The Times Great Lives

Giacomo Puccini

A famous opera composer

29 November 1924

Giacomo Puccini, whose death is announced on another page, had held first place among the composers of opera in his generation so decisively that to the majority of opera-goers he seemed to stand alone. Musicians may find among his contemporaries a dozen or more names whose works for the stage they will prefer before his. Humperdinck, Strauss, Charpentier, Bruneau, and Debussy have all displayed qualities which in their different ways are beyond the range of Puccini’s art, yet no one of them competes for his position of favour in the eyes of the general public. A conservative operatic management such as we have known in London may try experiments in one or other; ever since the success of La Bohème there have been no experiments in Puccini. The only question was how quickly each new work could be hurried on to the stage. In fact, an opera of his entitled Turandot was announced for production next spring; and he had almost finished it.

Once he was regarded as a member of a group of brilliant and sensational representatives of Young Italy. The comparatively early death of Leoncavallo, the failure of Mascagni to follow up the meteoric success of Cavalleria, and the lack of any decisive characteristics in Giordano enabled Puccini to outdistance his companions in that group, and Italian opera still has the advantage in the world over that of any other country in that it rallies to its standard the great voices, whether those voices are the product of Italy or of Australia, or Ireland or America.

Puccini was born at Lucca in the same year as Leoncavallo (1858) and was, like Bach and Mozart, the inheritor of a family tradition of musicianship. He represented the fifth generation of musical Puccinis, the earliest of whom, his great-great-grandfather, bore the same Christian name, Giacomo, and, was a friend of Martini, the master of Mozart. Puccini’s father dying when the boy was six years old, it was through the determination and sacrifice of his mother, who was left poor, that he was given the opportunity of study at the Milan Conservatory. There he worked at composition with Bazzini and with Ponchielli, the composer of La Gioconda. The production of a student work, a Capriccio for orchestra, called forth praise of his possibilities as a symphonic writer, but Puccini never mistook that as an indication that he should write symphonies. He subsequently put his powers in this direction to good use in devising those running orchestral commentaries which, supporting the dialogues of his characters on the stage, form the links between the great lyrical outbursts.

For some time Puccini lived in Milan with his brother and a fellow-student, enjoying the delights and sorrows of a Bohemian existence, enduring a sufficient amount of hardship to give him a place in the long roll of struggling geniuses, and incidentally storing up memories which were to give him the right local colour for his first accepted masterpiece.

His first opera, Le Villi, a modest work suggested to him by Ponchielli, was given at the Teatro dal Verme in Milan in 1884. Its production was an important moment in his career and the success was considerable, even if one discounts something from the tone of the telegram which he sent off to his mother after the first performance: ‘Theatre packed, immense success; anticipations exceeded; 18 calls; finale of first act thrice encored.’ The substantial part of it was that Le Villi was bought for a small sum by Messrs. Ricordi, who published it eventually, but not until Puccini’s fame had been established by his subsequent works.

Le Villi in an enlarged form brought Puccini on to the stage of La Scala in the following year, but it was not until 1889 that his second opera, Edgar, arrived and was actually produced there. Edgar was a failure, the one decisive and permanent failure which Puccini ever encountered. Possibly it helped him, as many such failures have helped, to realize the necessity of making ‘every stroke tell’, as Weber said in another connection. At any rate, Puccini must have seen in it the error of accepting too readily a weak libretto, for he became exceedingly fastidious, and each one of the works by which he is known is the result of a personal choice of subject framed to his wishes by his librettists, of whom L. Illica and G. Giacosa have been the chief.

The first was Manon Lescaut, which was produced at Turin in 1893, the drama of which, like its successor, La Bohème, is treated rather as a series of episodes than as a whole. Considering how well known the Abbé Prevost’s novel was, the operatic version might have carried this treatment further. Indeed, the attempt to remodel the story so as to make the deportation of Manon in the third act consequent upon the events of the second produces considerable incongruity. As the opera stands there is either too much or too little connection between its parts to be dramatically satisfactory. Outside Italy it had at first to contend with the popularity of Massenet’s opera, but in this country at any rate it has steadily increased in popularity, and its success rests largely on the skilful musical handling of details, such as the scene of Manon’s levée, and on the passionate love music of the last act, which Caruso first realized to the full.

