Censorship

When writing my chapter about words, I left out entirely any discussion of censorship, something ever-present in Italian opera throughout its history at least until the unification of Italy in 1870.

I think this must have been part of the attraction of the librettos of Metastasio, a native Roman and therefore someone familiar with the religious and political issues that aroused the attention of the censors. A composer could avoid the problem of censorship merely by choosing one of Metastasio's librettos to set.

Rossini began the movement away from Metastasio's librettos toward a more free-form libretto such as the French might use. The new style of opera was not what the church or the occupying armies had in mind, and they let their opinions be known. Verdi completely abandoned Stiffelio because he felt the censorship left nothing worth presenting.

This is a key issue in Divas and Scholars, which I won't repeat here. You'll have to read it for yourself.

The Siege of Corinth

I am irresistibly attracted to the serious operas of Gioachino Rossini. For my heart Rossini is perfect exactly the way he is and does not require the "improvements" of Verdi. There is a perfection of lightness in the coloratura that is not improved by the weight of future generations. I am happy to see this style returning to our ears, to hear the wonderfully ornamented da capos done as they were meant to be. Viva Rossini!

I went on Sunday to see the Baltimore Opera Company present Rossini's L'Assedio di Corinto or The Siege of Corinth, an actual historical event which took place in the 1450's. A Christian country is being invaded by Moslems who are heard praying to the prophet, something I am not sure actually happens. Never mind.

The production was traditional with Turks looking pretty much the way they do in Italian Renaissance paintings and the Greeks looking almost antique. I'm not sure my comments about the historical accuracy of costumes can be relied upon so we will assume they are not displaced from their intended setting. The two groups, Greeks and Turks, were easy to distinguish from one another, making the drama easy to follow.

The historical event requires a love theme to make it work as an opera. In preparation for invasion Maometto II has been personally casing the Greek cities, and while looking over Athens, he meets and falls in love with Pamira, daughter of the Governor of Corinth. Her father Cleomene, here sung by Bruce Ford, asks her to marry Neocle, but she refuses, saying her heart already belongs to another. Only during the opera does she discover that it is Maometto II himself that she loves. She vacillates, but ultimately decides on martyrdom with her countrymen over marriage to a foreigner.

The unusual feature of this opera is the presence of chorus in every scene, representing primarily the Greek people. It is a surprise in an Italian opera to hear so much chorus. It is they who carry the spirit of patriotism and martyrdom that is the main theme of the opera. They sing in simple block chords without counterpoint. This was very well done and effective.

Elizabeth Futral as Pamira was in a little over her head. She was better and more secure in the more solid Handel of Semele than here. The more ethereal Rossini caused her voice to become fluttery.

Vivica Genaux in the role of Neocle was a revelation. She did not quite achieve the godlike standards of Marilyn Horne, but definitely merited comparison, as great a compliment as I can imagine for a coloratura mezzo. Brava! And, yes, she looked fabulous.

Staging

Professor Gossett establishes three categories of production: traditional, displaced and radical or what the Germans call Konzept. Displaced just means you have moved it from its expected setting and time, much the way Verdi moved Un Ballo in Maschera to Boston. A concept opera is our full-fledged Eurotrash. It is curious that the operas I have seen recently fall into all three categories.

LA presented Don Carlo in a visually vivid but basically traditional setting. The characters dressed in period costumes which might be considered Spanish, and the Gothic arches of the movable modules that made up the set at least suggested an earlier period. There was a concept at work in the Caravaggio reproductions, but this was not powerful enough to drag the production from the traditional category.

Manon from LA displaced her from Paris in the nineteenth century to Paris in the twentieth century, but she was still basically the same girl. Costume changes aren't enough to make it a concept.

I think the New York City Opera presentation of Semele qualifies as a radical or concept interpretation. We are displaced from the far away mythical past to the 1960's, to be sure, but the characters are transfomed into a virtual newsreel by involving historical figures. This is definitely a concept, and it was shocking how well it worked, how easy it was to believe in the JFK/MM/Jackie triangle and its fatal result.

We Americans still prefer traditional settings, but can be persuaded to accept a displacement as long as we still feel at home. I have been promoting the idea that the production explains the opera regardless of which of the three categories it falls in. I accept the concept when it explains the action.

