59. For the Donna del lago duettino (N. 5), see the critical edition, 345–52; the Zelmira duettino (N. 7) is published in the critical edition of Rossini, Zelmira, 475–83; the Semiramide duettino (N. 6), so named to differentiate it from the duetto for the same characters in act 2 (N. 11), is in the critical edition of Semiramide, 561–615.
60. For a discussion of this problem in Otello, see the commentary by Michael Collins (141) to his critical edition of the opera (note 478–479). The page in Rossini’s original autograph manuscript, with the revised version visibly replacing an earlier one, can be seen in the facsimile edition of Otello, ed. Gossett, vol. 2, f. 133v. (102).
61. See the Andantino of N. 3 (mm. 83–132) in the critical edition of Semiramide, pp. 380–92. For bibliographical information about the recording, see chapter 5, n. 35.
62. Berlioz’s article was published in the Journal des Débats of 28 May 1839. I am citing the phrase after the Italian translation in Radiciotti, Gioacchino Rossini, 2:92.
63. For fuller information about these modifications, see my “Anna Bolena” and the Artistic Maturity of Gaetano Donizetti. Similar examples are described in the introduction to my facsimile edition of the autograph manuscript of Don Pasquale. The autograph manuscripts of Bellini’s Il pirata and Norma are also available in facsimile editions.
64. For further details about Giovanna’s aria, with musical examples, see my “Anna Bolena,” 68–72. The introductory chorus for the opera (mentioned in the next paragraph of this chapter) is discussed in “Anna Bolena,” 77–90.
65. The recording analyzed here was made as a studio recording at La Scala in September 1960 and was issued by Angel Stereo with the number 3615 C/L (35919-21). Of all the operas in the serious bel canto repertory, it should be said, Norma remained a favorite challenge for sopranos and is practically the only such work (along with Lucia di Lammermoor) regularly performed throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, so at least some of these cuts may have a longer pedigree. But no one has analyzed the history of cuts made to Norma.
66. For an important treatment of the relationship between these operatic themes and the Italian Risorgimento, see Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento.
67. See Bellini’s letter of 1 September 1831 to Pasta, published in Cambi, Bellini: Epistolario, 278–79.
68. See Bellini’s letter of 24 August 1832 to Felice Romani, ibid., 319–21.
69. See the fragmentary letter from Bellini to Francesco Florimo, written in March 1835, ibid., 533.
70. My 1983 facsimile edition of the autograph manuscript ofNorma contains reproductions of all the sketches and canceled skeleton scores known to survive at that time. Several additional sources have been identified subsequently.
71. An elaborate set of variations by Laure Cinti-Damoreau for the repeat of “Ah! bello a me ritorna” will be discussed in chapter 9. Variants by the tenor Mario for the repeat of Pollione’s cabaletta theme are found in the Biblioteca di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
72. This complete version of the music is present in the first edition of the vocal score, 85–90, cited in chapter 3, n. 33. In the autograph manuscript, the ensemble occupies ff. 133–138. When Bellini made the cut, he crossed out the last measure of f. 134r and all of f. 134v. Between ff. 134 and 135 there was originally one additional folio, which Bellini physically removed from his autograph manuscript. It survives in a collection of canceled material from the opera preserved in the Museo Belliniano of Catania. Since it no longer figured in the manuscript, Bellini did not need to cross it out. The folio was paginated as 117–118 in the Catania collection, but the correct order should be 118–117 (i.e., p.118 is the recto of what was originally f. 134bis, and p. 117 is the verso of the folio). It is reproduced in my facsimile edition of the opera among the sketches for the Scena e Terzetto Finale (N. 5).
73. The terzettino before the final scene of Maometto II, “In questi estremi istanti,” originally consisted of a canon in A minor/major, with the principal melody sung, in turn, by Calbo, Anna, and Erisso. The same piece figures in Le Siège de Corinthe, with the words “Céleste providence,” transposed up a half tone to A minor/major. According to the printed orchestral score of Le Siège, issued soon after the premiere in 1826 by Rossini’s French publisher Troupenas (see chapter 1, n. 17), the composer eliminated the solo statement by Calbo altogether and began instead with Pamira (= Anna) singing the tune and Néocles (= Calbo) accompanying her (see Le Siège de Corinthe, ed. Gossett, 469–77). In the original vocal score with piano accompaniment issued at the same time by Troupenas (pl. no. 180, pp. 304–13), however, all three entries are present, as in Maometto II. To make the matter even more confusing, in the first complete Italian edition of Le Siège de Corinthe (translated as L’assedio di Corinto), issued after the performance of the opera at La Scala in Milan on 26 December 1828 and probably reflecting the way the opera was performed there, the melody is presented only a single time, with all three voices in harmony: nothing whatsoever remains of the canon. There is no reason to believe that Rossini would have sanctioned this radical treatment of his score, but only a critical edition of the opera will make it possible to unravel the complicated history of this terzettino.
