Divas and Scholars

by Philip Gossett

  MANUSCRIPT COPIES OF ITALIAN OPERAS

  After the first run of performances, then, the autograph manuscript of an opera composed in Italy had largely served its function. The situation was quite different in France, where the production of new operas was centered in one major city, Paris. Music publishers there regularly used the autograph manuscripts and other materials supplied by composers of new works to print orchestral scores, and reductions for piano and voice, of operas first performed in the capital.21 These, in turn, could be employed in theaters scattered in smaller provincial centers around the country, theaters that would buy or rent orchestral parts from the publishers. Normally these publishers were commercial entrepreneurs, although early in the century a group of composers joined forces to form a cooperative society for the publication of their operas.22

  But in Italy during the first few decades of the nineteenth century there was no obvious center of musical and cultural life, and no music publisher powerful enough to dominate the market throughout the peninsula.23 Major theaters existed in several different cities, and one must always remember that “Italy” was a geographical area, not a political entity. After the defeat of Napoleon and the return of the Restoration monarchs in 1815, Naples was in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by the Spanish Bourbons; Milan was part of the Hapsburg, Viennese empire, to which the independent Venice had been annexed in the wake of Napoleon’s peace treaty with the Viennese at Campoformia in 1797; Rome and the Papal States were ruled by the Pope, whose claims were sustained by various political forces; Parma was an independent duchy; and so on. Lines of communication were scanty, laws differed from one state to the next, and theaters did the best they could.

  Each major theater in Italy had a close association with one or more copisterie, which copied entire scores, orchestral parts, and particelle for individual singers. In Rome, for example, local copisterie were run by Leopoldo Ratti and Gian-Battista Cencetti, who later formed a publishing company together.24 When an opera was successful, the copyists, who usually had the right to distribute the work (as Rossini pointed out), might prepare several copies of these materials, hoping to earn additional income by renting or selling them to other theaters. If they still had access to the composer’s autograph, they might use it as a source; if not, they worked from whatever copy was available. When the Teatro alla Pergola of Florence decided to perform immediately a work that had been an outstanding success in Rome, perhaps even with the same cast, the theater needed to contact Ratti and Cencetti, who would rent or sell them a manuscript and performing materials. Unless, of course, another musician had surreptitiously prepared a copy of the score from the composer’s autograph manuscript or from whatever copy was in the theater archive. Strictly speaking, of course, he had no right to do this, but control was lax. And, like a good capitalist, he probably could undersell Ratti and Cencetti, with their copisterie costs. Thus, the illegal copy may have found its way to Florence, at a cheaper price. From it, other copies might be drawn, in a constantly expanding network.25

  Copisterie also frequently prepared extracts from operas, or (by the 1820s) entire operas, in reductions for piano and voice or for piano alone. Although these also served the needs of singers, their most important audience was the growing middle-class public, which could enjoy at home the most popular numbers from works they had applauded in the opera houses. In the first decades of the century there was a large market for manuscript copies of excerpts, but as new techniques of engraving, lithographing, and printing brought the price of each copy down, and as Italian nineteenth-century opera grew ever more popular, it became possible to publish more economically than to copy. Still, it was remarkable how quickly printed editions of excerpts could be published. One popular number from Rossini’s Ermione, a duet from the first-act finale, hit the streets less than a week after the opera’s Neapolitan premiere in 1819, and a second (the famous cavatina for Oreste, “Che sorda al mesto pianto,” followed a few days later.26 Even complete vocal scores, in the second quarter of the century, were made available within a few months.27

  But these printed editions, especially those of a complete opera, opened new possibilities for clever entrepreneurs, which may have been why Italian publishers resisted printing complete operas—even in vocal score—for such a long time. Indeed, the first editions of most of Rossini’s Italian operas were printed north of the Alps, reflecting the European popularity of Italian opera. Italian publishers finally succumbed to the practice only after reductions printed in France, Germany, and Austria began to be imported into Italy. After all, if you took your vocal score to the theater and made a few observations about instrumental effects, you would have a pretty good idea about the original orchestration. What was to prevent a competent musician from reorchestrating the entire score and selling it to another theater as the original or even as an inexpensive imitation? We can often reconstruct extraordinary cases of fraud or of attempts to make the best of an uncertain situation.

