Divas and Scholars

by Philip Gossett

  5. The reference was added—as a rather awkward counterpoint—within the “Canzone Francese” during the finale, “Madre del nuovo Enrico de’ Franchi,” a duet sung by the two French travelers, Contessa di Folleville and Cavalier Belfiore (see Rossini, Il viaggio a Reims, 866–71). That piece, in fact, is one of the “national hymns” based on a popular tune, the old French folksong “Charmante Gabrielle,” as Janet Johnson recounts in her preface, xxx. The Abbado insertion can be heard on his recording, issued by Polygram in 1985 as Deutsche Gramophon 415 499–501. For an example of a scholar who assumed that the insertion was authentic, see Kern, “Verfassungsgeschichtliche Aspekte der Oper Il viaggio a Reims von Rossini.” He writes: “. . . spielt das Orchester in den gemeinsamen Gesang beider Franzosen zur Huldigung an die Schwiegertochter Karls X. im Schlußbild der Opera die Anfangstakte der Marseillaise” (247).

  6. See Beghelli, “Per fedeltà a una nota,” in which he points out (and not in a negative spirit) how far Muti’s readings stray from those indicated in the printed score.

  7. Rossini originally had an assistant compose this second-act solo for Lindoro, “Oh come il cor di giubilo” (see the critical edition of L’Italiana in Algeri, 320–26); for a later performance, at the Teatro Re of Milan in early April 1814, he replaced it by a beautiful piece of his own composition, “Concedi, amor pietoso” (see ibid., appendix 3, 724–49). The festival had expected to include Rossini’s replacement aria, and Fo had designed an imaginative staging, which had to be sacrificed at the last moment.

  8. See my essay accompanying the facsimile edition of Don Pasquale and my “Anna Bolena” and the Artistic Maturity of Gaetano Donizetti. Similar evidence is visible throughout the autograph manuscript of Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor.

  9. See his letter of 5 November 1870 to Ghislanzoni in I copialettere, 662. For the dating and a discussion of the problem of cabalettas in Aida, see Gossett, “Verdi, Ghislanzoni, and Aida,” 298 and 316–21. The problem of the Verdi cabaletta will be considered at the end of this chapter.

  10. That, of course, is the lesson of the dispute over Le nozze di Figaro between Cecilia Bartoli and Jonathan Miller, discussed at the conclusion of chapter 7.

  11. For complete information, see the preface and commentary to the critical edition of La gazzetta. The derivations were described earlier by Mauceri, “La gazzetta di Gioachino Rossini.”

  12. For further details about the accompaniment of secco recitative, see the concluding section of chapter 12.

  13. See my introduction to Mayr, Medea in Corinto, where I accept the hypothesis of Schiedermair, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Oper, 2:121–54. The basic point remains unchanged, however, even if it turns out that Mayr wrote first the accompanied recitative for Naples, then transformed it into secco for a performance in Bergamo, as suggested by Roccatagliati, “Il giovane Romani alla scuola di Mayr,” 313n. See also Russo, “Medea in Corinto.”

  14. See the preface by Gabriele Dotto to his critical edition of Bianca e Falliero, xxvii.

  15. These elements of stagecraft will be discussed in chapter 13.

  16. Serafin and Toni, Stile, tradizioni e convenzioni, 1:71–72.

  17. This edition was prepared by Vincenzo Borghetti.

  18. H. Colin Slim discusses the history in the preface to his critical edition of La donna del lago, xxi–xxiv. It is less clear why Rossini appears to have assigned a good deal of accompanied recitative to a collaborator in Mosè in Egitto (Naples, Teatro San Carlo, 5 March 1818).

  19. Verdi’s letter of 15 November 1843, published in Conati, La bottega, 102–3, was cited in chapter 2 at the end of the section “Orchestrating the opera.”

  20. Letter from Verdi to Carlo Marzari, postmarked 30 January 1853, published in Conati, La bottega, 312–13.

  21. The two London versions are compared by Michal Collins in his critical edition of Otello: see the commentary volume, 165–69.

  22. For an example, see mm. 72–103 in the Recitativo Dopo il Quartetto of Il Turco in Italia, which precedes the duet for Fiorilla and Don Geronio, “Per piacere alla signora” (N. 6). The measures are included in the critical edition, pp. 360–62, but the cut is clearly indicated, and the modifications necessary to make the cut are shown. In fact, with two accomplished actors in the roles, the scene is hilarious.

