84ⁱ. Il Tabarro

After attending a performance of Didier Gold’s drama La Houppelande in Paris at the Théâtre Marigny (probably sometime in May 1912),Note: *The première of Gold’s play took place at the Marigny on 1 September 1910; it was published by Ondet & Titerbo in 1911. Puccini decided at the beginning of 1913 to use it for a one-act opera (see NOTES to 84).
Didier Gold (1876-1931),Note: *Strangely, very little is known about the playwright. The following information is mostly taken from Campos 1999, 9 and 44.  whose real name was Goldhammer, engaged in the most diverse literary activities. Apart from several dramas (among them a Manon Lescaut written in 1913), he also wrote poems, texts for chansons, and music-hall sketches, including one for Mistinguett.
For a long time Puccini was uncertain about who could write the libretto. Apparently his nephew Carlo Marsili was given the first opportunity. He provided a text of 40 pages which may have dated from the early summer of 1913.Note: *It is mentioned in the Inventario: Archivio Puccini in Torre del Lago of 1980 (p. 29), but no longer exists in I-TLp. The journalist and playwright Valentino Soldani was also apparently considered a possible librettist.Note: *See Puccini’s unpublished letter of 3 May 1913, US-CA  no. 69. Soldani (1874-1935) tried for many years to write
a libretto for Puccini from his historical drama Margherita da Cortona, but Puccini rejected it again and again.
In August 1913, Puccini turned to the prominent writer and politician Ferdinando Martini (1841-1928),Note: *Martini was formerly Italy’s long-time secretary and minister of public education, then civil commissioner for the Italian colony of Eritrea; he later became the minister for all of the Italian colonies and a senator.  asking him to make an Italian versification from the French play (see Schickling 2000b).
By then, Puccini had already begun notating the first composition sketchesNote: *See Puccini’s unpublished letter to Sybil Seligman of 18 June 1913 in MEL; Puccini 1981, no. 103 (which, contrary to the publication was actually written on 12 July 1913); Carteggi 1958, no. 630, of 17 July 1913;Schickling 2000b, no. 1913.09.07.a.  and the periodical Teatro illustrato (IX, no. 14, 15-31 July 1913) reported that Puccini would compose Gold’s Houppelande. The hoped-for collaboration with Martini lasted until November 1913. When Puccini received Martini’s first drafts, he criticised them cautiously in his usual way and wrote (on 6 November 1913): “Manca quella tale canaglieria apache [It lacks that touch of Apache roguishness].” Martini immediately withdrew from the assignment, and Puccini readily accepted (see the letter of 10 November 1913 in Schickling 2000b).
Only two years later, Puccini took up the Tabarro project again,Note: *See Epistolario 1982, no. 137, of 23 October 1915 and Carteggi 1958, no. 683, of 30 October 1915. this time with Giuseppe Adami, who had already proven himself to be a fine collaborator with his work on the libretto of La Rondine (83). Adami’s own account of this new commission and of Puccini’s short-lived cooperation with Martini are a little too distorted. However, Adami also quotes a seven-verse “romanza” for Giorgetta by Martini, making it very clear that the well-read and cultured politician could not have been a satisfactory partner for Puccini (see Adami 1942, 211-16).
Parallel to the common work on the libretto, Puccini also drafted the composition, and in December 1915 he believed that he would soon finish it.Note: *See Carteggi 1958, no. 685, of 16 December 1915. But then the usual doubts about the libretto began, and in the spring of 1916 Puccini tried in vain to persuade the dramatist Dario Niccodemi (1874-1934), who had lived in Paris for a long time, to revise Adami’s text.Note: *See the letters to Niccodemi in the periodical Liburni Civitas XIV, nos. 1-3 (1941): 6-8. Even before the composition draft was finished, Puccini started to orchestrate the parts which were ready (see 84ⁱ.B.1), simultaneously continuing with the composition and together with Adami making innumerable changes in the libretto.Note: *See Epistolario 1982, nos. 142-46, partly dated inaccurately by Adami, but certainly written between 2 May and 27 July 1916. Finally, the full score was completed on 25 November 1916 (see 84ⁱ.B.1 and Carteggi 1958 , no. 697, of 26 November 1916).
