8. ‘La rondine’, or disenchantment.

After La fanciulla the restlessness which usually seized Puccini as soon as he had written the last note of a score was replaced by a deliberate period of research and reflection and greater serenity of judgment. Just when his activity seemed to be moving in the right direction, Giulio Ricordi died (1912), and because of a misunderstanding with Ricordi’s son Tito, who became director of the firm, Puccini passed La rondine over to Sonzogno.

The extremely generous terms offered by the impresarios of the Carltheater in Vienna for an operetta brought the composer face-to-face for the first time with a subject that was not drawn directly from the stage or from literature. Willner and Reichert’s story of Magda, a courtesan who finds true love with a young man from the country, but decides to leave him, is interwoven with references to La traviata, to Massenet’s Sapho and even to Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. Puccini commissioned Adami to prepare a libretto for him, omitting all spoken dialogue, and he began to write a genuine lyric comedy, an antidote to the war which was tearing Europe apart.

The whole plot is suffused with light irony, aimed at well-known people like D’Annunzio, whose pursuit of grandiose ideas is parodied in the poet Prunier, and Richard Strauss, evoked in a fleeting quotation from Salome. Yet La rondine has nothing in common with operetta, despite the numerous dance numbers, especially the omnipresent waltz, which Puccini placed at the heart of Act 2, and several modern dances, including a fox-trot, a one-step and a tango. His aim was to suggest the frenzied atmosphere and joie de vivre which are essential to the first two acts; at the same time he was indicating his modernity. Such dances, popular for some time in the US, were becoming fashionable in European art music, especially in France, and offered composers the possibility of enriching their rhythmic range. The world in which the characters of La rondine move is cynical and detached, made up of people animated by a spirit of practicality, concerned with amusing themselves and following the fashions of Paris. For this frivolous worldliness, fashionable dance rhythms were indispensable.

Many melodies, a few themes (each devoid of development and used as reminiscences), two arias, a duet and many waltzes: La rondine is constructed on this simple frame. It is no short cut to regain the favour of a nostalgic public; rather, it has a precise dramatic function. The whole dramatic spectrum of the second and third acts is built on Magda’s first two numbers (‘Chi il bel sogno di Doretta’ and ‘Ore dolci e divine’), so that everything we see thereafter has the characteristic of déja vu as musical episodes are reprised. It is a subtle way of fixing an idea: until the end, when Magda is forced to choose her future, she lives not in the present but in a nostalgia for the past.

After the lively visual and musical scene of the Bullier Ball, with the toast to love, in the style of a late 19th-century central finale, a postcard-like scene of a terrace overlooking the Côte d’Azur surrounds the lovers in an ecstatic pose in Act 3. Three months later they are still intent on recalling their meeting, as though to convince themselves that they are truly living in reality. But their conversation turns, to the rhythm of a waltz, to reminiscences of their life in Paris; the heroine succumbs to their fascination, and finally, faced with the prospect of marriage and children in the country, chooses to return to Paris as a courtesan.

This finale is alluring and attractive not only because of its delicate signature of bells but also because it is completely consistent with the underlying assumptions of the action. Magda leaves the love nest on the Côte d’Azur without being compelled; rather, she has understood very well what it would cost her to trust too much to the illusion created at the Bullier Ball. But Puccini was not satisfied and soon after completing the work he began to revise it, preparing two other versions. In the third version, following a few changes to the text of Act 3 and the introduction of a new passage, Ruggero leaves Magda after discovering her past from an anonymous letter. However, everything is more modern in the first version; novelty is lost irreparably if Ruggero dismisses Magda on the strength of an anonymous accusation. It is better to accept that a touch of sentimentality played its part in this revision. Through Magda, Puccini leaves the past behind, though with regret, to face a present which holds out the prospect of quite different adventures. Written in the atmosphere of his concluding masterpieces, La rondine, with its brilliant, ironic music, sprinkled with cynicism, is a precious gem.

Puccini: (5) Puccini, Giacomo