EXAMPLE 4.5. GIUSEPPE VERDI, ERNANI, FINALE PRIMO (N. 5), ORIGINAL VERSION, MM. 55–58.
EXAMPLE 4.6. GIUSEPPE VERDI, ERNANI, FINALE PRIMO (N. 5), WITH THE ADDED CABALETTA FOR SILVA, MM. 55A–59A.
Subsequent research has clarified much of the history of “Infin che un brando vindice.” The cabaletta is indeed by Verdi, but he did not write it for Ernani. It was composed at the request of Marini for insertion into a revival in Barcelona in 1842 of Verdi’s first opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio. Roger Parker first identified the Spanish libretto, which includes the relevant text; and Claudio Gallico, in the preface to the critical edition of Ernani, first transcribed the letter from Verdi to Marini that accompanied the manuscript on its voyage to Barcelona.55 We should not be surprised, then, that it was the same Marini who introduced “Infin che un brando vindice” into Ernani. What we still do not know is whether Verdi gave his blessing to the operation, or merely tolerated it.
By the time of the Ernani follies at La Scala, there was good reason to hope that similar problems might be easier to avoid in the future. The University of Chicago Press and Casa Ricordi had announced their intention to publish The Works of Giuseppe Verdi in new critical editions, and the inaugural volume in the series, Rigoletto, was about to appear. The conductor who first used the new Rigoletto in the theater was the conductor who had demonstrated how deeply he cared about the issues it sought to address: Riccardo Muti.
5
THE ROMANCE OF THE
CRITICAL EDITION
The words “critical edition” strike a mixture of scorn and terror in the hearts of many conductors, singers, and music administrators. That reaction is comprehensible: musicians have enough to do preparing a performance of a work without being told that the printed scores they are using are inaccurate or incomplete. The less they need to think about such problems, the happier they are. Moreover, most of them can recite an endless number of anecdotes about new editions that are worse than the old, musicologists who cannot interpret properly the notation of transposing instruments, guitar chords with seven notes for an instrument having only six strings, pages strewn with extraneous symbols, and so on. I have seen critical editions embraced by conductors with a rigor contrary to their true meaning, ignored by nervous singers unwilling to change a note or a word of an interpretation they believe to be authorized by some mystical tradition, denounced by pecunious administrators as the brainchild of rapacious music publishers, and debated in the popular press (particularly in Italy) with a passion that defies understanding.
Critical editions of literary works have a long history in Western culture, with roots in biblical scholarship, in Shakespearean scholarship, and in the editing of Greek and Latin texts—the triumph of Renaissance humanism.1 By debating the relative merits of Shakespearean quartos and folios, literary scholars sought answers about what might have been Shakespeare’s lost original: they developed sophisticated techniques for comparing multiple copies of a printed edition, investigating the mechanisms by which authorial manuscripts (essentially none survive) might have passed through the hands of compositors to assume printed form. By comparing and filiating medieval sources of ancient texts, classical scholars attempted to plunge back into antiquity, to comprehend the transmission of a work, and to move closer to that single source from which all later sources were thought ultimately to derive. Everything we know about Plato and Aristotle, about Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, about Virgil and Homer is owing to the patient work of generations of early scholars, comparing manuscripts in libraries all over Europe and the Middle East, at a time when the most far-flung sources, separated from one another geographically and from the original texts—whatever they may have been like—by millennia, needed to be examined and collated individually. Implicit in most traditional textual criticism, of course, was the profound faith that there is a work and that it can be recovered.2 In the case of the Bible, of course, there was the added implication that in its original form the text was God-given.
More recent studies foster a less absolutist view toward the history of a literary text. Instead of focusing on a single “definitive” version, the final form a work assumed in the hands of its author (what the Germans call the Fassung letzter Hand), genetic textual criticism conceives a poem, a novel, a drama, or an essay as the sum of all creative work expended on it. Drafts, canceled layers, published versions, later revisions: all are given weight. The “work” is not embodied in a single “authorized” version but is expressed through the various stages of a complex intellectual and artistic process, which is presented to the reader.3 Other textual critics, influenced particularly by the work of Jerome J. McGann, envision the text within a broader social context, of which the author is only one part: the context could comprise autograph manuscripts, to be sure, but also manuscript (or typed) copies, editorial interventions by publishing houses, publication in multiple editions in differing formats, public or private readings, theatrical productions, and so forth. For these critics, a literary work is social at its very core, and the quest for an authorial “original,” independent of that social context, is spurious and quixotic.4
Critical editions of nineteenth-century Italian operas make available the best texts that modern scholarship, musicianship, and editorial technique can produce. Fully cognizant of modern theory, they do not return blindly to one “original” source, although the composer’s autograph manuscript is often our best single guide. Instead, they reconstruct the circumstances under which a work was written, the interaction of composer and librettist, the effect of imposed censorship, the elements that entered into the performance, the steps that led to publication, and the role the composer played in the subsequent history of the work. They interpret the notation, often incomplete or contradictory, so that musicians have available not only a text prepared with an ear toward eventual performance, but also one that permits them to distinguish signs that stem directly from the composer from signs that derive from secondary sources or are provided by the editor. For works that exist in multiple versions, they either incorporate the versions within a single text (with “ossia”—alternative readings—indicated) or choose a basic performing text (with appendixes that make possible the practical realization of any version prepared under the direction of the composer).5
WHAT IS “VERDI’S RIGOLETTO”?
