Scene 3 In the desert the Prince is asleep, while Truffaldino is suffering from thirst. At the back of the stage stand the three stolen oranges, now grown large enough to contain human beings. Truffaldino is so desperate with thirst that he opens up one of them, and out steps a lovely princess named Linetta, who says she is dying of thirst. The second orange yields a second princess named Nicoletta, who is equally thirsty. In fact, they are both so thirsty that they die prettily right there and frighten Truffaldino into running away.
When the Prince awakens, he is not especially surprised to see a couple of pretty dead girls lying next to him; and when a quartet of soldiers conveniently happens to pass by, he orders an elegant funeral for them. When they have removed the bodies, he declares himself in love with the remaining orange and proceeds to cut it open. Out steps a third princess, this one named Ninetta, who is just as thirsty as her sisters were, though she does have breath enough to acknowledge her rescuer from thraldom and a keen interest in the Prince’s extravagant vows of love. However, she begins to faint away in his arms, whereupon the Reasonable Spectators descend upon the stage with a pail of water so that she may drink and the drama go on.
The Prince then announces their forthcoming nuptials and proposes to take his beloved directly to his father’s palace. She, however, refuses to go without a suitable wardrobe and sends him off to secure one. As soon as she is left alone, Fata Morgana, accompanied by Smeraldina, slinks in and stabs the girl in the head with a hatpin, changing her into a rat (or a pigeon, depending upon what production you are seeing). The powerful witch then instructs her black-faced assistant to impersonate the Princess.
The familiar March is heard once more; the whole court enters the scene; and Smeraldina announces herself as the Princess. The Prince knows better; he refuses to marry such an ugly girl; and the King, who claims that one must live up to his word, offers her his arm to lead her back to the palace.
ACT IV
Scene 1 In a brief scene before the curtain with cabalistic signs used in Act I, Fata Morgana and Celio argue violently. The Reasonable Spectators take a part in this argument, seize upon Fata Morgana, and shut her up in a box.
Scene 2 Back at the palace, in the throne room, Leandro and an assistant are making preparations for the return of the King; and when he arrives with his entourage, the curtains are drawn from before the throne—and there sits a huge rat (or pigeon, as the case may be). Everyone is shocked; but Celio’s magic—strengthened by his recent victory over Fata Morgana—is finally equal to the task of transforming the animal into its original form, that of the Princess Ninetta. While the Prince expresses his joy, Smeraldina is at a loss for explaining her presence satisfactorily. Finally, she is accused of being a conspirator with Leandro and Clarissa. The King decides that they are all traitors and must be hanged, and even the amiable Truffaldino’s pleas for mercy are in vain. However, as they are about to be seized, Fata Morgana appears in their midst; a trap door opens conveniently; and they disappear down it, presumably for the nether regions.
The King leads off with the toast: “God save the Prince and Princess,” and the opera closes with a repetition of the March.
LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR
(Lucy of Lammermoor)
Opera in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti with
libretto in Italian by Salvatore Cammarano,
based on Sir Walter Scott’s novel, The Bride
of Lammermoor
LORD ENRICO ASHTON OF LAMMERMOOR Baritone
LUCIA, his sister Soprano
ALISA, her companion Soprano or Mezzo-soprano
EDGARDO, Master of Ravenswood Tenor
LORD ARTURO BUCKLAW Tenor
RAIMONDO, chaplain of Lammermoor Bass
NORMANNO, follower of Ashton Tenor
Time: 1669
Place: Scotland
First performance at Naples, September 26, 1835
Scott’s novel The Bride of Lammermoor is seldom read nowadays, for it is not one of his best. It nevertheless attracted opera composers as a promising subject, three of them—Bredal, Carafa, and Mazzucato—having made use of it before Donizetti. None of the earlier versions survives on the boards, and of all of Donizetti’s works this is the one most frequently played.
