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At the time of the expulsion of the French from Sicily, one of our Florentines was an apothecary at Palermo, a very rich man called Bernardo Puccini, who had by his wife an only daughter, a very fair damsel and already apt for marriage.
From the distance, Butterfly could be heard approaching, her voice coming nearer as the typical Puccini progressions followed her ascent. There was the marriage, the cursing of Butterfly by the Bonze, and the exquisite love duet, so full of passionate abandon, and yet shaded with such delicacy.
Puccini has caught the fanciful grace of Murger's style with the dexterity of genius. His music is thoroughly Italian in style, but he never strikes a false note.
To begin with, he doesn't look like a disorderly genius with rumpled hair, but is the mildest-mannered man who ever scuttled another's score and smoked Munich cigars or played "skat." And then he loves money! What other composer, besides Handel, Haydn, Mozart yes, and also Beethoven Gluck, Meyerbeer, Verdi, Puccini, so doted on the box-office? Why shouldn't he?
It has little of the buoyancy which the theme demands, but there is a great deal of sound writing in the concerted music, and some of the ballads are tuneful enough in a rather commonplace way. His best-known work is 'The Night Dancers, an opera founded upon the legend which has been used by the Italian composer Puccini in his 'Le Villi.
"And some day your children will think Puccini and Strauss as old-fashioned as you think 'Faust' and Offenbach. But there are other things, like the things that a woman loves to do, for instance, when her children are grown, and her husband is dead, that never change!" Cornelia was silent, frankly puzzled.
And that night in our rooms we assembled the parts of the puzzle thus; one rambling Bedford limestone American castle in the Country Club district; two cars, with garage to match; a widowed mother, a lamented father who made all kinds of money, so naturally some of it was honest money; two brothers, a married sister; a love for Henry James, and Galsworthy; substantial familiarity with Ibsen, Hauptman, Bergsen, Wagner, Puccini, Brahms, Freud, Tschaikovsky, and Bernard Shaw; a whole-hearted admiration for Barrie; and a record as organizer in the suffrage campaign which won in her state three years ago, plus a habit of buying gloves by the dozen and candy in five pound boxes!
"Of the great modern Italian composers, I feel that Puccini is the most important, because he has a more intimate appreciation of theatrical values. He seems to know just what kind of music will fit a series of words or a scene, which will best bring out the dramatic sense. Montemezzi is also very great in this respect.
The influence of Verdi has been supreme among the Verdists of young Italy, though not one has proved knee-high to a grasshopper when compared with the composer of that incomparable Falstaffo. Ponchielli played his part, and under his guidance such dissimilar talents as Puccini, Mascagni, and Leoncavallo were fostered.
The third act shows the quay at Havre, and the embarkation of the filles de joie for New Orleans; and the last act, which takes place in America, is one long duet between Manon and Des Grieux, ending with Manon's death. Puccini looked at the story of Manon through Italian spectacles.
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