Divas and Scholars

by Philip Gossett

  11. Gossett, “Scandal and Scholarship.”

  12. Gossett, “Trasporre Bellini.”

  13. Gossett, “Staging Italian Opera: Dario Fo and Il viaggio a Reims.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  1. For the early history of the Santa Fe Opera, see Scott, The First Twenty Years of the Santa Fe Opera. There is a similar treatment of the Rossini Opera Festival by Lorenzo Arruga, Medaglie incomparabili.

  2. For a chronology of performances at the Teatro San Carlo, see Il Teatro di San Carlo 1737–1987, vol. 2, La cronologia, ed. Roscioni, esp. 161. See also the critical edition of the opera, Rossini, Ermione, ed. Brauner and Gossett.

  3. Escudier and Escudier, Rossini, 122–23.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Hiller, Plaudereien mit Rossini, in particular 94.

  6. For both The Works of Giuseppe Verdi and the Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini, my colleagues and I consider a critical edition to be “provisional” until it is published, by which time the experience of working through actual performances usually allows the editors to present a text tempered by theatrical fire.

  7. I recall that the score on his podium had never before been physically opened. He might, of course, have studied the opera from another source, but Ermione was not a work in circulation.

  8. Puntature and ornamentation in Rossini and throughout the repertory of Italian opera are discussed in chapter 9, where bibliographical references are provided.

  9. Allan Kozinn, “Greek Legend No Match for Bel Canto Heroics,” New York Times, 7 August 2000, E1. Why does our paper of record ask critics whose likes and dislikes are so clearly scripted in advance to review such events?

  10. The problem of stagings, radical and conventional, is discussed more fully in chapter 13.

  11. Verdi, Rigoletto, ed. Chusid.

  12. Kalmus reprinted and sold as Il Turco in Italia a French edition from the 1820s, reflecting a set of performances organized by Ferdinando Paër at the Théâtre Italien of Paris in 1820, in which Rossini’s opera was intentionally mutilated. See the preface to Rossini, Il Turco in Italia, ed. Bent. This Parisian revival of Turco is discussed further in chapter 7.

  13. Although elsewhere in the opera both Rigoletto and Monterone ascend from this c to e, the passages usually return to the c and never produce a dominant/tonic relationship between the e and a subsequent A major.

  14. Among studies touching on this moment of transition are Fulcher, The Nation’s Image; Gerhard, Die Verstädterung der Oper, trans. Whittall as The Urbanization of Opera; and Lacombe, Les Voies de l’opéra français au XIXe siècle, trans. Schneider as The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth Century. Gasparo Spontini anticipated Rossini’s revolution, with his La Vestale (1807) and other works.

  15. Rossini, Guillaume Tell, ed. Bartlet.

  16. Will Crutchfield informs me that opera professionals frequently speak about rehearsing the “duettone” from La traviata, meaning the long “duetto” (Verdi’s term) for Violetta and Germont.

  17. For the Troupenas orchestral score of the cavatina, see Rossini, Le Siège de Corinthe, ed. Gossett. The phrase quoted above occurs in the edition (with the plate number 12817) by the Milanese publisher, Francesco Lucca, issued in approximately 1860. For this date, see Antolini, Dizionario degli editori musicali italiani 1750 –1930, 213.

  18. Rossini, La scala di seta, ed. Wiklund.

  19. Information of this kind was accumulated by Rossini’s major biographer, Giuseppe Radiciotti: see his Gioacchino Rossini, 3:193–94. Work on the critical edition of Rossini’s works over the past decades has increased our knowledge greatly.

  20. I saw this performance at the Teatro Olimpico of Rome in November 1976. In the program, Handt attempted to justify his belief that this overture is by Rossini. For further information, see the preface to Wiklund’s critical edition, Rossini, La scala di seta, xxvi, as well as Gossett, “Le sinfonie di Rossini,” esp. 95–99.

  21. Rossini Arias/Alle voci della gloria, Teldec 9031-73242-2, with Gabriele Ferro conducting the orchestra of Welsh National Opera.

  22. There has been some excellent work recently on the problem of substitute arias in the nineteenth century. See Poriss, “Making Their Way through the World” and “A Madwoman’s Choice.”

