Hilary Poriss,
Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and
the Authority of Performance
. AMS Studies in Music. Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-
1953-86714.
This marvelous book exuberantly explores an exuberant aspect of nineteenth-century opera that
is rarely discussed today, but that was ubiquitous in the first half of the century, the practice of replacing
an aria (or other piece) in an opera with another or inserting an aria into an opera in a place where none
existed.
We of course are aware that composers themselves wrote such arias for their own operas, but
We of course are aware that composers themselves wrote such arias for their own operas, but
insertion
(10). The book concentrates on the period 1800-
, and their contemporaries gave
way to Verdi, extending this time-frame in both directions on appropriate occasions. It represents the
1 and including several
published articles.
did inserted numbers conform, both dramatically and musically, to their new environments, and how
important was it that they do so?
What artistic, economic, and social factors motivated nineteenth-
What artistic, economic, and social factors motivated nineteenth-
century singers to make these types of alterations?
And how were aria insertions received by critics,
And how were aria insertions received by critics,
especially the prima
donnas
actively asserted their ow
singers exerted powerful influence on opera during this period, both in the creation of the work and in its
transmission through performance.
ed, including librettos, newspaper reviews,
epistolary sources, anecdotal and biographical material, theatrical documents such as contracts, posters,
and box-
1
Hilary Poriss,
Artistic Licesnse: Aria Interpolation and the Italian Operatic World, 1815-
Chicago, 2000).
1
Brauner: "Changing the Score: Arias, Prima donnas, and the Authority of Pe
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2009
2
Librettos are especially important;; the primary documents that show precisely what pieces were
performed in a specific production.
The book is divided into an introduction (from which the above passages are drawn) and six
chapters, examining the issues from diff
century, the suitability and value of these pieces became a matter of discussion throughout the world of
Italian opera, and traces of these conversations surface in a variety of documents including contracts,
struggled against the caprices of prima donnas, but often had to yield. Perhaps surprisingly, critical
opinion was divided, some critics appreciating the vocal and dramatic skill that singers brought to their
insertion arias, others, increasingly as the century wore on, championing the opera as an integral work of
art. A brief excursus (25-28) discusses practical reasons for insertions
similarity of an aria with one in
a different opera that would make the former sound incongruous, the sudden replacement of an opera
with another without sufficient rehearsal time, benefit performances in which the singer is the focus
rather than the opera
while noting that such reasons account for only a small minority of occurrences.
Entrance: Carolina Ungher and Marino Faliero he
general discussion to examine
1835 and its connection with one of the leading singers of the era. The role of the heroine Elena lacks a
ntrance in Act I (as the term is usually used in the early
Otello),
the absence of such an aria was unusual and also not to the liking of leading sopranos, who
appreciation of their vocal prowess) would be diminished. Ungher, not the original Elena, was the first
to create an entrance aria, by interpolating an aria from another opera by Donizetti. She tried three
different arias in three different productions before settling on the second. Poriss sensitively delves into
the dramatic benefits and problems of these insertions as well as exploring why Ungher might have
rejected her first choice in favor of her second, particularly the issue of suitability to her voice.
2 This
unthinkingly imposed on a composer and his work.
Of course, singers did carry around favorite arias (
arie di baule
Way Through the World: Italian One-
3
2
om Sancia di
Castiglia
Ugo, conte di Parigir in style
-act aria, which leaves the question of why Ungher could negotiate the latter, but not the former.
3
19th-Century Music, 24 (2001), 197-
224.
2
Performance Practice Review, Vol. 14 [2009], No. 1, Art. 7
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3
directions. She first follows a specific singer, Giuditta Pasta, and her sixteen insertion arias, finding a
variety of reasons behind her choices: a particularly popular aria inserted into benefit performances, the
tradition of the powerful entrance already discussed in chapter 2, an opera that is itself a pasticcio, arias
especially suited to her voice, and arias made famous by other singers. This last category leads to a
77). The third
Niobe, with an analysis attempting to discover why this particular aria should have been so
popular (much of the aria is reproduced in piano-
observation that this repertory of arias, many of which come from operas that otherwise were quickly
forgotten, constitutes a sort of canon, at the same time as some operas as a whole are forming a canon,
basis became more the exception than
the rule. Increasingly throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, singers tended to perform
Chapters 4 and 5 t
I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Il barbiere di Siviglia
with more detail these two well-known scenes but rather to explore their implications in depth.
Giulietta e Romeo, and its association with Maria Malibran, is well known. As Poriss
points out (106), calling on the work of Michael Collins and Claudio Toscani, the substitution did not
originate with Malibran, but with Santina Ferlotti at a benefit performance in Florence less than a year
4 Malibran first took up the role of Romeo in fall
5
opinion about the substitution was divided;; Poriss is surely correct to suggest that the ringing defense of
ending by mezzo-soprano Giuseppina Ronzi de Begnis in a letter to Francesco Florimo dated
reputation (113).
6 Performances between 1833 and 1857 favored Vaccai almost two to one (104).
4
else did it first.
5
, fn 50).
