ng but Italian.

And I would not have it otherwise. It may offend some artistic
consciences that Butterfly, the Japanese courtesan, should sob out her
lament in music which is purely Italian in character and colour; but
what a piece of melody it is!

Puccini's is a still small voice; very pleading, very conscious of
itself and of the pathos of our little span of living; but the
wistfulness of its appeal is almost heartbreaking. He can never, I
suppose, stand among the great composers; dwarfed he must always be
against Mozart or Weber, or even Verdi. But he has done what all wise
men must do: he has discovered the one thing he can perform well, and he
is performing it very well indeed. His genius is slim and miniature, but
he handles it as an artist. There is no man living who can achieve such
effects with so slender material. There is no man living who can so give
you, in a few bars, the soul of the little street-girl; no man living
who can so give you flavour of a mood, or make you smell so sharply the
atmosphere of a public street, a garret, a ballroom, or a prairie. And
he always succeeds because he is always sincere. A bigger man might put
his tongue in his cheek and sit down to produce something like "La
Boheme," and fail miserably, simply because he didn't mean it.

When Puccini has something to say, though it may be nothing profound or
illuminating, he says it; and he can say the trite thing more freshly,
with more delicacy, and in more haunting tones, than any other musician.
His vocabulary is as marvellous as his facility in orchestration and in
the development of a theme. He gets himself into tangles from which
there seems no possible escape, only to extricate himself with the
airiest of touches. Never does his fertility of melodic invention fail
him. He is as prodigal in this respect as Caruso in his moments. Where
others achieve a beautiful phrase, and rest on it, Puccini never idles;
he has others and others, and he crowds them upon you until the ear is
surfeited with sweetness, and you can but sit and marvel.

There it is. Sniff at it as you will, it is a great art that captures
you against your reason, and when Puccini and Caruso join forces, they
can shake the soul out of the most rabid of musical purists. What they
do to commonplace people like myself is untellable. I have tried to hint
at it in these few remarks, but really I have told you nothing ...
nothing.

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