight with the feathered songsters, but Tonio brings

her rudely to earth. He pleads for a return of the love which he says

he bears her, but she bids him postpone his protestations till he can

make them in the play. He grows desperately urgent and attempts to rape

a kiss. She cuts him across the face with a donkey whip, and he goes

away blaspheming and swearing vengeance.

Then Silvio comes--Silvio, the villager, who loves her and who has her

heart. She fears he will be discovered, but he bids her be at peace; he

had left Canio drinking at the tavern. She tells him of the scene with

Tonio and warns him, but he laughs at her fears. Then he pleads with

her. She does not love her husband; she is weary of the wandering life

which she is forced to lead; if her love is true let her fly with him

to happiness. No. 'Tis folly, madness; her heart is his, but he must

not tempt her to its destruction. Tonio slinks in and plays

eavesdropper. He hears the mutual protestations of the lovers, hears

Nedda yield to Silvio's wild pleadings, sees them locked in each

other's arms, and hurries off to fetch Canio. Canio comes, but not in

time to see the man who had climbed over the wall, yet in time to hear

Nedda's word of parting: A stanotte--e per sempre tua saro--"To-night,

and forever, I am yours!" He throws Nedda aside and gives chase after

the fugitive, but is baffled. He demands to be told the name of her

lover. Nedda refuses to answer. He rushes upon her with dagger drawn,

but Beppe intercepts and disarms him. There is haste now; the villagers

are already gathering for the play. Tonio insinuates his wicked advice:

Let us dissemble; the gallant may be caught at the play. The others go

out to prepare for their labors. Canio staggers toward the theatre. He

must act the merry fool, though his heart be torn! Why not? What is he?

A man? No; a clown! On with the motley! The public must be amused. What

though Harlequin steals his Columbine? Laugh, Pagliaccio, though thy

heart break!

The between-acts music is retrospective; it comments on the tragic

emotions, the pathos foretold in the prologue. Act II brings the comedy

which is to have a realistic and bloody ending. The villagers gather

and struggle for places in front of the booth. Among them is Silvio, to

whom Nedda speaks a word of warning as she passes him while collecting

the admission fees. He reminds her of the assignation; she will be

there. The comedy begins to the music of a graceful minuet:--

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

Columbine is waiting for Harlequin. Taddeo is at the market buying the

supper for the mimic lovers. Harlequin sings his serenade under the

window: "O, Colombina, il tenero fido Arlecchin"--a pretty measure!

Taddeo enters and pours out his admiration for Colombina in an

exaggerated cadenza as he offers her his basket of purchases. The

audience shows enjoyment of the sport. Taddeo makes love to Colombina

and Harlequin, entering by the window, lifts him up by the ears from

the floor where he is kneeling and kicks him out of the room. What fun!

The mimic lovers sit at table and discuss the supper and their love.

Taddeo enters in mock alarm to tell of the coming of Pagliaccio.

Harlequin decamps, but leaves a philtre in the hands of Columbine to be

poured into her husband's wine. At the window Columbine calls after

him: A stanotte--e per sempre io saro tua! At this moment Canio enters

in the character of Pagliaccio. He hears again the words which Nedda

had called after the fleeing Silvio, and for a moment is startled out

of his character. But he collects himself and begins to play his part.

"A man has been here!" "You've been drinking!" The dialogue of the

comedy continues, but ever and anon with difficulty on the part of

Pagliaccio, who begins to put a sinister inflection into his words.

Taddeo is dragged from the cupboard in which he had taken hiding. He,

too, puts color of verity into his lines, especially when he prates

about the purity of Columbine. Canio loses control of himself more and

more. "Pagliaccio no more, but a man--a man seeking vengeance. The name

of your lover!" The audience is moved by his intensity. Silvio betrays

anxiety. Canio rages on. "The name, the name!" The mimic audience

shouts, "Bravo!" Nedda: if he doubts her she will go. "No, by God!

You'll remain and tell me the name of your lover!" With a great effort

Nedda forces herself to remain in character. The music, whose tripping

dance measures have given way to sinister mutterings in keeping with

Canio's mad outbursts, as the mimic play ever and anon threatens to

leave its grooves and plunge into the tragic vortex of reality, changes

to a gavotte:--

[figure: a musical excerpt]

Columbine explains: she had no idea her husband could put on so

tragical a mask. It is only harmless Harlequin who has been her

companion. "The name! The name!! THE NAME!!!" Nedda sees catastrophe

approaching and throws her character to the winds. She shrieks out a

defiant "No!" and attempts to escape from the mimic stage. Silvio

starts up with dagger drawn. The spectators rise in confusion and cry

"Stop him!" Canio seizes Nedda and plunges his knife into her: "Take

that! And that! With thy dying gasps thou'lt tell me!" Woful intuition!

