Verdi, “Don Carlo”. The
tenor aria is “L’ho perduta”. It was created by Tamagno – who also created
Verdi’s “Otello.
Io l'ho perduta! Oh
potenza suprema!
Un altro... ed è mio
padre... un altro... e questi è il re
Lei che adoro m'ha
rapita
La sposa a me promessa, ah, quanto puro e bel
fu il dì senza doman in
cui ebri di speme
C'era dato vagar,
nell'ombra, soli insieme,
Nel dolce suol di Francia,
Nella foresta di
Fontainebleau!"
---> Io la vidi e il
suo sorriso
Nuovo un cielo apriva a
me!
Ahi! per sempre or m'ha
diviso
Da quel core un padre, un Re!
Non promette un dì
felice
Di mia vita il
triste albor...
M'hai rubato, o
incantatrice,
Cor e speme, sogni...
amor!
("Je l'ai vue, et
dans son sourire, dans ses yeux pleins d'un feu charmant
tout ému, mon coeur a pu
lire le bonheur de vivre en l'aimant", etc.). I
wouldn't mind leads for
online analysis of that. Meanwhile, some facts (from
wiki):
"[The
Italian libretto] was in preparation by
Achille de Lauzières
as early as the autumn
of 1866. ... This Italian [libretto] -
with some
cuts and alterations -
was presented first at the Royal Italian
Opera House on
4 June 1867 (conductor:
Michael Costa), and received its Italian
premiere
- uncut - at the Teatro
Comunale di Bologna on 27 Oct. of that
year,
conducted by
Mariani."
"Following
an unsuccessful performance in Naples in
1871, Verdi ...
made two more
modifications to the score", including
some "verses by A.
Ghislanzoni to replace
some of the previously cut
material."
"An
Italian [libretto], re-using much of the
original 1866
[material] was made by
A. Zanardini. The La Scala, Milan,
première of the revision
took place on 10 Jan.
1884.
Verdi
did "allow a performance on 29 Dec.
1886 in Modena which
presented the
“Fontainebleau’’ first act along with
the revised 4-act
version. This version
was published by Ricordi as “a new
edition in five acts
without ballet”".
The
opera, wiki goes, "has been regularly
performed, particularly in
the four-act 1883
'Milanese' version."
"Following the
notable 1958 staging of the 1886 5-act Italian version at
the C. Garden (director
Visconti), this version has increasingly been
performed elsewhere and has been recorded by
Giulini."
1867
Verdi, Don Carlo – “Don
Carlo” has been called an ‘ever-changing opera”, as in a piece in the New York
Times.
"Don Carlo" is _not_ a tenor's opera
(titles can be misleading). But the tenor role is obviously the centre.
In Italian, Verdi changed some things, and it has more exuberance. It's brighter.
Alagna is quoted as saying. Ulrik
comments:
Io l'ho perduta! Oh potenza suprema!
Un altro... ed è mio padre... un altro ... e questi è il Re,
Lei che adoro m'ha rapita!
La sposa a me
promessa!
Ah! quanto puro e bel
Fu il dì senza doman, in cui, ebri di
speme,
C'era dato vagar, nell'ombra, soli insieme,
nel dolce suol
di Francia,
nella foresta di Fontainebleau!
nella foresta di Fontainebleau.
Aria:
Io la vidi e il suo sorriso ------ a
nuovo un cielo apriva a me! --- b
Ah! per sempre or m'ha diviso--- a
Da quel core un padre, un re.---- b
Non promette un dì felice ------ c
di mia vita il triste albor
-------- d
M'hai rubato, o incantatrice ---- c
Cor e speme, sogni... amor ---- d
--- Coda:
Aime, io l'ho perduta, io l'ho perduta.
The librettists involved were Ghislanzoni and Zanardini.
The NYT quotes from Italian conductor A. Pappano, comparing the French with the the Italian
version: like "meat and potatoes”.
Verdi was from Emilia-Romagna".
"In French that Emilia-Romagna
spirit is lost. ... In French, the baritone’s aria becomes a chamber piece."
Of course, the important point of "Don
Carlo" is philosophical. The NYT
article is so full of references to 'moral ambiguity' that are interesting.
We want you to see IL MARCHESE DI POSA turn. Every
man has his price. Betrayal of one kind or another is a foregone conclusion.
We watch characters on the stage hoping
against hope that they will pass a moral test.
|
We should always start with the historical'.
Some won't attend a 5-hour performance
of anything unless it's minimal _historical_. So, who _was_ this "Carlo". The easy
access to it I found in Budden, vol.
3, of his "Operas of Verdi",
revised edition -- now a Clarendon
paperback: On p. 10, Budden writes of the _real_ Carlo.
