Page 230 - Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2019. Vloga nacionalnih opernih gledališč v 20. in 21. stoletju - The Role of National Opera Houses in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 3
P. 230
vloga nacionalnih opernih gledališč v 20. in 21. stoletju
nationalism, was more conservative rather than the learned audience of Vi-
enna. Puccini was not a follower of Verismo, but an international author,
as written by the extreme nationalist Fausto Torrefranca in his provocative
biography Giacomo Puccini e l’opera internazionale (1912).21 The fate of the
Empire’s periphery, influenced by chauvinism, was the research of identi-
ty in a simple way. The diminished presence of the romanza style of Tosca
in comparison to Bohème, that sounded like a model in the vein of the tra-
ditional opera by numbers, was perhaps unacceptable for any kind of audi-
ence: either for the Italians, or for the Slovenes and Germans, all agreeing
that Tosca was an anaemic opera. Nevertheless, it is not easy to understand
the thinking of a young intellectual dealing with the legacy of Hegel, Schu-
mann and Wagner, but not of Eduard Hanslick. Unlike other intellectu-
als, the young Mandić was not influenced by the theory of Hanslick. In
the Austrian lands and abroad, only faint traces survived of his provoca-
tive formalism, which was overcome by positivist scholars, or refused by
the followers of Hegel’s philosophy,22 even if in Bologna Luigi Torchi trans-
lated into Italian the famous Vom Musikalisch-Schöne in 1883, and the lit-
erate Silvio Benco from Trieste wrote an article in memory of Hanslick af-
ter his death (1904).23 This trend reveals that not everyone was against him,
and Mandić, although fascinated by the late Romantic aesthetics, exam-
ined the dramaturgy and the technique of Tosca with accuracy, avoiding, in
such a manner, the suggestions of sound sentiment. Within this frame, he
not only defines the causes of the end of opera by numbers, but also the fall
of Tosca, attaching to Puccini the bad choice of a bizarre libretto, that led
him to give up his own intimate style of romanza, flourished in a brilliant
way in the previous operas. Although the reliance on the topic of Slavic na-
tional myth, readable in the libretto of the contemporary Petar Svačić, the
review written by Mandić is free from ideological bias close to Pan-Slavic
or Croatian nationalism. This is the reason why we could affirm, as Michel
de Montaigne wrote in his Essays (III, 13), “il y a plus affaire à interpreter
21 Printed in Turin by Bocca, the publishing house of the periodical Rivista Musicale
Italiana.
22 Barbara Boisits, “Der Geist des musikalisch Schönen. Ferdinand Peter Graf Lau-
rencins hegelianische Kritik an Eduard Hanslicks Formauffassung,” in Musicologie
sans frontières/Muzikologija bez granica/Musicology without Frontiers. Svečani zbor-
nik za Stanislava Tuksara/Essays in Honour of Stanilav Tuksar, ed. Ivano Cavallini
and Harry White (Zagreb: Croatian Musicological Society, 2010), 205–22.
23 Silvio Benco, “Hanslick e la sua sorte,” Piccolo della sera, 21 08 1904, reprint in Scrit-
ti musicali di Silvio Benco, ed. Gianni Gori and Isabella Gallo, introductory word by
Gianandrea Gavazzeni (Napoli: Ricciardi, 1974): 114–17.
228
nationalism, was more conservative rather than the learned audience of Vi-
enna. Puccini was not a follower of Verismo, but an international author,
as written by the extreme nationalist Fausto Torrefranca in his provocative
biography Giacomo Puccini e l’opera internazionale (1912).21 The fate of the
Empire’s periphery, influenced by chauvinism, was the research of identi-
ty in a simple way. The diminished presence of the romanza style of Tosca
in comparison to Bohème, that sounded like a model in the vein of the tra-
ditional opera by numbers, was perhaps unacceptable for any kind of audi-
ence: either for the Italians, or for the Slovenes and Germans, all agreeing
that Tosca was an anaemic opera. Nevertheless, it is not easy to understand
the thinking of a young intellectual dealing with the legacy of Hegel, Schu-
mann and Wagner, but not of Eduard Hanslick. Unlike other intellectu-
als, the young Mandić was not influenced by the theory of Hanslick. In
the Austrian lands and abroad, only faint traces survived of his provoca-
tive formalism, which was overcome by positivist scholars, or refused by
the followers of Hegel’s philosophy,22 even if in Bologna Luigi Torchi trans-
lated into Italian the famous Vom Musikalisch-Schöne in 1883, and the lit-
erate Silvio Benco from Trieste wrote an article in memory of Hanslick af-
ter his death (1904).23 This trend reveals that not everyone was against him,
and Mandić, although fascinated by the late Romantic aesthetics, exam-
ined the dramaturgy and the technique of Tosca with accuracy, avoiding, in
such a manner, the suggestions of sound sentiment. Within this frame, he
not only defines the causes of the end of opera by numbers, but also the fall
of Tosca, attaching to Puccini the bad choice of a bizarre libretto, that led
him to give up his own intimate style of romanza, flourished in a brilliant
way in the previous operas. Although the reliance on the topic of Slavic na-
tional myth, readable in the libretto of the contemporary Petar Svačić, the
review written by Mandić is free from ideological bias close to Pan-Slavic
or Croatian nationalism. This is the reason why we could affirm, as Michel
de Montaigne wrote in his Essays (III, 13), “il y a plus affaire à interpreter
21 Printed in Turin by Bocca, the publishing house of the periodical Rivista Musicale
Italiana.
22 Barbara Boisits, “Der Geist des musikalisch Schönen. Ferdinand Peter Graf Lau-
rencins hegelianische Kritik an Eduard Hanslicks Formauffassung,” in Musicologie
sans frontières/Muzikologija bez granica/Musicology without Frontiers. Svečani zbor-
nik za Stanislava Tuksara/Essays in Honour of Stanilav Tuksar, ed. Ivano Cavallini
and Harry White (Zagreb: Croatian Musicological Society, 2010), 205–22.
23 Silvio Benco, “Hanslick e la sua sorte,” Piccolo della sera, 21 08 1904, reprint in Scrit-
ti musicali di Silvio Benco, ed. Gianni Gori and Isabella Gallo, introductory word by
Gianandrea Gavazzeni (Napoli: Ricciardi, 1974): 114–17.
228
