Divas and Scholars Read online

  The public is both intrigued and confused by what it gleans about these problems through journalistic discussion of multiple versions, cuts, vocal ornamentation, changes in instruments and instrumental technique, and the reconstruction of historical staging practices. But journalism generally reflects immediate controversy about individual performances and performers. Few efforts have been made to proceed more systematically: to understand how modern concerns are rooted in the history of Italian opera; to elaborate principles that assist scholars and the public in thinking about these questions; to assist performers who need to make practical decisions.

  Although I love the beautiful sounds that are part (but only part) of what characterizes fine bel canto singing, I am not a professional voice teacher and claim no particular expertise on how to produce or evaluate those sounds. While no opera fan can resist an occasional parenthetical comment, the magic of great singing is not the central subject of this book. Nor is this a book that indulges in diva worship, although I love a Maria Callas recording as much as the next fan. I offer no speculation as to how Giuditta Pasta sounded when she first intoned “Casta Diva,” nor can I explain how Giambattista Rubini executed that legendary high f in Bellini’s I puritani, before which many a modern tenor has quivered. I care primarily about great and not-so-great works of operatic art and about the real musicians working in the opera house who face eminently practical problems in bringing these operas to the stage. It continues to be the extraordinary music and drama of Italian opera that most captures my imagination, although I am fully aware that the works I love come to life thanks to the singers who interpret them.6

  Divas and Scholars opens with a report on two opera festivals with which I worked closely during the summer of 2000, the Santa Fe Opera and the Rossini Opera Festival of Pesaro. Through discussions of five productions mounted during these festivals (and comparisons with earlier productions of these operas with which I was associated), I have tried to suggest the purpose of this book and the kinds of questions it will address. Part I, “Knowing the Score,” traces the social history of nineteenth-century Italian theaters in order to explain the nature of the musical scores from which performers have long worked. There are wonderful books about this social history (particularly those of the late historian John Rosselli, who made such important contributions to this field),7 but none draws the necessary conclusions about the history, transmission, and editing of the music. The concept of the critical edition as it applies to Italian opera is deliciously colorful, and I have tried to tell that story through case studies that illustrate the “romance” of the critical edition (not such an oxymoron as it might appear), with reference to Rossini’s Tancredi and Il viaggio a Reims and Verdi’s Stiffelio.

  In an “intermezzo” devoted to the production of Rossini’s Semiramide at the Metropolitan Opera in 1991, I seek to clarify what it means to talk about “performing” from a critical edition (notice, not “performing a critical edition”) and to set to rest some of the absurdities that still surface about the relationship between scholarship and performance. Part II, “Performing the Opera,” consists of a series of chapters devoted to different aspects of modern performance. “Choosing a Version” focuses on the problem of determining what music to adopt when multiple versions of an opera exist, a problem that needs to be analyzed in terms of the social environment in which these operas were conceived and in that of today’s theaters. “Serafin’s Scissors” discusses the omitting of passages from an opera in performance, examining the history of the practice and its advantages and disadvantages. A series of chapters then addresses issues pertaining to vocal style (ornamentation and transposition), the matter of texts, translations, and adaptations (of particular importance for operas written in French by Italian composers, which often continue to be performed in Italian translation), instrumentation, and certain aspects of stage direction and set design.

  Divas and Scholars concludes with a “coda” describing two unusual sets of performances with which I was involved during the 2002–3 season in Scandinavia, Verdi’s Gustavo III (the first version of Un ballo in maschera) in Gothenburg and Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims (with a partially new text added by Dario Fo) in Helsinki. In both cases my colleagues and I tested the limits of history and practice.