Carlo was the only legitimate son of King
Philip II of Spain.
Carlo was a violent, uncontrolled man who at an early age developed an unreasoning hatred of his father and was soon declared by him unfit to succeed to the throne.
His attempts to raise support for his rights abroad led to his being placed
under house arrest; long fasts
alternating with bouts of over-eating together with copious draughts of ice-cold water resulted in his early death.
What is
fascinating is Verdi's first approach to the thing. They mention Schillfer, of course, and the letler by Royer and Vaez (dated 1850)
“Dear Verdi,
I suggesting to you Schiller's _Don
Carlo_" as an early source, but I prefer to think -- and I may need further support to this that.”
Verdi was already quite familiar with
Schiller’s “Don Carlo” and perhaps had come to _love_ the thing via the
translation of his friend Maffei.
Vide: Lamport, "E. N. O." Guide to
"Don Carlo", Calder
Publications, p. 23:
"A complete Italian translation of Schiller's plays was made in the 1840s by Andrea Maffei. Verdi ... knew
Maffei well."
Io la vidi e il suo sorriso
Nuovo un ciel apriva a me!
Ah! Per sempre or m'ha diviso
Da quel core
un padre, un re.
Non promitti un dì felice
Di mia vita il triste albor,
M'hai rubato, incantatrice,
E cor, e speme, e sogni, e amor.
"I saw her, and her smile opened a new
heaven to me! Ah, my father the king has separated me forever from that
heart. The sad morning of my life does not
promise a single day of happiness. Enchantress, you have robbed me of heart and
of hope, of dreams and of love! You have robbed me of hope, of dreams,
and of love!"
An alternate version goes:
Io la vidi e al suo sorriso
Scintillar mi parve il sole;
Come l'alma al paradiso
Schiuse a lei la speme, il vol.
Tanta gioia a me prometto
Che s'inebria questo cor;
Dio, sorridi al nostro affeto,
Benedici un casto amor.
"I saw her, and at her smile, to scintillate
to me the sun appeared, as the soul to paradise disclosed to her the hope the
flight. So much joy to me promised that this heart embriagates itself.
God, smile
at our affection, bless one chaste love."
The next thing is to provide the link between such an _abstract_ thing as that
provided -- essentially by Achille de Lauzierès
out of the original by Méry and du Locle.
The vocal limitations of the tenor, Morère, no
doubt helped to shape the role of Carlo.
However, Verdi manages to take advantage of
the _narrower trimbre_ of the French
voice of Morere to create a tenor of a different sort.
So, while critics jump fast enough to psychological considerations it
may all be _in the difference between
French (a language foreign to Verdi) and Italian, his soul.
Carlo's opening utterance
["Fontainebleu! Foresta immensa e
solitaria!" -- recit. to the cavatina above, establishes him at once as a tenor of sensibility.
J'ai la vue, et dans son sourire,
Dans ses yeux pleins d'un feu charmant,
Tout ému, mon coeur a pu lire
Le bonheur de vivre en l'aimant.
Avenir rempli de tendresse!
Bel azur dorant tous nos jours!
Dieu sourit à notre jeunesse,
Dieu bénit nos chastes amours!
FONTAINEBLEU: FORESTA IMMENSA E SOLITARIA
"Fontainebleau! Forêt immese et solitaire.
The average
Italian indeed often _shies_ away from French_vowels_ being afraid
that they will interfere with his voice
production.
Tamagno, created the role in one Italian version.
There was an earlier Italian version (under
Michele Costa's direction at Covent
Garden, on June 4 1867) was. This was followed by productions in Italian too: -- I draw the info from Budden:
Bologna Oct 27,
1867 (cond. Mariani), and Milan March 1868 cond. Mazzucato. _Celada_
(I read in that great book, "A
pictorial treasure of Opera in America" by Blum, p. 59) who 'created'
the role at the New York Academy
of Music on April 12 1877.
|
"The duty-bound Isabella
has just a few hours of joy, in Atto I, the Fontainebleau scene.
Carlo tracks down Isabella
in France to see the woman he is supposed to marry.
When they meet, they have
an extended duet of blissful lyricism, which these lovers relish.
The Fontainebleu act is _hardly_
Schiller -- but, rather the minor play
by the librettist of
"Pescatori di
Perle" (Cormon, “Filippo II”).
It is nonsense to refer to the _Don Carlos_ of 1867 as 'French' and that of 1884
as 'Italian.
While French-language "Don Carlos" opened
in Paris in March 1867, by June 4 1867 it
was opened at
Covent Garden
("Royal Italian Opera") as conducted by Neapolitan-born Michele Costa, as sung in the
title tenor role by Neapolitan-born
Emilio Nadin, and as translated
by Neapolitan-born Achille de Lauzières.
