67. There were probably not many viewers at all, since the film—which I caught in a Roman theater together with six other hardy souls—was never released in the United States. A pity: so many lovers of camp lost the opportunity to watch Elizabeth Taylor mouth the words of “Ritorna vincitor” from Aida as if she were speaking, while the lush sounds of Aprile Millo poured from the sound track.
68. Cametti, Il teatro di Tordinona, 2:588–96. In the last sentence, Muzio is presumably referring to Francesco Lamperti, an important musician and singing teacher in Milan, whose sons Giuseppe and Giovanni Battista were the impresarios for the 1886 and 1887 seasons at the Teatro Apollo. As Muzio says, Verdi would have been more hesitant about approaching the impresarios directly. There were indeed eight performances of Don Carlo at the Teatro Apollo, beginning on 26 April 1887.
69. Harwood, “Verdi’s Reform,” 129.
70. See the seating arrangement for the Teatro San Carlo of Naples in 1818, as printed in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, reproduced in Harwood, “Verdi’s Reform,” 121, or the similar charts for the Teatro alla Scala from 1825, in Harwood, 122. These same charts are reproduced in Koury, Orchestral Performance Practices, 251 and 253.
71. The letter is given in Abbiati, Giuseppe Verdi, 3:262. I cite it after the translation in Harwood, “Verdi’s Reform,” 124.
72. Quoted in a slightly modified translation from Harwood, “Verdi’s Reform,” 124.
73. Gatti, Il teatro alla Scala nella storia e nell’arte, 1:237.
74. The production is described by the stage director, Gianfranco De Bosio, in his “Un’ipotesi di regia dell’ ‘Ernani,’ ” esp. 326. This production is described at greater length in chapter 13.
75. See Lucia di Lammermoor, ff. 151–177. The instrument is a more practical version, as first developed by Benjamin Franklin in the early 1760s, of traditional musical glasses.
76. Ashbrook, for example, does not mention it in his discussion of the opera in Donizetti and His Operas, 94–98 and 375–82; nor does Catherine Clément refer to it in her rapturous description of “The song of lunatic women” in her book Opera, or The Undoing of Women, 87–90.
77. Bini and Commons, Le prime rappresentazioni delle opere di Donizetti nella stampa coeva, 520–21.
78. Hadlock, “Sonorous Bodies,” esp. 534.
79. Smart, “The Silencing of Lucia,” 129n.
80. Sala, “Women Crazed by Love,” 40 (n. 39).
81. They include a 1970 recording with Beverly Sills on ABC (ATS 200006–3) and the 1992–93 Metropolitan Opera production of Lucia di Lammermoor, as well as the recent staging at Covent Garden during the fall of 2003, under the direction of Evelino Pidò, with Andrea Rost in the title role.
82. The edition, being edited by Gabriele Dotto and Roger Parker, was first used for performances at Covent Garden in 2003. I wish to thank Mr. Dotto for sharing with me the fruits of the work on this edition, on which I have drawn for much of the following paragraph.
83. See Il Teatro di San Carlo, 2:245.
84. Occasionally one reads that Donizetti originally wrote this melody for a basset horn. See, for example, Zedda, “La strumentazione nell’opera teatrale di Donizetti,” esp. 491. There is no such indication in the autograph manuscript of Don Pasquale: it is one of those urban legends that continue to weave themselves around Italian opera. Zedda also refers to the percussion instrument used in the act 3 serenata as “Tamburo basso,” misreading Donizetti’s “Tambours Basques” (see f. 192r), i.e., tambourines.
85. The passage appears on ff. 1–3 of the autograph manuscript of Don Pasquale: see the facsimile edition. I briefly discussed this example in the introductory essay to that facsimile, 48 (Italian) and 118–19 (English).
86. Problems associated with the natural horn have been discussed earlier in this chapter. See Macdonald, Berlioz’s Orchestration Treatise, 164–68.
87. Bini and Commons, Le prime rappresentazioni, 1121; these quotations are found on 1099.
88. He did not bring his autograph manuscript with him to Vienna, but had it forwarded from Paris to Ricordi in Milan so that a vocal score could be prepared. As far as we know, he never came into contact with the manuscript again.
89. For a discussion of late eighteenth-century practice, with historical seating charts, see Koury, Orchestral Performance Practices, 31–35. An excellent diagram from the Teatro Regio of Turin is found in Galeazzi’s Elementi teorico-pratici di musica con un saggio sopra l’arte di suonare il violino. Galeazzi’s diagram has been widely reproduced, most conveniently in Sadie, The New Grove Dictionary, 13:686.
