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Musical Courier 1927-10-27: Vol 95 Iss 17, 1927
74 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE CITY OF BELLINI
2By Adelina O'Connor Thomason
3Copyrighted, 1927, by The Musical Courier Company
5"Who does not love Bellini, does not love music."—Arrigo Boito
7So wrote the great librettist. I saw the letter amongst others of noted musicians, composers, actors, and actresses, men and women of literature, statesmen, and diplomats, all awaiting a place of honor in the Bellini House, which in September of this year was opened as a National Museum of Bellini Memorials, in the ancient city of his birth, Catania, Sicily.
9One hundred years ago it was, and more, when the brilliant young boy, Vincenzo Bellini, left a humble home to travel the long journey to Naples and enter the Conservatory of Music, the funds for study being supplied by the people of his little city and Prince Magnelli, Mayor of the Province of Catania.
11At that time there were four prominent schools of music in Naples. The Conservatory of St. Mary of Loreto, St. Onofrio, St. Sebastian, and Pietà dei Turchini (Tears of Heaven); but shortly thereafter all four were merged into one, occupying an ancient graying monastery, attached to a still more ancient church, on a narrow street of the same name, "St. Peter and Maiella."
13Though the Conservatory is called "St. Peter and Maiella," the name of Bellini is so intimately associated with this shrine of music that to think of it is to think of Bellini, for everywhere within its ancient walls one is ever reminded that Vincenzo Bellini is its brightest shining star alumnus, and were it called the Bellini Conservatory it could not be more entirely a memorial to his young genius.
15"The Angel Boy" was composed here, Andelson and Salvini, and a blaze of reflected glory fell full upon the gray old walls. The Pirate and The Stranger followed, and the young Bellini became the idol of musical Italy.
17Christmas morning bright and early I set forth to visit this famous old academy. Christmas may seem an inappropriate time for such a visit, but the joyous holiday is not celebrated with festivity in Naples; instead a solemn melancholy hangs in the dove colored air; the streets are crowded with hooded and sandalled priests, and all the good people go on foot to pray and worship in the thousand churches of the city.
19By way of the ancient Piazza Dante I passed under a gloomy arch, the Via Porta Alba, and on to another crumbling archway and another, to find a little green Piazza Bellini, only a circle of grass and cobble stones; but in the center rose a marble figure of the boy composer. Narrow alleys led away in all directions from the small piazza and through one of these, the Via Constantinople, I crept to a still narrower cobbled lane where a sign swung low on a shelving wall; St. Peter and Maiella; and I stopped to marvel that a little street could be so dirty.
21A book store was there—a tiny curiosity shop peering eerily out of a doorway. The old woman who kept the place was fat and indifferent, and not at all interested as to how I might find my way into the Conservatory; but a brown robed, bare-footed priest who idled amongst the books, was delighted to talk about the school and its hundreds of young musicians who come there from every nation under the sun, including my own United States; and he cordially offered to walk with me down the long length of the narrow street to the door of the Monastery.
23The rough cobbled way from the bookstore is lined with grim, straight standing stone houses; perpendicularly from the street they rise. No sidewalks here! Blinds were all tightly shut, but wide doors stood hospitably open, and swarms of chubby babies rolled around in the sun. No fear of automobiles in this small, thickly settled lane. A trundling donkey, saddle-bag laden, would do well to meander along his way, and not get bumped by the close crowding walls on either side.
25It being Christmas I invited the padre to take a little holiday refreshment with me at one of the very numerous confectionery shops along the street, and with many smiles and bows he signified that he would be very pleased indeed to take a cup of "caffee espresso" and we stopped at a toy cafe. The young girl presiding at the coffee fountain handed over great pieces of yellow cake, saturated in rum, and refused with a splendid gesture any pay from the hostess of the holy Father. "No!" It was an honor to serve us, by the grace of God, on Christmas morning.
27The Conservatory stretched a long, low, stolid length along the street of St. Peter and Maiella. A forbidding entrance, stone-paved, stone-walled, stone-roofed, led to a tiny vestibule, and here the good priest said good-bye to me.
