Giacomo Puccini :: III THE PUCCINI OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

III THE PUCCINI OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

Puccini, after the death of his beloved mother, sought consolation in hard work, and Edgar was written in Milan during a period, which was in like manner experienced by Wagner, of additional anxiety, brought about by the want of the actual means to live. But it is undoubtedly that out of such trials and troubles the best work of the brain is forged and brought to an achievement.

Puccini was living at this time in a poor quarter of Milan with his brother and another student. With the £80 he received for Le Villi he paid away nearly half of it to the restaurant keeper who had allowed him credit.

Milan, the chief operatic centre of opera-loving Italy, is full of music schools, agencies, restaurants and cafÉs, whose reason for existence, practically, is found in the fact that half the population is in one way or another connected with the operatic stage. Milan is even more Bohemian than Paris in this respect, and it is not difficult to understand why the subject of unconventionality, as treated by Puccini in La BohÈme, should have come to him with such force. He had, in fact, gone through the whole thing completely, so far as living on nothing and making all sorts of shifts for existence were concerned. Milan's social atmosphere is almost completely that of theatrical Bohemianism, and all the students come very intimately into contact with its essence and spirit.

There are many little stories of Puccini in his early days, which, after all, only represent the common lot of many a struggling genius the wide world over. He and his companions at the time Edgar was in the process of making rented one little top room in the Via Solferino, for which, according to Puccini's friend Eugenio Checchi, who has recorded the history of these early days, they paid twenty-four shillings a month. Puccini kept a diary, which he called "Bohemian Life," in 1881. It was little more than a register of expenses. Coffee, bread, tobacco and milk appear to be the chief entries, and there is an entire absence of anything more substantial in the way of food. In one place there was a herring put down; and on this being brought to Puccini's recollection, he laughingly said: "Oh, yes, I remember. That was a supper for four people."

As will be seen in the chapter on La BohÈme, this incident was made use of by the librettists in the third act of that opera.

From the Congregation of Charity at Rome, Puccini was in receipt at this time of £4 per month. The sum used to come in a registered letter on a certain day, and he and his companions usually had to suffer the landlord to open it and deduct, first, his share for the rent. Many were the scenes they had with this worthy possessor of real estate. He had forbidden them to cook in the room, and even with the marvellously cheap restaurants, where at least the one national dish of spaghetti could be indulged in for the merest trifle, our group of young strugglers found it even cheaper to do their cooking at home. As the hour of a meal drew near, the landlord used to go into the next room, or prowl about the landing, to listen and to smell. The usual stratagem was to place the spirit lamp on the table and over it a dish in which to cook eggs. When the frizzling began, the others would call out to Puccini to play "like the very devil," and going over to the piano he would start on some wild strains which stopped when the modest omelette—two eggs between three—was ready to turn out.

The material for firing was another source of expense. Their modest order did not warrant the coal-merchant sending up five flights of stairs to deliver it in whatever receptacle took the place of the usual cellar: so Michael Puccini, the brother, used to dress up in his best clothes, including a valuable relic in the shape of a "pot-hat," and take with him a black-bag. The others said, "Good-bye, bon voyage," with some effusion on the door-step to let the neighbours imagine he was going away for a visit; and off Michael would go, to return in the dusk with the bag full of coal.

There is something infinitely pathetic in recording that Puccini, when fortune smiled upon him, wrote to this brother in great glee to tell him of the success of Manon, and to say that he was able to buy the house in Lucca where they were born. But Michael, who had departed to South America to mend his own fortunes, was then lying dead of yellow fever, to which he had succumbed after three days' illness.

Edgar being completed, the work brought him in about six times the amount he had obtained for Le Villi, while with Manon, which followed, his position became practically assured for the future. Always of a shy, retiring disposition, he had often longed to get away from the cramped conditions of town life, and Torre del Lago, on a secluded lake not far from Lucca, lying in beautiful country, surrounded by woods, and connected by canals with the sea—into which it flows just by the spot where Shelley's body was washed ashore and afterwards burned—was an ideal spot to which his thoughts had often turned. He went there to reside first in 1891, about the time he was writing La BohÈme; but some time before that he had found a partner of his joys in Elvira Bonturi, who, like himself, came from Lucca, and whom he married. Their only son, Antonio, was born in the December of 1886. It was not until 1900 that Puccini built the delightful villa at Torre del Lago to which he is so devotedly attached, and to which he always refers as a Paradise.