74. The original version of the cabaletta is found in the first edition of the vocal score of Norma, 76–80. In the autograph manuscript the entire passage is included in the correct order (see vol. 1, ff. 120–126), but Bellini marked the cut of the transition and repeat (see his signs before the last measure on f. 123v and after the second measure on f. 125r), and he added a part for Norma during Adalgisa’s solo statement of the theme (see ff. 122v-123v). This part for Norma is a later addition to the score and was never intended to be sung when the cabaletta is performed in its entirety.
75. In the facsimile of the autograph, part of a rejected transition is found between ff. 94v and 95r. Some rejected pages, present in the Museo Belliniano collection, are included in the appendix. They are not absolutely continuous (some are replacements for others, but their correct order is pp. 71/72, 69/70, 75/76, 74/73, and 77/78.
76. There is no choral entry in the rejected skeleton score of the final cadential phrases for Norma, Adalgisa, and Pollione preserved in the Museo Belliniano (pp. 59–61, reproduced in the appendix to the facsimile edition), nor in the first edition of the vocal score (see 99–100). In the autograph manuscript it seems clear that ff. 145–147 (the concluding part of the act and the pages on which the chorus and banda are present) were a later addition to the manuscript. At this point the paper type changes (from 20-stave paper to 24-stave paper), the vocal staves are relabeled, and so forth.
77. Kimbell, Vincenzo Bellini, 83–84.
78. The autograph manuscript and rejected drafts provide considerable information about earlier versions of this melody (some of them a half tone higher than the final version, in A major instead of G major), but by the time Ricordi printed the first edition of the vocal score, the melody existed in the form we know today.
79. I have transcribed examples 8.4 and 8.5 directly from Bellini’s autograph manuscript, which does not always agree with the printed editions. The shift to the relative minor (rather than the tonic) in the eighth complete measure, which does not affect the vocal line, is not shown in the autograph, even though it is present in all printed editions subsequent to the first, and presumably stems from Bellini.
80. See, in particular, his letter to Giulio Ricordi of 20 November 1880, discussing the revision of Simon Boccanegra, in which he wrote: “Musically it would be possible to conserve the cavatina of the soprano, the duet with the tenor, and the other duet between father and daughter, even if there are cabalettas!! Rend thyself asunder, o earth! I do not have such an aversion to cabalettas, however, and if a young man were born tomorrow who knew how to make one for me of the worth of “Meco tu vieni o misera” [from Bellini’s La straniera] or “Ah perché non posso odiarti” [from Bellini’s La sonnambula], I would listen to it with all my heart, and I would renounce all the
harmonic trifles, all the affectations of our learned orchestrators.” The letter is published in Carteggio Verdi—Ricordi 1880–1881, 69–71 (citation p. 70). After that spirited defense, however, the composer did either omit or change the structure of the cabalettas in the revised Simon Boccanegra.
81. See, for example, Serafin and Toni’s suggestion for rewriting the beginning of act 2 of Rigoletto, in Stile, tradizioni e convenzioni, 2:177–79 (in which the Duke is given a big dominant seventh chord for “Ah, tutto il ciel non mi rapì,” whose resolution is provided by Rigoletto’s entrance, a procedure Serafin actually followed—with disastrous results—in his recording with Callas) or their remarks on the Leonora cabaletta from act 4 of Il trovatore (2:251–52) and the Germont aria from La traviata (2:295–98).
82. A very strong case has been made, however, that the progression from C minor to D major is already embedded in the “Maledizione” motive itself and informs the tonal activity of the opera as a whole. See, in particular, Conati, “Rigoletto” di Giuseppe Verdi, 124–37.
