Here we are at the Sleepwalking scene, which is always the high point of the opera. Anyone who has seen [Adelaide] Ristori [a famous actress who portrayed Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth] knows that very few gestures are needed, indeed everything can be limited to a single gesture, to rub away a spot of blood that she believes to have on her hand. The motions should be slow, and her footsteps should be hardly visible; her feet should drag along on the ground as if she were a statue or a ghost who walks. The eyes fixed, the body cadaverous; she is in agony and dies immediately after. Ristori made a rattling noise, a death-rattle. In music this must not and cannot be done; just as one should not cough in the last act of Traviata or laugh in the È scherzo od è follia of Ballo in maschera.55
How many sleepwalking Lady Macbeths, dying Violettas, and laughing Riccardos should have these words implanted in their memory. As Verdi continues to Escudier, the lament in the English horn supplies the effect of the death-rattle and does so “more poetically.” There is room for singers to interpret Verdi’s vocal lines with sensitivity and even, in certain instances, to provide small variations. There is no room for self-indulgence.
PUNTATURE AND PITFALLS
While ornamentation often bends melodic lines to the specific capabilities of a singer, it has a fundamental role to play in realizing in sound the composer’s notation. Puntature, on the other hand, are required exclusively to assist a singer in performing passages that are awkward for his or her voice or that pose problems of breathing and syllable placement. Such puntature are frequently required in modern performance, and singers, conductors, scholars, and critics should not flinch before them. Few tenors, even those willing to employ a falsetto-like head voice, are likely to undertake with success the high f Bellini wrote for Rubini in “Credeasi, misera!” near the conclusion of I puritani.56 Nor is this the only place where Rubini’s legendary range has required modern singers (and most nineteenth-century singers) to modify the vocal line or even transpose entire numbers. Indeed, as we shall in the next chapter, few printed editions of Bellini’s operas written for Rubini offer the solo music in its original keys.
Puntature were regularly needed in the nineteenth century, when in the course of an operatic season singers had to take multiple roles, not all of which were fully appropriate to their capabilities. Under the supervision of local music directors, the artists themselves would make necessary accommodations. As we have seen in chapter 7, when Verdi’s Ernani was performed in Vienna in May 1844, shortly after its Venetian premiere, the composer was unable to attend rehearsals, but he sent explicit instructions. To the director of staging at the Kärtnertortheater he stressed that “the performance be accurate,” adding, “Please do not allow cuts. There is nothing to take out and not even the shortest phrase could be removed without damaging the whole.”57 In a separate letter to Donizetti, music director of the theater, Verdi expressed his appreciation that the older composer had agreed to follow rehearsals, and asked him to supervise whatever puntature would be necessary.
Certain puntature tend to become traditional, passed down from teacher to student, petrified in recorded performances. One sympathizes with all the mezzo-sopranos who, faced with Rossini’s written text toward the end of the cantabile of Cenerentola’s final aria, take the easy way out by breaking the music at the beginning of m. 100 (the second measure in example 9.18), anticipating the final syllables of the word “rapido,” breathing deep, and then singing Rossini’s cadenza on the syllable “ah!” When I pointed out to Cecilia Bartoli, though, that Rossini’s way of handling this passage—as a single musical gesture—was ever so much more beautiful, she steadied her extraordinary instrument, set aside the requisite air, and shot through the passage exactly as the composer conceived it. It was an object lesson that no traditional puntatura should be allowed to persist from one performance to another when a great singer is able to negotiate the original.
Two interesting examples of traditional puntature emerged during rehearsals in the spring of 2001 for Verdi’s La traviata at the Verdi Festival of Parma, with Darina Takova in the role of Violetta and Carlo Rizzi on the podium. There are numerous places where singers over the years have modified the music for Violetta’s great aria “Ah fors’è lui,” with its cabaletta “Sempre libera,” at the conclusion of the first act. One, in the middle of the cabaletta theme, just before the reprise of the opening tune, is very much like the Rossini example cited above: the premature completion of a word, a hastily caught breath, and an interpolated “ah!”58 (example 9.19). The passage as written by Verdi, with its arrival at high c on the last syllable of “ritrovi” after a trill on g, is much more beautiful than the puntatura, assuring a long melodic line through the end of the phrase, but it makes difficult demands on the vocalist in a context that is already daunting. In this case one can only be thankful for the existence of a performance tradition to assist those singers who need help.