  There are other topics I would have liked to cover in this book, but they will have to await another occasion. For those interested in the question of Verdi’s metronome markings and their use in performances of his operas, I recommend the work of Roberta Montemorra Marvin and John Mauceri.8 Although it covers many different repertories, Clive Brown’s Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750–1900 is a mine of information on such matters as accentuation, dynamics, articulation and phrasing, bowing, tempo indications, vibrato, and so on.9 On the subject of dance in Italian opera, the best general treatment remains that of Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell; for a consideration of Verdi’s ballet music for Paris, see the important study of Knud Arne Jürgensen.10

  The subject of this book has been with me for some twenty years, and parts of it were presented as a series of Gauss Seminars at Princeton University in 1992; other parts were delivered as the Hambro Lectures in Opera at Oxford University in 2000. I am grateful to both institutions (and, in particular, to Victor Brombert at Princeton and to Reinhold Strohm and Margaret Bent at Oxford) for their kindness. All the opinions expressed in this book are my own, and I normally use the first-person singular in the text. On occasion, though, when I am identifying myself with other scholars or with a group of performers, I adopt the first-person plural. Even in those cases, however, no other individuals or institutions should be held responsible for my personal views. Musical examples are cited from the critical editions where these have been prepared; otherwise, a source is specified. Earlier versions of several chapters have been previously published: chapter 4 in The New Republic;11 chapter 6 in the newsletter of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992; an Italian version of chapter 10 in the proceedings of a conference from the bicentenary of Bellini’s birth;12 the second part of chapter 14 in a festschrift for Agostino Ziino.13 Passages from other chapters have appeared in various conference papers I have delivered over the past decade, which will be cited in the appropriate places.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To acknowledge all those whose help, example, encouragement, and thinking have gone into this book would mean listing all the institutions that have fostered my scholarly and practical efforts over the years (universities, opera houses, publishers, libraries), as well as all those individuals with whom I have lived, worked, gone to the theater, and discussed Italian opera. I have of necessity been somewhat more selective here, but I am no less grateful to everyone who has provided assistance, sustenance, and friendship.

  Among institutions the University of Chicago must take pride of place. I joined the faculty in 1968 and have long felt that no other institution could have offered me such an intellectually stimulating environment in which to grow, nor such tangible and intangible support of my efforts. A series of presidents (especially Hanna H. Gray and Hugo Sonnenschein), provosts (Gerhard Casper, Geoffrey Stone, and Richard Saller), deans (Karl J. Weintraub, Stuart Tave, and Janel Mueller), and department chairs and colleagues (among them Leonard B. Meyer, Edward E. Lowinsky, Howard Mayer Brown, Ellen Harris, and Anne Walters Robertson) have always been there for me; without them, none of this would have been possible. Nor will I ever forget that the stimulus to publish The Works of Giuseppe Verdi and continued support for the project came directly from the University of Chicago Press, its directors (Morris Philipson and Paula Duffy), its editors (John Ryden, Wendy Strothman, Penelope Kaiserlian, and Alan Thomas), and its music editors (Gabriele Dotto and Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell). “What do you mean there’s no complete edition of the works of Verdi!” said John Ryden, having read a footnote in which I lamented that such an edition did not exist: “We’ll do it.” And so they have.

  A few years earlier, a similar commitment
was made by the Fondazione Rossini of Pesaro. Bruno Cagli, artistic director of the Fondazione for thirty-five years and now also president of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, has been my colleague since the early 1970s, when the Fondazione embraced our vision of publishing the Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini. With the active support of a series of presidents (Wolframo Pierangeli, Giorgio de Sabata, Vincenzo Emiliani, and Alfredo Siepi), the Fondazione helped us through the political intricacies of a small Italian seaside town, and gave us the confidence and determination to move ahead.

  Neither the University of Chicago Press nor the Fondazione Rossini could have undertaken these projects alone. Our partnership with Italy’s greatest music publisher, Casa Ricordi of Milan, has been fundamental. I want to thank the administrators of the company, who—while not always sure where we were going—retained confidence in us: Guido Rignano and, in particular, Mimma Guastoni, whose inspiring leadership ensured that the critical editions of Rossini and Verdi would not remain on the library shelves. The institutional relationship continues to flourish under the new administrative structure of BMG Ricordi. What I have learned from the professional staff of Casa Ricordi (Luciana Pestalozza, Fausto Broussard, Gabriele Dotto, and Ilaria Narici, among others) is incalculable. Without their constant encouragement and institutional memory, as well as their willingness to offer me full access to the treasures in the Ricordi Archives, much of my work would have been impossible.

