52. In the review, which appeared in the Gazzetta privilegiata di Venezia on 17 March 1830, Tommaso Locatelli wrote, “A happier and more complete triumph theatergoers of a certain age do not remember after that of L’Italiana in Algeri.” It is quoted in its entirety in Pastura, Bellini, 238–39.
53. See Corghi’s preface to his critical edition of L’Italiana in Algeri (xxvii–xxx), as well as appendix 3 and the relevant commentary (176–84).
54. For further information, see Bent’s preface to her critical edition of Il Turco in Italia (xxi–xxvii). The history of the libretto has since been examined more fully by Nicolodi, Il Turco in Italia; see, in particular, her essay “Da Mazzolà a Romani (e Rossini),” ix–lix.
55. No moral code can be invoked to stop a singer from falsifying the sense of an opera. But why would one want to do it? In this case, the joke quickly wore thin. What Sills gained in immediate adoration from her public, she lost by having made Turco seem silly and unworthy of subsequent revival in New York. This for an opera that continues to play in major theaters all over the world.
56. Several contemporary reviews are cited in the preface to the critical edition, xxiv–xxvi.
57. The Roman revival is discussed in the preface to the critical edition, xxvii–xxx, and the music is printed as appendix 2 (928–1040); see also the related commentary, 207–48.
58. For Paër’s version of Turco, see the preface to the critical edition, xxx–xxxiii and the commentary, 252–59. The entire Parisian libretto is reproduced in Nicolodi, Turco, 427–501. See also her introductory essay, cxvii–cxix.
59. See the anonymous pamphlet De MM. Paër et Rossini (Paris, 1820), attributed to the poet Émile Deschamps and a certain Massé, who has not been better identified. See also Stendhal, Vie de Rossini, 1:27–28 (27–28 in the Coe translation).
60. Contemporaries were perfectly aware of this problem. Indeed, the administrators of the Opéra, officially responsible for the Théâtre Italien, in a letter to Paër of 27 October 1820 formally forbade him to insert music from other operas by Rossini into the composer’s works he was planning to stage, “with the exception of those which might still be taken from La Cenerentola, the only opera from which it is permitted for now to draw, since it has already been used to that end” (i.e., in Paër’s version of Il Turco in Italia). See Rossini, Lettere e documenti, 1:435.
61. A manuscript of the Zandonai Gazza is to be found in the library of the Pesaro Conservatory.
62. The critical edition of Macbeth, ed. Lawton, includes both arias. See the end of chapter 8, where the two versions of Macbeth are considered further.
63. The music of the alternative cavatina is printed in the critical edition, 681–712. See also Corghi’s preface, xxvi–xxvii, where he traces the history of the two compositions.
64. See chapter 3, n. 6.
65. The new composition was published for the first time in appendix 3 of the critical edition, 447–76; Gallico describes its historical context in his preface, xxii (English) and xlvi (Italian). For a rather negative evaluation of the substitution, see Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:169–70.
66. See Bini and Commons, Le prime rappresentazioni, 375–76. The complicated history will be clarified, I trust, in Roger Parker’s forthcoming critical edition of Lucrezia Borgia.
67. No modern edition of this cabaletta is currently available, although the revised finale to the opera is printed in the modern Ricordi score (pl. no. 41690). The cabaletta was published by Ricordi, however, in an appendix to its comprehensive edition (pl. nos. 32731–32754), issued in the early 1860s. For a thoughtful discussion of Frezzolini and her art, see Smart, “Verdi Sings Erminia Frezzolini.”
68. The same unidentified collaborator was also responsible for Don Geronio’s cavatina in the first act, Albazar’s aria in the second, and all the secco recitative. While Rossini often called on collaborators to prepare short solos or recitative, Turco is the only work in which a collaborator wrote a finale.
69. A preliminary critical edition of Matilde di Shabran, in the Neapolitan version, edited by Jürgen Selk, was performed at the Rossini Opera Festival of Pesaro during August 1996 and reproduced in 2004. The opera, in all versions associated with the composer, will eventually be published. For further information see the essay by Selk (“Matilde di Shabran”) in the program accompanying those performances.
