Abstract
This chapter probes Gabriele D’Annunzio’s conflicted relationship with Italian opera and his ambition to return to the genre’s origins. D’Annunzio’s engagement with opera was built on a restless dissatisfaction with its conventions and clichés: harshly critical of contemporary productions, he found that Italian composers did not live up to the ideals established first by the Florentine Camerata. Initially, D’Annunzio pointed to Richard Wagner as the artist who could revive Greek tragedy through his ambition to create a “total work of art.” Ultimately, however, D’Annunzio sought to overcome Wagner’s model and advocated a return to Monteverdi, first working to effect this return in his novels, then with his unrealized plans to build an Italian performance space—a Mediterranean equivalent of Wagner’s Festival House in Bayreuth.
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Notes
- 1.
D’Annunzio, ever concise, writes: “Il melodramma è senza dubbio una forma esaurita. Per una legge naturale, avendo prodotto abbastanza, deve cessare di esistere” (Melodrama is undoubtedly an exhausted art form. By natural law, having already produced a certain sufficiency, it must cease to exist). “A proposito della ‘Giuditta,’” La tribuna, March 14, 1887. Gabriele D’Annunzio, Scritti giornalistici 1882–1888, ed. Anna Maria Andreoli (Milan: Mondadori, 1996), 856.
- 2.
D’Annunzio, Scritti giornalistici, 859: “The public asked only for music. It did not care about the words. Every eighteenth-century master had already scored almost all of Pietro Metastasio’s melodramas, often two, three, and many more times. Audiences knew the librettos by heart, so they devoted their attention to the music. The music was new, full of unexpected moments . . . The libretto had no importance at all; the music was everything. And the music of operas was written specifically for the singers.” Translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
- 3.
Valentina Valentini, La tragedia moderna e contemporanea: Sul teatro di Gabriele D’Annunzio (Milan: Francoangeli, 1992), 24.
- 4.
Eugenio Montale, Sulla poesia (Milan: Mondadori, 1976), 68: “D’Annunzio, in the recent Italian tradition, is a bit like Hugo in the French lineage, from Baudelaire onward: he is present in everything because he has experimented or had contact with all the stylistic and prosodic possibilities of our time. In this sense, to learn nothing from him would be a very bad sign.”
- 5.
Scholarship on D’Annunzio and music has always been a fertile, albeit enclosed, endeavor. Among the more recent general studies, see Silvana Cellucci Marcone, D’Annunzio e la musica (L’Aquila: Japadre Editore, 1972), an attempt at reconstructing the poet’s approach to music by examining his relationships and correspondences with musicians throughout his life; Rubens Tedeschi, D’Annunzio e la musica (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1988), which focuses on the music-based thematic threads that are found throughout D’Annunzio’s works; and Guarnieri Corazzol, Sensualità senza carne, one of the most complete modern analyses of the poet’s relationship of with music: see pp. 173–98 for an extensive list of major and minor contributions to the bibliography of this subject.
- 6.
Niva Lorenzini, D’annunzio (Palermo: Palumbo, 1993), 17.
- 7.
“Gabriele D’Annunzio, Cento e cento pagine del Libro Segreto di Gabriele D’Annunzio tentato di morire, ed. Pietro Gibellini (Milan: Mondadori, 1995), 28–30: “The thunder of the organ rattled my head, as sudden as the burst of a storm, and the atrium trembled as though the cloud of pain gained strength from the shaking itself . . . I heard my own inner voice like the melody of a conversation with that music. I had become a musical instrument in the hands of an invisible musician . . . it was as if Palestrina himself had extracted the mortal anguish from my body and purified its stormy breath with Nicolò dell’Arca’s work and made of it a tragic harmony . . . In that moment I was born to music, underwent my nativity in infinite music, received in that music my rebirth and my fate. In a communion of tears my second life had begun. Another life was beginning, through the concordant discord of the same virtues, more alive and truer than my second and first.”
- 8.
Pierluigi Palestrina (1525–1594)—a sixteenth-century composer of masses and motets, as well as a prolific and successful madrigalist—successfully assimilated the richly developed polyphonic techniques of his French and Flemish predecessors. He was able to reconcile the technical, intellectual, and aesthetic directives of Catholic Church music in the post-Tridentine era. Through his achievement, he gained a reputation as the preeminent Catholic composer of his time. See Lewis Lockwood, Noel O’Regan, and Jessie Ann Owens, “Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da,” Oxford Music Online, 2001, Oxford University Press, accessed February 11, 2018,
- 9.
