"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Friday, July 30, 2010
Sunday Classics postscript: Cheating our way to the end of Act I of "Tosca"
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The "Te Deum" in the famous Arena di Verona:Scarpia "reawakens as if from a dream" -- from imagining his plan to entrap both the fugitive Angelotti and the beautiful Tosca -- and joins in the singing.
by Ken
Last week we looked at just the opening 10 minutes of Act I of Tosca. We haven't even linked up yet with the great Tosca-Cavaradossi scene, which we investigated a bit way back when. The whole act runs about 45 minutes, and we've barely scratched the surface of its musical and dramatic brilliance and depth.
Maybe it will be seen as merely waving a white flag, but going to skip now to a scene I mentioned last week, in the final minutes of the act: the Te Deum that has been quickly organized in the church of Sant' Andrea della Vale to celebrate the defeat of the invading (and to republican sympathizers potentially liberating) Napoleon III. Baron Scarpia, the tyrannical master of the Roman police, has figured out that his escaped prisoner Angelotti, the deposed consul of the short-lived Roman Republic, whom we met at the opening of the act, is being harbored by a known republican sympathizer, the painter Cavaradossi. He has also figured out that he can use the jealous insecurity of Cavaradossi's lover, the beloved singer Floria Tosca, to capture -- in different ways -- both Angelotti and Tosca.
While preparations continued for the Te Deum, which is to be blessed by no less than the Cardinal, Scarpia planted in the highly suggestible mind of Tosca the suggestion that Cavaradossi has been cheating on her, and she has rushed out of the church, leaving Scarpia to instruct his faithful flunky Spoletta.
SCARPIA: Three cops . . . a carriage . . . Quickly, follow her wherever she goes. Without being seen -- be careful! SPOLETTA: Very well. The meeting place? SCARPIA: Farnese Palace [i.e., the setting for Act II]. [As SPOLETTA leaves.] Go, Tosca! In your heart Scarpia nests. [The Cardinal and his cortege make their way to the high altar. Swiss guards clear the way for the procession by dividing the crowd on either side of an aisle.] Go, Tosca! [Occasional firing of cannon begins.] Scarpia has unfettered the falcon of your jealousy. How much promise in your ready suspiciousness! In your heart Scarpia nests -- go, Tosca! [SCARPIA bows and prays as the Cardinal passes. The Cardinal blesses the crowd, which also bows in reverence.] THE CHAPTER [i.e., the canons of the church, specified in the score as 12 basses]: Adjutorum nostrum in nomine Domini. THE CROWD: Qui fecit coelum et terram. THE CHAPTER: Sit nomen Domini benedictum. THE CROWD: Et hoc nunc et usque in saeculum. SCARPIA: Toward a double target I stretch my will; nor is the head of the rebel the more precious. Ah, those conquering eyes -- I would love to see their flame dim in spasms of love. The one to the gallows, the other into my arms. [He stands staring into space. The crowd turns toward the high altar; many kneel.] THE CHAPTER and THE CROWD: Te Deum laudamus: te Deum confitemur! SCARPIA [reawakening, as if from a dream]: Tosca, you make me forget God. [He kneels and joins fervently in the singing.] ALL: Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur.
Tito Gobbi (b), Scarpia; Angelo Mercuriali (t), Spoletta; Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Victor de Sabata, cond. EMI, recorded August 1953
I'm not going to rehash my problems with this "classic" recording, best known as the first Callas Tosca recording. This bit can't in any case be compared directly with the corresponding bit of the EMI stereo "remake," also featuring Callas in the title role and Tito Gobbi as Scarpia, if only because the pacing is so much quicker. (I've already expressed my minority opinion that even with the vocal toll taken on both Callas and Gobbi by those intervening 11-plus years, I much prefer the later recording. Note, by the way, that in this CD edition EMI has placed the track point right at Scarpia's "Tre sbirri . . . una carrozza," rather than at the more logical orchestral run-up to this moment, as in our other performances.)
Tito Gobbi (b), Scarpia; Renato Ercolani (t), Spoletta; Chorus of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra, Paris Conservatory Orchestra, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 1964-Jan. 1965
Going in the other direction, I described Karajan's 1962 version last week as "for me the most audaciously and most beautifully conducted Tosca on records." He stretches this great scene about to its limits, but rouses his great orchestra and fine Scarpia (Giuseppe Taddei) to a shattering culmination of the act.