  Rossini himself, for example, revised Tancredi several times. For a Milanese revival at the end of 1813 he wrote two new arias for the tenor, Argirio. His first-act aria in Milan, “Se ostinata ancor non cedi,” replaces the original Venetian “Pensa che sei mia figlia” of February 1813. The pieces, while musically unrelated, are dramaturgically similar (Argirio attempting to convince his daughter, Amenaide, to accept a political marriage to the haughty Orbazzano).28 Contemporary sources are divided: some have one piece, some the other. The most amusing source, though, is a Florentine manuscript, probably associated with a local performance. It has “Se ostinata ancor non cedi,” but the orchestration differs entirely from that known in all other sources; the vocal line is basically the same, but there are many small variants.29

  How can we explain this peculiar Florentine source for “Se ostinata ancor non cedi”? Here is a possible scenario. Florence, having decided to perform Tancredi, obtains a score, whether legitimately or not, and assembles a cast. Rehearsals begin. When it comes time for his first-act aria, Argirio steps forward, but as the pianist begins to play “Pensa che sei mia figlia,” the singer’s mouth drops open in astonishment. “Excuse me, maestro, what is that?” “Argirio’s aria,” comes the reply. “But no,” says our Argirio, who had just sung the role for the first time in Genoa, “that’s not the aria. The aria goes like this.” At which point he sings some snatches from “Se ostinata ancor non cedi,” explaining that the score used in Genoa came from Milan, where Rossini had directed performances last year. “In any event,” he concludes, “that’s the aria I know, and that’s the aria I intend to sing.” And out he storms. Panic in the Florentine theater. After a quick discussion (remember that the production is scheduled to open in a week), Argirio is called back. “Sing the melody,” he is told by the maestro al cembalo, who does his best to copy it down. “And what do you remember about the orchestration?” After receiving indications about instrumental solos, the maestro goes off. In a few hours he returns with an orchestration of “Se ostinata ancor non cedi.” “Is that more or less how it goes?” he asks our tenor. “That’s it,” responds the contented Argirio, and so a new orchestration of “Se ostinata ancor non cedi” appears, which may very well circulate to other theaters (although in this case the version seems never to have left Florence).

  But outright thievery was rampant, even in the 1830s, when composers such as Donizetti and Bellini began to make commercial agreements with publishers like Ricordi in Milan for the distribution of their operas. Donizetti’s letters are filled with complaints about operas which are supposed to be Ricordi’s property, yet have been pirated, and often reorchestrated. To his friend Andrea Monteleone, a musician associated with the Teatro Carolino of Palermo, where Donizetti spent a year as music director in 1826, Donizetti wrote on 12 October 1834:

  I might have truly believed from your long silence that I mattered very little to you, but I was wrong, and it is better for me, because losing friends is very sad, just as it is very sad for me to le
arn that L’elisir d’amore will fall on its face. It is even sadder because I fear that it is the false one, for now in Milan, Bellini’s music and my own circulates in bastardized form. Indeed, I warn you that if one day Parisina should fall into the hands of the Palermo impresario, unless it has been sold to them by Ricordi, try if you can—in my name—by every means to impede the performance, for it is certainly the false one. The sellers of this manhandled music are Artaria and Lucca, and their correspondents. Let this serve as a rule for you, because there exists a false Elisir, a false Norma, a false Bolena, and a false Parisina. Be a champion of justice and defend the honor of your friends, for as you will understand right away the instrumentation [of these false adaptations] is arciarabo [absolutely incomprehensible].30

  Bellini could become rabid on the same subject. Indeed, when his La sonnambula, first performed at the Teatro Carcano of Milan on 6 March 1831, began to circulate in a falsified version, he published an “Avviso musicale” in the Milanese press on 1 December 1831:

  It is appropriate to warn all theater Directors, Impresarios, and music sellers that a Theatrical Correspondent has permitted himself to orchestrate my opera La sonnambula from the reduction of it for piano, and to palm it off as that written by me for the Teatro Carcano of Milan at the last carnival. If such falsifications damaged only the financial interests of artists, I would perhaps not be tempted to protest, but they damage their reputation, for they spread imperfect works, monstrous and damaging even for those who acquire them in good faith, especially with the aim of using them in the theater. For this reason I appeal to theater Directors, Impresarios, and music sellers, begging them to consider spurious any score of Sonnambula offered them, except for copies signed by me or Signor Giovanni Ricordi, who has the only original. With this will be safeguarded my honor and their own interests, and the falsifiers will be taught that it is time to respect even here the rights of creators and not to compromise their reputation and dignity.31

  The warning had little effect. More than a year later, on 17 February 1833, Bellini wrote to his friend Francesco Florimo, librarian of the Naples Conservatory, lamenting another thievery, this time of Norma in Naples, which the composer refers to as his own country:

  You tell me that they are working on my Norma; and from whom have they gotten the score? I own it myself, and anyone else could only have given it orchestrated by some hack. [...] And should the presidency of our theaters, deaf to your complaints (complaints you may make in my name, allowing him to see, if necessary, even this letter), insist on producing my opera in this way, I believe you have the right to ask the competent authorities to put on the poster: Norma, vocal lines by Bellini, orchestrated by somebody else. I would like to be able to boast that in my country this justice will not be denied me.32

  The negative ramifications of these spurious orchestrations continue to our own day. When Fabio Biondi conducted Norma for the Verdi Festival of Parma in March 2001, he chose to perform the original version of the first-act finale of the opera, in which the composer highlighted equally the three protagonists, Norma, Adalgisa, and Pollione—a version printed in the earliest Ricordi vocal score of the opera.33 But Bellini later modified the passage in his autograph manuscript by crossing out a number of measures and by removing several pages, thus significantly reducing the presence of Adalgisa in the ensemble. Both musicians and scholars have found fault with this modification, which surely reflected the composer’s nervousness after the opera was poorly received at its Milanese premiere (Teatro alla Scala, 26 December 1831).34 Seeking to restore the passage to its original form, Fabio’s brother, Fabrizio Biondi, located the relevant measures in manuscript copies of the full score of Norma at the Conservatories of Naples and Milan. Despite their present location, however, both manuscripts were prepared in Naples, and it soon became apparent that they are examples of just the kinds of manuscripts Bellini had protested, in which the orchestration of the entire opera (not just the first-act finale) was falsified. Fortunately, Fabrizio and I realized the problem in time to develop a more plausible orchestration of the missing measures for the Parma performances. And, of course, this editorial orchestration was identified as such so that performers could judge for themselves whether it was successful or not, without assuming it was Bellini’s own work.

  Nor was reorchestration the only fraud perpetrated by unscrupulous copyists. As his first introduction to Parisian musical life, Donizetti was commissioned early in 1834 to write a new opera for the Théâtre Italien the following year. Resident composer in Naples at the time, Donizetti had the libretto of Marino Faliero prepared by a local poet, Emanuele Bidera. Before departing for Milan, where his Gemma di Vergy was to open the carnival season at La Scala on 26 December 1834, Donizetti had composed most of the Parisian opera. He left Milan for Paris on the last day of 1834. Once there, complications arose. Not only did various problems become evident in Bidera’s libretto, but Donizetti also received musical advice from Rossini, éminence grise of the Théâtre Italien during the first half of the 1830s and the person responsible for his commission. Furthermore, Donizetti had his first opportunity to hear music in Paris, not only at the Théâtre Italien, but at native Parisian theaters, the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique. As a result, he made extensive alterations in the new opera. In this revised state Marino Faliero was performed with reasonable but not overwhelming success, on 12 March 1835. For Donizetti, that score, and that score alone, was Marino Faliero.35