Most literary texts continue to be read by individuals in the quiet of their homes or in libraries. Even most editions of plays are intended for reading, and adaptations prepared for performance are rarely consigned to print. Many contemporary writers, including Nabokov, Calvino, and Eco have played with that relationship in fiction such as Pale Fire or If on a winter’s night a traveler..., creating literary works together with their textual and analytical commentary. Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees was born with a commentary for junior-high-school students as part of the text. Approaches to scholarship and creative work reflect common cultural roots.
Editions of musical scores (together with derivative parts and vocal scores) serve quite different purposes. The number of “readers” who can consult or consume the critical edition of an opera in the privacy of their home or in a library is minuscule in proportion to the number who may ultimately see and hear a performance of that opera in the theater or on television or will come to know it through recordings. Because of the size and complexity of the vocal, choral, and orchestral forces that need to be marshaled, furthermore, a musical performance cannot adopt quite so casual a relationship to a printed text as a play can. Stage directors who lack experience in opera rapidly learn that even a cut in the secco recitative cannot be made simply by striking out the unwanted lines of text: music must be rewritten, harmonies modified, an army of support personnel informed.
By comparison to the exertions of textual scholars reconstructing from later sources literary texts for which we lack authorial manuscripts, the task of editors preparing critical editions of the operas of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi
should be straightforward. In most cases we actually possess the author’s original manuscript and a wide range of sources documenting his further involvement with the work, not to mention the involvement of all those who formed part of the social and editorial process through which the opera came to be known by musicians and the public. To our distress, however, these documents—whether autograph manuscripts or derivative sources—are far from unequivocal. They are the source of all truth, so to speak, but they are also the root of all uncertainty.
Verdi’s direct involvement with Rigoletto was limited to its first series of performances, at the Teatro La Fenice of Venice during the carnival season of 1850–51. For a long time, as we have seen, it was also the only opera by Verdi for which the composer’s sketch was available to scholars. Thus, the simplicity of its history and the easy accessibility of relevant sources led the editors and publishers of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi to choose Rigoletto as the first Verdi opera to be prepared in a critical edition, which was edited by Martin Chusid.6 Those same qualities allow it to serve our needs as we consider the practical meaning of the phrase “Verdi’s Rigoletto.”
We can reconstruct with precision the genesis of Rigoletto from its first conception to its premiere on 11 March 1851. Already by the spring of 1850, Verdi and his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, had decided that the drama Le Roi s’amuse by Victor Hugo would be an ideal subject for their Venetian commission. During the summer Piave, who had already collaborated with Verdi on Ernani, I due Foscari, Macbeth, and Il corsaro, drafted a scenario, on the basis of which the librettist was assured that local censors would not object to the projected work. By the end of September he had almost completed the libretto, entitled at that point La maledizione (The Curse). By mid-October Verdi had received the text, and Piave was paid for it. As far as we know, the composer had written no music yet. He was fully occupied with Stiffelio, also to a libretto by Piave, whose premiere took place in Trieste on 16 November 1850.7 After that premiere Verdi threw himself wholeheartedly into La maledizione. He quickly sketched the first act, using names modeled on Victor Hugo’s play, which focused on the court of King François I of France: “Il Re” rather than “Il Duca,” “Triboletto” rather than “Rigoletto,” and “Bianca” rather than “Gilda.”
But Verdi knew the difficulties Hugo’s drama had encountered in Paris and remained concerned about censorship. By early December he was informed that the libretto had indeed been refused. Outraged, he offered to direct Stiffelio for Venice, since it was impossible for him to compose yet another opera. Piave, meanwhile, tried desperately to mollify both Verdi and the censors, proposing a revised libretto, Il Duca di Vendome. When Verdi received a copy, he rejected it out of hand, explaining precisely why the new libretto was impossible and concluding: “My notes, whether beautiful or ugly, are never written at random, and I always try to give them a specific character. In short, an original and powerful drama has been transformed into one that is quite common and cold.”8 After further consultations at Verdi’s home in Busseto, and subsequently between the librettist, theater, and censors in Venice, an agreement was reached: La maledizione, soon to be known as Rigoletto, was approved, with only a few alterations of details.
From the moment he heard about the censor’s original objections, Verdi halted all work on Rigoletto. Only after Piave had traveled back to Venice from Busseto on 5 January 1851 did the composer return to his task. Since composer and librettist were in different cities, a helpful series of letters chronicles their activities. Verdi sketched his way through acts 2 and 3, generally following the order of the libretto. By 14 January he had finished the Duke’s aria (he may have written Rigoletto’s aria earlier), by 20 January the remainder of the second act, by 5 February the third act.
