RICCARDO MUTI AND THE PEOPLE’S GIFT TO VERDI
It was a stroke of good fortune that, after the Vaughan skirmishes, the real battle for critical editions of nineteenth-century Italian opera and a revitalized performance practice to go with them was engaged first on Rossinian soil. After all, neither audiences nor musicians had much knowledge of Tancredi, La donna del lago, Il Turco in Italia, or Il viaggio a Reims. The appearance of new editions became a cause for rejoicing: singers and conductors accepted them readily, and audiences were delighted to hear what amounted to new works. An occasional crotchety critic (particularly one who disliked the bel canto repertory anyway) might snort something about “scholarship,” but know-nothingism has never seemed a worthy platform.
When the terrain shifted to the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, however, howls of anguish and even anger arose from some quarters, and studied indifference from others. The more familiar the work, the stronger the reaction. A belief in the rectitude, the sanctity, of what is perceived to be a modern performance tradition spilled over into a belief that the current printed text could lay equal claim to validity. This confusion is at the heart of contemporary controversies about editing and performing the music of Verdi. And the name around which these controversies have swarmed for almost three decades is that of Riccardo Muti.
With a rigorous approach to the scores that overshadows even that of the legendary Toscanini, Muti’s Verdi is inextricably tied to the search for a reconceptualized performance practice of Italian opera. More than any other Italian conductor, Muti has been associated with a strict reading of the printed score. Yet this “cause of fidelity,” as Muti has defined it, “must not be understood as the cold reproduction of a text, but as an intuitive interpretation through the written signs of a whole spiritual world that exists beyond the written signs.” 43 That spiritual position is achieved by insisting on integral performances and refusing to allow singers “traditional” liberties and interpolations.
When the works involved were tangential to the repertory, Muti’s approach won a chorus of approval. His Guglielmo Tell at the Maggio Musicale in 1972, although sung in Italian and based on a problematic edition, was a revelation. Yes, the work lasted more than five hours, and one had to be in optimal physical and mental condition simply to attend. (I was fortunate enough to hear the dress rehearsal.) Yes, it was performed in an execrable nineteenth-century translation, when it should have been done in the original French.44 Yes, the tenor Nicolai Gedda, a fine Arnold, bowed out before the end of the run. (At the repeat of Arnold’s phrase “Ah! Mathilde, idole de mon âme!” in A major, a full tone higher than its original statement in G major, Gedda was so obviously struggling that I worried about his health.) All this is true, but perfection is something we seek, not something we attain. Muti’s rendering of Rossini’s William Tell for the first time clarified for this modern listener the fascination that Rossini’s last opera had for nineteenth-century musicians.
With the works of Verdi, matters were very different. Whatever else anyone may or may not have heard in Florence when Muti directed Il trovatore in December 1977 at the Teatro Comunale, all that anyone talked about was the end of “Di quella pira,” the cabaletta for Manrico that concludes the third act. The reason was that Muti’s Manrico did not sing the high c traditionally interpolated to bring down the curtain amid a storm of applause. Indeed, the production has gone down in public consciousness and critical lore as Muti’s defiant challenge—the “Trovatore without a high c”—to the contemporary performing tradition. A similar reaction emerged when he conducted the same opera on 7 December 2000 to open the season at La Scala, marking the hundredth anniversary of Verdi’s death. As Loretta Bentivoglio wrote the next day in La Repubblica:
Fury and battles in the loggione of La Scala for a high c. “Shame,” some one screamed from above, when the tenor Salvatore Licitra failed to introduce the high note at the end of the cabaletta “Di quella pira,” which Riccardo Muti, as even children know, removed from the Trovatore that opened the season at La Scala last night.45
But Muti’s 1977 Trovatore was, in fact, much more. The American Verdi scholar David Lawton had taken the initial steps toward preparing the critical edition of the opera (which was ultimately published in 1993), carefully comparing the printed text of the Ricordi edition then commercially available with Verdi’s manuscript.46 Through this process he was able to identify errors and misreadings and begin to clarify the meaning of the composer’s notation. But the efforts of Lawton, Muti, the singers, the orchestra, and the production team were overshadowed: everything dissolved into the hullabaloo over the high c.
