"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Sunday Classics snapshots: Count Almaviva goes a-wooing, then and now
>
Urged on by Figaro (Ross Benoliel), "Lindoro" (Luigi Boccia as Count Almaviva) identifies himself to Rosina (Stephanie Lauricella), with Enrico Granafei playing the guitar and Jason Tramm conducting, at New Jersey State Opera, June 2012. (For English text, see below.)
by Ken
I'd like to think we established the premise well enough in last week's "snapshots" post, "Rosina I and Rosina II," where we heard aural snapshots of young Rosina first as the spitfire being wooed by the supposed poor student Lindoro in the opera Rossini fashioned from the popular Beaumarchais play The Barber of Seville, and then, a mere three years later, as the desolate, pretty much emotionally abandoned Countess Almaviva in the opera Mozart fashioned from Beaumarchais's equally popular sequel, The Marriage of Figaro.
I HOPE AURAL TRANSFORMATION OF ROSINA
CAME AS A SHOCK -- A REALLY HORRIBLE SHOCK
Victoria de los Angeles as Rosina II at the Met in 1952
Rosina I
I'm docile, I'm respectful;
I'm obedient, gentle, loving;
I let myself be ruled and guided. But --
but if you touch on my weakness,
I shall be a viper, I shall,
and a hundred tricks
I'll play before I'll yield.
And a hundred tricks, etc.
I'm docile, I'm respectful;
I let myself be ruled and guided, etc.
Victoria de los Angeles (s), Rosina; Orchestra of the Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), Carlo Felice Cillario, cond. Live performance, June 1962
Rosina II
Grant, love, that relief
to my sorrow, to my sighing.
Give me back my treasure,
or at least let me die.
Grant, love, etc.
Victoria de los Angeles (s), Rosina; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. Live performance, Mar. 1, 1952
by Ken
It's not that we've never done this sort of thing before in Sunday Classics. In fact, I like to think we've taken pretty frequent advantage of the oportunity afforded by this peculiar, er, format, to put together any two (or three or more) damned things we want which can benefit from being heard together. Butting together "the two Rosinas," as we've just done, is an idea so obvious that it doesn't seem to occur to many people that it really doesn't get done that often.
Sunday Classics: What stirs the blood better than a military march? This week courtesy of Mozart and Sousa
>
Unfortunately in audio only, Vladimir Horowitz plays his now-legendary finger-shattering arrangement of Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever. There's also an audio-only interview in which Horowitz explains how he came to play the piece, and then stop playing it. Horowitz's gradual tempo was deliberate, by the way. He believed that the piece was generally played too fast, trivializing it.
by Ken
For decades America's great bandmaster John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) had resisted the lure of the radio when he lifted his taboo, in 1929. Here is the March King talking, and conducting the Sousa Band in his best-known march (the greatest march ever written?), The Stars and Stripes Forever:
Sousa's father was a trombonist in the U.S. Marine Band, in which Sousa himself served an apprenticeship, eventually leading it, from 1880 to 1892, when he formed his own band. With the advent of recording, the Sousa Band became one of the most-recorded of all performing artists, playing not just Sousa's own music, marches and otherwise, but just about anything that could be arranged for band, and a lot of things you wouldn't have thought could be.
This is a direct outgrowth of the British band tradition. In many towns and villages throughout the British Isles the local band was for a long time the chief source of live music, a tradition that appears to have spread to the Commonwealth, as I discovered some years back on a crazy trip to Australia and New Zealand that left me something like two days in Melbourne. On arrival (from, I think, three days in Sydney, which it had taken me only a few hours to fall in love with), I noticed on arrival that the country's regional Marine band was playing one of a series of noontime concerts, in a church that looked on my map to be within walking distance of our hotel, with just enough time (I hoped) to make it.
I couldn't resist, and breathing pretty heavily (naturally it was a little farther than it looked on the map, and heck, I was venturing on foot in a city I'd been in for maybe half an hour) I slipped into a pew. I was surprised to find that none of the music on the program was "band" music. I don't remember the program, except that it included at least a couple of movements from Holst's Planets, which I remember sounded fairly weird, but then, so did the rest of the music. Nevertheless, I had a swell time.
