The Puzzle of Puccini
Six Degrees of Plácido Domingo: Part 4
Welcome to Part 4 of Six Degrees of Plácido Domingo, where we’ll be exploring opera’s current #MeToo reckoning through four centuries of misogyny and misconduct in the genre’s history — onstage and off. While you don’t have to have read anything else before diving in here, you can catch up with Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 for full effect.
In his review of Michele Girardi’s biography of the Puccini, His International Art, Jerry Fodor cuts to the chase with his read on the iconic composer:
“One is often moved to be sure; but there is also a sense of being complicit in something not entirely nice. The puzzle about Puccini is why this should be so.”
For Fodor, that puzzle is solved with some dramaturgical digging, which really is less of a dig as it is a sift. Puccini’s operas, which came to dominate Italian (and international) opera in the 20th Century, reach iconic musical heights, but at the expense of what, in some stagings, is near-literal torture porn.
Calixto Bieito’s Tosca at Den Norske Opera (Photo: Erik Berg)
“The audience is required to acquiesce in a suffering that signifies nothing but itself,” Fodor continues. “That, however, is the aesthetic of a voyeur. No wonder one feels spasms of ambivalence; no wonder one feels jerked about and put upon. And Puccini knows his business.”
And, for Puccini, that business was both professional and personal. And his success as a composer didn’t come in spite of his blurring the lines between work and play; it came because of it.
Giacomo Puccini met his future wife, Elvira Bonturi, after the death of his beloved mother, Albina Magi, just as the composer was on the precipice of success. But for Puccini, it’s not just the loss of his mother; it’s the loss of the woman who sacrificed everything to finance the fledgling artistic careers of her two sons. What’s more, her death occurs before Puccini could repay those sacrifices.
In his hometown of Lucca, a tiny Tuscan village surrounded by the remains of an ancient wall, the young Giacomo is distraught and rudderless. He’s then hired by his old schoolmate Narciso Gemignani to give his wife, Elvira, piano lessons. The chemistry on the piano bench is unavoidable, and the pair elope in a fever in 1886.
The elopement is the beginning of their problems: Italy, especially small-town Italy, at the end of the 19th Century is not the most progressive place, especially when it comes to marital vows. And while Narciso (true to his namesake, Narcissus) was no paragon of fidelity himself, and by all accounts made Elvira’s life fairly miserable, she still couldn’t divorce him. Especially since they had two children (a daughter, Fosca, and a son, Renato).
What’s more, Elvira was pregnant with Puccini’s son, and the evidence was becoming undeniable. So they ran off (with Fosca) to Milan, a scandal-making event that left the fate of Puccini’s second opera, Edgar, in question when Puccini’s publisher, Giulio Ricordi, caught wind. But the real brunt of the blowback fell on Elvira, who had an unhappy marriage to a man whose womanizing was seen as a mark of character rather than a moral failing, and whose own (seemingly single) infidelity made her the object of scrutiny and ridicule. Narciso was a ladies’ man. She was a whore, an adulteress, and a homewrecker.
It wouldn’t be until Antonio Puccini, the composer’s son with Elvira, was a man himself that the couple could legally marry — following the death of Narciso (at the hand of a man whose wife he had seduced).
Puccini, Elvira, and Antonio at Torre del Lago
But, by this time, Puccini had already indulged in several affairs of his own, what he called his “little gardens,” many of whom were the prima donnas singing premieres of his growing catalogue of operas (which by this time included Manon Lescaut, La Bohème, and Tosca). There was Hariclea Darclée, the original Tosca who, in her time, was considered the opera world’s equivalent of Sarah Bernhardt. There was Cesira Ferrari, who created the role of Manon Lescaut.
Most prominently, however, was Corinna. She wasn’t a singer, but rather a 20-something teacher or law docent he had met, either on a train or on a train platform in 1899 or 1900 Different tellings of the story give different details, but what is concrete in this story is that the 40-something Puccini went so far as to buy the woman, who was nearly half his age, a house near his own in the provincial town of Torre del Lago, where he and Elvira had re-settled along with Antonio and Fosca.