What makes the controversy particularly absurd is that the note in question never existed in any printed edition of the opera. The “great moment” is in fact an interpolation. In this respect, Lawton’s edition of the opera was unchanged with respect to the older printed edition. Muti’s insistence that the interpolated note not be sung, however, marked not only his performance but also Lawton’s edition, which became “the edition of Il trovatore without a high c.” But why should anyone care so much? Does it make such a difference if the tenor ascends to that note rather than remaining on the g, as in the printed text?47
Looking exclusively at the end of the aria, the interpolated note is nothing but harmless pyrotechnics. As assertive a cabaletta as Verdi ever wrote, the piece closes the third act, brings down the curtain, and moves the opera precipitously to the final catastrophe. Verdi’s conclusion demonstrates his wish to preserve an unusual level of tension. Manrico would ordinarily have ended the aria by descending from the g of “All’armi” to the lower c. Instead Verdi holds the voice on the g so that Manrico concludes on the fifth of the C major chord, while the first tenors take the e below it and the second tenors and basses sing middle c. The result is a full tonic triad, with Manrico alone on the highest note.48
Why did Verdi not intensify this effect further, by giving c, e, and g to the male chorus, with Manrico free to ascend to high c? Musical analysis, which can be invoked to support all sides of an argument, is painfully unsuited to this kind of question. But here is a relatively simple explanation—a historical explanation, not a musical one. Verdi wrote the role of Manrico for Carlo Baucardé, a tenor whose effective range it presumably reflects. The part has a high tessitura, sitting for long stretches in the sixth between middle c and high a, but a (which recurs frequently) is the highest note that Verdi expected Manrico to sing easily. Only at a single point in the opera does the composer notate a high b for Manrico, in the context of the stretta that concludes the first-act trio. In this section, the Conte di Luna has a part of his own (“Di geloso amor sprezzato”), while Leonora and Manrico sing two different texts to essentially the same music. They begin together, at the octave, until Leonora ascends to high b, at which point Manrico is assigned a lower note, g (example 4.3). When the theme is repeated, now with an accompanimental line for the Conte, Leonora must ascend by leap to the b. To avoid interrupting the octaves being sung by Manrico and the prima donna, Verdi gave the tenor a choice: either b (the only time in the opera) or the lower d, should the singer be unable to handle the higher pitch (example 4.4). Verdi, in short, did not feel that Baucardé had a usable high c, nor a high b, and only a most uncertain high b.49
EXAMPLE 4.3. GIUSEPPE VERDI, IL TROVATORE, SCENA, ROMANZA E TERZETTO (N. 3), MM. 229–236.
EXAMPLE 4.4. GIUSEPPE VERDI, IL TROVATORE, SCENA, ROMANZA E TERZETTO (N. 3), MM. 259–262.
It would be possible, of course, to broaden this discussion to include the issue of Verdi’s writing for tenor in the 1840s and the first part of the 1850s, at a time when an earlier vocal style, characterized by a lighter upper register (think of Tonio’s cavatine “Pour mon âme quel destin,” with its eight high cs in Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment), was giving way to a more robust sound, extending into the highest register. In that context, the role of Manrico is perfectly characteristic of how Verdi wanted to write for tenor at that moment in his
life. Later, to be sure, he tended to push his tenors higher, as techniques of vocal production changed and, with them, Verdi’s entire approach to a tenor’s tessitura.
But it is quite irrelevant whether or not, as a famous anecdote would have it, Verdi actually told the singer Enrico Tamberlick, who had boasted of the success of his high c with the public, “Far be it from me to deny the public what it wants. Put in the high c if you like, provided it is a good one.”50 The real disaster of the interpolated high c is its effect on the choice of an appropriate tenor to sing the role of Manrico. The sine qua non for an opera house today, as it casts the part, has become the ability of a tenor to let loose a stentorian high c at the end of “Di quella pira.” The interpolated note has come to dominate the conception of the part, and everything else is planned around an effect that Verdi never intended. To produce the high c, furthermore, singers generally cut the cabaletta by half and omit the notes that they should be singing with the chorus, so as to preserve breath and energy for the final pitch.
