2. The Bohemian period.

Puccini’s first opera was Le villi, which he entered for the Sonzogno Competition of 1883. It was rejected by the examiners, who were chaired by Ponchielli; the official reason given was that the score was illegible. It is possible, however, in view of the unusual qualities of the work and the gifts of the composer, that the publisher Giulio Ricordi, himself an excellent musician and in a position therefore to recognize new talent, had some influence on the decision. If Le villi had been successful it would have been published by Sonzogno; instead, the opera ended up in the hands of his rival. News was spread that there would be a private performance of the work in the house of Marco Sala, a member of the scapigliatura. Boito and Praga were present and a subscription was raised for a production, which opened at the Teatro Dal Verme on 31 May 1884. As anticipated, Le villi was a success, in spite of the shortcomings of its libretto, by Ferdinando Fontana. Ricordi had found Verdi’s successor.

The work’s symphonic unity is achieved by the prominence of two orchestral intermezzos and a prelude, in which are interpolated reminiscences and anticipations of the vocal parts. They establish a dramatic cohesion using interwoven melodies, a technique which, from Manon Lescaut onwards, was to characterize Puccini’s compositions. The most original music is given to the tenor, notably a splendid romanza, in which Puccini displayed gifts which he was to develop fully in the next few years: melodic originality, harmonic delicacy, dramatic intuition and flexibility in the orchestra.

During the early years of his career Puccini’s life was overshadowed by the death of his mother. It was also complicated by his relationship with Elvira Bonturi (the wife of a Luccan grocer, Gemignani), with whom he had a son, Antonio, in 1886. It was not until after the death of Elvira’s husband that they were able to marry in 1904. Early in these difficult years Puccini and Fontana began their next collaboration, Edgar, an opera based on a poem by Alfred de Musset. The first night at La Scala (21 April 1899) made little impression and Puccini began revising the score. In 1892 he reduced it from four acts to three and later, in 1905, he pruned it again for a revival in Buenos Aires, but even then it achieved no more that a succès d’estime.

Fontana insisted on keeping to the allegorical subject but at the same time, to please the Scapigliati, he tried to create opportunities for theatrical moments in the style of a grand opera. The result was a libretto lacking in coherence in which symbolic contrasts between guilt and purity, virtue and vice (personified by Fidelia and Tigrana, on the pattern of Micaëla and Carmen in Bizet’s masterpiece) were grotesquely inserted into a drama of action. Consequently the original identity was lost, without being replaced by a new one. Puccini failed to achieve a true unity; he merely linked together a few passages, using recurring motifs. Nevertheless, from a strictly musical point of view, many sections in Edgar are worthy of consideration. Chief among these is the first part of the third act, when the fake funeral of Edgar takes place. Puccini treated it with complete sincerity, his imagination responding to the idea of death, a subject which in the future would inspire some of his best theatrical moments. Unfortunately the dramatic structure forced him to make a number of concessions to scapigliatura taste. However, the lesson was very useful to him: from then he chose his subjects himself and prescribed the dramatic style of the libretto before setting it to music. Edgar was the only real failure of his career.

Puccini: (5) Puccini, Giacomo