As Mary Jane Phillips-Matz suggests in her biography of Puccini, Corinna offered Puccini "a welcome respite" from "life with the grim Elvira" (whom, at this point, he still had not married). Because both Corinna and Puccini were legally single, and because both "took this long relationship seriously," there was even the possibility that Puccini would abandon Elvira and marry Corinna. “During one crisis he even decided to leave Elvira for her, because, as he said, she offered him love and inspiration.”
Elvira, of course, knew about all of this. She also knew that Puccini blamed it on her “illness,” by which he meant her nerves. Nerves that, if nothing else, could be ascribed to both ongoing issues between Elvira and her legal husband, and the blame that she took for their initial affair.
Puccini, meanwhile, was equally responsible for the affair, but remained relatively unscathed by public opinion. Over the ensuing two decades, he had not only become regarded as Italy’s national composer and the spiritual successor to Giuseppe Verdi, but he also had managed to cultivate an image as a modern, cosmopolitan man. He was a sort of proto-George Clooney or Leonardo DiCaprio who, as he himself put it, was “a mighty hunter of wild fowl, operatic libretti, and attractive women.”
Puccini in his car, along with Doria Manfredi, Elvira, Fosca, and her daughter
This combination would come to play against Puccini in February 1903. On a drive from Lucca back home to Torre del Lago, the car that Puccini was traveling in ran off the road and flipped over. It threw Elvira and Antonio, who were both bruised and shaken but otherwise safe, along with the family’s chauffeur, who broke his leg. Puccini, meanwhile, was pinned under the automobile.
The greatest damage was done to his right leg, which had been crushed. It was the first auto accident to receive wide publicity, and hundreds of telegrams began to pour in, including one from the king.
Mere hours after the crash that almost took the life of her common-law husband, Elvira’s legal husband, Narciso Gemignani, died. She and Giacomo Puccini were now free to marry each other and legitimize their son, Antonio. But there was still Corinna.
It took Elvira, Ricordi, and Puccini’s sisters to convince him that the “decent” thing would be to break up with Corinna and marry Elvira. In the spring of 1903, he asked his friend Lugi Pieri, along with two attorneys, to break it off with Corinna on his behalf while he continued a slow and arduous convalescence. The negotiations took up nearly the rest of the year, with Corinna threatening to sue Puccini based on their love letters. At the time, this was a serious threat that could have led to a prison sentence for Puccini, who considered exile in Switzerland as an alternative.
At the end of 1903, Elvira reached out to Ricordi for help when Corinna had asked Puccini for a face-to-face meeting. “You have to get that perfidious, big troublemaker [Corinna] away from him,” she pleaded. Nevertheless, Puccini met with Corinna. The aftermath of that meeting between Puccini and Elvira resulted in him punching her. Shortly thereafter, Corinna agreed to a financial settlement, Elvira and Puccini married in their home on January 3, 1904, and the next day, Puccini left for Milan for the premiere of Madama Butterfly.
During this time, Puccini was also suffering through a long recovery period from the car crash that was hampered by complications, including the realization that he was diabetic. It wasn’t until September of 1903, according to a New York Times report, that he was able to walk without crutches.
Given all that was going on, it seemed like the right time for the Puccinis to hire a maid.
Doria Manfredi was born in Torre del Lago and had grown up in the village that was now the Puccinis’ home. The year before, her father had died, leaving the family in what one newspaper described as “the most squalid misery.” Doria was 16 when she was hired by the Puccinis a year later, initially to help with Giacomo’s convalescence. Even after Puccini recovered, however, Doria stayed on at the Villa Puccini, proving herself indispensable to organizing the chaotic home. What’s more, Doria was the first maid who lasted at the Villa Puccini, seemingly able to keep up with Elvira’s demands and temper. Vincent Seligman, the son of Sybil Seligman (with whom Puccini had a brief affair and a lifelong friendship) and one of Puccini’s earliest biographers, remarked: “The whole household revolved around Doria.”