At the time of Muti’s Trovatore in Florence, one Italian critic commented that the high c, even if not written by Verdi, was a gift that the people had given to Verdi. This bit of sentimentality hides the basic issue: whether Manrico does or does not produce a high c is of little artistic importance. What is artistically devastating is that the perceived need to hit the stratospheric note has transformed our conception of the role. Give me a tenor who can sing Manrico as Verdi conceived the part and chooses to add a ringing high c, and I will join the loggione in applauding him. Failing that, let Manrico, in Rossini’s famous words to the same Tamberlick, leave his high c on the hat rack, to be picked up on his way out of the theater.51
“LA CABALETTA, FILOLOGO”
The opening of the operatic season at La Scala on the evening of 7 December, the day honoring Milan’s patron saint, Sant’Ambrogio, is present-day Italy’s most keenly awaited musical event each year. “Scala” supplements are published in the major newspapers; what the Italians call the cronaca pages report gleefully on those members of the government and society likely to be in attendance and what they will be wearing; protest movements (involving party politics or animal rights) know that their activities will be publicized. Through all the social trappings, some attention is even paid to the music. The performances of Verdi’s Ernani at La Scala for Sant’Ambrogio in 1982 were particularly in the public eye: it was the first time that this prestigious event was to be entrusted to Riccardo Muti.
For weeks before the premiere, the word filologia (“philology”) was tossed around by critics and the public. For this, Muti was more than a little responsible. Just before the performance he told the Corriere della Sera: “This will be the Ernani of Giuseppe Verdi, that is, an edition extremely faithful to the manuscript, without cuts; the opera will be performed exactly as it was conceived.”52 It was a peculiar statement. First of all, Muti used the manuscript of Ernani largely to investigate a single issue, as we shall see. The score that he employed was the standard edition, prepared by Ricordi at the end of the nineteenth century, with more than its share of mistakes and misreadings. Muti could justifably have talked about a performance “extremely faithful to the Ricordi edition,” but hardly about fidelity to Verdi’s autograph.
But there was another, graver problem. What does it mean to perform an opera “exactly as it was conceived”? How do we know how a work was conceived? We cannot ask Verdi how he conceived Ernani. Perhaps we must settle for something far more banal: choose an edition derived as closely as possible from authentic sources, and then use that edition as the basis for a performance, bringing to bear what the composer wrote down, other historical information, our knowledge about performances Verdi himself directed, our awareness of modern performing traditions, and—most of all—our own musical and dramaturgical intuitions. In any event, the claim to an “Ernani at La Scala the way Verdi wanted it” (the invention of a Corriere della Sera headline writer) was imprudent under the best of circumstances.
Just as a polemic about a single note characterized Muti’s Trovatore in Florence, a single piece served as the lightning rod for his Ernani in Milan: the cabaletta for Silva, “Infin che un brando vindice,” within the first-act finale. The piece was not in the original version of the work, performed at the Teatro La Fenice of Venice on 9 March 1844.53 Although this movement is included in most editions of the opera, Muti decided to omit it. He set forth his reasons in the same Corriere della Sera interview:
Just recently I happened upon a vocal score from the second half of the nineteenth century, in which the cabaletta for the bass, “Infin che un brando vindice,” is missing. My curiosity aroused, to keep faith with my rigor and my philological scruples I decided to examine Verdi’s manuscript: from Casa Ricordi I obtained a copy of the original, and I had confirmation that the cabaletta is not there. Driven, as always, by a need to return to the sources and to arrive at the truth of the written sign, I sought documentation by calling on the musicologist Francesco Degrada and consulting the book of Julian Budden. These explain clearly that almost certainly the cabaletta is not by Verdi and was inserted for the first time by the bass Ignazio Marini, who sang it in the fall of 1844 in Milan.
At the time, the critic of a Milanese paper reacted negatively, going so far as to protest strongly this abusively inserted cabaletta and to hold Marini (then a well-known bass) responsible for having introduced it into the opera. Having verified this, I also found the answer to a problem that had been disturbing me: Why was it that the [arias for the] soprano, tenor, and bass had both cantabiles and cabalettas, while [that for] the baritone alone had no cabaletta, leaving the relationship among the four unbalanced? The answer appeared in Verdi’s original manuscript: the soprano and tenor had both a cantabile and cabaletta, but neither the bass nor the baritone had a cabaletta. I thus decided to follow the precise indications of the composer and to omit a passage almost certainly not by Verdi or, at least, of which there is no trace in the original manuscript.