EXAMPLE 9.18. GIOACHINO ROSSINI, LA CENERENTOLA, FINALE SECONDO: CORO, E SCENA CENERENTOLA (N. 16), CONCLUSION OF THE CANTABILE (MM. 99–100), AS WRITTEN AND AS SUNG WITH A PUNTATURA.
In the case of Violetta’s cadenza at the close of the cantabile, on the other hand, a performance tradition that simplifies the singer’s task severely distorts Verdi’s musical idea. His notation suggests groupings of sixteenth notes lightly accented at the beginning of each group, so that the final “delizia al cor” can be sung as written.59 This procedure, though, makes it difficult for a singer to catch her breath anywhere within the cadenza. In fact, the music is almost never sung this way. The notes are grouped with implied accents at the end of each group of four, the last accent occurring on the first of the two sixteenth notes for “delizia.” All the beaming is implicitly modified, and “de-[lizia]” is postponed until the low e, allowing Violetta to take a good breath before finishing the phrase (example 9.20). Again, one understands the motivation for this puntatura, but it should represent a last resort, a change introduced to assist a singer in serious difficulty, not a tradition to be preserved. Yet faced with the imperious, unforgiving, and noisy Parma loggionisti, who have never actually examined Verdi’s notation and know only what they hear on old recordings, Takova (perfectly capable of singing Verdi’s own music) allowed their incivility to influence her decision to adopt the puntatura.
EXAMPLE 9.19. GIUSEPPE VERDI, LA TRAVIATA, ARIA VIOLETTA (N. 3), WITHIN THE CABALETTA THEME (MM. 156–158), AS WRITTEN AND AS SUNG WITH A PUNTATURA.
EXAMPLE 9.20. GIUSEPPE VERDI, LA TRAVIATA, ARIA VIOLETTA (N. 3), THE CADENZA CONCLUDING THE CANTABILE (MM. 113–114), AS WRITTEN AND AS SUNG WITH A PUNTATURA.
In today’s operatic world, if a singer is capable of handling with distinction the bulk of a role, it is far preferable to remove or modify a few individual notes at the extremes of his or her register than to preserve notes that sound poor; it is far preferable to simplify a florid passage he or she finds particularly ungrateful than to allow the notes to blur; it is far preferable to make room for a breath than to have a phrase sputter to an unsatisfying conclusion. There are limits, however, beyond which the indiscriminate use of puntature is destructive. Beverly Sills passed that limit when she played Pamyra in Rossini’s Le Siège de Corinthe, a part much too low for her voice. Montserrat Caballé passed that limit when she assumed the title role in Ermione, a part for which she no longer had the requisite vocal skills.
Other pitfalls need to be pointed out. Not one of the singers working in the first four decades of the nineteenth century would ever have introduced into a Rossini opera the kind of coloratura and variations that became standard at the end of the nineteenth century. In America, this type of vocalism is best known through an edition of “Una voce poco fa” edited by Estelle Liebling, who passed on her late nineteenth-century taste and training to several generations of American singers, including Beverly Sills.60I still see this execrable piece of work in the hands of young singers, and I simply cannot fathom the know-nothingism that allows such a practice to continue to flourish in
American conservatories.
The problem is not that Liebling transposed the cavatina up a half step from E major to F major so that it suits a higher voice. Although I believe that Rossini’s comic operas lose much when their female protagonists are sung by sopranos rather than the contraltos and mezzo-sopranos Rossini had in mind, such transpositions were already common in the early nineteenth century. Nor are there grounds for arguing against the use of variations intended to push the tessitura higher, for Rossini’s own ornaments often do the same. But three elements of the Liebling variants for “Una voce poco fa” are more disturbing: all testify to historical ignorance and stylistic insensitivity. First, the voice is allowed to exhibit coloratura pyrotechnics that are totally out of style. Rossini never wrote any part resembling the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Olympia in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman, or the title role in Delibes’ Lakmé, and a cadenza that prepares the repeat of a cabaletta theme with the kind of vocalism seen in example 9.21 is unheard of in his operas.61 If no singer performing an Italian opera can be taken to task for failure to respect the style of that opera, as some critics apparently believe, then performers of Mozart, Mussorgsky, or Wagner should be permitted similar latitude. But that uncomfortable consequence is rarely acknowledged. I have already described the anger generated by Cecilia Bartoli’s decision to interpolate Mozart’s own substitute arias for Le nozze di Figaro into that same opera. Imagine if she had let fly a Cenerentola cadenza!
