In other cases of censorship, only individual pieces were eliminated. The Neapolitan censors seem to have been particularly nervous in the period following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1815. Rossini, recently arrived in the city, appears to have mollified them by replacing Isabella’s patriotic rondò in L’Italiana in Algeri, “Pensa alla patria” with the politically neutral and musically bland (though attractive) “Sullo stil de’ viaggiatori.”73 In it, Isabella and the chorus no longer invoke “patria” or the “worth of the Italians”; instead she treats the story as an adventure, which they will chat about when they get home, “sullo stil de’ viaggiatori” (as all travelers do). Far from having Isabella incite the Italians with thoughts of patriotic fervor, Rossini presents her actions as merely “l’inganno della beltà” (the strategem of beauty). Written for a specific situation, a specific historical moment, “Sullo stil de’ viaggiatori” is hard to take seriously as an alternative in the modern opera house. But one could imagine with dread a political climate in which once again it might be impossible to sing “Pensa alla patria.” As far as we know, the replacement aria was never performed again in the nineteenth century, and its survival is quite fortuitous: it occurs in a single source, a copyist’s manuscript now preserved in Milan but of Neapolitan provenance.74
Most variant versions, however, reflect the different technical capabilities or dramatic propensities of singers engaged for a revival of an opera. Nineteenth-century Italian composers wrote their music with specific singers in mind. When they were unfamiliar with the characteristics of particular voices, they would refrain from preparing solo music for those singers until they had an opportunity to work with them or at least to learn more about their voices. When Verdi was sketching the first version of Macbeth in 1847, as mentioned in the beginning of chapter 3, he kept in contact with his singers by letter, sending them vocal parts and asking for comments. To his first Lady Macbeth, Marianna Barbieri-Nini, he wrote, “In the 3/8 Adagio of this duet, there is a chromatic scale at the end [example 7.1]. It must be sung rallentando and end in a pianissimo; if this proves difficult for you, let me know.”75 Although the passage was ultimately replaced, this ending chromatic scale and its surrounding measures are still present, as an earlier layer, in Verdi’s autograph manuscript; under the right circumstances and for the right singer, the original version might even be performed.76 To his first Macbeth, Felice Varesi, Verdi sent two proposals for an important phrase that occurs during the scene of the apparitions of the eight kings in the third act, adding: “do the one that suits you best, and write to tell me which one I should orchestrate.”77 Because he had never heard Barbieri-Nini sing, he refrained from composing her “Trionfai” solo at the beginning of the second act, informing her instead (in the same letter quoted above), “All that is needed to complete your part is a cabaletta, which I shall write for you in Florence so that it will suit your voice perfectly and be sure to make an effect.”
EXAMPLE 7.1. GIUSEPPE VERDI, MACBETH, SCENA E DUETTO (N. 5), AN EARLY CADENTIAL FIGURE FOR LADY MACBETH FROM THE CANTABILE.
