Divas and Scholars

by Philip Gossett

  This change in Verdi’s conception of the scene between Una vendetta in dominò and Un ballo in maschera has an effect similar to the removal of specific references to the gallows on the “orrido campo” (horrible field), a change mandated by the Roman censors. There is something faintly sentimental, even pietistic, about Verdi’s modification. The pure-hearted maiden appears to the heavenly sound of the flute, accompanied by high string tremolos (shades of La traviata), then kneels to pray as the first violins, second violins, and cellos take the tune over a three-octave range, with the flute and first clarinet playing celestial arpeggios (shades of Gilda’s “Lassù in ciel”).

  Stage directors today, of course, are not much given to sentimentality and pietism, and most audiences would snicker at an Amelia kneeling in prayer. Nonetheless, Verdi’s music for Ballo speaks clearly. In one of the productions I saw recently, the problem was resolved by keeping Amelia out of sight until the embarrassing moment had passed and the music again became agitated. Calixto Bieto simply ignored the music (to put it bluntly), or (to put it generously) used it as an ironic counterpoint for the action introduced by the director: act 2 began with a homosexual rape and murder on the “orrido campo.” Even the grandest of grand musical gestures, in short, cannot be treated as an absolute guide to staging Verdi’s operas today. Once we understand the composer’s own ambivalence about this scene, that knowledge plays inevitably into our thinking about it.

  2. A CADENZA IN THE SECOND-ACT FINALE. The continuity draft of the laughing-chorus finale of the second act was originally notated in B major, but Verdi lowered the tonality to B major before preparing his skeleton score. The original text reads “l’innamorato Conte riposa!” (the Count in love [Ankastrom in Gustavo III, Renato in Una vendetta in dominò] takes his ease), as it did in the skeleton score; after 11 September 1858 the composer changed it to “l’innamorato campion” (the champion in love) for Ballo, since the creole Renato is no longer a Count. Explicit references to cuckoldry, such as “Tal marchio fitto mi volle in fronte” (he wanted that deep mark [i.e., horns] on my forehead), which Verdi had copied into the skeleton score, he modified for the Roman censors to “per lui non posso levar la fronte” (because of him I cannot raise my head). The continuity draft, skeleton score, and final version remain structurally identical until near the end, when in the continuity draft there appears a two-measure repeated phrase, the first measure of which is the concluding one on folio 213v in the autograph manuscript, crossed out, but fully orchestrated. After that single measure, Verdi removed an entire leaf from this finale (the original folio 214) when preparing Un ballo in maschera, adding a new leaf with new music pertaining to the revised score. When the Una vendetta in dominò layer begins again, at folio 215, it picks up with Ankastrom’s invitation to the conspirators to come to his home the next day, as in the final version.30

  The music in the continuity draft, from the two-measure repeated phrase through Ankastrom’s invitation, includes a cadenza for Amelia and Ankastrom. Here they could seem to be warbling in the mode of Gilda and the Duke, yet most of their singing in the cadenza is actually done separately, suggesting their alienation (example 14.1). Verdi stepped back from this solution, but—given that the first measure of the phrase was orchestrated in Verdi’s autograph—it seems likely that the entire passage we know from the continuity draft, including the cadenza, had been orchestrated before Verdi modified his score.

  For performers, the principal interpretive challenge in this final scene, in Gustavo III as in Un ballo in maschera, is the interaction between Ankastrom/ Renato and Amelia. Scholars tend to focus on details, of which performers are often heedless or even contemptuous. How much ink has been spilled on the subject of the veiled moon and the veiled lady, the inadvertent dropping of the veil as Amelia seeks to stop the conspirators from attacking her husband, while the moon’s rays illuminate her face. A nice idea, but just try to get a veil to fall inadvertently while a singer rushes forward and simultaneously strives to produce an effective melodic line. In Gothenburg, Amelia wore a mask, and the conspirators could not remove it without harming her, so she removed it herself. In Parma a more standard veil was employed, and I struggled mightily to have the performers obey Verdi’s instructions. The conductor, Valéry Gergiev, and the stage director, Andrej Konchalovskij, were supportive, yet the effort was ultimately abandoned as Amelia ostentatiously ripped off her veil and threw it as far from herself as she could so as not to trip over it. To my eye, the gesture made her seem more like an exhibitionistic Salomè than a hesitant Amelia, but no one in the audience seems to have minded.

