Masters of Italian Music (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the last few years, however, Italy has been justified of her raptures in a very remarkable manner. The extraordinary success of " Caval- leria Rusticana " is still fresh in our memories. Before the production of his little opera Pietro Mascagni was not merely obscure, he was absolutely unknown. He is now one of the most famous of living composers. " Cavalleria Rusticana " has been performed upon almost every operatic stage in the world, and everywhere with the same success. Even where critics came to sneer, the public remained to applaud. Whatever may be Mascagni's ultimate fate, it cannot be denied that his first work scored one of the most genuine triumphs in the history of music. Pietro Mascagni was born at Leghorn on December 7th, 1863. His father, Domenico, was a baker, but though his origin was not exactly illustrious nor his environment artistic, the young composer was evidently not born to poverty, for his father seems early to have made up his mind to make him a lawyer. With that laudable object in view, he was sent to school. Everything went well at first; Pietro was industrious and earned golden opinions from his teachers. But before long his studies took a different direction. He struck up a friendship with a certain Signor Bianchi, a teacher of singing, who must be complimented on being the first to discover the boy's talent for music. His father heard with some annoyance of this new departure, but bore it?singing-lessons and all?with resignation, until he discovered attempts at composition scattered about his son's room. This was no laughing matter, and he proceeded to exercise summary judgment by cramming them one and all into the fire. His anger, however, was short-lived, and he made noble amends by presenting his son with an old piano, picked up second-hand. Ye...