  The Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani of Parma, founded in 1959, is a younger institution than the others, but it has been a beacon for Verdi studies through its conferences, its publications, its library. The present director of the Institute, Pierluigi Petrobelli, befriended my wife and me when I first came to Italy to study Italian opera in 1966, and since then we have worked together continuously. Without the example of Petrobelli’s own scholarship and his patient efforts on behalf of others, Verdi studies could not have flourished as they have over the past decades.

  I have mentioned above some of the performers from whom I have learned the most, and the list could be extended many times over, but let me here thank several opera houses and festivals that have been particularly supportive of my efforts. Not all references in this book to their productions are positive, but I would not want my criticisms to hide my profound gratitude for all they have done and continue to do for Italian opera. After all, if the scholar in the opera house cannot function as a gadfly, what is he doing there? Lyric Opera of Chicago has been my home company since 1968, and I want to express my appreciation to the late Ardis Krainik, one of the finest impresarios of our time; to the company’s remarkable conductor and artistic director for so many years, Bruno Bartoletti, who always kept me honest; to its former artistic adviser, Matthew Epstein, an eternal font of operatic wisdom; and to the king of press agents, Danny Newman, because no one has been so kind to me as he. I cut my operatic teeth as a standee at the Metropolitan Opera of New York, and I have kept learning over the years from its entire musical staff, beginning with the music director, James Levine, but continuing through coaches, conductors, and orchestral musicians, as well as its librarian, John Grande, who helped me understand what I was doing. Eve Queler, with her Opera Orchestra of New York, takes the challenge of presenting lesser-known works in concert, and I have had the pleasure of working and talking opera with her since 1978, when we presented the new edition of Tancredi, with Marilyn Horne and Katia Ricciarelli.

  In Italy I treasure particularly many of my experiences at the Rossini Opera Festival of Pesaro, which will—necessarily—play an important role in this book. While I have not always agreed with their artistic decisions, I know that the head of the festival for twenty-five years, Franco Mariotti, has done more than anyone to make sure that the works of Rossini live on the modern stage. The opportunity to work at the festival with Claudio Abbado, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Roger Norrington, and many other fine conductors, at the Teatro alla Scala of Milan with Riccardo Muti, at the Teatro Comunale of Bologna with Riccardo Chailly, and in various other Italian theaters with fine conductors and singers has allowed me to understand the world of Italian opera from within and to avoid easy generalizations. Many thoughts and formulations in this book reflect long conversations during weeks of rehearsals with Richard Buckley in Chicago and Santa Fe, and with Evelino Pidò in Belgium, France, Italy, and the United States. To both of them go my sincerest admiration and affection.

  The world of operatic scholarship is equally broad, and I have enjoyed working closely with students and colleagues in several countries, including all those who have prepared critical editions of the works of Rossini and Verdi under my direction. Each has found his or her way into this book, but I want particularly to acknowledge several of them. The late M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet, professor of music at Duke University, was the editor of Guillaume Tell and our foremost scholar of French eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opera. I began as her teacher and ended as her student. Margaret Bent, medievalist extraordinaire and fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford, is also an opera fanatic on the side (with, alas, oltremontane tendencies). Her edition of Il Turco in Italia finally brought that score back into the public view, and her ability to join philology and musicality is unrivaled. Patricia Brauner has been at my side in the Rossini edition since the 1980s, and I could not have done this work without her. Smart and sensible in equal parts, she has kept the project on an even keel when it threatened to teeter out of control. She and her husband, Charles (editor most recently of the critical edition of Mosè in Egitto), have helped give a human face to all the years of effort. Azio Corghi, one of Italy’s greatest living composers, was also the editor of L’Italiana in Algeri and remains a friend of long standing, with whom I have had the pleasure of conversing frequently about art and life.

