Mascagni.org presents a new original document: Intermezzo From
The Eternal City, a four-page insert published in the San
Francisco Examiner on December 7, 1902, Mascagni's birthday.
The Intermezzo presented here is just one and a half page
long, the remaining one and a half page featuring a movement from
Act IV. This is in fact the central part of a piece called
Valley of the Shadow, an intermezzo to Act II, the first
bars of which appear on the first page of the document. The actual
score has the following commentary:
Nothing can stop Roma's destiny. She has met David Rossi
and has fallen in love with him. An overwhelming passion is
the result of their intercourse, and her past and her present
are forgotten in the hopes she builds for her future with the
man of whom she is enamoured.
Mascagni wrote incidental music for Hall Caine's play The
Eternal City in the summer of 1902. At the time this document
was published, he was in the middle of his troubled North American
tour, during which he would regularly perform excerpts from his
latest composition.
While the piano score for The Eternal City is still
available, the orchestral score remains lost.
