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