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'Le Portrait de Manon, a delicate little sketch in one act, and 'Thaïs, a clever setting of Anatole France's beautiful romance, both produced in 1894, will not be likely to add much to Massenet's reputation. 'La Navarraise, produced during the same year in London, was apparently an attempt to imitate the melodramatic extravagance of Mascagni.
And the Schenckius, the folio filled with casus rariores, which had strayed in among the rubbish of the bookstall on the boulevard, and the noble old Vesalius with its grand frontispiece not unworthy of Titian, and the fine old Ambroise Pare, long waited for even in Paris and long ago, and the colossal Spigelius with his eviscerated beauties, and Dutch Bidloo with its miracles of fine engraving and bad dissection, and Italian Mascagni, the despair of all would-be imitators, and pre-Adamite John de Ketam, and antediluvian Berengarius Carpensis, but why multiply names, every one of which brings back the accession of a book which was an event almost like the birth of an infant?
I've heard a good many jokes about the foolishness of giving them a diet of Shakespere and Beethoven, of Mæterlinck and Mascagni, but that sort of talk comes either from the outsiders or from the Great White Way crowd.
Do we hear the romance of your concertinas setting thousands of hobnailed boots a-clatter with Terpsichore in the Boulevard de la Chapelle, in Polonceau and Myrrha, or do we hear only your union orchestra soughing through Mascagni in the Café de Paris? Do we know the romance of your peoples or the romance of your restaurateurs? Which? I wonder.
Marie Tempest is not versatile, unless she should be so designated for having made equal successes on the lyric and dramatic stages, but she is one of the most satisfying artists at present appearing before our public. Mallarmé was not versatile; Cézanne was not versatile; nor was Thomas Love Peacock. Mascagni, assuredly, is not versatile.
Following these, it introduced its readers to new compositions by Sir Arthur Sullivan, Tosti, Moscowski, Richard Strauss, Paderewski, Josef Hofmann, Edouard Strauss, and Mascagni. Bok induced Josef Hofmann to give a series of piano lessons in his magazine, and Madame Marchesi a series of vocal lessons.
'Der Evangelimann, on the other hand, is thoroughly eclectic in style, and the influence not only of Wagner, but of Meyerbeer, Gounod and even Mascagni, may be traced in its pages. Kienzl's later works have met with little favour.
"Cavalleria Rusticana," an opera in one act, words by Signori Targioni-Tozzetti and Menasci, music by Pietro Mascagni, was written in 1890, and was first performed at the Costanzi Theatre in Rome, May 20, of that year, with Gemma Bellinconi and Roberto Stagno in the two principal rôles. It had its first American production in Philadelphia, Sept. 9, 1891, with Mme.
'Zanetto' , on the other hand, seems to contain the best work which Mascagni has yet given to the world. It is founded upon Francois Coppée's charming duologue, 'Le Passant, a graceful scene between a world-weary courtesan and a youthful troubadour who passes beneath her balcony.
Living like Strasburg geese. These people are sick from a diseased appetite. It matters little what you give them: Tristram or the Trompeter von Saekkingen, Beethoven or Mascagni, a fugue or a two-step, Adam, Bach, Puccini, Mozart, or Marschner: they do not know what they are eating: the great thing is to eat. They find no pleasure in it. Look at them at a concert. Talk of German gaiety!
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