6. For a complete transcription of this wonderful document (preserved in Rome, Biblioteca Corsiniana dell’Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Arch. Linceo 90), see appendix 6 in Carteggio Verdi–Somma, 340–402 (the passage appears on 401). The manuscript is also analyzed, with several facsimiles, in Luzio, “Il libretto del Ballo in maschera massacrato dalla censura borbonica,” Carteggi verdiani, 1:241–75.
7. This manuscript, which has never been transcribed for publication or reproduced in full, is preserved in the Archivio di Stato of Rome.
8. The compromise was explained to Verdi by his Roman friend Antonio Vasselli in a letter of 10 June, cited by Luzio, Carteggi verdiani, 4:141n.
9. See, for example, Roncaglia, “Riccardo o Gustavo III.”
10. For a fine series of essays on the performing arts during and after Gustaf’s reign, see Mattsson, Gustavian Opera.
11. Lindegren, Maskeradbalen (Gustaf III).
12. See John, A Masked Ball, Un ballo in maschera. For the reference to Edward Dent, see p. 8.
13. I verified this in the recently issued DVD of a performance from 1991, conducted by James Levine, with Luciano Pavarotti, Leo Nucci, and Aprile Millo, ASIN: B00006CXFD.
14. See his letter to Somma of 26 November 1857, Carteggio Verdi–Somma, no. 69 (p. 243).
15. David Rosen, in the third chapter of his essay on the Disposizione scenica of Ballo (in Rosen and Pigozzi, “Un ballo in maschera” di Giuseppe Verdi, 46–53), makes a valiant effort to justify the Boston setting historically, but I do not find the argument convincing.
16. In some performances I have heard this as “Addio, diletto mia patria.” For the Swedish setting, Verdi actually wrote, “Mia dolce patria, addio,” and words and music fit beautifully together.
17. Carteggio Verdi–Somma, no. 49 (p. 184); future references will be in the text, as CVS.
18. I wish to thank Pierluigi Petrobelli, the director of the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, and the Carrara-Verdi family for having made the sketches for Un ballo in maschera available to those of us working on the critical edition of the opera. The principal continuity draft includes text throughout, except in those places where the composer and the librettist had still not agreed on a final version; where isolated sketches are without text, they involve later revisions (in order to work out contrapuntal details, for example), rather than preliminary ideas.
19. Letter to Vincenzo Torelli in Naples of 26 December, printed in I copialettere, 564.
20. See Walker, “Lettere inedite,” 285–86.
21. On 30 December, after Somma returned to Venice, Verdi asks for another stanza in the second-act finale (CVS 80, pp. 263–64): “I have already done the music, and preserve as much as you can that somewhat comic character.” This is the first letter to Somma after the latter’s departure. The continuity draft, in fact, has text everywhere except for this choral passage. Thus, Verdi’s draft must have been prepared between 27 and 30 December. In that same letter of the 30th, Verdi tells Somma, “If you are not opposed, I would omit the allegro of that [Renato’s] aria, ‘Son dessi che debito.’ The piece becomes long; the action is cold, and all those strophes are useless.” Somma had conceived the aria in two principal parts, with a concluding cabaletta, but Verdi tells him for the first time on 30 December that he is omitting the cabaletta, a decision he must have made after Somma’s departure from Busseto. This act 3 aria, then, which exists in the continuity draft in a version very different from the “Eri tu” of Ballo, must have been sketched after 27 December. Since none of Verdi’s observations in his letter of 30 December touch on the following romanza for Gustavo and the concluding festa da ballo (ball scene), he probably did not complete their continuity drafts until early January 1858.
22. Luzio, Carteggi verdiani, 1:49.
23. At least one fragmentary rejected page, however, survives from the skeleton score: it was auctioned at Sotheby’s in London on 6 December 2002, as item 197. It is part of a passage from the trio, quartet, and quintet in act 3 that Verdi removed during his work on Ballo (the original ff. 260–261). This surviving page contains the reprise of the conspiracy tune with the addition of Amelia, a passage in which she originally sang “tre pugnali scintillano già” (three daggers are already gleaming), which in Ballo became “i lor ferri scintillano già” (their steels are already gleaming”). Apparently “ferri” were acceptable, but “pugnali” were not. As expected, the version of this skeleton-score fragment is essentially identical to what is in the continuity draft of Una vendetta in dominò.
