But Solera had already written five or six librettos and knows the theater, dramatic effect, and musical forms. Sig. Piave has never written, and therefore it is natural that in these things he is deficient.
In fact, what woman would be able to sing one after another a big cavatina, a duet that finishes as a trio, and an entire finale, as in this first act of Ernani? Sig. Piave will have good reasons to advance, but I have others, and I answer that the lungs will not hold up under this effort. What maestro would be able to set to music without boring the audience a hundred lines of recitative, as in this third act? In all four acts of Nabucco or of I lombardi, you will surely not find more than a hundred lines of recitative.
And the same could be said of so many other small things. You who have been so kind to me, I pray you to make Piave understand these things and persuade him. However little experience I may have, I nevertheless go to the theater all year long, and I pay the most careful attention: I have seen myself that so many compositions would not have failed had there been a better distribution of the pieces, a more careful calculation of the dramatic effects, clearer musical forms... in short, if the poet and composer had had more experience. So many times a recitative that is too long, a phrase, a sentence that would be most beautiful in a book and even in a spoken drama, just make the audience laugh in a sung drama.24
The order of pieces, proper and physically reasonable demands on the capacities of singers, a concern for brevity, an awareness of the difference between the requirements of spoken drama and opera, the clarity of structure of individual numbers—all were basic to the proper layout of a musical drama.
THE POETRY OF A DRAMMA PER MUSICA
In the beginning was the word. At least most of the time. Occasionally, to be sure, a composer decided to reuse music written for an older opera in a new one, and obedient librettists were called upon to write appropriate poetry. The practice extends beyond Rossini, who certainly made ample use of it at certain moments in his career. Even Romani was called upon to play this game when Bellini sought to salvage in I Capuleti e i Montecchi some music from the ruins of their unsuccessful Zaira. But then again, Bellini liked to compose textless, abstract melodies in the morning (he called them his “daily exercises”), which he later sought to place in his operas. Many pages of these exercises exist; the tunes for which he had found a home are neatly crossed out.25 Other composers, for one reason or another, might prepare melodies for specific scenes in an opera before they had any text in hand or when faced with a text they did not like. Letters from both Donizetti and Verdi to their librettists sometimes request poetry of a certain meter with a precise number of lines, a sign that the music was already written. But these counterexamples are relatively few in number. Generally, the libretto came first.
To understand the nature of Italian opera in the first half of the nineteenth century, it is essential to understand how the poetry of a libretto was organized. This was such an obvious matter to composers and librettists that they rarely needed to comment upon it in their letters. Printed librettos, issued for each production and reflecting the contents of those performances, preserved the shape and organization of the poetry, so that contemporary audiences followed the dramatic and poetic structure (either during performances or away from the theater) with ease. It would be clearer to modern audiences had not many editors of librettos and recording companies, who include librettos in their “packages,” developed the atrocious practice of obscuring the structure of the text. They have conceived the “typical listener” as someone curled up at home with a compact disc, a libretto, and precious little intelligence. They presume that this listener, with limited knowledge of Italian, will be unable to recognize repetitions of words unless those repetitions are written out, so they repeat words or phrases over and over, instead of leaving the poetry as written. They further presume that the listener is incapable of following dialogue among characters unless the interventions of each character are drastically set off from those of other characters by typographically intrusive methods (beginning the first words of each character flush left, for example, so that the structure of the poetry is obscured). The organization of the poetry is therefore sacrificed to what is deemed to be easy comprehensibility. Given this “disorganization” and the introduction of superfluous text repetitions, it becomes almost impossible to read the text for pleasure or to understand its poetic structure, and generations of opera lovers have suffered the consequences. Yet to understand how a composer wrote an opera, with all its implications for how we should edit and perform that opera, we need to have a clear sense of the structure of the libretto.