70. This summary is the result of recent work on the opera—much of it based on newly available manuscript sources—by Ilaria Narici, who is editing Un ballo in maschera for The Works of Giuseppe Verdi; by Simonetta Ricciardi, editor of the Carteggio Verdi–Somma; and by me. Among earlier publications that have proven useful are: Pascolato, “Re Lear” e “Ballo in Maschera”; Alessandro Luzio, “Le lettere del Somma sul libretto del Ballo in maschera” and “Il libretto del Ballo in maschera massacrato dalla Censura borbonica,” in Carteggi verdiani, 1:219–40 and 1:241–75, respectively; and Rosen and Pigozzi, “Un ballo in maschera” di Giuseppe Verdi.
71. There is a wonderful document in which Verdi sets the libretto of Una vendetta in dominò alongside that of Adelia degli Adimari, adding a series of piquant footnotes. It is described and transcribed in Carteggio Verdi–Somma, 342–405.
72. Ilaria Narici and I were responsible for just such a reconstruction, performed for the first time at the Gothenburg Opera in Sweden during the fall of 2002. The project is described in chapter 14.
73. Although there is no documentary evidence concerning this substitution, we have already seen in chapter 3 that the original rondò with its introductory chorus was looked on with suspicion in both Venice and Rome. The composition was published for the first time in Corghi’s critical edition; see appendix 4, 751–81.
74. The manuscript, Fondo Noseda I.86 of the Milan Conservatory, belonged to the Milanese collector Gustavo Adolfo Noseda. See Moreni, Vita musicale a Milano.
75. The letter of 31 January 1847, is published (with a translation) in Rosen and Porter, Verdi’s “Macbeth,” 39–41.
76. The original version has been reconstructed by David Lawton in the critical edition of Macbeth.
77. The letter, written during the last week of January 1847, is also in Rosen and Porter, Verdi’s “Macbeth,”36–37.
78. The letter is cited in Abbiati, Giuseppe Verdi, 1:507–8; see also Claudio Gallico’s preface to the critical edition of Ernani, xxi (English) and xlv (Italian).
79. The original version of the opera is printed in facsimile in Giacomo Meyerbeer, Il crociato in Egitto. For information about the various versions, see Mongrédien, “Les débuts de Meyerbeer à Paris,” and Pinamonti, “Il crociato in Egitto da Venezia a Parigi.”
80. H. Colin Slim amply documents the Parisian revival in his critical edition of La donna del lago (see, in particular, the preface, xxvii–xxx, and the commentary volume, 178–94). Because he did not want to encourage performers to employ this version, which he judged distinctly inferior to the original, Slim decided to include in appendix 3 only newly composed music: those who might wish to use the pieces from Bianca e Falliero (or Semiramide or Armida, both of which were also sources for music introduced into the opera in Paris) need to consult the editions of those operas—all of which are in print—together with the commentary to La donna del lago.
81. A number of Stendhal’s reviews are gathered in Notes d’un dilettante, 227–32.
82. See Mauceri, “Rossini a Roma nel 1821.” The crucial letter for La donna del lago, however, is not found in Mauceri but is printed in Rossini, Lettere e documenti, 1:472–73.
83. For complete details, see the introduction to Toscani’s critical edition of I Capuleti e i Montecchi (xx–xxii), as well as the music printed in appendix 1 (509–624) and its accompanying commentary (103–13).
84. The strangest transposition, though, occurs in the second-act finale (N. 9), where Bellini transposed down by a full tone Romeo’s beautiful solo “Deh! tu, bell’anima,” even though the same singer, Giuditta Grisi, performed the part in both Venice and Milan.
It suggests that Grisi found the rather high tessitura of this passage a strain.
85. The passage is found in the critical edition, 591–94.
86. Alessandro Rolla was usually identified as the “Primo violino, Capo d’orchestra” at La Scala, and as such was responsible for leading the orchestra. On Rolla, see Inzaghi and Bianchi, Alesandro Rolla.
87. Cambi, Bellini: Epistolario, 264–65.
88. On the other hand, I cannot subscribe to the apparent decision of the Donizetti editors to publish Maria Stuarda but to ignore Buondelmonte: if scholars are to bring out critical editions of this repertory, they should offer to opera lovers and to performers the widest possible set of alternatives that can be traced to each composer. Extensive sources are extant for Buondelmonte, including a full score, partly autograph, in the Naples Conservatory Library and some 31 pages of autograph music in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. See Turner, Four Centuries of Opera, 54–56.
89. See the discussion in Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:198–99. Verdi’s letter to Mario of 1 January 1847, requesting the return of the composer’s original manuscript, was first published in Simone, “Lettere al tenore Mario de Candia sulla cabaletta de I Due Foscari.”