24. This staging is mentioned in chapter 13.
25. Recall that there is a gap in the continuity draft within act 2: Verdi was working on this section of the opera during December 1857, before Somma came to Sant’Agata over Christmas to finalize the libretto as Una vendetta in dominò. Because the composer presumably felt that he needed to move cautiously during this period, the continuity draft includes neither the aria of Amelia, nor the duet for Amelia and Gustavo, nor the trio for Amelia, Gustavo, and Ankastrom.
26. There is good evidence within several surviving fragmentary sketches for this duet—as it was conceived for Una vendetta in dominò and within the definitive form of the piece from Un ballo in maschera—that its music was first written in skeleton score in different keys than in the final version. Verdi’s decision to change these keys was probably the main reason why he substituted all the pages of the original skeleton score.
27. Notice that the sybil Ulrica in Gustavo III becomes “pallid” as she looks at the stars, whereas the black Ulrica in Ballo turns her “earth-colored face” to the stars.
28. Harold Powers described these measures in his article “La dama velata.” Because of disruptions in the structure of its autograph manuscript, Powers knew that the passage must have been revised by Verdi. Yet he could not determine the nature of the revisions because the continuity draft was not available and because he did not try to imagine the original structure of the autograph.
29. The entire scena and aria originally filled a fascicle of seven nested bifolios. When preparing Un ballo in maschera, Verdi snipped away the first five folios, leaving two nested bifolios and five single folios (ff. 152–160). He subsequently replaced the five canceled folios with five new nested bifolios (ff. 141–150) and a single folio (f. 151). The canceled measures appear at the beginning of f. 152.
30. This section is notated quite differently in the continuity draft and the autograph manuscript, although the sense is similar. But the change was made as Verdi prepared the skeleton score of Una vendetta in domino, and he did not alter it significantly for Un ballo in maschera.
31. See Salvatorelli, Pensiero e azione del Risorgimento, 151.
32. While the prelude was being played, workmen painted the mask an intense red against the largely blackened stage.
33. For an account of the rediscovery of this, Rossini’s last Italian opera, written in 1825 and considered lost for 150 years, see chapter 5.
34. During the summer of 2004, Ronconi himself said to me in a private conversation that stagings have their natural life cycles, and that the effort to preserve them over an extended period of time is usually misguided.
35. See Johnson’s preface to the critical edition of Il viaggio a Reims, xxviii–xxix. She first developed these ideas in her 1983 article, “A Lost Rossini Opera Recovered.”
36. His wife and collaborator, Franca Rame, has set up an Internet “Archivio Franca Rame Dario Fo” (http://www.archivio.francarame.it), which presents an impressive number of documents pertaining to their life and work, artfully arranged and beautifully reproduced. The documents quoted in the following paragraphs are all taken from this Archivio.
37. I am translating from both the talk Fo actually delivered and from his original, longer statement: both are available in the Archivio Franca Rame Dario Fo.
38. Grammelot is Fo’s “invented” language, with words that sound real and are spoken as if they were meaningful, but are actually nonsense
syllables. Part of their “meaning,” of course, is a function of the elaborate gestural vocabulary that Fo uses in his theater presentations.
39. On 9 January 2003, just a few weeks before the premiere of Il viaggio a Reims in Helsinki, Warren Hoge published an article in the New York Times, “Finland’s Multitude of Maestros,” that brought the country’s efforts to the attention of American readers.
40. For full details, see the introduction to the critical edition of La gazzetta, xxxii–xxxiv and xliii–xlv.
41. See Fo, “Il teatro comico e la situazione.”
42. See also chapter 8, in the section “Making cuts: Recitative.”
43. See Johnson’s preface to the critical edition of Viaggio, xlviii–xlix.
44. The painting is reproduced at the end of Janet Johnson’s preface to the critical edition of Viaggio, lxv.
45. Let me thank my colleague Anne Walters Robertson for pointing this out; see her Guillaume de Machaut and Rheims, 246.
