Elisir d'amore and Le Philtre
Auber had a major success in 1831 with Le Philtre, a romantic comedy about village life in the Pays Basque. At lignting speed, Donizetti came out with an Italian version
Dec 7, 2009
Scribe was one of the hottest librettists working in the 19th century. He was more than just a mere scriverer, however. He was a theatrical personnage of the utmost importance, with a new conception of theater, in some ways alined with the Romantic drama of Victor Hugo, in other ways more commercial and bottom line oriented, providing entertainment that made immense sums of money, almost like a Hollywood producer.
Almost every major opera composer set a Scribe libretto or translation of one. When Bellini's La Sonnambula came out in 1831, it was an Italian version by Felice Romani of a Scribe property that had been treated both as a vaudeville and as a comedie-ballet. Perhaps inspired by this, in 1832, Donizetti came out with Elisir d'amore, also a Romani version of Scribe's Philtre of 1831, set by the composer Daniel Francois Esprit Auber..
Scribe, Donizetti and Auber
Donizetti and Auber were two of the most prominent composers on the opera stage in the period between Rossini and Verdi. Their natures couldn't have been more dissimilar – Donizetti the fervent romantic, dying at 50 of syphilis, forced by money wants to write opera after opera until he couldn't even remember the names of them all; Auber, the bourgeois craftsman, a comfortable businessman in the entertainment industry.
The only real similarity is the number of operas they wrote and the fact that both were equally comfortable in comedy and melodrama. Auber could be called the French Rossini for his sanguine character and sociability, but, unlike Rossini, was not lazy – he continued to write operas almost up to his death, due not even to old age -- although he was old enough -- but after effects of the Prussian siege of Paris in 1871..
Donizetti of course has several operas in the standard operatic repertoire, although, like Rossini, his comedies are overrepresented compared to the actual break down of his oeuvre between comedies and melodramas. Auber has very few: there are some on the periphery, like Muette de Portici (1828)and Fra Diavolo, but none that are really established.
This is strange, considering that Muette de Portici was a watershed in French grand opera – marking the end of the more stately, grandiose style of Spontini and the beginning of a new era, characterized most prominently by the intense dramaturgy of Meyerbeer. And Fra Diavolo lasted in the reperoire into the modern era, may still be commonly done in German in Germany, and even was done by Laurel and Hardy, in one of their feature films!
Auber's Philtre
Le Philtre is hard to pigeonhole. Technically it is a comedy, but it is not as light as Fra Diavolo, which could almost be called French Gilbert and Sullivan. The melodies are very different from Muette or Fra Diavolo, they have a striking folkloric element. The vocal writing, especially for the tenor, not Nemorino here but Guillaume, has a heroic dimension, like a French helden tenor, but with sustained singing above A natural that would be hard for most modern tenors, and especially modern big tenors, to encompass.
The original Guillaume was Adolphe Nourrit, who also created Arnold in Guillaume Tell, Robert in Robert-le-diable and Raoul in Les Huguenots. Although Nourrit was supposedly in the French lineage of the haute-contre – the tenors who from the time of Lully sang an extremely high tessitura but did it with augmented falsetto, not from the chest – from the other roles he sang, which are heroic, it is doubtful he had the light insubstantial sound of today's lyric tenors.
Alfredo Kraus could have done a good Guillaume, but even he never sang Raoul or Robert-le-diable. In the Auber version, there is an aria for tenor before his version of “esulti pur la barbara”, that is illustrative of the type of tenor role that Guillaume is. It is sung here by Leslie Johnson in the St Jude's Opera Workshop celebration of Donizetti's bicentennial in 1997 in New York City.
Donizett's Elisir d'Amore
In Donizetti's treatment, called Elisir d'amore, the basque village of Le Philtre becomes every Italian paese, with it's four stock characters of the bluff man-of-the-world recruiting sergeant, the itinerant quack doctor, the learned, rich and beautiful property owner, and finally the little nobody – Nemorino, the gonzo or simpleton who in different ways gets the better of all of them.
