100 Great Operas and Their Stories

by Henry W. Simon

  ACT II

  Act II of Boito’s libretto follows quite closely the plot as it is given in Shakespeare’s Act III. Cassio wants his commission back, and as the act opens off a garden in a hall of the palace, Iago pretends friendship to Cassio and offers some good advice. Go to Otello’s wife, Desdemona, he says, and ask her to plead for you. Cassio acts on this advice at once, going into the garden to await the lady. At this point the libretto makes its most striking departure from the play. Iago sings his great Credo, in which he tells the audience quite frankly that he believes in a god—but it is a cruel god, and Iago acts accordingly.

  And now—almost as though in answer to a prayer—Iago has a piece of rare luck. Otello comes by and sees Cassio in the garden, pleading with Desdemona. “Ha—I like not that,” says Iago, and he begins to sow the seeds of doubt in Otello’s mind. Maybe Cassio is spending a little too much time with Desdemona, he suggests. Oh, he does it ever so reluctantly, ever so politely, and in ever so friendly a fashion. But the poison is surely there. A chorus in praise of the gentle Desdemona is now sung by her ladies, by some sailors, and by some children. It almost persuades Otello that he is foolish to doubt his lovely wife for a moment. Unfortunately, when they meet she immediately pleads for Cassio, and Iago’s poison begins to work. Otello becomes angry with his wife, and when she tries to wipe his perspiring brow with her handkerchief, he snatches it from her and throws it to the ground. A fine quartet occurs here, for the scene has been watched by both Iago and his wife Emilia, who is Desdemona’s lady-in-waiting.

  When the women have left, a powerful duet develops between Otello and his false friend Iago. The villain pretends to soothe the wretched General, but before the scene is over, he has suggested a way in which Desdemona may be tested. He says that he has seen Desdemona’s handkerchief in Cassio’s possession. (Of course, Iago has it himself at that very moment, for he has recovered it from Emilia, who picked it up.) If Desdemona cannot produce the handkerchief, suggests Iago subtly, Cassio must have it—and have Desdemona’s favor, too. The poor, passionate Otello is now in a fever of doubt and jealousy, and the act closes as their voices join powerfully in a vow of vengeance.

  ACT III

  Shortly after the curtain rises, Iago promises to let Otello overhear a conversation with Cassio—Cassio, the man whom he thinks to be Desdemona’s lover. But even before this eavesdropping can be arranged, Otello gets more food for his jealousy. Desdemona again asks that Cassio be restored in Otello’s favor. Enraged, the General asks for his wife’s handkerchief, and when she cannot produce it, Otello is more than ever convinced of her guilt. He accuses her boldly, while poor Desdemona, utterly bewildered, pleads her innocence. Finally, he rudely orders her away, and he is badly shaken when Iago returns. The scene is set—says the villain—for the eavesdropping. As Otello hides behind a pillar, Iago engages Cassio in light talk. They are really talking about Bianca, who is Cassio’s light-of-love, but Otello, overhearing only snatches of the conversation, thinks they are speaking lightly of his own wife. When, toward the end, Iago produces Desdemona’s handkerchief, Otello naturally jumps to the wrong conclusions.

  Thus, when an ambassador from Venice is announced, Otello is in a terrible mood. He decides to kill Desdemona that very night. Ironically, at that moment an off-stage chorus hails Otello as the “Lion of St. Mark,” and the Ambassador from Venice, Lodovico, enters with the whole populace. There is an order from Venice for Otello to return, and for Cassio to take over the governorship of Cyprus. As Otello reads this order, he keeps a wary eye on his wife. He overhears her commenting on Cassio to Lodovico, and before the whole assembly he strikes her and hurls her to the ground. Everyone is deeply shocked, and a fine, impressive ensemble develops as each expresses his own feelings. Finally, Otello orders them all away.

  Left alone with Iago, he rants for blood and vengeance. So excited does he become that he falls down in a convulsion. Off-stage, the crowd is again hailing the “Lion of St. Mark.” But on-stage, Iago triumphs over his fallen General. Ecco il Leonel—“Look at the Lion!” he cries with a poisonous arrogance, and the curtain falls.

