Niccolò Piccinni

“ Niccolo Piccini, who was not less than fifty years of age when he left Naples for the purpose of outrivaling Gluck, was born at Bari, in the kingdom of Naples, in 1728. His father, also a musician, had destined him for holy orders, but Nature made him an artist. ”

“ The Piccinino had an impressionable brain and a fickle humor. His whole life was a constant alternation of meditation and curiosity. The simple and graceful conversation of Mila, her kindly thoughts, the generous outflow of her affections, and an indefinable touch of grandeur of soul, courage, and cheeriness of temperament, which she inherited from her father and uncle, gradually fascinated the brigand. ”

“ Do not think that the Piccinino is worse than other men. He was born calm and long-suffering; but there are virtues which would become vices in us Sicilians, if we should cling to them. Reason and a sense of justice taught him to be a scourge at need. But you see that his heart is sound at bottom. He is very angry with your mother, you told me, and you dreaded his vengeance. You see that he absolves her from the crime which certainly never occurred to that saint-like woman's mind; you see that he does homage to truth, even in the heat of his anger ”

“ Poor old Piccinni died in 1800 at the age of seventy-two, and his tomb said that he was "Cher aux Arts et à l'Amitie." He left to his widow and six children no property but the memory of his genius. Madame Piccinni was given a pension, but she proudly declined to accept it purely as a charity, and asked that four pupils of the Conservatoire be assigned to her for instruction, which was done. Piccinni left two sons; the younger had some success as an opera writer, and the elder had a natural son, who was quite successful as a composer of operas. ”

“ An attempt was afterwards made to set up Sacchini against Piccinni; but Sacchini being, as regards the practice of his art, as much a Piccinnist as a Gluckist, this manœuvre could not be expected to have much success.
The French revolution ruined Piccinni, who thereupon retired to Italy. Seven years afterwards he returned to France, and, having occasion to present a petition to Napoleon, was graciously received by the First Consul in the Palace of the Luxembourg.
"Sit down," said Napoleon to Piccinni, who was standing; "a man of your merit stands in no one's presence." ”

“ He concluded that the nobility could not do without wealth: a marvellous discovery which fatigued him much.
At that moment, as the beak of a great pelican of gilded wood, which did duty as hour hand on a monumental clock in the gallery of the Della Serra palace, marked four o'clock in the afternoon, the Piccinino was thinking that his five or six repeating watches must be slow, so impatiently did he await Mila's arrival. ”

“ These words were at once harsh and flattering to the Piccinino's sensitive self-love. The criticism of his past life cut him to the quick, but the favorable judgment concerning his capacity for usefulness in the future healed the wound. He blushed, turned pale, reflected and understood. He was too intelligent to contend against the truth. Agatha and Michel affectionately took his hands, and begged him on their knees to accept half of a fortune the whole of which they owed to him. Tears of pride, hope, joy, and perhaps of gratitude as well, started from his glistening eyes, and he accepted. ”

“ Lord God! you will die of the heat. Our roads are so rough! Come to the house; I will pour the first glass for you, and then I will go, as your lordship kindly permits me to do so."
"My cousin will not go away until you are in the house," said Mila, in obedience to a meaning glance from the Piccinino.
The abbé, seeing that he could not get rid of his obsequious host except by complying with his wish, passed through the arbor without an opportunity to address a word or a glance to Mila; for the Piccinino, still playing the part of a respectful peasant and zealous host, walked between them. ”

“ Piccinni fell in love with a pupil, like him an Italian, Vicenza Sibilla. When he was twenty-eight he married her. His biographer Ginguené says: "She joined to the charms of her sex, a most beautiful and touching voice. All that happy disposition, assiduous study under so good a master could accomplish, especially when teacher and pupil loved each other passionately, and were equally impassioned for the art, which one taught, and the other learned, it is all that which you must imagine, to get an idea of the talent of Mme. Piccinni. ”

“ For these reasons it is far better to side with Niccolò Piccinino, particularly as the Duke of Milan has several times advised me to do so, and has just written me duplicate instructions, saying he will never give me Madonna Bianca, or anything else I desire from him, unless I am in perfect accord with and make an alliance with Niccolò Piccinino. This can be done to avoid all trouble. So I send [Pg 40] Battista my secretary with my conclusions for you to see, and have taken time enough to answer for the reply to come from Florence; for whatever you decide is to be done, will be well done. ”

“ That he should ever have been opposed, on equal terms, to Gluck, seems now incredible. Yet by numbers of contemporaries—critical and cultivated—he was reckoned Gluck's equal, and his superior by not a few. But his art was of kind that adapts itself to its age; Gluck's the art to which the age has, in time, to adapt itself. Novelty brings such an unavoidable shock, that originality may find itself, for the time, in opposition to 'good taste,' and the vero be less readily accepted than the ben trovato. Piccinni was no discoverer, but an accomplished and successful cultivator in the field of Art. ”

“ The Piccinino turned slowly toward Michel, and stared at him as if he had not previously seen him; then, taking from his belt a richly-mounted stiletto, he presented it to him with an almost imperceptible smile of irony and contempt, as if to say: "You are old enough and strong enough to defend yourself."
Michel, annoyed at being placed in such a position, was about to make a sharp retort, when Fra Angelo cut him short, placing his iron hand on his shoulder. ”

“ In all times, alas! the sparrow has yielded to the fascination of the vulture.
In all this the Piccinino gave way to an inborn passion for increasing the difficulties of an adventure to his profit, or simply for amusement. To be sure, he had no better way of enticing Abbé Ninfo to his house than by offering a bait to his lust. But he might well have chosen some other woman than the innocent Mila to play, with the aid of some slight resemblance or of a similar costume, the part of the person who was to appear in his garden. ”

