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Romantic Nostalgia and Wagnerismo During the Age of Verismo: The Case of Alberto Franchetti*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2016

Davide Ceriani
Davide Ceriani*
Affiliation:
Rowan University Email: ceriani@rowan.edu
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Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , August 2017 , pp. 211 - 242
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© Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to thank Carol J. Oja, Anne C. Shreffler, Philip Gossett, Aaron S. Allen, Emily Abrams Ansari, Ryan Bañagale, William Bares, William Cheng, Elizabeth T. Craft, Richard Dammers, Andreas Giger, Glenda Goodman, Jack Hamilton, Sheryl Kaskowitz, Thomas Lin, Drew Massey, Alexandra Monchick, Matthew Mugmon, Robert Rawlins, David Trippett, Gavin Williams Leanne Wood, and four anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments and insightful suggestions. A special thanks goes to Alessandra Jones for both her comments and help in editing this article, and to my father Roberto Ceriani who helped me with my research on primary sources. An earlier version of this article was presented at the sixteenth Biennial Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music in Southampton, UK, in July 2010.

References

1 D’Arcais, Francesco, ‘La musica italiana e la Cavalleria rusticana del M. Mascagni’, Nuova antologia 25/11 (1 June 1890): 518 Google Scholar.

2 D’Arcais, ‘La musica italiana’, 518.

3 See Wilson, Alexandra, ‘Music, Letters and National Identity: Reading the 1890s’ Italian Music Press’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 7/2 (2010): 105 Google Scholar.

4 Budden, Julian, The Operas of Verdi: From Don Carlos to Falstaff (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981): 278 Google Scholar. See also Wilson, Alexandra, The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 17–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Mallach, Alan, The Autumn of Italian Opera: From Verismo to Modernism, 1890–1915 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2007): 19 Google Scholar.

6 See Nicolodi, Fiamma, ‘Opera Production from Italian Unification to the Present’, in Opera Production and Its Resources, vol. 4 of The History of Italian Opera, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998): 165–177 Google Scholar.

7 Galli, Amintore, ‘ Cavalleria rusticana: Melodramma in un atto di G. Targioni Tozzetti e G. Menasci, musica di Pietro Mascagni’, Il teatro illustrato 121 (1891): 9 Google Scholar. Galli taught at the Milan Conservatory and was artistic director of Casa musicale Sonzogno.

8 See Iovino, Roberto, Mascagni (Milan: Camunia, 1987): 47–48 Google Scholar; Tedeschi, Rubens, Addio, fiorito asil: Il melodramma italiano da Rossini al verismo (Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1992): 71–74 Google Scholar; Salvetti, Guido, ‘La Giovine scuola italiana ’, in Gli italiani all’estero: L’opera in Italia e in Francia, vol. 2 of Musica in scena: Storia dello spettacolo musicale, ed. Alberto Basso (Turin: EDT, 1996): 417–418 Google Scholar.

9 See Giger, Andreas, ‘Verismo: Origin, Corruption, and Redemption of an Operatic Term’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 60/2 (2007): 271–316 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Basini, Laura, ‘Masks, Minuets and Murder: Images of Italy in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci ’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 133/1 (2008): 32–68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 A recent study by Ruberti, Giorgio, Il verismo musicale (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2011)Google Scholar may be considered the first attempt to investigate the negative reactions provoked by verismo operas. On the early positive reception of Pagliacci, especially in German-speaking countries, see Dryden, Konrad, Leoncavallo: Life and Works (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007): 39–41 Google Scholar, and Conati, Marcello, ‘“Un indicatore stradale”: Mascagni, Leoncavallo & C. nei teatri tedeschi: 1890–1900’, Musica/Realtà 60/3 (1999): 153–187 Google Scholar.

11 See Corazzol, Adriana Guarnieri, ‘Opera and Verismo: Regressive Points of View and the Artifice of Alienation’, Cambridge Opera Journal 5/1 (1993): 39–53 Google Scholar.

12 In addition to Mascagni’s Cavalleria and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, other major verismo works of the 1890s that ended tragically were Umberto Giordano’s Mala vita (1892; although Cristina kills herself only in the second version of the opera, titled Il voto and first staged in 1897), Francesco Cilea’s La Tilda (1892), Pierantonio Tasca’s A Santa Lucia (1892), Nicola Spinelli’s A basso porto (1894), Pietro Floridia’s Maruzza (1894), Mascagni’s Silvano (1895), Antonio Smareglia’s Nozze istriane (1895) and Cilea’s L’Arlesiana (1897).