In San Francisco I saw a Konzept production of Busoni's Doktor Faust where Faust was some kind of computer operator in a factory. People came and went for no apparent reason. I had a violent negative reaction to it because it failed utterly in my idea that the production explains the opera. Nothing in it made any sense at all, and none of the actions were explained. The production won an award in Germany where, perhaps, the plot of this opera may be known, as it certainly was not by me.

It was fascinating to learn that concept opera in Germany extended all the way back to the 1920's. An arguement could be made that modernism was German, a statement that completely flies in the face of my previous statements that it came from the Ballet Russe. I have digressed, as usual. In the twentieth century leadership came from the French and Germans, with a brief interruption ....

Ahem. The chapter on staging is not fuddy-duddy at all. Forgive me.

Gymnastics

In the second scene of La Traviata Anna Netrebko walks along the top of the sofa. Now that we know she studied gymnastics, we recognize that these are balance beam maneuvers. She stands securely on one foot while Rolando grasps the other foot. She does an acceptable dismount, considering it's an opera and not a competition.

Gymnastics training for opera singers? It does sound a little severe. It is not good for a singer to grunt like Maria Sharapova, but physical training can only do good. Pavarotti played tennis. Cecilia Bartoli was a Flamenco dancer. Rolando Villazon works out. Anna Netrebko jogs. Get physical. It can't hurt.

Question

I am getting to the end of Divas and Scholars and wish to comment on the instrumntal chapter. I should soon be able to return to something more trivial to write about.

My question has to do with the weight of the orchestra. The gorilla in the corner wanted a thicker, darker, heavier sound coming from the orchestra which changed its weight radically from what it had been in the bel canto.

Professor Gossett does not discuss the gradual change in orchestral weight that occurred throughout the nineteenth century from the point of view of its effect on singing. Verdi (along with Wagner, of course) is known as the killer of voices. All those loud brasses and drums force the singers to sing louder and louder, resulting in a very heavy style of singing that is only now beginning to go out of style.

I am interested in this issue. The Cecilia Bartoli effect continues. Opera continues to shift its focus toward the Baroque and lighter, more florid singing. Would a lighter, early instruments concept help to reduce the excess noise coming from orchestras in Verdi operas and allow a more legato approach to singing them?

It is interesting to me that Verdi thought Macbeth was his best opera. It isn't our favorite because it contains one of his worst screamer parts, Lady Macbeth, and results in the worst examples I have heard of soprano bellowing and vocal strain. One wishes never to hear again Gwyneth Jones wobbling her way through the role and tends as a result to avoid the opera altogether.

Is somewhat lighter Verdi possible? Would people tolerate it?

Words

I feel inclined to explain the Words and Music chapter from Divas and Scholars, assuming I understand it myself.

Opera has two great traditions: the Italian and the French. The first French Opera was six decades behind the first Italian Opera, but unlike operas in other countries, such as Germany and England, Pomone by Robert Cambert in 1671 firmly established a vogue for opera in French, a vogue that was quickly exploited by Lully. He was followed by Rameau, Gluck (his biggest success and most important influence was in France), Cherubini, Salieri (a lot of Italians wrote operas in the French style), etc. In Rossini’s time Spontini and Mehul were the main French opera composers. The French developed their own comic opera tradition, too, starting in the late Baroque/early Rococo and continuing through Carmen and so on.

Each country established its own independent tradition. By the time of Rossini the Italian tradition was over 200 years old and the French tradition a more youthful 140 years. I don’t recall any French composers who moved to Italy, but the list of names above gives a clear indication that a lot of Italian composers, including all of Gossett’s quadrumvirate: Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi, wrote French operas for Paris. Paris was simply too lucrative a market to ignore. No one but the Germans Handel and Johann Christian Bach seem to have regarded London as a place to move to.

When the Italians wrote for the French market, it might be an Italian opera they were writing, such as Il Viaggio a Reims by Rossini, but more likely, they composed French operas for the French, using their style and their librettos. An opera generally starts with a libretto. Both countries developed a style of poetry that they deemed suitable for an opera libretto and composed music in their own style. In the case of the French this generally included ballet. Louis XIV was a ballet enthusiast--in his youth he was a ballet dancer as well--and the tradition stuck. Sticking in ballets and taking them back out again is not really a problem.