I still don't understand the impulse to have bands perform all that un-band-like music (I guess if your town can't muster an orchestra, you make do with a band). But when it comes to marches, and in particular military and military-style marches (as most of Sousa's marches are), there's no better instrument than a well-drilled band, and traditionally the best-drilled of all are the actual military bands, which have been as important to American armed forces as they have to their British counterparts. It's one activity of those armed forces that I can get behind without reservation.
"SALUTE TO THE SERVICES"
Which brings me to a record that has given me as much pleasure as any I've owned. It contains just under 39 minutes of music, which was kind of stingy even on LP. Still, it's just as well that in preparing a CD edition EMI didn't try to pad it out. The LP was about as close to perfect as they come.
The official title is The Military Band,with the subtitle "Salute to the Services" (I believe on LP it was "A Hi-Fi Salute . . ."), which I've always taken to refer to the suite of five marches at the start, which are preceded by "Reveille" and followed by "Taps." Actually, on the CD "Taps" comes at the end of the program; I've taken the liberty of shifting it to where it seems to me to belong: following the five marches (some more official than others) representing the five U.S. military services.
1. Reveille 2. SOUSA: The U.S. Field Artillery March (Army) 3. ZIMMERMAN: Anchors Aweigh (Navy) 4. MANCINI arr.: Marines on Parade 5. CRAWFORD: U.S. Air Force Song 6. VAN BOSKERCK: Semper Paratus (Coast Guard) 7. Taps
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded 1958
I kept going back and forth as to whether to make separate files of the individual pieces or to put them all in one "suite" file, and finally opted for the latter -- with some care, you can still pick out the individual pieces within the group file. I think they're more fun heard in one fell swoop, and the better you get to know them, the more fun they are. This is, by the way, more music that falls in the category of stuff I can, indeed have been known to, listen to over and over and over.
THE SLATKIN CLAN
Conductor Felix Slatkin (1915-1963, felled by a heart attack), is perhaps better-known as the father of conductor Leonard Slatkin (born 1944), which is unfortunate, because where Leonard is a well-meaning plodder (and I'm not even thinking of his recent Met Traviata fiasco), Felix was the genuine article, a conductor of real passion and flair, who recorded actively in the days when Capitol still had a domestic classical recording program, both with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra and his own Concert Arts Symphony Orchestra. Leonard's mother, Eleanor Aller (1917-1995), was also a sensational musician, best known as the cellist of the wonderful Hollywood Quartet, of which Felix Slatkin was first violinist.
(Eleanor's brother Victor Aller, 1905-1977, was a fine pianist who often played and recorded with both the Concert Arts Symphony Orchestra and the Hollywood Quartet. The Slatkins' other son, Frederick Zlotkin, born 1947, is longtime principal cellist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra and cellist of the Lyric Piano Quartet. Zlotkin reverted to the pre-Americanized version of the family name; the Allers had been Altschulers in the old country. There's a lovely online reminiscence by Fred Zlotkin of growing up in that remarkable musical circle, which included Frank Sinatra, who recorded with Felix Slatkin. At some point we're going to have to come back to the Hollywood Quartet. The problem is that I don't have any of their recordings on CD, and while a lot of what they recorded has been reissued by Testament, those CDs are really expensive.)
Although both Felix and Eleanor were American-born, they came from Eastern European Jewish stock (Fred Zlotkin's reminiscence includes studying, not very successfully, with his violinist grandfather Gregory Aller, 1876-1963 who "came from what I would describe as the Old Russian school"), and like so many of those émigré musicians they found their way to Hollywood, where the movie studios offered so much employment for talented and versatile musicians that they could make a decent living and still have time to pursue their "serious" musical ambitions.
WAIT, HAVE I GOTTEN AHEAD OF MYSELF?
It was obvious (wasn't it?) that the connecting thread in last night's preview between Figaro's "Non più andrai," the aria with which he brings Act I of The Marriage of Figaro to such a rousing climax, and the Sousa marches we heard is the military march.
In Mozart's case, while the whole aria is set in a basic march rhythm, as Figaro goes into ever more grueling detail about the military career suddenly facing the young page Cherubino, Mozart almost surreptitiously slips in an unmistakably martial rhythm. By the time Figaro is ready to send his young friend off to "victory" and "military glory" with that potentially show-stopping "Cherubino alla vittoria, alla gloria militar," the music is in full military-march mode. The postlude for the aria, in which most stagings have Figaro leading Cherubino in some form of mock march, combines a tone of irony with an unmistakable sense of exhilaration and lift. It's music that almost inevitably sets the entire body in motion.
