Ted Riccardi - Between the Thames and the Tiber

“The note is dated yesterday, Watson, and it is now eleven thirty. If we hurry, we shall watch as our young lady meets her padrone .”

We walked quickly down Via Condotti to Piazza di Spagna. The sun was hot and the snow was transformed into sparkling-clear rivulets that met at the central fountain. The Roman air was as clear as it had ever been. We sat at the Café Margutta, each of us with a large granità di mandorle in front of us.

“No one so far,” said Holmes as he glanced down Via Margutta.

“Here she comes, Holmes, dressed in her rags. And there from Via Babuino, her padrone , no doubt.”

He was a tall, thin gentleman, dressed in a long, light blue coat with velvet trim. His hair was blond, and he wore a long moustache and a goatee which gave his face the form of an almost perfect triangle. A look of recognition passed over Holmes’s face, but he said nothing.

The couple embraced after running towards each other. The man wrapped her in a shawl and hailed a cab. Holmes and I followed them briefly at a safe distance. Their driver went down the Corso, through Piazza Venezia, to the gate of the Villa Orsini, where they left their cab and continued on foot into the villa.

“We won’t follow them for now,” said Holmes. “Come, Watson. The musical aspects of the case now thrust themselves on us. Let us return to Monsieur Murger and our quarters.”

Murger was still asleep on the couch when we arrived. Holmes moved quietly to his bookshelves where he kept his collection of musical scores.

“You will see now, Watson, the value of my collection of opera scores, at least for a first assault on the problem of the two Bohème s.” I helped him carry the most recently acquired scores from the bottom of an old almirah where he kept them in a large pile.

“Here we have, Watson, all of the major operas of the last decade or so, in both orchestral and piano scores. And here are the two delivered to Puccini and Leoncavallo. We remove as well their own operas from the pile, leaving us with the composers whose work is well known to the public and among whom we may find the culprit. The composers are Boito, Catalani, Cilea, Mascagni, Zandonai, and Giordano. We have twenty scores here, all of which I intend to read through rapidly to find the author of the two fraudulent ones.”

“Holmes, I flatter myself even if I say that I am musically illiterate, but I have no idea what you are looking for. What indeed are you looking for? These are only so many names, none of which is known outside Italy,” said I, with the full intention of annoying him.

“Very simple, my dear fellow. You are letting your concern over your admittedly tin ear detract from your reason, and reason always wins in the end. In the realm of art and music, it is reason that rules, and the rules that operate are those of observation and deduction, as they do everywhere Let us see if I can cast some light on the present problem. You agree, initially at least, that the culprit—what shall we call him, this ingenious rogue who can mimic, forge even, the art of Italy’s greatest composers? Let us call him Cagliostro, after the great charlatan—must be a composer in his own right, one of great talent at least, schooled in all the musical disciplines: harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration. In this case, he must also have the ability to compose his own libretti, or he must have one who is complicit in his misdeeds, shall we say.”

I decided to flaunt my knowledge, meager as it was, and use some of the oddments about music that I had collected by questioning him. “But only one composer has written his own libretti and that was the German Richard Wagner.”

“Indeed, old boy, but you noticed quickly that I have omitted all composers who are not Italian.”

“And why is that? Surely they would be competent.”

“Competent is an excellent term to describe what might be the work of someone foreign to Italy who attempted to forge an Italian opera. The attempt would fail miserably. The scaffolding would be there but not the individual creative impulse. It would be the equivalent of a Rembrandt trying to be a Michelangelo. It would be immediately discovered. Despite their abilities, composers such as Massenet, Bizet, Charpentier, even Wagner, could not pull it off. Their individual ‘sound’ would give any one of them away. Also, there would be little motive, whereas among the Italians one could predict without exaggeration a certain rivalry, shall we say?”

“But Holmes, what about the similarity of some of Dvořák’s Rusalka to Puccini’s La Rondine ? Isn’t there an aria—Doretta’s, I believe—that comes close to being a copy by Puccini of Dvořák’s melody?”

“You astonish me, old boy, you have been listening and learning. You raise a valid point, however. The answer is simple: It is the use of the piano as an orchestral instrument that marks this similarity, nothing more.”

Holmes was silent for a moment, and I thought that he might wish to be alone when he said, “I thank you, old fellow, for your questions. Please note once more that I have excluded Verdi from the list, though musically he is as qualified as the others. But he is old and unconcerned with other people’s work. Leave me now, for I have precious little time to consider this problem before we go to meet its creator.”

Holmes was soon lost in his scrutiny of the scores piled in front of him. Every so often he would stand up from his work and pace through our sitting room, but he said nothing. It was only after about five hours of intense effort that he said, “I am getting close, Watson, and I am pretty sure that I have identified the culprit. And I know his motive. Let me work a little longer and I will test my solution on you.”

I watched him as he took a last few notes. “Come, Watson, and listen to my solution to this musical puzzle. My method has been simplicity itself: to find in the Bohème forgeries and in the forger’s own published opera music, as well as in the compositions of the other leading composers, similar musical usages of such rare occurrence that the forger himself unwittingly might have allowed them to appear in the stolen music. In some instances he may have baited his hook consciously in order to tease and mislead, thereby throwing the investigator off the track. Now, as I expected, that no such rarities occur in the works of Catalani, Cilea, Mascagni, or Zandonai is no surprise, since the caliber of their work is far below that of Puccini and Leoncavallo. I must say that I am surprised that Mascagni is out on the first round. While his music is pleasant, it shows no élan, and beyond Cavalleri a there is only Iris , of which there is little to be said.”

“Who then are left? I must say that I can barely keep their names straight.”

“Don’t bother, Watson. Follow my reasoning, not the names of the composers. What I want, dear fellow, is your critique of the argument. Shall I go on?”

“Please do, Holmes.”

“If I am correct, the remaining composers are still under consideration: Boito, Ponchielli, and Giordano. In my judgement, these three are the equal of Puccini and Leoncavallo. Their output is small, but the quality is high. In the coming years, the works of the first group will disappear from the stage, their main arias being the only portion to be widely remembered. Boito, Ponchielli, and Giordano, however, will be performed increasingly.”

“I say, Holmes, I am still troubled by the absence of the greatest of all operatic composers, to wit, Giuseppe Verdi. Surely, he deserves a place in your reasoning.”

“Thank you, dear Watson. No doubt, he deserves a place on historical grounds, but the old man is now an eighty-year-old Orpheus hard at work on Falstaff , his greatest masterpiece. His transition to a late style has evoked much talk, particularly his use of orchestral textures reminiscent of the verismo school. More to the point, he has never had any interest in the rivalries of composers. Quite the contrary not even Wagner troubled him in the least.”