None of this would have been a problem had it been considered suitable to simply translate an opera from French to Italian or from Italian to French. If the composer was Italian, the only side of the equation Gossett is concerned with, the Italians wanted the result to be an Italian opera and not merely a translated French one. So the Italians rewrote the French operas to be Italian operas with more or less the same music but completely different poetic forms, with the result that the Italian versions are not really what you would call versions. They’re different operas.

This seems a problem with a simple solution: write new translations. We in the English speaking countries do it all the time and don’t really understand why this is a problem. Every 25 years or so we tire of old translations and want new ones. Germans are excellent translators and are adept at finding exactly the right German words to capture the original. The German translation of My Fair Lady is awesome.

This appears not to work for the Italians. Sensitivities are upset. Toes are stepped on. Traditions are violated. Perhaps they have learned to love their version and don’t want to give it up. What is one to do?

I have oversimplified, as usual. The biggest problem, it seems to me, is that in countries not either Italy or France it is the Italian version that is performed. We should not presume to speak for the Italians, but we can certainly speak for ourselves. When the San Francisco Opera presented Donizetti's La Favorite in 1973, it was in the Italian version. In the 1999-2000 season SF presented the French version. We shall regard this as progress. At the Met this opera has not been presented since 1978, but all the performances have been in Italian. I know that when I learned the aria, it was called in Italian "O mio Fernando."

Verdi's Sicilian Vespers was sung in Italian at the Met as recently as 2004. Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment seems always to have been sung in French.

Frankly, there is a prejudice against French caused by the ghastly manner in which it is often sung. I am pleased to say that I did not experience any of my usual nausea about the pronunciation of French in Los Angeles Opera's Manon. Anna continued to sound like herself. Her voice didn't disappear into her head when she tried to do nasals, as is so often the case.

I feel inclined to promote the fortunes of La Favorite because it is one of those rare operas with a mezzo heroine, and Professor Gossett makes his best arguements relative to this opera. A dramatic mezzo should champion it. In French.

Words and Music

My favorite words and music story has always been the interview with Paul McCartney where he discussed composing the great romantic song "Yesterday." Apparently the words which brought forth this wonderful song were "scrambled eggs."

Scrambled eggs.
Yadda, yadda, yadda, scrambled eggs.
Yadda, yadda, yadda, scrambled eggs.
O, yadda, yadda, scrambled eggs.

According to Wikipedia, this is the most covered song of the twentieth century.

Correspondence

[I wrote to the University of Chicago:]

This is an idle curiosity question for Philip Gossett, whose book Divas and Scholars I am very much enjoying. I have just finished the chapter on transposition.

Do you have, or would you wish to express an opinion of modifications made to Cyrano de Bergerac to accomodate the aging voice of Placido Domino. I have this on good authority. I was told this after complaining that the role sounded like it was written for a baritone.

I think your book is fascinating and very fun to read. I am interested in
how much these principles extend back into earlier Italians like Salieri and Paisiello.

[And got back this:]

Dear Barbara,

Thanks for your very kind note.

What you tell me about Cyrano de Bergerac doesn't surprise me a bit. Placido has done this before, as he jumps from one vocal type to another. He is such a fabulous musician that usually it works for him, but occasionally he misjudges. (His "Figaro" with Abbado in Rossini's Barbiere was not a success!)
[Figaro is a baritone. Ach! Or madre de dio!]

I'm sure the procedure went back to the eighteenth century. And I find it all over the place in Verdi, not only with singers but with the composer himself, as he thinks through vocal ranges.

I've been working on La forza del destino for the critical edition recently.Verdi--as he composed the opera in 1861/1862 and as he revised it in 1869--made major transpositions in the Aria Don Carlo ("Urna fatale"), in the Coro ed Aria Melitone, in the Duetto for Leonora and Alvaro in Act I, in the Preziosilla solo in the Scena Osteria at the start of Act II. And it goes on and on.

I'm glad you're enjoying the book: I really wrote it to be enjoyed!

All best wishes,

Philip Gossett

[Isn't this cool!! If I wasn't supposed to post this, I'm sorry. It was irresistable.]