Giuseppe Taddei (b), Scarpia; Piero de Palma (t), Spoletta; Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. RCA/Decca, recorded September 1962
Finally, I thought it would be fun to hear how this scene plays with Scarpia sung by a baritone of the size, weight, upper-range thunder, and general tonal juice of the 1962-vintage Cornell MacNeil. In a performance that featured Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli in their stupendous vocal primes as Tosca and Cavaradossi (we heard Corelli's "Recondita armonia" from this performance in last Saturday's preview), I have a feeling that as audience members filed out for the first intermission, the voice ringing in their heads was MacNeil's.
Cornell MacNeil (b), Scarpia; Paul Franke (t), Spoletta; Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Kurt Adler, cond. Live performance, Apr. 7, 1962 (mono)
We return to Gianni Schicchi and Puccini's affectionate portrayal of the young lovers Lauretta and Rinuccio, with a look back at their Verdian forebears, Falstaff's Nannetta and Fenton. Then in Sunday's post we finish up with the scene from Gianni Schicchi in which "O mio babbino caro" is a crucial component.
UPDATE: As it turned out, it worked better to focus on Puccini's relationship to his pair of young lovers in Saturday's preview, and save the backward glance at Verdi's for the main post Sunday.
Sunday Classics: Hey, that Puccini sure knew how to make a scene
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Yes, the simple lyrical lines of "O mio babbino caro" were heavy going for Renata Scotto by the time she sang all three soprano leads in Puccini's Trittico at the Met in 1981, but the bigger problem with this clip is that it starts too late and ends too early to allow us to appreciate the real accomplishment of the aria.
by Ken
We have two great Puccini arias on our plate. It's not that their greatness isn't acknowledged but that the scope of their achievement is rarely accorded.
In the case of "Recondita armonia," which we began considering in last night's preview, you will rarely hear proper appreciation for the genius of Puccini's musico-dramatic construction, of which Tosca is not just a riveting but an inexhaustibly fascinating example. I can't begin to do justice to this subject, but I think we can at least hear some of the phenomenal care, and of course brilliance, with which just this brief (a mere 10 minutes) opening chunk of Act I is put together.
And in the case of the now-inescapable "O mio babbinio" from Gianni Schicchi, I argued both in a January 2009 post and in Friday night's preview that the gush of mawkish sentimentality we normally hear when the piece is ripped out of context both falsifies it and strips it of most of its originality and brilliance, by which it manages, astoudingly, to be at once profoundly moving and side-splittingly funny.
TOO MUCH, TOO MUCH
Once I had this whole post laid out, with all the audio files in place, I decided that it was just too much, especially after last night's preview grew to more properly post length. So we're going to table most of the Gianni Schicchi discussion to next week, which will also allow us to do a bit more exploring. However, you're still going to hear what I consider the basic minimal representation necessary to make the simplest sense of "O mio babbino caro." Then next week we can fit it into the context of this hilarious scene.
1. TOSCA: "Recondita armonia"
In last night's preview, we wound up hearing almost the whole scene, or the portion of the scene we're considering here. The only "new" music today is the Sacristan's musically memorable entrance and brief solo scene before the entrance of Cavaradossi. As it happens, it was this scene in particular -- and in particular the once seeming uniquitousness of Fernando Corena's Sacristan -- that got me to thinking about doing some sort of post, which gradually morphed into this one. Sure enough, today we're going to hear this portion of Corena's Sacristan three times over, and that still omits an earlier (1952) and a later (1979) recording of the role.
I thought we would begin by breaking the scene down into three component parts:
1. Opening, "Ah! Finalmente!" (scene of Angelotti)
The desperate fugitive we meet shortly after the curtain rises on the interior of Rome's church of Sant' Andrea della Valle will later be identified for us by the painter Mario Cavaradossi as Cesare Angelotti, the onetime consul of the overthrown Roman Republic.
[ANGELOTTI enters, dressed as a prisoner, torn, disheveled, trembling with fear, almost running. He gives a quick glance around.] ANGELOTTI: Ah! Finally! In my dumb terror I thought I saw a policeman's jowl in every face. [Turns to look around attentively, and calms down as he recognizes the place. He gives a sigh of relief seeing the column with the basin of holy water and the Madonna.] The basin . . . the column . . . "At the foot of the Madonna," my sister wrote me. [Advances, searches at the feet of the Madonna, and draws from it, with a muffled cry of joy, a key.] Here's the key, and here's the chapel. [With great care he inserts the key in the lock of the Attavanti Chapel, opens the gate, enters the chapel, recloses, and disppears.]