90. Prota-Giurleo, La grande orchestra del R. Teatro San Carlo nel Settecento (da documenti inediti), 27.
91. Meucci, “La trasformazione dell’orchestra,” 443–51. The following paragraph draws on Meucci’s research.
92. Although the list of orchestral personnel for the Teatro alla Scala for the carnival season 1845–46 (see Meucci, “La trasformazione dell’orchestra,” 461–62), does not explicitly mention a keyboard player, there was indeed a very well-known “maestro al cembalo,” composer, and teacher, Giacomo Panizza, who was a regular member of the theater orchestra during the early 1840s (see the commentary to Nabucco, 13). The indications in both the Nabucco libretto of 1842 and the 1845–46 personnel, identifying Vincenzo Merighi as “Primo Violoncello al Cembalo” and Luigi Rossi as “Primo Contrabbasso al Cembalo,” therefore, were not merely remnants of an earlier practice.
93. Cavicchi, “Per una nuova drammaturgia rossiniana,” esp. 88.
94. Quoted in ibid., 90.
95. Quoted in ibid., 88.
96. See Grove, A Dictionary of Music and Musicians. In Sadie, The New Grove Dictionary, the example is found in the article on Robert Lindley by Lynda Lloyd Rees, 11:4; in Grove Music Online, see Lynda MacGregor and Christina Bashford: “Robert Lindley” (accessed 26 September 2004).
97. Let me thank Michael Steinberg, who was there, for that information.
98. Richard Burke kindly brought that recording to my attention.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1. Von Rhein’s article was published in the Chicago Tribune Magazine of 5 September 2004. As he informed me privately, he had actually made “top 10” and “top 10 misses” lists, but only half of his choices made their way into the magazine. Still, the overall picture was unchanged. The only Italian opera among the original “top 10” was a Lucia di Lammermoor of 2004, notable—as von Rhein himself remarked—for the performance by Natalie Dessay in her first American Lucia. The totally conventional production by John Copley was—to my mind—otherwise dreary. Among von Rhein’s original 10 misses there is a fourth Verdi opera (La traviata) and one by Puccini (Tosca).
2. Seven years later, when the opera had recovered enough finally to return to the Met, now in a conservative production by Nicolas Joël with sets by Ezio Frigerio, Peter G. Davis commented in New York Magazine on 4 January 1999: “I realize that the Met is probably still reeling from its last Lucia production, an experimental feminist interpretation by Francesca Zambello that went haywire somewhere along the line, but at least that misguided effort was not completely brainless.” (I consulted Davis’s review at http://www.newyorkmetro.com.)
3. Ross, “Verdi’s Grip.”
4. Petrobelli, “Response to David J. Levin,” 486.
5. Rossini, Lettere e documenti, 3a:119. This letter is part of the recently recovered group of 250 autograph letters, almost all by Rossini and for the most part addressed to his mother, written between 1812 and 1829.
6. For an amusing report, see the notice by Jay McInerney in the New Yorker of 25 December 2000 /1 January 2001, 60.
7. That Boito and Verdi conceived the scene in this way is clear both from Boito’s letter of 17 June 1881 (see Carteggio Verdi–Boito, 1:51–57), together with which he sent the words of the scene to Verdi, and from the production book in which the actual staging of the 1887 premiere is recorded. The latter is reproduced in Hepokoski and Ferrero, “Otello” di G
iuseppe Verdi: see 35 and 41–46 in the reproduction of the Disposizione scenica. For further observations about the significance of these published production books, see the sections “Staging manuals (livrets de mise en scène) in France” and “Staging manuals (disposizione sceniche) in Italy” later in this chapter.
8. Rosen and Porter, Verdi’s “ Macbeth,” 27.
9. For an evaluation of Verdi’s indebtedness to the boulevard theater, see Sala, “Verdi e il teatro di boulevard parigino degli anni 1847–1849.”
10. For information about the composition and original staging of the Macbeth ballet, see Jürgensen, The Verdi Ballets, 77–92 and the accompanying illustrations.
11. The poetry was the same in 1847, but Verdi’s music for the earlier version was more in the style of his Risorgimental choruses from the 1840s.