Dying, Nedda calls: "Help, Silvio!" Silvio rushes forward and receives

Canio's knife in his heart. "Gesumaria!" shriek the women. Men throw

themselves upon Canio. He stands for a moment in a stupor, drops his

knife and speaks the words: "The comedy is ended." "Ridi Pagliaccio!"

shrieks the orchestra as the curtain falls.

"Plaudite, amici," said Beethoven on his death bed, "la commedia finita

est!" And there is a tradition that these, too, were the last words of

the arch-jester Rabelais. "When 'Pagliacci' was first sung here (in

Boston), by the Tavary company," says Mr. Philip Hale, "Tonio pointed

to the dead bodies and uttered the sentence in a mocking way. And there

is a report that such was Leoncavallo's original intention. As the

Tonio began the piece in explanation so he should end it. But the tenor

(de Lucia) insisted that he should speak the line. I do not believe the

story. (1) As Maurel was the original Tonio and the tenor was

comparatively unknown, it is doubtful whether Maurel, of all men, would

have allowed of the loss of a fat line. (2) As Canio is chief of the

company it is eminently proper that he should make the announcement to

the crowd. (3) The ghastly irony is accentuated by the speech when it

comes from Canio's mouth."

CHAPTER IX

"CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA"

Having neither the patience nor the inclination to paraphrase a comment

on Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" which I wrote years ago when the

opera was comparatively new, and as it appears to me to contain a just

estimate and criticism of the work and the school of which it and

"Pagliacci" remain the foremost exemplars, I quote from my book,

"Chapters of Opera" [Footnote: "Chapters of Opera," by H. E. Krehbiel,

p.223] "Seventeen years ago 'Cavalleria Rusticana' had no perspective.

Now, though but a small portion of its progeny has been brought to our

notice, we nevertheless look at it through a vista which looks like a

valley of moral and physical death through which there flows a sluggish

stream thick with filth and red with blood. Strangely enough, in spite

of the consequences which have followed it, the fierce little drama

retains its old potency. It still speaks with a voice which sounds like

the voice of truth. Its music still makes the nerves tingle, and

carries our feelings unresistingly on its turbulent current. But the

stage-picture is less sanguinary than it looked in the beginning. It

seems to have receded a millennium in time. It has the terrible

fierceness of an Attic tragedy, but it also has the decorum which the

Attic tragedy never violated. There is no slaughter in the presence of

the audience, despite the humbleness of its personages. It does not

keep us perpetually in sight of the shambles. It is, indeed, an

exposition of chivalry; rustic, but chivalry nevertheless. It was thus

Clytemnestra slew her husband, and Orestes his mother. Note the

contrast which the duel between Alfio and Turiddu presents with the

double murder to the piquant accompaniment of comedy in 'Pagliacci,'

the opera which followed so hard upon its heels. Since then piquancy

has been the cry; the piquant contemplation of adultery, seduction, and

murder amid the reek and stench of the Italian barnyard. Think of

Cilea's 'Tilda,' Giordano's 'Mala Vita,' Spinelli's 'A Basso Porto,'

and Tasca's 'A Santa Lucia'!

"The stories chosen for operatic treatment by the champions of verismo

are all alike. It is their filth and blood which fructifies the music,

which rasps the nerves even as the plays revolt the moral stomach. I

repeat: Looking back over the time during which this so-called veritism

has held its orgies, 'Cavalleria Rusticana' seems almost classic. Its

music is highly spiced and tastes 'hot i' th' mouth,' but its eloquence

is, after all, in its eager, pulsating, passionate melody--like the

music which Verdi wrote more than half a century ago for the last act

of 'Il Trovatore.' If neither Mascagni himself nor his imitators have

succeeded in equalling it since, it is because they have thought too

much of the external devices of abrupt and uncouth change of modes and

tonalities, of exotic scales and garish orchestration, and too little

of the fundamental element of melody which once was the be-all and

end-all of Italian music. Another fountain of gushing melody must be

opened before 'Cavalleria rusticana' finds a successor in all things

worthy of the succession. Ingenious artifice, reflection, and technical

cleverness will not suffice even with the blood and mud of the slums as

a fertilizer."

