Chapter 13 - Gian Francesco Malipiero

Summary

This chapter uses Pirandello’s collaboration with Italian modernist composer Gian Francesco Malipiero on the opera The Changeling as a way into discussing Pirandello’s relationship to and understanding of music more broadly. Several of the author’s short stories, including such works as “Old Music,” “Farewell, Leonora!” – both written in 1910 – and “Zuccarello the Distinguished Melodist,” dating to 1914, make note of shifts in Italian musical taste in that period and therefore suggest a certain attention to music on the author’s part. But Pirandello’s interest in musical vanguardism is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that he collaborated with Malipiero, a musician so experimental that he was dubbed the “Pirandello of the music scene.” The essay recounts their collaboration as a window onto the two men’s personalities, experimental performance at the time, and the complications for artists and intellectuals who collaborated with the Mussolini regime.