pretext, but because he has crossed the love-path of a leader of the
revolution.

When Giordano composed "Siberia," he followed the example of Mascagni
and Puccini (if he did not set the example for them) by seeking local
color and melodic material in the folk-songs of the country in which
his scene was laid. Puccini went to Japan for musical ideas and devices
to trick out his "Madama Butterfly" as Mascagni had done in "Iris."
Giordano, illustrating a story of political oppression in "Siberia,"
called in the aid of Russian melodies. His exiles sing the
heavy-hearted measures of the bargemen of the Volga, "Ay ouchnem," the
forceful charm of which few Russian composers have been able to resist.
He introduced also strains of Easter music from the Greek church, the
popular song known among the Germans as "Schone Minka" and the "Glory"
song (Slava) which Moussorgsky had forged into a choral thunderbolt in
his "Boris Godounoff." It is a stranger coincidence that the "Slava"
melody should have cropped up in the operas of Giordano and Moussorgsky
than that the same revolutionary airs should pepper the pages of
"Madame Sans-Gene" and "Andrea Chenier." These operas are allied in
subject and period and the same style of composition is followed in
both.

Chenier goes to his death in the opera to the tune of the
"Marseillaise" and the men march past the windows of Caterina
Huebscher's laundry singing the refrain of Roget de Lisle's hymn. But
Giordano does not make extensive use of the tune in "Madame Sans-Gene."
It appears literally at the place mentioned and surges up with fine
effect in a speech in which the Duchess of Dantzic overwhelms the proud
sisters of Napoleon; but that is practically all. The case is different
with two other revolutionary airs. The first crash of the orchestra
launches us into "La Carmagnole," whose melody provides the thematic
orchestral substratum for nearly the entire first scene. It is an
innocent enough tune, differing little from hundreds of French
vaudeville melodies of its period, but Giordano injects vitriol into
its veins by his harmonies and orchestration. With all its innocence
this was the tune which came from the raucous throats of politically
crazed men and women while noble heads tumbled into the bloody sawdust,
while the spoils of the churches were carried into the National
Convention in 1793, and to which "several members, quitting their
curule chairs, took the hands of girls flaunting