Guarnieri Corazzol, Sensualità senza carne, 45.
- 10.
For an exhaustive analysis of D’Annunzio’s relationship with European Symbolism, see the collection of essays edited by Emilio Mariano, D’Annunzio e il simbolismo europeo (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1976).
- 11.
Francesco Flora, although noting D’Annunzio’s use of musical motifs to symbolize characters, themes, and situations, ultimately argues that we should delve no further into this aspect of D’Annunzio’s work, believing that music was not integral to the author’s intellectual direction: see Flora, D’Annunzio (Messina-Milan: Principato, 1935), 181–185. Alfredo Gargiulo reflected on the musicality of Poema paradisiaco, but also denied the centrality of music in D’Annunzio’s poetry; see Gargiulo, Gabriele D’Annunzio (Firenze: Sansoni, 1941), 182. Luciano Anceschi subsequently remarked on the light musicality of D’Annunzio’s Versi di amore e di Gloria: LXIV, but described this musicality as a mere means of relief from the otherwise dark tone of the poem. Guarnieri Corazzol, likewise, described the Poema paradisiaco as only incidentally musical rather than the product of a programmatic musical sensibility; see Sensualità senza carne, 112–113. Marco Della Sciucca finally challenged this low estimation of D’Annunzio’s musicality, examining the musical research that went into the composition of Poema paradisiaco; see “Analizzando la musicalità della poesia: Il ‘Poema paradisiaco’ di Gabriele D’Annunzio,” Nuova Rivista Musicale italiana 34, no. 1 (2000): 43–64.
- 12.
Della Sciucca, “Analizzando la musicalità della poesia,” 46.
- 13.
Raffaele Mellace, “Letteratura e musica,” Storia della letteratura italiana—Il Novecento: Scenari di fine secolo 1 (Milan: Garzanti, 2001), 440.
- 14.
“Nel primo centenario della nascita di Vincenzo Bellini” and “In morte di Giuseppe Verdi.” In Chap. 3 I will discuss the latter’s influence on the poetry of Saba.
- 15.
Alberto Bertoni, “‘Alcyone’ come partitura: qualche cenno metrico,” Lingua e stile 12, no. 2 (1987): 281–294.
- 16.
Mellace, “Letteratura e musica,” 439–40.
- 17.
Guarnieri Corazzol, Sensualità senza carne, 59–60. In L’innocente, other concepts recur as themes, distinguishable from these “motifs” (i.e. part of a conventional narrative framework influenced by European Symbolism). Only later does D’Annunzio combine the two, introducing integral thematic patterns that anticipate the leitmotifs of Wagner’s operas.
- 18.
D’Annunzio’s writings on music are collected in the two volumes of his Scritti giornalistici, ed. Annamaria Andreoli (Milan: Mondadori, 2003). A selection of these writings appears also in Tedeschi, D’Annunzio e la musica, 137–220.
- 19.
Guarnieri Corazzol, Sensualità senza carne, 40.
- 20.
Guarnieri Corazzol describes D’Annunzio’s musical education as ample, but his attitude crass and ambivalent, torn between spiritualism and erudition. For the critic, this equates to a fundamentally amateurish and flawed approach to music. Sensualità senza carne, 55.
- 21.
Lara Sonja Uras explores D’Annunzio’s correspondences with Italian musicians in “D’Annunzio e i musicisti italiani: scambi epistolari,” in D’Annunzio musico immaginifico: atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Siena 14–16 luglio 2005 (Florence: Olschki, 2008), 69–95.
- 22.
Francesco Paolo Tosti (1846–1916) was an Italian songwriter and music teacher. He studied violin and composition at the Conservatory of Naples. In his youth, he composed some of his most popular successes, including the songs Non m’ama più and Lamento d’amore. Tosti later moved to Rome, when the Princess Margherita of Savoy chose him as her singing teacher. He was also appointed curator of the court music archives. Tosti then moved to London, where he was appointed vocal teacher to the royal family. After being knighted in 1908, he retired in 1912 to Italy, where he remained until his death. See Horner, Keith, “Tosti, Sir (Francesco) Paolo,” Oxford Music Online, 2001, Oxford University Press, accessed March 18, 2018, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000028203
- 23.
