5 - Torrefranca versus Puccini

Summary

‘Puccini … embodies, with the utmost completeness, all the decadence of current Italian music, and represents all its cynical commercialism, all its pitiful impotence and the whole triumphant vogue for internationalism.’ Thus was the project to promote Puccini as a national hero checked in 1912 when the Turin-based academic publishing house Fratelli Bocca released a vitriolic monograph entitled Giacomo Puccini e l'opera internazionale. Fausto Torrefranca, the book's twenty-nine-year-old author, made no attempt to disguise his contempt for the composer promoted by Ricordi as Verdi's successor, and his assessment of Puccini stood in stark contrast to the idolatry of the popular musical press. Nominating himself as the only critic courageous enough to stand out against the current artistic climate of vulgarity and insincerity, Torrefranca wrote his book as a call to arms to his dissatisfied peers, encouraging them to rise up against an older generation characterised by ‘spiritual mediocrity’.

Torrefranca organised his 133-page assault on Puccini into four sections. The first (‘Psicologia dell'opera pucciniana’) considers the decadence of Italian opera and of Puccini's personality, while the second (‘La vita artistica del Puccini e l'ambiente’) is a caustic biographical profile and commentary on Puccini's operas up to 1910. The third, entitled ‘Puccini uomo di teatro’, examines Puccini's attitudes towards dramatic structure and characterisation, and the final section (provocatively entitled ‘Puccini musicista?’) is an assessment of Puccini's musical style and influences.