Italian librettos, well into the latter part of the nineteenth century, were almost always written exclusively in poetry, not prose, and the poetry was governed by quite specific rules.26 The libretto (and therefore the opera) was divided into individual musical “numbers,” compositions called arias (or a variety of other names specifying a piece featuring a solo singer), duets, trios, introductions (the first number in an opera or, occasionally, the first number of a later act), and finales to one or more acts. For each genre there developed certain rules about internal structure, rules that could be observed, bent, or broken, but which composers and librettists recognized. Between these formal numbers were scenes of dialogue or monologue intended to be set as recitative, usually accompanied primarily by a keyboard instrument early in the century, almost always with orchestral accompaniment by the third decade. The nature of the poetry differed depending on the dramatic situation and its potential musical significance, but the most basic division was between poetry intended for recitative and that intended for formal numbers.27
Rendering terms describing Italian verse into what might appear to be simple English equivalents is profoundly misleading. An Italian settenario is not really a “seven-syllable” line of verse, since it can have six, seven, or eight syllables, depending on whether the line is: (a) tronco (concluding with an accented syllable, a so-called masculine ending, hence six syllables); (b) piano (the form according to which the poetic meter is measured, concluding with an accented syllable and an unaccented one, a so-called feminine ending, hence seven syllables); or (c) sdrucciolo (concluding with an accented syllable and two unaccented syllables, hence eight syllables). Here are some representative examples of the three kinds of settenari verses, all with a final accent on the sixth syllable, from a duet in Rigoletto:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Tut-te le fe-ste al tem-pio (settenario piano)
[Each feast day at the church]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Se i lab-bri no-stri ta-cque-ro, (settenario sdrucciolo)
[Although our lips were silent,]
1 2 3 4 5 6
Da- gl’oc-chi il cor par-lò. (settenario tronco)
[Our hearts spoke through our eyes.]
Notice that, in Italian verse, the final vowel of one word and the first of the next elide and are considered a single syllable: hence “[fe]-ste al,” “Se i,” and “[gl’oc]-chi il” are counted as single syllables. Similar considerations affect senari, ottonari, decasillabi, and endecasillabi verses (“six,” “eight,” “ten,” or “eleven” syllables, respectively, but which can normally exist in tronco, piano, or sdrucciolo forms). To avoid this confusion, I use Italian metrical terms wherever appropriate throughout this book.
Verses for recitative were written in what is known as versi sciolti, poetry consisting of endecasillabi and settenari freely mixed, with only an occasional rhyme. A single line of poetry could be assigned to a single character, or divided among several characters, and grammatical units might well run on from one verse to the next. If the poetry is printed correctly, the way librettists intended them to be printed and the way they were printed during the nineteenth century, the poetic structure is almost always quite rigorous.
Here are the first three lines of the opening recitative in the last act of Rigoletto, a dialogue for Rigoletto and Gilda, in which she insists that she still lo
ves the Duke. As written by Piave, it consists of a settenario followed by two endecasillabi. The beginning of each verse is written flush left; when the lines are split among more than one character, the continuation of the line is indented:
The division of a single line of verse among characters, the irregular (though not unplanned) changes in the length of lines, the occasional but not prevalent use of rhyme, all imply a musical setting in a freer, declamatory style, that is, recitative. Faced with such a text, composers usually set them accordingly.
That does not mean, however, that recitative verse, versi sciolti, can never be set lyrically. Indeed, one of the ways in which the operas of the generation of Bellini and Donizetti differ from those of Rossini and composers of his time is in the extent to which later composers pepper their recitative scenes with lyrical periods, even when the verse forms do not easily lend themselves to this practice. In Romani’s libretto for Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, the second act begins with recitative, a scene between Queen Anna and King Henry’s new favorite, Giovanna Seymour. Anna, alone, is musing to herself on the shame she feels. Giovanna enters, pities Anna’s state, and finally addresses her. Here are the first eight lines of recitative, of which the first and seventh are settenari, all the rest endecasillabi:
These eight lines of recitative, with a rhyme between the last two lines (“destina” and “regina”) to mark the moment in which Giovanna reveals her presence to Anna, are perfectly standard in their construction. Concluding rhymes of this kind have much the same function as does the rhymed couplet at the end of a scene in Shakespeare: to provide momentary closure.
