Divas and Scholars
Page 61
Perhaps the gulf between those who want “traditional” stagings and those who favor “radical” ones can never be negotiated, and yet some historical knowledge and some consideration of nineteenth-century staging and stagecraft as it pertains to Italian opera can provide important points of departure. In fact, while textual scholars were discovering the musical sources for Italian opera, scholars of theater history were exploring surviving evidence for the same repertory. Thanks to their efforts we now know an enormous amount about the look and feel of the original stagings. As James Hepokoski expressed it in 1995, “Thirty years ago, the following would have been an astonishing claim: should we wish to do so, we could reconstruct the original costumes, sets, and staging of Verdi’s operas from 1855 (Les Vêpres siciliennes) to 1887 (Otello).”20 Whether such a reconstruction is also desirable, of course, is quite a different matter. Before we tackle that question, let us consider the surviving evidence, which is still unknown to most opera lovers: the livrets de mise en scène in France, the disposizioni sceniche in Italy, and stage and costume design in both countries.
Staging Manuals (Livrets de Mise en Scène) in France
The desire to register in written form the details of an operatic staging emerged at a particular historical moment in the nineteenth century. Not that earlier examples are altogether lacking, but descriptions and images of Renaissance entertainments in France or the spectacular stage effects of Baroque opera were intended primarily to celebrate the court or aristocratic society under whose auspices the works were produced. The pictures are meant to astonish and delight, not to serve as the basis for reproducing the effects in later productions.21 But several new factors contributed to the emergence of written production books in the early nineteenth century: there was a sizable group of public theaters producing operas and eager for material, both new and old; the notion of a stable repertory began to emerge, operas that would be performed again and again in theaters throughout a country or even abroad; staging became more complex, so that written instructions simplified the task of those responsible for producing a work by giving them access to earlier approaches.
That staging manuals, livrets de mise en scène, first established themselves in France is not surprising.22 Not only was Paris a great center of opera, featuring several major opera houses, but a host of smaller theaters with permanent or seasonal opera companies had emerged around the country during the latter part of the eighteenth century in cities such as Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Strasbourg, or Nantes, as well as Francophone centers such as Brussels. This development was given further impetus under Napoleon, who sought to regulate cultural activities throughout his dominions, and later still under the Restoration. Most new operas were produced first in the capital, and regional houses were primarily interested in reproducing (albeit in a less sumptuous fashion) recent Parisian successes. The new home of the Opéra, the Salle Le Peletier, which opened in 1821, was to be the primary opera house in Paris until its destruction by fire in 1873, two years before the inauguration of the Palais Garnier. Particularly well equipped, the Peletier permitted a wealth of scenic effects, incoporating innovative staging techniques from the popular boulevard theaters and employing the latest technology. The formation of a “Comité de mise en scène” at the Opéra in 1827, along with the appointment of Jacques Solomé as directeur de la scène and Pierre Cicéri as peintre en chef, resulted in a more welcoming attitude toward innovation and greater complexity in staging. Finally, with the extraordinary popularity of the music of Rossini in Paris during the 1820s and the significance of his presence at the Peletier between 1826 and 1829, which stimulated a strong desire to present Rossini’s operas in other cities, the belief in a reproducible repertory gained further strength.
The manuals were also the product of new approaches to the dramaturgical construction of French operas. By the 1820s, opera librettos tended to incorporate a larger number of elaborate stage directions, indicating the increased importance of dramatic action throughout each work. The construction of these librettos was dependent upon ever more complex arrangements of the painted backdrops used for the settings and solid pieces of scenery, some purely decorative (the Italians called them stabili), some accommodating actors (praticabili). Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri, the principal French set painter, actually traveled to Switzerland in order to produce accurate backdrops of Swiss scenes for Guillaume Tell, and his sets were described in the staging manual.23 As illumination with gas became the norm, it was possible to regulate lighting in ways unthinkable with the candles used in the eighteenth century; that too was noted. Choral masses were required to move more freely on the stage, and the manuals suggested how to avoid symmetries in the placement of the chorus and how to differentiate members of the ensemble. A highly formal style of acting among the principals gave way to one that sought more natural, although still relatively emphatic, movements, with carefully developed facial expressions and gestures.24 As Elizabeth Bartlet points out, introducing her edition of the Solomé mise en scène of Guillaume Tell (1829),
Soloists and chorus now needed to sing and act at the same time, and not to move only during instrumental passages. The same “modern” dynamic is apparent even more in the ensemble scenes at the end of the first and third acts, with their asymmetrical arrangements. [...] every character on stage is now asked to participate in the action with reactions and movements.25
Similar comments could be made about the elaborate ensemble scenes in Auber’s 1828 La Muette de Portici, not to mention the technical skill required to stage the final catastrophe and (again) an exploding volcano. Everything is explained in detail in the printed livret de mise en scène.26 If you wanted to stage the opera in Brussels in 1830 (and set off a revolution), here was a manual that described what was done in Paris.