12. The history and staging of Un ballo in maschera will be discussed further in chapter 14.
13. I was particularly disturbed by the practice of having women’s voices join what Verdi intended to be a male chorus at the conclusion of the first scene. My remarks are printed as “Verdi’s Ideas on Interpreting His Operas” in Verdi 2001.
14. A draft of the letter is included in I copialettere, 39.
15. The issue is raised by Parker, in his “Reading the ‘Livrets’ or the Chimera of ‘Authentic’ Staging,” 345–47; see also Rosen, “On Staging that Matters.” There have been important individual exceptions to this practice. The critical edition of Guillaume Tell, edited by Bartlet for the Fondazione Rossini, for example, includes in a separate volume an edition of the mise en scène prepared by Jacques Solomé, the directeur de la scène for the original 1829 production (see Commento Critico: Testi, 107–51). Four years later the Fondazione Rossini also published an iconographical volume, which provides ample documentation concerning the original staging of Guillaume Tell and its significance for the history of nineteenth-century French operatic practice: Bartlet, with Bucarelli, Guillaume Tell di Gioachino Rossini.
16. Volumes devoted to Boito’s Mefistofele and Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Un ballo in maschera, and Otello are in print.
17. In addition to the iconographical volume devoted to Guillaume Tell, cited in note 15, a full study of the iconographical sources for Rossini’s Otello may be found in Scarton and Tosti-Croce, Otello.
18. Sutcliffe, Believing in Opera, 169.
19. Ibid., 330 and 353.
20. Hepokoski, “Staging Verdi’s Operas.” Hepokoski, who is no proponent of historical stagings, provides a strong statement of what he calls the “paradox” of stagings that seek to reproduce Verdi’s own practice: “in restoring an original staging we do not so much ‘see’ the original work as experience a modern, historicized commentary on what has continued to extend into our own time” (19).
21. The classic treatment of the French ballet de cour is McGowan, L’Art du ballet de cour en France. The most important early example of the genre, the Balet Comique de la Reine, was presented on 15 October 1581 to commemorate the wedding of the sister of the Queen, Mademoiselle de Vaudemont, and the Duc de Joyeuse, a favorite of King Henri III (see McGowan, 42–43). The “livret” published in 1582 to commemorate this event has many illustrations, as well as the text and music of the spectacle. Clearly the publication was meant to celebrate the power and splendor of the court: there was no thought of reproducing the Balet Comique elsewhere. Likewise, no one would have considered reproducing the staging of Antonio Cesti’s lavish Il pomo d’oro, commissioned by the Viennese imperial court, and first performed in 1668 to celebrate the Empress’s birthday, with extravagant sets by Ludovico Burnacini, many of which were engraved by Matthäus Küsel and figure in early printed librettos. For further information, see Schmidt, “Antonio Cesti’s Il pomo d’oro.” The engravings are reproduced in Guido Adler’s edition of those sections of the work known to survive at the end of the nineteenth century in Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, Jg. III/2 (vol. 6) and IV/2 (vol. 9) (Vienna, 1896–97). Schmidt subsequently discovered additional music. For a description of early librettos, see Schmidt, 401–2.
22. Although similar documents were earlier studied by theater historians such as Marie-Antoinette Allévy, in her La mise en scène en France dans la première moitié du dix-neuvième siècle, the first person to bring these sources to the attention of musicologists was H. Robert Cohen. See, in particular, his volume with Marie-Odile Gigou, One Hundred Years of Operatic Staging in France, as well as Cohen’s The Original Staging Manuals for Twelve Parisian Operatic Premières, which includes the staging manuals for Verdi’s Les Vêpres siciliennes and Le Trouvère. Also of importance is the article by Pendle and Wilkins, “Paradise Found.”
23. See Bartlet, Guillaume Tell di Gioachino Rossini, 74–81, for information about Cicéri’s Swiss travels in search of “vérité locale” (local truth) and several reproductions of the sketches he made.
24. In “Staging Verdi’s Operas” (15–16), Hepokoski has pointed out that views of what constitutes naturalezza in stage action varied over the course of the nineteenth century, so that the term is by no means self-explanatory.
25. See Commento Critico: Testi, 110, in Bartlet’s critical edition of Guillaume Tell; the mise en scène of Solomé follows on 117–51. The latter is also reproduced as appendix 2 of Bartlet, Guillaume Tell di Gioachino Rossini, 177–89.