In revivals, composers and singers themselves routinely made puntature, small adjustments in the melodic lines to suit new voices. There is a lovely letter from Verdi to Donizetti on the occasion of one of the very first revivals of Ernani, in Vienna just a few months after the Venetian premiere of March 1844. Since the composer could not attend the Viennese rehearsals, he asked Donizetti, who was music director of the Viennese theater, to follow preparations in the theater carefully, adding: “I beg you to occupy yourself both with the general direction and with the puntature that may be necessary, especially in Ferretti’s part [Luigi Ferretti played the role of Ernani].”78 When appropriate singers were unavailable, and puntature were insufficient, composers intervened more heavily. Only in a few early performances, following its Venetian premiere of 1824, could Meyerbeer’s Il crociato in Egitto feature a castrato, Giambattista Velluti, in the leading role of Armando. But Velluti, the last important operatic castrato, was at the end of his career, and Meyerbeer subsequently rewrote the part for mezzo-soprano: in that version, particularly with the exceptional Giuditta Pasta as its interpreter, the opera could circulate.79
Some revisions made by Italian composers to suit the needs of available singers seem appalling by modern standards. For an 1824 Parisian revival of La donna del lago, for example, Rossini lacked two tenors capable of doing justice to the second-act trio “Alla ragion deh rieda.” Instead, he inserted two fine but irrelevant pieces from another opera, Bianca e Falliero, neither of which required a virtuoso tenor.80 The intervention did not go unnoticed. Stendhal, reviewing the performance in the Journal de Paris of 9 September 1824, referred specifically to the omission of the trio: “To tell the truth, thanks to Bordogni and Mari it was necessary to omit a [...] piece from the original score of La donna del lago that would have pleased the public.”81 We cannot properly evaluate this alternative version of La donna del lago apart from the historical circumstances that gave it birth. Rossini frequently lacked appropriate singers—particularly two virtuoso tenors—to perform his Neapolitan operas in other Italian or European theaters. When contemplating a revival of La donna del lago in Rome during the carnival season of 1822, a performance that did not ultimately take place, the composer had already suggested the introduction of the two pieces from Bianca e Falliero in place of the trio from La donna del lago.82
One should not imagine that composers always undertook such revisions reluctantly: many variant versions for specific singers were prepared with alacrity. After the highly successful premiere of I Capuleti e i Montecchi in Venice during the carnival season of 1830, the Venetian impresario Giuseppe Crivelli determined to mount the opera again to open the following carnival season at the Teatro alla Scala of Milan, where he also served as impresario. For the role of Giulietta, however, Crivelli had engaged Amalia Schütz-Oldosi, a mezzo-soprano with a considerably lower tessitura than the original Giulietta, Rosalbina Caradori Allan. Thus, Bellini was obliged to modify the part considerably.83 He did this by intervening massively on a complete manuscript copy of the entire opera. In some cases he simply provided an alternative vocal line for Giulietta, leaving the rest of the score unchanged; in some cases he completely rewrote significant passages, transposing both of Giulietta’s solo compositions down by a full tone or by a minor third, and even transposing her duet with Romeo down (but only by a half tone).84 In Giulietta’s aria at the beginning of the second act he inserted a stunning new lyrical section, “Morir dovessi ancora” (Even if I must die).85 Although the editor of the critical edition does not suggest it, I cannot imagine that soprano Giuliettas will need much encouragement to transpose the passage up by a minor third and to include it in their performances. Despite all this work, however, Bellini was not altogether pleased with the results, as he informed his friend Giovanni Battista Perucchini on 3 January 1831:
For me the opera made only half the effect of the one I heard in Venice: whether because the theatre is larger, because Rolla’s tempi are too broad,86 because in all the ensembles the voices of the two women cannot blend well since both are mezzo-sopranos, because such a large theater is harmful to Grisi, but when all is said and done I no longer hear the Capuleti of Venice, and yet the theater is always full of abundant applause.87
The public does indeed seem to have been pleased, and the opera was performed twenty-five times during the course of the season. The particular characteristics of its cast, however, leave modern performers with a choice of versions for performing I Capuleti e i Montecchi.
In concluding this discussion of historical circumstances, we find ourselves inevitably, if unwillingly, faced with the problem of authorial intention. It has been dogging us throughout. Although it is only one factor in our considerations, a composer’s attitude toward the text of an opera matters. That Donizetti transformed Maria Stuarda into Buondelmonte with a heavy heart, because the censors refused permission to perform the original opera, canno
t help but influence our choice of which work to perform.88 Although Verdi was willing to compose an alternative cabaletta for I due Foscari as a gesture of friendship to the influential tenor Mario, he specifically requested that Mario return the manuscript after he had used the piece and not allow copies to be made.89 This is consistent with Verdi’s tendency to leave his autograph manuscripts in what he considered to be a “definitive state.” Even if we are not obliged to be guided by this evidence, we can hardly be indifferent to it.
