Sunday Classics preview: Puccini makes a scene, (1) "Gianni Schicchi"

In this 2007 Royal Academy Opera (London) production, the Donati relatives read poor defunct Buoso's just-found and much-dreaded new will.

by Ken

In January 2009 we spent some time with Gianni Schicchi, and I made the point that its best-known aria, one of all of opera's best-known, Lauretta's "O mio babbino caro," is all but universally known in a form that makes a travesty of it. I tried to explain it back then; this week I'm going to try to make it possible for you to hear what I mean.

Let's start by refreshing our memory of how this comic one-act treasure, the crowing glory of Puccini's trilogy of one-acts, Il Trittico, opens. We're in Florence in the year 1299. In the home of the just-deceased Buoso Donati, his assembled relatives, in addition to mourning their dearly departed, make one another aware of a rumor that he made a new will before he died, leaving his prized possessions to the monks.

PUCCINI: Gianni Schicchi: opening


soloists; Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Lamberto Gardelli, cond. Decca, recorded July 1962

Now let's listen to some famous sopranos sing the much-loved aria. Note how differently these performances deal with the problem ripping the aria out of the opera, where it's made to happen by an outburst from the wily Gianni Schicchi, who has been summoned to help with the will problem (which turns out to be as dire as the rumor reported) by the Donati nephew Rinuccio, a dashing young fellow who happens to be madly in love with Schicchi's daughter Lauretta.

After being treated by Rinuccio's fearsomely snobbish aunt Zita like something gross that's stuck to her shoe, Schicchi roared that to help those people he would do: "Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!," and from those thrice-thundered "Niente"s, the orchestra has undergone a harmonic meltdown in the span of a single bar to set the stage for Lauretta's life-or-death plea to her dear little daddy.

So what do you do when you yank the aria, which has no other introduction, out of context? Well, our first performance, from an LP of Puccini arias originally released in 1970, is that you don't do anything. You just have the singer start singing.

PUCCINI: Gianni Schicchi: "O mio babbino caro"

O my dear little daddy,
I like him. He's lovely, lovely.
I want to go to the Porta Rossa
to buy a wedding ring!
Yes, yes, I want to go there!
And if I were to love him in vain,
I would go to the Ponte Vecchio,
but to throw myself in the Arno!
I'm pining and I'm tormented!
O God, I'd like to die!
Daddy, have pity, have pity!
Daddy, have pity, have pity!

Montserrat Caballé, soprano; London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. EMI, recorded c1969

Anna Netrebko and Claudio Abbado adopt a common solution, although in a decidedly peculiar fashion. They retain the orchestral accompaniment to Schicchi's thrice-uttered "Niente"s, but Abbado has the orchestra sound this in such muted fashion as to make it incomprehensible to the point of being perhaps counterproductive.


Anna Netrebko, soprano; Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded Feb.-March 2004

Next we have a version that seems to say, if we can't introduce the aria honestly anyway, why not make the lie we tell a whopper? A sloppy-sentimental opening has been grafted on, so that not only is any trace of what actually sets poor Lauretta into song is cunningly removed, it's made to sound as if she's just sorta sad. I'd like to think that the genius who came up with this brilliant idea suffered a suitably untimely and excruciating demise.

However, we do have to give Renée Fleming credit for trying to imagine herself, in her singing, as a lovesick young woman. (By the way, in case you were wondering, we know exactly how old Lauretta is: 21. Her adored Rinuccio 24, and her dear daddy 50. We know because Puccini and librettist Giovacchino Forzano helpfully provided ages for all of the characters, except for Buoso's country-bum brother-in-law Betto, who's described in the cast list as "poor and badly dressed, age indefinable.")


Renée Fleming, soprano; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. Decca, recorded July 1999

[Note: This may be as close as we get to a farewell tribute to Sir Charles Mackerras, who died of cancer on July 14 at 84, and despite his illness was scheduled to conduct two Proms concerts later this month and Mozart's Idomeneo next month at the Edinburgh Festival. He was for me an extremely problematic musician, and perhaps we'll talk about that one of these days. For the record, in my highly idiosyncratic and utterly un-British style, I identify him in 1969 as just plain "Charles" and in 1999 as "Sir Charles," because he wasn't knighted till 1979. There's a Telarc recording of Gilbert and Sullivan's Yeomen of the Guard and Trial by Jury wherein the album booklet identifies him, in full caps but minus the first few letters of his given name, as "LES MACKERRAS." To me his career makes much better sense if we think of him as "Les." The two "O mio babbino caro" accompaniments, for example, done 30 years apart, while certainly professionally competent, are so unmemorable -- apart from that abominable fake introduction in the Fleming one -- that you barely notice them even when they're happening. However, don't they seem a lot more creditable from a guy named Les?]


IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S PREVIEW --

We prepare to hear Puccini make another scene on Sunday by listening to the great tenor aria "Recondita armonia" from Tosca.


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