How Mascagni came to write his opera he has himself told us in a bright

sketch of the early part of his life-history which was printed in the

"Fanfulla della Domenica" of Rome shortly after he became famous.

Recounting the story of his struggle for existence after entering upon

his career, he wrote:--

In 1888 only a few scenes (of "Ratcliff") remained to be composed; but

I let them lie and have not touched them since. The thought of

"Cavalleria rusticana" had been in my head for several years. I wanted

to introduce myself with, a work of small dimensions. I appealed to

several librettists, but none was willing to undertake the work without

a guarantee of recompense. Then came notice of the Sonzogno competition

and I eagerly seized the opportunity to better my condition. But my

salary of 100 lire, to which nothing was added, except the fees from a

few pianoforte lessons in Cerignola and two lessons in the Philharmonic

Society of Canosa (a little town a few miles from Cerignola), did not

permit the luxury of a libretto. At the solicitation of some friends

Targioni, in Leghorn, decided to write a "Cavalleria rusticana" for me.

My mind was long occupied with the finale. The words: Hanno ammazzato

compare Turiddu! (They have killed Neighbor Turiddu!) were forever

ringing in my ears. I needed a few mighty orchestral chords to give

characteristic form to the musical phrase and achieve an impressive

close. How it happened I don't know, but one morning, as I was trudging

along the road to give my lessons at Canosa, the idea came to me like a

stroke of lightning, and I had found my chords. They were those seventh

chords, which I conscientiously set down in my manuscript.

Thus I began my opera at the end. When I received the first chorus of

my libretto by post (I composed the Siciliano in the prelude later) I

said in great good humor to my wife:

"To-day we must make a large expenditure."

"What for?"

"An alarm clock."

"Why?"

"To wake me up before dawn so that I may begin to write on 'Cavalleria

rusticana.'"

The expenditure caused a dubious change in the monthly budget, but it

was willingly allowed. We went out together, and after a good deal of

bargaining spent nine lire. I am sure that I can find the clock, all

safe and sound, in Cerignola. I wound it up the evening we bought it,

but it was destined to be of no service to me, for in that night a son,

the first of a row of them, was born to me. In spite of this I carried

out my determination, and in the morning began to write the first

chorus of "Cavalleria." I came to Rome in February, 1890, in order to

permit the jury to hear my opera; they decided that it was worthy of

performance. Returning to Cerignola in a state of the greatest

excitement, I noticed that I did not have a penny in my pocket for the

return trip to Rome when my opera was to be rehearsed. Signor Sonzogno

helped me out of my embarrassment with a few hundred francs.

Those beautiful days of fear and hope, of discouragement and

confidence, are as vividly before my eyes as if they were now. I see

again the Constanzi Theatre, half filled; I see how, after the last

excited measures of the orchestra, they all raise their arms and

gesticulate, as if they were threatening me; and in my soul there

awakens an echo of that cry of approval which almost prostrated me. The

effect made upon me was so powerful that at the second representation I

had to request them to turn down the footlights in case I should be

called out; for the blinding light seemed a hell to me, like a fiery

abyss that threatened to engulf me.

It is a rude little tale which Giovanni Verga wrote and which supplied

the librettists, G. Targioni-Tozzetti and G. Menasci, with the plot of

Mascagni's opera. Sententious as the opera seems, it is yet puffed out,

padded, and bedizened with unessential ornament compared with the

story. This has the simplicity and directness of a folk-tale or

folk-song, and much of its characteristic color and strength were lost

in fitting it out for music. The play, which Signora Duse presented to

us with a power which no operatic singer can ever hope to match, was

more to the purpose, quicker and stronger in movement, fiercer in its

onrush of passion, and more pathetic in its silences than the opera

with its music, though the note of pathos sounded by Signor Mascagni is

the most admirable element of the score. With half a dozen homely

touches Verga conjures up the life of a Sicilian village and strikes

out his characters in bold outline. Turiddu Macca, son of Nunzia, is a

bersagliere returned from service. He struts about the village streets

in his uniform, smoking a pipe carved with an image of the king on

horseback, which he lights with a match fired by a scratch on the seat

of his trousers, "lifting his leg as if for a kick." Lola, daughter of

Massaro Angelo, was his sweetheart when he was conscripted, but

meanwhile she has promised to marry Alfio, a teamster from Licodia, who

has four Sortino mules in his stable. Now Turiddu could do nothing

better than sing spiteful songs under her window.