90. A much more appropriate venue for the Vaccai finale was found when Roberto Abbado recorded I Capuleti e i Montecchi, with a cast featuring Vesselina Kasarova and Eva Mei, and included the Vaccai finale on a supplementary CD. The recording was issued in 1998 by RCA Victor Red Seal, as 09026-68899-2.
91. See Giazotto, Maria Malibran, 142–43. Her friend the Countess de Merlin, in Memoirs of Madame Malibran, 1:144–45 (I quote from the English version), wrote, “The result was a decided failure. The small and feminine form of Madame Malibran was in no respect adapted to the manly and heroic character of Otello. The dusky colour, too, with which she tinged her countenance, not only deformed the beauty of her features, but concealed all that flexibility of expression which was their peculiar charm.”
92. “Pietoso all’amor mio” was frequently performed during the nineteenth century, in part because Ricordi published it in its first edition of the complete score of the Italian translation of Le Siège de Corinthe (L’assedio di Corinto). Ricordi issued the Scena e Duetto with Donizetti’s cabaletta late in 1828, with the plate number 3650, identifying it as having been “written in Genoa by Donizetti.” When it came to printing a complete edition of the score in 1829, however, Ricordi included the Donizetti cabaletta but no longer named its composer. The title at the beginning of the number reads simply: “Scene and Duet / Che veggo oh Ciel / in L’Assedio di Corinto / by Maestro Rossini. / Sung by Sig.a A. Tosi and Sig. A. Tamburini / in the opening of the Theater in Genoa.”
93. In the opening scene, for example, Corsaro was simply unaware that the mixed chorus (Scottish peasants) at the beginning of the introduzione constituted a different group of people from the male chorus at its close (hunters in the service of King Giacomo). No wonder the audience seemed totally confused by what was happening onstage.
94. A full accounting of the opera’s history and problems must await Fabrizio Della Seta’s critical edition, to be published in the Edizione critica delle opere di Vincenzo Bellini. For the moment, it is possible to consult a facsimile of the autograph manuscript (the latter housed in the Biblioteca Comunale in Palermo) of what was essentially the version performed in Paris at the end of January 1835, together with the pages in which Bellini himself made modifications for Naples (these pages were inserted by Bellini into a copy of the opera preserved today in the Museo Belliniano of Catania): see Bellini, I puritani, ed. Gossett. For a brief, largely accurate introduction to the sources, see the description by Lippmann in Adamo and Lippmann, Vincenzo Bellini, 544–48. As always, Pastura, Bellini, 396–468, provides a highly useful treatment of the history. Two publications of the 1980s, on the other hand, are unfortunately confused: Monterosso, “Le due redazioni dei Puritani”; and Pugliese and Vlad, I puritani ritrovati.
95. See Bellini’s letter to Florimo of 5 January 1835 in Cambi, Bellini: Epistolario, 497. This meeting in London and the problem of the so-called “Malibran” version of Sonnambula will be discussed in chapter 10.
96. One can follow the chronology through a series of letters, printed in Cambi, Bellini: Epistolario. Bellini had originally expected to finish the Parisian opera and have it performed in November 1834, then to travel to Naples to present an entirely new opera for Malibran in February 1835. By 24 July 1834 he is beginning to have doubts about the feasibility of this project, and he mentions for the first time the possibility of revising Puritani for Malibran (ibid., 418), although he rejects the idea. By 13 October he realizes that there will be no time to compose a new opera, and suggests instead coming to Naples to adapt Puritani “for Malibran and the rest of the company, perhaps composing some new pieces when I think it necessary, in agreement with Malibran, who will be consulted by me throughout, and in this way I will make it practically a new opera” (ibid., 454). In letters of 18 and 21 November he finally admits that he can’t come to Naples: instead, he will make the necessary changes and send the score to Naples: “So, tomorrow [22 November] I begin to make all the necessary modifications that the opera requires”; and he expects “to consign the score at the latest by 1 January [1835]” (ibid., 476–77).
97. Bellini tried to speak well of Pepoli most of the time, but he knew his limitations, as he said in a letter to his friend Alessandro Lamperi of 7 October 1834, “the book isn’t bad, but it isn’t Romani” (ibid., 446). Pepoli wrote the poetry for eight of the twelve songs that Rossini set to music in Les Soirées musicales, published in 1835 (the other four use older texts by Metastasio).
98. The most significant letters for determining this chronology are those from Bellini to Florimo of 21–22 December and 5 January (ibid., 488–93 and 494–98).