From the time of the production of Manon onwards Puccini’s most famous operas follow in a series with three to four years between each. La Bohème, also at Turin, came in 1896, La Tosca at Rome in 1900, Madama Butterfly at Milan in 1904. The Carl Rosa Opera Company first brought La Bohème to England and performed it in English a couple of years before it was produced at Covent Garden at the instigation of Mme Melba. Puccini came to England for the first performance of The Bohemians at the Theatre Royal in Manchester, on which occasion, it may be remarked, he was much amused by the makeshift fashion in which the brass and drums of the orchestra had to be accommodated in boxes. La Bohème having won its way both in London and the provinces, La Tosca was quickly secured and was given at Covent Garden in 1900 with Mme Ternina in the principal part. The extraordinary ill treatment which Madama Butterfly received from the Milanese public on its production at La Scala in 1904 really had very little effect on Puccini’s position with the wider public. The performance under Signor Campanini had scarcely begun when it was interrupted by hisses and cries of disapproval; it was carried through in spite of continued disturbance, and at the end Puccini took the score away with him, refusing to risk a second performance there. Yet so firmly fixed was he in the estimation of the English public that the Covent Garden authorities did not hesitate to stage it in the following year with the distinguished cast (Mme Destinn and Signori Caruso and Scotti) who were its most famous interpreters.

It is on these three works that Puccini’s fame most principally rests, and, while each of them possesses to the full his salient characteristics of glowing melody and strong characterization, the variety of their subject matter brings wide differences of musical treatment. There is a freshness and simplicity about La Bohème which does not fade with frequent repetition. La Tosca, at first rather looked askance at by serious musicians for the crudity of its melodrama, yet contains some of the most forcible musical moments in the whole of Puccini’s work. The broad tune with which the orchestra pictures Tosca’s sense of horror after the murder of Scarpia is in itself enough to proclaim Puccini’s genius for emotional melody. The whole of the music of the later scenes of Madama Butterfly, depicting the phases of hope, fear, disillusionment, heroism, shows an insight for which neither of the previous operas prepares us.

After this there was an interval of seven years before Puccini wrote another opera. He was said to have considered a number of subjects, including the story of Marie Antoinette. When one thinks of the increasing power with which he had delineated the characters of women, it seems a pity that he turned aside from his subject. When the opportunity came of a production in America he was seized by a play of David Belasco’s, which had been successful in New York, one of those hectic romances of California, in which rascality and sentiment alternate with bewildering rapidity. La Fanciulla del West was announced in the autumn of 1910 for simultaneous production in New York, Boston, and Chicago, and the composer went to New York to superintend the performance there, for which Mme Destinn and Caruso were engaged. In the circumstances it is hardly necessary to say that the arts of advertisement were used to the full and that the work was clamoured for in the principal opera houses of Europe. It is refreshing to find that the benefits of advertisement are, after all, comparatively short lived, for the boom given to The Girl of the Golden West, to quote the original title, did not blind anyone to the fact that, in spite of moments of beauty and a wealth of striking detail, it was not to be placed in the same class with its predecessors.

A still longer interval divided it from the set of three one-act operas which was completed in 1919 and which was given at Covent Garden in 1920 after performance in Italy and America. In planning his triptych, Puccini sought an opportunity to display again his power of dealing with widely different situations, involving strongly contrasted types of emotion. Il Tabarro is one of those pieces of sordid violence which have attracted all Italian composers since Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Suor Angelica aims at an atmosphere of religious mysticism, and Gianni Schicchi is caustic comedy. In the first he was doing again what he and others had already done with success. In the second he failed by mistaking a self-conscious sentiment for a real emotion. In the third he succeeded in what for him was an entirely new genre and produced a masterpiece of opera buffa which captivated every one; that this was the general opinion in England was shown by what happened at Covent Garden. For the first few performances the three were given in sequence, and it was pointed out that Puccini wished them to be given together; then Suor Angelica was dropped, and finally Gianni Schicchi alone remained, the places of the others being filled by performances of the Russian Ballet.