29A porter hunched over a charcoal foot-warmer. He wore a shapeless blue cap whose front bore the insignia of a harp and he scanned my letter of introduction with nearsighted eyes. The credentials appearing satisfactory to him, he ushered me through a thick wooden door. Behold! Dirt and squalor in the street outside—royal grandeur and elegance beyond it. In a splendid open courtyard palm trees waved softly and flowers bloomed about a fountain. A granite figure of Beethoven, heroic in size, sat moodily on a pedestal in a far grassy corner; sepulchral in appearance it was, and wrapped in yards and yards of thin white cloth. The weary figure has been waiting in the open many a long year for an official unveiling; has waited so long that its granite base can scarcely be seen for the thick ivy growth that covers it! But time is long in Italy! There is no hurry, and eventually the monument will be placed in the new Concert Hall in the Conservatory, when that hall is finally made ready.
31I asked the porter the name of the sculptor of this huge and splendid work. He said he thought the poor man was dead. Other attendants who mysteriously appeared from somewhere declared the maker had been there the day before. Under the ivy I found the name, famous in Italy—Francesco Jerace.
33An old bell hung on a rusty chain. My ancient blue porter gave this a good pull to warn an inside man, buried and hidden somewhere in the vast cloister, that a stranger was coming. A door swung wide, and we proceeded up a broad stone stair. The floors and frescoes of this old convent remain today brilliantly gorgeous in mosaics and color, perfect, though done in the year 1193. The Director of the Conservatory, Signor Cilea, to whom I was conducted, declared that he was glad to see me, and with much slow ceremony conducted me through long stretches of magnificent palatial galleries, halls, and rooms lined with paintings and statues of all the celebrated composers, musicians and singers of the world, of their day and generation, through complete museums, where my eyes rested first on one quiet precious memorial and then on another more precious and sacred. In a solemn corner stood the little piano of Pai-siello; the gaily painted trumpet of Rossini's father, town crier and trumpeter of Pesaro, stared out of a big case, and there was an idle red-wood piano on a low raised platform. Inside the lid I read the pin scratched words: "On this dear old thing I wrote Semiramide. G. Rossini."
35Four deep window-shaded salons are set apart in the Conservatory to the eternal memory of four great men, whose careers were bound up with the Institution, Rossini, Donizetti, Cimarosa, and Bellini. Each room was vast, and richly furnished—brilliant with memories of the composer for which it is named.
37A red velvet hung cabinet in the Bellini Salon holds the original manuscripts of Norma and Sonnambula, each autographed with the delicate pen of the master. His quill lies there beside his crystal inkstand, and, above the wide door a lovely portrait looks down with smiling eyes, vividly blue. His hair is curly gold and he wears a ruffled collar after the fashion of the day. The maroon velvet coat is all gold-leaf embroidered and a velvet ribbon with a cross hangs about the lace trimmed frilly collar of his cloak.
39The sunny Christmas Day passed in Naples, and it was a drizzly coldish winter evening when I boarded a small white steamer for the night's journey to the enchanted Island of Sicily—alone and three cornered, out in the blue Mediterranean. Darkness had fallen when the steamer pulled away from the shivering unsheltered pier and the city rose, electric lighted, in tiers to the sky, while the gray cone of the near-by crater of Vesuvius smoked and smoked, like an eternal pipe.
41A few stray Americans were on board looking cold and homesick, and a number of English and Germans, Italians and Frenchmen! A band of broken-down musicians sang for us in the ship's little rolling salon, loud harmonies in a strange English. It's a longa, longa way to Tipperary, and Dixie and The Suane River.
43In the earliest morning Sicily was in sight, and the superb city of Palermo, curving about the shore in a sapphire ring. Mountains loomed beyond, gray and orange colored in the blue air, and valleys between were yellow with lemons and tangerines and pomegranates, and the perfume of fruit and jasmine hung heavily over the Bay.
45For Cantania the traveller boards a good railroad train in Palermo and in stylish comfort proceeds around the winding shell of the Mediterranean shore, down the coast southward, amidst flowers and fruit orchards, where giant lemons bump against the train windows. I was not taking the road by the sea this sunny winter morning, but instead climbed into a high old-fashioned narrow gauge wooden steam car, which crosses the heart of Sicily over the plains, crawls up the mountains and cuts into the interior country, where the soil is arid, the sun burning hot, and water scarce. A barren country it is, waste, dry, and poverty-stricken; but Catania lies nearest this way in a straight line across the Island.