In the five-act version,
the aria is: "Io la vidi e _al suo sorriso_"). In the four_-act
version the aria is:
"Io la vidi e _il_
suo sorriso".
The two versions can be
compared:
J'ai la vue, et dans son
sourire ----------------a Io la vidi
e al suo sorriso -------a
Dans ses yeux pleins
d'un feu charmant, -b Scintillar mi parve il sole -------b
Tout ému, mon coeur a pu lire ----------------a Come l'alma al paradiso -------a
Le bonheur de vivre en
l'aimant. --------------b Schiuse a lei la speme, il vol. --b
Avenir rempli de tendresse! --------------------c Tanta gioia a me prometto ------c
Bel azur dorant tous nos
jours! --------------d Che s'inebria questo cor ----------d
Dieu sourit à notre
jeunesse, -----------------c Dio, sorridi al nostro affetto, -----c
Dieu bénit nos chastes amours! ------------d Benedici un casto amor.-----------d
Note that it’s one
shared 'amor' – singular -- (however 'casto') being
_singular_, i.e. one
thing _shared_ by the lovers (even if as verbalised by
Carlo only) rather than
double ("chastes amours", in the French).
De Lauzières's
original version (which he was working on by 1866) may have been modified by Zanardini (On top of that,
there's the _third_ Italian librettist involved here: Ghislanzoni, for the Filippo/Posa
duetto, _and_ Faggione for those editions which reintroduce the opening chorus
by the woodcutters).
Schiller’s “Don Carlo” (tr.
by Maffei, who was friends with Verdi,
had provided a translation of the German
play which Verdi may have read by the late 1840s -- it was officially published in
the 1850s)
The "Fontainebleu"
scene is nowhere in the Schiller play.
Budden notes
that in Cormon's play, “Filippo II”, the thing opens with a 'Prologue', set
in St-Germain, and led by Carlo disguised as an
'étudiant d'Alcalá' (title of the 'prologue' in fact).
But the idea of re-setting
it in Fontainebleu in the winter is of course very appropriate.
So, the imagery of the
smile is present in both the French and the Italian. The 'feu' in
the French becomes the 'sun' in the
Italian. The imagery being synaesthetic: it's all about the _warmth_ about
this 'love at first sight' Carlo is experience (re-emphasised shortly after when Carlo becomes, in the words of Budden, 'the
first boy scout who kindles a fire by
rubbing two twigs together'.
The Italian manages to
rhyme 'sorriso' with 'paradiso', which I
think makes a good eschatological point,
since the recitative to the cavatina has already mentioned "Eden". None of that imagery in the French.
By 1867, when Verdi was
corresponding with Costa (indeed Verdi was congratulating Costa) on the staging of "Don Carlo"
at Covent Garden (the convention of referring to the _Italian_ version as
"Don Carlo" is however later), he would NOT know, as he did, in his later years, that the
"Royal Italian Opera" were indeed _counted_ by then.
de Lauzières wonders.
How much store did Verdi
himself set by the original language?
Certainly he never
imagined that Don Carlo--- tr.de Lauzières --
would be performed outside France
in any other language than Italian,
unless it were the vernacular of the country concerned.
But it should be borne
in mind that Italian was still in most theatres the accepted lingua franca of
opera. All over Europe and America Fausts greeted Marguerite's cottage with a 'Salve dimora' [tr. de Lauzières. Speranza],
[and] Lionels apostrophised their Marthas with 'M'appari tutto amor' [tr.
de Lauzières.
As for the 'variorum' -- what Budden calls the
1866, 1867, 1872, 1884, and 1886 editions, each seem to present
a different version of "Carlo".
Some are fascinated by Verdi's 'craft' (as opposed to 'art', as a critic had it)
when it came to re-write the
cavatina of the five-act version
("Io la vidi e al suo sorriso")
-- an outburst of expectation and
passion -- into the totally different animal
of the four-act version ("Io la
vidi e il suo sorriso" -- an outburst
of nostalgia, perhaps even more
powerful.
In Hume's
words, the real Carlo was a
"semi-imbecile", "lame and epileptic", "already
vicious and
uncontrollable ... yellow and wasted with
intermitent fever" (cited by Godfrey,
"The dramatic genius of Verdi", vol. 2, p. 137).
Budden, for one, seems clear as to the nature of
Carlo's passion for "Isabella"
(the Italian translators preferred this shorter version to the French 'Elisabeth'), and he presents Carlo as being
a 'tenor' "in love with love”, much like Alexis in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The
Sorcerer!” (I love love only).