  Imagine his consternation when he discovered that copies of the opera were circulating with the earlier version, which he considered to have been superseded. The culprit was Gennaro Fabbricatore, a Neapolitan copyist. Another copyist, with free access to Donizetti’s scores, had sworn to make only a single copy of Marino Faliero as it existed when the composer left Naples. Instead he made two, selling one of those copies to Fabbricatore for one carlino per page. From this copy, Fabbricatore soon made the score available to others, and thus illegal copies of the score circulated without even the need for reorchestration. Donizetti knew instantly that fraud was involved, as he told Ricordi in a letter of 20 October 1835: “As fortune would have it, in Paris I composed many new pieces, and added a great many things, and so the altered libretto and the new music testified to their being scoundrels.”36 But the problem would not go away. On 2 November 1836 he wrote to his friend Luigi Spadaro Del Bosch in Messina:

  I hear that in Messina they are doing Belisario and Marino Faliero. I am almost certain in my belief that both these scores are false, and therefore I beg you to ask the Impresarios if they would have the kindness to send me a piece of each opera, and I, by immediate courier, will respond with a yes or a no. In any case, try to find out if Marino begins with a sung Introduzione in B. If the stretta of the finale is in E. If the aria of the tenor or the first scene is in C minor, if the text of the duet for two basses in the stretta is “Trema o Steno, tremate o superbi,” etc.

  If all of this is true, it may be the real score, but if not would you please go to the Superintendent to have them suspend the performance, as happened in Palermo.37

  Ill will, fraud, and thievery: all complicated the problem of transmission.

  Even in the absence of dishonesty, even when manuscript copies were made without the intent to deceive, the more popular a work and the longer it remained in the repertory, the more complex and confused its transmission became. Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri had its enormously successful premiere at the Teatro San Benedetto of Venice on 22 May 1813, after which Rossini himself directed revivals in Milan in 1814 and Naples in 1815.38 He kept his autograph manuscript until the Milanese revival, at the Teatro Re in early April 1814, at which time it became the property of the copyist of that theater, Giovanni Ricordi, whose activities we will be investigating shortly. By the time the score arrived in Ricordi’s hands, Rossini had made important changes in the opera. To cite a particularly interesting one, for Milan he modified extensively the original version of the second-act cavatina for Isabe
lla, “Per lui che adoro,” the alternatively funny and tender piece in which Isabella prepares her toilette in front of a mirror, fully aware that her three suitors, Lindoro, Taddeo, and Mustafà, are looking on from their respective hiding places.

  In the Venetian original of “Per lui che adoro,” the orchestral introduction features a lovely solo for cello; in the revision, prepared for the Teatro Re and the only version present in Rossini’s autograph manuscript, the solo is assigned to a flute. Rossini surely made this change because the small Teatro Re, whose orchestral forces were described as inadequate in a contemporary review, had no appropriate cellist.39 But of some twenty-five manuscript copies I have personally examined of the opera, only one (in the library of the Parma Conservatory) has the version with flute; every other score contains the version with cello, which existed before Ricordi had acquired Rossini’s autograph manuscript. In other words, even before April 1814, eleven months after the Venetian premiere, enough scores were already in circulation to guarantee that the opera’s early transmission would be independent of the Milanese copyist and publisher. Only at the end of the nineteenth century and in the twentieth did Ricordi effectively control the transmission of L’Italiana, and during that time the version with cello largely disappeared. I have been told, however, that a recording of the aria by Zara Dolukhanova made in Russia, where Ricordi’s scores were less prevalent, still used the original cello.40 The critical edition of the score, edited by Azio Corghi, makes both versions available, of course, and the first American performance in this century of the version with cello took place in a Metropolitan Opera production of 1984, conducted by James Levine, with Marilyn Horne the unforgettable Isabella. In this case, the manuscript copies provide evidence that the autograph manuscript no longer preserves.