PUCCINI'S VILLA AT TORRE DEL LAGO

Before finally deciding on a site at Torre del Lago—the Tower of the Lake—Puccini stayed for a time at Castellaccio, near Pescia, where a good deal of La BohÈme was put to paper. Tosca was begun at Torre del Lago, and finished during a visit at the country house, Monsagrati, not far from Lucca, of his friend the Marquis Mansi. At the time of Madama Butterfly he was back at Torre del Lago, to which he was taken after his motor accident, but he was at this time the possessor of another country villa at Abetone, in the Tuscan Appenines, and in this latter place a good deal of his latest opera was set down. He has more recently built yet another country villa on the opposite side of the lake to Torre del Lago, on the Chiatri Hill. It is a charming example of the Florentine style of architecture, in which brick and marble are most skilfully blended. But Puccini told me, when last I saw him, that so far he had only spent a week-end in it.

Puccini, who was always addicted to sport and an open-air life, went in for motoring in the year 1901. His accident, by which he broke his leg and suffered a great deal of pain and anxiety owing to the difficulty of the uniting of the bone, took place in the February of 1903. He had left his beloved Torre del Lago and gone into Lucca for a change of air and place, owing to a bad cold and sore throat from which he could not get free. One of Puccini's characteristics is a certain obstinacy which very often leads him to do things in direct opposition to anything like a command. The fact that his doctor had told him not to go out in his car at night was sufficient, of course, for "Mr. James"—Puccini is invariably addressed by those round him as "Sor Giacomo"—to decide on a little evening trip; and he and his wife and son with the chauffeur started off in the country. About five miles from Lucca there is a little place called Vignola, where is a sharp turn in the road by a bridge. Going at full speed, this was not noticed in the dark, and as the car turned, it went over an embankment and fell nearly thirty feet into a field. Mdme. Puccini and Antonio were unhurt, but the chauffeur had a fractured thigh and Puccini a fractured leg. Unfortunately, Puccini was pinned under the car, stunned and bruised by the fall; and, moreover, suffered considerably from the fumes of the petrol. A doctor, luckily, was staying at a cottage near by, and he was able to render first aid. Afterwards another doctor was sent for from Lucca, and it was decided to make a litter and carry Puccini to Torre del Lago by boat, as owing to the inflammation the leg was not able to be set immediately. Puccini's great friend, Marquis Ginori, went with him on the boat; and, although in great pain, the invalid found himself regretting that on the journey so many wild duck flew within range, just at the time, as he laughingly remarked, he could not shoot them. Three days after his arrival home, Colzi, a famous specialist from Florence, came and set the leg. The actual uniting of the bone was a long and tedious process, which spread over eight months, and Puccini was not really able to walk again properly until he had been to Paris—where his Tosca was produced at the Opera Comique—and undergone a special treatment at the hands of a French specialist. His first visit to Paris had been in 1898 for the rehearsals of La BohÈme.

PUCCINI IN HIS 24-H.P. "LA BUIRE"

Photo. by R. de Guili & Co., Lucca

Puccini visited London for the first time when he came over for the production of Manon at Covent Garden in 1894. He came again in 1897 for the production in English of La BohÈme at Manchester by the Carl Rosa Company. This was not, by all accounts, one of his most pleasant visits to a country of which he is very fond. Apart from the nervous worry of a first performance of a brand new work in a strange language, there were difficulties which made it a peculiarly trying time for the composer. Robert Cuningham, the Rodolfo, was unfortunately seized with a fearful cold which made him practically speechless on the night of the performance, and he could do no more than whisper his part. All things considered, it is not to be wondered at that Puccini, after spending nearly three weeks in rehearsal, decided to keep away from the theatre on the eventful night. He has himself written down his impressions of Manchester, as well as those of London and Paris.

"Manchester, land of the smoke, cold, fog, rain and—cotton!

"London has six million inhabitants, a movement which it is as impossible to describe as the language is to acquire. A city of splendid women, beautiful amusements, and altogether fascinating.

"In Paris, the gay city, there is less traffic than in London, but life there flies. My chief friends were Zola, Sardou and Daudet."

