Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 189, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1919 — WRITES NEW NOVEL OPERA [ARTICLE]

WRITES NEW NOVEL OPERA

Mascagni’s Latest Effort Is Revolutionary Step. Has No Characters, but Represents Ideas for Which Men Have Striven. Rome. —-Pietro Mascagni, known to everyone as the composer of “Cavalleriti Rusticana” and numerous other musical works, has written a new opera. “D Piccolo Marat," which is characterized here as distinctly a revolutionary step in operatic works. It contains no personalities as characters In the story, but it substitutes for them symbolic representations of virtues and Ideals similar tn the American pageant. / **j expect to produce my new opera ffprt winter ill Rome," said Signor Mascagni to the Associated Press correspondent. "The theme is founded on

the conflict of the ideas between the autocrat and the democrat, between oppression and freedom. The time of the opera, of course, is not limited to any one period. The opera is symbolic of many periods and would Just as readily apply to the stirring times of the American Revolution as it would to the French revolution, or the Russian or the Ravarian. “I have no characters in the production representing any particular personalities. There is no Napoleon, Metternich or Garibaldi. My characters represent the ideas for which men have endeavored to beep man In subjection. There is a character for Justice, for truth, for freedom; and, on the other hand, for tyranny, for Ignorance, for wrong. The plan In my new work has been to depict in song the evolution of man from a slave to a free man through the Instrumentality of characters representing the abstract qualities for which man fought, and.

on the eontiary, the qualities he fought against.”