  EXAMPLE 14.1. GIUSEPPE VERDI, GUSTAVO III, CADENZA FOR AMELIA AND ANKASTROM IN FINALE II.

  What audiences cannot help but notice, on the other hand, is the interaction between Amelia and Ankastrom/Renato. Here Somma’s verses are quite explicit. At the beginning of the finale, their dialogue, while strained, is direct. After the revelation they inhabit different spheres—both speak aside, he of the dishonor his “friend” has brought on him, she of her isolation and shame. Only after summoning the conspirators to his home the next morning does Ankastrom/Renato address Amelia directly, asserting his resolve to fulfill his promise, while she—still unable to speak to him—begs pity from heaven. Verdi’s modification in the final scene addresses the problem of situating Amelia and Ankastrom/Renato and intensifies the alienation of the characters. The omission of the cadenza avoids a musical gesture that threatens to bring the characters together in musical terms, contradicting their dramaturgical separation. The Bieto production, with its visual immediacy in his Fascist setting, translated alienation into more violent confrontation between husband and wife, with much physical interaction. Despite my intellectual conviction that the Parma production’s effort to keep the characters apart—so that they neither touched nor addressed their words to one another—was more “correct,” the effect was less theatrically compelling. In Gothenburg, on the other hand, a production about which I will speak more fully below, the characters came together poignantly to sing their anti-cadenza, and then Ankastrom broke away to address the conspirators.

  3. THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF “ERI TU.” We have already seen that the famous Renato aria “Eri tu” was written specifically for Un ballo in maschera, not for Una vendetta in dominò. After 11 September 1858 the skeleton score of the aria Verdi had composed for Una vendetta in dominò at the end of 1857, “E sei tu,” was removed from the manuscript of that opera. Verdi made a continuity draft of the new piece, using Somma’s revised text, and then wrote out an entirely new autograph manuscript of the new aria. Changes in the text involved not only elements pertaining to the revised plot mentioned above (with “dell’amico tuo,” for example, replacing “del vassallo tuo”), but also images considered objectionable by the Papal censors. They would not allow Amelia to be referred to as “Paradiso dell’anima mia” (Paradise of my soul) or as “simile ad un angel” (like an angel), preferring the less exalted “la delizia dell’anima mia” (delight of my soul) and “sì bella, sì candida” (so beautiful, so chaste). The continuity draft of the original “E sei tu” is complete, however, so that the original aria can be fully reconstructed.

  The dark, introverted atmosphere with which “E sei tu” begins is profoundly different from the simmering rage that pervades the first part of “Eri tu,” with its well-known punctuating rhythmic figure for trumpets and trombones. In “Eri tu” Verdi moves from this intense D minor to the relative major (F major) after eighteen measures, about two-fifths of the way into the aria, as Renato invokes his love for Amelia (“O dolcezze perdute!” Oh lost sweetness!). The composer accompanies the shift of key and mode with the first appearance of a celestial, arpeggiating harp and flutes. Only after this sixteen-measure lyrical outpouring is there a brief return to the parallel minor (F minor, at “È finita! non siede che l’odio, / E la morte nel vedovo cor!” (It is over! only hate and death remain in this widowed heart!), after which Verdi concludes the aria with an eight-me
asure cadence in F major, taking up again the words “O dolcezze perdute! O speranze d’amor!” (Oh lost sweetness! Oh hopes of love!).

  In “E sei tu” the brooding opening in F minor continues and builds through “Traditor! che in tal guisa rimunerei del vassallo tuo primo la fé” (Traitor! that is how you would repay the faith of your principal vassal”). At that point the music shifts to A flat major for the more lyrical setting of “O dolcezze perdute!” (example 14.2). Although there is only a faint hint of an accompaniment in the continuity draft, the harp and flutes of “Eri tu” work perfectly well, and that is how we orchestrated the phrase in our reconstruction. In one of the most striking moments in the piece, the voice sits on middle c to conclude the phrase “brillava d’amor!” (shone with love!), while the opening tune returns in the accompaniment back in F minor for a more extended reprise and cadence at “È finita! non siede che l’odio, / E la morte nel vedovo cor!” Thus, the initial mood—less aggressive, more inward, than in “Eri tu”—plays a much more consistent role in “E sei tu.” Only at the very end does the original version anticipate the revision, returning to F major for the brief concluding phrase (“O dolcezze! o memorie d’amor!”), using a tune essentially the same as the one Verdi would employ in the same place in “Eri tu.” The vocal climax, with the baritone sustaining a high f, attacked softly, followed by a crescendo, is shared by both versions.

