EXAMPLE 11.5. GIOACHINO ROSSINI, GUILLAUME TELL [RE´CITATIF ET ROMANCE MATHILDE], (N. 9), MM. 70–76, A PASSAGE IN RECITATIVE FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH AND IN THE CALISTO BASSI TRANSLATION.
When we turn to lyrical numbers (arias, duets, ensembles), the musical changes introduced with the Italian translation remain startling, though the musical context is more determinate and offers less opportunity for wide-ranging modification of melodic lines. French poetry for lyrical numbers allowed a certain freedom in mixing lines of differing numbers of syllables; Italian poetry required that lyrical verses normally be regular, with all lines in a stanza having the same metric structure. The first three verses of Mathilde’s aria at the start of act 3 in French, for example, are octosyllabes; the next four are six-syllable lines (as always in French verse, not counting the feminine ending).54 It would have been impossible for an Italian poet during the first half of the nineteenth century to render these verses in standard Italian meters, since the Italian equivalent of French octosyllabic verse would have been the shunned novenario, or nine-syllable verse (with feminine endings counted, as is standard in Italian poetry); changing to settenario for the next four, furthermore, is an internal shift that would also have been unacceptable. Instead, the seven verses in two meters of the French are changed by Calisto Bassi to six verses of decasillabi.
Mathilde:
Pour notre amour plus d’espérance;
Quand ma vie à peine commence,
Pour toujours je perds le bonheur.
Oui, Melcthal, d’un barbare
Le forfait nous sépare;
Ma raison, qui s’égare,
A compris ta douleur.
[There is no more hope for our love, when my life has barely begun, I will never again be happy. Yes, Melcthal, the actions of a barbarian separate us; my reason, which overwhelms me, has understood your sorrow.]
Contemporary Italian (Bassi):
Ah! se privo di speme è l’amore,
Non mi resta che pianto e terrore:
Infelice per sempre sarò.
Un delitto a me toglie il mio bene,
Fa più acerbe le immense mie pene,
Né il suo duol confortar io potrò.
[Ah! if my love has no more hope, nothing remains for me but tears and terror. I will always be unhappy. A crime deprives me of my beloved and makes my immense suffering more bitter, nor can I comfort your sorrow.]
For these Italian words to be underlaid to Rossini’s music, a task accomplished by an unknown hand (certainly not Rossini), many changes in note values and text underlay were needed, so many that the original rhythm is sometimes unrecognizable.
French poetry for music made frequent use of octosyllabic verse, and the changes resulting from Italian substitutions for the novenario often undermine the rhythmic qualities of Rossini’s music. An excellent example is the duet for Mathilde and Arnold in the second act, where the Austrian princess admits her love for the Swiss youth. In the original French, her admission takes the form of a quatrain of four octosyllabes; in the Italian translation this is rendered as four ottonari.55
Mathilde:
Oui, vous l’arrachez à mon âme
Ce secret qu’ont trahi mes yeux;
Je ne puis étouffer ma flamme,
Dût-elle nous perdre tous deux!
[Yes, you drag from my soul this secret that my eyes betrayed; I cannot extinguish this flame, even were it to destroy us both.]
Contemporary Italian (Bassi):
Tutto apprendi, o sventurato,
Il segreto del mio cor.
Per te solo fu piagato,
Per te palpita d’amor.
[You learn, unhappy one, the secret of my heart, which bends only before you, which beats for the love of you.]
The problem is not only the change in meter but also the fixed accentuation pattern of ottonari verse in Italian libretto poetry, major accents falling on the third and seventh syllables. The rhythmic monotony of the opening phrases in the setting of the Italian text reflects the uniform way in which the ottonari are declaimed, while the French original, which differentiates the setting of the first and second verses, is rhythmically more accentuated and varied (example 11.6). But the rhythm of the Italian verse also destroys the effect Rossini has calculated at the end of Mathilde’s opening section in the French original, where for several bars a single syllable is held while the voice ascends a fifth between the first and second beats (example 11.7). Only after this passage does Rossini use texted high notes, but on the downbeat rather than on the second beat, forcefully concluding Mathilde’s stanza. In the translation, on the other hand, every single high note on the second beat is given a syllable (example 11.8). This excess of accentuation changes the way the phrase is sung and decreases the effect of the cadential phrase. The habit of singing the music in this way in Italian, furthermore, had so infiltrated the performance history of the work that Carol Vaness, performing the French original in San Francisco in 1992, for the most part beautifully, actually changed the words of the French here so as to pound out those high notes with new syllables in every measure, in utter disregard for Rossini’s carefully constructed melodic line.