Donizetti made Elisir less of a play with music -- by drastically reducing the role of the peasant girl Jeannette/Gianetta he turned it into the stock Bellini quartet, of soprano, tenor, baritone, and bass, like I Puritani. Elisir is not really a comic opera, like Donizetti's much later Don Pasquale, rather he called it a drama giocoso, or a melodrama with a happy ending and comic elements, like Marriage of Figaro.
The tenor role in Elisir is not as challenging as the tenor in Le Philtre, but it is very long and heavier than people think. Placido Domingo could have been a great Nemorino, as shown when he did “Esulti pur la barbara” in the park in San Francisco. Neither Adina nor Nemorino are really served by the light voices who do those roles on today's stages.
Additions in the Donizetti version
The main additions to Elisir d'amore, additions that Donizetti asked for and for which he may well have written the texts, increased the romantic, the pathetic, in the old sense of the word, element of the story. The best known difference is the addition of the aria for tenor, the most famous piece in the opera, Una Furtiva Lagrima (a hidden tear).
The other major difference is the duet for soprano and tenor, Chiedi all'aura lusinghiera, which is an aria for soprano in Le Philtre. This is one of three duets for soprano and tenor, each with a different character, and Chiedi is one of the most beautiful pieces in the opera, not a comic duet like Esulti pur la barbara, but an outpouring of romantic feeling. It is one of the pieces that suffers the most from a soubrette Adina.
Donizetti himself could have identified with Nemorino. He came from a family of illiterate fabric workers in Bergamo, and had the good fortune to sing as a boy in the church choir of Santa Maria Maggiore where he came to the attention of Simone Mayr, the capelmeister, a prominent opera composer from Bavaria, who gave him his first training in music and recognized his great talent. He himself was saved from military service by a wealthy women who payed the fee for him to avoid being drafted into the Austrian army.
It's a human tendancy to praise one thing by downgrading another. This has been done with Le Philtre and Elisir d'amore. There are people who praise Philtre by downgrading Elisir, and vice versa, but in reality they are both wonderful works. The real shame is that Philtre is hardly ever done, and Elisir is done, but usually done in a halfhearted way, with rushed tempos and lackluster ghost voiced singers so that the romantic beauty of the music can't blossom.
Almost every major opera composer set a Scribe libretto or translation of one. When Bellini's La Sonnambula came out in 1831, it was an Italian version by Felice Romani of a Scribe property that had been treated both as a vaudeville and as a comedie-ballet. Perhaps inspired by this, in 1832, Donizetti came out with Elisir d'amore, also a Romani version of Scribe's Philtre of 1831, set by the composer Daniel Francois Esprit Auber..
Scribe, Donizetti and Auber
Donizetti and Auber were two of the most prominent composers on the opera stage in the period between Rossini and Verdi. Their natures couldn't have been more dissimilar – Donizetti the fervent romantic, dying at 50 of syphilis, forced by money wants to write opera after opera until he couldn't even remember the names of them all; Auber, the bourgeois craftsman, a comfortable businessman in the entertainment industry.
The only real similarity is the number of operas they wrote and the fact that both were equally comfortable in comedy and melodrama. Auber could be called the French Rossini for his sanguine character and sociability, but, unlike Rossini, was not lazy – he continued to write operas almost up to his death, due not even to old age -- although he was old enough -- but after effects of the Prussian siege of Paris in 1871..
Donizetti of course has several operas in the standard operatic repertoire, although, like Rossini, his comedies are overrepresented compared to the actual break down of his oeuvre between comedies and melodramas. Auber has very few: there are some on the periphery, like Muette de Portici (1828)and Fra Diavolo, but none that are really established.
This is strange, considering that Muette de Portici was a watershed in French grand opera – marking the end of the more stately, grandiose style of Spontini and the beginning of a new era, characterized most prominently by the intense dramaturgy of Meyerbeer. And Fra Diavolo lasted in the reperoire into the modern era, may still be commonly done in German in Germany, and even was done by Laurel and Hardy, in one of their feature films!
