On November 4th he took the train for Doctor Ledoux’s clinic in Brussels, one of only two places then treating cancer with radium. Although he received a handful of visitors he felt so alone. His wife had remained in Milan.
He was in such pain. Not only physical because of the crystal needles injected into his throat, the tracheotomy, the connecting tubes to feed him and give him breath but also psychological.
The maestro was utterly depressed. He’d brought his sketches along hoping to finish his work, hoping to find the inspiration for that final duet where the ice-cold princess melts into the embrace of the prince.
But how could he do anything in the situation he now found himself? Of course the doctor kept on assuring him that the cure was going to be successful. All the signs pointed to that. But his son was told differently. There would be no cure.
He’d taken a few days out for a walk in the city and visited the local opera house. He’d even attended the start of a performance of one of his own works. But, too tired he’d left the theatre before the finish.
He thought of his recent visit to the village of his family’s village a family of five generations of musicians. He remembered how pleased the locals had been at seeing him, how they celebrated his visit with twelve garlanded arches one for each of his operas. He’d been so moved by their loving naiveté.
The end came but it was not his throat that had given way. It was his heart. A massive stroke right there where his sentiments came from.
He’d wanted to slip away quietly but it was not to be. The funeral cortege led by four black horses pulling a profusely garlanded hearse, was lined by large crowds.
The service in the Royal church of Saint Mary was accompanied by organ playing the funeral music from his early opera ‘Edgar’. How much time had he spent on this work which had not gained anything like the success he’d wished. He tried and tried again to make it work. Rewriting it. But now the irony: it was thought most fitting for his own funeral.
And his princess? Abandoned like the unnamed prince’s serving girl. Unfinished. But could he have ever finished his masterpiece? Would he ever have found the inspiration to find transformational music turning her from indifference to passionate love? Would future critics ever say that it was best that he’d died when he did for he would never have been able to find that music in his heart? Would lesser hands have finished it in a mockery of what he wished?
As the coffin was brought to the train from Ostend to begin its journey to Milan and his homeland what thoughts had entered the minds of those who’d been moved by his music?
Many years later another conductor found himself in that country in a city where the National Opera had the cast to sing the composer’s work in a less cantabile language: Flemish. I was there staying in his house, a young lad more interested in Bach and the Beatles than in this for me sentimentalised tedium and told him so. ‘I’d give my right arm to write just one page of what the maestro wrote,’ affirmed the conductor. That for me was the beginning of a sea-change of attitude towards the composer. A change that has led to this time of year where it seems the whole world that has a heart is mourning the passing of a great soul and a true expresser of human emotion in the transcendental art of music. That is why this will be for me and for so many a time of reflection and joy that we have his music to illuminate our lives in the anniversary of his death one hundred years ago.
Giacomo Puccini (22 December1858 – 29 November 1924)
Laying a wreath on the front of the Puccini family home at Celle this November