Silvio Maionica (bs), Angelotti; Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome), Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Decca, recorded July 1959
2. "E sempre lava" . . . "Che fai?" (entrances of the Sacristan and then Cavaradossi)
Note that the way the track points are placed on this CD, the Sacristan's entrance music, which depicts his limping gait as he sets about his morning chores, is tacked onto the Angelotti scene, and this track begins with his first words.
SACRISTAN: And always washing! Each paintbrush is filthy, worse than a poor priest's collar. Mister painter! . . . There! [Looks toward the scaffold, where the painting stands, and seeing it deserted exclaims in surprise.] No one! I would have sworn that the cavalier Cavaradossi had returned. [Puts the brushes down, climbs up on the scaffold, looks through the basket, and says:] No, I'm mistaken. The basket is intact. [The Angelus sounds. The SACRISTAN kneels and prays quietly.] SACRISTAN: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae, et concepit de Spiritu Sancto. Ecce ancilla Domini; fiat mihi secundum Verbum tuum et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis . . . [CAVARADOSSI enters from the side door and sees the SACRISTAN on his knees.] CAVARADOSSI: What are you doing? SACRISTAN: Reciting the Angelus. [CAVARADOSSI mounts the scaffold and uncovers the painting. It's a Mary Magdalen with large azure eyes and a great shower of golden hair. The painter stands mute in front of it, observing attentively. The SACRISTAN, turning toward CAVARADOSSI to speak to him, sees the uncovered painting and lets out a cry of wonder.] SACRISTAN: Holy vessels! Her portrait! CAVARADOSSI: Whose? SACRISTAN: That unknown woman who in recent days has come here to pray. Totally devoted . . . and pious. [Motions toward the statue of the Madonna, from which ANGELOTTI earlier removed the key.] CAVARADOSSI: It's true. And she was so engrossed in her prayer that I painted, without her noticing, her beautiful face. SACRISTAN [to himself]: Flee, Satan, flee!
Fernando Corena (bs), the Sacristan; Mario del Monaco (t), Cavaradossi; Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome), Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Decca, recorded July 1959
Now Cavaradossi asks the Sacristan for his paints and resumes contemplation of the painting he has been working on, nothing the "recondite harmony" between the "diverse beauties" of his beloved Tosca and the model for the portrait.
CAVARADOSSI: Give me my paints. [The SACRISTAN complies. CAVARADOSSI paints rapidly, pausing frequently to observe. The SACRISTAN comes and goes, carrying a small basin in which he continues to wash the paintbrushes. Suddenly CAVARADOSSI stops painting; from his pocket he lifts a medalion containing a miniature portrait, and his eyes go from the medalion to the painting.]
Hidden harmony of diverse beauties! Flora is dark, my ardent beloved . . . SACRISTAN [to himself]: Joke with knaves, and let the saints be. CAVARADOSSI: And you, unknown beauty, crowned with blond locks, you have azure eyes -- Tosca has black eyes. SACRISTAN [to himself]: Joke with knaves, and let the saints be. CAVARADOSSI: The art in her mystery blends together the diverse beauties. But while I'm painting her, My sole thought, Tosca, is you! SACRISTAN [to himself, aside]: These various skirts who set themselves in competition with the Madonna give off the stench of Hell.
Joke with knaves, and let the saints be. But with these Voltairean dogs, enemies of the holy realm, there's no point talking. Joke with knaves, and let the saints be. For sure, they're sinners, the whole lot. Let us rather make the sign of the cross. Excellency, shall I go? CAVARADOSSI: Do as you please. [Continues to paint.] SACRISTAN: The basket is full. Are you serving penitence? CAVARADOSSI: I'm not hungry. SACRISTAN [with irony, rubbing his hands]: Oh! I'm sorry! [He can't suppress a gesture of joy and a glance of avidity toward the basket, which he picks up and sets aside.] Be sure to close up when you leave. CAVARADOSSI: Go! SACRISTAN: I'm going. [Goes out at the rear. CAVARADOSSI, turning his back to the Chapel, works. ANGELOTTI, believing the church deserted, appears behind the gate and inserts the key to open it.] CAVARADOSSI [turning at the creaking of the lock]: There's someone in there!