46. See Opera News 67, no. 8 (February 2003): 96.
GLOSSARY
ACCOMPANIED RECITATIVE Recitative accompanied by the orchestra, without a keyboard player. In 1815 for Naples, following French practice, Rossini began to accompany his recitative in serious operas with a full complement of strings. Earlier he had used accompanied recitative only in scenas, more elaborate recitatives introducing arias or ensembles, often with wind instruments as well as strings. By the 1820s and 1830s, recitative in all but comic operas was accompanied by the orchestra. Among Verdi’s works, only his youthful comic opera, Un giorno di regno (1840), uses secco recitative.
ACCOMPANIMENT Music with a strong lyrical impulse is often thought of as being divided between a “melody” and an “accompaniment.” The latter frequently uses standard devices, such as the arpeggiation of chords in the upper strings or favorite rhythmic patterns (Verdi favored a Polonaise rhythm). Italian opera composers were criticized for devoting too much attention to the melody, and insufficient attention to the accompaniment.
ALEXANDRINE In French verse drama (Racine, Corneille), the alexandrine is the basic unit of verse, a twelve-syllable line with a caesura in the middle; there can be mute endings in both halves of each line. In Italian verse this would be the equivalent of doppio settenario (for a similar meter, see quinari doppi), a verse form found only rarely in opera librettos of this period.
ANTEFATTO The action that has taken place before the beginning of an opera and must be understood if the dramaturgy of the opera as laid out in the libretto is to make sense. In published librettos, the antefatto is often printed at the opening of the volume.
APPOGGIATURA When Italian composers in the first decade of the nineteenth century (extending a technique widespread in the eighteenth) set the last two syllables of a verso piano with two identical pitches, it was understood that the part would not actually be sung that way. Normally the first note, on the accented penultimate syllable, would be sung a step higher or—more rarely—a step lower; the second note, on the accented final syllable, would be sung as written.
ARIA The generic name for a composition featuring a solo voice. Subcategories are cavatina or rondò. Although arias always feature a solo voice, many also employ the chorus or one or more pertichini, other characters who play a subsidiary role in the music of the aria.
ARIA DI BAULE Literally a “trunk aria.” Famous singers would have a group of favorite arias ready at hand to insert into operas when they felt their parts did not give sufficient scope to their art or that they lacked a sufficient number of solo compositions.
ARIA DI SORBETTO A short solo composition sung by a secondary character (a comprimario). The name reflects the custom of selling and consuming ices in Italian theaters when the principal characters were offstage. Rossini often asked collaborators to take responsibility for composing arie di sorbetto.
ARPEGGIATION The notes of a chord can be played together as a single sonority or they can be played successively, one at a time. Arpeggiation is the technique of developing an accompaniment from a series of chords whose notes are played successively.
ARTICULATION Composers provide not only pitches and rhythms but also accents, slurs, and staccati, indicating to performers how they should interpret the pitches. The totality of such performance indications within a musical passage is known as the articulation of the passage.
AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT The manuscript of an opera primarily or entirely in the hand of its composer. Sometimes—within an autograph manuscript—passages of recitative (secco or accompanied) or entire individual pieces (often arie di sorbetto) by other musicians are preserved as composing scores. At other times, one or more pieces we believe to be the work of the primary composer are nonetheless preserved only in the hand of a copyist. We nonetheless continue to refer to the entire manuscript as representing the composer’s autograph manuscript of the opera.
A VISTA When a change of stage setting between one scene and another was meant to be done in full view of the audience, it was said to be a change a vista. The nineteenth-century system of painted backdrops and a limited number of three-dimensional elements made such rapid changes eminently feasible.
BALLATA A simple, usually strophic song with a distinctly popular flavor. In the operas of Verdi, ballate are often embedded within larger scene complexes (such as Oscar’s “Volta la terrea” in the introduction of Un ballo in maschera).
