BY WAKELING DRY LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMVI Printed by Ballantyne & Co., Limited Tavistock Street, London LIVING MASTERS OF MUSIC EDITED BY ROSA NEWMARCH GIACOMO PUCCINI...

A big broad man, with a frank open countenance, dark kindly eyes of a lazy lustrous depth, and a shy retiring manner. Such is Giacomo Puccini, who is operatically the man of the moment. It was behind the scenes during the autumn season of opera at Covent Garden in 1905 that I had the privilege of first meeting and talking with him, and about the last thing I could extract from him was anything about his music. While his reserve comes off like a mask when he is left to follow his own bent in conv

In Lucca in 1858, in a house in the Via Poggia, Giacomo Puccini was born. The family originally came from Celle, a typical mountain village on the right bank of the Serchio. From the earliest times the family was one devoted to the art of music, and while the world knows only of the musician who is the subject of this book, the achievements of his musical ancestors were of no mean order. It will be sufficient to trace back the family to one of the same name, a Giacomo Puccini, who, born in 1712,

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 recei

The Dal Verme Theatre, where Puccini's first opera was produced, has been the scene of many experiments in the art of opera. More than one composer has been able to get a hearing there, if no more, and among the list of trials and experiments—the value of which taken as a whole will doubtless some day be accounted at their proper worth, and which still come out like shades of the night to remind us how little we appreciate native endeavour—are to be found the names of more than one English compo

With his second work for the stage, Edgar —the libretto being by Fontana, the author of the opera-ballet Le Villi —Puccini adopts the designation of lyric drama. Edgar is in three acts, and with it the composer attained to the dignity of a first performance at the Scala, Milan. It saw the light on April 21, 1889, with the following cast, the conductor being Faccio: The vocal score was not published by Ricordi until 1905. The theme of the drama is the familiar one of a man tempted by passion, who

Auber was the first opera-composer to be attracted by the Abbé Prévost's famous romance Manon Lescaut . It is one of those vivid stories of love and passion which have ever made an appeal to those in search of a theme for musical expression. As drama it has a very close connection with life in general, and its human interest has that full flesh-and-blood quality which gives it a certain quick vitality. Sad and sordid it may be; but the story of the wayward Manon, as fascinating a black sheep as

The mere fact that La Bohème , Puccini's fourth work, to which he gave the plain title of opera, is his most popular composition for the stage, makes one all the more inclined to search more minutely for weaknesses. But with repeated performances (for it has passed into the regular repertory of all opera houses wherever it has been played) its unity, both as an idea and an expression, comes out more and more with remarkable distinctness. It captured the Italian ear and taste immediately, and bab

With his next opera—for Tosca is the only one of his works so entitled by the composer—Puccini made a rather curious reversal of the proceedings as compared with La Bohème , taking it from an Italian story treated from the French point of view. From the old world story of Murger, Puccini turned to a notable example of modern French stagecraft, in Sardou's drama of La Tosca . His librettists again were Giocosa and Illica, and they provided the composer with a strikingly apt presentation of the gr

For his latest opera, Madama Butterfly , Puccini turned to the flowery land of Japan for the environment of a story—the book being by Illica and Giocosa—which, following his invariable custom, he chose himself. The suggestion appears to have come originally from Mr. Frank Nielson, who was then the stage manager at Covent Garden, that Puccini should go and see the play by Belasco, running at the time at the Duke of York's Theatre in London. He did so, and was immediately taken with its possibilit