Gabriele D’Annunzio, “Un poeta melico,” La tribuna, June 28, 1886.
- 24.
Guarnieri Corazzol, Sensualità senza carne, 111.
- 25.
Regarding Wagner’s impact on Italian culture, see Giorgio Gualerzi, Wagner in Italia (1871–1971) (Venice: E.A. Teatro La Fenice, 1972); Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol, Tristano, mio Tristano: Gli scrittori italiani e il caso Wagner (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988).
- 26.
D’Annunzio signed the December 29 review with the pseudonym Vere De Vere (Gabriele D’Annunzio, “Intermezzo,” Scritti giornalistici, 221–224). He saw the opera on April 16th, directed by Vittorio Podesti at the Teatro Brunetti in Bologna. Lohengrin had premiered at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna on November 1, 1871, under the direction of Angelo Mariani. See Gualerzi, Wagner in Italia.
- 27.
In the aforementioned “A proposito della ‘Giuditta,’” D’Annunzio writes: “Preferirei piuttosto un ritorno all’antico che questa pazza ed illogica innovazione per cui Riccardo Wagner ha INVANO profusi con abbondanza veramente mirabile, tanti tesori di inspirazione e di scienza” (I would much prefer a return to the ancient over this crazy and illogical innovation for which Richard Wagner has IN VAIN produced, in truly remarkable abundance, so many treasures of inspiration and wisdom). Tedeschi, D’Annunzio e la musica, 170–171.
- 28.
June 2, 1888, conducted by Giuseppe Martucci and under the stage direction of Gaetano Archinti’s. See Gualerzi, Wagner in Italia.
- 29.
Guarnieri Corazzol, Sensualità senza carne, 17.
- 30.
D’Annunzio, Il caso Wagner, ed. Paola Sorge (Bari: Laterza, 1996), 24–26. Umberto Saba evokes D’Annunzio’s passion for Wagner in his short story “Il bianco immacolato signore,” which I will discuss in Chap. 3.
- 31.
“Io non sosterrò che i maestri moderni debbano avere tanta cultura letteraria da poter comporre senza l’aiuto d’un poeta il libretto, e non pretenderò che, come Riccardo Wagner e come Arrigo Boito, essi, facendo ricerche pazienti di ritmi nuovi e di rime rare, producano una duplice opera d’arte” (I will not argue that modern masters must have enough of a literary background to write out a libretto without the help of a poet, and I will not pretend that, like Richard Wagner and Arrigo Boito, they must painstakingly seek out new rhythms and rare rhymes, thus producing a double work of art). Tedeschi, D’Annunzio e la musica, 166.
- 32.
Guarnieri Corazzol, Sensualità senza carne, 152.
- 33.
Arnold Whittall, “Leitmotif” Oxford Music Online, 2001, Oxford University Press, accessed March 18, 2018, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000016360
- 34.
See Guarnieri Corazzol, Tristano, mio Tristano, 15–16. Guarnieri Corazzol also reconstructs the French filter through which D’Annunzio read Wagner’s librettos in Sensualità senza carne, 149–60. For an earlier study of D’Annunzio’s relationship with Wagner, see Giuliano Donati-Petténi, D’Annunzio e Wagner (Florence: Le Monnier, 1923).
- 35.
“Ciascuno di quei musici maghi ch’essi prediligevano tesseva intorno alla lor sensibilità acuita un diverso incantesimo. Una Pagina di Roberto Schumann evocava il fantasma d’un amore inveterato . . . Un Improvviso di Federico Chopin . . . Altri cortinaggi di porpora, cupi come la passione senza scampo, intorno a un letto profondo come un sepolcro evocava l’Erotica di Edoardo Grieg” (Each of those musicians whom they loved weaved a different charm about their supersensitive feelings. A page of Robert Schumann evoked the phantom of a very old amour that extended over him . . . An Impromptu of Frederic Chopin . . . High purple curtains, dark as a merciless passion, around a bed deep as a sepulcher—that is what is evoked by the Erotic of Edward Grieg). D’Annunzio, Il trionfo della morte, 337. Trans. A. Hornblow, 362–63.
- 36.