83. For a discussion of ornamenting the repetitions in Verdi, see chapter 9.
84. James Hepokoski has had the most interesting things to say about Verdi’s use of this tradition in La traviata and Il trovatore. See his essays “Genre and Content in Mid-Century Verdi” and “Ottocento Opera as Cultural Drama.”
85. See the critical edition of La traviata, ed. Della Seta, 333–39, and compare especially the articulation markings at mm. 138–145 and 175–183. Even where the edition has chosen to extend markings from one strophe to the other, it differentiates Verdi’s own markings from editorial integrations, so that the singer can always be aware as to precisely what the composer wrote.
86. Often, but not always; as Hepokoski has shown in his “Ottocento Opera as Cultural Drama,” there is little French about Azucena’s “Stride la vampa.”
87. Perhaps the following will give some flavor of Serafin and Toni’s prose (see 2:167–68): “The unaccompanied cadenza, a 2, […] is a gross concession of Verdi’s, perhaps the most tawdry we know, stuck on like a coda di gala [the train of a wedding dress or a set of tails], exclusively decorative, to meet the public’s taste for bravura vocal pyrotechnics.” These authors compare it to “extraneous” cadenzas in classical violin or piano concertos, “a sort of efflorescence provoked by exhibitionistic needs deriving from the inevitable, invasive virtuosity of concertos.”
88. See Verdi’s letters of 25 March 1847 to Barezzi and of 23 November 1848 to Flauto, both in Rosen and Porter, Verdi’s “Macbeth,” 57 and 66. Translations are either cited directly from those in this volume or lightly modified. My understanding of the opera has been greatly enhanced by my work with David Lawton on his critical edition of the opera.
89. See the letters from Escudier to Verdi of 27 September 1864 and of Verdi to Escudier of 22 October 1864, both in Rosen and Porter, Verdi’s “Macbeth,” 70–71.
90. See the letters from Verdi to Piave of 3 December 1846 and to Barbieri-Nini of 2 January and 31 January 1847, in ibid., 18–20, 28–30, and 39–41.
91. These reviews (Vincenzo Meini of 15 March in La moda and Alessandro Gagliardi in the Revue et Gazette Musicale of 28 March) are published in translation in ibid., 373 and 378.
92. Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:294.
93. See Verdi’s letter to Varesi of 23–30 January 1847 and the review (in translation) by L. F. Casamorata from the Gazzetta musicale di Milano, both in Rosen and Porter, Verdi’s “Macbeth,” 36–37 and 390.
94. See the letters from Verdi to Piave of 10 and 22 December 1846, in ibid., 20–24 and 26–27.
95. The critical edition of Macbeth includes the music of both versions; for a vocal score of the 1847 chorus, see Rosen and Porter, Verdi’s “Macbeth,” 511–16.
96. See the letters from Verdi to Piave of 10 December 1846 and to Varesi of 23–30 January and 4 February 1847, as well as from Varesi to Ranzanici of 17 March 1847, in Rosen and Porter, Verdi’s “Macbeth,” 20–24, 36–37, 41, and 54–56.
97. See Verdi’s letters to Varesi of 4 February 1847, and to Escudier of 2 December 1864, in ibid., 41 and 75.
98. See Carteggio Verdi–Boito, 1:7–12 (Boito to Verdi, 8 December 1880), 1:12–13 (Verdi to Boito, 11 December 1880), 1:40 (Boito to Verdi, 5 February 1881), and 1:40–41 (Verdi to Boito, 6 February 1881).
99. See Viardot’s letter to Arditi of 15 March 1859, in Rosen and Porter, Verdi’s “Macbeth,” 364–65.
100. I first came across these letters in Milan Kundera’s lovely article, “You’re Not in Your Own House Here, My Dear Fellow.” For a fuller treatment of them, see Craft, Stravinsky, 225–28, from which my citations are derived.
CHAPTER NINE
1. These 1969 performances were discussed in chapter 4, in the section “Claudio Abbado and a tenor Romeo.”
2. It is one of the peculiarities of the Zedda critical edition of Il barbiere di Siviglia that Zedda provides many ornaments in his critical notes to Rosina’s cavatina, most introduced as “Rosina can vary as follows” (see pp. 68–70 of the commentary), but not one of his examples corresponds to Rossini’s own variations, neither those in Milan nor a similar set published a few years later by Edition Eulenberg (General Music Series 108), based on an autograph manuscript owned at that time by the editor, Franz Beyer; see Rossini, Varianten zur Cavatine der Rosina “Una voce poco fa.”