  23. Rossini, La Cenerentola, ed. Gossett.

  24. Rossini, La Cenerentola, ed. Zedda.

  25. The critical edition of Rossini’s operas includes music by other composers as long as Rossini himself was directly involved in the performances where they were inserted. We know about Agolini’s compositions through their presence in various early nineteenth-century sources. For further details, see chapter 3.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1. There is an extensive literature about the social milieu in which Italian opera flourished. Apart from the contributions by Rosselli, Banti, and Sorba mentioned in the preface, see the essays, with extensive bibliography, in Storia dell’opera italiana, ed. Bianconi and Pestelli, particularly vol. 4, Il sistema produttivo e le sue competenze, trans. Cochrane as Opera Production and Its Resources. Della Seta provides an important overview in his Italia e Francia nell’Ottocento. Also useful is de Angelis, Le carte dell’impresario.

  2. Il Teatro di San Carlo 1737–1987.

  3. Cametti’s Il teatro di Tordinona poi di Apollo continues to serve as a model for histories of a single theater.

  4. Girardi and Rossi, Il Teatro La Fenice.

  5. For precise timetables, see my introductions to the facsimile editions of the autograph manuscripts of Il barbiere di Siviglia (English, 12–26; Italian, 63–79) and Don Pasquale (English, 86 –90; Italian, 15–20).

  6. Verdi used the phrase “anni di galera” in a letter to his friend Clara Maffei of 12 May 1858, published in I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, ed. Cesari and Luzio, 572.

  7. For the finest short biography of Bellini, see Rosselli, The Life of Bellini. The most significant overall study continues to be Pastura, Bellini secondo la storia. Although a number of new letters and documents have appeared since its publication, Cambi’s Bellini: Epistolario remains the most important and best-annotated collection. For Donizetti, see Ashbrook, Donizetti and His Operas. Of great importance is Bini and Commons, Le prime rappresentazioni delle opere di Donizetti nella stampa coeva. As in the case of Bellini, the most important collection of letters and documents remains one printed in the 1940s, Zavadini, Donizetti, supplemented by more recent articles and monographs.

  8. See Piperno, “Il Mosè in Egitto e la tradizione napoletana di opere bibliche,” as well as his “‘Stellati sogli’ e ‘immagini portentose.’”

  9. See, for example, Verdi’s contract with La Fenice for La traviata, as reproduced in Verdi, La traviata, ed. Della Seta.

  10. The best overall treatment of the Neapolitan operas of Rossini remains Cagli, “All’ombra dei gigli d’oro.” See also the excellent chapter by Kimbell, “Rossini in Naples,” in his Italian Opera, 448 –66.

  11. For historical information about these operas, see the prefaces to L’Italiana in Algeri, ed. Corghi, and Semiramide, ed. Gossett and Zedda.

  12. For studies of the most important librettists of this later tradition, see Black, The Italian Romantic Libretto, and Roccatagliati, Felice Romani librettista. There is no comparable work for librettists of the earlier tradition, but an important article is Castelvecchi, “Walter Scott, Rossini e la couleur ossianique.”

  13. See his letter to Simone Mayr of 15 June 1826, published in Zavadini, Donizetti, 246 –47.

  14. See Rossini’s letter to Romani of 31 August 1819 approving the choice of a subject, in Rossini, Lettere e documenti, 1:393.

  15. The page is reproduced in facsimile in I copialettere, between 422 and 423.

  16. Verdi’s language for various elements associated with his compositional process has been studied by Folena, “Lessico melodrammatico verdiano.”

  17. The manuscript is found among the composer’s papers at the Villa Verdi in Sant’Agata. I was able to examine i
t in a microfilm copy at the American Institute of Verdi Studies. Although only the selva for the second act seems to survive, Verdi’s correspondence with Piave, his librettist, suggests that the composer prepared a similar manuscript for each act.

  18. Piave would follow Verdi’s instructions precisely, employing a senario meter (basically with six syllables to each line, as explained later in this chapter).

  19. The most elaborate studies of the genesis of a Verdi libretto concern the original version (1847) of Macbeth. See [Folena], “Il Macbeth verdiano”; and Degrada, “Observations on the Genesis of Verdi’s Macbeth” and “The ‘Scala’ Macbeth Libretto.”

  20. The compositional history of Donizetti’s Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali has been sorted out in exemplary fashion in the 2002 critical edition, ed. Parker and Wiklund.

  21. Here, too, the terminological pitfalls are legion. See Beghelli, “Tre slittamenti semantici.”

  22. Letter to Piave of 2 October 1843, published in Conati, La bottega della musica, 91–92. The compositional history of the opera is discussed in the preface to Ernani, ed. Gallico.

