Perennial

For at least a generation modernistic esthetes and masterminds have been prophesying a speedy decline for the sentimental operas of the late Giacomo Puccini. Sensible critics,*however, have often pointed out that, though they may be bathetic, Puccini's operas are masterpieces of musical stagecraft, shaped by one of the surest hands that ever penned an aria. Meanwhile Tosca, La Boheme, and Madame Butterfly have been played incessantly wherever opera is given. During his lifetime, Composer Puccini made a fortune from them--a rare feat for a composer of serious music--and today they are still tops on the list of operatic bestsellers.

Most thoroughgoing biography of Puccini, to date, is that of Austrian Critic Richard Specht, which appeared in an English translation five years ago (Alfred Knopf). To it was added last week a genial book of personal reminiscence by Vincent Seligman,t son of Puccini's close friend, Sybil Seligman, a British-born musical amateur. Without attempting to rival Biographer Specht's scholarship. Biographer Seligman gives a more intimate picture of a fastidious, cultured musician who was loved by a fearsomely jealous wife, who himself loved motorboats, feminine society, high-powered automobiles.

*Including sometimes-sensible Critic George Bernard Shaw, who hailed Puccini as the successor of the great Giuseppe Verdi, when Puccini's Manon Lescaut was given its first London performance in 1894.

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