In one respect Puccini set a practical example by which other composers might profit. He always gave his personal supervision to the first productions of his works, and he never conducted them. In this way he was able to assure himself that the regular conductors had a sympathetic understanding of his musical intentions and could secure what he wanted in his absence. He was ready to acknowledge the great debt which he owed to his interpreters, both conductors and singers, and his appreciation of their efforts went hand in hand with an unerring instinct for gauging their capabilities. By writing music which it was a joy to sing he could be certain that the singer would convey his own pleasure in it to the hearers. Puccini could use his orchestra for any thing that he wanted to say, either to describe the draught by which Mimi’s candle was extinguished or to enhance the first ardours of Rodolfo’s love. Even in the most lurid moments of La Tosca and Il Tabarro he handled the orchestra without a sense of effort. He knew all the tricks of modern orchestration, yet rarely, save in some passages of La Fanciulla del West, seemed to set much store by them. His unerring sense of what would be effective in the theatre was a power shared by most composers of his country, but he employed it to finer purpose than the majority in his generation. If Puccini’s was not the greatest music, at least there could never be any doubt that it was music.

Claude Monet

The great painter of light

5 December 1926

Judged by the nature and extent of his influence, Claude Oscar Monet, whose death is announced on another page, was the most important artist within living memory. Others, such as Manet and Renoir, may have excelled him in personal achievement and even in the number of their evident followers, but for what may be called infective and pervasive effects upon the body of painting there is nobody to compare with him except Cézanne, whom he long outlived, and Cézanne was not his equal in accomplishment. Monet did not invent a new thing; he would hardly have had such a widespreading influence if he did; but, happening to be born at the right moment with an instinctive bent for that expression of light which both Turner and Constable had attempted, he carried it on to fulfilment and dominated the field of painting until Cézanne, inheriting his gains, recalled the attention of artists to the claims of solid earth. He may be said to have irradiated landscape painting, and the gleams penetrated into quarters where any conscious acceptance of his influence would have been hotly disclaimed.

Though he came to be associated with the North of France, Normandy in particular, Monet was actually born in Paris, in the Rue Laffitte, on November 14, 1840 – the same day as his future friend, Auguste Rodin – his mother being a member of a Lyons family. His childhood was spent at Havre, where caricatures drawn by him and exhibited in a shop window attracted the attention of Eugène Boudin, who initiated him into painting in the open air. As early as 1856 the two were exhibiting together at Rouen, and Monet always spoke of Boudin with gratitude, saying that he had ‘dashed the scales from his eyes and shown him the beauties of land and sea painting’. The following year Monet went to Paris, but without immediate results, and in 1860 he left for Algeria to complete his military service in the Chasseurs d’Afrique. He returned invalided, with his instinct for light further confirmed. Back at Havre he fell in with Jongkind, the Dutch artist, who, like Boudin, may be said to have prepared the way for Impressionism, and the three of them worked together.

In 1863 Monet went again to Paris with the intention of entering the studio of Gleyre, and here he made the acquaintance of Renoir, Sisley, and other painters, who, with differences, were carrying on the tradition of the Barbizon group, Corot in particular. Monet quickly decided to work out his own salvation. He made his first appearance in the Salon of 1865 with two marine subjects – ‘Pointe de la Hève’ and ‘Embouchure de la Seine à Honfleur’. His work at this period showed affinities with both Boudin and Jongkind, and also with Manet – a broadening of the facts under the influence of light into atmospheric values, but without any decided attempt to realize light itself on the canvas. Its characters may be seen in ‘Plage de Trouville’, in the Courtauld collection at the Tate Gallery, though that picture was not painted until 1870.

Monet’s first attempt to paint a large landscape with figures in the open air bore the same title as a famous picture by Manet, ‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe’. It introduced him to Courbet and the two men became fast friends. An amusing story is told of a visit paid by them to Alexandre Dumas the Elder, who was stopping in Havre. This was in 1866, when Monet’s ‘Camille’, afterwards known as ‘Dame en Vert’, was attracting attention in the Salon. Neither of the artists had met Dumas, but Courbet insisted that they should call. At first they were told that Dumas was not at home, but Courbet said: ‘Tell him that it is Courbet who asks for him; he will be in.’ Dumas came out in shirt and trousers; he and Courbet embraced with tears; and the two painters were invited to lunch, cooked by Dumas himself, who afterwards paraded them through the streets of Havre in his carriage.

The following year Monet’s ‘Women in a Garden’ was rejected by the Salon, and its exhibition in a shop window brought him the acquaintance of Manet and introduced him to the group of writers, including Zola, who were then championing Manet and his friends. It was between this date and the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War that the informal association of artists began which, consolidated by the attitude of the Salon, led to the Impressionist school. They included Monet, Camille Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Sisley, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, who was Manet’s sister-in-law, and Mary Cassatt among others. Not all these artists were Impressionists, as the word came to be understood, but they had common sympathies in refusing to be bound by authority.