  23. As far as we know, Solera’s original manuscript librettos have not survived.

  24. Letter to Brenna of 15 November 1843, published in Conati, La bottega, 102–3.

  25. An intriguing sheet, with several melodies subsequently used in I puritani, is reproduced in Pastura, Bellini, facing 385.

  26. In some unusual cases comic dialogue was written in prose: this is the case particularly in operas with characters singing in Neapolitan dialect, such as Don Pomponio in Rossini’s La gazzetta of 1816.

  27. Among basic studies on musical forms in Italian nineteenth-century opera are Gossett, “Verdi, Ghislanzoni, and Aida”; Powers, “‘La solita forma’ and the Uses of Convention”; Balthazar, “Rossini and the Development of the Mid-Century Lyric Form.”

  28. In fact, Rossini introduces the new lyrical section in senari with a transitional passage, already in common time, that continues to employ the settenari of the Andantino.

  29. This example cites the text as printed in the original publication of Cammarano’s libretto, not as set to music by Verdi; the composer made a number of small modifications.

  30. Although ostensibly each verse pattern has “ten” syllables, doppi quinari are distinct from decasillabi, with their characteristic accents on the third, sixth, and ninth syllables. The quintessential example of decasillabi in Italian opera is Somma’s text for Verdi’s most famous chorus (accented syllables are printed in boldface): “Va pensiero sull’ale dorate, / Va ti posa sui clivi, sui colli / Ove olezzano tepide e molli / L’aure dolci del suolo natal!” The text is quoted, as Verdi set it to music, from the critical edition of Nabucodonosor, ed. Parker.

  31. Letter to Cammarano of 4 April 1851, published in Carteggio Verdi–Cammarano (1843–1852), ed. Mossa, 188 –89.

  32. The effect of the structure of verses on a composer’s activity has been studied extensively by Friedrich Lippmann. See, in particular, his Versificazione italiana e ritmo musicale, trans. Bianconi, the revision of an earlier study in German.

  33. For the Barbiere documents, see my preface to the facsimile edition, 12–19 (English) and 63–70 (Italian); for the composition of Beatrice di Tenda, see Rosselli, Bellini, 105–15; for Parisina, my introduction to Donizetti, Parisina.

  34. Verdi kept up a formidable correspondence all his life, and it is the primary source of our knowledge of his activities and opinions. The Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, which has assiduously collected photocopies of these letters for decades, has begun to publish parts of this correspondence, reserving a volume or volumes to the letters exchanged with significant figures in Verdi’s life: Boito, Cammarano, the Ricordi firm, and Somma. Apart from the Copialettere and Conati’s La bottega, other significant collections of letters are found in Abbiati, Giuseppe Verdi; Alberti, Verdi intimo; and Luzio, Carteggi verdiani. The most significant series of books about Verdi’s operas remains Budden’s three-volume The Operas of Verdi.

  35. For an overview of these materials, see Gossett, “Compositional Methods.” The Semiramide sketches are transcribed fully as appendix 1 to the critical edition of the opera, 1421–41. The Moïse sketch is published in facsimile and discussed in Gossett, “Gioachino Rossini’s Moïse.”

  36. Gatti, L’abbozzo del Rigoletto di Giuseppe Verdi. On Verdi’s preliminary sketches, see Gossett, “Der kompositorische Prozeß.” See also Petrobelli, “Remarks on Verdi’s Composing Process” and “Thoughts for Alzira,” and Gossett, “Verdi the Craftsman.”

  37. Gatti, Verdi nelle immagini. There is good reason to believe that Verdi also sketched earlier operas, at least in part, and important manuscripts have been identified for I due Foscari, Alzira, and Jérusalem.

  38. For a lovely example, pertaining to the cabaletta of the Duke’s aria at the beginning of act 3 of Rigoletto, see the introduction by Martin Chusid to his critical edition of the opera, xviii (English) and xlii (Italian).

  39. The sketches have been studied by Gossett in “New Sources for Stiffelio,” and Hansell in “Compositional Techniques in Stiffelio.”

  40. The most important single publication to come out of the celebrations in honor of the hundredth anniversary of Verdi’s death in 1901 was Verdi, La traviata: Schizzi e abbozzi autografi, ed. Della Seta, a facsimile of the sketches for La traviata with an ample introduction, transcription, and analysis. The explanatory “Commento critico” was published in 2002.

