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Tobin, James E.
December 8, I926 THE COMMONWEAL I3I of degradation under the belief that it is the true way to greatness? The point is too obvious to need laboring. Apparently what the business man who has...
...And yet he would be a daring prophet who would assert that twenty, or even ten years from now, Turandot will still find itself in the Metropolitan's repertory, in a llst which certainly will include Boh~me and Tosca and Butterfly...
...Never had Puccini constructed a score with greater shrewdness, and never had he worked up his dimaxes to more outwardly overwhelm- ing effect...
...who has fought always and only for his own hand...
...This to a certain extent was honest, although it came rather strangely from the lips of one who had not, so far as could be discovered, done as much as lift a finger to make it easier for those who were to follow...
...rive of a financial paper on the pass that things had come to, expressing, with a kind of quaint wistfulness, a fear that it was really harder for young men to get ahead today than it was when he was young...
...Urban, by the magnificent handling of the stage by Mr...
...His Boh~me, unlike Verdi's Traviata, was to be succeeded by no Aida or Otello or Falstaff...
...Jerltza, Mr...
...In Manon Lescaut and Boh~me, Puccini probably said all he really had to say...
...JAMES E. TomN...
...That the affair is not without its humorous side is seen in such cases as that of the president of one of the largest and wealthiest Canadian corporations who recently retired from active service, and who un-bosomed himself in pessimistic vein to the representa...
...Turandot, despite the masterly conducting of Mr...
...In the music, moreover, there is a gorgeousness of color which often blinded one to the essential emptiness underneath...
...Bada, the stentorian singing of Mr...
...The true Puccini remained the youthful Puccini...
...Much if not all of the foregoing is, I am aware, open to the modern objection of being "destructive criticism...
...De Luca, and Mr...
...Our hot de-fense of our ideas and beliefs does not indicate an established confidence in them," writes Professor Rob- inson in the work already quoted, "but often half dis- trust, which we try to hide from ourselves, just as one who suffers from bashfulness oitsets his sense of in-feriority and awkwardness by rude aggression...
...yon Wymetal, by the admirable singing of the chorus, and the effective work of the principal artists, what remained was precisely thls--an utter emptin~s...
...It did really appear as if the leaven of conscience was at work, in spite of the strenuous efforts of the rep-resentative of the financial paper to explain it away otherwise...
...The younger man had in his early work drained the cup of his genius to the bottom, and his was to be no ever-renewlng flagon...
...These two works bore the stamp of a strikingly individual talent...
...In his polyphonic writing for the choruses in particular, the composer showed a mastery he perhaps never attained before, while his economy of means and his certainty of touch were alike extraordinary...
...Is it not that the man's genius was purely instinctive, that his intellect never equaled his emotions...
...who has cultivated his superiors and connived at injus- tice and cruelty for "political reasons," and who has learned to harden his heart because it paid to do so) what he will have to do to get in touch and in sym- pathy with his fellows again is simply to start an equally laborious process of unmaking and rebuilding...
...For this the world will ever be his debtor...
...If he does not know, and cannot find out, his case must be sad in-deed, and it does not appear probable that anything one can do or say will furnish the needed illumination...
...There is no help for it, painful though it may seem...
...that poignant cry that so frequently denotes the fear of criticism of any kind at all...
...Lauri-Volpi, is but another in that long llst of Italian operas, effective for awhile, and then forgotten...
...If the single item of melodic inspiration be omitted, it might well be proclaimed that Puccini has here reached his apotheosis...
...Then followed Tosca and But- terfly, and in these there was a masterful reworklng of the melodic materials which had gone before...
...Youth writes it knows not why nor how, but the mature man needs to turn to a conscious internal spirit which the flame of his youth must feed, but which must guide his way into other, deeper paths...
...An audi- ence which packed the theatre greeted each curtain with en-thusiastic applause and even with cheers, and it is understood that the ticket speculators have not been slow to take the hint...
...With The Girl of the Golden West, the decline had become patent, and the three short operas which followed showed only a slight return to the old creative fire...
...It is something he ought to know already...
...e earch Have you never seen the anxious night Sweeping away the dusty clouds With frantic haste, when she has lost, Amid the piled disorder of her floor, The shining coin she stole from day...
...Sera~n, the admirable impersonations of Mine...
...Apparently what the business man who has fol-lowed such a course will have to do to keep abreast of the times (the type that has genuinely believed that business and sentiment could not be mixed and has stifled his natural impulses and emotions accordingly...
...December 8, I926 THE COMMONWEAL I3I of degradation under the belief that it is the true way to greatness...
...And yet once this initial effect had departed, an effect heightened by the superb scenic investiture given the opera by Mr...
...It then became evident that the miracle worked by Verdi, who with each new group of operas discovered for himself a new soul, was not to be looked for in his successor...
...What is the reason for Puccini's failure to sustain his youth- ful creative vigor...
...It is difficult to know how to tell an employer or a man-ager, himself a human being, how to be human...
...If understanding of purely operatic e~ectiveness and tech- nical mastery toward that end were enough to give life to a work, Turandot might face the future unafraid...
...And Puccini, strive as he might, never could reach beyond his first instinctive outbursts...
...His true music was and will ever remain the expression of youthful passion, a passion charged with the pathos of inexperience, fresh, sincere, spon- taneous...
...PUCCINI'S TURANDOT By GRENVILLE VERNON T HE production of Turandot, Puccini's posthumous opera, at the Metropolitan Opera House, bears from the popu- lar standpoint every mark of a pronounced success...
...It is the Puccini of Boh~me who will remain...
Vol. 5 • December 1926 • No. 5
