Speranza
The arranged marriage of Francesca, the daughter of Guido Vecchio da Polenta, Conte di Ravenna, to the physically deformed Gianciotto Malatesta took place around 1275.
A love affair develops between Francesca and Gianciotto’s younger brother, Paolo -- detto "il bello", which results in their slaughter after being discovered by Gianciotto.
Francesca had been duped into agreeing to the marriage by thinking that she would marry Paolo.
This, however, is NOT referred to in Canto V of Dante’s Inferno -- possibly the most famous passage in the whole Divine Comedy, and the source for Modesto Tchaikovsky’s libretto for Rachmaninov's melodramma (Teatro di Bolshoi, Mosca, 1906). (Ruolo del tenore: PAOLO).
Ill-fated, doomed, lovers take second place only to Romeo and Giulietta of near-by Verona in the nineteenth-century musical imagination.
Significantly, none of the many melodrammi, most notably by Strepponi (the first one, to a brilliant libretto by Felice Romani and 'musicato' by Verdi's father in law) Amboise Thomas, Edoardo Napravnik (conductor at the Bolshoi for many years), Sergio Rachmaninov, and Riccardo Zandonai (to a libretto by Tito Ricordi, 'tratto da D'Annunzio), have survived in the repertoire (though the Zandonai piece, based on a vehicle for Italian actress Eleanora Duse, by Gabrielle d’Annunzio, has much going for it).
Rather, it is in the concert hall that you are most likely to encounter Paolo Malatesta, either in the Liszt's Dante Symphony (1853), where Paolo inspires the lush central paragraph in the "Inferno" first movement, or the "tone poem" by Tchaikovsky (1878), one of his most overwrought and emotional works.
Rachmaninov, in common with fellow Russians Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, is a victim of a sort of iceberg effect, in that a small proportion of their work is ubiquitous and overplayed.
Many other excellent pieces of his have languish, though.
Rachmaninov’s five-or-so melodrammi are probably his least known works, though, in fact, his first opera "Aleko amongst the Gypsies" (1893), based on Pushkin’s poem, "I zingari", performed at the Teatro Bolshoi, Mosca, launched his career, undoubtedly benefitting from the enthusiastic endorsement of Tchaikovsky.
"Aleko, or the Russian amongst the Gypsies" is the closest in the Russian repertoire to the verismo school of shocking realism inaugurated by Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana (1890).
The melodramma was performed a great deal in its early years and took on a new lease of life when the celebrated BASS, Fyodor Chaliapin, took it into his repertoire -- playing the Russian. The Gypsy was played by the tenor (The Gypsy gets murdered by the Russian). Famous aria: The Gypsy's Romance.
In the 1897-8 season, Rachmaninov was engaged as a conductor by the enterprising industrialist Savva Mamontov, who had founded an independent "Opera company" in 1885 and had secured the rights to some notable premieres, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko.
Though initially inexperienced, Sergio Rachmaninov quickly became one of the most sought after conductors, championing productions of "Carmencita Garcia: la zingara", by Bizet, "Sansone e Dalila" and many of the Russian classics.
This brought him into the orbit of the most notable Russian singers of the day, as the dedications to his songs attest.
In the 1904-6 seasons, Sergio R. was music director at the Bolshoi Theatre, conducting operas by Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Mussorgsky and the high profile premiere of Rimsky’s Pan Voyevoda.
After the bloody massacre
in front of the Winter Palace in
1905, Sergio R. stays on at the Bolshoi
solely to see his new double-bill of operas, Il cavaliere avaro (tratto da Pushkin -- tenor role: the Baron's son, Alberto) and Francesca e Paolo: melodramma in un prologo, due quadri, ed un epilogo, launched.
He then resigned, anxious not to be associated with a state institution in such unstable times.
For the remainder of his Russian years, until he went into exile in 1917 (with The Bloody Russian Revolution) he was thwarted in his attempts to write a full-length opera.
A project based on Flaubert’s Salaambo faltered, and a setting of Maeterlinck’s Monna Vanna (retelling the famous Pisa episode) was abandoned after Sergio R. discovers the rights had been secured by a French composer.
Pietro Tchaikovsky had collaborated with his brother, Modesto, on his last two operas, La damma di picche (1890) and Iolanta (1892).
Modesto, aware of the success of Rachmaninov’s "Aleko, or a Russian among the Gypsies", had attempted to interest Rachmaninov in a setting of the Undine legend.
Even though the project on the UNDINE legend was abandoned, Modesto was quick to respond to a new request from Rachmaninov, in 1898, for a libretto on a Shakespearean subject, possibly Riccardo II.
Modest countered with a scenario outlining Paolo Malatesta e Francesca da Rimini based on Dante.
At this point, Rachmaninov was in a profound depression, resulting from the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, chaotically conducted by an inebriated Glazunov, which had been venomously attacked by the St.Petersburg critics.
As a result, Sergio R. was unable to write for almost two years thereafter.
This extreme case of writer’s block and self-doubt were resolved only with medical help, from Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who specialized in treatment by hypnosis.
The effects were immediate.
After consultations early in 1900, Rachmaninov spens June and July in Varazze, Italy, staying with Chaliapin (for whom he wrote a song).
In Varazze, Sergio R. composes the sunny, bright, love duetto for Paolo and Francesca at white heat, followed closely on his return to Russia by the Suite no. 2 for two pianos and the world famous Piano Concerto no. 2.