Elvira had suffered through enough of her husband’s dalliances to recognize a pattern. That Puccini was also in 1907 working on a new opera, what would eventually become La fanciulla del West, was also cause for concern: He had, as many have suggested, a habit of falling in love with a new woman with each new opera, grafting many of her characteristics onto the new leading lady he was creating. Even small things were, not without cause, reasons to be concerned: In the hot Italian summers, it was common for maids to do the ironing at night, when it was relatively cooler. But since Puccini worked at night, Elvira became convinced that this was a ruse for the two to meet.
Doria became the object of Elvira’s scorn and suspicion, but matters became even more complicated in 1908.
What had happened in that time that would disrupt the seemingly tense but tenable domestic situation? Italian filmmaker Paolo Benvenuti proffered one link in 2008 when he discovered a suitcase of letters from Doria’s grand-niece, Nadia. These letters piece together what likely led to Doria’s dismissal and eventual death: In September of 1908, Doria was asked to ready the villa at Torre del Lago for the Puccinis’ return. It was there that she discovered Fosca, who by this time was married to impresario Salvatore Leonardi, in bed with one of Fanciulla’s librettists, Guelfo Civinini.
Fosca was living in one of the chicest areas of Milan, had two children with Salvatore, and had witnessed firsthand the fallout of her mother’s extramarital affair. Benvenuti’s research suggests that she then went to Elvira and told her that she had caught Doria in bed — with Puccini.
Salvatore Leonardi, Antonio Puccini, Doria Manfredi, Fosca Gemignani-Leonardi, Sybil Seligman, and David Seligman at the Villa Puccini [source]
Thus began what Rosalind Gray Davis described as Elvira’s “fierce campaign of harassment and persecution” of Doria. Firing her was just the beginning: The two women would cross paths often, leaving Elvira an opportunity to snipe at the woman she believed had slept with her husband. When their paths didn’t cross, Elvira would tell others of the story. It was a miserable situation for all three.
“I should like to leave my home,” Puccini wrote to Sybil Seligman at the beginning of October that year. “But the opportunity never occurs because I lack the moral strength to do it.” He did eventually leave, hiding out in Paris’s Hotel Bellevue, writing Sybil letters claiming that his life had been destroyed, and telling his former lover how he “often lovingly fingered my revolver!”
The situation became known as the “Affaire Doria” and continued through the end of the year. Puccini managed to see Doria a few times in secret, noting that “the sight is enough to make one cry; in addition to everything else she's in a very poor state of health.”
While it’s apparently true that Puccini and Doria never had an affair — for reasons which shall soon become clear — Benvenuti now believes, based on the letters and the resemblance that she bore to the heroine of Fanciulla, that Puccini was having an affair at that time with Doria’s cousin, Giulia. Like Minnie, the saloon owner in Gold Rush-era California, Giulia ran a tavern on the lake that the Villa Puccini also overlooked. Benvenuti described Giulia as “independent and commanding, but at the same time humble and affectionate.”
Perhaps, then, Puccini did feel some responsibility to Doria, who knew of the affair and even acted as a go-between for her cousin and her boss. But, absent of Puccini offering any clarification of this to Elvira, she continued to be the scapegoat for Doria and much of the sleepy little fishing village she had known all her life.
A few weeks later, on January 23, 1909, Doria swallowed three tablets of corrosive sublimate, what is now known as mercuric chloride. It was enough to be lethal, but not immediately: She spent five days in agony, convulsing and vomiting, until she finally died, telling her mother, “I have been poisoned by the rumors, but I am innocent.”