Last night we heard the great Ezio Pinza in a March 1940 Met broadcast performance, because I wanted you to hear the warmth and magnetism he brought to the recitative before the aria. Here's a studio recording of just the aria from only ten months earlier, with Pinza in even more resplendent vocal shape:
Ezio Pinza, bass; Victor Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Reibold, cond. RCA/Preiser, recorded May 8, 1939
THE MIGHT OF THE MARCH KING
It was in fact that trip to the South Pacific that put me on a series of long flights, both transcontinental and transoceanic, on every one of which the movie was A Few Good Men, with which I quickly developed a love-hate relationship. (On the final leg of the journey, the return flight from L.A. to New York, not only was the movie the inescapable A Few Good Men, but since it was a domestic flight, the airline expected me to pay for the headset. Oh, right! By then I figured I didn't need sound; I could recite the dialogue.
For a movie that was so heavily Marine-centered, director Rob Reiner made a recurrent musical choice that was easily understandable and also, I think, incredibly self-destructive: Sousa's Semper Fidelis. Let's here the performance from the Slatkin Military Band record:
SOUSA: Semper Fidelis
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol-EMI, recorded 1958
Now this is, as memory serves, a notably snappier performance than the one used in A Few Good Men. It occurred to me during my endless viewings of the film that the piece can stand, indeed cries out for, a still-snappier performance. That amazing snare-drum transition to the trio (at 1:09 of the Slatkin performance) could be sharpened and drilled beyond edginess to outright snarling vehemence, and then that contrasting tune of the trio (at 1:16) really has, if you listen for it, a really threatening edge.
I think Morton Gould (1913-1996) -- a gifted composer and arranger as well as conductor and, yes, bandmaster -- gets some of this in his recording. (The introductory flourish, sounding the tune of the trio is presumably Gould's own inspiration. I wouldn't want to hear the piece this way all the time, but I rather like it.)
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 17, 19, and 26, 1956
But even in a conventionally milder-mannered performance, the music has such tightly disciplined authority, even authenticity, that it sort of screams "Fake!" at the overblown histrionics of A Few Good Men's writing and acting. It's undoubtedly a good thing for the picture that it doesn't have the kind of performance of Semper Fidelis which it set me to imagining.
In case you were wondering, British bands love Sousa's marches as much as American ones, maybe more. Here is the 1983 performance of Semper Fidelis from this week's Special Bonus Prize CD, by the Band of H.M. Royal Marines conducted by Lt. Col. G.A.C. Hoskins, M.V.O., L.R.A.M., R.M. (Principal Director of Music, Royal Marines):
OUR "BASIC SOUSA" TOUR
Over the course of his long composing career, Sousa produced an enormous quantity of music, the best of which seems to me of a quality that hasn't been surpassed in any medium, and I think that, give or take a couple of numbers, there's general agreement as to which constitute the "core" Sousa marches. With a minimum of chatter, let's run through some of the general favorites.
The Stars and Stripes Forever
If you've had your fill of The Stars and Stripes, feel free to skip ahead. Personally, I can't get enough of it, at least in worthy performances. We're going to be hearing a lot of the Gould and Slatkin CDs we've already sampled, and it would be a shame not to let them have a go at The Stars and Stripes. It's not for nothing that their ensembles are both named "symphonic bands"; their performances have both a weight and a tonal refinement not often realized by even the best actual military bands.
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 17, 19, and 26, 1956
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol-EMI, recorded 1958
The Washington Post
At this point, as Lieut. Colonel Hoskins joins Gould and Slatkin in our rotation, I think we begin to hear the differences between British and American performances I was talking about last night. As our friend Bil was suggesting in his comment, with the stiff-upper-lip Brits there seems to be much less rhythmic differentiation with those 4/4 bars that make up a march. I quite like these Royal Marine performances.
In more extremely British-style performances, like Monty Python's Liberty Bell, the individual measures almost seem to circle around on themselves, like a boomerang, or a paddle ball springing back on itself. You may have noticed that the American performance of Liberty Bell we heard last night didn't have any of the goofy quality of the Python version, which always seems to me to suggest a Silly Walks sort of marching in which an army of John Cleeses might be strutting in circles, or crashing into one another.
A MID-ATLANTIC LIBERTY BELL?
Keith Brion is an American Sousa specialist who has founded a New Sousa Band on this side of the Atlantic but has been recording a Sousa series for Naxos with Britain's Royal Artillery Band.
(arr. Brion and Schissel) Royal Artillery Band, Keith Brion, cond. Naxos, Vol. 6, recorded Jan. 15-16, 2002
The Washington Post march was commissioned by the newspaper's owners while Sousa was still with the Marine Band, for performance at its essay-contest awards ceremony.
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 17, 19, and 26, 1956
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol-EMI, recorded 1958
Band of H.M. Royal Marines, Lt. Col. G.A.C. Hoskins, cond. EMI, recorded February 1983
The Thunderer
Isn't it odd that The Thunderer is actually one of the less thunderous of Sousa's marches? It's certainly one of the more tuneful, though.
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 17, 19, and 26, 1956
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol-EMI, recorded 1958
Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger, cond. Kem-Disc, recorded c1981
El Capitan March
El Capitan began life in 1896 as a full-length three-act comic opera. Sousa extracted a suite of waltzes from it, and derived this, one of his most popular marches, from a chorus in Act II.
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 17, 19, and 26, 1956
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol-EMI, recorded 1958
Band of H.M. Royal Marines, Lt. Col. G.A.C. Hoskins, cond. EMI, recorded February 1983
Manhattan Beach
I've seen a source that claims this march was written to honor California's Manhattan Beach, which is a new one on me. The young Sousa Band performed regularly in summer in Brooklyn's Manhattan Beach, then still a park and upscale resort area near the eastern end of Coney Island. The march, at not much over two minutes, is unusually short, but it contains one of Sousa's most famous tunes.
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Jan. 22-23, 1959
Band of H.M. Royal Marines, Lt. Col. G.A.C. Hoskins, cond. EMI, recorded February 1983
Royal Artillery Band, Keith Brion, cond. Naxos, Vol. 1, recorded Aug. 5-6, 1999
The Gladiator
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 17, 19, and 26, 1956
Band of H.M. Royal Marines, Lt. Col. G.A.C. Hoskins, cond. EMI, recorded February 1983
Royal Artillery Band, Keith Brion, cond. Naxos, Vol. 6, recorded Jan. 15-16, 2002
King Cotton
Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger, cond. Kem-Disc, recorded c1981
Band of H.M. Royal Marines, Lt. Col. G.A.C. Hoskins, cond. EMI, recorded February 1983
(arr. Brion and Schissel) Royal Artillery Band, Keith Brion, cond. Naxos, Vol. 2, recorded Aug. 9-10, 1999
NOW ONE NON-SOUSA MARCH
Of course there have been countless other composers of American-style military marches, and many marches written that are on a par with the second-tier Sousa marches. Only one march pops to mind, though, that seems to me to merit hearing in the company of the Sousa marches we're hearing today: Edwin Bagley's The National Emblem.
BAGLEY: The National Emblem
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 17, 19, and 26, 1956
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol-EMI, recorded 1958
AND FINALLY, TO RETURN TO MOZART AND "NON PIU ANDRAI"
Way back when, I wrote about a strange and wonderful rhythmically charged counterfigure that steals into the cello part near the end of the long theme and variations slow movement of Mozart's A major String Quartet, K. 464 and then briefly becomes the main order of business, rising through successively through the quartet before sinking back down. Mozart performs something like that trick here with the military march that, as noted above, is first hinted at Figaro's "Over mountains, through valleys" -- at 1:56 of the highly theatrical performance below by baritone Renato Capecchi, a couple of seconds earlier in the Tomlinson-Barenboim performance -- and then emerges fully formed when Figaro switches suddenly (at 2:49) from one last repetition of the "Non più andrai" section to the exhortation "Cherubino alla victoria, all gloria militar." Note particularly what a wonderfully big deal the Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay and his German orchestra make of the rousing full orchestral statement of the military march which ends the act.
MOZART: Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro): "Evviva! Evviva! Evviva" . . . "Non più andrai"
FIGARO: Hurrah! SUSANNA Hurrah! DON BASILIO: Hurrah! FIGARO [to CHERUBINO]: And you're not applauding? SUSANNA: The poor little thing is suffering because the master is sending him away from the estate. FIGARO: Ah, on such a lovely day! SUSANNA: On a wedding day! FIGARO: When everyone is praising you! CHERUBINO [kneeling]: Forgive me, my lord . . . COUNT: You don't deserve it. SUSANNA: He's still a boy. COUNT: Less so than you might think. CHERUBINO: It's true, I did wrong, but never from my lips will -- COUNT [raising him]: Fine, fine, I pardon you. In fact, I'll do more. There's a vacant posting for an officer in my regiment. I choose you. Leave at once. Farewell! [The COUNT starts to leave. SUSANNA and FIGARO stop him.] SUSANNAandFIGARO: Ah, just till tomorrow. COUNT: No, he leaves at once. CHERUBINO: I'm ready to obey you, my lord. COUNT: Go, for the last time embrace your Susanna. [to himself] That blow was unexpected! [The COUNT and BASILIO exit. CHERUBINO embraces SUSANNA, who remains confused.] FIGARO [to CHERUBINO]: Hey, captain, give me your hand. [softly] I want to talk to you before you leave. [aloud, with feigned joy] Farewell, little Cherubino! How your fate changes in a moment!
Aria, "Non più andrai" No more, you amorous butterfly, Will you go fluttering round by night and day, Disturbing the peace of every maid, You pocket Narcissus, you Adonis of love.
No more will you have those fine feathers, That light and dashing cap, Those curls, those airs and graces, That roseate womanish colour.
No more, you amorous butterfly, Will you go fluttering round by night and day, Disturbing the peace of every maid, You pocket Narcissus, you Adonis of love.
You'll be among warriors, by Bacchus! Long moustaches, knapsack tightly on, Musket on your shoulder, sabre at your side, Head erect and bold of visage, A great helmet or a head-dress, Lots of honour, little money, And instead of the fandango, Marching through the mud.
Over mountains, through valleys, In snow and days of listless heat, To the sound of blunderbusses, Shells and cannons, Whose shots make your ears sing On every note.
No more, you amorous butterfly, Will you go fluttering round by night and day, Disturbing the peace of every maid, You pocket Narcissus, you Adonis of love.
Cherubino, on to victory, On to military glory! Cherubino, on to victory, On to military glory!
Renato Capecchi (b), Figaro; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Count Almaviva; Irmgard Seefried (s), Susanna; Paul Kuen (t), Don Basilio; Hertha Töpper (ms), Cherubino; Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded September 1960
John Tomlinson (bs), Figaro; Andreas Schmidt (b), Count Almaviva; Joan Rodgers (s), Susanna; Graham Clark (t), Don Basilio; Cecilia Bartoli (ms), Cherubino; Berlin Philharmonic, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Erato, recorded May 6-17, 1990
Sunday Classics preview: If you hear what tonight's musical selections have in common, you know our subject for tomorrow
>
Bonus! An actual prize! Win a CD of Sousa marches!
The musical joy of The Marriage of Figaro's Act I finale is stripped out of this singularly joyless rendering in the Unitel film directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and conducted by Karl Böhm, with Hermann Prey as Figaro, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the Count, Mirella Freni as Susanna, John van Kesteren as Don Basilio, and Maria Ewing as Cherubino.
There's nothing mysterious about the common thread between our musical selections, so I'm not sure this week's prize, a CD of Sousa marches performed very smartly by the Band of H.M. Royal Marines conducted by Lt. Col. G.A.C. Hoskins, M.V.O., L.R.A.M., R.M. (Prinicipal Director of Music, Royal Marines). I know that sounds made up, possibly by the Pythons. Sometimes the boys didn't have to go far to achieve parody, though -- real life came pre-self-parodied.
The prize could go for answering this question, or for picking up on the distinction between British and American Sousa performances hinted at below, or maybe just for making up a better question for this week's preview, which was supposed to be an easy one but instead has taken me an entire day -- an entire beautiful springlike day, to boot. Somebody's gonna win that damned CD!
[A]
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA: (1) The Stars and Stripes Forever (2) The Liberty Bell
Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger, cond. Kem-Disc, recorded c1981
The Wallace Collection, John Wallace, cond. Nimbus, recorded c1987
In many years of listening to Sousa march performances, I've become increasingly persuaded that there's a fundamental difference between British and American performances. So wouldn't you know that now, when I would like that difference to be so blatant as to be unmistakable, it comes out as relatively subtle -- although less so in the case of The Liberty Bell, which any Monty Python will recognize immediately. In fact, the difference is certainly the reason why the Pythons originally thought Liberty Bell would suit their purposes.
[B]
MOZART: Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro): Act I finale, concluding with the aria "Non più andrai"
Le Nozze di Figaro: Act I finale
The hapless, hormonally overdrive young page Cherubino has developed the unfortunate habit of being in the company of young women on the estate who are also being seduced by the lord of the estate, Count Almaviva (whom we last encountered, in The Barber of Seville, as a romantic, idealistic young tenor seeking the hand of the lovely young Rosina, whom we will encounter again after the first intermission, now as the Countess Almaviva, having undergone one of the most heart-rending transformations in the annals of fictions). Figaro, now the Count's manservant, knows that his master is trying to delay his marriage to the Countess's personal maid, Susanna, on whom the Count has dallying designs (the "right" that he has given up, the infamous droit du seigneur, is the feudal lord's "right" to sleep with brides under his stewardship), and by way of speeding up the process has brought in a troupe of villagers to pay choral tribute to their lord. We're skipping over the first sounding of this choral tribute (we get to hear it down below) and picking up at the annoyed Count's response.
COUNT ALMAVIVA: What is this comedy? FIGARO [softly to SUSANNA]: Now we're in the dance. Back me up, my dear. SUSANNA [softly to FIGARO]: I have no hope. FIGARO [to the COUNT]: My lord, do not disdain this deserved tribute of our affection. Now that you've abolished a right so unwelcome to anyone who falls in love. COUNT: That right no longer exists. What do you want now? FIGARO: This first fruit of your wisdom we've gathered today to celebrate; our wedding is already arranged; now it remains for you to make sure that your gift is turned over unstained, dressed in this candid garment, symbol of honesty. COUNT [to himself]: Diabolically clever! So I have to finesse. [aloud] I'm grateful, friends, for such an honest expression. but for this I don't deserve either tributes or praise. It's an unjust right, and by abolishing it in my lands, I merely restore the rights of nature and duty. EVERYONE: Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah. SUSANNA: What virtue! FIGARO: What justice! COUNT [to FIGARO and SUSANNA]: I promise you that I'll perform the ceremony. I just wish a brief indulgence, to be able -- in the company of my most loyal subjects and with the richest ceremony -- to bring about your fullest happiness. [to himself]: Marcellina has to turn up. [aloud]: Leave me, friends.
CHORUS OF VILLAGERS: Happy maidens, strew flowers before our noble lord. His great heart preserves for you an even more beautiful flower's glorious innocence. [The villagers exit.]
FIGARO: Hurrah! SUSANNA Hurrah! DON BASILIO: Hurrah! FIGARO [to CHERUBINO]: And you're not applauding? SUSANNA: The poor little thing is suffering because the master is sending him away from the estate. FIGARO: Ah, on such a lovely day! SUSANNA: On a wedding day! FIGARO: When everyone is praising you! CHERUBINO [kneeling]: Forgive me, my lord . . . COUNT: You don't deserve it. SUSANNA: He's still a boy. COUNT: Less so than you might think. CHERUBINO: It's true, I did wrong, but never from my lips will -- COUNT [raising him]: Fine, fine, I pardon you. In fact, I'll do more. There's a vacant posting for an officer in my regiment. I choose you. Leave at once. Farewell! [The COUNT starts to leave. SUSANNA and FIGARO stop him.] SUSANNAandFIGARO: Ah, just till tomorrow. COUNT: No, he leaves at once. CHERUBINO: I'm ready to obey you, my lord. COUNT: Go, for the last time embrace your Susanna. [to himself] That blow was unexpected! [The COUNT and BASILIO exit. CHERUBINO embraces SUSANNA, who remains confused.] FIGARO [to CHERUBINO]: Hey, captain, give me your hand. [softly] I want to talk to you before you leave. [aloud, with feigned joy] Farewell, little Cherubino! How your fate changes in a moment!
aria, "Non più andrai" [Note: The translation of the aria is taken over straight -- apart from adding the major repetitions, and of course introducing typos -- from Lionel Salter's 1968 rendering of the opera; after the ridiculous amount of time I spent agonizing over this much of the scene, including getting the damned HTML coding more or less right, I'm plain out of gas.]
No more, you amorous butterfly, Will you go fluttering round by night and day, Disturbing the peace of every maid, You pocket Narcissus, you Adonis of love.
No more will you have those fine feathers, That light and dashing cap, Those curls, those airs and graces, That roseate womanish colour.
No more, you amorous butterfly, Will you go fluttering round by night and day, Disturbing the peace of every maid, You pocket Narcissus, you Adonis of love.
You'll be among warriors, by Bacchus! Long moustaches, knapsack tightly on, Musket on your shoulder, sabre at your side, Head erect and bold of visage, A great helmet or a head-dress, Lots of honour, little money, And instead of the fandango, Marching through the mud.
Over mountains, through valleys, In snow and days of listless heat, To the sound of blunderbusses, Shells and cannons, Whose shots make your ears sing On every note.
No more, you amorous butterfly, Will you go fluttering round by night and day, Disturbing the peace of every maid, You pocket Narcissus, you Adonis of love.
Cherubino, on to victory, On to military glory! Cherubino, on to victory, On to military glory!
Ezio Pinza (bs), Figaro; John Brownlee (b), Count Almaviva; Bidù Sayao (s), Susanna; Alessio de Paolis (t), Don Basilio; Jarmila Novotna (s), Cherubino; Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Ettore Panizza, cond. Live performance, March 9, 1940
Cesare Siepi (bs), Figaro; Frank Guarrera (b), Count Almaviva; Nadine Conner (s), Susanna; Alessio de Paolis (t), Don Basiliio; Mildred Miller (ms), Cherubino; Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Fritz Stiedry, cond. Live performance, Jan. 15, 1955
Giorgio Tozzi (bs), Figaro; George London (bs-b), Count Almaviva; Hilde Gueden (s), Susanna; Norman Kelley (t), Don Basilio; Mildred Miller (ms), Cherubino; Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. Live performance, Jan. 11, 1958
Walter Berry (bs-b), Figaro; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Count Almaviva; Erika Köth (s), Susanna; Julius Katona (t), Don Basilio; Edith Mathis (s), Cherubino; Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance from Tokyo, Oct. 23, 1963
It's the aria we're interested in here, but I wanted the run-up to it for two reasons: first, to establish the context makes this such a grand finale, as exhilarating as it is entertaining; but also to give you a sample of the real greatness of our first Figaro, Ezio Pinza. With both his Figaro and his Don Giovanni, you can listen to his recordings of the operas' musical numbers and he wipes away the competition, but you don't have a glimmering till you've heard his live performances, even though they capture him at later, vocally less splendiferous stages of his career than the jaw-dropping recordings of the '20s and early '30s. It's in the recitatives, which for so many singers are merely the monotonous conversational stuff that has to be gotten through to get to the musical numbers, that we hear in Pinza's performances not just a tonal refulgence but a warmth and rounded humanity that put him truly in a class by himself.
One note about our fourth performance above: Although it's sung in Italian, this is very much Figaro, and Mozart in general, in the Germanic tradition, with a preference for a higher-range (baritone or bass-baritone rather than bass) Figaro and a generally more exaggerated, almost lurching approach to (I almost said "assault on") the music. And there's no more, er, dramatic example than the Count of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, which would later be immortalized in the Unitel film of the opera, also conducted by Karl Böhm, where Fischer-Dieskau is partnered by another very Germanic-style Mozart baritone, Hermann Prey, as Figaro. (In fairness, you may also hear in the first three performances a distinctly broad-humored American approach.)
With regard to Fischer-Dieskau's Count (of which he made at least three studio recordings, without resort to the countless live performances in circulation), even in the bits we hear here, I think we can hear what Conrad L. Osborne meant when he ventured that DFD is giving us his opinion of the character rather than portraying him. That said, I think our Figaro here, Walter Berry, has significantly better instincts about the music, though he's not terribly comfortable singing in Italian.
Finally, to make sure we're probably fixed on the aria, here's one last performance of "Non più andrai," just the aria:
José van Dam (bs-b), Figaro; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded August 1985
with the subtitle "Salute to the Services" (I believe on LP it was "A Hi-Fi Salute . . ."), which I've always taken to refer to the suite of five marches at the start, which are preceded by "Reveille" and followed by "Taps." Actually, on the CD "Taps" comes at the end of the program; I've taken the liberty of shifting it to where it seems to me to belong: following the five marches (some more official than others) representing the five U.S. military services.