  23. To take a particularly egregious example, in Il Turco in Italia the Recitativo Dopo la Cavatina Geronio concludes in E major; the following Cavatina Fiorilla begins in A major: see the critical edition, 171–72. In this case the solution is very simple: starting at m. 61, Zaida could continue declaiming on a d, and everything else (vocal lines and continuo) needs to be taken up a semitone from 61 through the end of the recitative. The recitative thus concludes in E major, dominant of the key of the following cavatina.

  24. Verdi was particularly concerned about this scene, and laid out details of Simone’s motions in a letter to Piave written toward the end of 1856 (letter LXI in Morazzoni, Verdi: Lettere inedite, 38, reprinted in Abbiati, Giuseppe Verdi, 2:375).

  25. To be fair to “La Divina,” Will Crutchfield reminds me that in an interview she once opined that in the second act of Tosca, “Vissi d’arte,” her own showstopper, held up the action and ought to be cut. Of course, an opera is not a play, and holding up the action is not always a bad thing. One wonders whether remarks of this kind might not have reflected her interactions with Visconti.

  26. See Serafin and Toni, Stile, tradizioni e convenzioni, 1:11n. My criticism of the pretences and influence (acknowledged or unacknowledged) of this book should not be taken as criticism of Serafin as a conductor, as a trainer of voices, as a significant participant in the bel canto revival during the 1950s and 1960s. But the list of operas he conducted at La Scala during the 1910s included hardly any Italian operas written before 1855: his specialties seem to have been Wagner and Strauss (between 1911 and 1914 he conducted Siegfried, Die Meistersinger, Lohengrin, Parsifal, and Tristan, as well as Der Rosenkavelier, Feuersnot, and Salome) and the young Italian school (composers such as Mascagni, Laparra, Wolf-Ferrari, Montemezzi, Smareglia, and Alfano). See the useful repertory and cast lists in Gatti, Il teatro alla Scala, 2:71–73. Hence, to imagine that Serafin formed a significant link to nineteenth-century performance practice (and particularly to practice reflecting atittudes from the first half of the nineteenth century) seems little more than wishful thinking, even if the dues he paid in the opera house as a young conductor and coach included preparation of some of the earlier Italian repertory.

  27. This would be a complicated task at best, since one must not be misled by the recorded evidence, whose shape was often determined by the physical limitations of early technology.

  28. Serafin and Toni, Stile, tradizioni e convenzioni, 1:88.

  29. Example 8.1 is transcribed directly from Rossini’s autograph manuscript: the rhythmic imprecisions in the two measures marked “[sic]” give a better indication of how the phrase should be performed than an artificially “corrected” text could offer.

  30. For all the relevant documents, see my introduction to the facsimile edition of the autograph manuscript of Il barbiere di Siviglia, 6–8 (English), 58–60 (Italian).

  31. The examples are drawn from the critical editions of La Cenerentola, and of Le nozze di Teti, e di Peleo. The example from Il barbiere di Siviglia is transcribed directly from the autograph manuscript.

  32. Printed librettos document the entire history. This argument will be developed further in the preface to the critical edition of Il barbiere di Siviglia, which I am preparing.

  33. This, for example, is what he says about the solo arias for Giacomo and Elena that book-end the second act of La donna del lago: “Lacking for inspiration, he [Rossini] had recourse to rhetoric and to the ostentation of vocal ornaments. Thus arose the cavatina for Uberto, “Oh fiamma vorace”; and likewise the rondo finale [“Tanti affetti”]: both are bravura arias and nothing more.” See Radiciotti, Gioacchino Rossini, 1:387.

  34. So, when th
e fine tenor Paul Austin Kelly interpreted the role of the Count at the Rossini Opera Festival of Pesaro in the summer of 1997, he sang the aria some nights and not others, depending on how he felt physically. In principle, the festival wanted to include it, but never to the detriment of the singer’s performance.

  35. For useful analyses of the relationship between the operas of Pavesi and Donizetti, see Anselmo, “Don Pasquale” di Gaetano Donizetti, 51–92, as well as Cronin, “Stefano Pavesi’s Ser Marcantonio and Donizetti’s Don Pasquale.” Compare also my introduction to the facsimile edition of the autograph manuscript of Don Pasquale, 20–22 (Italian), 91–94 (English).