At the start of this scene, however, Donizetti chose to provide a lyrical moment for Anna, using her first words as the basis for a short lyrical prayer. To render these irregular recitative verses into verses appropriate for a regular musical period, with balanced phrases, the composer was forced to push and prod recalcitrant material, arriving finally at something like the following poetic “stanza” in mock settenari:
Dio, che mi vedi in core,
Mi volgi a te, o Dio...
Se meritai quest’onta
Giudica tu, o Dio.
Despite the awkward arrangement of the poetic text, Donizetti created a touching lyrical moment, filling out the emotional world of his protagonist. Which is to say that composers, while heavily dependent on the text presented to them by their librettists, were not slaves to it.
Verses intended for formal numbers are quite different. In the simplest case, solo arias, they consist of stanzas of rhymed poetry in a single meter, or first in one meter, then in another. Here is the text of Lindoro’s entrance aria (his cavatina) from Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri. First he laments at being far from his beloved; then he reflects that even the thought of her brings calm to his soul:
Languir per una bella
E star lontan da quella,
È Il più crudel tormento,
Che provar possa un cor.
Forse verrà il momento:
Ma non lo spero ancor.
Contenta quest’alma
In mezzo alle pene
Sol trova la calma
Pensando al suo bene,
Che sempre costante
Si serba in amor.
To yearn for a beauty
And be far from her,
Is the worst torment
That a heart can experience.
Perhaps the moment will come,
But I do not yet hope for it.
This soul seeks happiness
Amidst sorrow
And finds calm only
Thinking of its beloved,
Whom, ever constant,
It continues to love.
There are two six-line stanzas here, the first using settenari, the second senari. The metric change between the stanzas is a specific invitation to the composer to prepare an aria in two separate sections, with different vocal rhythms, different tempos, and different meters. Even before the composer began his work, the poet had defined Lindoro’s cavatina as being a piece in two musical sections. Rossini, who was as comfortable with the convention as the librettist, set the piece accordingly, with an initial Andantino in 6/8 followed by an Allegro in common time.28
Poetry in fixed meters was used not only for lyrical sections but also for dialogue falling within musical numbers (as opposed to the versi sciolti employed for dialogue falling between musical numbers). The difference is significant, and using the term “recitative” to refer indiscriminately to both kinds of music hides distinctions that are important for how we must hear and perform the passages in question. Within a musical number dialogue (or parlante as it was often called in the nineteenth century) was frequently organized into more regular rhythmic units, with the orchestra providing continuity and structure, while the vocal line fits itself into the texture more freely, following the implications of the dramatic situation.
Between the lyrical sections of his scena and aria at the end of act 3 of Il trovatore, for example, Manrico is informed that the gypsy he believes to be his mother, Azucena, has been taken captive by the Conte di Luna and is about to be burned at the stake. Although Cammarano’s text for this passage has some of the qualities of recitative verse (in particular the use of single lines of poetry divided among several characters, with grammatical units running on from one verse to the next), its use of meter and rhyme gives it an urgency that versi sciolti do not normally have.29 I have introduced spaces between certain lines to clarify visually the stanzaic structure.
In fact the poetic structure (three four-line stanzas of settenari, rhyming second and fourth lines) is identical to the structure Cammarano employed for the primo tempo (first section) of Manrico’s aria, which begins:
Ah! sì, ben mio, coll’essere
Io tuo, tu mia consorte,
Avrò più l’alma intrepida,
Il braccio avrò più forte.
Ah! yes, my beloved, when I am
Your husband and you my wife,
I will have a more intrepid soul,
My arm will be stronger Still.