That innocence was proven when the local court ordered an autopsy It confirmed to the public that Doria died a virgin, an event that must have been a humiliating coda to a devastating loss for her family. And, even had she not been a virgin, would that have still warranted the attacks she endured? Documents showed that, in that month alone, Elvira had accosted Doria on New Year’s Day, calling her a “gossip and a filthy creature,” and on the 19th, calling her a “whore” and a “tramp who ran after my husband,” even threatening to drown her in the lake. After Doria’s death, Elvira suggested it was from a botched abortion.
We know Puccini’s thoughts because he wrote frequently to Sybil during this time. In a letter from Rome, dated January 27, he lamented:
“I’m in the depths of despair, and my position is irretrievably ruined!”
A few weeks before that, he described his life as “a martyrdom.” While Puccini had friends to visit him in Rome, a small consolation as he concedes to Sybil, his own tone in these letters is suicidal: “I am really weary of life, which has become an intolerable burden.” But much of this hopelessness also seems to hinge on Doria’s actions, not his own: “It’s impossible to forecast the consequences of this ghastly tragedy, if Doria dies,” he continues in his January 27 letter.
The next day, Puccini follows up:
“That wretched girl died this morning! You can’t imagine the state I am in!… It’s the end of everything, my dear; I’ve written to Ricordi’s to straighten out Elvira’s affairs, but I never, never wish to have anything more to do with her.
“Feel for me — I am utterly broken.”
Three days after that, Puccini reveals to Sybil that Doria’s family began the process of bringing legal action against Elvira for slander and “being directly responsible for her suicide.
“This may be, in part, true; but partly it is untrue — and it is only fair to say it,” Puccini adds. “I’m not going to tell you exactly what happened; it would be too long and too tedious to relate the whole story.”
But chief among Puccini’s concerns now were the consequences both for Elvira and — even moreso — for him. “God grant that the friends who have taken the matter in hand succeed in dissuading the family from bringing the suit!” he adds to Sybil. “I am a wounded man — and perhaps one who may never recover.”
Sybil Seligman (center) with her husband David (left) and Puccini (right), 1907 [source]
Elvira went to trial on July 6, 1909 (although she never appeared in court, against the advice of both Puccini and his attorneys). On July 8, she was found guilty on three counts: defamation of character, libel, and “menace of life and limb.” Claiming that illness kept her in Milan, Elvira was sentenced in absentia to five months and five days of house arrest, a fine of roughly $3,400 in 2020 dollars, and all other legal costs.
“And they wanted to avoid scandals!” Elvira wrote to Puccini on the 8th. “But it would have been less scandalous if it were known to everybody that you had an affair with the servant rather than this. Are you persuaded now that [Doria’s family] have been the most disgusting in all of this? I am still right! And you still love this town? How I detest it.”
Elvira avoided her sentence thanks to her husband. Much like Corinna before them, the Manfredis were bought out — for what in 2020 dollars would be just over $58,000. On October 2, just over a year after Doria’s dismissal, the Court of Appeal declared the lawsuit “extinct.” Elvira and Puccini, despite considering divorce one and for all (and Antonio considering a split as well by moving as far away as possible from his parents and half-sister), stayed together until his death in 1924. Elvira died six years later, in 1930.
Puccini eventually finished La fanciulla del West, which premiered in 1910 at the Metropolitan Opera. Part of the opera’s lack of success has been attributed to Doria’s death, although the event is seen as a scapegoat for Puccini’s lack of “genius.” Puccini also continued his affair with Giulia Manfredi (and pursued other women in the remaining 15 years of his life).
While some scholars see Minnie’s virtuousness and piousness as reflections of Doria in Fanciulla, the clearer allegory that many have drawn is in Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, left unfinished at the time of his death. Many see Turandot, the eponymous ice princess, as Elvira, while Liù, the submissive servant who sacrifices herself for the man she loves, as Doria.
These parallels, however, do a disservice to both Elvira and Doria.
What if Doria had not been a virgin? What if she had an affair, but not with Puccini? What if she did have an affair with Puccini but it never escalated to sex? What if Puccini had coerced Doria into taking the fall? The presumption of innocence — and the wholesale assignment of innocence and blame to the two women at the center of this story — is an operatic binary, but discounts the fact that opera characters are allegories for real life, not real life itself.