Practical Conditions of Modern Performance
The third and final dimension of our grid consists of the technical capabilities and the explicit desires of singers; the theatrical practices of a particular opera house, located in a particular city, with a particular audience; the artistic vision of conductors or stage directors.
The questions faced by modern performers are not different in kind from those of their nineteenth-century predecessors. The technical problems posed by Rossini’s music for tenor remain formidable. The incompatibility of a robust prima donna and the consumptive Violetta in La traviata was as apparent when Montserrat Caballé sang the role as when Fanny Salvini-Donatelli created it. Prima donnas remain divided between those, like Ronzi De Begnis, who are proud to perform I Capuleti e i Montecchi as Bellini conceived it and those prepared to choose a pasticcio alla Malibran because it seems vocally more satisfying, between those unwilling to change so much as a single word in a rendition once learned and those constantly reexploring the dramaturgical and musical meaning of a part.
It is difficult for the public to comprehend the extent to which some singers are prisoners of what they believe to be “tradition,” generally identical to the music they have already memorized. Logic, meaning, and evidence are to no avail. In the second act of Verdi’s Ernani, for example, the king of Spain, Don Carlo, in pursuit of the bandit Ernani, arrives unexpectedly at the château of Don Silva. Silva, who has promised Ernani the rights of hospitality, helps the bandit escape the fury of the king by hiding him behind a painting in the family portrait gallery. (Gilbert and Sullivan fans recognize in this setting the origin of the wonderful scene in the second act of Ruddigore where the bad baronet’s relatives emerge from the frames of their portraits to insist that he continue his life of crime.) Don Carlo has followed Ernani, and knows he is in the house. In Victor Hugo’s play, from which the libretto is derived, the king poses a series of alternatives to Silva: “Réponds, duc, ou je fais raser tes onze tours!” (Respond, Duke, or I’ll have your eleven towers razed); “Je veux sa tête, ou bien la tienne” (I want his head, or else your own).
Verdi rendered this confrontation as an aria for the king, with a secondary part for Silva. In the standard edition of Ernani, the king addresses Silva in a ringing phrase, beloved of baritones: “Il tuo capo, o traditore, altro scampo, no, non v’è” (Your head, traitor, there is no other escape). That doesn’t offer Silva much of a choice! One can understand why a singer might enjoy declaiming “o traditore” in the face of the old man, but not only is the text meaningless, it is not what Francesco Maria Piave printed in his libretto or what Verdi wrote in his autograph score. The correct text is “Il tuo capo, o il traditore, altro scampo, no, non v’è” (Your head or the traitor, there is no other escape). Yet when Piero Cappuccilli portrayed Don Carlo in the first performance of the new critical edition of Ernani, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago during the 1984–85 season, he flatly refused to change anything (including this word) in the way he had always sung the part.
It is not that Cappuccilli was unwilling to historicize his performance: he merely refused to think past the history he already knew. Indeed, one of the most interesting developments over the past decades has been the enthusiasm with which some singers have participated not only in historical reconstructions of so-called authentic versions of operas, but even in reconstructions of versions associated not with a composer but with an earlier singer. Although it was fascinating to hear the Vaccai finale when Marilyn Horne performed Romeo in Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi in Dallas in 1977, no one (least of all Horne) believed that this choice of a performing version improved the work.90 Horne was also featured in the mid-nineteenth-century Pauline Viardot version of Gluck’s eighteenth-century Orfeo ed Euridice, in part arranged by Berlioz. She never did convince an opera house to stage Rossini’s Otello with the title role (originally written for tenor) assigned to a mezzo-soprano, as Malibran performed it as a “novelty” in a benefit evening on her behalf in Paris toward the end of 1831,91 but it was not for lack of trying. The festival in Martina Franca finally did produce the opera with a mezzo-soprano during the summer of 2000, confirming the wisdom of those who had previously refused to undertake this operation. Nor is the interest in such historical stagings limited to Marilyn Horne: in 1989 the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome successfully performed Cimarosa’s Gli Orazi ed i Curiazi of 1796 with inserted florid arias by Marco Portogallo, a version that had circulated widely in Italy at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
However problematic these reconstructions may be for those who believe in the aesthetic superiority of the works in versions conceived by their composers, they testify to a refreshing vitality in modern performance. Opera houses, in fact, remain divided between those (such as La Scala when it was directed by Riccardo Muti) committed to the careful study of each opera they present, frequently with the use of integral texts, and those where performances of Italian operas in “standard versions” are hurriedly thrown together without adequate rehearsals (the situation in most smaller German theaters). The differences are often a function of whether a theater organizes its season according to the “stagione” system or the “repertory” model.