13 Ruberti, Il verismo musicale, 15.

14 Ruberti, Il verismo musicale, 43.

15 Cameroni, Agostino, ‘Intorno alla Germania di Franchetti’, La Lega Lombarda, 14–15 March 1902 Google Scholar.

16 See Biaggi, Girolamo Alessandro, ‘Della musica melodrammatica italiana, del M° Mascagni e dell’Amico Fritz dato alla Pergola di Firenze’, Nuova antologia 26/23 (1 December 1891): 540–547 Google Scholar; Fodale, Paolo, ‘Sulla ricerca del vero e del nuovo nelle Arti e specialmente nel melodramma’, Il teatro illustrato 129 (1891): 139–140 Google Scholar. See also Schwartz, Arman, ‘Rough Music: Tosca and Verismo Reconsidered’, 19th-Century Music 31/3 (2008): 228–244 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 The use of dissonant clashes and extra-musical devices has been investigated by Ruberti, Il verismo musicale, 141–262.

18 On the new techniques that the librettists employed between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries see Paolo Fabbri, ‘Metrical and Formal Organization. 10, Asymmetry as the Norm’, in Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth, vol. 6 of The History of Italian Opera, ed. Bianconi and Pestelli, 204–15.

19 A detailed analysis of both operas is in Erkens, Richard, Alberto Franchetti: Werkstudien zur italienischen Oper der langen Jahrhundertwende (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2011)Google Scholar.

20 See for example Badalì, Renato, ‘Alberto Franchetti e la sua opera Cristoforo Colombo: Profilo di un compositore dimenticato’, Columbeis 3 (1988): 291–309 Google Scholar.

21 Newspapers consulted for this research include the conservative Corriere della sera (Milan), Gazzetta del popolo (Turin), Gazzetta di Parma (Parma), Gazzetta piemontese (Turin; absorbed by La stampa in 1894), Il giornale d’Italia (Rome), La Lega Lombarda (Milan), Il mattino (Naples), La perseveranza (Milan), Il secolo XIX (Genoa) and La sera (Milan); and the moderate or liberal L’avvenire d’Italia (Bologna), Il Caffaro (Genoa), La Lombardia (Milan), La nazione (Florence), Il resto del Carlino (Bologna), Il secolo (Milan; published by Sonzogno), La stampa (Turin) and La tribuna (Rome). Periodicals include Gazzetta musicale di Milano (Milan; published by Ricordi), Il teatro illustrato e la musica popolare (Milan; published by Sonzogno), Nuova Antologia (Rome, but originally published in Florence) and Rivista musicale italiana (Turin).

22 Some of the most relevant contributions on the debate about the opera choir and national identity in Italy during the 1840s include: Gossett, Philip, ‘Becoming a Citizen: The Chorus in Risorgimento Opera’, Cambridge Opera Journal 2/1 (1990): 41–64 Google Scholar; Parker, Roger, “Arpa d’or dei fatidici vati”: The Verdian Patriotic Chorus in the 1840s (Parma: Istituto nazionale di studi verdiani, 1997)Google Scholar; Smart, Mary Ann, ‘Verdi, Italian Romanticism, and the Risorgimento ’, in The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, ed. Scott L. Balthazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 29–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gossett, Philip, ‘ Edizioni distrutte and the Significance of Operatic Choruses During the Risorgimento ’, in Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu, ed. Victoria Johnson, Jane F. Fulcher and Thomas Ertman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 181–242 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Examples included Dante, Columbus, Michelangelo, Palestrina, Galileo and Leopardi. Alberto Asor Rosa discussed this process in Storia d’Italia, ed. Romano, Ruggiero and Vivanti, Corrado, vol. 4, tome II, Creazione e assestamento dello Stato unitario (Turin: Einaudi, 1975): 821–999 Google Scholar.

24 Zoppelli, Luca, ‘The Twilight of the True Gods: Cristoforo Colombo, I Medici and the Construction of Italian History’, Cambridge Opera Journal 8/3 (1996): 253–254 Google Scholar.

25 Irace, Erminia, Itale glorie: L’identità italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003): 165–208 Google Scholar.

26 Examples include politician and activist Giuseppe Mazzini (who died in 1872), novelist and poet Alessandro Manzoni (1873), journalist and linguist Niccolò Tommaseo (1874), King Vittorio Emanuele II (1878), revolutionary and military leader Giuseppe Garibaldi (1882) and patriot Giacinto Albini (1884).