D’Annunzio, Il trionfo della morte, 337–38: “But, in the prelude to Tristan and Ysolde (sic), the leap of love toward death was unchained with inconceivable violence; the insatiable desire was exalted even to the intoxication of destruction. ‘... To drink yonder the cup of eternal love in thy honor, I would, on the same altar, consecrate thee to death with myself.’” Trans. A. Hornblow, 363.
- 37.
In a letter to Francesco Paolo Tosti, D’Annunzio asks, “Hai veduto nel Trionfo della morte la parafrasi letteraria del Tristano e Isotta? Come t’è parsa?” (Did you see the literary paraphrase of Tristan and Isolde in The Triumph of Death? What did you think?). Cellucci Marcone, D’Annunzio e la musica, 33–34.
- 38.
For an exhaustive analysis of the musical references in Il trionfo della morte, see Nicola Cattò, “Appunti musicali per il Trionfo della Morte,” Quaderni del Vittoriale, nuova serie 2 (2006): 47–92.
- 39.
The term Gesamtkunstwerk has become part of the standard language of art scholarship and aesthetics, referring to an artist’s combination of several different forms of art in one work. Aside from music, the term is used frequently in architecture. Wagner first used the term in the essay “Art and Revolution” (1849), and soon after, with minor variations, in “The Artwork of the Future” (“Das Kunstwerk des Zukunft,” 1849). Inspiration for the concept came from the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides, models that Wagner sought to evoke with his own dramas. The composer honed the concept further in his theoretical masterpiece Opera and Drama (Opera und Drama, 1851), where he says that the three components of opera—Wort (Word), Ton (Music), and Drama (Scene)—should be fused seamlessly into a single form (a total work of art).
- 40.
D’Annunzio, Il trionfo della morte, 3: “We had several times discussed an ideal modern book in prose that, varied in sound and rhythm as a poem, would combine in its style the most diverse varieties of the written word and harmonize all the varieties of the mystery. This book would alternate the precision of science, with the seduction of dreams; it would not seek just to imitate, but to continue Nature. Free from the constraints of fairy tales, it would bring to the light of literary art, the particular life—sensual, sentimental, and intellectual—of a human being placed in the center of the universe.” D’Annunzio discusses the same idea in an interview with Ugo Ojetti, included in the volume Alla scoperta dei letterati (Milan: Bocca, 1899), 297–331.
- 41.
D’Annunzio quotes the original German: “Es gibt Bücher, welche für Seele und Gesundheit einen umgekehrten Wert haben, je nachdem die niedere Seele, die niedrigere Lebenskraft oder aber die höhere und gewaltigere sich ihrer bedienen: im ersten Falle sind es gefährliche, abbröckelnde, auflösende Bücher, im andern Heroldsrufe, welche die Tapfersten zu ihrer Tapferkeit herausfordern.” Jenseits von Gut und Bose, Aph. XXX. Trans. from Friedrich Nietzsche , Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, ed. Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman, trans. Judith Norma (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 30.
- 42.
Published on July 23, August 3, and August 9, 1893. They can be found in Scritti giornalistici, 233–251. See also Paola Sorge, Il caso Wagner, 47–78.
- 43.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, ed. Michael Tanner, trans. Shaun Whiteside (London: Penguin, 2003), 14.
- 44.
“[Wagner] flatters every nihilistic (Buddhistic) instinct and togs it out in music; he flatters every form of Christianity, every religious expression of decadence .” Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 40.
- 45.
“‘Parsifal’ is a work of rancour, of revenge, of the most secret concoction of poisons with which to make an end of the first conditions of life, it is a bad work. The preaching of chastity remains an incitement to unnaturalness: I despise anybody who does not regard ‘Parsifal’ as an outrage upon morality.” Nietzsche , Nietzsche Contra Wagner, 73.
- 46.
D’Annunzio, Il caso Wagner, 76: “Only music today is able to express those dreams that are born in the depths of the modern melancholy, the indefinite thoughts, the limitless desires, the sourceless anxieties, the inconsolable desperations, all the darkest and most anguished torments . . . Richard Wagner has not only gathered in his work all the spirituality and ideality that circled around him, but by interpreting our metaphysical needs, he has shown us the most hidden part of our lives.”
- 47.
Casella, D’Annunzio e la musica, 22.
- 48.