“ The Piccinino's situation and the circumstances of his capture were as follows. The murder of Abbé Ninfo had been executed and proclaimed with an insane audacity altogether contrary to the young chief's habitual prudence. To kill a man, and to boast of it by an inscription left upon the very spot where the crime was committed, instead of concealing his body and removing every trace of the deed—a very simple matter in a region like that of Ætna—was certainly a desperate performance, a sort of challenge hurled at destiny in a moment of frantic excitement. ”

“ At the end of the ventilating corridor, which ran from end to end of the upper floor, he opened a double door, the inner one being bound with iron, and ushered Mila into the truncated tower which he had incorporated into his house, so to speak, and where he had fitted up a dainty and mysterious boudoir.
No princess ever possessed one more sumptuous, more sweetly perfumed or adorned with rarer objects. But no artisan had ever put his hand to it. The Piccinino himself had concealed the walls beneath hangings of Oriental silk stitched with gold and silver. ”

“ Could so young a maid risk a tête-à-tête of this sort without a moment of fear or embarrassment?
The Piccinino, observing that she had a very beautiful ring on her finger, and thinking that he could follow the thread of her thoughts by following the direction of her glances, said to her, with a smile: "You love jewels, my dear Mila, and, like all girls, you think more of personal adornment than of anything else in this world. My mother left me a few trinkets of some value, which are in that lapis lazuli casket by your side. ”

“ The Piccinino had never seen a beautiful woman without being disturbed and restless until he had examined her carefully, in order that he might cease to think of her if her beauty was imperfect, or cast his net over her if her style of beauty succeeded in inflaming his disdainful heart, a strange compound of love and indolence, energy and torpor. Few men of twenty-five have lived so chaste and self-restrained a life as the bandit of Ætna ”

“ Michel saw that the Capuchin had touched the right chord at last; for when he was appealed to as the son of the Prince of Castro-Reale, a title which nobody dared or chose to give him openly, the Piccinino started, sat up and sprang to his feet as if he were ready to start at once. But suddenly he put his hand to his leg and fell back on the couch.
"It is impossible," he said, "I am in too much pain."
"What is the matter?" asked Fra Angelo. "Are you wounded? Is that spent ball of last year still troubling you? In the old days we used to march with bullets in our bodies. ”

“ In this same war of operatic schools and composers which raged in Paris upon the reforms of Gluck, the Italian composer Piccinni was haled to the front as an unwilling opponent of Gluck.
The world is needlessly cruel to those who happen to interfere in any way with the favourites of posterity, and Piccinni's name is a byword in the history of music. ”

“ Farewell for the present, Michelangelo Lavoratori!"
"I tell you that he is your brother!" repeated the princess, earnestly; "your father's son and not Pier-Angelo's; the son of a woman whom you cannot insult by your contempt, and who could not have listened to you without committing a crime and an act of madness. Do you not understand me?"
"No, signora," said the Piccinino, with a shrug; "I cannot understand the fables that come to your mind at this moment to save your lover's life. If this poor boy is my father's son, so much the worse for him ”

“ Piccinni, without delay, set about the music of her pas, and produced a gavot, which was considered one of the most charming things in the Opera.
When Piccinni started for the theatre, the night of the first representation, he took leave of his family as if he had been going to execution. His wife and son wept abundantly, and all his friends were in a state of despair.
"Come, my children," said Piccinni, at last; "this is unreasonable. Remember that we are not among savages. We are living with the politest and kindest nation in Europe. ”

“ I am surprised to find nothing against your father, Mila. Ah! yes, here it is! The signor abbé's measures were all taken to strike his great blow. This evening Pier-Angelo Lavoratori and—Fra Angelo too!—Ah! you reckoned without your host, my friend! You did not know that the Piccinino will never allow a finger to be laid on that shaven head! How ill-informed you were! Why, Mila, this man, whom people look upon as a monster of iniquity, is nothing but an idiot, upon my word! ”

“ I talked to him during the ball, on the main staircase, and the Marquis della Serra, who was escorting me, complimented him, as I did myself, upon his paintings. From that moment down to this very evening Michel had never seen me; ask himself! You are not a man whom one can deceive, captain; use your perspicacity, and I will trust it."
The Piccinino quivered with pleasure at this concise declaration, made with the assurance which truth alone can give, and he pressed Agatha's hand against his breast with such force that she detected his sentiments at last. ”

“ He could, when Gluck died, strive to organise a memorial festival in his honour, and when his other rival, Sacchini, was taken from the arena by death, he could deliver the funeral eulogy. This Sacchini, by the bye, was a reckless voluptuary, who seems never to have married.
Piccinni was the very beau ideal of a father and a husband. He and his wife, who was a singer of exquisite skill and a teacher of ability, gave little home concerts, which were events. They and their many children went through more vicissitudes than have fallen to the lot of many musicians ”

“ Agatha had conquered. The bandit's head was completely turned, and another passion, which was contending with greed in his heart, gained the upper hand in a twinkling. He put both of the signora's trembling hands to his lips and bestowed upon them a kiss so long and so passionate that Michel and the marquis himself shuddered. Another hope than that of wealth took possession of the Piccinino's brain. A violent passion had sprung to life within him on the night of the ball, when he saw her admired and coveted by so many men whom she did not even deign to notice, himself included ”

“ But the real Piccinino, the one who styles himself the justicier d'aventure, and who directs all the operations of the brigands of the mountain; the man whom nobody knows and as to whom, if he should be captured, it would be impossible to prove that he had ever been the leader or a member of the band, is a handsome, well-educated, eloquent, dissipated and cunning young man; the same Carmelo Tomabene with whom you talked at the fountain."
Mila was so thunderstruck that she almost determined not to go on with her story. ”