27 The most comprehensive study on this subject is Tobia, Bruno, Una patria per gli italiani: spazi, itinerari, monumenti nell’Italia unita (1870–1900) (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1991)Google Scholar. See also Körner, Axel, Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy: From Unification to Fascism (New York: Routledge, 2009): 180 Google Scholar.

28 See Duggan, Christopher, Francesco Crispi, 1818–1901: From Nation to Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002): 444–450 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Examples include the contrasts between the right wing and left wing political parties (Destra ‘storica’ vs. Sinistra ‘storica’), the disputes between Catholics and anti-clericals (the so-called ‘Roman Question’ or questione romana) and the division between developed North and underdeveloped South (the so-called ‘Southern Question’ or questione meridionale).

29 Irace, Itale glorie, 187.

30 The event took place in Genoa from June until November 1892 and Franchetti’s work was one of its highlights. The celebration is chronicled in Bottaro, Mario, Genova 1892 e le celebrazioni colombiane (Genoa: Pirella, 1984): 69–71 Google Scholar.

31 Cecchinato, Eva, Camicie rosse: I garibaldini dall’Unità alla Grande Guerra (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2007): 228 Google Scholar. The two books were Vita di Giuseppe Garibaldi narrata da Jessie W. Mario, 2 vols (Milan: Treves, 1882) and Garibaldi e i suoi tempi (Milan: Treves, 1884).

32 Sorba, Carlotta, Il melodramma della nazione: Politica e sentimenti nell’età del Risorgimento (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2015): 241–242 Google Scholar.

33 Boym, Svetlana, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001): 41 Google Scholar. Important theoretical observations on the concept of nostalgia in Italy between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are in Hara, Kunio, ‘Staging Nostalgia in Puccini’s Operas’ (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2012): 34–48 Google Scholar.

34 As Depanis dismissively wrote in 1894, ‘the man of verismo opera is nothing better than a beast’. See ‘I nostri compositori all’estero: Il romanticismo, Il verismo, Franchetti e Mascagni’, Gazzetta Piemontese, 20–21 December 1894.

35 See Mallach, The Autumn of Italian Opera, 63.

36 A detailed account of the events that brought the City of Genoa to choose Franchetti is in Rio, Lorella Del, ‘Il Cristoforo Colombo di Alberto Franchetti’ (Tesi di Laurea, University of Parma, 1992): 154–169 Google Scholar.

37 Franchetti was born into one of the wealthiest families in Italy. His father was a rich landowner and his mother was Maria Luisa Rothschild, a member of the famous Jewish-German family of bankers. Alberto’s grandfather was among the founders of the Italian railways system and, for his exceptional accomplishments, King Vittorio Emanuele II conferred upon him the title of Baron in 1858.

38 See Macchi, ‘Il Cristoforo Colombo’, La Lombardia, 8 October 1892; Nappi, ‘La prima del Cristoforo Colombo’, La perseveranza, 26–27 December 1892.

39 Jarro [Piccini], ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, La nazione, 26 March 1895; Pagliara, ‘Colombo’, Il mattino, 27–28 December 1896.

40 Parodi, , ‘ Cristoforo Colombo ’, Il teatro illustrato 142 (October 1892): 149–150 Google Scholar.

41 [Achille Tedeschi], ‘Il libretto del Cristoforo Colombo musicato dal maestro Franchetti’, Corriere della sera, 6–7 October 1892; [Anonymous], ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, Il secolo XIX, 6–7 October 1892.

42 Il Misovulgo [Noseda], ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, Corriere della sera, 31 December 1892–1 January 1893. Il Misovulgo (crowd hater) was a traditionalist music critic who in various articles expressed his wish that the composer who may become Verdi’s heir should not belong to the verismo movement.

43 See Cesare Gamba, ‘Il Cristoforo Colombo di Franchetti’, Il Caffaro, 21 September 1892.

44 These included the French grand opéra, Massenet’s works, Wagner’s music drama, the late Verdi operas, the stream of Italian composers who wrote the so-called opere-ballo, the veristi and what was still performed in the bel canto style. See Il Misovulgo, ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, Corriere della sera, 31 December 1892–1 January 1893: ‘Both public and composers have trouble, nowadays, to establish where the beautiful [in music] is, amidst so much confusion of schools and genres, among so much disparity of taste, among fights for almost opposite [aesthetic] ideals’.