Romain Rolland, Les origines du théâtre lyrique moderne: l’histoire de l’opéra en Europe avant Lully et Scarlatti (PhD diss., University of Paris, Sorbonne, 1895).
- 49.
“Il 9 maggio, a Roma, d’A. incontra R. Rolland: gli dichiara tra l’altro di provare un incipiente fastidio per la musica di Wagner” (On May 9th, in Rome, D’A. meets R. Rolland: and confesses, among other things, to feel an incipient annoyance for Wagner’s music). Guarnieri Corazzol, Sensualità senza carne, 19.
- 50.
D’Annunzio, “La rinascenza della tragedia,” La tribuna, August 3, 1897, in Scritti giornalistici, 262–265.
- 51.
Cesare Pascarella Jr., “Il sogno del ‘Teatro di Albano,’” D’Annunzio romano (Rome: Palombi, 1963), 149–70. For reports on D’Annunzio’s plans for the theater in Albano, see also Mario Morasso, “Il Futuro teatro d’Albano: Colloquio con G. D’Annunzio,” L’Illustrazione italiana, October 20, 1897; and Angelo Orvieto, “Il teatro di Festa: Colloquio con Gabriele D’Annunzio,” Il Marzocco, December 12, 1897.
- 52.
Pascarella, “Il sogno del teatro di Albano,” 157.
- 53.
See D’Annunzio, Il caso Wagner, 32.
- 54.
Il fuoco, 158: “The work of Richard Wagner . . . is founded in the German spirit, and its essence is purely northern. His reform is not without analogy with that attempted by Luther; his drama is the supreme flower of the genius of a race, the extraordinarily powerful summary of the aspirations that have stirred the souls of the symphonists and national poets, from Bach to Beethoven, from Wieland to Goethe. If you imagined his work on the Mediterranean shores, amid our pale olive-trees, our slender laurels, under the glorious light of the Latin sky, you would see it grow pale and dissolve.” Trans. Dora Knowlton Ranous, The Flame (New York: The National Alumni, 1906), 102, with my modifications.
- 55.
D’Annunzio is thus engaging with Nietzsche when he critiques him. Another example of this is D’Annunzio’s claim that Nietzsche had neglected the value of the Florentine Camerata, derided Palestrina, and mocked the recitativo of early Italian operas (referring to The Case of Wagner, 21–22). D’Annunzio puts his objections to Nietzsche in the voice of his novel’s protagonist: “Filo ineguale e confuso . . . Nulla è più lontano dall’Orestiade quanto la tetralogia dell’Anello. Penetrarono assai più profondamente l’essenza della tragedia greca i Fiorentini di Casa Bardi . . . Essi cercavano nell’antichità greca lo spirito di vita: essi tentavano di sviluppare armoniosamente tutte le energie umane, di manifestare con tutti i mezzi dell’arte l’uomo integro” (It was an uneven and a tangled thread . . . Nothing is further from the Orestiades than the tetralogy of the Ring. The Florentines of the Casa Bardi have penetrated much deeper into the true meaning of Greek Tragedy . . .They sought the spirit of life in Grecian antiquity; they tried to develop harmoniously all human energies, to manifest man in his integrity by every method of art). Il fuoco, 159–60. Trans. Ranous, 103. This again speaks to the emphasis on Italy’s authentic access to the Mediterranean spirit. But here too there are echoes of Nietzsche in The Case of Wagner (1888), where the philosopher praises Bizet over Wagner, juxtaposing Wagner’s histrionic operas to the human passion of Bizet’s Carmen: “I heard yesterday—will you believe it?—the masterpiece of Bizet for the twentieth time . . . May I venture to say that Bizet’s orchestra music is almost the sole orchestration I yet endure? That other orchestra music is all the rage at present, the Wagnerian orchestration, at once brutal, artificial, and ‘innocent’—thereby speaking to the three senses of modern soul at the same time,—how detrimental to me is that Wagnerian orchestration!” Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner; The Twilight of the Idols; Nietzsche Contra Wagner, trans. Thomas Common (New York: Macmillan, 1896), 5.
- 56.