EXAMPLE 11.6. GIOACHINO ROSSINI, GUILLAUME TELL, DUO [MATHILDE-ARNOLD] (N. 10), MM. 3–6, IN THE ORIGINAL FRENCH AND IN THE CALISTO BA SSI TRANSLATION.
Metric problems can also be compounded by politics. In the second-act finale, the cantons gather around Tell. They are hesitant to revolt against their Austrian masters for fear of what may happen to their wives and children. Tell reminds them of their real plight, with two powerful octosyllabes, immediately repeated by the chorus.
EXAMPLE 11.7. GIOACHINO ROSSINI, GUILLAUME TELL, DUO [MATHILDE–ARNOLD] (N. 10), MM. 34–38, IN THE ORIGINAL FRENCH.
EXAMPLE 11.8. GIOACHINO ROSSINI, GUILLAUME TELL, DUO [MATHILDE–ARNOLD] (N. 10), MM. 34–38, IN THE CALISTO BASSI TRANSLATION.
Un esclave n’a point de femme,
Un esclave n’a point d’enfants.
[A slave can have no wife, a slave can have no children.]
Not only are these French verses in an unloved rhythm for Italian poetry, but they also highlight the powerful word “slave.” Rossini sets them as two parallel phrases, strongly underlining the political message (example 11.9). In the Calisto Bassi translation, the word “slave” is completely eliminated, while the original octosyllabes are rendered as two recitative verses: a settenario and an endecasillabo.
E cinti da’ perigli
Vediamo i genitor, le spose, i figli...
[We see our parents, wives, and children surrounded by perils.]
The sense of Rossini’s music, the rhythmic power of the original, the balance of phrases, indeed the meaning of the moment is gone (example 11.10). New verses by Paolo Cattelan have tried to restore sense, rhythm, and meaning to the Italian, using a meter of nine syllables, in imitation of the French: they succeed in capturing the sense of Rossini’s music and the dramaturgical significance of the passage:
Per noi schiavi non vi son mogli,
Per noi schiavi non più de’ figli...
But these verses, or any verses like them, would not have been metrically desirable for a librettist working in Italy between 1800 and 1860. He would hardly have allowed himself to adopt the forbidden novenario meter.
Harold Powers, however, in an important essay, has brought forth a fascinating counterexample from 1842.56 When the Florentine impresario Alessandro Lanari staged the Italian premiere of Fromental Halévy’s opera La Reine de Chypre during the carnival season of 1842–43, he had its French text, written by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, rendered into Italian by Francesco Guidi. For Guidi, Lanari established unusual parameters, as the translator explains in his preface to the printed libretto:
EXAMPLE 11.9. GIOACHINO ROSSINI, GUILLAUME TELL, FINAL 2e (N. 12), MM. 306–308, IN THE ORIGINAL FRENCH.
EXAMPLE 11.10. GIOACHINO ROSSINI, GUILLAUME TELL, FINAL 2e (N. 12), MM. 306–308, IN THE CALISTO BASSI TRANSLATIO
N.
I was required to make the translation of the present drama by M. de Saint-Georges not only literally, syllable by syllable and note by note, following the music already written by Maestro F. Halévy, but also preserving throughout the libretto the heterogeneous meter of the French verses, which differs greatly from our own, especially in the recitatives. The management wanted rigorously to respect the original.