  My gratitude to Will Crutchfield can hardly be described. We have been talking about Italian opera for twenty years, and I never fail to be challenged and inspired by his thoughtful and genuinely helpful criticism. He knows more about this repertory than anyone else, and his own forthcoming book on elements of performance practice will fill out much of what I have to say here. If there is a model to which I have aspired in writing about music for a nonscholarly audience, it is that of my friend and colleague Andrew Porter, whose many years at the New Yorker produced the most sustained and brilliant example of music criticism for our time. As if that were not sufficient, his singing translations, scholarly activity on the Verdi operas (in particular Don Carlos), and efforts at resurrecting nineteenth-century staging practices have all played a key role in helping me to develop my ideas. Working with Fabrizio Della Seta on the critical edition of both La traviata and (for the Rossini edition) Adina was as positive an experience as any general editor could hope to have. That the new Bellini edition is in his capable hands (with his fine colleagues Alessandro Roccatagliati and Luca Zoppelli) gives me great confidence in the project. Even more, he has been a soft-spoken but incisive colleague and a friend of the greatest integrity, and I continue to learn from him. I met the Italo-American musician, composer, and scholar Gabriele Dotto when he had just begun to work for Casa Ricordi during the 1980s, and promptly carried him off to Chicago. He prepared the critical edition of Rossini’s Bianca e Falliero and served for many years as managing editor of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, before Casa Ricordi stole him back. Now general editor (with Roger Parker) of the new Donizetti edition, Gabe knows what it is like from inside as no one else, and I will always be grateful to him for his insight and warmth. Ellen Harris is no specialist in nineteenth-century Italian opera, just a great Handel scholar, a fine singer (our lecture/concert on ornamentation in Rossini was the first version of what has become chapter 9 of this book), and a trusted friend. Colwyn Philipps (Lord St. Davids), has been a font of endless knowledge about printed music for twenty years, and his superb Rossini collection is now part of the library of the Fondazione Rossini.

  During the course of my work on this book, several students—man
y of them now respected scholars and teachers in their own right—have assisted me in one task or another. Let me mention Stefano Castelvecchi of King’s College, Cambridge, editor of Verdi’s Alzira; Jeffrey Kallberg, our finest Chopin scholar, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and editor of Verdi’s Luisa Miller; Doug Ipson, who is preparing the edition of Verdi’s La battaglia di Legnano; Daniela Macchione, whose superb work with the Fondazione Rossini over the past five years has been a breath of fresh air; Hilary Porris, assistant professor at the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, whose own studies of substitute arias has changed much of our way of thinking about the phenomenon; and Alberto Rizzuti, who teaches at the University of Turin and is preparing the critical edition of Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco.

  A number of friends and colleagues have read some or all the chapters of this book and have provided me with extremely useful feedback. They obviously bear no responsibility for what I may have done with their advice, but I do want to thank them most warmly for their efforts to set me straight. They include, among those I have already cited, Charles and Patricia Brauner, Will Crutchfield, Andrew Porter, and Alan Thomas. Let me add Denise Gallo of the Library of Congress, who is preparing the edition of Rossini’s Musica per banda; Helen Greenwald of the New England Conservatory, coeditor of Zelmira for the Rossini edition and a truly supportive friend; Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell, managing editor of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi and editor of Verdi’s Stiffelio; Linda and Dick Kerber of the University of Iowa, a historian and a cardiologist, who love opera and—in the case of Linda—go back to my high school years; Ron Mellor, professor of classics and history at the University of California, Los Angeles, who seems to get to every opera performance I attend, in any country and at any time of year; Roger Parker, professor at Cambridge University and distinguished scholar of Italian opera from Donizetti to Puccini; Federica Riva, librarian of the Parma Conservatory, thoughtful commentator on the Italian operatic scene, and dear friend; and Leon Wieseltier, author, political commentator, literary editor of the New Republic, and Rossini fan (who would have known?). I am particularly grateful to Margaret Mahan, whose skilled editorial labors made a real difference, and Alan Thomas, who shepherded the book through the Press with the proper mix of kindness and rigor.