This text is the work of Luigi Illica, the foremost Italian librettist of the era, stagewise and shrewd about what might bring forth music of vocally dramatic impact. To read through it is to find oneself caught up in what I think of as the d’Annunzio-fied world of Italian culture in that time. Nearly every page of it includes, in addition to the dialogue and stage directions, fevered commentary on the proceedings. On the pages of the act divisions appear extended prose-poem epigraphs—far beyond, for example, the brief passages from Murger that Illica intersperses with the acts of his La Bohème. These are odes, inspirational homilies, that seek to transport us into a state at once sensuous, numinous, and exalted, yet somehow philosophical as well. At the outset we are told that “La luce è l’idioma degli eterni” (“Light is the idiom of the eternals”), and that only the innocent, pure like the light, can comprehend the warm language of the Sun. As the Sun appears, it brings Iris out of the realm of dreams, where she often dwells; indeed, she seems to live in the borderland between dream and wakefulness, and is at times not sure where she is, just as she seems not to distinguish among dolls, puppets, and people, or between the events and persons of a play and those of “real life.” She is not far from a Maeterlinck character, and this opposition of the light and clarity from above versus the dark and murk here below is not far from the mystical struggle toward the light in a Maeterlinck drama.

Iris is given a great deal to sing in the first two acts, including some extended solos, but they are not of the instantly memorable sort, and so are seldom heard out of the full-performance  context. The closest to an exception is “Un dì, ero piccina,” also called the Aria della piovra, for reasons that will soon be evident. The set-up for this piece, sung in the Act 2 brothel, is this (stay with me here): In Act 1, Iris had been drawn into the puppet play by the pathetic predicament of its heroine, oppressed by a cruel father. But the hope of rescue dawns with an offstage serenade sung by the unseen Osaka in the guise of Jor, “son of the Sun.” Now, hearing Osaka’s voice, she at first confuses him with Jor. In passionate terms, Osaka declares himself to be “Pleasure!”, and this word (“Il Piacere!“) suddenly unlocks a childhood memory for Iris. One day, at the temple, she saw a beautiful screen full of symbols suggesting a mystery. It depicted a dead sea, the color of bronze; a sky of livid red, like blood; and a beach of grey and black. On this shore, a young woman encounters an octopus (piovra) whose tentacles entangle her. Though she struggles against the entrapment, she also smiles, and her spasms resemble laughter. At last, with a final spasm, she smiles again and dies. A priest of the temple instructs the young Iris: “That octopus was Pleasure! That octopus was Death!” As her narrative concludes, Iris bursts into tears and begs to return to her home and father.