Work on Francesca e Paolo was not resumed until 1904, when Rachmaninov wrote to ModestoTchaikovsky, outlining various changes.
Secretly, Rachmaninov confided to friends that he found the libretto far from satisfactory, citing a problem with the proportions of the work. The scene with The Cardinal, he thought, needed to be omitted.
He also repeatedly badgered Modest for words for the souls of
the damned in the prologue in
Hell.
Modesto failed to supply any words, "not even a modest line," Sergio regretted.
When these words were unforthcoming, Sergio made a virtue out of necessity with an evocative use of a WORDLESS chorus:
mmmmmm
mmmmmm
mmmmmm
Similarly, wheno Modest came up
with too few words for a revision of the
love duetto, Rachmaninov expands the section with a
fifty-bar orchestral passage depicting the lovers’ fateful kiss
---- il baccio di PAOLO, il baccio di LANCILLOTTO del Lago --
which is gradually overwhelmed by a
resurgence of the ominous music depicting the torments of hell.
---
Lanciotto’s appearance at the
conclusion, slaughtering the lovers with a
single sung line, concludes a scene that seems
conceived more as a symphonic climax than a stage one.
----
The opera is framed by a Prologue and Epilogue in Hell,
revealing Dante Alighieri and his guide, "il fantasma di Virgilio" throughout the Inferno.
We see Paolo Malatesta and Francesca fleetingly blown
about in the winds that torment the lustful souls, allowing them no rest.
Alighieri poses questions to the lovers who sing the famous lines
‘There is no greater pain than to remember in present grief, past happiness'
--- a phrase that is repeated by the chorus at the conclusion of the opera.
In Aligheri, Paolo NEVER speaks! He NEEDS to recover his voice.
----
The first quadro is dominated by a histrionic monologue for Lanciotto, tailor-made for bass Chaliapin to perform (ironically, conflicting engagements led him to withdraw at the last moment, which had possible effects on the work’s success).
Lanciotto explains the duping of Francesca before the marriage.
There is as a brief scene between Francesca and her husband in which she confesses she does not love him.
----
The second quadro is the duetto Paolo-Francesca, culminating in their slaughter and a transition to the hellish epilogue, which ends furiously with a silent Alighieri, fainting in sympathy at the horror of Francesca’s tale.
This structure has a precedent, which is significantly not an operatic one.
----
Modesto Tchaikovsky had been influenced by his brother’s symphonic poem (and perhaps by Lizt's Dante Symphony) which similarly surrounds Francesca and Paolo with a vivid and extended portrayal of hell and the lustful winds.
Rachmaninov’s opera can be regarded as an amplification of Pietro Tchaikovsky’s scenario: a symphonic poem with obbligato voices.
Whatever the problems with Rachmaninov’s Francesca da Rimini, the music is not one of them.
-----
MUSICAL ANALYSIS:
The "Prologue" in hell is in D minor, a key that Rachmaninov uses for his darkest most emotional utterances.
The chromatic fugal
writing is ingenious and
graphically portrays the
seething winds and groaning tortured souls.
Alighieri and Il fantasma di Virgilio are introduced by a
halting, stumbling THEME or motivo, which
the intervals expand and
contract in a mechanical fashion.
It is
reminiscent of the limping motif that
portrays the wizard Kashchey the Immortal in Rimsky-Korsakov’s eponymous opera (1902), which had caused a minor sensation as its composer, then seen as the doyen of conservatism, exploited a modernist vein, that was to influence Stravinsky and Prokofiev greatly.
Both Kashchey and Rachmaninoff's "Francesca e Paolo" were accused of yielding to the influence of Wagner, whose Ring was first performed in St Petersburg in 1889 and had proved a revelation to certain Russian composers, notably Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin, who both managed to turn this overwhelming influence into something very personal which flavoured much of the music of Russia’s Silver Age.
In Rachmaninov’s case, this accusation of Wagnerianism
had more to do with the sombre orchestral palette,
that to our ears now sounds much more
in the tradition of Tchaikovsky’s late
operas and symphonies.
There is a rudimentary use of recurring motives
in "Francesca e Paolo", including a particularly
intriguing connection between
a simple DESCENDING (onto hell) five-note figure
associated with Francesca and Paolo
This motif is first heard fleetingly in the "Prologo" and then dominating the Duetto Quadro) and an ASCENDING five-note scale that depicts the violent and threatening Lanciotto.
Whether this connection was conscious or not, it is
a telling musical effect.
The Duetto music, written some four years before (in Varazze, 1901) the more sombre surrounding scenes, is direct, SUNNY and uncomplicated in expression.
It reflects the exhilaration of Rachmaninov’s recently rediscovered creativity.
If this Duetto is compared to the sublime central love theme from Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poem, it has none of the emotional anguish or sense of trapped fate of the earlier work, which is perhaps surprising for such a melancholic composer.
And if one remembers that "Francesca e Paolo" was written in the same period of Rachmaninovs ripely melodic Piano Concerto no. 2 and his Symphony no. 2, the opera lacks the melodic abundance of those works.
The voice writing is only occasionally melodic
and it is the orchestra that bears the brunt
of the argument, which would account for those initial critical reactions that accuse Rachmaninov of imitating Wagner.
It is frustrating that Francesca is Rachmaninov’s last (completed) word when it comes to opera, as the limitations of the too pared down scenario preclude him from breathing psychological life into the characters; doubly frustrating when he is so evidently alive to the contrasts of mood and pace that show the instincts of a real musical dramatist.
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