im
from bringing an accusation of theft against Leoncavallo when
"Pagliacci" was announced for production in French at Brussels and of
beginning legal proceedings against the composer and his publisher on
that score. The controversy which followed showed very plainly that
Mendes did not have a leg to stand upon either in law or equity, and he
withdrew his suit and made a handsome amende in a letter to the editor
of "Le Figaro." Before this was done, however, Signor Leoncavallo wrote
a letter to his publisher, which not only established that the incident
in question was based upon fact but directed attention to a dramatic
use of the motif in a Spanish play written thirty-five years before the
occurrence which was in the mind of Leoncavallo. The letter was as
follows:--

Lugano, Sept. 3, 1894.

Dear Signor Sonzogno.

I have read Catulle Mendes's two letters. M. Mendes goes pretty far in
declaring a priori that "Pagliacci" is an imitation of his "Femme de
Tabarin." I had not known this book, and only know it now through the
accounts given in the daily papers. You will remember that at the time
of the first performance of "Pagliacci" at Milan in 1892 several
critics accused me of having taken the subject of my opera from the
"Drama Nuevo" of the well known Spanish writer, Estebanez. What would
M. Mendes say if he were accused of having taken the plot of "La Femme
de Tabarin" from the "Drama Nuevo," which dates back to 1830 or 1840?
As a fact, a husband, a comedian, kills in the last scene the lover of
his wife before her eyes while he only appears to play his part in the
piece.

It is absolutely true that I knew at that time no more of the "Drama
Nuevo" than I know now of "La Femme de Tabarin." I saw the first
mentioned work in Rome represented by Novelli six months after
"Pagliacci's" first production in Milan. In my childhood, while my
father was judge at Montalto, in Calabria (the scene of the opera's
plot), a jealous player killed his wife after the performance. This
event made a deep and lasting impression on my childish mind, the more
since my father was the judge at the criminal's trial; and later, when
I took up dramatic work, I used this episode for a drama. I left the
frame of the piece as I saw it, and it can be seen now at the Festival
of Madonna della Serra, at Montalto. The clowns arrive a week or ten
days before the festival, which takes place on August 15, to put up
their tents and booths in the open s