45 Ruberti, Il verismo musicale, 43.

46 This opera premiered in Rome at the Teatro Argentina. On the genesis and reception of Giordano’s Mala Vita, see Sansone, Matteo, ‘Giordano’s Mala Vita: A Verismo Opera Too True to Be Good’, Music & Letters 75/3 (1994): 381–400 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sansone, , ‘Giordano e il verismo a Napoli: Mala vita, Mese mariano ’, in Umberto Giordano e la Francia, ed. Giovanni Dotoli (Fasano: Schena, 1999): 71–87 Google Scholar.

47 Tonolla, ‘Colombo alla Scala’, La sera, 28 December 1892.

48 Nappi, ‘La ripresa del Colombo’, La perseveranza, 25 March 1894; Cameroni, ‘Colombo di Franchetti al Dal Verme’, La Lega Lombarda, 19–20 October 1902.

49 Another work from the same period that attempted to reconcile wagneriani and anti-wagneriani was Leoncavallo’s I Medici (1893), the first opera of a planned (but never completed) trilogy titled Crepusculum inspired by Wagner’s Ring and particularly by Götterdämmerung. See Dryden, Leoncavallo, 47–62 and 202–12.

50 See Ziino, Agostino, ‘Rassegna della letteratura wagneriana in Italia’, in Antologia della critica wagneriana in Italia, ed. Agostino Ziino (Messina: Peloritana, 1970): 9–57 Google Scholar; Jung, Ute, ‘La fortuna di Wagner in Italia’, in Wagner in Italia, ed. Gianfranco Rostirolla (Turin: ERI, 1982): 55–225 Google Scholar; Miller, Marion S., ‘Wagnerism, Wagnerians, and Italian Identity’, in Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics, ed. David C. Large and William Weber (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984): 167–197 Google Scholar.

51 Critics who opposed Wagner throughout the late 1880s, 1890s and beyond included Vincenzo di Marmorito, Carlo Giuliozzi, Alfredo Oriani and Vincenzo Tommasini. See Ziino, ‘Rassegna della letteratura’, 77–93.

52 See Ziino, ‘Rassegna della letteratura’, 65.

53 See Romeo, Rosario, ‘Germany and Italian Intellectual Life from Unification to the First World War’, in Modern Italy: A Topical History Since 1861, ed. Edward Tannenbaum and Emiliana P. Noether (New York: New York University Press, 1974): 292–310 Google Scholar.

54 See Criscione, Caterina, Luigi Torchi: Un musicologo italiano tra Ottocento e Novecento (Imola: La Mandragora, 1997): 60 Google Scholar; Körner, Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy, 98; Duggan, Francesco Crispi, 1818–1901, 333–87.

55 Askew, William C., ‘Italy and the Great Powers Before the First World War’, in Modern Italy, ed. Tannenbaum and Noether, 313–314 Google Scholar.

56 See Smith, Denis Mack, Italy and its Monarchy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989): 77–78 Google Scholar; Haywood, Goffrey A., Failure of a Dream: Sidney Sonnino and the Rise and Fall of Liberal Italy, 1847–1922 (Florence: Olschki, 1999): 130 Google Scholar.

57 Giolitti, Giovanni, Memoirs of My Life, trans. Edward Storer (New York: Fertig, 1973): 70–71 Google Scholar. Among Italian composers, Umberto Giordano was probably the one whose name was most closely associated with France. See Pistone, Danièle, ‘Umberto Giordano et la France’, in Umberto Giordano e la Francia, ed. Dotoli, 33–51 Google Scholar. On the rapprochement between Italy and France see Gaeta, Franco, La crisi di fine secolo e l’età giolittiana (Turin: UTET, 1982): 372–376 Google Scholar.

58 See Torchi, Luigi, Riccardo Wagner: Studio critico (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1890): 25 Google Scholar; Magnico, Carlo, Rossini e Wagner, o la musica italiana e la musica tedesca (Turin: Candeletti, 1877): 15–16 Google Scholar.

59 See Baragwanath, Nicholas, The Italian Traditions & Puccini: Compositional Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Opera (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011): 47–49 Google Scholar.

60 See Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions & Puccini, 169 and 263.

61 Franchetti initially studied with Joseph Rheinberger in Munich (1881–84), and then under the guidance of Felix Draeseke and Edmund Kretschmer in Dresden (1884–85). See Ferraresi, Alessia, ‘Alberto Franchetti: una biografia dalle lettere’, Fonti musicali italiane 3 (1998): 215–232 Google Scholar.

62 See Depanis, ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, Gazzetta piemontese, 11–12 October 1892; Gamba, ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, Il Caffaro, 12 October 1892; Giuseppe Padovani, ‘Il Cristoforo Colombo di Franchetti’, Il resto del Carlino, 9 October 1892.