  36. Sometimes the pieces are cut for economic reasons: by removing these choruses, the choral accompaniment to the Serenata, and the brief choral interventions in the Rondò Finale, it is possible to eliminate the need for a chorus in Don Pasquale altogether.

  37. A modern edition of Ser Marcantonio, prepared by Paolo Fabbri and Maria Chiara Bertini, was performed at the Teatro Rossini of Lugo in April 2000, but I don’t know whether the opera was given complete or with cuts.

  38. See the critical edition of L’Italiana in Algeri, 320–26 and 448–55, and the relative commentary. The editor of this volume, the composer Azio Corghi, tells of a performance from his edition, conducted and staged by colleagues who constructed the entire spectacle around “Le femmine d’Italia,” blissfully unaware that it isn’t by Rossini (they had read neither the preface nor the commentary to the edition). The evening began with the conductor walking down the aisle of the theater humming the tune. I am not saying that this was a bad or inappropriate choice, only that a little knowledge could have spared them the embarassment of commenting on their innovative use of Rossini’s great tune in their production.

  39. In Charles Brauner’s critical edition of the opera, which had its premiere at the Teatro San Carlo of Naples on 5 March 1818, “A rispettarmi apprenda” appears as an appendix. The principal text includes instead the new aria with which Rossini replaced the Carafa piece, “Cade dal ciglio il velo,” added for a revival of the opera at the same theater in February and March 1820. See Rossini, Lettere e documenti, 1:310. Rossini placed the new aria within his autograph manuscript of Mosè in Egitto, where it occupies ff. 69–80.

  40. It is worth pointing out that the Roggiero aria, printed in the critical edition of Tancredi, pp. 500–504, uses an orchestral melody (mm. 5–9) that Rossini borrowed from what was widely considered to be his first completed composition, a song, “Se il vuol la mulinara.” An autograph manuscript of the song is in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York; see The Mary Flagler Cary Music Collection, 41. As the annotators of this catalogue point out, although the piece bears the autograph date of “li 20 marzo 1801,” the manuscript is likely to have been written a few years later, as a presentation copy for Vincenza Viganò Mombelli, who prepared the libretto of his first opera, Demetrio e Polibio.

  41. I made a similar argument in chapter 1 about the duettino for Pilade and Fenicio in the second act of Ermione, a piece that allows the singer portraying Ermione a moment of respite between her gran scena and the duet finale with which the opera concludes.

  42. The Aria Albazar (N. 12) is found in the critical edition of Il Turco in Italia, 698–710. In order to make this cut, it is necessary to perform the dialogue between Albazar and the Poet (Recitativo Dopo l’Aria Narciso, mm. 1–29), which concludes on the dominant of C major, then to continue directly with the Coro, N. 13, in C major.

  43. Serafin and Toni, Stile, tradizioni e convenzioni, 2:62, 2:167–68, 2:177.

  44. For an assessment, see Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 2:167–242, and Mila, Giuseppe Verdi.

  45. See Lawton, “Le Trouvère,” where he comments, “Since Verdi himself cut Leonora’s cabaletta in Act IV for Paris, this traditional practice is well justified” (102). As I am suggesting in this chapter, however, the composer’s decision to cut this cabaletta in a later performance, for different performers, in a different language, and for a different audience should constitute only one factor in our thinking. Lawton’s critical edition of Le Trouvère is forthcoming in The Works of Giuseppe Verdi.

  46. Verdi himself, however, was ever more prepared to take this path, as is apparent with the first-act finale of Luisa Miller, where Cammarano originally provided him text for a final quick movement, which he rejected. See Verdi’s letter to Cammarano of 17 May 1848, cited in the introduction to Verdi, Luisa Miller, xvii (English) and xli (Italian).

  47. Ornamentation is the subject of chapter 9, where full bibliographical references and descriptions of Rossini’s own manuscripts and of those of his contemporaries are provided.

  48. Performances of Handel’s operas over the past decade have demonstrated as clearly as possible that these works seem much shorter when given in their entirety. What was needed to make them live in the modern theater was a way to stage effectively the “da capo” aria. Notable recent successes, such as two I have seen at Lyric Opera of Chicago (the 1999 Alcina of Robert Carsen, first performed at the Opéra National of Paris, and the 2003 Partenope of Francisco Negrin, first performed at Glimmerglass Opera) have tended to present each of these arias as miniature dramas, so that the formal musical repetitions are balanced by a dynamic, constantly evolving stage action. I do not in any way consider such directorial interventions to be “compromises”: they are thoroughly appropriate. This topic will be developed at greater length in chapter 13.