Notice the uneasy slippage here between analytical explanation and philology. As for analysis, do we really know how many characters in a “typical” Italian opera of 1845 have multipartite arias and how many have arias in a single tempo? And as for philology, Degrada and Budden are much more cautious than Muti: they describe factors that might suggest the piece is by Verdi and others that suggest it is not, leaving the matter open.54
But a performance does not have the luxury of being indecisive. Silva cannot proceed to the footlights and explain the situation to the audience: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are not sure whether the cabaletta that follows in some sources is really by Verdi, so I’m going to (a) sing it or (b) leave it out.” And the glamor of opening night at La Scala blends poorly with uncertainty. Muti took a legitimate doubt and made an entirely plausible artistic decision. After all, composers and performers of Italian opera in the nineteenth century were frequently called upon to make just such decisions for particular occasions on practical grounds, to meet the needs of theaters and singers. Then Muti buttressed his decision with claims that it was philologically motivated and analytically just. Rumors circulated widely in Milan that the real motivation for omitting the cabaletta was the inability of an aging Nicolai Ghiaurov to sing it well.
By the time of the old Spanish grandee’s entrance toward the end of the first act, the opening-night audience at La Scala was already hostile to the staging by Luca Ronconi and the sets of Ezio Frigerio, whose price was the subject of vociferous debate and whose awkward multiple levels subjected the singers to unaccustomed gymnastics. I particularly recall Mirella Freni as Elvira teetering perilously on a platform as she was carried up and down flights of stairs. The singers in turn reacted with a tentative performance that did not sit well with mélomanes in the audience. Finally Silva appeared and sang his cantabile, “Infelice! e tu credevi.” As he continued with the finale, omitting “Infin che un brando vindice,” a cry was heard from the recesses of the theater: “La cabalet
ta, filologo!” The last word was spat out with palpable scorn. Muti dug in his heels and carried on.
The incident was worthy of the theater of the absurd. Ostensibly, Muti acted with philological responsibility by omitting the cabaletta, while the gallery patrons demonstrated their attachment to the “traditional” way of singing Ernani. But in truth all of them got it wrong. What the loggionisti did not understand was that in the performing tradition of Ernani, the Silva cabaletta was usually omitted. Although it is present in Ricordi materials (which, as so often, take their cue from a Milanese production), in most extant copies of these materials the music is firmly crossed out. And Muti erred in not understanding that the music he actually performed was a philologist’s nightmare, an erroneous conflation of two separate versions.
Whoever introduced the cabaletta into the score also felt it necessary to modify the preceding two bars of music. When Ricordi first printed string parts of the opera soon after its premiere, the publisher followed Verdi’s autograph, without the Silva cabaletta. When the string parts were reprinted to include the cabaletta, Ricordi modified the two previous bars. Parts for winds, brass, and percussion for Ernani were first printed in the 1880s, and they contain only the modified bars introducing the cabaletta. Each version has its own musical and harmonic integrity. As Verdi originally conceived the piece, Silva’s “L’antico Silva vuol vendetta, e tosto...” concluding in F minor, easily lead to his “Uscite...” (addressed to his followers) in D major (example 4.5). In the revision, the music emphasizes the dominant of F minor, then continues directly with Silva’s cabaletta by leaping to that key’s relative major, A, a common harmonic progression in Italian opera of the period (example 4.6). It is similar to the progression we find leading into the final cabaletta of act 2 in Rigoletto, as discussed in chapter 1 (see example 1.2). What Verdi never intended, however, was the version played at La Scala. Muti performed the bars that had been rewritten in order to introduce the cabaletta, and then he cut the cabaletta. Philology indeed! But he was hardly alone in having made that mistake. Ever since Ricordi in the 1880s printed wind, brass, and percussion parts containing only the revised version, there was no way to perform Verdi’s own music. Everyone who omitted the Silva cabaletta fell into the same trap. Only when the critical edition of Ernani became available was it possible to perform the music either as Verdi had originally written it or with the added cabaletta. Performances, by their very nature, cannot pretend to be philological: that is the purpose of editions.
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