63 See Padovani, ‘Il Cristoforo Colombo al Carlo Felice’, Il resto del Carlino, 8 October 1892; Gamba, ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, Il Caffaro, 12 October 1892; Mime, ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, Il resto del Carlino, 10 December 1894.

64 Depanis took this ballata as the most appropriate example to demonstrate Franchetti’s skills in the ‘science of counterpoint’. See ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, Gazzetta piemontese, 11–12 October 1892. Mallach, Alan also discussed this passage in ‘Alberto Franchetti and Cristoforo Colombo ’, The Opera Quarterly 9/2 (1992): 20 Google Scholar.

65 Parodi, , ‘ Cristoforo Colombo ’, Il teatro illustrato 142 (October 1892): 149 Google Scholar.

66 See Padovani, ‘Il Cristoforo Colombo di Franchetti’, Il resto del Carlino, 9 October 1892; Parodi, , ‘ Cristoforo Colombo ’, Il teatro illustrato 142 (October 1892), 149 Google Scholar; Depanis, ‘Cristoforo Colombo: Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova’, Gazzetta piemontese, 9–10 October 1892.

67 Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions & Puccini, 38.

68 Criticism of Illica’s libretto is in Depanis, ‘Cristoforo Colombo: Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova’, Gazzetta piemontese, 9–10 October 1892. Franchetti’s dissatisfaction with Illica’s verses is also documented in Ferraresi, Alessia, ‘La questione wagneriana nella teoria giovanile di Ferdinando Fontana librettista e Alberto Franchetti musicista’, Horizonte: Italianistische Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaft und Gegenwartsliteratur 2 (1997): 87 Google Scholar. See also Illica’s letter to Ricordi on 22 February 1892, published in Eugenio Gara, Carteggi pucciniani (Milan: Ricordi, 1958): 67. Budden comments on Franchetti’s ‘broad and regular’ melody in ‘La musica di Germania’, booklet attached to the CD of Germania (Reggio Emilia: Teatro Valli e Fondazione ‘I Teatri’, 2002): 10.

69 Giger, Andreas, Verdi and the French Aesthetic: Verse, Stanza, and Melody in Nineteenth-Century Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 207–228 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, particularly 212, 215, 225 and 228.

70 Basevi, Abramo, Studio sulle opere di G. Verdi (Florence: Tofani, 1859): 109 Google Scholar. Originally published in L’Armonia between June 1857 and September 1858. An English translation is available as Basevi, , The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, trans. Edward Schneider with Stefano Castelvecchi, ed. Castelvecchi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013): 99 Google Scholar.

71 The ‘lyric prototype’ principles are addressed in Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions & Puccini, 207–10. See also Targa, Marco, Puccini e la giovane scuola: Drammaturgia musicale dell’opera italiana di fine Ottocento (Bologna: Albisani, 2012): 104–108 Google Scholar. Although my analysis primarily focuses on melody and rhythm, I am fully aware of the importance that harmonic analysis holds in the discussion about the lyric prototype – particularly after Steven Huebner’s article ‘Lyric Form in Ottocento Opera’, Journal of the Royal Musicological Association 117/1 (1992): 123–47.

72 The Alexandrine verse originates from a group of two-hexasyllable hemistich; in Italian metric the settenario corresponds to the French hexasyllabe. The use of Alexandrine verse in late Verdi, which clearly influenced Franchetti’s, is discussed in Giger, Verdi and the French Aesthetic, 208.

73 Padovani, ‘Il Cristoforo Colombo di Franchetti’, Il resto del Carlino, 9 October 1892.

74 I use the definition giovane scuola only for convenience’s sake, fully aware of its questionable validity. See Virgilio Bernardoni, ‘Giordano e il modello pucciniano (via Sardou): Il caso Fedora’, in Umberto Giordano e la Francia, ed. Dotoli, 55.

75 The following is a selection of cities where Cristoforo Colombo was performed before World War One. 1892: Genoa (world premiere), Milan. 1893: Hamburg. 1894: Bologna, Milan, Treviso, Turin. 1895: Ferrara, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Trento, Venice. 1896: Naples, Prague. 1900 and 1901: Buenos Aires. 1902: Barcelona, Milan. 1903: St Petersburg. 1904: Rosario (Argentina). 1905 and 1906: Buenos Aires. 1908: Milan. 1909: Monte Carlo. 1910: Buenos Aires, Rome. 1911: Mantua. 1912: Brescia, Genoa, Turin. 1913: Chicago, Philadelphia. 1914: Capri, Milan, Philadelphia. I would like to thank Richard Erkens for providing this list.