Lola married the teamster, and on Sundays she would sit in the yard

with her hands posed on her hips to show off the thick gold rings which

her husband had given her. Opposite Alfio's house lived Massaro Cola,

who was as rich as a hog, as they said, and who had an only daughter

named Santa. Turiddu, to spite Lola, paid his addresses to Santa and

whispered sweet words into her ear.

"Why don't you go and say these nice things to Lola?" asked Santa one

day.

"Lola is a fine lady now; she has married a crown prince. But you are

worth a thousand Lolas; she isn't worthy of wearing your old shoes. I

could just eat you up with my eyes, Santa"--thus Turiddu.

"You may eat me with your eyes and welcome, for then there will be no

leaving of crumbs."

"If I were rich I would like to have a wife just like you."

"I shall never marry a crown prince, but I shall have a dowry as well

as Lola when the good Lord sends me a lover."

The tassel on his cap had tickled the girl's fancy. Her father

disapproved of the young soldier, and turned him from his door; but

Santa opened her window to him until the village gossips got busy with

her name and his. Lola listened to the talk of the lovers from behind a

vase of flowers. One day she called after Turiddu: "Ah, Turiddu! Old

friends are no longer noticed, eh?"

"He is a happy man who has the chance of seeing you, Lola."

"You know where I live," answered Lola. And now Turiddu visited Lola so

often that Santa shut her window in his face and the villagers began to

smile knowingly when he passed by. Alfio was making a round of the

fairs with his mules. "Next Sunday I must go to confession," said Lola

one day, "for last night I dreamt that I saw black grapes."

"Never mind the dream," pleaded Turiddu.

"But Easter is coming, and my husband will want to know why I have not

confessed."

Santa was before the confessional waiting her turn when Lola was

receiving absolution. "I wouldn't send you to Rome for absolution," she

said. Alfio came home with his mules, and money and a rich holiday

dress for his wife.

"You do well to bring presents to her," said Santa to him, "for when

you are away your wife adorns your head for you."

"Holy Devil!" screamed Alfio. "Be sure of what you are saying, or I'll

not leave you an eye to cry with!"

"I am not in the habit of crying. I haven't wept even when I have seen

Turiddu going into your wife's house at night."

"Enough!" said Alfio. "I thank you very much."

The cat having come back home, Turiddu kept off the streets by day, but

in the evenings consoled himself with his friends at the tavern. They

were enjoying a dish of sausages there on Easter eve. When Alfio came

in Turiddu understood what he wanted by the way he fixed his eyes on

him. "You know what I want to speak to you about," said Alfio when

Turiddu asked him if he had any commands to give him. He offered Alfio

a glass of wine, but it was refused with a wave of the hand.

"Here I am," said Turiddu. Alfio put his arms around his neck. "We'll

talk this thing over if you will meet me to-morrow morning."

"You may look for me on the highway at sunrise, and we will go on

together."

They exchanged the kiss of challenge, and Turiddu, as an earnest that

he would be on hand, bit Alfio's ear. His companions left their

sausages uneaten and went home with Turiddu. There his mother was

sitting up for him.

"Mamma," Turiddu said to her, "do you remember that when I went away to

be a soldier you thought I would never come back? Kiss me as you did

then, mamma, for to-morrow I am going away again."

Before daybreak he took his knife from the place in the haymow where he

had hidden it when he went soldiering, and went out to meet Alfio.

"Holy Mother of Jesus!" grumbled Lola when her husband prepared to go

out; "where are you going in such a hurry?"

"I am going far away," answered Alfio, "and it will be better for you

if I never come back!"

The two men met on the highway and for a while walked on in silence.

Turiddu kept his cap pulled down over his face. "Neighbor Alfio," he

said after a space, "as true as I live I know that I have wronged you,

and I would let myself be killed if I had not seen my old mother when

she got up on the pretext of looking after the hens. And now, as true

as I live, I will kill you like a dog so that my dear old mother may

not have cause to weep."

"Good!" answered Alfio; "we will both strike hard!" And he took off his

coat.

Both were good with the knife. Turiddu received the first blow in his

arm, and when he returned it struck for Alfio's heart.

"Ah, Turiddu! You really do intend to kill me?"

"Yes, I told you so. Since I saw her in the henyard I have my old

mother always in my eyes."

"Keep those eyes wide open," shouted Alfio, "for I am going to return

you good measure!"

Alfio crouched almost to the ground, keeping his left hand on the

wound, which pained him. Suddenly he seized a handful of dust and threw

it into Turiddu's eyes.