  ACT IV

  The brief, touching, violent, and tragic last act is really a combination of two different scenes from Shakespeare’s play. It takes place in Desdemona’s bedroom, where, with Emilia’s help, she is preparing for bed. She sings a sadly appropriate ballad (The Willow Song) about Barbara, whose lover went mad. Otello apparently has done the same thing. When Emilia leaves, Desdemona utters her very touching prayer—the Ave Maria. She then goes to bed, and a moment or two later (with a sinister passage in the double basses of the orchestra), Otello strides in. He puts out the candle; he kisses her to the melody of the first-act love duet; and then, with a heavy heart, he asks whether she has prayed. Quickly she realizes what is on Otello’s mind: he plans to kill her. All her pleas are in vain; everything she gently or fearfully urges is misunderstood; and finally, in a terrible rage, he strangles her.

  Silence. Then a knock at the door. It is Emilia, who sees at once what has happened. Yet, Desdemona, with her dying breath, says that she has killed herself. “Liar,” cries Otello, “ ’twas I that killed her!” And when Emilia tries to maintain the innocence of the dead, he threatens her, too. It is only when Lodovico, Cassio, Iago, and all the others are summoned by her cries that Otello finally learns the truth. Aghast and heartbroken, he lays down his sword. He goes to the bed, looks tenderly at the wife he had so dearly loved, and takes out a dagger and stabs himself. “Un bacio—un altro bacio,” he sings softly, as he takes a final kiss to the music of the earlier kisses.

  PAGLIACCI

  Opera in two acts by Ruggiero Leoncavallo

  with libretto in Italian by the composer

  CANIO, the heavy lead of the players Tenor

  NEDDA, his wife and leading lady Soprano

  TONIO, the clown Baritone

  BEPPE, the juvenile lead Tenor

  SILVIO, a villager Baritone

  Time: the Feast of the Assumption (August 15) in the late 1860’s

  Place: on a crossroad near Montalto, a village in Southern Italy

  First performance at Milan, May 21, 1892

  One usually thinks of Pagliacci as beginning with the famous Prologue—II pròlogo, as Italian baritones denominate it quite simply. But as a matter of fact, there is a fairly long introduction to the Prologue, and in it are heard all the themes that will later be developed in the score-the love theme, the jealousy theme, the players’ theme, etc. For the young composer, writing in the 1890’s had been bitten by the Wagner bug and was using the leitmotiv as skillfully as any other fashionable opera man. He was also bitten by the verismo bug, which means that his story would deal with common folks doing ordinary everyday things—like making love to other men’s wives and committing murder.

  PROLOGUE

  Suddenly, in the midst of this orchestral introduction, the character of Tonio, the clown, steps out before the curtain and speaks directly to us. He tells us how the opera was written—from the composer’s heart. And in fact, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, who wrote both the libretto and the music, based his story on a criminal case that his own father, a district judge, had tried. Then Tonio goes on to explain that actors have feelings and passions just like everyone else. That is the theme of the entire opera. Finally, Tonio rings up the curtain—at which point there is great applause, for Tonio has finished the Prologue and sung a high G.

  ACT I

  Now the opera itself begins. In a small village in Southern Italy a crowd welcomes a troupe of traveling players. There are shouts as the troupe comes in, and the leader—a powerful tenor much given to hamming—invites everyone to come to the performance that evening. When Tonio, the clown, tries to help the leading lady out of the wagon, the leader kicks him aside. For this leading lady, Nedda, is the wife of the principal, Canio; and Canio warns everyone off his private preserves in the aria Un tal gioco. It is not a good idea, he says, to make love to his wife—not anywhe
re outside of a play, that is. Then he goes off to the village for a drink with friends, and the pretty Bell Chorus is sung by those who remain.

  Now Nedda, the leading lady, is left alone; and she sings a happy song to the birds, known as the Ballatella. It shows her essentially carefree nature. At its close—enter the villain. This is our friend Tonio, the clown, who is an ugly hunchback. He tries desperately to make love to Nedda; but she first laughs at him, and then, when he persists, she sets on him with a whip. Vowing vengeance, he stumps off to the village to join his master.

  There follows a long and melodious love duet, for Nedda has a swain in this village named Silvio. As the duet closes, they make an appointment to meet that night after the performance.