76 Il Misovulgo, ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, Corriere della sera, 31 December 1892–1 January 1893. Other positive comments that followed Colombo’s revivals included Nappi, ‘La ripresa del Colombo’, La perseveranza, 25 March 1894; Gamba, ‘La prima del Cristoforo Colombo di Franchetti’, Il Caffaro, 2 January 1895; Essepì [Salvatore Procida], ‘Cristoforo Colombo di Franchetti’, La sera, 19–20 October 1902; Pozza, Giovanni, ‘Cristoforo Colombo alla Scala’, Corriere della sera, 19 January 1908Google Scholar.

77 Fior d’Alpe by librettist Leo di Castelnovo (pen name of the novelist Leopoldo Pullé) premiered on 15 March. Il Signor di Pourceaugnac by librettist Ferdinando Fontana, after Molière’s theatrical piece, premiered on 10 April. Sonzogno published Fior d’Alpe while Ricordi published Il Signor di Pourceaugnac.

78 See the negative review of Il Misovulgo, ‘Scala: La prima rappresentazione di Fior d’Alpe’, Corriere della sera, 16–17 March 1894. Fior d’Alpe had seven performances at la Scala, including the premiere. See also Sansone, Matteo, ‘Un Fior d’Alpe dal conte al barone e altri idilli’, in Alberto Franchetti (1860–1942): l’uomo, il compositore, l’artista, ed. Richard Erkens and Paolo Giorgi (Lucca: LIM, 2015): 111–136 Google Scholar.

79 See Ferraresi, ‘Alberto Franchetti: una biografia dalle lettere’, 224–5. Il Signor di Pourceaugnac had five performances at La Scala, including the premiere. See also Streicher, Johannes, ‘Il signor di Pourceaugnac di Franchetti nella stampa dell’epoca (1897–1898)’, in Alberto Franchetti (1860–1942), ed. Erkens and Giorgi, 137–185 Google Scholar.

80 Verdi’s comment is in Conati, ed., Encounters with Verdi (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984): 322.

81 Among them were the military defeats in the battles of Dogali (1887) and Adwa (1896), the Banca Romana scandal (1892) and the trasformismo that began with Agostino Depretis’s first Government in 1883.

82 See Tobia, Una patria per gli italiani, vi.

83 See Franchetti’s letter to his father on 16 June 1897, quoted in Ferraresi, ‘Alberto Franchetti: una biografia dalle lettere’, 225.

84 The incipit of this aria will later be associated with the Tugendbund. ‘Studenti udite!’ became famous because it was the first ever recorded by Caruso. See Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso (New York: Knopf, 1988): 56–57 Google Scholar.

85 The full list of historical characters in Germania is in Erkens, ‘Die Nation as dramatis persona: Zur dramaturgischen Konzeption von Luigi Illicas und Alberto Franchettis Deutschland-Opera Germania’, in Alberto Franchetti (1860–1942), ed. Erkens and Giorgi, 215–17.

86 See Criscione, Luigi Torchi, 41.

87 See Torchi, , ‘ Germania: Dramma lirico in un Prologo, due Quadri ed un Epilogo di Luigi Illica. Musica di Alberto Franchetti’, Rivista musicale italiana 9 (1902): 377–421 Google Scholar.

88 See http://comitatogianicolo.it/gianicolo-parco/Manifesto.pdf (accessed 15 October 2015). See also Banti, Alberto Mario, ‘The Remembrance of Heroes’, in The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Italy, ed. Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012): 182 Google Scholar.

89 Lützows Wilde Jagd was originally a poem written by the German soldier and patriot Theodor Körner, published posthumously in 1814 as a part of the collection Leyer und Schwerdt. Carl Maria von Weber was the first to set it to music, in 1814, for a cappella male chorus. The piece, together with five more patriotic songs on Körner’s texts, was published in Berlin in 1816. In the catalogue of Weber’s works edited by Friedrich Wilhelm Jähns in 1871, this hymn is signed as J168.

90 Minor, Ryan, Choral Fantasies: Music, Festivity, and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Klenke, Dietmar, Der singende ‘deutsche Mann’: Gesangvereine und deutsches Nationalbewußtsein von Napoleon bis Hitler (Münster: Waxmann, 1998)Google Scholar.