In the “stagione” system, which prevails in Italian opera houses and most American ones (such as Chicago or Houston), a company of singers is brought together for a fixed period of time. They rehearse a work and give seven to ten performances over the course of a month, after which the work is retired for the season. Rarely is the same opera produced in successive seasons. With each set of performances, it is therefore possible to study the work anew (although in practice opportunities for study may depend on how late in the rehearsal period the tenor’s contract allows him to arrive—by private jet, bien entendu). In the “repertory” system, a larger number of operas is offered in rotation with constantly changing casts. Works are performed over a longer period of time each season and often in successive seasons. Since new singers consequently are rotated into the cast with minimal rehearsal, a “repertory” system favors the standardization of operatic texts. The “stagione” system does not guarantee great performances, nor does the “repertory” system guarantee poor ones. Yet it is important to understand how the difference between these systems affects what can appear on stage.
James Levine’s Metropolitan Opera is an unusual combination of the two principles. It is a “repertory” house that aspires to offer some operas in performances normally possible only in a “stagione” system. It succeeds in doing so when Levine himself supervises the performances, when a conductor such as Carlos Kleiber demands similar working conditions, or when an opera is prepared as if it were part of a “stagione” system. Performances at the Metropolitan Opera in which the scenery overwhelms other parts of the production are often those most firmly rooted in the “repertory” concept.
Nor should we forget that union contracts have profound implications for the economic viability of artistic decisions. Some contracts provide for a standard performing time of three hours, after which fifteen-minute periods of overtime begin. Instructing a conductor that a show will not go into double overtime affects the decisions he makes about which version to perform. Some contracts provide more flexibility, taking into account that operas vary in length; even so, a provision that additional payments must be made after midnight affects artistic choices.
What no longer exists for nineteenth-century Italian opera, of course, is a living composer with the moral force to insist, as d
id Verdi, that he is responsible for every decision pertaining to the performance of one of his operas. But we should not exaggerate the efficacy of nineteenth-century composers in controlling the way their operas were performed. Composers rarely participated in revivals of their operas, and when they did, they often behaved just like other musicians: that is, they intervened in the text. Indeed, famous composers functioning as musical directors sometimes intervened in the text of operas by their colleagues. When Rossini’s L’assedio di Corinto (the Italian translation of Le Siège de Corinthe) was performed in Genoa in 1828, Donizetti inserted a new cabaletta into a duet in the second act, replacing one of Rossini’s more unusual compositions with a rather ordinary piece.92
What moral force a composer may have exercised in the nineteenth century lies today with conductors and stage directors, in whose hands such decisions ultimately rest. In their own self-interest and the interest of the productions for which they are responsible, these performers need to explore every area of the three-dimensional grid I have been describing before making the decisions that are within their prerogative to make. What was truly appalling about the infamous Metropolitan Opera production of L’assedio di Corinto, mounted for Beverly Sills in 1976, were not the many aesthetically questionable decisions made by Thomas Schippers, a most able Rossini conductor. It was rather that he did not know who wrote the music he was performing, where it came from, or the alternatives. What was truly appalling about the Houston Grand Opera production of Rossini’s La donna del lago in 1981 was that Frank Corsaro did not understand the plot of the opera, seemed unfamiliar with Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake, and apparently didn’t care.93
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