  This is not the place to suggest possible reasons for Verdi’s rewriting the Ankastrom aria for Un ballo in maschera. Without claiming for a moment that “E sei tu” is superior to “Eri tu”—one of the most popular arias Verdi ever wrote for baritone—one can justifiably say that had Verdi not revised the piece for Un ballo in maschera, the original aria would have continued to be performed over the decades to the delight of singers and audiences alike. Certainly the nightly ovations that would greet Gothenburg’s Ankastrom, Krister St. Hill, testify to the aria’s ability to give pleasure, even to a public that knows and loves “Eri tu.”

  EXAMPLE 14.2. GIUSEPPE VERDI, GUSTAVO III, ARIA ANKASTROM (“E SEI TU”), OPENING PHRASE AND LYRICAL PHRASE.

  Performing Gustavo III

  If scholars can indeed reconstruct with conviction the skeleton score of Una vendetta in dominò, as Verdi carried it with him to Naples in January 1858, where does that leave us? A skeleton score, after all, is not an opera that can be performed. Here we exit the realm of scholarship and enter the hypothetical. Given the widespread dissatisfaction with the compromised fate of Un ballo in maschera, the temptation to intervene is great. Two operations seem both possible and sensible: (1) reconstruct the opera Verdi brought with him in skeleton score to Naples in January 1858, but by using the revised libretto Verdi offered the Roman impresario in March 1858, Gustavo III; (2) transform Un ballo in maschera into a version with no historical precedent, Un ballo in maschera (Gustavo III), by underlaying Verdi’s libretto of March 1858 to the definitive opera, making only those few musical changes required by specific changes in the text that cannot be accommodated to the music for Ballo. So, for example, the vocal line must be changed in order to replace “S’appella Ulrica, dall’immondo sangue dei negri” (She’s called Ulrica, of the foul blood of the negroes) by the original text, “S’appella Ulrica, la sibilla” (She’s called Ulrica, the sybil).

  The first, “maximalist,” intervention is what was performed at the Gothenburg Opera in September 2002. The second, “minimalist,” intervention—which is possible, thanks to the reconstruction of Gustavo III—was used in a concert performance of the opera at New York’s Carnegie Hall on 31 March 2004, with the Collegiate Chorale under the baton of Robert Bass. The following passage from the trio of conspirators in the third act gives the flavor of what we have been missing. Although the music is unchanged between Una vendetta in dominò and Un ballo in maschera, the quality of the text Verdi actually set to music (in the right-hand column) is profoundly better than the compromised verses for Rome:

  Una vendetta in dominò/Gustavo III

  Un ballo in maschera

  Tutti stretti alla fede d’un patto,

  Dunque l’onta di tutti sol una,

  Tutti ardenti d’un solo desio,

  Uno il cor, la vendetta sarà,

  Noi giuriamo per l’anima a Dio

  Che tremenda, repente, digiuna

  Questo rege esecrato immolar.

  Su quel capo esecrato cadrà.

  [All joined by the faith of a pact,

  [Thus, the shame of all is one shame,

  all burning with a single desire,

  our hearts are one, revenge will be

  we swear to God on our souls to

  one, terrible, sudden, hungry it will

  murder this execrated King.]

  fall on that execrated head.]

  One cannot help wondering how any opera company could perform anything else.

  Operas are also historical documents, and the original text of Gustavo III included a phrase that would return to Italian history in a striking fashion two years later. At the end of the first scene, Gustavo explains his plan to visit Ulrica’s den to the assembled courtiers. The first stanza of his poetry originally went as follows:

  Ogni cura si doni al diletto,

  E s’accorra al fatidico tetto

  Per un dì si folleggi, si scherzi

  S’affratelli al suo popolo il Re.

  [Let us give ourselves over entirely to pleasure,

  and let us hurry under the prophetic roof.

  For one day let us frolic and play, let the

  King be a brother to his people.]

  With the King demoted to a Governor General and the “prophetic” roof softened to a “magical” one, the strophe in Un ballo in maschera becomes:

  Ogni cura si doni al diletto,

  E s’accorra nel magico tetto

  Tra la folla de’ creduli ognuno,

  S’abbandoni e folleggi con me.

  [Let us give ourselves over entirely to pleasure,

  and let us hurry under the magical roof. Among

  the crowd of the credulous, let each of you

  abandon himself and frolic with me.]