He may have been additionally attracted to the subject because one of his grandfathers, Donald Izett, was a Scot. Nevertheless, for the purposes of opera, the names of Scott’s characters were sensibly changed to their more mellifluous Italian equivalents. Thus, Lucy becomes Lucia; Henry, Enrico; Edgar, Edgardo; but place names remain the same, and Ravenswood is Ravenswood still, though pronounced, “Rahvensvood.” Other changes were made, too, besides the necessary cutting. For instance, Scott’s Edgar meets a highly unoperatic end by wildly riding his horse into a quicksand. No tenor could sing two long arias ending in a high D-flat under such circumstances, and so Donizetti’s Edgardo quite conventionally stabs himself. An Italian tenor is sure to sing well given this advantage. The final aria, by the way, one of the best ever written by Donizetti, was tossed off in half an hour while the composer was suffering from a severe headache.
But the opera is a vehicle primarily for a coloratura soprano, not for the tenor, and many great sopranos have chosen it as a debut piece in New York. Among them were Patti, Sembrich, Melba, Barrientos, and Lily Pons. Both Pons and Sembrich also chose the role to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversaries of their respective debuts at the Metropolitan.
ACT I (“The Departure”)
Scene 1 In the garden of Lord Enrico Ashton’s castle a group of guards, under their leader Normanno, is searching for a prowler. While they are out beating the bushes, Enrico himself tells Normanno and the family chaplain, Raimondo, about his straitened circumstances. He hopes to improve them by arranging a marriage between his sister Lucia and the wealthy Lord Arturo Bucklaw. Unfortunately, Lucia is unwilling to cooperate. Normanno, having a shrewd suspicion as to the cause of Lucia’s unwillingness, tells of the day when a certain stranger saved her from a maddened bull and how the two meet secretly each morning in the park. That stranger is Edgardo of Ravenswood, who happens to be Enrico’s chief enemy.
At this opportune moment the guards return. They have caught sight of the trespasser but have been unable to apprehend him. However, they do report unequivocally that he is none other than Edgardo. The scene ends as Enrico energetically expresses his hatred of the man who is an enemy of the family and who threatens to upset his plans for Lucia’s marriage of convenience.
Scene 2 is introduced by an extremely pretty harp solo—perhaps suggesting the park where the scene takes place, perhaps the two pretty young women who are deep in earnest consultation beside the fountain. Lucia of Lammermoor tells her attendant, Alisa, a kind of ghost story about that fountain, and Alisa warns her that it would be better to give up the lover she meets at this place. But Lucia insists on her love for Edgardo and sings his praises. The story of the fountain is told in a smoothly flowing melody (Regnava nel silenzio) and her love is sung in the cabaletta of the aria (Quando rapita in estasi).
When Edgardo comes to meet his love, Alisa tactfully retires. He must, he says, depart for France; but before going, he would like to become reconciled with Enrico and tell him of his love. This idea frightens Lucia, who begs him not to do so. Edgardo bitterly recounts the reasons he has for hating the Ashtons, but the scene ends with a loving farewell duet (Verranno a te sull’ a ure) in which first Lucia, then Edgardo, then both together sing one of the finest melodies in this ever-melodious opera.
ACT II (“The Marriage Contract”)
Scene 1 Through a conversation between Enrico and Normanno that takes place in a hall of the castle of Lammermoor, we hear that all of Edgardo’s letters to Lucia have been intercepted. In addition, a letter has been forged to show that Edgardo has been unfaithful to Lucia and is now married to someone else. When Normanno retires, Enrico uses every device possible to persuade his sister to marry Arturo. He breaks her heart by showing her the forged
letter, and he adds that it is her duty to the family to marry her wealthy suitor. Poor Lucia never actually consents to the marriage, but she is too distracted to resist.
Scene 2 As a matter of fact, Lord Arturo is already at the castle, and the next scene takes place in the great hall. There is a festal wedding chorus; Arturo pledges his good faith; and when Lucia, still in tears, comes in, the marriage contract is signed.
Just at this point a heavily cloaked stranger enters. It is Edgardo, returned from France; and when he sees the signed marriage contract, he turns on Lucia and all his enemies in wrath, and with drawn sword. It is only the faithful old chaplain, Raimondo, who saves the wedding party from ending in bloodshed and murder. In the ensuing Sextet from Lucia, all the principals, not to mention the chorus of wedding guests, express their many conflicting emotions at the same time—and with stunning effect. At its close Edgardo marches angrily from the hall.