The publisher’s work of reproducing the score apparently started immediately (see Puccini 1981, no. 27, of 5 December 1916), as a performance of Il Tabarro was expected to be scheduled very soon, without the planned other one-act operas.Note: *See Carteggi 1958, no. 702, of 11 January 1917, in which Puccini mentions Le Villi as a possible companion piece. Shortly thereafter, however, with Suor Angelica Puccini found the long-sought continuation for the trilogy (see NOTES to 84ⁱⁱ), and the plans for a suitable theatre for the first performance of Il Tabarro as well as the production of the orchestra material and the piano-vocal score obviously were suspended.
Puccini used the long hiatus before the first performance to make some additional revisions. In an unpublished letter to Ricordi’s Carlo Clausetti of 22 February 1917,Note: *I-Mr, Carteggio Puccini-Clausetti, no. 37. Puccini mentioned “l’aggiunta del tenore [the addition for the tenor].” This doubtless refers to Luigi’s aria “Hai ben ragione” (fig. 44 – fig. 46), confirmed by the autograph full score (84ⁱ.B.1) to be a relatively late addition. When the copyist’s full score was ready in December 1917, Puccini again made changes.Note: *See Carteggi 1958, no. 714, and Puccini’s unpublished letters to Clausetti (I-Mr, Carteggio Puccini-Clausetti, nos. 49, 50, and 52, of 8, 9, and 15 December 1917, no. 54 of 15 February 1918, no. 64 of 26 March 1918, no. 80 of 24 June, and no. 81 of 26 June 1918).  In September 1918, the performance material and the piano-vocal scores for all three pieces of the Trittico were finally ready;Note: *See Carteggi 1958, no. 731, of 4 September 1918. the complete printed edition (84.E.1) was issued in October.
The first performance of Il Trittico in New York marked the first time in Puccini’s career that he did not supervise or attend the première of one of his operas. Therefore, he looked after the first Italian performance (in Rome on 11 January 1919 at the Teatro Costanzi) all the more. Apparently there were changes made in Il Tabarro during the rehearsals, partly shown in the second edition of the piano-vocal score (84.E.2) and in the first printed full score (84ⁱ.E.2a), as well as several additional corrections, made by Puccini shortly afterwards.Note: *See Carteggi 1958, nos. 741, 743, 745, and 750 of 25 January, 13 February, 21 February, and 22 March 1919. Consequently, the second Italian performance on 10 May 1919 in Florence probably presented the (nearly) definitive version.
Two and a half years later, after a performance of Il Trittico in Bologna, Puccini objected to Michele’s monologue (already considerably shortened in 84ⁱ.E.2). He asked Adami for a new text, informing him of his very concrete wishes.Note: *See Epistolario 1982, nos. 195 and 197 of 1 and 17 November, and Carteggi 1958, no. 819, of 9 November 1921. The full score of the new monologue was written on the same music paper Puccini used for the full score of Turandot (see 84ⁱ.B.3) which had been at Puccini’s disposal from the autumn of 1921 (see NOTES to 91). In communications of December 1921 to Guido Zuccoli who headed Ricordi’s “copisteria [copying department],” Puccini asked about this “brano Tabarro [piece for Tabarro].”Note: *See the letters of 15 December (unpublished, sold by the music antiquarian Voerster, Stuttgart) and 31 December 1921 (in Schickling 2000b, no. 1921.12.31.a.)  This means that the new version was completed by the beginning of December 1921 and probably used for the first time in the Trittico performance on 28 January 1922 in Rome and the following day at La Scala, where Puccini was present at rehearsals.Note: *See also the confirmation of this in Ricci 1954, 178.