47Rocky mountains rise abruptly, beyond Palermo, and there were occasional pack-mule teams toiling slowly over. Picturesque, well-armed mounted police with broad sombrero hats silhouetted darkly against the skyline at intervals; for this wild, lonely part of Sicily is the reputed land of the sinister Black Hand and the Banditti.
49Giant growths of cacti crowded the train tracks. At the infrequent lonely stations never a woman or a child was to be seen—just a herd of goats, or sheep, a solitary shepherd and his dog and then long miles of utter solitude.
51It was an all-day journey across the island, and at an early hour in the evening my shabby train of little cars drew into the station shed of one of the oldest cities in the world, Catania, crouched below the ever menacing volcano of Etna—snow-white smouldering fiery Etna.
53Arriving was not unlike arriving at any city. Hotel porters in shabby old uniforms shouted and grabbed shabby luggages. Everything seemed old and shabby, and I rattled in a shabby one-horse shay over an uneven pavement, away from the brightly lighted station square. The cab dived suddenly into a little pitch black alley, and the alley dived into an open market, which at this hour of the night was in full operation. Only the men were in the streets making the purchases; not a woman was in sight. In Sicily women are not to be seen in the market or in any public place, nor on the streets, after the early afternoon; therefore it is not hard to understand why the market at Catania was being conducted at night, the men doing the purchasing after the day's work was done.
55In this night market I saw a Sicilian "caretto," the famous two-wheeled cart of Sicily. It is a gay painted small wagon, swung steeply from the ground, and hitched to its bright colored body a mangy little donkey, smaller than he ought to be, pulls and strains under a heavy load. The poor little brown beast is always tiny for the size of the cart which he is pulling and he wears a huge and heavy harness of leather, silver trimmed, with feathers and cockades, and scores and scores of jingling bells, with ostrich head plumes waving and red velvet blinders with insets of mirror glass jewelling gleaming across his poor small forehead.
57Though the peasant is poor, his cart is richly painted, as it has been in Sicily for one thousand years and more in history; and it is a thing of great rustic beauty, ornate and multicolored.
59In this night market there were many gaudy carts piled high with golden produce. A tin, holding a dripping candle, on the donkey's back, gave light for trading, and the enterprising stalls were all doing a thriving business in large chestnuts, almonds, oranges and lemons, and other products of Catania's lava soil; for Catania owes her existence to the lava which has repeatedly destroyed her.
61Seven times in history the mighty overwhelming volcano of Etna has erupted and buried Catania, and seven times a new city has risen on the ashes of the old. The street-pavings, the Cathedral, the many churches, and the homes and public buildings are constructed of the black gray lava, which in the eruption of 1669 poured out a scorching stream and destroyed Catania; but gardens now bloom, once more, in the lava soil, and fountains splash in lava basins.
63My cab drew slowly out of the noise and color and beauty of the marketplace, and turned toward an illuminated square, where a great sculptured marble group rose magnificently white—a memorial to Bellini. Norma was there and the Pirate and the Puritans and the lovely sleep-walking Amina, all grouped below a figure of the handsome young composer.
65A wide avenue, the Via Etna, led away, and at its distant end, straight ahead, a snow-white mountain loomed, plainly visible in the moonlight; Etna the Terrible, white and smoking; encircled by a belt of snow. Its high crater constantly belched forth clouds of smoke and, at intervals, spouts of fire.
67Catania was brilliant with white globes of light all down the Via Etna and around the Bellini Square, which make up the modern city; but the streets and narrow alleys of the poor were as black and mysterious as ever they were in mediaeval days. It was late night by now, and I was glad to seek my room in the little Inn, "Bellini," with its lava floor, lava walls, and lava ceiling! and I fell asleep in a chilly bed, looking forward to the warm sun of the morning, trusting that in the interval, Etna would not bury the city for the eighth time.
69A vast blooming public garden lay directly opposite my hotel, and through this I walked in the early morning to see near its entrance gate, amidst masses of flowers, a marble bust on a thin white pedestal, "Bellini," and the name of Bellini was planted in small evergreens on a sloping hillside.
71The city was not yet awake. The streets were ripe with cows and goats; the natural milk-carts, whose owners gossiped together as they filled the empty wine or beer bottles let down by their customers on strings from high windows; the goats, meanwhile, playfully butting each other, or passing the time consuming fresh theatrical posters from a nearby wall.
73Like most other streets in Catania, one broad avenue, the
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