"Ah!" howled Turiddu, blinded by the dust, "I'm a dead man!" He

attempted to save himself by leaping backward, but Alfio struck him a

second blow, this time in the belly, and a third in the throat.

"That makes three--the last for the head you have adorned for me!"

Turiddu staggered back into the bushes and fell. He tried to say, "Ah,

my dear mother!" but the blood gurgled up in his throat and he could

not.

Music lends itself incalculably better to the celebration of a mood

accomplished or achieved by action, physical or psychological, than to

an expression of the action itself. It is in the nature of the lyric

drama that this should be so, and there need be no wonder that wherever

Verga offered an opportunity for set lyricism it was embraced by

Mascagni and his librettists. Verga tells us that Turiddu, having lost

Lola, comforted himself by singing spiteful songs under her window.

This suggested the Siciliano, which, an afterthought, Mascagni put into

his prelude as a serenade, not in disparagement, but in praise of Lola.

It was at Easter that Alfio returned to discover the infidelity of his

wife, and hence we have an Easter hymn, one of the musical high lights

of the work, though of no dramatic value. Verga aims to awaken at least

a tittle of extenuation and a spark of sympathy for Turiddu by showing

us his filial love in conflict with his willingness to make reparation

to Alfio; Mascagni and his librettists do more by showing us the figure

of the young soldier blending a request for a farewell kiss from his

mother with a prayer for protection for the woman he has wronged. In

its delineation of the tender emotions, indeed, the opera is more

generous and kindly than the story. Santuzza does not betray her lover

in cold blood as does Santa, but in the depth of her humiliation and at

the climax of her jealous fury created by Turiddu's rejection of her

when he follows Lola into church. Moreover, her love opens the gates to

remorse the moment she realizes what the consequence of her act is to

be. The opera sacrifices some of the virility of Turiddu's character as

sketched by Verga, but by its classic treatment of the scene of the

killing it saves us from the contemplation of Alfio's dastardly trick

which turns a duel into a cowardly assassination.

The prelude to the opera set the form which Leoncavallo followed,

slavishly followed, in "Pagliacci."

The orchestral proclamation of the moving passions of the play is made

by the use of fragments of melody which in the vocal score mark

climaxes in the dialogue. The first high point in the prelude is

reached in the strain to which Santuzza begs for the love of Turiddu

even after she has disclosed to him her knowledge of his infidelity:--

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

the second is the broad melody in which she pleads with him to return

to her arms:--

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

Between these expositions falls the Siciliano, which interrupts the

instrumental flood just as Lola's careless song, the Stornello,

interrupts the passionate rush of Santuzza's protestations, prayers,

and lamentations in the scene between her and her faithless lover:--

[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 mass. 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 basses 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 mass? Santuzza, significantly: "It is Easter

and the Lord sees all things! None but the blameless should go to

mass." 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 passion proclaims celestial

peace. Its instrumentation was doubtless borrowed from Hellmesberger'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 multitude. 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. Mass

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 glass 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 tithe 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 illustrated in an attempt by a German writer, Edmund von

Freihold, [Footnote: I owe this illustration 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 Massimo,

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 Massimo 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 compassion when she sees her victim in the

attitude 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

principal 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 shore, 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 appetite 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 manuscript 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 thoroughbass, and eked out a troublous existence until

his success in competition 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 title 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

principal 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 Association, 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

title of "Rantzau." Mascagni's librettist retained the title. 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 assumption 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 restitution. 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 Passant," 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,

entitled "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.

In the winter of 1902-1903 Signor Mascagni was in the United States for

the purpose of conducting performances of some of his operas and giving

concerts. The company of singers and instrumentalists which his

American agents had assembled for his purpose was, with a few

exceptions, composed of the usual operatic flotsam and jetsam which can

be picked up at any time in New York. The enterprise began in failure

and ended in scandal. There had been no adequate preparation for the

operas announced, and one of them was not attempted.

This was "Ratcliff." "Cavalleria rusticana," "Zanetto," and "Iris" were

poorly performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in October, and an

attempt at Sunday night concerts was made. Signor Mascagni's countrymen

labored hard to create enthusiasm for his cause, but the general public

remained indifferent. Having failed miserably in New York, Mascagni,

heavily burdened with debt, went to Boston. There he was arrested for

breach of contract. He retaliated with a suit for damages against his

American managers. The usual amount of crimination and recrimination

followed, but eventually the difficulties were compounded and Mascagni

went back to his home a sadly disillusionized man. [Footnote: The story

of this visit is told in greater detail in my "Chapters of Opera," as

is also the story of the rivalry among American managers to be first in

the field with "Cavalleria rusticana."]