  Unfortunately, Tonio has brought back his master just in time to hear those last words. In fearful anger Canio chases after Silvio, but he cannot find him. When he returns, he demands to know the name of Nedda’s lover. Steadfastly she refuses to give it, until Canio, fearfully enraged, takes out a wicked-looking knife to threaten her. Nedda’s life is saved, however, just in time, by Beppe, another actor in the troupe, the one who plays juvenile leads. He reminds Canio and the others that it is time to prepare for the performance; and as the rest go off, Canio is left alone.

  It is then that he has his famous laugh-clown-laugh aria, Vesti la giubba. Though his heart is breaking, he knows that the play must go on. Sobbing with anguish, he enters the now-hated theater to dress for his part.

  ACT II

  Before Act II there is an orchestral intermezzo based on the Prologue. This reminds us of the theme of the opera—that life off the stage is very much like life on it. When the action starts, the villagers are busily assembling for the evening performance outside the temporary stage set up on the roadside. Their hubbub is hushed as the play-within-a-play commences. Nedda, in the role of Columbine, listens to a serenade sung off-stage by Beppe, who plays the role of Columbine’s lover, Harlequin. Soon Taddeo—the clown, played by Tonio—comes in to make love to her, just as he did in real life only that afternoon. He is again repulsed, but this time he good-naturedly blesses the lovers. Columbine and Harlequin thereupon sing a pretty duet over their evening meal, when Taddeo, in mock terror, interrupts them. Columbine’s husband, Pagliaccio, is coming! Quickly Harlequin exits by the window. But Pagliaccio enters just in time to hear them arrange a rendezvous. This, again, is exactly what had happened that afternoon; in fact, exactly the same words are repeated. Canio tries hard to act the part of Pagliaccio in the play, but the parallel is too terrible for him to bear.

  Suddenly he tears off part of his costume and cries: No, Pagliaccio non son: “No, I am Pagliaccio no longer.” Pitifully, he recalls the early days of his love for Nedda—and the crowd applauds his realistic acting. Now Nedda tries to make him come to his senses by taking up the lines of the play. But Canio becomes more and more furious, demanding to know the name of her lover. Finally he draws out his terrible knife, and before anyone can interfere, he has driven it into her back. With her dying breath Nedda calls for Silvio’s help. Silvio rushes up, out of the audience—only to meet the same terrible knife. As Canio realizes that he has committed a double murder, he turns brokenly to the audience. “La commedia è finita,” he sobs. “The comedy is finished.” And the orchestra blares out the laugh-clown-laugh theme.

  Postscript for the historically curious: Leoncavallo, who said he was present, as a small boy, at the trial of “Canio” in his father’s court, used to tell the sequel to his tale. The culprit’s real name was Alessandro, and he had murdered his wife after the performance, not during it. He was found guilty, sentenced to a term in prison, and then cried: “I do not repent the crime! Quite the contrary: if it had to be done over again, I’d do it!”

  After he got out of prison, he did not go back to the stage but became a servant in the ménage of one Baronessa Sproniere.

  Catulle Mendès threatened suit for plagiarism against Leoncavallo on the ground of a similarity of situation in his popular drama La femme de tabarin (with incidental music by Chabrier). In this play an actor also murders his wife during the course of a play-within-a-play. But there had been a much earlier nineteenth-century work using the same device; and, in fact, the idea goes back at least as far as Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy. Eventually Mendès withdrew his charges and offered a handsome apology.

  PARSIFAL

  Festival stage play in three acts by Richard

  Wagner with libretto in German by the composer,

  based on the poem Parzifal by Wolfram

  von Eschenbach, on Perceval, ou le conte

  du Grail by Chrétien de Troyes, and the

  Mabinogion

  AMFORTAS. King of Monsalvat Baritone

  TITUREL, founder and former King of the Grail Bass

  GURNEMANZ, a veteran knight of the Grail Bass

  KLINGSOR, a magician Baritone

  PARSIFAL, the “pure fool” Tenor

  KUNDRY, a sorceress Soprano

  Time: the Middle Ages

  Place: Spain

  First performance at Bayreuth, July 26, 1882

  Wagner did not call this work an “opera” but a “festival stage play.” Legend has it that he regarded it so much as a sort of religious ceremony, rather than entertainment, that he insisted on there being no applause and that it should never be given in any opera house less consecrated to noble music than his own Festspielhaus at Bayreuth, where only works by the master were to be performed.

