Puccini with his long-suffering librettists: Guiseppe Giacosa (centre)
and Luigi Illica (right)
Another valuable edition to Phaidon Press's fast-growing 20th-Century composers
series, following the award-winning design formula set by its predecessor
volumes. It includes some 230 pages of profusely illustrated biography, followed
by a classified list of works, a list of material, available in English,
for additional reading, and a selective discography that few would argue
with except that it was compiled just too late to include the fabulous
new EMI recording of La Rondine (the one Puccini opera that
is still grossly and unfairly neglected) with Gheorghiu and Alagna that must
surely now supersede the Sony Te Kanawa/Domingo recommendation.
Conrad Wilson was music critic of The Scotsman for many years and
is the author of a history of Scottish opera, and a biographer of its founder,
Sir Alexander Gibson. He was also program editor of the Edinburgh Festival.
Wilson is an eloquent counselor for the defence of Puccini and his music.
In his introduction, Wilson probably speaks for many of us when he says,
"Puccini is the composer through whom most of us learn to love opera. That
many of us thereafter learn to hate Puccini seems an act of ingratitude…
Later, with luck, some of us grow to love him all over again, this time usually
for good."
One distinguished English critic observed that opera houses need Puccini
the way farms need dung, meaning that without La Bohème, Tosca
and Madama Butterfly, most opera companies would be in penury. Defending
Puccini in the context of criticism for his gift of melody, Wilson reminds
us that "he had the ability to write a good tune and then place it seemingly
effortlessly in the context of a work that is beautifully crafted, unerringly
paced and precisely coloured" Elsewhere Wilson consistently emphasises Puccini's
instinctive feel for drama and his supreme skill as an inventive
and imaginative orchestrator, so that the background to La
Bohème and Il tabarro, for instance, are brought sharply
into focus.
All the operas. commencing with the gothic Le Villi through to
Turandot, unfinished at the composer's death, are discussed and analysed
at length, and Wilson offers many interesting insights. For instance, of
Tosca (described by the American scholar and critic Joseph Kerman
as "that shabby little shocker"), Wilson writes: "Scarpia's lustful voicing
of his Credo, which coincides with a choral Te Deum . . . at the end of Act
I, is a brilliant coup de théatre of a
sort only Puccini (or perhaps Verdi) could have devised." Yet Wilson
also suggests a missed opportunity-- the chance to end the opera exactly
as it had begun, with a series of exultant chords that depicted the brutal
Scarpia even before he appeared on the stage. Were they to he ironically
hammered out by the orchestra as the curtain falls, these same chords would
suggest Scarpia to he posthumously gloating over the fate of Tosca and
Cavaradossi."
The life of the composer is brought into sharp focus. His escapades as a
student, which he would recall in La Bohème, are covered: so
too are his passions for shooting waterfowl, fast cars. and speedboats--
plus the many women with whom he found solace (including Sybil Seligman,
wife of a London banker, who gave him much artistic encouragement and support).
All these distractions were sought as an escape from an unhappy marriage
to the woman with whom he had impulsively eloped years earlier. Elvira Puccini
had once been the wife of one of his friends. At that time she had been
a handsome young woman. But she had a flashing Italian temperament,
she was strong-willed, a scold, and obsessively jealous of her husband. She
booby-trapped his trouser pockets with camphor and his drinks with bromides.
She denounced Doria, one of Puccini's domestic servants for having an affair
with her husband. Ironically, it appears that Doria, perhaps, was one of
the few women who came into Puccini's orbit who did not, although Wilson
seems to suggest that the jury may still he out. "Did she have ideas above
her station? Did she hero worship Puccini? Did he encourage her?"
To escape Elvira, Puccini travelled extensively, often to oversee the production
of his operas in fine detail. He was meticulous and merciless in his obsessive
search for perfection in the production of his operas: probably a significant
contributory factor to their success. This obsession and insecurity rubbed
off onto his long-suffering librettists, especially Guiseppe Giacosa and
Luigi Illica who had to go through rewrite after rewrite before Puccini was
satisfied. Their work and that of' Puccini's publishers, Ricordi, are also
well documented.
The description of the composer's last days is poignant: the details of the
abortive operation to save him from cancer of the throat is harrowing indeed
(he had been a lifelong chain-smoker). This book is a well-rounded portrait
of one of the 20th century's major composers. and it is one of the
best so far in this enterprising Phaidon series. Wilson's prose style is
succinct, clear, colourful, and persuasive; moreover, the book is a very
good read. Ian Lace
The above review was first published in Fanfare (January/February 1998)
London
and San Francisco: Phaidon Press, 1997. 240 pp. 97 illustrations 
