Thus spake Tommasini
“I will have more to say on this question later.” So, three weeks ago, Anthony Tommasini left open the subject of how “[n]one of the versions of [Les Contes d'Hoffmann] that have appeared over the years, some of them corrupted, can be said to be authentic.” The Times scribe has at last broken his silence, though La Cieca will leave it up to the reader to decide whether he actually has “more to say.” [NYT]
Well, no one is forcing them to cast the nutjob Marina Polavskaya et al.
Of course, the Met has one (1) Francophone singer in its upcoming CARMEN, so perhaps they should be doing that in Italian as well?
I can’t cite chapter and verse but I do not think you are correct that Verdi preferred the Italian libretto for DON CARLO(S). Even worse is VESPRI, where the tenor addresses the soprano as “O donna” several times…
According to Andrew Porter Verdi worked on the French libretto while composing Don Carlo. He understood the language and made changes to the libretto just as he did with the Italian ones. The Italian translation came afterwards. In a New Yorker article by Porter many years ago he highlighted several instances where the music and the Italian words didn’t quite go together.
Is there a basis for saying that Verdi disliked the French language? Never heard that one before.
Since there is so much talk over original
or not perception -there is only one
thought left -how well do the so called artists put this work across to convince us that this is the only way …sadly this second rate Met group do
not convince .you can lay it all at the
feet of Levine who has come to believe he is Levine the celebrated conductor . It all barely made average and that is not good enough .Calleja should not be at the Met -he is not good enough a singer
and bleets like a goat in heat . The rest come to his level and yowl for all they are worth ,and true singing goes out the window .As for ovations, present Met audiences (lowest ever) give ovations when you just pass gass, so it is nothing to go by .It is all so second rate .
Verdi, like most Italians in the 19th century (I suggest reading the great, late, John Roselli’s “Opera in 19th century Italy”, a crisp very scholarly book) spoke first a Parmigiana dialect, and then French, and only while living in Milan as a student really came to master literary Italian.
He took his French librettos VERY seriously, criticizing the pro forma translation commissioned by the cheap Paris impresario who did the “French” Macbeth for its bad grammar and inelegant wording. Verdi set Vepres and Don Carlos carefully and in a masterly fashion, his music sits precisely and elegantly on the French words in both scores. His understanding of musical declamation in French (listen to the King’s aria in its original text)was second to none, including French born composers, several of whom were employed by the Paris Operas during the laborious preparations for Don Carlos (they included Delibes, who supervised the copying of parts).
The Italian translation of Don Carlos was/is a mess and he was unhappy about it, since it shifted the stresses in his setting to the wrong (weaker) words and is also much cruder than the French text. However, outside of France, there was more of a market for opera in Italian, so Verdi lived with the translation.
A question for those who know more about this than me: Did Verdi himself prepare, or at least oversee, French language versions of the revisions he made to Don Carlo for Italian houses? Or is the only French version the original one from the Paris premiere? Can we benefit from Verdi’s later musical revisions in an “authentic” French language version?
Thanks mrsjohnclaggart. That agrees with everything I thought I knew on the subject. No wonder I love you so…
I have never been to a performance in Amsterdam (opera house or concert hall) where they did not have a standing ovation. It has become a bit of a joke … indeed it actually reminds me of a variation of an old joke. Police Officer: “And can you tell me, sir, what you were doing on the evening of October 27th?” Man being quesrioned: “Ah, yes, I remember it well .. it was the night when they didn’t have a standing ovation at the Concertgebouw”.
I think Tommasini deserves some credit for managing to stage some sort of rapprochement between Kaye and Levine. I was amazed to see the two portrayed as practically lovey-dovey, after Kaye’s recent pronouncements — not just “Balderdash,” but statements like “it is admirable that Maestro Levine can prepare new scores by Gunther Schuller and Elliot Carter, and (his recent serious health issues aside) shocking that for years maestro Levine has refused to restudy HOFFMANN … the affront to scholarship …” (etc. etc.) http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/classicalmusic/2009/12/musicologist_met_operas_new_ho.html
Maybe Tommasini’s piece does give hope for their future collaboration.
Andrew Porter has been credited (or taken credit) for finding some music in the 1960′s that was not included in the French premiere. I believe that music was added when the RHO produced Don Carlos in French a few years ago.
My recollection is that Levine claimed to have included some not-heard-before music in the first act of the current Met’s production. (Vaguely remember it having to do with the chorus at the beginning of the Fontainebleau scene.)
“Andrew Porter has been credited (or taken credit)”
That parenthetical slam is nasty and unnecessary. This was one of the most important discoveries in Verdi studies by one of the people best-equipped to appreciate and elucidate its significance, and it does not deserve a snide remark.
I also heard many years ago a recording in French where Eboli was told to leave the country or go to a nunnery by Posa and not by the Queen. I remember it well because I liked the way that instructing someone else to deal with Eboly added to the Queen’s regality. I don’t remember seeing this in any of the productions I’ve seen. Was that part of a different version?
In the original French version it is the Count of Lerma who gives Eboli the choice. He enters the stage after the confrontation between Eboli and Elizabeth, who had a full fledged duet, which was cut right before opening night. I saw a Turin production (in French) in 1990 with Lerma instructing Eboli.
I think Andy Porter (who used to bring bewildered looking pick ups to the Met press room dressed in full leather) found ms in the Paris Opera back men’s room and connected it with the ur-Don Carlos (why he was clutching at the old bricks therein has never been explained). Verdi cut almost an hour before the first night. He had been informed that the last trains for the suburbs from Paris would leave before the opera was over prompting an early stampede. I believe there is still some controversy over exactly what was included on opening night, and what might have been cut or changed during the first run.
Above, I didn’t mean all Italians spoke the dialect of Parma, Verdi did, but those born elsewhere spoke local dialects and usually French. Literary Italian was actually a foreign language to many. Da Ponte’s family for example spoke only a Judeo-Venetian dialect but after all converted, changing their family name to the name of the Bishop who converted them he, aged 11 (!) laboriously taught himself literary Italian so he could read Dante. However he did use a Venetian pronunciation with friends which turned harmless looking Italian works into double-entendres (Harnoncourt has a chart for Cosi, showing which words when twisted slightly become very dirty indeed, Guglielmo’s first act aria is evidently a riot of obscenity).
I believe the long opening chorus was first given in full at the Met. I could be wrong that Verdi cut this for the first performance in Bologna, I believe he did, but it did exist in an Italian translation. Earlier attempts at an Italian five act version either cut a big section of it, or omitted it.
That’s fascinating about the doubles entendres in Così. They might make the piece a bit more interesting (though I love Come scoglio, preferably sung by Margaret Price).