75. Canto d'anime (Pagina d'album)

On 15 April 1903, Puccini entered into a contract with the “Gramophone Company (Italy), Ltd.” for the compo- sition of a “Song for one voice, for exclusive reproduction on the Gramophone or other talking machines.” Puccini’s contacts with Alfred Michaelis, the Italian representative of the English record company, go back a few months earlier when Puccini asked Michaelis to provide him with records of Japanese music that could be helpful to him for the composition of Madama Butterfly (74).
On 27 April 1903, Puccini asked Luigi Illica, then his principal librettist, to write a text for that record commission, but obviously was unsatisfied for a long time with Illica’s work on the text of the song.Note: *See Carteggi 1958 No. 346, footnote 1, and Puccini’s unpublished letter to Illica, presumably from 29 June 1903 (I-PCc, Fondo Illica, No. 219). Illica procrastinated and apparently did nothing more on this project. Since Puccini, too, had enough to do with the completion of Madama Butterfly, it was only on 10 February 1904 that he repeated his request for a text from Illica (see Carteggi 1958 No. 346), and after finishing the preliminary changes in Madama Butterfly, he finally tended to the composition of Canto d’animeNote: *See Puccini’s unpublished letter to Illica of 24 March 1904 (I-PCc, Fondo Illica, No. 274). which was finished in April 1904 (see 75.B.1).
Concerning Puccini’s attitude toward recordings and the inherent problems dealing with copyright matters, there is an extensive documentation in Kaye 1987, pp. 93-104.