Divas and Scholars

by Philip Gossett

  In the nineteenth century, composers normally orchestrated their own operas from beginning to end. Although Rossini would occasionally use a collaborator to write recitative or to compose an aria di sorbetto, there are only two or three instances in which he permitted another composer to orchestrate an operatic number for which he wrote the skeleton score.64 Italian opera composers may have worked in conditions that resemble those of the American musical theater, but the idea that there was another person waiting in the wings to orchestrate their scores, such as Broadway’s famous Robert Russell Bennett, would have been anathema. That haste was required for the task did not mean it was done without care. Indeed, the most striking orchestral effects were probably conceived, even if not fully written down, together with the vocal lines. The remainder of the orchestration followed well-understood principles, more a matter of craft than of invention or inspiration. Autograph manuscripts of Rossini, Donizetti, and Verdi show an easy mastery of orchestral writing; those of Bellini a more hesitant grasp, although his direct experience with the orchestra during rehearsals usually led him to effective solutions.

  Still, composers simplified the task of completing the orchestration whenever possible, allowing themselves a wide range of shortcuts. Where the structure of the music demanded repetition of a section (the reprise of the principal theme of a cabaletta, for example), Bellini and Donizetti did not even bother to lay out the measures, preferring to write “Dall’A al B” (“From A to B”) across the score, meaning that the next measures repeated identically the measures between the ones marked “A” and “B.” They would begin notating the music again with the measure after the repeat. Somewhat less cavalier, Rossini and Verdi usually marked off the necessary measures, but entered only the vocal lines and bass. (In larger ensembles they might even leave a series of blank measures.) At the beginning of the repeated passage they too would write either “Come Sopra” (“As above”—typical of Rossini) or “Dall’A al B” (Verdi), specifying that all material not written in full should be derived from the first appearance of the passage. In some autograph manuscripts, copyists filled in the blank measures.

  Only in one respect did composers turn to other musicians to complete their orchestration: they did not prepare full scores for the wind bands, frequently supplied by the local military garrison, which appeared onstage (sul palco) during certain operas. After Rossini first employed such a banda sul palco in his Ricciardo e Zoraide of 1818, these bands played an ever more important role in Italian serious opera. Normally a composer would prepare a short score of the music to be played by the banda, written on two staves, as if for piano. A local bandmaster would arrange this music for whatever contingent of band instruments could be made available by municipal or military authorities. That procedure is as true for Rossini in Semiramide as for Verdi in Nabucco and Un ballo in maschera.65 Only once did Rossini himself make a banda realization, in a very special circumstance. Revising his Mosè in Egitto in 1819, he added the famous Prayer in the third act, just before the Hebrews cross the Red Sea. The accompaniment of that Prayer employs both orchestra and banda, and Rossini himself wrote the banda parts.66 Even when Rossini did not directly write banda parts, he consulted closely with the bandmaster. No one but the composer could have taken responsibility for the extraordinary use of stage band in the first-act finale of La donna del lago, where nine trumpets and four trombones accompany the entrance of Malcom, to which a more normally constituted banda is later added, for a total of some thirty-five band instruments sul palco. The French found the effect intolerable, and after the work was first given in Paris in 1824, Rossini was compelled to have a new band reduction prepared, for a more modest group of instruments.67

  Many peculiarities persisting in modern editions of Italian operas from the first half of the nineteenth century, to the confusion of instrumentalists, singers, and conductors, can be understood only by examining the layers in which the autograph manuscripts were generated and by interpreting the abbreviations composers employed. Some discrepancies deriving from the compositional layers are trivial. Frequently, for example, the value of the note in the violoncellos and double basses is not the same as the value of the notes in all other instrumental parts. In the lovely duet for Pippo and Ninetta (N. 12) in the second act of Rossini’s La gazza ladra, the section preparing for the repetition of the cabaletta theme closes with a G major chord for the entire orchestra and voices. The note in the violoncellos and double basses is a half note, but in every other orchestral part there are quarter notes. There is a discrepancy only because Rossini wrote the note in the violoncellos and double-basses into his score before he wrote the other orchestral parts; nothing in the music suggests that the composer wanted to prolong the sound of the violoncellos and double basses alone.68