  41. For a consideration of the music as it existed in January 1858, see chapter 14.

  42. On the basis of manuscripts in St. Petersburg, Holmes discussed some of these changes in “The Earliest Revisions of La forza del destino.” At the time he wrote this essay, the sketches were not available.

  43. See the preface to Rossini, La donna del lago, ed. Slim, as well as my introductions to Rossini, Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra, and to Rossini, Mosè in Egitto: A Facsimile Edition of Rossini’s Original Autograph Manuscript.

  44. Similar problems arise in Mosè in Egitto, in whose autograph manuscript there are, in the second act, five recitative passages whose textual history remains elusive and whose author is uncertain. These issues are discussed in the preface and critical notes to Rossini, Mosè in Egitto, ed. Brauner.

  45. See Bellini, Il pirata, ed. Gossett. The vocal parts of this final section are on folios 162–65, the orchestral parts on 173–78.

  46. These performances of Semiramide are the subject of chapter 6.

  47. For further details, see the critical commentary to Verdi, Alzira, ed. Castelvecchi with Cheskin.

  48. See the critical commentaries to Rossini, Otello, ed. Collins, and Guillaume Tell, ed. Bartlet.

  49. See the critical commentary to Rossini, Tancredi, ed. Gossett.

  50. See the critical notes to the Cavatina Elvira (N. 3) in the critical edition of Verdi, Ernani, 35–40.

  51. As if that were not bad enough, twentieth-century orchestras have had to cope with the disappearance of the cimbasso from today’s orchestras, so that modern judgments on such matters have usually been made with the sound of the tuba in mind, a very different sound from the one intended by Verdi (see chapter 12).

  52. I first advanced this hypothesis, which by now has been generally accepted, in my article “The Composition of Ernani” (see particularly 33–35).

  53. See my introductory essay to the facsimile edition of Donizetti, Don Pasquale, pp. 37–45 (Italian) and 108 –15 (English).

  54. I discuss the problems associated with the structure of this chorus in my introduction to Bellini, Norma.

  55. The standard chorus at the San Carlo in 1816—men and women—was thirty (see the description of expenses from February 1816 in Rossini, Lettere e documenti, 1:142). For the witches in Macbeth in Florence, Verdi asked for eighteen women, divided into three groups, but he treated this as an unusual request: see his letter to Alessandro Lanari of 21 January 1847, in Rosen and Porter, Verdi’s �
�Macbeth,” 33.

  56. Gossett, Le sinfonie di Rossini, particularly 56 –68. Rossini may well have known the overture to Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (1781), in which what seems at first to be a strictly instrumental composition soon becomes a formidable vocal ensemble.

  57. See the introduction to the critical edition of Verdi, Alzira, xvi (English) and xxxiv (Italian).

  58. The best discussion of this incomplete opera is Pastura, Bellini, 245–76. Two autograph pages, from the collection in the Museo Belliniano of Catania, are reproduced in Bellini, ed. Andò, De Meo, and Failla, 212.

  59. The libretto was edited by Lo Presti as “Le Duc d’Albe: The Livret of Scribe and Duveyrier.” See also Ashbrook, Donizetti and His Operas, 434–36.

  60. There are two articles about L’Ange de Nisida, together with an edition of Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz’s libretto, in the Donizetti Society Journal 7 (2002): Lo Presti, “Sylvia prima di Léonor (con interferenze di un duca),” and Desniou, “Donizetti et L’Ange de Nisida”; the transcription of the libretto, by Lo Presti and Desniou, follows. See also Donizetti, La Favorite, ed. Harris-Warrick. For a serious corrective to earlier accounts of Stolz and her art, see Smart, “The Lost Voice of Rosine Stolz.”

  61. These documents are all cited in the preface to Rossini, Edipo Coloneo, ed. Tozzi and Weiss.

  62. Letter to Piave of 5 February 1851, published in Conati, La bottega, 250 –51.

  63. See the discussion of the chorus that opens the final act in its 1847 version, “Patria oppressa” (N. 12a), in the introduction and commentary to Verdi, Macbeth, ed. Lawton.

  64. In the cavatina “Fragolette fortunate” for the heroine of Adina, an opera he prepared on commission for a Portuguese nobleman, Rossini wrote the first nineteen measures in full. For the remainder of the piece (mm. 20 –118), he notated only a skeleton score, leaving the orchestration to another musician. See Rossini, Adina, ed. Della Seta.

  65. The contemporary banda realization for Semiramide is printed as vol. 4 of this critical edition.