It appears that Illica had no direct Japanese source for his story. He was simply seized by the “bel Genio nipponico” that was then beginning to exert a fascination in the West, and by examples of Japanese art. Among these was a reproduction of a woodblock print, “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife,” by Hokusai, which was almost certainly the inspiration for the Aria della piovra.^(I) It does not take close inspection to recognize this scene as rather bizarre erotica, one in a famous series by Hokusai. (It apparently still serves as honored precursor in the Japanese porn industry.) This is an octopus-on-woman sexual encounter that, at least in Illica’s recounting, ends in the woman’s death—”con un estremo spasimo che par un riso” and “essa sorride e muor” would not seem to leave much doubt that Illica understood it that way, and that his innocent heroine has a proto-Freudian sense of this connection between sexual Pleasure and Death. Aside from the piquant discovery that we can draw a straight line from Iris to that droll James Bond entertainment Octopussy, I don’t derive much romantic stimulation from this connection, and between sex with an octopus, a dive into the sewer, and two repulsive male principals, I think we can see why this libretto has not been reckoned a great enchantment.

What did Mascagni make of it, though? Over 130 years later, his immediate change of direction after the instant triumph of Cavalleria Rusticana is still marveled at. In Verga’s tale he had found a tweaked specimen of the old narrative that pulled from him (in a very short time of creation) a score of sustained inspiration. Yet dramaturgically speaking, he swam away. The metanarrative had ruled for more than fifty years. New energies were about. Mascagni was very young. Within a year, he had produced his second most-successful opera, L’amico Fritz. It is a charming pastoral happy-ending piece that for its time and place of composition could already be considered mildly exotic (it takes place in an Alsatian Jewish community). But the atmosphere-to-action ratio has lengthened out; Mascagni’s strong strokes alternate with treading water. Now (1896), after a few near-abortive interim efforts, he comes to the Illica text outlined above, and is intrigued.

In The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Michele Girardi, writing about Iris and noting its predominance of atmosphere over action (characteristic of so many operas of that period), suggests that for that reason, the first act is more successful than the two that follow. That observation is one with which I would normally be inclined to concur, and Giudice has probably seen Iris in the theatre, as I have not. I can visualize a staging of the puppet play and abduction, and some of the developments involving Iris and Il Cieco, that might carry us through Act 1. And it’s necessary to keep in mind that until Act 3, so much depends on the strength of the spell cast by the principal soprano. Still: on the basis of two listenings and some attention to libretto and score, my impression is that most of this opera’s fascination—enough, I would think, to make it worth staging under the right circumstances—lies in Act 2 and, especially, Act 3.