"Zanetto" was produced along with "Cavalleria rusticana" at the

Metropolitan Opera House on October 8, 1902, and "Iris" on October 16.

Signor Mascagni conducted and the parts were distributed as follows

among the singers of the company: Iris, Marie Farneti; Osaka, Pietro

Schiavazzi; Kyoto, Virgilio Bollati; Il Cieco, Francesco Navarrini; Una

Guecha, Dora de Filippe; Un Mercianola, Pasquale Blasio; Un Cencianola,

Bernardino Landino. The opera was not heard of again until the season

of 1907-1908, when, just before the end of the administration of

Heinrich Conried, it was incorporated into the repertory of the

Metropolitan Opera House apparently for the purpose of giving Mme. Emma

Eames an opportunity to vie with Miss Geraldine Farrar in Japanese

opera.

CHAPTER XI

"IRIS"

"Light is the language of the eternal ones--hear it!" proclaims the

librettist of "Iris" in that portion of his book which is neither said

nor sung nor played. And it is the sun that sings with divers voices

after the curtain has risen on a nocturnal scene, and the orchestra has

sought to depict the departure of the night, the break of day, the

revivification of the flowers and the sunrise. As Byron sang of him, so

Phoebus Apollo celebrates himself as "the god of life and poetry and

light," but does not stop there. He is also Infinite Beauty, Cause,

Reason, Poetry, and Love. The music begins with an all but inaudible

descending passage in the basses, answered by sweet concordant

harmonies. A calm song tells of the first streaks of light; woodwind

and harp add their voices; a mellifluous hymn chants the stirring

flowers, and leads into a rhythmically, more incisive, but still

sustained, orchestral song, which bears upon its surface the choral

proclamation of the sun: "I am! I am life! I am Beauty infinite!" The

flux and reflux of the instrumental surge grows in intensity, the music

begins to glow with color and pulsate with eager life, and reaches a

mighty sonority, gorged with the crash of a multitude of tamtams,

cymbals, drums, and bells, at the climacteric reiteration of "Calore!

Luce! Amor!" The piece is thrillingly effective, but as little operatic

as the tintinnabulatory chant of the cherubim in the prologue of

Boito's "Mefistofele."

And now allegory makes room for the drama. To the door of her cottage,

embowered on the banks of a quiet stream, comes Iris. The peak of

Fujiyama glows in the sunlight. Iris is fair and youthful and innocent.

A dream has disturbed her. "Gorgons and Hydras and Chimaeras dire" had

filled her garden and threatened her doll, which she had put to sleep

under a rose-bush. But the sun's rays burst forth and the monsters

flee. She lifts her doll and moves its arms in mimic salutation to the

sun. Osaka, a wealthy rake, and Kyoto, a pander, play spy on her

actions, gloat on her loveliness and plot to steal her and carry her to

the Yoshiwara. To this end they go to bring on a puppet show, that its

diversion may enable them to steal her away without discovery. Women

come down to the banks of the river and sing pretty metaphors as they

wash their basketloads of muslins. Gradually the music of samisens,

gongs, and drums approaches. Osaka and Kyoto have disguised themselves

as travelling players, gathered together some geishas and musicians,

and now set up a marionette theatre. Iris comforts her blind father,

the only object of her love, besides her doll, and promises to remain

at his side. The puppet play tells the story of a maiden who suffers

abuse from a cruel father, who threatens to sell her to a merchant.

Iris is much affected by the sorrows of the puppet. The voice of Jor,

the son of the sun, is heard--it is Osaka, singing without. The melody

is the melody of Turridu's Siciliano, but the words are a promise of a

blissful, kissful death and thereafter life everlasting. The puppet

dies and with Jor dances off into Nirvana. Now three geishas,

representing Beauty, Death, and the Vampire, begin a dance. Kyoto

distracts the attention of the spectators while the dancers flaunt

their skirts higher and wider until their folds conceal Iris, and

Osaka's hirelings seize her and bear her off toward the city. Kyoto

places a letter and money at the cottage door for the blind father.

Through a pedler and the woman he learns that his daughter is gone to

be an inmate of the Yoshiwara. He implores the people who had been

jeering him to lead him thither, that he may spit in her face and curse

her.