6
The author might have exercised simi
(21), equally unattested with an autograph. See Bellini,
Epistolario, ed., Luisa Cambi (Milan: Mondadori, 1943), 74-5.
Here, the source of the letter is Florimo.
3
Brauner: "Changing the Score: Arias, Prima donnas, and the Authority of Pe
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2009
4
These observations lead to an exploration of the magnetic power Malibran held over opera in the
tion as a singer, which only increased after her death, challenged other
singers to emulate her. She led an unconventional life, including dressing as a man, as she did in the
trouser role of Romeo. Many stories surrounded her early death, for example, refusing medical attention
after her horseback-riding accident (and thus in effect committing suicide) and her supposed singing
duel with Maria Caradori-Allan at her final concert, in a duet that she always interpolated into
Capuleti
and that was said to have precipitated her death.
7 Her posthumous reputation thus served to identify her
As for the singing lesson in
Barbiere, this became the locus of ever-expand-
did, beginning with Geltrude Righetti-Giorgi, the original Rosina, in the earliest revivals of the opera.
The growth of this intervention was aided by the fact that
Barbiere remained a very popular, frequently
performed opera. And grow it did, particularly after c. 1860, when singers, beginning with Adelina Patti,
prima donnas brazenly disregarded stylistic consistency when selecting their substitute arias for
introducing arias that were whollyeven comicallyincompatible with
insertion: it lasted longer (Poriss notes instances as late as the 1990s), grew in size to include more than
significant, since the aria contributed to the dramatic action of the opera. Nevertheless, Poriss concludes,
is one of the few moments in the repertory in which prima donnas might still
-
soprano to recapture the excitement that was generated by the mini-concerts around the turn of the
mini-
in London in 1849. (The story itself is printed in the appendix.) The story is told in the first person by
the aria itself, which describes its composition and its transmission by three singers of different types:
Giulia, a capricious prima donna, possessing a fine voice but no feeling;; Lisa, who possesses feeling but
insufficient talent;; and Xanthi, the ideal. The composer, Stefano, wrote the aria out of his desperate love
for Giulia and kills himself early in the story when she rejects him for Lord Vane.
I found this chapter the least satisfying of the book. The attempt to connect the aria to James
-
7
[served] as a m
Malibran. Aspden is referring to eighteenth-century England, and nobody contained Malibran.
4
Performance Practice Review, Vol. 14 [2009], No. 1, Art. 7
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5
re
at all. The suggestion that the shallow Giulia is in part a representation of Giulia Grisi (180ff) seems
unfair to Grisi, whose skills and sensitivity were praised by Bellini
8 (the suggestion of Angelica Catalani
-room singer
e to
seems
in E.-T.-A. Hoffmann (171-
n this story
certainly speaks to the subject of the book. I am glad to have it.
***
Considering the mission of
Performance Practice Review, it seems desirable to comment on the
usefulness of this book for performance today. As Poriss notes on many occasions, our view of opera as
an integral work, a view that developed in the course of the period under discussion, has militated
against continuing or reviving the practice of aria insertion. She also mentions the experience of Cecilia
Bartoli (187-
Le nozze di Figaro with ones that Mozart
wrote for that purpose was greeted with loud denunciations from several critics, as if she had desecrated
a masterpiece. Insertions have continued to be made in a small number of operas in recent times:
Barbiere
, La figlia del reggimento,9 Die Fledermaus (187), but certainly the practice will never return to
that of the early nineteenth century, just as conditions in the opera house will never return, as the author
acknowledges. Besides, one of these conditions was the opportunity to hear many such operas on a
regular basis, whereas today, notwithstanding an increase in the last sixty years or so, we hear relatively
few performances of operas from the
bel canto repertory and so would prefer to experience them in their
integral form, before they are subject to the kind of tinkering this book describes. (
Il barbiere di Siviglia
again might be regarded as an exception.)
is well-
taken, but unlikely to be heeded. The irony here, I might add (Poriss does not discuss this issue), is that
at the same time we insist on integral performances of critical editions of our operas, we are given many
8
See Bellini,
Epistolario, 501, letter of 26 or 27 January 1835 to Florimo (the autograph of this letter survives).
9
La Fille du régiment] and sang the tune of the
orchestral prelude, then a sultry rendition of
The New York Times, February 8, 2010, C5.
5
Brauner: "Changing the Score: Arias, Prima donnas, and the Authority of Pe
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2009
6
opera house, then, is comparable to that of the singers in 1800 to 1850: they shape an opera to their own
wills, with or without the blessing of the audience. I am not certain that we are the better for it.
10
, identifying [the] favorite insertions
on nineteenth-
Capuleti, the compact
disc medium allows recordings to include both the original work and insertions and could give the
listener the choice of which arias to hear where, provided editions (in full score) of the insertions were
available to the performers.