Mario del Monaco (t), Cavaradossi; Fernando Corena (bs), the Sacristan; Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome), Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Decca, recorded July 1959
NOW LET'S PUT IT ALL TOGETHER
PUCCINI: Tosca: Act I opening scene: "Ah, finalmente" . . . "E sempre lava" . . . "Dammi i colori" . . . "Recondita armonia"
As noted, we're going to hear two more recordings with the then seemingly ubiquitous Fernando Corena as the Sacristan, and the three performances are certainly very different. The RCA recording has the obvious plus of Bjoerling's Cavaradossi, but also a much-underrated contribution from conductor Erich Leinsdorf.
Herbert von Karajan's RCA/Decca recording, made from what has always seemed to me the most satisfying and productive portion of his long career, is for me the most audaciously and most beautifully conducted Tosca on records, and I have to say that even with the way Giuseppe di Stefano is heaving that peerless tenor around by 1962, I prefer his performance here to the one we heard last night, from the widely worshiped 1953 EMI recording.
For me the 1953 EMI Tosca is another of those "legendary" recordings (like the Tristan with Flagstad conducted by Furtwängler, the Rosenkavalier with Schwarzkopf conducted by Karajan, the Fidelio conducted by Klemperer, and the Così conducted by Böhm) in which producer EMI Walter Legge hired outstanding and unquestionably appropriate performers (in this case including also Maria Callas as Tosca and Tito Gobbi as Scarpia, with Victor de Sabata conducting) and then cajoled, steamrollered and where necessary (as with the 19 or however many takes it was of the Tosca "Te Deum" he forced Gobbi to sing) browbeat them into giving, not their own performances, but his sterile, denatured, middlebrow one. Somehow listeners through the generations seem to have been snookered into hearing the performers' reputations rather than the performances that actually made it onto the tapes.
Leonardo Monreale (bs), Angelotti; Fernando Corena (bs), the Sacristan; Jussi Bjoerling (t), Cavaradossi; Rome Opera Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded July 1957
Carlo Cava (bs), Angelotti; Fernando Corena (bs), the Sacristan; Giuseppe di Stefano (t), Cavaradossi; Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. RCA/Decca, recorded September 1962
Believe it or not, it is actually possible to perform this scene without Fernando Corena. The version we're about to hear is in fact from EMI's stereo remake of Maria Callas's Tosca, again featuring Tito Gobbi as Scarpia, and while they're both unquestionably more challenged vocally after the nine-year interval, as suggested above I find the later performances way more alive and grabbing, as indeed I do the performance as a whole. I might add that our Sacristan here, Giorgio Tadeo, is one of the most appealing I've heard. (UPDATE: The only reason I hedged this, as "one of the most appealing," is that I hadn't bothered to relisten to the performance. Appealingness isn't a quality often sought by Sacristans -- Tadeo's is clearly the most appealing I've heard, a really lovely, quite touching piece of work.)
Leonardo Monreale (bs), Angelotti; Giorgio Tadeo (bs), the Sacristan; Carlo Bergonzi (t), Cavaradossi; Paris Conservatory Orchestra, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 1964-Jan. 1965
2. GIANNI SCHICCHI: "O mio babbino caro"
The original issue of EMI's 1958 recording of Gianni Schicchi, from which we'll hear an excerpt next week, featured this watercolor impression of the title character by none other than Tito Gobbi.
As noted above, we're going to defer most of our Gianni Schicchi discussion to next week, but I still want you to hear how "O mio babbino caro" sounds in context.
Gianni Schicchi: "A pro di quella gente?" . . . "O mio babbino caro"
The wily Gianni Schicchi, you'll recall, has been sent for by Rinuccio, a nephew of the Donati family, which is grieving over the recent demise of their, um, beloved old Buoso -- but rather more over the discovery that he had made a new will leaving his most valuable possessions to the monks. Rinuccio has an ulterior motive: He's hopelessly in love with Lauretta, the daughter of Schicchi, whom he knows his fearsome Aunt Zita considers a hopeless parvenu, a despised member of the "new" class in the Florence of 1299. It's hardly coincidental that both Schicchi and his daughter are known, not by real names, but by diminutive nicknames -- not Giovanni and Laura but Gianni and Lauretta.