91 Gossett, ‘Becoming a Citizen’, 64.

92 Pesci, , ‘A proposito di Germania ’, Gazzetta musicale di Milano 57 (13 November 1902): 603–604 Google Scholar.

93 See Samoggia, Giuseppe, ‘Germania del maestro Franchetti’, Il resto del Carlino, 10–11 March 1902Google Scholar; D’Atri, Nicola, ‘L’opera Germania del maestro Franchetti alla Scala’, Il giornale d’Italia, 13 March 1902Google Scholar; Nappi, ‘Germania di Franchetti’, La perseveranza, 14 March 1902; Enzo, ‘Germania’, L’avvenire d’Italia, 1 November 1902.

94 Villanis, ‘In attesa della Germania di Franchetti’, La stampa, 10 March 1902.

95 Roberto Scardovi listed 52 operas inspired to verismo subject written between 1890 and 1899. See Scardovi, , L’opera dei bassifondi: Il melodramma ‘plebeo’ nel verismo musicale italiano (Lucca: LIM, 1994): 64–113 Google Scholar.

96 See for example Nappi, ‘La prima della Germania alla Scala’, La perseveranza, 12 March 1902.

97 Cameroni, ‘Intorno alla Germania di Franchetti’, La Lega Lombarda, 14–15 March 1902.

98 See Pietro, ‘Germania’, La provincia di Pisa, 12 March 1903; D’Atri, ‘Germania al teatro Costanzi’, Il giornale d’Italia, 28 March 1903; s., ‘Germania al Regio’, Gazzetta di Parma, 12 January 1905.

99 This is a selection of cities where Germania was performed until World War One. 1902: Alexandria of Egypt, Ancona, Ascoli, Bologna, Brescia, Buenos Aires, Florence, Lisbon, Messina, Milan (world premiere), Montevideo, Naples, Novara, Trento, Treviso, Trieste. 1903: Asti, Buenos Aires, Carpi, Ferrara, Mantua, Lisbon, Montecatini, Montevideo, Naples, Pavia, Pisa, Rome, St Petersburg, Trieste, Turin, Udine. 1904: Buenos Aires, Genoa, Milan, Odessa, Minsk, Rosario (Argentina), Verona, Vicenza, Zara. 1905: Cremona, Fiume, Modena, Odessa, Palermo, Parma, Reggio Emilia, St Petersburg, Venice. 1906: Alessandria, Mexico City, Novara. 1907: London, Parma, Savona. 1908: Brescia, Karlsruhe, Padua. 1909: Gent, Milan, Santiago de Chile, Valletta, Valparaiso. 1910: Cordoba, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Turin. 1911: Cremona, Genoa, New York. 1912: Boston, Buenos Aires, Cagliari. 1913: Hamburg. I would like to thank Richard Erkens for providing this list.

100 Jarro [Piccini], ‘La Germania’, La nazione, 26–27 December 1902. Premiered in 1898, Iris was Mascagni’s third major success, after Cavalleria rusticana and L’amico Fritz (1891).

101 See Cameroni, ‘Intorno alla Germania di Franchetti’, La Lega Lombarda, 14–15 March 1902: ‘Franchetti … showed that even during the current reign of hybrid opera one could advance … a national [operatic] art form that bears its own imperishable traits which should be jealously preserved’.

102 See sp. [Procida], ‘Alla vigilia di Germania del maestro Franchetti’, La sera, 10–11 March 1902.

103 Galli, ‘Germania’, Il secolo, 13–14 March 1902.

104 Comments that used those adjectives and focused on the ‘Italian’ nature of Franchetti’s inspiration included: sp. [Procida], ‘Germania’, La sera, 12–13 March 1902; Pozza, ‘La prima della Germania di Franchetti alla Scala’, Corriere della sera, 12–13 March 1902; Nappi, ‘Strascichi di cronaca della prima della Germania’, La perseveranza, 13 March 1902; Samoggia, ‘Germania’, Il resto del Carlino, 15–16 March 1902; D.P., ‘Germania’, Roma, 21–22 December 1902; Jarro [Piccini], ‘Al teatro della Pergola la Germania’, La nazione, 29 December 1902; Pietro, ‘Germania’, La provincia di Pisa, 19 March 1903; Carlo Falbo, ‘La Prima a Roma di Germania’, Cronache musicali e drammatiche, 25 March 1903.

105 Piccardi, Carlo, ‘Ossessione dell’italianità: il primato perduto tra nostalgia classicistica e riscatto nazionale’, in Nazionalismo e cosmopolitismo nell’opera fra ‘800 e ‘900, ed. Jürgen Maehder and Lorenza Guiot (Milan: Sonzogno, 1998): 25–57 Google Scholar.