Second, Rossini’s cadenzas and those of the singers of his age occur in well-defined structural positions. Rhythm matters, and the insertion of extraneous cadenzas in the middle of a balanced phrase, another Liebling speciality, destroys the symmetry so characteristic of the composer’s art. Finally, there are many appropriate opportunities for vocal display throughout a Rossini aria. But nowhere in his operas, nowhere in the variations he explicitly wrote for singers, nowhere in the pedagogical treatises from the first half of the nineteenth century, nowhere in the notebooks of Laure Cinti-Damoreau or Adelaide Kemble, nowhere in printed editions with singers’ ornaments, nowhere does one find a Rossini aria that concludes by simplifying Rossini’s notation and then by having the singer drop out of the cadences, introduce a cadenza at a totally inopportune moment, and conclude with a high note (in this case a stratospheric f), as in this classic Liebling finale. Example 9.22 includes Rossini’s original text and his own variation for Matilde Juva (both transposed to F major), as well as Liebling’s version.62
EXAMPLE 9.21. GIOACHINO ROSSINI, IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA, CAVATINA ROSINA (N. 4), THE PREPARATION FOR THE REPEAT OF THE CABALETTA IN ESTELLE LIEBLING’S VERSION AND KEY (MM. 89–90).
“The audience expects it.” “My public demands it.” “If I don’t sing it, they’ll think I don’t have it.” “What would my mother say?” You name the justification, I’ve heard it. With all the freedom to ornament, all the freedom to add cadenzas (including high notes), somehow the battle lines form over the last note of a piece, as if the audience will forget all the artistry and fireworks of an entire evening in the theater unless reminded by a final stentorian howl. In all the many cadenzas and variations in Adelaide Kemble’s notebook, filled with ornamentation for Tancredi, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor, and operas by Mercadante and Pacini, there is not a single example of this practice. In the music of Rossini, it is simply an anachronism, sometimes a pleasant one, perhaps, but still an anachronism. Even in Riccardo Muti’s exquisitely crafted interpretation of Il trovatore that opened the Scala season on 7 December 2000, a few loggionisti booed when the tenor, Salvatore Licitra, did not interpolate the high c at the end of “Di quella pira.” And the late Franco Corelli, whose powerful voice was not always matched by artistic insight, was quoted as saying that Il trovatore was not Il trovatore without the high c. While I am not so implacably opposed to this interpolation as Muti is (so long as the singer can perform the rest of the role as Verdi wrote it), the devotion of a small part of the public to the interpolated note is absurd.63
EXAMPLE 9.22. GIOACHINO ROSSINI, IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA, CAVATINA ROSINA (N. 4), THE FINAL CADENCES OF THE CABALETTA, AS ROSSINI WROTE THEM AND VARIED THEM FOR MATILDE JUVA (TRANSPOSED TO F MAJOR), AND AS ESTELLE LIEBLING RENDERED THEM (MM. 111–114).
Did singers improvise cadenzas and variations in the nineteenth century, or did they and their coaches (sometimes the composers themselves) work them out in advance? Contemporary sources suggest that true improvisation was rare. There are striking similarities in variations associated with different singers, and even when Rossini himself wrote out ornaments for a single piece on multiple occasions, he tended to repeat himself. The large number of surviving sources with ornamentation penciled in suggests that singers developed an interpretation and reproduced it for the most part fairly consistently.
This supposition is supported by evidence from our own century. The very queen of Rossinians, Marilyn Horne, worked from ornamentation prepared in advance (usually by her superb pianist and coach, Martin Katz). If she felt that a pattern was working poorly, of course, she was eminently capable of changing it on the spot. Of all the Rossini singers with whom I have worked over the past thirty years, however, Cecilia Gasdia is the only one whose extraordinary musicianship and mastery of bel canto style allowed her instinctively to spin out one complex series of variations after another. Even Gasdia, however, tended to adopt a single set of variations for a run of performances, to the immense relief of the terrorized conductors working with her.