Not until after the dialogue between Manrico, Ruiz, and Leonora does Cammarano finally change the poetic structure, employing a compound meter that the Italians call quinari doppi for the famous conclusion of Manrico’s aria. In quinari doppi, each line of poetry is made up of two separate quinari (often printed with additional space between them), and each half-line can conclude with a word that is tronco (“spe-gne-rò,” with the accent on “-rò”), piano (“pi-ra,” with the accent on “pi-”), or a sdrucciolo (“spe-gne-te-la,” with the accent on “-gne-”):
Di quella pira l’orrendo fuoco
Tutte le fibre m’ arse, avvampò!...
Empi spegnetela, o ch’io, tra poco,
Col sangue vostro la spegnerò!....
The horrid fire of that pyre
Burns all my fibers, sets me ablaze!...
Villains, put it out, or I will soon
Extinguish it with your blood!....
A more pressing invitation to a rousing cabaletta could not have been offered to a composer.30
Verdi sought to stimulate the conservative Cammarano to provide him with unusual verse patterns and continuous structures by writing to his poet, “If in opera there were neither cavatinas, duets, trios, choruses, finales, etc. etc., and the whole work consisted, let’s say, of a single number, I should find that all the more right and proper.”31 Similar pleas would be repeated over and over again in the composer’s correspondence, until—many years later and in very different historical circumstances—he found in the person of Arrigo Boito a librettist able to understand and embrace his half-understood desires. Their resulting collaborations, on the revision of Simon Boccanegra (1881) and on Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893), belong to a different esthetic plane, even though they are rooted in Verdi’s previous achievements. Earlier, however, Cammarano (just like Piave and Antonio Ghislanzoni—the librettist for a relatively late Verdi opera, Aida, o
f 1871) provided Verdi with a libretto in which most numbers were carefully laid out in an essentially traditional fashion, the fashion that dominated Italian opera from the early nineteenth century through the 1860s—the period with which this book is primarily concerned. Had they done anything else, the composer might not have been prepared to cope with the artistic challenge.
By purely poetic means, then (the use of different meters, the use of stanzas of verse for a single character, the use of dialogue, etc.), librettists—often in consultation with the composer—materially influenced the structure and character of both the entire opera and each individual piece. They provided composers with recitative verse and with formal numbers, so that the poetry shaped important musical decisions. For the most part, composers took the structural parameters implicit in the poetry, fashioning each composition accordingly and from those parameters developing the shape of the entire opera.32
A COMPOSER’S PRIVATE DOCUMENTS: SKETCHES
Though a completed libretto might be delivered on time to a composer, often it arrived piecemeal, leaving him in a state of anguish and uncertainty, even about the number of acts into which the drama was to be divided. Contemporary documents suggest that when the subject of the opera on which Cesare Sterbini and Rossini were to collaborate was altered at the last minute, Sterbini fed the composer the libretto of Il barbiere di Siviglia in installments, and Rossini prepared each piece as the text was handed to him. Bellini suffered immeasurably from Romani’s failure to provide poetry for Beatrice di Tenda in adequate time, leading to an ugly dispute in the Venetian press and a formal break in their relations. Donizetti waited impatiently in Florence for almost a month while the libretto Romani was supposed to be preparing for Parisina failed to arrive. Both knew that Romani was terribly overworked and notoriously dilatory, but he was also considered to be the finest contemporary librettist.33 Verdi worked closely with his poets in determining the shape and contents of his operas. Once he began to receive poetry, he tormented them, demanding extensive changes in the texts they had sent. Because Verdi frequently worked in a different city from his librettists, and rarely traveled to the city in which an opera was to be performed until rehearsals began, there is extensive correspondence between the composer and his poets.34 Such documentation is less ample for earlier composers and librettists, but there are many indications that they consulted with one another in working out the dramaturgy of an opera and the structure of its poetry.
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