Indeed, when Schicchi arrives, with his beloved Lauretta in tow, he's treated like dirt by Zita, and is all set to whisk his daughter out of this house of horrors when Rinuccio makes a desperate last appeal to him, even addressing him as "Signor Giovanni." Schicchi explodes: "For the sake of those types? NOTHING! NOTHING! NOTHING!" Then something altogether extraordinary happens.
GIANNI SCHICCHI: For the sake of those types? NOTHING! NOTHING! NOTHING!
LAURETTA: 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!
GIANNI SCHICCHI: Give me the will.
Fernando Corena (bs), Gianni Schicchi; Renata Tebaldi (s), Lauretta; Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Lamberto Gardelli, cond. Decca, recorded July 1962
By the way, even though we got to hear more of our friend Fernando Corena's Schicchi here than we did of poor Gabriel Bacquier's in our post-opening video clip, I expect you'd like to hear more of what was a wonderful role assumption. Not to worry, we're going to hear more next week.
Sunday Classics preview: Puccini makes a scene, (2) "Tosca"
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No, we're not actually going to hear Pavarotti as Cavaradossi (I never heard him get especially happy results in the role), but here he is -- grinning about something -- in Act I of Tosca.
Tonight we're in the opening scene of Tosca. Our subject, of course, is Cavaradossi's almost-entrance aria, "Recondita armonia, and for tonight we're just going to think of it -- mostly, anyway -- as one of the supremely beautiful two- or three-minute spans of music ever imagined. However, we will already be coming up against its dramatic context in two ways:
(1) Our excerpts pick up and stop at different points, as indicated by the letter keys keyed to our master English text, below.
(2) In all our performances, we hear the accompanying mutterings of the appalled Sacristan. It's possible to omit them, of course, and this is routinely done when the aria is performed as a stand-alone excerpt. After all, not many tenor recitalists are able, or wish, to have a bass on hand.
Well, maybe just once we should hear the aria without the Sacristan's interpolations. On LP I've got a zillion recordings, but from my CD options I thought we might hear the wonderful German tenor Joseph Schmidt, singing (in German) "Wie sich die Bilder gleichen" ("How the pictures resemble each other") in 1929.
[d] in German, with orchestral postlude extracted from [e]: Joseph Schmidt, tenor; Berlin Municipal Opera Orchestra, Selmar Meyrowitz, cond. Recorded 1929 [AFTERTHOUGHT: It may be just as well that the Sacristan is MIA here. While in his native Italian he rolls off the tongue as "il Sagrestano," in German he has the unfortunately thuggish-sounding moniker of "der Messner."]
Before we hear "Recondita armonia" again, we're going to begin, as we did last night with Gianni Schicchi, by musically setting the scene. In this case, it's the very scene into which our aria is nestled.
PUCCINI: Tosca: Act I opening, "Ah! Finalmente!"
We're in Rome, you'll recall, more specifically in the Church of Sant' Andrea della Vale. (Each of the opera's three acts is set in a real Roman location.) At curtain rise, the escaped political prisoner Angelotti -- we'll worry about who he is tomorrow -- enters, knowing only too well that the forces of the brutal Roman police chief, Baron Scarpia (who of course is dramatized musically in those three thundering chords heard for the first time at the very start of the opera) are in hot pursuit.
[ANGELOTTI enters, dressed as a prisoner, torn, disheveled, trembling with fear, almost running. He gives a quick glance around.] ANGELOTTI: Ah! Finally! In my dumb terror I thought I saw a policeman's jowl in every face. [Turns to look around attentively, and calms down as he recognizes the place. He gives a sigh of relief seeing the column with with the basin of holy water and the Madonna.] The basin . . . the column . . . "At the foot of the Madonna," my sister wrote me. [Advances, searches at the feet of the Madonna, and draws from it, with a muffled cry of joy, a key.] Here's the key, and here's the chapel. [With great care he inserts the key in the lock of the Attavanti Chapel, opens the gate, enters the chapel, recloses, and disppears.]