  49. It might be objected, of course, that composers themselves occasionally introduced modifications in their music that had precisely this effect (Verdi’s revision of Simon Boccanegra after more than two decades is the classic example). Still the ways in which a great composer might have modified his own music must not be confused with the ways in which present-day interpreters should feel free to intervene.

  50. Tonal closure in a musical number in several sections was as crucial for Rossini as it was for Mozart in his multimovement symphonies. This introduction is taken over without significant structural change from Maometto II. But Verdi, for example, was prepared to abandon such a formal principle.

  51. A few years later, in December 1982, I was engaged by the Teatro Comunale of Florence to lecture about the opera before the opening of their new production. As soon as I realized that they were introducing the same cut, I discussed it with the conductor, Eliahu Inbal. Unaware that the cut was first introduced for the Milanese performances of 1969, he assured me that it was “traditional.” When I pointed out the structural consequences and the thematic transformation, he seemed genuinely crestfallen, but the two days remaining before the performance offered insufficient time to make amends.

  52. The maneuvers are described as follows in the stage director Solomé’s mise-en scène: “Rodolphe, three hunters, and two women in riding habits arrive on horseback, with falcons on their fists. They cross the scene at a gallop, from the left to the right of the Public. As soon as they have disappeared, six soldiers carrying braziers place them on the slopes of the mountains and rocks so as to illuminate the hunting party, which is reposing at the rendez-vous. Then the pages of the hunt and valets bring in the dogs and stop in the middle of the stage. The horses likewise place themselves in the middle; the riders step down. Six pages of the hunters, with falcons on their fists, cross the stage and exit to the left of the Public. Then peasants carrying deer and wild boar follow the same path. The horsemen mount the horses again and leave to the left, with the pages and valets. As the horsemen, pages, and valets depart, the hunters and the piqueurs on foot enter from the right. They have javelins, gourds, etc. They too come to a halt and sing the Chorus, ‘Quelle sauvage harmonie.’ ” See the volume Commento Critico: Testi in the critical edition of Guillaume Tell, 132–33.

  53. The repeated measures are 1–41 of the Chœur (N. 8): see pp. 531–39 of vol. 2 in the critical edition of Guillaume Tell.

  54. Two particularly beautiful examples are the cabaletta, “Perché soave calma,” from the duet
for Ermione and Pirro in Ermione (N. 3, mm. 240–326, on pp. 237–58 of the critical edition) and “Ah! dopo cotanto penar per trovarsi” from Bianca e Falliero (N. 5, mm. 178–275, on pp. 483–507 of the critical edition).

  55. Some characteristic examples are the cabaletta “Cielo! in qual’estasi,” from the duet for Elena and Uberto in La donna del lago (N. 2, mm. 280–404, on pp. 213–47 of the critical edition) or the cabaletta “Va, superbo: in quella Reggia,” from the duet for Arsace and Assur in Semiramide (N. 3, mm. 161–276, on pp. 401–33 of the critical edition).

  56. See the cabaletta “Dov’è mai quel core amante,” from the duet for Elcia and Osiride in Mosè in Egitto (N. 3, mm. 180–220).

  57. For the Viaggio a Reims cabaletta “Oh! quanto ingannasi,” see N. 5, mm. 114–324, on pp. 492–513 of the critical edition. All musical sources for Le Comte Ory omit the equivalent of mm. 215–256 of Il viaggio a Reims for the cabaletta “Ce téméraire,” in the duet for Comte Ory and the Comtesse Adèle (N. 7); see, for example, Rossini, Le Comte Ory, 340–52.

  58. Since Harold Powers’ important article “ ‘La solita forma’ and the Uses of Convention” was published in 1987, many musicologists have referred to the first section in this model as a “tempo d’attacco.” I stubbornly resist the name. In the entire nineteenth century it is used only by Abramo Basevi in his famous Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi, 191, where it immediately precedes the description of a very particular kind of primo tempo (the standard term in the period), that is, a short introductory section which prepares the cantabile, much as a tempo di mezzo prepares the cabaletta. The example is the duet for Rigoletto and Gilda in the first act of Rigoletto; a similar piece is the duet for Alfredo and Violetta in the last act of La traviata. It seems to me inappropriate to use it for the typical Rossinian duet, where the primo tempo is a fully developed section, both musically and dramatically.