99. In some seasons, at least, the theater continued the practice, prevalent in Rossini’s time, of engaging two contrasting tenors.
100. Bellini reports this outcome in a letter to Alessandro Lamperi of 27 February 1835 (ibid., 524).
101. After Bellini’s death, Florimo sent this score to Bellini’s family in Catania, whence it made its way to the Museo Belliniano of that city. See Lippmann in Adamo and Lippmann, Vincenzo Bellini, 546.
102. For astute comments on the relationship between Rossini and Bellini, see Rosselli, The Life of Bellini, 130–34. See also Pourvoyeur, “Rossini et les Puritains.”
103. Bellini writes about post-premiere cuts in a letter to his uncle, Vincenzo Ferlito, of 26 January (Cambi, Bellini: Epistolario, 504).
104. Both versions are reproduced in Bellini, I puritani: see the revised Parisian version on ff. 39v and 41–42v of the Palermo manuscript and the Neapolitan version on pp. 78–82 of the Catania manuscript.
105. Bellini told Florimo in a letter dated 5 January 1835 that this duet was “d’un liberale che fa paura” (so radical as to be terrifying; Cambi, Bellini: Epistolario, 498).
106. The cuts include two beautiful movements: a slow trio within the first-act finale, Larghetto affettuoso, “Se il destino a te m’invola,” actually removed from the Palermo autograph (the cut is evident in the final Parisian version on f. 114v) but present in the Neapolitan version on pp. 235–47 of the Catania manuscript; and a cantabile, Andante sostenuto, in the duet for Elvira and Arturo, “Di qual dì che ti mirai,” present in the Palermo autograph (ff. 121v-127v in the second volume) but marked to be cut.
107. This is the ending found in the recording issued by Decca in 1975, under the direction of Richard Bonynge, OSA-13111.
108. The passage begins on f. 112r in the Palermo manuscript, where Bellini entered the change in the accompaniment only for a few measures, but presumably intended it to continue for the entire passage (through f. 114r). The equivalent passage in the Neapolitan version is found on pp. 231–35 of the Catania manuscript, where no trace of the revised version can be seen.
109. See my preface to the critical edition of Tancredi
, xxxiv–xxxv. The music is printed on pp. 802–18, and the relevant Notes are on pp. 284–90 of the commentary.
110. The history is recounted in many sources. Easily available titles in English include Carter, W. A. Mozart, 125–26, and Daniel Heartz, Mozart’s Operas, 151–54. All the relevant music is available in the critical edition of Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro, ed. Finscher. Ferrarese was apparently romantically involved with the librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte.
111. I quote from Marshall, Mozart Speaks, 371.
112. I read the interview, with Shusha Guppy—published in the Paris Review 165 (spring, 2003)—online at http://www.parisreview.com/tpr165/miller1.html.
113. See Miller’s interview with Martin Bernheimer, in Bernheimer, “Operating Theater.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
1. In her critical edition of Guillaume Tell, while making available all the music Rossini prepared for the opera, Bartlet tries to address these questions in her preface and by the way she organizes the volume into a main text and appendixes.
2. The critical editions of the Rossini operas, in particular, regularly indicate in their commentary volumes all the cuts either made (by omitting measures) or indicated (by annotations) in contemporary sources, whether printed editions or manuscripts. When the cuts can be traced back to the composer himself, the measures are included in the score but are marked in the standard Italian fashion with the indication “Vi-” “-de.”
3. I am aware that this is a recurring theme in Divas and Scholars, and it may be that in the United States it is a theme that does not require quite as much repetition as it may have needed a decade ago. Half of my professional activity, though, is in Italy, where—I fear—there are still many conductors, old and young, who continue to invoke “tradition” as an excuse for perpetuating questionable practices. There is much that is good in the performing tradition, but a blind acceptance of cuts reflecting another generation’s sensibility is not one of them.
4. The recording was issued by Polygram in 1993, as no. 435763. The one advantage of a soprano Rosina is that she can sing the soprano aria “Ah! se è ver che in tal momento” that Rossini added to the second act for Joséphine Mainvielle-Fodor, who sang the role at the Teatro San Samuele of Venice during the spring of 1819, while Rossini was in the city preparing Eduardo e Cristina for the same theater. It should be added that even during periods when Rosina was primarily sung by sopranos, there were always important mezzo-sopranos who performed the role, singers such as Conchita Supervia, Jennie Tourel, and Giulietta Simionato.
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