Il fuoco, 280–81: “Oh, no! I shall not revive any ancient form; I intend to create a new form, obeying only my instinct and the genius of my own race, as did the Greeks when they created that marvelous structure of beauty, forever inimitable—the Greek drama. For a very long time, the three practicable arts of music, poetry and dancing have been separated . . . and I think that now it is impossible to combine them in a single rhythmical structure without taking from one or another its own dominant character, which has already been acquired . . . Among the things most susceptible of rhythm, Language is the foundation of every art that aspires to perfection. Do you think that the language is given its full value in the Wagnerian drama?” Trans. Ranous, 185–186.
- 57.
Giuseppe Mazzotta, “Nietzsche e la Poetica del Fuoco,” in D’Annunzio a Yale: Atti del convegno, Yale University, 26–29 marzo 1988: 295–303, ed. Paolo Valesio (Gardone Riviera: Fondazione del Vittoriale degli Italiani, 1989). Mazzotta goes on to argue that the cyclical alternation of day and night represents Nietzsche’s idea of the Eternal Return.
- 58.
Il fuoco, 157–58: “‘Bayreuth!’ Interrupted Prince Hoditz. ‘No; the Janiculum!’ exclaimed Stelio, suddenly breaking his silence of blissful dizziness. ‘A Roman hill. We do not need the wood and brick of Upper Franconia; we will have a marble theater on a Roman hill’” Trans. Ranous, 101.
- 59.
Il Fuoco can indeed in many ways be read as a theoretical summa of D’Annunzio’s ideas on dramaturgy.
- 60.
This work was followed quickly by Sogno d’un mattino di primavera (1897) and Sogno d’un tramonto d’autunno (1898).
- 61.
Valentini analyzes the references to La città morta in Il fuoco.
- 62.
As Lucia Re notes, D’Annunzio’s plays were always centered on a great tragic actress. Re, “Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Theater of Memory,” 16
- 63.
Valentini, La tragedia moderna e contemporanea, 62.
- 64.
See Mary Ann Frese Witt for a synthesis of the fundamental sources of D’Annunzio’s drama, in particular the role of Nietzsche in articulating an idea of modern tragedy: “He read The Birth of Tragedy with a view toward the creation of his own modern tragedies and toward a vision of a new kind of theater. There were other influences as well. While he admired Wagner, he was attracted by the ‘Mediterranean,’ anti-Germanic side of Nietzsche, by Romain Rolland’s concept of a theater of the people, and by current French idea on creating a ‘Latin’ theater in opposition to Wagner through the revival of tragedy in outdoor productions in the Roman theater at Orange. He was undoubtedly aware of Paul Claudel’s activity in the rebirth of ‘religious’ theater and certainly felt himself to be part of the general European movement against bourgeois realism.” Witt, The Search for Modern Tragedy: Aesthetic Fascism in Italy and France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 37.
- 65.
Valentini, La tragedia moderna e contemporanea, 16.
- 66.
Witt best summarizes D’Annunzio’s ambitions: “In the plays he calls his tragedies, D’Annunzio continues to write the tragedy of modernity’s inability to realize fully the rebirth of tragedy.” Mary Ann Frese Witt, Nietzsche and the Rebirth of the Tragic (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), 82.
- 67.
Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, Gabriele D’Annunzio (Milan: Mondadori, 1909), 107.
- 68.
One of several political rallies, the speech was pronounced in Pescara on August 22, 1897, and published the following day in the pages of “La tribuna” with the title “Laude dell’illaudato.” Now in D’Annunzio, Prose di Ricerca ed. Annamaria Andreoli and Giorgio Zanetti (Milan: Mondadori, 2005), vol. I, 429–440.
- 69.
Lorenzini, D’annunzio, 63–63.
- 70.
Il fuoco, 302: “‘The gesture of Perseus!’ exclaimed Daniele, still under the spell of exaltation. ‘At the end of the tragedy you cut off the head of the Moira, and show it to the multitude, ever young and ever new, which shall bring the spectacle to a close amid great cries of enthusiasm.’” Trans. Ranous, 197.
- 71.
Valentini, La tragedia moderna e contemporanea, 25.
- 72.
Tedeschi, D’Annunzio e la musica, 45.
- 73.
The first project that D’Annunzio and Puccini discussed was an adaptation of Parisina, eventually set to music by Mascagni in 1913. Another project was Rosa di Cipro, the first draft of what would become La Pisanelle, ou la mort parfumée, scored by Ildebrando Pizzetti (also in 1913). The project that the poet and the composer discussed for the triptych was entitled La crociata degli innocenti and represented Puccini’s attempt to chart a new direction after the critical failure of La fanciulla del west. According to Tedeschi, this subject would prove unsatisfactory to both D’Annunzio and Puccini, leaving both of them embittered by the experience. D’Annunzio e la musica, 51–53.