In both
versions of the cavatina (in the five-act and four-act versions) there is always a reference to Carlo's father. So it seems it
is _hatred_ for the father figure
(authority figure) vis-a-vis an
Inter-generational conflict, that seems to explain Carlo's behaviour much more than any
unconditional passion for the daughter of the King of France.
Similarly, the associations of Carlo with the Marchese (later Duca) di Posa seem slightly artificial
in
that Posa seems an ideological element which interested Schiller
ONLY and perhaps Verdi, but that
seems totally otiose in explaining
Carlo's traits -- other than his
sublimation for his 'forbidden' (or
'guilty', as he has it) love.
1867
Verdi, “Don Carlo”.
While there is much to comment on different aspects, the best way to
approach these issues is via proper musical characterisation. In this
respect, a comparison between the first version of the cavatina (in the
five-act version) and the second version is illuminating.
In the first version ("Io la vidi e al suo sorriso") we have what Budden calls 'an old-fashioned a1-a2-b-a2 complete
with CODA and a rest for the voice at the start of the third phrase.
There are ornamentations on "tanta gioa a
*me* prometto che s'inebria *questo* cor: "a reverie of
classical delicacy, with a delicious core ... in the suavest accents.
But what about the _second_ version?
Recall there is a big lapse in between, and styles
_do_ change. Verdi knew he was working for Tamagno in this case, who
created the four-act "Carlo".
Like all Verdi's revisions it is longer breathed
and
less repetitive than the original.
There is no reprise of the opening phrase
and no separate coda.
The changes are clearly designed to reflect the
altered mood of the singer, and a hundred deft touches transform joyful
anticipation into nostalgic memory.
At this point is good to go back to the orchestral score for the FIRST cavatina.
For all his
scheming, Carlo is a guileless boy at heart.
The antiquated
form in a a ternary pattern does NOT preclude a very definition of his
present mood.
Witness the schwaermerish upward-reaching
gatures combined with moving chromatic
inner parts, the perfect expression of someone
in love with love.
This enrichment of the harmonic palette engenders
a subtlety of scoring.
Where we should expect a string accompaniment, it
is, rather, the WIND instruments that
provide the scaffolding and the strings that
unterline the important countours
with varieties of arco and pizzicato.
The different
animal of the four-act version requires a different scoring.
Not only is
the key lowered by a tone from C to B flat; it is approached through G minor,
so affording that yearning for _lost happiness which the romantic Italians
never failed to draw from the relative major used in such a context.
Regarding the orchestration proper, there’s no glinting
upper woodwind colours to relieve the
gloom of the low clarinet.
Instead of the
caressing chromaticisms" of the earlier version, there is a viola fidget
to give a sense of nagging restlessness.
1867
Verdi,
“Don Carlo”
Michele
Costa's performance 'rights' as he performed
(or 'conducted') Verdi's "Don
Carlos" -- and the
correspondence with Verdi that followed. How much did Verdi know? Would his letter have been as complimentary if he KNEW? But also it may relate to Costa's _own_ opera by that title.
About Costa's own "Don Carlo", Costa himself had composed a "Don Carlo" in 1844, also based on Schiller – and it had opened in Italy.
London’s "Royal Italian Opera" was a thing initiated in the 1830s, so one may think that Costa's "Don Carlo" had a showing there, too.
What Costa did to Verdi’s "Carlos": the first act was removed completely.
In this, Costa’s changes were very much LIKE Verdi's own later changes.
Likewise, he removed the ballet.
Costa did retain the scene in which Isabella" and La Principessa d’Eboli exchange masks.
Costa also shortened the duet between FILIPPO II and the Inquisitor by four line.
This may be the lines that had offended the French Empress.
Of Elisabetta's great aria in Act V he gave only part of the central episode and the reprise.
Costa removed the tenor's aria (Io la vidi) from Act I to just before the terzetti in Act III where Carlo receives a note of assignation from Eboli.
Verdi wrote to Escudier: "I'm not surprised some of the numbes were encored. That may seem odd in Paris, but I can well imagine the effect the terzetto could produce when sung by three singers who have _rhythm_. Rhythm is just a dead letter at the Opéra".
The less complimentary comment by Verdi concerns the 'cavatina' role of Carlo's aria: What is remarkable is the extent to which Costa's scheme anticipates that of Verdi's own revision of 1883.
None the less when Verdi did learn of the displacement of Carlo's aria, he was irritated.
“”Io la vidi” is a cantabile which is all right at the start of the action, but not when the action is already under way." (Verdi, Letter to du Locle, 5.12.1867)
It was an "aria d'entrata" as it were -- more so in the 4-act version.
Verdi's own subsequent solution was subtler and more apt, turning the aria into a 'reminiscence' and keeping the symmetry of Act I and Act IV -- with no transposition of the locale unity (no action set in
France).
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