  The fact is, however, that Wagner himself liked to lead the applause at the end of the second act; and while the prohibition against applause is generally followed today after Act I (at least by that part of the audience which is aware of the tradition), everyone voices approval of the Flower Maidens after Act II, and Act III is also generally clapped, though not at the august Metropolitan Opera House. As for the prohibition against playing Parsifal outside of Bayreuth, Wagner did have that idea once, but shortly before his death he seems to have given oral consent to the tenor-impresario Angelo Neumann to take it on the road. The change of heart never evolved into a written contract, and so that first extra-Bayreuth production took place at the Metropolitan on Christmas Eve twenty-one years after the premiere and over the futile legal gestures of Wagner’s widow. It was a gala and vulgarly publicized occasion. A special “Parsifal Limited” express was chartered from Chicago; the Evening Telegram brought out a “Parsifal” extra; and premium prices were put upon seats.

  The religious and philosophical ideas of the libretto are a mixture of Christianity and Buddhism, while the symbolism of the cup and the spear is still older. But as the trappings of the Wolfram poem which inspired the story are essentially Christian, it is most convenient to remember that the beneficent Grail is the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper and in which Joseph of Arimathea is supposed to have caught His blood, while the spear is the one which pierced His side on the cross.

  PRELUDE

  The prelude, a slow, religious tone poem, is based on the themes sometimes identified as the motives of the Love Feast, the Spear, the Grail (which is the famous Dresden Amen), and Faith. Wagner himself wrote a close for the prelude to be used in concerts, but when it is played in the opera house, the curtain rises on an unresolved chord.

  ACT I

  Scene 1 is near the castle of the Holy Grail at Monsalvat, in Spain. Gurnemanz, one of the knights of the Holy Grail, and several followers offer their morning prayers. They are ready to help Amfortas, the King of the Grail, to bathe in the lake nearby, hoping to ease the pain of his wound. Kundry, a weird, ill-kempt woman, interrupts them. She, who serves both the Knights of the Grail and their enemy, Klingsor, has brought balsam from Arabia to help heal Amfortas. The King, who is now carried in on a litter, wishes to thank the woman, though he despairs of all help.

  When he has gone, Gurnemanz tells his squires some of the history of the Grail. Old Titurel, the father of Amfortas, had received two holy treasures, the Cup—or Grail—fro
m which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, and the Spear which pierced His side. To guard these, Titurel built the sanctuary of Monsalvat and gathered a brotherhood of knights. Now Titurel has grown too old for his office, and Amfortas is King. But there had been a villain—Klingsor. He had failed, through his bad character, to be made a knight of the Grail, and, as a sorcerer, he had acted the part of enemy to the whole group. With the aid of beautiful women he had enticed Amfortas into his magical garden; he had captured the Spear; and he had inflicted the wound on Amfortas from which he still suffers. Only the recapture of the Spear and the aid of a pure and guileless innocent—or fool—can save the King and the order of knights.

  At the end of Gurnemanz’s narrative there is a cry from the lake, and a dying swan falls before them. A youth follows quickly; and when Gurnemanz upbraids him for killing the bird, he cries out in his ignorance—for he knows nothing of evil. In fact, this lad, who is Parsifal, does not know even the names of his parents. Kundry, however, seems to know about him, and she tells him that his mother has died. It now seems to Gurnemanz that this boy may, indeed, be the guileless fool to save Amfortas. Solemnly he leads him to the castle, and the eloquent Transformation Music, during the change of scene, is heard.

  Scene 2 Within the castle, in the great hall of the Holy Grail, the knights are assembled. Old Titurel, as though speaking from a tomb, urges his son to proceed with the ceremony. At first Amfortas demurs: he feels unworthy. But presently the Cup is revealed; the consecration of the bread and wine is carried out; and Amfortas suffers bitterly. But Parsifal only stands foolishly by, takes no part, and seems unimpressed. As the long act closes, Gurnemanz, in anger, turns the boy from the door.