It was long assumed that these French livrets were intended to guarantee a uniform staging over time (in Paris) and space (in smaller theaters throughout France and Belgium). As H. Robert Cohen contends,
Staging in Paris and the French provinces throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth was an art of preservation rather than creation. Régisseurs strove to conserve, to the extent possible, the original mise en scène of an opera’s premiere as transcribed in the production book. Staging, in a word, was not intended to be altered.27
Hence, the argument runs, the elaborate descriptions of movements, gestures, stage placement, costumes, and set designs. Hence the multiple copies existing in Parisian libraries, some printed, some in manuscript, prepared over the course of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth for operas that remained in the repertory. In the collection of the Bibliothèque de l’Association de la Régie Théâtrale alone, Cohen and Gigou found eight separate sources for Guillaume Tell and ten for Halévy’s La Juive.
This theory of uniformity seemed to be supported by a well-known letter from Scribe to Louis Palianti, who was responsible for the series “Collection de mises en scènes de grands opéras et d’opéras-comiques,” which began publication in 1837 and was ultimately “to encompass more than two hundred titles.”28 Scribe’s letter, which Palianti used as a testimonial for his series, was written on 2 December 1849:
I believe that your work is done with such care and intelligence, that it makes clear and apparent the thought of the author, that it stands in for him in rehearsals, that it should enormously help the fortunes of dramatic works in the provinces and abroad, and that its usefulness is indubitable. All that remains to be desired, now, is your expansion of the publication to include a much larger number of mises en scènes; [this publication] should be found not only in the libraries of provincial theaters, but also in our national archives. That would make it impossible to forget fine old traditions, and it is to be regretted that such a work was not started years ago.29
Recently, though, Arnold Jacobshagen has challenged this orthodoxy. By looking closely at various production books for Auber’s Fra Diavolo, books prepared at various points during the co
urse of the nineteenth century, Jacobshagen has demonstrated that the copies are quite different one from the other. While sets and costumes remained relatively constant, “the positions, movements, and dramatic actions of the performers did change over time.” Thus, the livrets de mise en scène “functioned primarily to document the current state of a production, in order to orientate other theaters toward Paris. This does not mean that later Parisian productions were obliged to replicate earlier ones. The livrets de mise en scène were intended as documents for the present rather than the future.”30 The practical significance of these sources, in short, continues to be contested, and interpreting their instructions remains a challenge.
Staging Manuals (Disposizioni Sceniche) in Italy
It was through Giuseppe Verdi’s contact with Paris that the idea of publishing staging manuals passed from France to Italy. During the first half of the nineteenth century, staging for the premiere performances of an opera in Italy was generally the responsibility of the librettist, who worked in conjunction with the composer. For later revivals, theaters turned instead to their resident poet, sometimes referred to as direttore della scena or direttore degli spettacoli.31 It is not that staging and dramatic interpretation were considered secondary, but the public’s attention focused largely on the performance by an individual singer. Giuditta Pasta, famed as Tancredi, Medea, and Norma, was praised as much for her dramatic interpretations as for her voice. This statement is taken from a review of her performances at the Théâtre Italien of Paris, beginning on 14 January 1823, in Mayr’s Medea in Corinto:
What words could I use to speak of the inspiration that Signora Pasta reveals with her voice and of those aspects of sublime or unusual passions she brings to life before our eyes? Sublime secrets, that surpass the limits of poetry and everything that the chisel of Canova or the brushes of Correggio can reveal of the depths of the human heart. Who, without shuddering, can think of the moment when Medea draws her children to her, while her hand already grasps the dagger, then pushes them away, as if struck by remorse? These are touches of an indescribable delicacy, that would drive even the greatest writer, I believe, to despair.32
In such an environment, stage directors—men like Francesco Maria Piave in Venice, Salvadore Cammarano in Naples, Calisto Bassi in Milan, most of them theatrical poets—were primarily concerned with making sure that the action moved along smoothly, entrances and exits were properly executed, and the indications of the libretto were followed.33 Invention and innovation in staging was the furthest thing from their mind. It was also significant that in Italy there was no single center, like Paris, from which all truth flowed, but many centers, each of which believed in the validity and worth of its own theaters and its own institutions.