When critics speak of improvisation in bel canto opera, they often invoke jazz. While there are similarities between the genres, there are also enormous differences. The presence of a large orchestra, with multiple players on each string part, means that even accomplished musicians cannot modify their pitches as they listen to the meanderings of a singer. A single solo instrument can be interactive, of course, and I will never forget the redheaded clarinettist with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, whose name I never knew, modifying his instrumental echoes to respond to the variations used by Bernadette Manca di Nissa, in the role of Isaura, when she repeated her cabaletta theme in the first Pesaro production of Tancredi in 1982.64 But an improvising singer in bel canto opera whose instinct leads her through a slightly different harmonic path to a cadential goal will soon find herself creating horrid dissonances with the orchestra, a situation that a fine jazz quartet could readily overcome. Nineteenth-century singers were very much like modern ones: some were superb musicians, capable of spinning out inventive variations and cadenzas; others possessed splendid instruments but had to learn everything in advance. Ultimately what matters is not whether a singer improvises cadenzas and variations, but whether he or she performs with intelligence, musicality, and stylistic acumen.
There is, to be sure, no moral obligation for singers to employ variations or cadenzas at all or, if they do, to choose those with aesthetic roots in the style of the composer. Nor should a tenor be arrested for singing the high c at the end of “Di quella pira.” But musical art is a complex mechanism in which the separate parts have a tendency to move in tandem. The structure of Rossini’s music and the character of his vocal style are beautifully adapted to the style of ornamentation Rossini favored; the structure and character of the style to which Verdi was aiming favored very different vocal techniques, even if his early works sometimes sit uncomfortably between two worlds. Singers who train their voices to accomplish certain tasks cannot move to others without a period of adjustment. That is why lovers of fine singing are horrified when promising young artists, whose voices are well suited to the bel canto repertory, are exploited by conductors desperate for new faces to sing such heavy parts as Verdi’s Aida or Otello or Puccini’s Turandot. If there is any place within the world of Italian opera where one can justifiably speak of moral obligation and high crimes, that would be a pretty good place to start.
10
HIGHER AND LOWER: TRANSPOSING
BELLINI AND DONIZ
ETTI
“ANY NOTE YOU CAN SING, I CAN SING HIGHER”
As Ethel Merman taught us in a duet/duel from Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, singing is both art and gymnastic competition. Fanatics in the audience treat the theater as a gladiatorial arena: they pay the price of admission to judge whether artists have cleared the high e or scored a bulls-eye on the low f. No Roman spectator with thumb pointed downward was ever more intolerant than a scornful loggionista booing a soprano who hasn’t made the grade. Those fanatics know where registral extremes lie, where the tessitura sits uncomfortably high or low, where a two-and-a-half octave scale threatens the unwary. Bred on the fantasy of recorded bliss, they judge real performances by canned sound.
Just as performers have made cuts in the written text of an opera since the dawn of the genre, so too have they transposed music up and down to suit their vocal needs. Autograph manuscripts and contemporary manuscript copies from the first half of the nineteenth century are filled with phrases like “a half tone lower,” “in G major,” or even with two or more alternatives, some lower than the notated tonality, some higher.1 Not only do we find the E major “Una voce poco fa” from Il barbiere di Siviglia a half tone higher, in the F major beloved by sopranos, but even in G major, where Joséphine Fodor-Mainvielle liked to sing it in Paris during the 1820s.2 (By December 1825, however, her vocal means had so deteriorated that she was forced to withdraw after a single performance in the title role of Rossini’s Semiramide, essentially ending her Parisian career.)3
There is nothing exceptional about these transpositions. The quality of Luciano Pavarotti’s performances in Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment at the Metropolitan Opera in 1995, as his career was drawing nearer to an end, should not be judged by whether he actually sang the eight notorious high cs at the end of Tonio’s cavatine “Pour mon âme quel destin,” not to mention the additional high c usually interpolated within the final cadence, or requested that the piece be transposed down a half or a whole tone to enable him to make another stab at a demanding tenor role that he had mastered in his youth. Yes, it is thrilling to hear a fresh voice sing the cavatine in its original key and knock off those high notes to perfection, and Juan Diego Flórez made a sensation in a concert at Pesaro during the summer of 2000 when he sang “Pour mon âme quel destin” as an encore, but that young voice may or may not have developed the artistry of a seasoned professional in the remainder of the role.4 Marilyn Horne’s magisterial performance as Falliero in Rossini’s Bianca e Falliero in Pesaro during the summer of 1986 was in no way compromised by her decision to lower parts of the second-act gran scena, “Tu non sai qual colpo atroce,” by a tone, from F minor/major to E minor/major. Careful modifications in the secco recitative made the shift imperceptible to all but those few following with score in hand, and no one cried “scandal” when the several high cs written by Rossini, treacherous for the diva at that moment in her career, became so many high bs, which she sang with conviction and passion.5
Divas and Scholars Page 45