Mascagni’s Le Maschere is an opera based on the commedia dell’arte, the “symbol of the Italic spirit” (Mascagni). The commedia dell’arte included a series of stock characters, words improvisation and elaborated plots. Books of scenarios and masks were part of the equipment. The complex plots were based on the problems of intimate relationship, between father and children, brothers and sisters, husband and wife and illicit lovers
The commedia dell’arte had been very popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth century but in the 1890s it was only a far memory. So, why did Mascagni decide to base on it his composition?
“Today the public goes to the theatre to make itself miserable, to ruin their digestion with violent emotions…. We, the authors, no longer know how to laugh on stage”. (Mascagni)
The composer’s decision to write a comic opera was not only artistic but a contribution to the polemic on the state of opera.
The first performance of Le Maschere itself become an object of controversy and derision due to the decision of making the opera debut in seven theatres across the Italian peninsula.
On January 17 1901, after a barrage of pubblicity, La Machera had its premiere in six Italian theatres, being the Naples performance delayed for the illness of the tenor Anselmi. These were the six theatres which hosted Le Maschere’s premieres: Teatro Costanzi in Rome, La Scala in Milan, La Fenice in Venice, the Regio in Turin, the Carlo Felice in Genoa and the Filarmonico in Verona. The opera was performed in Naples’ San Carlo two days later.
Mascagni conducted the performance in Rome with Celestina Boninsegna, Bice Adami and Amedeo Bassi. In Milan the opera was conducted by Toscanini with Caruso as Florindo, Carelli as Rosaura.
The opera was a success only in Rome. In the other theatres it was probably the most spectacular fiasco in the history of the Italian opera, dwarfing (in sheer scale) the disaster of Madama Butterfly three years later.
But let’s have a look to what happened in the different cities.
In Genoa the performance was suspended because the disapproval whistles of the audience were so loud during the last act that the voice of the singers could not be heard.
A reviewer of the Milan performance wrote “the public seemed only seized by an untamable furor”. The public shouted and whistled during the opera accusing the author of plagarims and recollections. One person cried “La bohème!”, another replied “Viva Puccini”. At the end of the opera the public was so tired that they left the theatre without neither applause nor condemnation. In Turin, Venice and Verona the outcome was little better.
But why was this debut such a spectacular fiasco? Read the next article!