Danilo Seraiocco (bs), Angelotti; Philadelphia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti, cond. Philips, recorded live, March 1991 and Jan. 1992
ON TO "RECONDITA ARMONIA"
Tomorrow we'll fill the brief gap between where we've just left the terrified Angelotti and where we're going to pick up. But for now let's jump to the aria. Here as promised is our master English text:
[a] [The Angelus sounds. The SACRISTAN kneels and prays quietly.] SACRISTAN: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae, et concepit de Spiritu Sancto. Ecce ancilla Domini; fiat mihi secundum Verbum tuum et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis . . . [b] [CAVARADOSSI enters from the side door and sees the SACRISTAN on his knees.] CAVARADOSSI: What are you doing? SACRISTAN: Reciting the Angelus. [CAVARADOSSI mounts the scaffold and uncovers the painting. It's a Mary Magdalen with large azure eyes and a great shower of golden hair. The painter stands mute in front of it, observing attentively. The SACRISTAN, turning toward CAVARADOSSI to speak to him, sees the uncovered painting and lets out a cry of wonder.] SACRISTAN: Holy vessels! Her portrait! CAVARADOSSI: Whose? SACRISTAN: That unknown woman who in recent days has come here to pray. Totally devoted . . . and pious. [Motions toward the statue of the Madonna, from which ANGELOTTI earlier removed the key.] CAVARADOSSI: It's true. And she was so engrossed in her prayer that I painted, without her noticing, her beautiful face. SACRISTAN [to himself]: Flee, Satan, flee! [c] CAVARADOSSI: Give me my paints. [The SACRISTAN complies. CAVARADOSSI paints rapidly, pausing frequently to observe. The SACRISTAN comes and goes, carrying a small basin in which he continues to wash the paintbrushes. Suddenly CAVARADOSSI stops painting; from his pocket he lifts a medalion containing a miniature portrait, and his eyes go from the medalion to the painting.] [d] Hidden harmony of diverse beauties! Flora is dark, my ardent beloved . . . SACRISTAN [to himself]: Joke with knaves, and let the saints be. CAVARADOSSI: And you, unknown beauty, crowned with blond locks, you have azure eyes -- Tosca has black eyes. SACRISTAN [to himself]: Joke with knaves, and let the saints be. CAVARADOSSI: The art in its mystery blends together the diverse beauties. But while I'm painting her, My sole thought, Tosca, is you! SACRISTAN [to himself, aside]: These various skirts who set themselves in competition with the Madonna give off the stench of Hell. [e] Joke with knaves, and let the saints be. But with these Voltairean dogs, enemies of the holy realm, there's no point talking. Joke with knaves, and let the saints be. For sure, they're sinners, the whole lot. Let us rather make the sign of the cross. Excellency, shall I go? CAVARADOSSI: Do as you please. [Continues to paint.] SACRISTAN: The basket is full. Are you serving penitence? CAVARADOSSI: I'm not hungry. SACRISTAN [with irony, rubbing his hands]: Oh! I'm sorry! [He can't suppress a gesture of joy and a glance of avidity toward the basket, which he picks up and sets aside.] Be sure to close up when you leave. CAVARADOSSI: Go! SACRISTAN: I'm going. [Goes out at the rear. CAVARADOSSI, turning his back to the Chapel, works. ANGELOTTI, believing the church deserted, appears behind the gate and inserts the key to open it.] CAVARADOSSI [turning at the creaking of the lock]: There's someone in there!
PUCCINI: Tosca: Act I, "Dammi i colori" . . . "Recondita armonia"
The first performance we're going to here is literally the aria and just the aria -- our [d]. Then we back up to include [c], which begins with the painter Cavaradossi's request that the Sacristan hand his paints up to him on the scaffold where his easel is set up, followed by the orchestral picture to which he begins to paint, and then his abrupt cessation of painting to observe the startling observation he's just observed.
[d] only: Plácido Domingo (t), Cavaradossi; Jack Bittner (b), the Sacristan; New York City Opera Orchestra, Emerson Buckley, cond. Live performance, Oct. 5, 1967
[c]-[d]: Giuseppe di Stefano (t), Cavaradossi; Melchiorre Luise (bs), the Sacristan; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Victor de Sabata, cond. EMI, recorded August 1953
Now let's push on just a bit more, to include the "aftermath" of the aria, our [e].
[c]-[e]: Giacomo Aragall (t), Cavaradossi; Spiro Malas (bs), the Sacristan; National Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded Feb.-May 1984
Act I, "Che fai?" . . . "Dammi i colori" . . . "Recondita armonia"
Now let's back up just a bit, to Cavaradossi's entrance, interrupting the Sacristan's morning prayer.