***
is due for footnotes rather than the
increasingly unavoidable endnotes. The bibliography is impressive, the index extensive, although it does
not pick up everything, particularly items in footnotes. There are five illustrations, half- to full-page, of
nineteenth-century sopranos;; these are nice to have if not, strictly speaking, necessary to the text. The
seventeen musical examples, ranging from four to fifty-seven measures, are generous in quantity, but
printed rather small (and sometimes blurry in my review copy). The texts are too small for these aging
eyes to read without a magnifying glass, and the measure numbers, in a light italic font, are especially
difficult. I would have gladly sacrificed the illustrations for larger examples. I would also have liked
tables of contents for the illustrations and examples.
e-style not to include the original text of translated quotations
if the translation comes from a previously published source. My preference would have been to include
the original for all translations. Why this can be important is illustrated by the following from
Lettre sur
of 1756:
It happens rather often that the virtuosi
the principal male and the principal female singer
who determine the fashion of their colleagues, present the composer, the impresario, and the
public with arias which they have sung with success in other operas;; they compel the composer
to adjust these at once to their present roles, in order, as t
(68-9).
The translation, by Robert Freeman, was evidently made from a German translation of the original
French,
11 so the English is twice-removed from the original. In fact, the French says something quite a
bit different:
10
Ernani I witnessed in Catania (May 2009), which the director assured us
11
Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel,
ed., Robert Marshall (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1974), 321-
Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft 7 (1924), 129-63;; the
passage is on p. 144.
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Il arrive même assez souvent que les
Virtuosi-à-dire, le premier Acteur & la premiere [sic]
applaudissement, & forcent le Maître de Chapelle de les placer contre vent & marée dans leurs
rôles, pour assurer, disent-ils, le succès de la Piece [sic].
12
(It happens quite often that the virtuosi, that is, the principal male singer and the principal female
singer, who set the tone
to the exclusion of their colleagues, the composer, the impresario and
the public
, carry with them arias that they have sung to applause in other operas and force the
conductor to insert them, come hell or high water [literally, against wind and tide], into their
13
***
Precisely because I am so enthusiastic about this book, I regret having to report a large number
of minor errors of various sorts that mar the text, as the following sampling illustrates:
(1) Mistranscription of Italian texts, e.g., three errors in a quotation from Radiciotti (138, fn
14
(2) Questionable translations. Sometimes these are looser than is necessary, but without
serious harm:
However,
(137) as
(3)
(4) Grammatical errors:
a.
b.
Italian to make sense (102).
12
, 46. The title page gives the place of publication as Naples, but Daniel Heartz (cited 69 fn10)
demonstrates that the likely place was Paris. As Poriss notes, Heartz also ascribes the authorship not to Josse de Villeneuve,
but to Ranieri Calzabigi. The mistranslation is already in the German.
13
In the article cited in fn
mistranslation is less harmful.
14
Giuseppe Radiciotti,
(Tivoli: Arti grafiche Majella di
A. Chicca, 1927-9), 1: 232. The mistaken Italian in the first of these alerted me to the mistranscription, as did similar
mistakes in other quotations.
7
Brauner: "Changing the Score: Arias, Prima donnas, and the Authority of Pe
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2009
8
c.
ed his opinion in an angry
d.
15
(5)
(6) Miscellaneous:
a. Poriss is usually meticulous in identifying the source of an insertion aria or noting
(102, fn 6) is not
identified and is apparently not in the index. The author might also have alerted
Ungher interpolated into
Marino Faliero (discussed 50-5).16
b. 109, fn 29 gives a modern Italian translation of a German quotation from the
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
. Why not the German original?
c.
- , fn 78) are the
same piece.
Macbeth: 1845 (23) instead of 1847. The
ber of productions listed in the chart (73-4): it is
17
ne
18
The reader will say that I am picking at the tiniest of nits here, and so I am. I would not have
thought to mention most of these were it not for their sheer quantity. I counted well over sixty, affecting
more than 25% of pages. This goes beyond the inevitable glitches to which we are all subject, myself
definitely included.
15
The
New York Times New York Times Online, After
the only [plural noun].
16
Marino Faliero
Lucia di Lammermoor
Cambridge Opera Journal 13 (2001), 3, fn 8). However, it is not in the early Ricordi edition of this
opera, and I take the absence of this identification here as a silent correction. The two footnotes are otherwise nearly
identical, which probably accounts for the absence of a cross-
17
The author has double-counted the duplicates in the chart. The number depends on whether the production of
Otello
from 1826 to 1833;; Pasta
18
three. This does not invalidate the main point, that Farinelli made very limited use of
arie di baule.
8
Performance Practice Review, Vol. 14 [2009], No. 1, Art. 7
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9
The author is ultimately responsible for the correctness of her text, but I think the publisher bears
some responsibility here, too. This is, after all, a major university press, publishing under the imprint of
d here. Thorough
copyediting, by someone competent in Italian as well as English, should have caught most of these
errors.
I do not want to end this review negatively. The book is thorough, full of material difficult to
come by, accessibly written, free of jargon, and with interesting, provocative ideas. Poriss provides
ample data, but also looks searchingly at that data. The small errors mentioned above should not drive
away potential readers, who will derive from this study a much-enriched picture of Italian operatic life
of the nineteenth century.
***
The reader should be aware that I have known Hilary Poriss for many years. When she was a
graduate student, she worked for my wife, Patricia Brauner, who receives an acknowledgement in the
book.
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