Social Victorians/Timeline/1910s

1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s-30s

1910

May 1910

Friday, 1910, 6 May, Edward VII, King of England, died. Saturday, 1910, 7 May, The Abbey Theatre in Dublin did not close for Edward VII's death, so Annie Horniman cut them off.

June 1910

Summer 1910: W. B. Yeats summered with Lady Gregory at Coole Park 1897-1917 or so, until WBY bought the Tower at Ballylee. (I got this from Wade?).

September 1910

1910, 26 September, George Pollexfen died.

December 1910

Sometime in December 1910, Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot," illustrated by Gilbert Holiday, was published in the Strand (Baring-Gould II 509).

1911

June 1911

Summer 1911: W. B. Yeats summered with Lady Gregory at Coole Park 1897-1917 or so, until WBY bought the Tower at Ballylee. (I got this from Wade?).

1912

Sometime in 1912, Florence Farr moved to Ceylon "to accept a position as Principal of Ramanathan College for Hindu Girls. According to W. B. Yeats, in the words of 'All Souls' Night', she

Preferred to teach a school
Away from Neighbour or friend
Among dark skins, and there
Permit foul years to wear,
Hidden from eyesight, to the unnoticed end. (Harper 74 175, n. 17)

June 1912

Summer 1912: W. B. Yeats summered with Lady Gregory at Coole Park 1897-1917 or so, until WBY bought the Tower at Ballylee. (I got this from Wade?).

1913

Summer 1913: W. B. Yeats summered with Lady Gregory at Coole Park 1897-1917 or so, until WBY bought the Tower at Ballylee. (I got this from Wade?).

1914

Summer 1914: W. B. Yeats summered with Lady Gregory at Coole Park 1897-1917 or so, until WBY bought the Tower at Ballylee. (I got this from Wade?).

1915

Summer 1915: W. B. Yeats summered with Lady Gregory at Coole Park 1897-1917 or so, until WBY bought the Tower at Ballylee. (I got this from Wade?).

1916

Summer 1916: W. B. Yeats summered with Lady Gregory at Coole Park 1897-1917 or so, until WBY bought the Tower at Ballylee. (I got this from Wade?).

1917

1917, Florence Farr died, in Ceylon.

Summer 1917: W. B. Yeats summered with Lady Gregory at Coole Park 1897-1917 or so, until WBY bought the Tower at Ballylee. (I got this from Wade?).

1924

29 November 1924: Puccini died of cancer, age 66, in Brussels, having written 30 minutes of music beyond "Nessun Dorma" of Turandot (Johnson 39).

1926

25 April 1926 — Premiere of Turandot at La Scala, Milan, with Toscanini conducting. Puccini's pupil Alfano had finished the opera, but the premiere "ended on the last note which Puccini committed to the score. The conductor, Toscanini, then turned and addressed the audience. Accounts differ as to his exact words. According to one report they were: 'Here, at this point, Giacomo Puccini broke off his work. Death on this occasion was stronger than art.' Another report has him saying: 'At this point, the maestro laid down his pen.'" (Johnson 39).

"The first performance of Turandot on 25 April 1926 ended with Liù's cortège. Eugenio Gara, who was present, gives a firsthand report of Toscanini turning round to face the audience and saying 'in a voice hoarser than usual: Qui finisce l'opera, perché a questo punto il Maestro è morto' (The opera is ending here because at this point the Maestro died …). The appropriateness of Toscanini's gesture was generally appreciated because the evening was dedicated to Puccini, seventeen months after his death. Toscanini's words have been variously reported, but were frequently interpreted to suggest that Puccini had died shortly after composing the episode of Liù's death, which allowed the sentimental to regard the passage as Puccini's own requiem. The facts are quite otherwise, as we know: "Puccini had finished orchestrating the passage in late February 1924, nine months before he died, and in it he probably utilized material — the 'musichetta di sapore chinesa' — that dated from 1921, the first year of intense work upon the score.

Nor should it be overlooked that Toscanini's remarks could have served him as a diplomatic excuse for not conducting Alfano's ending to Turandot. Though Alfano's completion of Puccini's score was not performed on the evening of the prima assoluta, it had been played and sung at the prova generale, the dress rehearsal two days earlier, to which the critics many of them from abroad, had been admitted. It was no secret that Toscanini's dissatisfaction with Alfano's first attempt was because the conductor did not regard it as conforming sufficiently closely to his memory of Puccini's playing and discussion of the final duet in September 1924, and that a revision had been ordered." (Ashbrook and Power 152)

Works Cited

• Ashbrook, William, and Harold Powers. Puccini's Turandot: The End of the Great Tradition. Princeton Studies in Opera. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
• Baring-Gould
• Johnson, Frank. "Puccini Scores," National Review 23 July 1990: 39.