What follows is an Italian libretto filled with the dread novenario, with shifting meters within a single stanza, and with unusual—even if acceptable—meters, such as doppi settenari. As a result, it was presumably possible to preserve the music of Halévy with only minimal adjustments. The history of Italian translations of French operas would have been very different indeed had Lanari and Guidi’s experiment garnered further support, but it does not appear to have done so. Not until Arrigo Boito’s extraordinary transformation and expansion of the metrical structure of Italian librettos from the time of his Mefistofele (1868) did Italian poesia per musica begin to allow itself this kind of poetic freedom.57
We are therefore left with an enigma: in the absence of a wholly separate version in each language undertaken by the composer, there is no thoroughly satisfactory way of providing an appropriate translation for an early nineteenth-century opera from Italian to French or vice versa. In order to follow the musical line, it is imperative to create verse forms that have no place in the art of libretto construction from the period; in order to follow the verbal conventions of the period, it is necessary to create verse forms that distort the vocal lines of the original score. In our world, where musical values in opera tend to be exalted over literary ones (often representing dramatic genres for which we have less sympathy), we may choose to privilege the composer’s art. But if we do, it must be with the full realization that we are creating a work far removed from what would have been considered acceptable during the 1830s. To all intents and purposes, Guglielmo Tell, with its text by Calisto Bassi, was Rossini’s opera for 150 years in Italy, England, the United States, even Austria. Indeed, it was to the Calisto Bassi Guglielmo Tell (further disguised as Rodolfo di Ster-linga) that, in 1840, Rossini himself added the new finale mentioned above.
TRANSLATIONS OF DONIZETTI:
SEX, RELIGION, AND “LA [FRAN]-CIA”
Although we often hear of performances of Italian operas with the names La favorita and La figlia del reggimento, Donizetti never wrote such operas. He did write a French score for the Paris Opéra, La Favorite, in 1841, and an opéra-comique by the name of La Fille du régiment in 1840, both of which were soon translated into Italian, the original works heavily recast to be rendered acceptable to Italian censors or less dependent on French conventions. After all, Donizetti had had the audacity to write a grand opera about religion and sex; worse still, he intermingled the two in ways that seemed almost sacrilegious. To tame the wild sentiments of La Favorite, the Italian censors rendered its plot incomprehensible, giving free rein to generations of music critics and listeners who have reacted with hostility to a plot that has very little to do with the text Donizetti set to music.58 As for transforming a French opéra-comique into an Italian opera buffa, Donizetti and his assistants in Italy modified profoundly the original words and made many significant musical changes. In both operas, dramaturgical problems interacted with metrical problems in a way that was characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century Italy, rendering the job of producing an adequate translation even more difficult.
The changes made in La Favorite to overcome the objections or anticipated objections from Italian censors are quite extraordinary. The plot of Donizetti’s opera is powerful. Fernand, a novice in the monastery of St. James of Compostella in 1340, admits to his prior, Balthazar, that he has fallen in love with a beautiful woman whose hand he inadvertently touched during a service. Unbeknownst to Fernand, his beloved, Léonor de Guzman, is the mistress of King Alphonse XI. Ashamed of her situation, she brushes aside Fernand’s offer of marriage and instead presents him with a commission in the King’s army, where Fernand distinguishes himself in battle against the Moors. But scheming courtiers have informed the Pope that the King has rejected his legitimate wife for Léonor, and Balthazar arrives, as envoy from the Pope, to inform Alphonse that he must restore his wife and banish Léonor or face excommunication.