  But not every case is trivial. This is Verdi’s continuity draft for the end of Rigoletto’s soliloquy, “Pari siamo,” in which he compares himself to the assassin, Sparafucile (example 2.2). The chord in the second measure appears on the second beat, immediately after Rigoletto sings his high e. Compare Verdi’s autograph manuscript of Rigoletto, where the passage is scored for voice and strings. In the example the upper string parts are condensed on a single staff (example 2.3). Verdi could not have wanted lower strings to enter on the second beat and upper strings on the third, as shown here. Rather, this is a quintessential error reflecting successive layers in the autograph. Copying the version of the continuity draft into his skeleton score, Verdi wrote the note in the lower strings as it appears in that draft. Completing the orchestration (and influenced by the chord he had correctly written in the preceding measure), he placed the chord in the upper strings on the third beat, without having noticed the discrepancy with what he had previously written down. Verdi’s incoherent notation was encouraged by the layout of the manuscript, with upper strings filling the top three staves and lower strings the bottom two, separated by winds, brass, percussion, and vocal parts. Writing Rigoletto and lower strings, then, Verdi was using adjacent staves; adding upper strings he was writing at the top of the page.

  EXAMPLE 2.2. GIUSEPPE VERDI, RIGOLETTO, SCENA E DUETTO (N. 4), MM. 67–68 IN THE CONTINUITY DRAFT.

  What did Verdi intend here? Editors and performers must make a judgment, one dependent both on aesthetic considerations and on our understanding of the process by which Rigoletto was notated. Most contemporary manuscripts blindly follow the original. Those few secondary sources keen enough to be aware of the problem, including the orchestral parts and vocal score issued by Verdi’s publisher Ricordi, adopted the principle that “majority rules,” opting for the version of the upper strings. Yet there is good reason to favor the rhythmically striking placement of the chord on the second beat, as in the lower strings (written both in the continuity draft and in the skeleton score, while Verdi was thinking more closely about the relationship between the chord and the vocal line), rather than the the more pedestrian placement on the third beat (written while the composer was furiously completing the orchestration).69 Whatever one’s choice, however, there is no way to be certain of what Verdi intended. What is certain is that he did not intend what he wrote and that the problem must be fixed in both the printed score and in performance.

  EXAMPLE 2.3. GIUSEPPE VERDI, RIGOLETTO, SCENA E DUETTO (N. 4), MM. 67–68 IN THE AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT.

  Many puzzles and inconsistencies reflect abbreviations used by composers during the orchestration of their scores. Once we understand that copyists may have filled in orchestral lines marked “Come Sopra” by a composer, we can avoid giving these additions the same weight as the composer’s own notation, a mistake that occurs in so many nineteenth-century secondary sources. From a secondary source, of course, it is impossible to know that the autograph manuscript was not all in the composer’s hand, so that variants introduced by copyists appear to have the same weight as a composer’s own notation.70 When we understand that a composer used shorthand for passages in which the orchestration is derived “Come Sopra,�
� furthermore, we better appreciate that even autograph differences in the bass line in such passages may have been introduced inadvertently by the composer, who was probably writing from memory. Finally, if we keep in mind the physical appearance of these autograph manuscripts, we can be sensitive to situations where a composer began to write anew after a “Come Sopra” passage. Writing without actually seeing the preceding measures, a composer frequently introduced banal errors in the instrumentation or infelicities in the way an instrumental part resolves.