  Two years later, on 20 September 1859, the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini wrote an open letter to the would-be King of Italy, Victor Emanuel II, in which he rebuked him in these words: “Voi non v’affratellaste al Popolo d’Italia” (You have not made yourself a brother to the people of Italy).31 There is a precise correspondence between Mazzini’s letter and a phrase from a version of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera that he could not have known. Even if it should prove that the phrase was a common idiom of the period, its pointed use in Gustavo III is significant for those who care about the history and culture of the Italian Risorgimento; in comparison, the bland revised text in Ballo is without interest.

  Neither of these operations can be anything more than a “hypothetical reconstruction”: even assuming that our interpretation of the skeleton score is basically correct, we have no way of knowing what Verdi himself would have done had he had a free hand. For Gustavo III, in particular, we do not know what alterations the composer might have made as he orchestrated his score, nor what modifications might have emerged during rehearsals, nor whether he might have made still other changes when he decided to return the opera to its original setting in Stockholm. In some cases, indeed, there are hints that the score he brought to Naples might have been different from Ballo, but the evidence is insufficient to allow us to reconstruct a hypothetical original.

  EXAMPLE 14.3. GIUSEPPE VERDI, GUSTAVO III, ARIA ANKASTROM (“E SEI TU”), ADDED ORCHESTRAL FIGURE.

  Even more important, we do not know how the composer’s orchestration for Naples in January 1858 might have differed from the orchestration of Un ballo in maschera for Rome. When the music is basically the same, Ilaria Narici and I followed his later orchestration. When the music is similar, we followed his later orchestration wherever possible, making only required emendations. When the music is large
ly different, as in Ankastrom’s “E sei tu,” we orchestrated the passage anew, remaining always within the orbit of Verdi’s own procedures. But we could not resist allowing trumpets and trombones to add the rhythmic counterpoint in the Ankastrom aria shown in example 14.3. Anyone who knows “Eri tu” will understand why.

  The Gothenburg production, by Anthony Pilavachi, was one of the most convincing stage treatments of the opera I have ever seen, not only for the coherence of its libretto but also for the inventive manner in which the opera was realized both visually and dramaturgically The story was updated to a timeless present, and an effort was made to portray Gustavo as a ruler more interested in his private life than in matters of state. His indifference to the political realities surrounding him was established from the beginning. In receiving petitions in the first scene, for example, the King pronounced his words ironically, and the documents were soon strewn across the stage. The Chief Judge, seeking Ulrica’s banishment, was a nerdish figure, bowing and scraping before the King. He was physically abused by Oscar, who tore up the documents, tripped him, and rode him like a horse, all to the King’s evident amusement. The reactions of the conspirators, dressed in dark three-piece suits with red ties, some already sporting hidden weapons at this point, made clear their disgust with the lack of dignity surrounding the court, however “popular” Gustavo might be. One could argue that these antics are hardly inherent in Verdi’s score, but I found wholly convincing Pilavachi’s effort to reverse visually the earliest objections of the Neapolitan censors, by suggesting the existence of a well-justified “political conspiracy.”

  Without insisting on Gustavo’s active homosexuality, the production gave Oscar a central role, establishing him as a rival to Amelia for Gustavo’s affections, at least in the mind of the page. His erotic presence was felt by everyone on stage, male and female alike. Even in the quintet of the last act, Oscar shamelessly rubbed up against the conspirators (Ribbing and Dehorn), who did not seem displeased in the least by the resulting sexual charge. The two scenes of the first act were joined by Oscar, who moved directly from the end of the scene in the royal palace into Ulrica’s den, where he struck the ground with his staff three times on the opening chords, as if a stage manager in a French classical drama. Ulrica herself seemed like the leader of a carefully organized séance, surrounded by excited well-to-do ladies from the court, carrying shopping bags, out for an afternoon’s frisson. And when Amelia’s fright increases at the end of her aria opening the second act (“Mezzanotte!.. ah! che veggio? Una testa / Di sotterra si leva... e sospira... ”; Midnight!.. ah! what do I see? A head rises from underground... and sighs...), it was the appearance of a masked, shadowy Oscar that terrified her, an Oscar who was accompanying the King to the “orrido campo.” At the end of the opera the grieving Amelia was upstaged by a distraught Oscar, who dragged the final curtain across the stage, as he collapsed in front of her.