When the King offers Fernand the opportunity to marry a noblewoman, and Fernand’s choice falls on Léonor, the heartbroken King agrees and grants Fernand a noble title. But the courtiers interpret this as the King’s way to circumvent the Papal decree, and they scorn Fernand, who learns only after the marriage that Léonor has been the King’s mistress. Enraged, Fernand tears off his decorations, breaks his sword, and throws its fragments at the King’s feet. In the final act he returns to the monastery, where the monks are engaged in digging their own graves, an affirmation of their willingness to abandon all earthly pleasures. Fernand prepares to take final vows, while Balthazar goes to comfort a dying pilgrim. The pilgrim turns out to be Léonor, who wants only to explain herself to Fernand. His love rekindled, he still hopes to flee with her, but it is too late. As death claims her, Fernand cries out to the monks that his own death will soon follow.59
The Italian translation still widely used today, La favorita, was prepared by Francesco Jannetti for the Milanese publisher Lucca, who printed the first Italian edition of the opera. Jannetti completely obscured the nature of the drama. Baldassare is no longer the spiritual father of Fernando but becomes the actual father both of Fernando and of Alfonso’s legitimate wife, who is therefore Fernando’s sister! How is it possible, then, that Fernando does not show any sign of knowing the King? How can he refer to himself as a “soldato misero”? How can Leonora (the mistress of the King) imagine that she will raise Fernando to a high rank when he is already the brother of the Queen? One absurdity is piled upon another. And instead of a monk leaving his vocation and his spiritual father for earthly love, we have simply a young man leaving his real father to follow after his beloved, a very different level of conflict from that envisioned in La Favorite. The last act, in particular, becomes utterly ridiculous. Jannetti builds it around the assumption that, devastated by the cruelty of her husband, the King’s wife (Baldassare’s daughter and Fernando’s sister) has died. Baldassare and Fernando have simply come to the monastery for her funeral (while the King apparently has stayed at home!). Since Fernando is not about to take any kind of vows (let alone final ones), why should we find his admission that he still loves Leonora to be scandalous? The story has been totally bent out of shape, and those who have complained that it makes no sense are quite correct.60
But metric considerations in the poetry have equally falsified the opera. While some famous compositions work effectively in Jannetti’s translation or require only small changes (Léonor’s aria “O mon Fernand,” for example, is well served by “Oh mio Fernando”), others lose much of their character. The text of the cabaletta of the final duet for the lovers, “Viens, je cède éperdu au transport qui m’enivre,” is basically in French alexandrines (in Italian the equivalent meter would be settenari doppi).61 Within it, however, Donizetti introduces many repetitions of individual words in order to create a particular kind of melody: each measure begins with a note held for two beats and an eighth note, which serves as the first note of the two triplets that close the measure. Each of the remaining five notes has a syllable, so that the overall effect of each measure is of restraint followed by an outpouring of hammered energy (example 11.11). In Italian there is not even a hint of the original meter. Instead, the words are rendered as strophes of ottonari, with typically regular accents on the third and seventh syllables of each verse, and without internal repetitions of words or phrases. The result is a more poorly wrought relationship between words and music and the distinct loss of the musical and dramatic character so striking in the French original (example 11.12). There is nothing subtle about the difference between the two versions of the cabaletta. It is immediately audible to a listener wh
o knows nothing about the technical matters that produce the change. Only a patent disregard for the musical and dramatic values inherent in Donizetti’s original could have led a “translator” to this betrayal of the composer’s opera. If La Favorite is worth our attention at all, either it must be sung in French or the translation must be modified to remain closer to the meaning of the original text and to the coordination of text and music found in the French.62
EXAMPLE 11.11. GAETANO DONIZETTI, LA FAVORITE, FINAL (N. 15), MM. 285–288, IN THE ORIGINAL FRENCH.
For La Favorite a new critical edition has facilitated access to Donizetti’s original score and its various layers. More difficult at this point is understanding the history of La Fille du régiment, Donizetti’s opéra-comique, whose first performance at the Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique of Paris on 11 February 1840, after much equivocation on the part of the music critics, especially Berlioz, was an enormous popular success. The sources of this work have not been fully studied, and we do not have reliable information about its various versions.63 These problems are intensified because Donizetti himself took some responsibility for the Italian version of the opera, first performed at the Teatro alla Scala of Milan on 3 October 1840, transforming an opéra-comique with spoken dialogue into an opera buffa with recitative. The many significant differences among Italian sources, however, make it difficult to separate Donizetti’s work from that of other arrangers.
EXAMPLE 11.12. GAETANO DONIZETTI, LA FAVORITA, FINALE 40 (N. 15), MM. 285–288, IN THE CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN TRANSLATION.
While much of the music is basically unchanged, Donizetti introduced several significant modifications to reduce the French character of the opera and make it more Italian. Composers of opéra-comique peppered their scores with couplets, short lyrical solos in two parallel—but not necessarily identical—strophes, sometimes with a choral conclusion at the end of each strophe. Some amusing and tuneful couplets have a frankly popular cast; some sentimental or passionate couplets are composed in a more subtle fashion. The form is related to the entire French romance tradition, which Verdi was to transform in such an extraordinary manner in the solo music for Violetta in the first and last acts of La traviata (as we saw in chapter 8).
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