Visit to England

During the siege of Paris, in 1870–71, Monet and Pissarro paid a visit to England, and there can be little doubt that the acquaintance with Turner and Constable which they made then had considerable influence in confirming their aims – just as the exhibition of Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’ in Paris had profoundly affected an earlier generation of French painters. It was in 1874 that the word ‘Impressionism’ was first coined, and by accident. Under the title of ‘Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs du 15 avril au 15 mai 1874’, the artists already named, with others, arranged a collective exhibition at Nadar’s, in the Boulevard des Capucines. Among the works by Monet there was one entitled ‘Sunrise, an Impression’, merely by way of description. The word ‘Impressionists’ was seized upon as a term of ridicule for the whole group, and though many of them had nothing in common with Monet they cheerfully accepted it as a battle-cry. Financially the exhibition was a disaster, the works being sold by auction the following year at prices averaging about 100 francs. It was at this time that Manet, who was well off, suggested to Duvet a way of helping Monet, then very poor, by buying ten of his pictures between them for 1,000 francs without disclosing the purchasers.

The Impressionists, as they were now called, continued to hold exhibitions, being supported by Durand-Ruel and other dealers with the courage of their convictions, and little by little, with the aid of intelligent criticism, hostility was overcome and the aims of Monet and his associates began to be understood. It was not, however, until 1889, when he shared an exhibition with Rodin at the Georges Petit Gallery, that Monet had a substantial success, his first one-man show in 1880 having been a failure.

With his studies of the Gare Saint Lazare in the third group exhibition of 1877, Monet had already begun the series of the same or similar subjects – railway stations, cathedrals, hay-ricks, river banks, poplars, water-lilies – under different conditions of light which were to establish his fame, and from 1889 onward his artistic reputation steadily increased. In 1883 he had settled at Giverny, in the department of the Eure, Normandy, and he remained there for the rest of his life, with occasional visits abroad, quietly and happily producing his pictures. Monet never received any honour from the State, though a tardy offer was made to him of a seat on the Académie des Beaux Arts, which he declined, and such pictures of his as are to be found in French national collections, at the Luxembourg Museum and elsewhere, are gifts or bequests. He himself presented to the French nation a series of 19 ‘Water-Lily’ paintings, and in 1923, at the age of 83, in the company of his old friend, M. Clemenceau, who was a supporter of the Impressionists in the stormy days of the ’seventies, Monet visited the Tuileries Gardens to inspect the building which was being specially constituted to contain them.

London Views

His work has been frequently shown in London, at the Goupil Gallery, the Leicester Galleries, the Lefèvre Galleries, the French Gallery, the Independent Gallery, and elsewhere, and some years ago an association of English and foreign artists was formed in London called the ‘Monarro Group’, combining the names of Monet and Pissarro as heads of the movement with which they found themselves in sympathy. In connection with Monet’s visits to England his views of the Thames, including ‘Waterloo Bridge’ and ‘The Houses of Parliament’, must not be forgotten. He is represented in the Modern Foreign Section of the Tate Gallery by two pictures only: ‘Plage de Trouville’, painted in 1870, purchased in 1924 by the Trustees of the Courtauld Fund; and ‘Vetheuil: Sunshine and Snow’, painted in 1881, included in the Lane Bequest of 1917.

Monet’s artistic progress may be described as the more and more purely æsthetic organization of his technical conquest of light and atmosphere. He did not follow the so-called neo-Impressionists into the formal dotting which was the logical outcome, or scientific application, of his own system of laying strokes or touches of pure colour side by side, eliminating all browns from the palette, but contented himself with a method which produced the effects he desired; and it was the æsthetic value, the poetry, rather than the mere realization of light that inspired him. Nor, though he was a pioneer in the discovery of ‘colour in shadow’, was he a decorative colourist by intention; he painted colour for the sake of light rather than light for the sake of colour. His work has been called lacking in design, but the charge cannot be supported. It stands to reason that if an artist is designing in atmospheric values, in veils of light, the design will not be so emphatic, so easily grasped, as if he were designing in solid forms, but nobody can look with attention at a picture by Monet and regard it as a mere representation of the facts and conditions. In this respect his work might well be compared to the music of his countryman Claude Debussy, in which, under an atmospheric shimmer, the melodies are not so immediately recognizable as they are in the works of Bach or Beethoven, but are nevertheless present to the attentive ear.