26. Indications Générales et observations pour la mise en scène de “La Muette de Portici” (Paris, [1829]), which Cohen has described as “the first independently published operatic livret scènique”: see his “A Survey of French Sources for the Staging of Verdi’s Operas,” 14n. For further commentary, consult Pendle and Wilkins, “Paradise Found,” 184–90.
27. Cohen, The Original Staging Manuals for Twelve Parisian Operatic Premières, xxiii.
28. Cohen and Gigou, One Hundred Years of Operatic Staging in France, xliii.
29. I cite the translation, slightly edited, as in Jacobshagen “Staging at the Opéra-Comique in Nineteenth-Century Paris,” 242. The matter is considered at length, but primarily with respect to German sources and stagings, in Langer, Der Regisseur und die Aufzeichnungspraxis der Opernregie im 19. Jahrhundert. See, however, his discussion of “Veröffentliche ‘mises en scène’ in Frankreich” (198–226) and “Gedruckte Inszenierungsanweisungen in Italien und Rußland” (274–90).
30. Jacobshagen, “Staging at the Opéra-Comique in Nineteenth-Century Paris,” 259.
31. The history of stage direction in Italy is traced by Guccini in his essay “Direzione scenica e regia,” revised and translated as “Directing Opera.” I will cite the English version.
32. This review, from the Parisian Moniteur, is cited after Ferranti-Giulini, Giuditta Pasta e i suoi tempi, 54–55. Another reviewer comments, “When has Paris ever seen a lyric tragedy not only sung but acted with such profound sensibility, with such rapturous ardor?” (49).
33. See Guccini, “Directing Opera,” 146.
34. Black, “Cammarano’s Notes for the Staging of Lucia di Lammermoor”; see also his “Cammarano’s Duties as Producer,” chapter 15 of The Italian Romantic Libretto, 272–90.
35. Black, “Cammarano’s Notes for the Staging of Lucia di Lammermoor,” 36. The following quotations are from Black’s translation, 36–38, slightly edited (the actual document is reproduced at 32–35).
36. Donizetti had an opportunity to work in the French system at the Opéra three times in the early 1840s, and livrets de mise en scène were published for Les Martyrs, La Favorite, and Dom Sébastien, not to mention the French Lucie de Lammermoor and the opéra-comique, La Fille du régiment. But the composer does not seem to have attempted to introduce the practice into Italy. In her critical edition of La Favorite, Harris-Warwick draws extensively on the mise en scène for her critical notes. See also Smith, “The Livrets de Mise en Scène for Donizetti’s Parisian Operas,” which concentrates particularly on Les Martyrs.
37. Although no printed livret for Jérusalem has been located, sever
al manuscript versions exist: see Cohen, “A Survey of French Sources for the Staging of Verdi’s Operas,” 16, 26, and 32.
38. Kaufman, in his Verdi and His Major Contemporaries, points out that the opera was extremely popular in France and French-language theaters “but was a great rarity in its Italian translation, being unable to supplant the earlier I Lombardi” (361n).
39. According to Hopkinson, A Bibliography of the Works of Giuseppe Verdi, 1813–1901, 2:113–14, Ricordi first announced publication of the vocal score of Giovanna de Guzman, whose plate numbers extend from 28116 through 28150, on 20 January 1856. The plate number of the disposizione scenica (28556) therefore suggests a publication date several months later. See Peterseil, “Die ‘Disposizioni sceniche’ des Verlags Ricordi,” 150–55, where she provides a list of all the disposizioni sceniche published by Ricordi, with bibliographical information and the location of a surviving copy. It is surprising how many of the disposizioni sceniche announced in various Ricordi catalogues have not been located, among them—most surprisingly—the disposizione scenica for Falstaff, registered in the Ricordi ledgers on 25 July 1893 with the plate number 96585 (155). Some fifteen years ago I saw a catalogue card for this Falstaff volume in a Roman antiquarian book dealer’s shop off the Via della Scrofa, but the dealer was unable to produce the book or to give me further information about the source of his annotation. When I returned a few years later, still intrigued, he was gone, and the premises were occupied by a gadget store.
40. Abbiati, Giuseppe Verdi, 2:316.
41. For information about Cencetti, son of the publisher Giovanni Battista Cencetti, see Rosen and Pigozzi, “Un ballo in maschera” di Giuseppe Verdi, 21–23. According to Rosen (22–23), there is no evidence that Verdi actively participated in the preparation and publication of this disposizione scenica, although he certainly played a central role in the Roman staging of his opera.
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