Identifier: favouriteoperasf00hadd (find matches)
Title: Favourite operas from Mozart to Mascagni : their plots, history and music
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Hadden, J. Cuthbert (James Cuthbert), 1861-1914
Subjects: Operas
Publisher: New York : Thomas Nelson
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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alling up mysterious pictures, which seemed toarise from my opera score as do the two ghosts which areconstantly before the hero of the drama. My music, however,failed to provide me the necessaries of life, and I determinedto return to Ancona, having meanwhile written letter uponletter asking for employment. One morning a letter arrivedwith an invitation to come at once to Naples, and an en-closure of 100 lire. I was engaged for the company of theDuke Cirella. It only lasted a month, when as before thecompany disbanded and left me idle for six weeks. I lost notime; all my meals consisted of a plate of macaroni, and Iworked diligently at the composition and instrumentation ofmy opera, which grew to a large heap of music sheets ; this ienclosed carefully in a hand-bag. It would be the treasury-box of my future ; this at least was my dream when takinglong walks to Posilipo and Portici, chasing rainbows and see-ing pictures of future greatness and fortune in the sparklingof the waves. 240
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Turiddu, Santuzzo and Lola at the church door THE COMPOSER Mascagni then relates his renewed wanderings withMarescas company, arriving on December 29, 1885,at Cerignola, to find there a home for several years.When the company started out for Sicily, our com-poser managed to get lost; and as soon as he foundthe coast clear he returned to Cerignola, where somekindly souls among the city authorities got him oneor two pupils, and then he became director of anorchestra school. I found time to work on myopera, he says, recalling those days, and had itfinished in less than two years and a half. Only afew scenes were lacking in 1888, but I then lockedup the score. I had some premonition that it mightbe a necessity for me to become better known bya work of smaller dimensions. The idea to write• Cavalleria Rusticana had possession of me formany years previously. The young composer gives a description of hisdespair and of his efforts to find a text, whenfinally his friend Targioni, in

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