ACT III
Scene 1 Immediately following the wedding, Enrico visits Edgardo in his lonely room in the Wolfscrag tower to vilify him and to taunt him with the details of the ceremony. The two men defy each other heroically and, in the final duet, agree to meet at dawn to fight a duel among the moldering tombstones of Ravenswood. The scene is usually omitted in performance.
Scene 2 The assembled wedding guests are still making merry in the great hall when Raimondo, the chaplain, interrupts the gaiety. Lucia, he announces in horrified accents, her mind having deserted her, has murdered Arturo.
A moment later Lucia herself appears. She is still in her nightdress. She looks deathly pale, almost like a ghost, and carries the fatal dagger. Now comes the celebrated Mad Scene. Lucia imagines herself with Edgardo; she relives some of their earlier and happier days; she imagines herself married to him. And at the end, knowing that death is near, she promises to wait for him.
Scene 3 takes us outside the castle, where Edgardo is wandering, disconsolate, among the graves of his ancestors. A train of mourners, led by Raimondo, interrupts his sad philosophizing. He asks for whom they are mourning, and learns of the sad events that have just taken place. A death bell tolls. It is for Lucia. Only now does Edgardo realize that she has always been faithful to him. He sings his final farewell (Tu che a Dio spiegasti l’ali—“Thou hast spread thy wings to heaven”) and then, before Raimondo can stop him, plunges a dagger into his own heart. With the cello taking up the melody, he breathes his last words of farewell.
Postscript for the historically curious: Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor was based on a real marriage of convenience resulting in tragedy that took place in Scotland in 1669. Janet Dalrymple (Lucia) attacked her new husband, David Dunbar (Arturo), whom she had been forced to marry by her father, Viscount Stair (Enrico) instead of the man she loved, Lord Rutherford (Edgardo). In real life the unsuccessful suitor was the bridegroom’s uncle.
MADAMA BUTTERFLY
(Madam Butterfly)
Opera in three (originally two) acts by Giacomo
Puccini with libretto in Italian by Giuseppe
Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based on David
Belasco’s play of the same name, which was in
turn based on a story by John Luther Long
MADAME BUTTERFLY (CIO-CIO-SAN) Soprano
SUZUKI, her servant Mezzo-soprano
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PINKERTON, Lieutenant U. S. Navy Tenor
KATE PINKERTON, his wife Mezzo-soprano
SHARPLESS, U. S. Consul at Nagasaki Baritone
GORO, a marriage broker Tenor
PRINCE YAMADORI, a rich Japanese Baritone
THE BONZE, Cio-Cio-San’s uncle Bass
THE IMPERIAL COMMISSIONER Bass
THE OFFICIAL REGISTRAR Baritone
TROUBLE, Cio-Cio-San’s child Mute
Time: about 1900
Place: Nagasaki
First performance at Milan, February 17, 1904
Three of the most popular Italian operas in the repertoire—The Barber of Seville, La traviata, and Madama Butterfly—were resounding failures on their opening nights, and of those three failures Butterfly’s was perhaps the most resounding of all. Everyone, from the composer and cast down to the orchestra players and the stagehands, had confidently expected nothing but another triumph for the composer of Manon Lescaut, La Bohème, and Tosca. Yet even the glorious entry music of Butterfly (sung by the great Rosina Storchio) was greeted with silence—and silence from an Italian audience is an ominous thing at best. Later in the first act there were cries of “That’s from Bohème … Give us something new!” Hisses greeted the first-act curtain; and when, near the beginning of the second act, a breeze billowed up Storchio’s gown, someone cried out: “Butterfly is pregnant!” From then on it was a long series of catcalls, moos, cock-a-doodle-doos, and obscenities. And the reviews, on the whole, were not much more polite.
Puccini, bewildered and heartbroken, canceled the other scheduled performances at La Scala though it meant the payment of a considerable sum, took back his score, and made a number of revisions, the chief of them being to divide the long second act into what we now hear as Acts II and III. Three and a half months later the revised version was mounted in Brescia under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.
Now the opera was a huge success. In the first act the audience applauded the scenery and demanded an encore for Pinkerton’s little aria as well as of the entire love duet. Four more numbers had to be repeated later on, and after each of them, in the quaint Italian fashion, the composer came on the stage to take a bow along with the singers. “Never again,” to quote George Marek, Puccini’s finest biographer, “did Butterfly fail. No other first performance proved short of a triumph.”