Rarely was the work of these stage directors documented in writing, but John Black has found a fascinating document in the library of the Naples Conservatory that gives us some insight into how they plied their craft.34 It is the draft of a set of notes that Cammarano prepared for an unnamed colleague in another city, explaining how Lucia di Lammermoor (of which Cammarano himself wrote the libretto) was staged in Naples at the Teatro San Carlo, 26 September 1835. There is relatively little detail. For the entire first scene of the opera, for example, during which we learn of the feud between the family of Enrico, brother of Lucia, and that of her beloved Edgardo, Cammarano writes only, “The huntsmen are scattered in several groups. Normanno arrives from the right (that is, the actor’s right or left). The huntsmen leave from the opposite side. Enrico and Raimondo enter from the right. The huntsmen return from the left. At the end of the cavatina, everybody goes out from the right.”35 Occasionally he provides more detailed instructions for the movement of the chorus. When in the finale of the second act Edgardo arrives, interrupting the signing of the marriage contract, Cammarano indicates that the chorus must move toward the door, then draw back. “The men place their hats [which they must have been holding in their right hands] on their heads, then let their right hands grasp the hilts of their swords, but they hold back when they see Lucia fall, fainting, into a chair.” He then adds something more interesting: “Make sure that the actions of the chorus are very animated. I recommend that Edgardo should not pick up his hat and cloak, it being unlikely that he would think of doing so in a moment of such desperation. For the next act, the actor will collect them from Alisa and the others.” Still, none of this approaches the level of detail found in contemporaneous livrets de mise en scène in Paris.36
Presumably Verdi became aware of what a French livret de mise en scène was like in 1847, when he staged Jérusalem at the Paris Opéra.37 Yet the composer does not appear to have commented on the practice, perhaps because he did not expect that Jérusalem, a revision of his popular I Lombardi alla prima crociata, was destined to have a significant performance history in Italy.38 The situation was very different when Verdi wrote his first original opera for France, Les Vêpres siciliennes, which had its premiere at the Opéra on 13 June 1855. Now he had every interest in helping to ensure that this opera would be successful in Italy, and, as we saw in chapter 11, he personally supervised the Italian translation as Giovanna de Guzman, sending a score to Ricordi with the new Italian text entered in his own hand on 6 July 1855.
While no documentary evidence has been produced that Verdi also sent to his publisher a copy (whether manuscript or printed) of the livret de mise en scène for Les Vêpres siciliennes or wrote to Ricordi about the practice of publishing such volumes, an entry in the company’s ledgers dated “10/1855” indicates that they were working on an Italian edition, issued in 1856 as “Disposizione scenica for the opera Giovanna de Guzman by Maestro Cav. Giuseppe Verdi, official of the Legion of Honor, compiled and regulated according to the mise en scène of the Imperial theater of the Opéra of Paris.”39 In a letter to Piave of 28 November 1855, however, Verdi made it clear that he believed firmly in the French practice of publishing and using such production books: “I am sending you under separate cover the description of the mise en scène of Vespri. It is beautiful, and by reading the pamphlet with care even a child could stage the opera well. If the Vespri are changed into Guzman, you only need to change the costumes. But the mise en scène should stay the same.”40 Nor did the composer’s enthusiasm for the practice wane. Although no production books seem to have been published for either of the operas Verdi prepared in 1857 (the original version of Simon Boccanegra and Aroldo, a revision of Stiffelio), Ricordi issued a disposizione scenica for Un ballo in maschera on the occasion of its first performance at the Teatro Apollo of Rome on 17 February 1859, prepared by the librettist and by the direttore di scena associated with the theater, Giuseppe Cencetti.41 From that moment until the end of Verdi’s creative life, an Italian disposizione scenica was published for most of his new operas and major revisions, not to mention important operas by his contemporaries, including Luigi Ricci’s Il diavolo a quattro, Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele, Amilcare Ponchielli’s I Lituani, “Giulio” Massenet’s Il Re di Lahore and Erodiade, and Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (the manual for which was published in 1893).42
The disposizione scenica for Un ballo in maschera is basically a practical document. It describes properties and costumes, mentions pieces of scenery (tables, fireplaces) that need to be moved into place, and lays out the position of the painted backdrops, specifying which scenes use the entire stage (“scene lunghe,” deep scenes) and which only part of the stage (“scene a mezzo teatro,” scenes on half the stage; or “scene corte,” shallow scenes, or even “cortissime,” very shallow). The instructions for the entrances, exits, and movements of the characters are explicit, and occasionally the disposizione scenica offers considerably more detail than the stage directions found either in Verdi’s autograph manuscript or in the printed libretto. In the scene immediately after Renato stabs Riccardo, the chorus sings a furious “Ah! morte... infamia sul traditor” (Ah! death... infamy for the traitor), after which the small string orchestra in the wings—unaware of what ha
s happened—continues to play as Riccardo tells the chorus to free Renato. The only stage direction is for Riccardo: “he takes out the dispatch [in which he has agreed to send Renato and Amelia away from the court], and signals Renato to approach.” Riccardo then sings the Andante, “Ella è pura, in braccio a morte, te lo giuro, Iddio m’ascolta” (She is pure, in the arms of death I swear it, with God as my witness). The disposizione scenica gives further information:
Soon, their anger surpassing all other sentiments, everyone cries out: Morte, abbominio [Death, abomination], etc. At the last repetition of these words, two officials, members of the chorus, seize Renato to drag him to his deserved punisment, but at the words of Riccardo: No, no... lasciatelo [No, no... leave him alone], etc., the guilty one is set free. Then Riccardo signals Renato to approach him. Oscar immediately makes everyone else step back, while the agitated Renato draws near to the dying man; who, drawing the dispatch from his breast pocket, tells him: Ella è pura [She is pure], etc. The offstage music suddenly comes to an end, and other dancers and extras soon appear on stage, signaling that in the adjacent rooms, once the dreadful notice of the crime arrived, the dancing stopped.