At the same time he began to draft in skeleton score what would become his complete autograph manuscript, inserting vocal lines, the bass, and occasional instrumental indications. In this form he sent to Venice on 5 February all of the first act and most of the third (with the exception of the final duet), so that copyists could prepare particelle, parts from which each of the singers could study his or her role. Verdi did not himself arrive in Venice until 19 February, carrying with him the second act and the final duet of the third. We know that he had done no orchestration as of 11 February, for on that date he wrote to Ricordi that he had sent several pieces to Venice so that vocal lines could be extracted: “only the vocal lines,” he said, “because I have not yet been able to do a note of the instrumentation.”9 Perhaps some of the material he carried with him on 19 February was already orchestrated, but the first act and most of the third were certainly orchestrated while he rehearsed with the singers. Orchestral rehearsals began about 4 March, by which time the orchestration must have been largely completed and the parts copied; the first performance followed one week later.
Whenever we think about the sources for “Verdi’s Rigoletto,” we must bear in mind the speed with which the opera was written. Furthermore, as soon as Verdi arrived in Venice on 19 February, his activities were extremely diverse. He had to orchestrate his music, coach the singers, oversee the physical production and staging, and prepare the orchestra. There was no aspect of the production to which he did not turn his attention. It is hardly surprising, then, that many details in the autograph manuscript were overlooked in his drive to meet the imminent deadline of performance. Immersed as all the participants were in a single stylistic ambience, the composer could take a great deal for granted from his singers and orchestral musicians. A gesture or a few words of explanation during rehearsals would provide whatever correctives seemed crucial. Nor did Verdi ever reconsider those details, as he might have done had he anticipated that the full score would actually be published. Instead, he trusted Ricordi to provide reasonable copies of the score and to prepare adequate materials. Once the initial set of performances was over, the autograph manuscript of Rigoletto became the property of Casa Ricordi, and Verdi never touched it again. His emotions at consigning his autograph to his publisher were probably not as strong in 1851 as in 1886, when he wrote to Arrigo Boito, librettist of Otello, that the last two acts had been consigned to the Ricordi copisteria: “Poor Otello! He will never return here again!!!”10
Strictly speaking, what is “Verdi’s Rigoletto”? Philosophers have debated “the identity of the musical work” extensively.11 Many believe that the identity of Rigoletto must be sought in some “ideal” conception of the work as Verdi imagined it, of which the written notation is but an approximation. One can understand and even sympathize with this viewpoint, but it addresses primarily nonmusicians, those uncomfortable with the ambiguities of actual musical notation. Few would use such arguments for literature. When literary scholars try to push back our knowledge of a Shakespearean play beyond surviving printed sources to a hypothetical manuscript in the author’s hand, they believe that they are seeking to recover the lost ideal state of “Shakespeare’s The Tempest.” In the presence of such an authorial text, they would hardly describe the penned words of Shakespeare as a mere approximation of characters and actions imagined by the writer, even while acknowledging that once an “ideal text” enters the theater, it becomes part of a complex social framework and lies open to modification and intervention from one or more hands. The problem about identifying a musical work with some “ideal performance” of that work as imagined by the composer is that there is no such thing. The very notion negates the nature of musical art, in which there is a composition and there is a set of performances of that composition. Nor does it help to evoke performances directed by a composer: Stravinsky’s interpretations of his own music differ profoundly from recording to recording.
We know nothing more about “Verdi’s Rigoletto” than what we find in the autograph manuscript of that opera (together with its antecedent sketch). No other source whatsoever, not a single variant, can be demonstrably linked to the composer.12 As performers and editors, we can (and should) broaden our concerns to include the
editorial history and performing traditions of Rigoletto. We can acquire useful information by studying letters in which Verdi comments on the opera, by reading contemporary reviews and periodicals, by examining instruments and instrumental practice in the 1850s, by understanding the structure of theaters and the nature of contemporary stagecraft, by following the careers of the singers for whom Verdi was writing. But the only trace we have of “Verdi’s Rigoletto” is that autograph manuscript.
Would it not be enough, then, simply to study this document, either directly or in a beautiful facsimile reproduction, or—to assist those who find Verdi’s handwriting too confusing for easy consultation—in a diplomatic transcription? In some cases it might indeed be enough. Since transforming into print the written notation of many compositions of our own time can pose intractable problems, publishers frequently resort to reproducing autograph manuscripts. Composers have met this challenge by developing a clarity of notation and a level of accuracy that would have astonished a Beethoven, the illegibility of whose hand was legendary in his own time. For Verdi, however, consultation of his autograph manuscript is rarely adequate. The extreme pressure under which he worked led him into errors, lacunae, and inconsistencies of every kind.
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