Auber's Philtre
Le Philtre is hard to pigeonhole. Technically it is a comedy, but it is not as light as Fra Diavolo, which could almost be called French Gilbert and Sullivan. The melodies are very different from Muette or Fra Diavolo, they have a striking folkloric element. The vocal writing, especially for the tenor, not Nemorino here but Guillaume, has a heroic dimension, like a French helden tenor, but with sustained singing above A natural that would be hard for most modern tenors, and especially modern big tenors, to encompass.
The original Guillaume was Adolphe Nourrit, who also created Arnold in Guillaume Tell, Robert in Robert-le-diable and Raoul in Les Huguenots. Although Nourrit was supposedly in the French lineage of the haute-contre – the tenors who from the time of Lully sang an extremely high tessitura but did it with augmented falsetto, not from the chest – from the other roles he sang, which are heroic, it is doubtful he had the light insubstantial sound of today's lyric tenors.
Alfredo Kraus could have done a good Guillaume, but even he never sang Raoul or Robert-le-diable. In the Auber version, there is an aria for tenor before his version of “esulti pur la barbara”, that is illustrative of the type of tenor role that Guillaume is. It is sung here by Leslie Johnson in the St Jude's Opera Workshop celebration of Donizetti's bicentennial in 1997 in New York City.
Donizett's Elisir d'Amore
In Donizetti's treatment, called Elisir d'amore, the basque village of Le Philtre becomes every Italian paese, with it's four stock characters of the bluff man-of-the-world recruiting sergeant, the itinerant quack doctor, the learned, rich and beautiful property owner, and finally the little nobody – Nemorino, the gonzo or simpleton who in different ways gets the better of all of them.
Donizetti made Elisir less of a play with music -- by drastically reducing the role of the peasant girl Jeannette/Gianetta he turned it into the stock Bellini quartet, of soprano, tenor, baritone, and bass, like I Puritani. Elisir is not really a comic opera, like Donizetti's much later Don Pasquale, rather he called it a drama giocoso, or a melodrama with a happy ending and comic elements, like Marriage of Figaro.
The tenor role in Elisir is not as challenging as the tenor in Le Philtre, but it is very long and heavier than people think. Placido Domingo could have been a great Nemorino, as shown when he did “Esulti pur la barbara” in the park in San Francisco. Neither Adina nor Nemorino are really served by the light voices who do those roles on today's stages.
Additions in the Donizetti version
The main additions to Elisir d'amore, additions that Donizetti asked for and for which he may well have written the texts, increased the romantic, the pathetic, in the old sense of the word, element of the story. The best known difference is the addition of the aria for tenor, the most famous piece in the opera, Una Furtiva Lagrima (a hidden tear).
The other major difference is the duet for soprano and tenor, Chiedi all'aura lusinghiera, which is an aria for soprano in Le Philtre. This is one of three duets for soprano and tenor, each with a different character, and Chiedi is one of the most beautiful pieces in the opera, not a comic duet like Esulti pur la barbara, but an outpouring of romantic feeling. It is one of the pieces that suffers the most from a soubrette Adina.
Donizetti himself could have identified with Nemorino. He came from a family of illiterate fabric workers in Bergamo, and had the good fortune to sing as a boy in the church choir of Santa Maria Maggiore where he came to the attention of Simone Mayr, the capelmeister, a prominent opera composer from Bavaria, who gave him his first training in music and recognized his great talent. He himself was saved from military service by a wealthy women who payed the fee for him to avoid being drafted into the Austrian army.
It's a human tendancy to praise one thing by downgrading another. This has been done with Le Philtre and Elisir d'amore. There are people who praise Philtre by downgrading Elisir, and vice versa, but in reality they are both wonderful works. The real shame is that Philtre is hardly ever done, and Elisir is done, but usually done in a halfhearted way, with rushed tempos and lackluster ghost voiced singers so that the romantic beauty of the music can't blossom.
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