- 74.
Giovanni Gelati chronicles the surprising yet prolific relationship between D’Annunzio and Mascagni in Il vate e il capobanda: D’Annunzio e Mascagni (Livorno: Belforte, 1992).
- 75.
Gabriele D’Annunzio, “Il capobanda,” Il mattino, September 2–3, 1892. D’Annunzio first depicted Mascagni as an avid businessman, more interested in profit than in artistic creation. He writes: “L’autore della Cavalleria rusticana, dell’Amico Fritz, dei Rantzau, e di non so quante altre opere ed operette inedite, non si occupa che di affari, non può occuparsi che di affari. Egli è sempre stato fuori dell’arte, e ci vorrà rimanere” (The author of Cavalleria rusticana, of L’amico Fritz, of I Rantzau, and I don’t know how many other unpublished works and operas, cares only about business, cannot help but care only about business. He has always been outside of the artistic world, and he will want to stay that way). Scritti giornalistici, 79.
- 76.
However, the colossal scope of this opera would necessitate cuts that ruined the artistic integrity of the work, in D’Annunzio’s eyes, to the extent that it was eventually scrapped altogether.
- 77.
For a complete analysis of this collaboration see Renato Chiesa, “La Francesca da Rimini di D’Annunzio nella musica di Riccardo Zandonai,” Quaderni Dannunziani 32–33 (1965): 320–354.
- 78.
Jürgen Maehder, “Franchetti, Baron Alberto (opera),” Oxford Music Online, 2002, Oxford University Press, accessed January 11, 2018, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000901678
- 79.
Tedeschi, D’Annunzio e la musica, 43–44. For a more detailed account of the origins of the libretto see Raffaella Bertazzoli, “Storia intertestuale di un libretto d’opera: La figlia di Iorio,” in Gabriele D’Annunzio e la musica nel centocinquantesimo anniversario della nascita 1863–2013, ed. Giuseppe Ferrari (Verona: Cierre edizioni, 2015), 9–26.
- 80.
Other members of this group were Franco Alfano (1875–1954) and Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936). These musicians sought to overcome the conventions of Italian opera, trying to update it in light of Wagner’s innovations. As Massimo Mila explains, the group simply took note of the changing conditions of culture, and the changing taste and habits of the Italian audience: it was simply no longer possible to write successful operas in the style of Verdi, Puccini, or Donizetti. Mila, Breve storia della musica, 491.
- 81.
Tedeschi, D’Annunzio e la musica, 108–09. D’Annunzio’s relationship with musicians in his later career is the ultimate testament to the poet’s commitment to music, and to his efforts to continually develop his work. These collaborations produced mixed results, were met with mixed critical and popular responses, and resulted in widely varying degrees of good will between D’Annunzio and the respective composers. See also Valentini’s assessment of these collaborations and their goal of artistic innovation.
- 82.
Guido M. Gatti and John C.G. Waterhouse, “Pizzetti, Ildebrando,” Oxford Music Online, 2001, Oxford University Press, accessed March 18, 2018, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000021881
- 83.
Pizzetti was also a respected music critic. In an open letter to Giuseppe Bocca, published in Rivista musicale italiana, Pizzetti provided an important account of the principles that inspired his work on the score of D’Annunzio’s La nave. Ildebrando Pizzetti, “La musica per ‘La Nave’ di Gabriele D’Annunzio: Lettera all’avv. Giuseppe Bocca,” Rivista musicale italiana XIV (1907): 855–862. Also in Alfredo Casella, ed., Gabriele D’Annunzio e la musica (Milan: Fratelli Bocca, 1939), 107–114.
- 84.
Tedeschi, D’Annunzio e la musica, 59.
- 85.
As Tedeschi puts it, “D’Annunzio è sincero nell’ammirazione di quello che sinora ha cercato invano: una musica che mantenga intatto il predominio della parola, la sua” (D’Annunzio is sincere in the admiration of what he has been thus far looking for in vain: a music that would keep the predominance of the word intact, in particular, his word). Tedeschi, D’Annunzio e la musica, 84.
