Puccini and Shelley, in my mind, are the two visitors to Bagni di Lucca who have the highest significance. Shelley, the great English lyric poet, and Giacomo Puccini another great writer of ‘lirica’ which, in Italian, means opera, both loved this area for its peace and relative summer coolness. Of course, they never met – almost forty years separates the death of Shelley from Puccini’s birth. However, in several ways they are closely related, not only in terms of their immense creativity, but also through connections with other people.

For example, Respighi (who wrote one of his operas on a libretto Puccini had rejected) set three of Shelley’s poems, in translations. Do look at my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/sunset-with-shelley-and-respighi/ to find out what these poems are.

When we come to original English settings then we are truly spoilt for choice. For example, that beautiful poem:

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

counts at least thirty settings ranging from Charles Hubert Parry’s in 1897 (coincidentally Parry was baptised in the same church whose graveyard contains the remains of the Shelley family including the poet’s heart, St Peter’s in Bournemouth), Frank Bridge’s (Britten’s teacher) in 1904  to Roger Quilter’s in 1925 to Philip Legge’s in 2010.

Just ‘YouTube’ Music, when soft voices die and you’ll be amazed at how many settings of this lovely Shelley poem there are. I’d be interested to know whether you have a favourite among them.

My current favourite is this one from Patrick Jonathan, a British composer born in 1959 but currently based in Kuala Lumpur. The video accompanying the music is rather interesting as it includes Viareggio’s Shelley festival poster and the Pietà-like statue of the poet mourned by his Mary in Christchurch priory.

Peter Warlock, Philip Heseltine’s pen name, set Shelley’s poem twice. He had his most creative periods when in Llandyssil, a village we know well as it’s on the road between Welshpool and Newtown, and in Eynsford, another village we are acquainted with as it’s an attractive watering hole just outside south east London in the Darenth valley. (I remember I loved riding my Transalp across the ford there and getting completely splashed).

(Philip Heseltine AKA Peter Warlock)

It’s not often realised that the late lamented art critic Brian Sewell’s father was Peter Warlock himself. Regrettably, Brian never saw his dad as Peter died in a gas-filled kitchen of his house in Tite street Chelsea seven months before Brian was born. At the time Warlock was transcribing the music of Philip Cipriani Potter (whose godmother was the sister of the great eighteenth century artist and ancestor of my wife Alexandra Antonia Cipriani – see https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/my-wifes-illustrious-ancestor/ .)

Mentioning the great Sewell reminds me of a lively article he wrote on Puccini for Holland Park Opera.   http://www.operahollandpark.com/archive-1997-brian-sewell-puccini/.

(Brian Sewell)

And so we have gone full circle and returned to Lucca’s greatest maestro. Things connect don’t they in the end.

PS Don’t forget my talk on all this. It’s at Shelley House in Bagni di Lucca Villa on July 14th: