Sunday Classics: The Prologue to Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci" entreats, "Consider our souls"

Juan Pons as Tonio lip-syncs the Pagliacci Prologue in Unitel's 1982 film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, with Georges Prêtre conducting the La Scala orchestra. (Ignore the other clowns Zeffirelli's inserted, mere distractions.) We even get to see the traveling players arrive in the Calabrian village, with Plácido Domingo as the master of the troupe, Canio, and Teresa Stratas as his wife and costar, Nedda.

If I may? If I may?
Ladies! Gentlemen!
Excuse me if I present myself thus alone.
I am the Prologue.
Because the author is putting
the old-style masks
onstage again.
In part he wants to revive
the old customs, and to you
once again he sends me.

But not to tell you, as before,
"The tears that we shed are false,
by our agonies and our suffering
don't be alarmed."
No! No!
The author has sought
to paint truly for you
a slice of life.
He has for maxim only that the artist is a person,
and that he must write for people,
and draw inspiration from what's true.

A nest of memories in the depths of his soul
sang one day, and with real tears
he wrote, and his sobs beat time for him!

So then, you'll see loving, yes, the way
real human beings love; you'll see hate's
sad fruits, miseries' agonies.
Cries of rage you'll hear, and cynical laughter!

And you, rather than our poor
actors' costumes, consider
our souls, because we are people,
of flesh and bone, and since in this orphan
world, just like you, we breathe the air!

I've told you the concept.
Now hear how it worked out.
Let's go -- begin!

by Ken

Hanging on the grimy wall of my college newspaper office was a yellowed sheet that was the "key" to the 5-point rating system we used for movie reviews. Oh, I pooh-poohed the numerical ratings, on the ground that how can you reduce a sensible evaluation to a number? But the fact was that our readers all too clearly paid more attention to the ratings than to the ever-so-wise reviews.

I should explain that the ratings were on a 5-point scale because so were our grades (though the movie ratings allowed single-place decimal gradations). It wasn't the 5 points you're probably imagining, however. It went like this:

5 = A
4 = B
3 = C+
2 = C-
1 = D
0 = F

That's right, C-plus and C-minus were different grades! I like to think we were simply ahead of our time in recognizing the importance -- if you will, the centrality -- of mediocrity, and of making distinctions therein.

Oh yes, the movie ratings. To this day I wish I had made a copy of that sheet, which was intended to encourage at least some consistency in the way the numbers were applied by the many people who reviewed movies. Two of the "definitions" I do remember, the top and bottom ones:

5.0 = A film that will change your life
[down to -- ]
0.0 = "The Greatest Story Ever Told"

Over the years I've thought a lot about that 5.0 rating. It struck me then, and strikes me still, that the 5.0 criterion ought to be part of the ambition of any artistic endeavor. Or what's the point? To pass the time? The time will pass quite well on its own.

I'm not saying necessarily it has to be an earth-shaking change in our lives. But if you don't have something to show us about life as we know it, if only a slightly different way of seeing some aspect of it, why bother?

I realize that this is by no means a universally accepted proposition. In fact, a lot of people approach all works of art in the exact opposite way: to reinforce, or at least leave untouched, everything they already think, and think they know. So where some of us are looking for some new and improved understanding of the world around us and the way it works, for an awful lot of culture consumers the goal, rather rigidly enforced, is to ensure that no understanding of any kind takes place.

Creative artists have always found themselves bucking up against this attitude, and in all the arts there have been periodic waves of "reform," to shake up the encrustations that inevitably set in after whatever success the last wave of reform achieved. It was certainly on the mind of Ruggero Leoncavallo when he created his one enduring masterpiece, I Pagliacci, and in particular when he decided to begin by sending out the baritone who sings the role of the hunchback Tonio to present a Prologue. (It should be noted that Leoncavallo wrote his own libretto, so all these decisions were entirely his.)

I thought we would start by breaking the Prologue down a bit, starting with the rousing orchestral introduction.

(A) Orchestral introduction


RCA Victor Orchestra, Renato Cellini, cond. RCA/EMI, recorded January 1953

Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded Sept.-Oct. 1965

Now, according to the libretto, the baritone who sings Tonio -- in the costume he will wear as Taddeo in the commedia dell'arte play-within-a-play ("pagliacci," by the way, are clowns) in Act II -- emerges through the curtain, addressing the audience simply, "Si può? Si può?" Note that the Italian "Si può?" ("If I may?") is a mere two simple syllables, something that's awfully hard to duplicate in a singing translation.

It fascinates me how many translators charged simply with communicating the sense of the text find it necessary to offer something other than this deliciously simple, straightforward way of claiming the audience's attention. I'm looking at translations by normally estimable translators which render it as "Will you allow me? May I?" and "Excuse me." And already I think they've lost the thread of the way Leoncavallo is trying to establish contact with the audience. I don't make any great claims for my translation, except that it tries to retain contact with the actual text.

(I should say with regard to the recordings chosen that Giuseppe Taddei, in the Karajan-DG version, is in shakier vocal shape than I remembered -- obviously it's been awhile since I listened to the LPs, and I bought the CD edition for this occasion. It's curious because he had come from Vienna, where he sang the splendid Scarpia we sampled in Maestro Karajan's Tosca recording. Unfortunately, the audio-clip editing, pathetically simple though it is, is such a trial for me that, having gotten well into it, I wasn't willing to discard the work done. There's certainly no cause concern for the steadiness of Leonard Warren's upper range!)

(B) "Si può? Si può?"

If I may? If I may?
Ladies! Gentlemen!
Excuse me if I present myself thus alone.
I am the prologue.
Because the author is putting
the old-style masks
onstage again.
In part he wants to to revive
the old customs, and to you
once again he sends me.

But not to tell you, as before,
"The tears that we shed are false,
by our agonies and our suffering
don't be alarmed."
No! No!
The author has sought
to paint truly for you
a slice of life.
He has for maxim only that the artist is a person,
and that he must write for people,
and draw inspiration from what's true.

Leonard Warren (b), Tonio; RCA Victor Orchestra, Renato Cellini, cond. RCA/EMI, recorded January 1953

Giuseppe Taddei (b), Tonio; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded Sept.-Oct. 1965

As the author tries to communicate to the audience the source of his inspiration for this piece, we come up against what seems to me a simply fabulous image that, again, translators seem to feel compelled to "fix." HIs invocation of "un nido di memorie" is rendered as "a swarm of memories" or "a horde of memories," although as far as I know memories are no more likely to come in "nest" form in Italy than in the English-speaking world. But could you ask for a more evocative image than "a nest of memories"? Especially a nest of memories lurking in the depths of the author's soul, singing -- another image that translators feel honor-bound to protect English-speakers from.

(C) "Un nido di memorie"

A nest of memories in the depths of his soul
sang one day, and with real tears
he wrote, and his sobs beat time for him!

So then, you'll see loving, yes, the way
real human beings love; you'll see hate's
sad fruits, miseries' agonies.
Cries of rage you'll hear, and cynical laughter!

Leonard Warren (b), Tonio; RCA Victor Orchestra, Renato Cellini, cond. RCA/EMI, recorded January 1953

Giuseppe Taddei (b), Tonio; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded Sept.-Oct. 1965

Now we come to the heart of the matter, and for this remarkable appeal to the audience Leoncavallo summoned one of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies I've ever heard.

(D) "E voi, piuttosto"

And you, rather than our poor
actors' costumes, consider
our souls, because we are people,
of flesh and bone, and since in this orphan
world, just like you, we breathe the air!

I've told you the concept.
Now hear how it worked out.
Let's go -- begin!

Leonard Warren (b), Tonio; RCA Victor Orchestra, Renato Cellini, cond. RCA/EMI, recorded January 1953

Giuseppe Taddei (b), Tonio; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded Sept.-Oct. 1965

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Ever since I began doing these pieces, one thing I knew I wanted to present was the Prologue to Pagliacci. So for a couple of years now the subject has been churning in my head. The hope was to find ways of (a) showing what a remarkable piece of musico-dramatic writing it is, and (b) communicating why it seems to me so important. That's not going to happen, so this week I'm contenting myself with serving up the music -- within, always, the limits of what I have on CD -- and leaving to you the (a) delectation and (b) consideration of it.

What got me to thinking about it just now was hearing the 1935 recordings, made for the soundtrack of the film Metropolitan by the great American baritone Lawrence Tibbett, of "Vesti la giubba," which we heard first in Friday night's preview, and then again (with identification) last night, and the Pagliacci Prologue, which I promised last night we would hear today. So here it is.


Lawrence Tibbett, baritone; orchestra, Alfred Newman, cond. Delos (Stanford Archive Series), recorded for the soundtrack of Metropolitan, 1935

Now we're going to hear the complete Prologue in the same performances from which we heard the end of Act I and the Intermezzo last night, starting with the Munich recording conducted by Lamberto Gardelli, a solidly idiomatic if rarely inspired conductor who made a fair number of recordings of Italian operas in Germany and Hungary. Sure enough, he coaxes a surprisingly close to idiomatically Italianate performance out of the Bavarian orchestra -- and chorus, which of course we don't hear here. We do hear, though, how difficult it is for even a pretty decent German baritone like Bernd Weikl to produce a really Italianate sound.


Bernd Weikl (b), Tonio; Munich Radio Orchestra, Lamberto Gardelli, cond. Eurodisc, recorded December 1983

Finally we come to my first and still favorite recording of Pagliacci. All these years later it still has everything going for it except the Nedda of Lucine Amara. As I've mentioned, I'm a long way from an unalloyed fan of Tito Gobbi, with the voice's range limitations at both ends and the generally monochrome snarl that passed for "interpretation," but as with the Rossini "Resta immobile" from William Tell we heard (from the two-LP 1963 Art of Tito Gobbi), and of course his recording of the title role in Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, he could really bear down and do the job, and I love this, his second studio recording of Tonio. He even bangs out the interpolated high A-flat on "Al pari di voi" and high G on the concluding "Incommin-cia-te" -- not things of peerless beauty, but they make the effect. (Leoncavallo didn't write these upward leaps, but I can't imagine they would have displeased him, and the music sure sounds plain without them. Gobbi ducked the A-flat in his earlier recording.)

The recording also features the thrilling Canio of Franco Corelli, a sturdy Silvio from baritone Mario Zanasi, and exceptionally vital and beautiful work by the underappreciated Yugoslav (I guess now we would have to say Croatian) conductor Lovro von Matačić, getting the best out of Italy's best orchestra and chorus. (The original LP issue had as a fourth-side filler glorious performances of great choral scenes from Verdi's Nabucco, Trovatore, and Aida, which I used to listen to all the time. I wonder if they've turned up on CD.)


Tito Gobbi (b), Tonio; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Lovro von Matačić, cond. EMI, recorded 1961

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