  Verbal instructions for one instrumental part to be derived from another are equally perilous. Following eighteenth-century practice, where violas tended to join the lower strings, Rossini and Donizetti (but also Bellini and Verdi on occasion) sometimes mark the viola staff “col basso.” The meaning is clear: violas double the part of the lower strings. But realizing this instruction in practice is not always so simple. Cellos and double basses usually read from the same line and play the same music (with double basses sounding an octave below the cellos—even that not unequivocal, since the notes available on nineteenth-century instruments were not everywhere the same). But when violas, whose lowest note is the c below middle c, are asked to play together with cellos, whose lowest note is the c an octave below the lowest viola note, should they play the same notes as the cellos or an octave above? Should they switch from one register to the other, and if so where? How do we know precisely where the composer wanted the violas to play? Did he even consider the problem? The context often provides a clear picture, but there are many occasions when editors and instrumentalists are thrust back on their own resources. That, too, is a consequence of the way these autograph manuscripts were prepared.

  All these matters had both immediate and long-range implications for the transmission of Italian operas from the first half of the nineteenth century. They continue to have ramifications for musicians and scholars trying to decide what a composer may have meant. The process here described, however, hardly encouraged composers to think about posterity. There is ample documentary evidence that they were conscious of their artistic stature and faced their tasks with seriousness and confidence. Yet they were compelled by the nature of the system within which they worked to concentrate their attention, all their attention, on a performance whose fast-approaching reality imposed severe constraints. With opening night three days hence, the soprano was battling with her lover (the tenor), the bass was incapable of learning his music, the first oboe turned out to be a clarinettist in disguise, and the entire viola section (both players) was sick.71 If anyone had told Rossini in 1816 that Il barbiere di Siviglia would still be entertaining the public in the twenty-first century, he would have been incredulous. After all, there was practically no “active repertory” in 1816. Apart from a handful of operas by Gluck, Mozart, Paisiello, and Cimarosa (all composers either still alive or dead less than thirty years), most of the operas being performed at all, and all the operas being performed regularly, were newly or recently composed.

  With an opera fully orchestrated, the composer’s autograph manuscript now went back to the copyists, who drew out parts for the individual members of the orchestra. Finally, it was possible to rehearse the orchestra. For Rigoletto, the first orchestral rehearsal took place on 4 March 1851, precisely one week before the premiere of the opera.

  3

  TRANSMISSION VERSUS TRADITION

  Your copyists work too quickly: if they are paid by the page, pay them by the hour, augment their salary, do what you want, but try to remedy this disorder.

  Giuseppe Verdi to Tito Ricordi, 17 January 1863

  REHEARSALS AND FIRST PERFORMANCES

  However hectic the period of preparation may have been, rehearsals were even more intense. At best a completed opera would be rehearsed for a month; in dire circumstances rehearsals would begin before the last act had been drafted. Composers and stage directors (usually their librettists) worked first with the singers, some of whom might have received part of their music in advance. Rehearsals with full orchestra began only a few days before the premiere, when composers finally completed the orchestration. Opening night approached with frightening rapidity. That first performances were underrehearsed, tentative, and frequently disappointing is no surprise, and the fabled opening-night disasters of Il barbiere di Siviglia and Norma owed much to the circumstances of their production. Composers hoped for immediate popular triumphs, to be sure, and sometimes even got them, but they knew that the production would improve over the course of the season.

  From reviews, letters, diaries, and contemporary reports, as well as from hints in musical sources, we learn much about rehearsals and premieres, and capturing the flavor of this activity helps orient us to problems we continue to face. For example, composers often tailored their scores to the abilities of their singers. When Verdi sent vocal parts to Felice Varesi and Marianna Barbieri-Nini, his original Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, in 1847, before the rehearsal period, he urged them, “Let me know if there are any passages that lie badly for you,” so that he might make modifications before orchestrating the score. For Macbeth, Verdi prepared alternative versions of a passage and asked the baritone to select the one that suited him better.1