- 86.
Vincenzo Borghetti and Riccardo Pecci edited a collection of essays that explore several aspects of the collaboration between D’Annunzio and Pizzetti, with particular emphasis on their work on Fedra. The volume offers an important account of the opera’s critical success, an assessment of its artistic contours, and an identification of its main cultural sources of inspiration. Most importantly, these essays help us better understand the artistic trajectory of the D’Annunzio-Pizzetti collaboration, the two artists’ aim to overcome both the provincialism of contemporary Italian opera and Wagnerism, to create a new drama that would redefine the cultural coordinates of Italian opera. Borghetti and Pecci, Il bacio della sfinge: D’Annunzio Borghetti e “Fedra” (Turin: EDT, 1998).
- 87.
In 1916, D’Annunzio copiloted a biplane (commanded by lieutenant Luigi Bologna) in a bombing raid over Trieste. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing near Grado, permanently damaging D’Annunzio’s eyesight and necessitating a long period of convalescence. This was not, however, the end of D’Annunzio’s role in World War I. On the night of February 10, 1918, D’Annunzio participated in a naval raid in which a group of fast attack torpedo boats assaulted the Austrian battleships anchored in the Bay of Bakar, near Fiume. The battle was not consequential for the war, but was effective in boosting the morale of Italian troops, still devastated after their defeat in the Battle of Caporetto (October 24–November 19, 1917). The attack would be remembered as the Beffa di Buccari (Bakar Mockery). Finally, on August 9, 1918, D’Annunzio led a group of planes over Vienna, releasing thousands of leaflets urging the Austrian population to surrender.
- 88.
The document, originally entitled “La reggenza del Carnaro: Disegno di un nuovo ordinamento dello stato libero di Fiume” (The Carnaro Regency: Design of a New Order of the Free State of Fiume), was co-authored by the Italian syndicalist Alceste De Ambris (1874–1934). In paragraph 64, D’Annunzio declares: “Nella reggenza italiana del Carnaro la Musica è una istituzione religiosa e sociale . . . la Musica considerata come linguaggio rituale è l’esaltatrice dell’atto di vita, dell’opera di vita” (In the Italian regency of Carnaro, Music is a religious and social institution . . . Music, considered as a ritual language, is the exalter of the act of life, of life as a work of art). Prose di ricerca 1, 127–28.
- 89.
In paragraph 65, D’Annunzio outlines his project for a theatre, not surprisingly echoing Wagner’s Bayreuth: “Nella città di Fiume al collegio degli Edili è commessa l’edificazione di una Rotonda capace di almeno diecimila uditori, fornita di gradinate comode per il popolo e una d’una vasta fossa per l’orchestra e per il coro” (In the city of Fiume, the Builders Guild will commit to the construction of a Theater capable of accommodating at least ten thousand listeners, with comfortable steps for the people and one of a large pit for the orchestra and choir”). Prose di ricerca 1, 128.
- 90.
D’Annunzio is often described as a “prisoner” here, an exile in his own country. Despite his aversion to Mussolini, D’Annunzio was kept alive in isolation in the Vittoriale by the Fascists, who were wary of D’Annunzio’s popularity. As Witt summarizes, “the fascists preferred to keep D’Annunzio more or less imprisoned in his ‘Vittoriale,’ where they could make use of him when convenient without having too much to do with him.” Witt, The Search for Modern Tragedy, 33.
- 91.
Lucia Re best summarizes D’Annunzio’s project in “Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Theater of Memory: Il Vittoriale degli italiani/Il teatro della memoria di Gabriele D’Annunzio: Il Vittoriale,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 3 (Winter 1987): 6–51. For studies on the structure’s history and architecture, see Umberto Di Cristina, La dimora di D’Annunzio: Il Vittoriale (Palermo: Novecento, 1980); Arturo Mozza, ed., D’Annunzio e il Vittoriale: Guida alla casa del poeta (Gardone Riviera: Edizioni del Vittoriale, 1985); Attilio Mazza, Vittoriale: Casa del sogno di Gabriele D’Annunzio (Brescia: Edizioni del Puntografico, 1988).
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Acetoso, M. (2020). From Bayreuth to Fiume: D’Annunzio, Wagner, and the Death of Italian Opera. In: Echoes of Opera in Modern Italian Poetry. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46091-4_2
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