Why the first failure and then the triumph? It cannot be explained, as with La traviata, by an inadequate first cast: Butterfly’s was absolutely first-class. Maybe, as has been surmised, the violence was inspired by the composer’s ill-wishers, as was possibly the case with The Barber. I rather think, however, it can best be attributed to the nature of Italian opera audiences, who love nothing better than to express their opinions unmistakably, whether right or wrong.
ACT I
At the turn of the century—about forty-five years before an atom bomb destroyed it—the harbor town of Nagasaki was a very pretty place. On the outskirts of the town, and overlooking the harbor, is a pretty Japanese villa. In the garden, when the opera begins, there are a Japanese busybody and an American naval officer. The busybody is Goro, the marriage broker; the officer is Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, U.S.N. Goro has arranged a marriage for the Lieutenant, and he shows him over the house that has been rented for 999 years (with, of course, a convenient cancellation clause). The marriage contract, by the way, has the same convenient clause—cancelable at a month’s notice.
When the United States Consul, Sharpless, calls, he tries to persuade Pinkerton that there is danger in this arrangement, for Sharpless knows the prospective bride, her name being Cio-Cio-San, or Madam Butterfly, and he fears that the probable result will break her tender heart someday. But Pinkerton cannot be made to take anything seriously, and he even proposes a toast to the day when he will be really married—in the United States.
And now it is practically time for the wedding ceremony. Butterfly, accompanied by her relatives, makes her entrance as her voice soars above the close harmony of her female companions. She tells Pinkerton about herself and her family and her age—which is only fifteen—and she shows him various trinkets she carries in her large Japanese sleeve, including a dagger her father had used to commit suicide on the order of the Mikado. The general tone of the meeting, however, is very gay. The Imperial Commissioner performs the brief legal ceremony, and everyone sings a toast to the happy pair when, suddenly, an ominous figure interrupts. He is Butterfly’s uncle, the Bonze, a Japanese priest, who has learned that Butterfly has renounced her traditional religion in favor of Christianity and has come to cast her out. All the relatives side with the Bonze, and they turn on the young bride. But Pinkerto
n orders them all away; and in the long and wonderful love duet that closes the act, Butterfly forgets her troubles. Together, Lieutenant and Madam Pinkerton enter their new home.
ACT II
Three years have passed quietly in Butterfly’s house, but Lieutenant Pinkerton has not been heard from. Suzuki, who has been praying to her Japanese gods, tries to tell her mistress that he never will come again. At first Madam Butterfly is angry, but then she sings her famous ecstatic aria Un bel dì, describing in detail how one fine day he will sail into the harbor, come up the hill, and again meet his beloved wife.
Soon there is an embarrassed visitor—Sharpless, the American Consul. He has a letter he wishes to read, but Butterfly makes such a hospitable fuss over him that he cannot get going. They are interrupted by the marriage broker, Goro, bringing with him the noble Prince Yamadori, who wishes to marry Butterfly. The lady politely but firmly refuses the Prince, whereupon Sharpless again tries to read the letter. Actually it tells of Pinkerton’s marriage to an American girl, but the Consul does not have the heart to break the news—and so only a portion of the letter is read aloud in the Letter Duet. Instead, he asks what Butterfly would do if Pinkerton never returned. For a moment she thinks that suicide would be the only answer. Gently Sharpless advises her to accept the Prince. That is impossible, she insists—and she brings in the reason for the impossibility. It is her young son, named Trouble. But, she adds, he will be called Joy when his father returns. Utterly defeated, Sharpless leaves.
And now a cannon is heard from the harbor. An American ship—Pinkerton’s ship, the Abraham Lincoln—has arrived! With joy Butterfly and Suzuki decorate the house as they sing their lovely Flower Duet Then they prepare to await the arrival of the master. Through holes in the screen, Butterfly, Suzuki, and Trouble prepare to watch the harbor throughout the night. A beautiful melody (used earlier in the Letter Duet) is played and hummed by an off-stage chorus, and the act quietly closes.
100 Great Operas and Their Stories Page 25