  While assisting with preparations in London for the premiere of I masnadieri during the summer of 1847, Verdi’s student and colleague Emanuele Muzio, who accompanied the composer on this trip, wrote frequently to Verdi’s father-in-law in Busseto, Antonio Barezzi. Muzio described with admiration some of the artistic qualities of their leading lady, the “Swedish nightingale” Jenny Lind, but disparaged her style of singing: “Her agility is incomparable, and often to show off her skill in singing she errs on the side of fioriture, turns, and trills, things that pleased last century, but not in 1847. We Italians are not accustomed to this manner; and, should Lind come to Italy, she would abandon this mania she has for ornamentation and would sing more simply.”2 While Muzio’s opinions probably reflected those of Verdi, the composer was not about to ignore the particular talents of Lind. Both the autograph manuscript of I masnadieri and the singer’s part derived from it show many changes in Amalia’s vocal lines, which were originally much simpler, perhaps because Verdi did not directly know her voice; the changes were introduced during rehearsals to accommodate Lind’s style. Amalia’s cavatina, “Lo sguardo avea degli angeli,” is thus well represented with just the kind of fioriture, turns, and trills that Muzio deplored.3 What we do not know, of course, is the additional ornamentation Lind may have introduced during rehearsals and performances of the opera.

  Composers made many modifications for artistic reasons, independent of the predilections of individual singers. Revision and polishing continued throughout the rehearsal period, often creating confusion in the subsequent transmission of an opera. A single note might be involved, as in “Caro nome” in Rigoletto. At the end of this beautiful evocation of “Gualtier Maldè” (the false name the Duke invents during his duet with Rigoletto’s daughter), Gilda repeats the name twice. All printed scores of the opera have her ascend both times from b (“Gualtier Mal-[dè]”) to the tonic e for the final syllable (“[Gualtier Mal]-dè”). But in Verdi’s autograph manuscript he unequivocally altered those final e, opting to hold the voice on the lower b (example 3.1). It is not difficult to understand the appeal of this change. The ascent provides a strong cadential gesture, an effect diametrically opposed to the dreamy repetition of the name that results from holding the pitch unchanged. Furthermore, the ensuing return of the main theme, “Caro nome,” begins on that same e: if the voice has already ascended there, the freshness of this reprise is compromised. Why, then, did printed scores not incorporate Verdi’s change? We know the answer. Verdi’s publisher, Ricordi, anxious to print a vocal score as soon as possible, sent a copyist from Milan to Venice, where Rigoletto was in rehearsal. Ricordi’s copy—with the earlier version of “Caro nome”—was finished and forwarded to Milan before opening night. Every vocal score published by Ricordi (and those derived from t
hem by other publishers) and every subsequent manuscript copied in Milan followed that earlier version of the melody. Indeed, the only source—apart from the autograph manuscript—that has Verdi’s revision is a copy of Rigoletto prepared by La Fenice after the premiere. Thus, we know for certain that Verdi changed Gilda’s melodic line between the time the Ricordi copy was made (toward the end of February 1851) and the time the Fenice copy was prepared (early in March).4

  EXAMPLE 3.1. GIUSEPPE VERDI, RIGOLETTO, ARIA GILDA (N. 6), MM. 63–71.

  While composers frequently introduced important revisions into their scores just before or after the premiere, only some of these emendations made their way into materials from which the operas were later performed. Rossini modified the Pas de trois and Tyrolean chorus (“Toi que l’oiseau ne suivrait pas!”) from Guillaume Tell, bringing the chorus back for a rousing conclusion, but Rossini’s French publisher, Troupenas, never registered the change.5 When the duet for Percy and Anna in the first-act finale of Anna Bolena, “S’ei t’abborre, io t’amo ancora,” fell flat, Donizetti replaced it with a new duet, “Sì, son io che a te ritorno,” but printed scores included only the former.6 And Donizetti was dissatisfied with the ending of the second-act duet for Don Pasquale and the Dottore in Don Pasquale, making numerous changes both during rehearsals and afterwards: the laughing conclusion, for example, was added for a revival in Vienna several months after the Parisian premiere of 3 January 1843. While the Ricordi score ultimately got this right, other editions published during the 1840s are chaotic.7