BANDA SUL PALCO “Stage band.” Beginning in 1818, during Rossini’s Neapolitan years, the composer developed the practice of bringing a fully costumed brass band on stage at certain points within an opera, generally to play music (marches, processions) actually heard by the protagonists. The band musicians were usually supplied by local military garrisons. As late as Rigoletto (1851), Verdi too employed a banda sul palco. Nowadays these bands are usually placed offstage, in the wings.
BEL CANTO “Beautiful singing.” The term has many uses in modern parlance. It can refer, generically, to the style of operas written in the first decades of the nineteenth century by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and their contemporaries. It can also refer to a style of singing that stresses vocal flexibility and beautiful sound, rather than dramatic declamation. It should be obvious, though, that the music of the primo Ottocento often has strong declamatory passages, whereas the music of Verdi is filled with bel canto passages.
BIFOLIO A single sheet of paper, folded in half, with a separate series of musical staves drawn on each of its four sides. Rossini, who did not prepare continuity drafts, normally constructed his autograph manuscripts as a series of bifolios; Verdi, who did prepare continuity drafts and hence knew the precise length of each piece before preparing his autograph manuscript, organized his manuscripts as a series of nested bifolios, one inside the other, known also as “fascicles” or gatherings.
BRINDISI Literally a toast, and that is how the term is used for the brindisi of Violetta (then Alfredo) in Verdi’s La traviata and Lady in Verdi’s Macbeth. Often the term simply signifies a drinking song.
CABALETIA The final, usually quicker section of a multipartite aria or ensemble. Through the first half of the nineteenth century, cabalettas were normally constructed with a theme, a brief transition, a repetition of the theme, and cadences. Rossini (and to a lesser extent Bellini and Donizetti) expected that the repetition would be ornamented by the singer.
CANTABILE A lyrical, slow section of a multipartite number. In an aria, the opening section is usually a cantabile; in a duetto, it is the second section that can be described as a cantabile, often with the two voices singing together in close harmony (thirds or sixths). More generally the term is used for any lyrical melodic line.
CARNIVAL SEASON The theatrical calendar in nineteenth-century Italy was divided into several seasons, dependent on the liturgical year. The most important was the season of carnival, which began on 26 December and continued through the beginning of Lent or even the beginning of Holy Week, depending on the city. Carnival 1818 is the season that began on 26 Decem
ber 1817.
CAVATINA In the nineteenth century, a cavatina is normally an entrance aria for a character who has not previously appeared on stage. The term does not refer to a specific musical form and is never used in the nineteenth century to stand for the first, lyrical section of a multipartite aria (the correct term is cantabile). Occasionally in the music of Rossini one finds remnants of an eighteenth-century usage, in which cavatina meant a short aria, in one section, normally found toward the end of an opera.
CAVATINE A French term for the Italian cavatina; its meaning is the same.
CHOREGUS The leader of the chorus, a term derived from ancient Greek drama.
COL BASSO “With the bass.” When orchestrating their scores, opera composers often used this phrase to instruct instruments such as the bassoons, cimbasso, violas, and violoncellos to play together with the double basses, thereby reinforcing the bass line.
COME SCRITTO “As written.” Some performers believe that they should follow strictly the indications of a written or printed score. In doing so, they fail to understand that implicit within a composer’s notation are a series of conventions for interpreting that notation.
COME SOPRA “As above.” Composers in their autograph manuscripts (and, subsequently, scribes preparing copies) used this phrase to avoid writing out passages that were to be repeated without modifications. Instead, they specified that the music from point A to point B was to be repeated in full. In some cases the composer would write out the vocal lines and orchestral bass part, using come sopra to refer to the remainder of the orchestration.
CONCERTATORE In the era before the introduction of formal conductors (during the 1850s), the concertatore was the musician principally responsible for the performance of an opera, almost always the first violinist of the orchestra. In the absence of the composer, he would direct rehearsals. At the performances themselves, he would give cues to other instrumentalists and singers and would lead by playing his violin from a specially marked part known as violino principale.
Divas and Scholars Page 86