"Greedy Diversion"

Musical grave-robbing had been a flourishing trade even before Our Love (from the Romeo and Juliet overture) put Tchaikovsky on the jukeboxes. And nothing could be done about it by the shades of Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Chopin; their works were in the public domain. But supposedly the melodious music of Italy's Giacomo (La Boheme) Puccini, who died in 1924, was still safe. Not so.

Last week the New York Times uncovered a story that shocked U.S. music lovers. The Office of Alien Property, which seized the U.S. business of Puccini's Italian publishers as enemy property, had sold rights to the music to a Broadway producer, Milton Shubert.* Puccini's heirs and publishers were helpless.

Shubert got permission to lift music from any Puccini opera so long as he mixed nobody else's music in with it. The terms raised such a hue & cry that Attorney General Tom Clark rushed into print with an explanation. The U.S. had reserved a veto: if Shubert's score was not up to Puccini's "high artistic standards," the deal was off.

It was an explanation that did not satisfy such protesters as the Metropolitan Opera, Fiorello LaGuardia or Arturo Toscanini. Toscanini, longtime friend of Puccini, made public his telegram to President Truman: "[I] implore you to forbid this greedy diversion of great Italian musical art . . . you, who are a passionate lover of music. . . ."

* Puccini was no stranger to Broadway. He borrowed from Belasco plays for Madama Butterfly and The Girl of the Golden West.

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