106 Piccardi, ‘Ossessione dell’italianità’, 42–4.

107 See Brancaleoni, Chiara, ‘Germania, dramma lirico di Alberto Franchetti (1902). Per una analisi del libretto e della partitura’ (Tesi di Laurea, University of Perugia, 2004), 92–129 Google Scholar.

108 Between 1891–92 and 1903–04, for example, La Scala opened its season with Wagner’s operas seven times. See Barigazzi, Giuseppe, La Scala racconta (Milan: Hoepli, 2010): 588 Google Scholar. Franchetti himself commented on the interest that Wagner generated in Italy in the early years of the twentieth century in ‘Snobismo Wagneriano’, L’alba, 16 January 1901.

109 See Ziino, Antologia della critica wagneriana in Italia, 58–128.

110 Carugati, ‘La Germania di Franchetti’, La Lombardia, 12 March 1902.

111 D’Atri, ‘L’opera Germania del maestro Franchetti alla Scala’, Il giornale d’Italia, 13 March 1902: ‘In Germania, melodic ideas are often very beautiful … [but they] drown … in the incessant polyphony that makes them appear all very similar’.

112 Kimbell, David, Italian Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991): 630 Google Scholar.

113 Wilson, The Puccini Problem, 46 and 69.

114 See Macchi, ‘Germania alla Scala’, Il tempo, 12 March 1902; Samoggia, ‘Germania’, Il resto del Carlino, 15–16 March 1902.

115 Interestingly, the only exception to this rule was an article without a title by Alfredo Cortella that appeared in the Ricordi-owned Gazzetta musicale di Milano on 27 March 1902. Cortella argued that in Germania, Franchetti had followed Puccini’s ‘melodic and stylistic genius’.

116 Nappi, ‘Cristoforo Colombo di Franchetti al Dal Verme’, La perseveranza, 19 October 1902. Emphasis is in the original.

117 Though it did not premier until 1893, I Medici was written before Pagliacci. See Lubrani, Mauro and Tavanti, Giuseppe, Ruggero Leoncavallo: I successi, i sogni, le delusioni (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2007): 17 Google Scholar.

118 See Macchi, ‘Germania’, Il tempo, 9 March 1902; Essepì [Procida], ‘La seconda di Germania di Franchetti’, La sera, 14–15 March 1902; Samoggia, ‘Germania del maestro Franchetti’, Il resto del Carlino, 10–11 March 1902.

119 Comments that confirm this trend also appeared after the revivals of Colombo that took place from 1902 as a consequence of Germania’s success. See Farina, Salvatore, ‘Lettera aperta al Comm. Giulio Ricordi’, Gazzetta musicale di Milano 57 (1902): 565 Google Scholar; Cameroni, ‘Colombo di Franchetti al Dal Verme’, La Lega Lombarda, 19–20 October 1902; Nappi, , ‘ Cristoforo Colombo di Franchetti al Dal Verme’, Il mondo artistico 44 (21 October 1902): 3 Google Scholar.

120 Both La figlia di Iorio (1906, libretto by Gabriele D’Annunzio) and Notte di leggenda (1915, libretto by Giovacchino Forzano) received mild reviews and disappeared after a few performances.

121 See Depanis, ‘Cristoforo Colombo: Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova’, Gazzetta piemontese, 9–10 October 1892.

122 This is a selection of cities where Cristoforo Colombo was performed in versions different than the original: a version without the third and fourth acts was staged in Hamburg in 1893, in Buenos Aires in 1910, and in the United States (Chicago and Philadelphia) in 1913–14. A version in three acts and epilogue was staged in Treviso in 1894 and in Naples in 1896. Franchetti also wrote a “new” third act for the performance staged in Rome in 1923. A variety of changes were adopted for most of the performances listed in note 75. I would like to thank Richard Erkens for providing the information contained in this footnote.

123 Pozza, ‘Dal Verme: Cristoforo Colombo del maestro Franchetti’, Corriere della sera, 19–20 October 1902.

124 Max, ‘Germania di Franchetti al Costanzi’, La tribuna, 28 March 1903.

125 On the dissolution of the Italian tradition see Bernardoni, Virgilio, ‘Puccini and the dissolution of the Italian tradition’, in The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera, ed. Mervyn Cooke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 26–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosselli, John, ‘Italy: the Decline of a Tradition’, in Music and Society: The Late Romantic Era: From the mid-19th Century to World War I, ed. Jim Samson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991): 126–150 Google Scholar.