What’s more, this historical narrative has continued into the 21st century, with a 2004 New York Times review of Fanciulla calling the achievement of the work “remarkable” given that Puccini’s work “was interrupted for months by the most hideous personal crisis of his life.” Anthony Tommasini, who authored the review, also describes Elvira as “routinely [erupting] in binges of furies over [her husband’s] infidelities” and “unhinged with jealousy.” In the same year, a guide to the composer's Il Tabarro, written by conductor and historian Burton D. Fisher labels Puccini's wife “an insanely jealous and tempestuous woman” and sympathizes with the “deep psychological scar” that Doria's suicide left on Puccini.
Even Rosalind Gray Davis’s writing on the affair, published in 2005, follows this old narrative. Reviewing Davis’s co-authored book, Puccini and the Girl: History and Reception of The Girl of the Golden West for a 2007 issue of Women & Music, Ruth A. Solie notes:
“In her account… the Genius retains his privilege throughout the affair, which is introduced to the reader in terms of ‘Elvira Puccini’s violent jealousy’ and goes downhill from there… [portraying her as] unreasonably disruptive of the Master’s creative peace of mind.”
Taking into consideration Puccini’s note of Elvira’s “illness,” this portrayal mirrors the arcane and gendered notions of hysteria in lieu of nuance and autonomy. And despite the fact that this court case was well-documented, with journalism from that era easily accessible, it’s still hard to get a solid read on what exactly happened in Torre del Lago. But that doesn’t excuse the default, paper-doll personas affixed onto Elvira or Doria.
Nada Malanima as Doria Manfredi in the 1973 Italian mini-series Puccini
Or Puccini, for that matter. His affairs may have been consensual, as his ongoing friendship and platonic (or near-platonic) intimacy with Sybil Seligman would suggest. Or they may have been coerced by the power dynamics between singer and composer. We don’t know and I’m not here to speculate on what he did. In this case, the problem is what he didn’t do — hiding behind Doria’s seeming subservience as a means of evading the consequences of what appears to be a very real affair with her cousin, buying off her family — and at least one other woman — in an attempt to avoid the consequences of his actions, knowing full well what type of reception Doria was in for.
And for this, he’s not only excused, but lauded. Even considered by some to be a feminist. One particularly stymying note on Puccini, published by The Kennedy Center (a connection that deserves its own unpacking), states:
“His appreciation and compassion for women abounds in the substance of his operatic heroines, their valiant struggles and, most often, melancholy demise.”
On April 25, 1926, Turandot finally received its posthumous premiere at La Scala. In the 17 months between the composer’s death and the unveiling of his final work, no small amount of hype built up around the work. And yet, as Alexandra Wilson notes, there was truth in the line “Turandot does not exist,” sung by the three Bonzes in Act I. Reviewing the premiere, Raffaello de Rensis wrote:
“With her regal mantles, her tiaras, her beauty, was forgotten. Not one member of the public, in our view, wanted to see her again.”
This wasn’t a slight against singer Rosa Raisa, who was praised for a “valiant execution of a thankless role.” It was the indictment of a woman without dimension or empathy. It’s ironic, then, that Turandot’s motivations may be among the clearest and most empathetic of Puccini’s heroines. Nevertheless, with the aura of Puccini’s genius clouding the stage, the lady vanishes.
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Further Reading
“Look and Spectatorship in Manon Lescaut” by Alessandra Campana for The Opera Quarterly (2008)
“Modernism and the Machine Woman in Puccini's Turandot” by Alexandra Wilson for Music and Letters (2005)
Puccini and the Girl: History and Reception of The Girl of the Golden West by Annie J. Randall and Rosalind Gray Davis (2005)
Puccini: A Biography by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz (2002)
Puccini: His International Art by Michele Girardi (2000)
Puccini Among Friends by Vincent Seligman (1938)