3. This recording has been available as Sony S2K 39311.
4. The first appendix to the critical edition of La donna del lago includes the original version of the vocal line of the Rondò Finale (N. 13), with the three sets of variants superposed: see 896–904. These autograph variants are found in manuscripts currently preserved, respectively, in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra, Rés. 525; Forli, Biblioteca Comunale, Fondo Piancastelli, MS 406 CR 306; and Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, MS AC XIII 48/9. For full details, consult the commentary to the edition, 159–63.
5. Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, ed. Vetter.
6. See the critical edition of Rigoletto, 289–90 (N. 13, mm. 1–28). Notice, by the way, that immediately after these first measures (the dialogue between Rigoletto and Sparafucile, where Rigoletto pays Sparafucile half the money in advance for killing the Duke), Verdi began once again to write out explicitly almost every possible appoggiatura in the recitative. As we shall see, already by the early 1840s Verdi had begun to provide more explicit written instructions to his singers concerning the use of appoggiaturas.
7. Problems concerning the reorchestration of early nineteenth-century operas toward the end of the century are discussed in chapter 3, under the rubric “Transforming L’Italiana: The orchestration.”
8. Although there has been relatively little published work concerning recorded evidence pertaining to ornamentation in Rossini, see the significant essay by Crutchfield, “Vocal Ornamentation in Verdi: the Phonographic Evidence.” Another important contribution is that of Shawe-Taylor, “Verdi and His Singers.”
9. The autograph of La scala di seta is found in Stockholm, Sweden, in the Nydahl collection of the Stiftelsen Musikkulturens främjande; that of Il signor Bruschino is in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale (fonds du Conservatoire, Ms. 1337). These manuscripts are discussed fully in the critical editions of La scala di seta, ed. Wiklund, and of Il signor Bruschino, ed. Gazzaniga.
10. How should one translate “coglioni” in this phrase? My Italian-English dictionary says “blockheads”; I rendered it as “stupid pedants.” The word is actually an Italian vulgarism for testicles. The passage is found in the critical edition of Otello (N. 8, mm. 331–333, on pp. 664–65); in my edition of the facsimile of the original manuscript, see the second volume, f. 66v.
11. See the critical edition of Ermione (Recitativo Dopo l’Aria Pirro [N. 6], mm. 66–74 , on pp. 400–401).
12. The relationship of Romani’s text to previous incarnations of the libretto is discussed in detail by Nicolodi, Il Turco in Italia.
13. The entire passage is given in
the critical edition of Il Turco in Italia, 494–96 (mm. 493–516).
14. For the conclusion of the cantabile, see the critical edition of La scala di seta, N. 3, m. 49 of the aria (p. 174); for the reference to Monelli at the end of the accompanied recitative, see N. 3, m. 11 of the accompanied recitative (p. 159).
15. The most important of these is a collection in Paris at the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra, prepared by Rossini for “Mlle E. Rouget.” This was the French singer Eugénie Rouget, who became Mme de Chambure before 1839; hence it is most likely that the manuscript predates her marriage (see Slim, in his commentary to the critical edition of La donna del lago, 159–60). This manuscript is the basis for all the variations published in the second appendix to Ricci’s Variazioni—Cadenze—Tradizioni per canto, vol. 4, “Variazioni e cadenze di G. Rossini.”
16. For several sets of variations prepared for Giuditta Pasta, often with cadenzas, see the critical edition of Tancredi, 606–7 (for the Duet, N. 14, “Lasciami: non t’ascolto”) and 802–18 (for the composition by Giuseppe Nicolini, “Il braccio mio conquise,” which Pasta sometimes introduced as a final aria). For Giulia Grisi, Rossini prepared variants for the scene for Desdemona opening act 3 of Otello (see the critical edition, 955–61). According to the commentary of Michael Collins, 148–49, it seems likely that the composer wrote this manuscript when Grisi performed the role at the Théâtre Italien of Paris during the 1833–34 season.
17. Rossini wrote a variation for the second-act finale (N. 16) of La gazza ladra and a cadenza for the opening section of the duet between Ninetta and Pippo (N. 12) when Patti sang the role of Ninetta at the Théâtre Italien of Paris in 1867. See the critical edition of the opera, 1076–78. The variants for Matilde Juva for “Una voce poco fa” have been discussed earlier in this chapter.
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