Rubini

The chapter in Divas and Scholars called “Higher and Lower” brings to light certain things about the operas of Vincenzo Bellini that were new to me. Bellini composed many of his tenor roles for a man named Giovanni Battista Rubini, a man with a seemingly abnormally high voice, higher even than Manuel Garcia, the tenor for whom Rossini often composed, including Otello and Arnold in William Tell, a man apparently with high C's to burn. Rubini had a high F. That’s the F that is a fourth above the normal tenor’s high C, called by Gossett “stratospheric.” That makes him the male equivalent of the Queen of the Night. Garcia and Rubini sang with a floating larynx, and weren’t trying for the kind of tone associated with tenors of Verdi and Puccini who use a forced down larynx. This stuff all seems huge to me. Gossett talks about transposing, but the end result always sounds unsatisfactory. If you transpose the tenor down, often you must also transpose the soprano down as well, making the role a mezzo in those parts while leaving her a soprano everywhere else. Bellini is considered one of the all time great Italian composers, and yet besides Norma his operas are rarely performed. Perhaps this is the reason. Fashion in tenors changed during this period toward a heavier, pushed up chest style, and Bellini was caught in the cracks. Does even Juan Diego Florez have a high F? David Daniels has one, certainly, but do we want a falsettist singing Bellini? Perhaps Rubini simply was a falsettist, and David Daniels would be the right person to replace him. His high F had to be falsetto.

Denyce Graves

I went last night to hear Denyce Graves in recital at Kennedy Center with accompanist Warren Jones. I liked it, but not enough to stay for the whole thing.

It's a long drive back to Frederick, though I seem to have finally discovered the route. There is a rule in Washington--if you don't know how to get there, we're not helping. This is a little like hiding Bolinas (obscure California reference.) In the south they don't want to help out all those lost northerners by actually giving them directions, so there are absolutely no signs that say "turn here for Kennedy Center," and the actual route is rather mystical. Ditto for getting back out. So far I have gone a different way driving home each time I've gone there, making the whole trip take about a half an hour longer.

Route to Kennedy Center: down the GW parkway to the Roosevelt bridge (that's Teddy, not Franklin), turn right at the very first opportunity and keep right. Sounds easy. So why no signs? If you miss the turn, you're sunk. You can circle the place for hours. Allow time for circling.

Route back: Exit going north and continue north along the river. Exit onto K, exit onto Key bridge, exit immediately onto GW parkway. The sign will say "to 495." It will never say George Washington Parkway, but what else could it be? If you miss any of these turns or exit the south side of the building, you are sunk. It's an IQ test. No dumm people are invited. Skip all this and go on the Metro, except you have to walk around in the dark, and it takes a lot longer to get home.

I usually take the scenic route home through the middle of DC with stops to ask directions and get home very cranky.

Denyce Graves, a beautiful black woman with an interesting mezzo-soprano voice, changed the program from the original printing. She sang "O Del Mio Dolce Ardor" from Gluck's Paride ed Elena to open instead of "Sweeter than Roses" and added an aria, "Acerba volutta" from Cilea's Adriana Lecourveur. This was an odd experience for me--I have sung everything on the first half of her program except for "Heimliches Lieben" by Schubert. That means I have a really good idea of how she did. She subtitled her program "Woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown."

She successfully took the low D at the end of Schubert's "Der Tod und das Maedchen," something I don't remember doing and have actually never heard before. Excellent.

I liked her best in the pair of arias: Cilea's "Acerba volutta" and Donizetti's "O mio Fernando" from La Favorita. These are dramatic mezzo arias for which she is very well equipped. I liked also very much her semi-dramatization of Schubert's "Gretchen am Spinnrade." She has a big voice and a big vibrato which she needs to keep under control. It is a voice perhaps best suited to opera. Ms Graves is a DC native and had a very sympathetic audience.

Speaking of the audience--DC audience members seem to clap constantly. If the singer takes too deep a breath, they begin clapping, including a round of applause in the middle of "O mio Fernando." I think the aria makes a better effect if it runs its course.

I have to say a few words about Warren Jones. He put the music flat on the piano so he could always easily see Ms Graves. I couldn't tell if this meant they had not practiced that much together. Did I find him "the finest accompanist now working" as the blurb in the program says? He seemed to me to charge wildly ahead at every opportunity while Ms Graves held back. They often seemed not to be performing the same pieces. She always insisted on her own interpretation no matter what he did. This is the secret to getting your own tempo--just sing that tempo no matter what others around you are doing. Eventually they will submit. Think how much better it might be to agree on a tempo before hand!

But then, I know too much. I was always imagining my own expectations.