It was when Puccini was in Paris for the production of La BohÈme that he first met Sardou and arranged about the setting of La Tosca. Sardou invited him to dinner, and after the coffee and cigars asked him to play a little of the music he thought of putting in the new opera. Sardou's knowledge of music, by the way, has, to say the least of it, its limitations, and Puccini is very loth to play anything he may have in his mind in the way of a composition. Puccini sat down at the piano, however, and played a good deal, which Sardou liked immensely. But Sardou did not know that the composer was merely stringing together all sorts of odd airs out of his previous operas.

Puccini's days at his beloved Torre del Lago are divided between sport and work. The beginning of his house, by the way, was a keeper's lodge, a mere hut, on the edge of the wood. It is so white that in the distance it looks like marble, but as a building it is quite unpretentious. There is a little garden leading down to the lake, while at the back stretches the fine open country. He is usually up and away early in the morning, accompanied by his two favourite dogs, "Lea" and "Scarpia." He goes to and fro from his shoots in his motor-boat "Butterfly." The place abounds with wild duck, wild swans and all sorts of water-fowl, the principal quarry from the sportsman's point of view being coots, hares, and wild boar. Puccini has been frequently snowed up while away shooting as late as April.

To the south of the lake, in the plain, are some remains of a bath attributed to Nero, with undoubted traces of a Roman road and a fosse. One can hardly move a yard in Italy without coming across villas of Lucullus, roads of Hannibal, or fields of Cataline, but this particular place, not only from the traces of buildings which remain, but from the result of excavation, by which many Roman remains were brought to light, is of great antiquity.

Coming in from a "shoot" Puccini often allows the best part of the day to pass in more or less what seems like idleness, preferring to put down his music at night—the one relic, one may say, of his old wayward restless ways. He works chiefly on the ground floor of his house at Torre del Lago, in a spacious apartment which is a sort of dining-room, study and music-room all in one. The ceiling is crossed with large wooden beams, and he calls the Venetian blinds, which are outside the many and large windows, "mutes" for the sun, using the word, of course, in its sense of a device for softening the tone of a musical instrument. The walls of the room are decorated with some quick impulsive designs, dashed on by his friend the artist Nomellini, representing the flight of the hours from dawn to night. For the rest, the room is full of photographs of all sorts of distinguished people, from Verdi downwards, and stuffed birds.

When the desire for work is upon Puccini, "it catches him," as an Italian would say, "by the scalp," and he works at a thing continuously. During the recovery from his motor accident he was wheeled to the piano each day and planned out Madama Butterfly, although the actual writing down of the melodies and the general work of construction was done, of course, away from the instrument. He makes a rough sketch of the whole score as a rule, which he subjects to all sorts of weird alterations only intelligible to himself, and from this makes a clean copy embodying all the process of polishing and finishing to which the original idea was subjected.

PUCCINI AFTER A "SHOOT"

Photo. by S. Ernesto Arboco

It is difficult to get from Puccini any particulars of his ideas and aims. He much prefers to do things rather than to talk about them. He has on one or two occasions, however, given a hint of his views which may be worth putting down again. One is on the interesting question as to dramatic instinct in music. Puccini maintains that it is a question not of instinct but experience. He says himself that his early works were lacking in dramatic quality, but he does not agree that if it is not inborn it cannot be developed. He maintains that the choice of librettos has more to do with it than anything else, and from the first he has worked a good deal in this way by more than the usual amount of consultation and exchange of ideas that goes on between a composer and the writer of the book. Marie Antoinette, at the time when I had the pleasure of talking with him, was the subject for an opera which was, at least, uppermost in his mind. "But I have thought of many subjects and stories," he said. "La Faute de l'AbbÉ Mouret and the Tartarin of Daudet are two well-known ones. The latter is pure fun, but I have always thought, when coming to the point, that I should be accused, if I set it, of copying Verdi's Falstaff. The former, I believe, Zola promised to Massenet. I have also thought of Trilby; and several excellent themes for plots could be gathered from the stories of the later Roman Emperors." One statement at least was very characteristic of Puccini. "My next plot must be one of sentiment to allow me to work in my own way. I am determined not to go beyond the place in art where I find myself at home."

Puccini is very fond of the theatre, and when last in London enjoyed the production of Oliver Twist—he is specially fond, in our literature, of Dickens—and The Tempest.

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