[b]-[e]: Richard Tucker (t), Cavaradossi; Salvatore Baccaloni (bs), the Sacristan; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Dimitri Mitropoulos, cond. Live performance, March 15, 1958
[b]-[e]: Franco Corelli (t), Cavaradossi; Ezio Flagello (bs), the Sacristan; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Kurt Adler, cond. Live performance, Apr. 7, 1962
Act I, "Angelus Domini" . . . "Che fai?" . . . "Dammi i colori" . . . "Recondita armonia"
Finally, let's add just one more bit, our [a]: the Sacristan reciting the "Angelus," which Cavaradossi interrupts when he enters.
[a]-[e]: Enrico Fissore (bs), the Sacristan; Roberto Alagna (t), Cavaradossi; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Antonio Pappano, cond. EMI, recorded August 2000
So who was the world's greatest tunesmith? Owing to a sudden, er, schedule availability, my answer will come in tomorrow's classical music post
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Raina Kabaivanska (at age 56) and Luciano Pavarotti (age 55, in a role I don't think he ever sang all that effectively) sing most of the Act I duet from Puccini's Tosca, with Daniel Oren conducting. On the plus side, the clip has subtitles. (It begins at Tosca's "Al tuo fianco sentire.") The phrase "Qual occhio al mondo . . ." comes at 4:29.
by Ken
Owing to technical difficulties (mine, and trust me, you don't want to get me started on that -- after staying up an entire night trying to do a couple of pathetically simple "clips," consisting of nothing more than an image tacked onto an MP3 audio file -- I'm prepared to swear that this whole Internet thing is a cruel hoax, and this YouTube thing a ridiculous scam that'll never catch on), this week's music program has been pushed back to next week.
We were going to have a name-the-composer quiz in anticipation of tomorrow's Sunday classical music post. I'm going to allow that damned Internet and YouTube a week to get their act together. For now, though, I want to pursue an issue that comes up in the course of the now-delayed discussion: What the heck makes a great melody a great melody?
Oh no, I'm not going to try to answer that question. I'm not that crazy. I'm simply going to register astonishment at how ill-equipped I am to even consider it, and I'm not sure there's anybody much better equipped. I don't see any fancier alternative to the reality that we recognize great tunes after the fact, by the power they have to take control of the consciousness, and burrow into the unconscious, of large numbers of listeners.
By way of an obvious example of how hopeless it seems to me to try to define or analyze this, I return to that great moment I wrote about last week in the Act I "love duet" of Tosca, a duet that barely manages to be one as Tosca and Cavaradossi, preoccupied with their own problems, mostly talk past one another. Finally comes that remarkable moment when Cavaradossi, responding to Tosca's jealous fixation on the eyes he has painted in his portrait of the Madonna, for which he has used the beautiful Marchese d'Attavanti as a model.
Suddenly Floria has Mario's full attention, and Puccini has given him one of the great opportunities in the tenor literature. "Qual occhio al mondo puo star di paro all'ardente occhio tuo nero?" "What eyes in the world can stand comparison with your ardent black eyes?" (For the record, Mario refers in both instances to "eye," singular, but it seems to me that in English that just sounds silly, especially when we're confronted with the image of Tosca's "black eye.") This is the kind of take-charge moment for which good singers pay their career dues, and great singers announce themselves. If our tenor can take charge of it, can pour forth the wash of honeyed tenor magic for which the composer set him up, this can be as arrestingly beautiful moment as has ever been conjured by the mind of man.
(Not entirely surprisingly, if I could hear only one singer here, it would be Jussi Bjoerling -- in the RCA Tosca with Zinka Milanov and Leonard Warren, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf -- even though his was a lighter grade of tenor than the role calls for. No tenor has matched, not just his vocal refulgence, but his seemingly intuitive sense of how to shape a Puccinian phrase for maximum buildup and release. No, I'm not thrilled with the above clip, but I decided it was the best I could do. A significantly younger Kabaivanska, a fine artist of whom I have some lovely memories, can be heard from Japan with tenor Flaviano Labo in 1973. And I've heard worse performances than the Standard Hour one, apparently from 1953, by the improbably cast Licia Albanese and Jan Peerce, who actually did sing these roles a little.)
But as I pointed out last week, from the analytical standpoint, the "melody" Puccini has given the tenor is mostly just a series of upward-and-downward scale passages. This is supposed to be melodic genius? Uh, well, 'fraid so.
Obviously there's no rational answer to as preposterous a question as "Who was the greatest melody-writer of all time?" But it can be a fun question to speculate on. And the field is wide open -- anyone who wants to throw in the name of Irving Berlin can make an awfully good case, based on both quality and the astonishing volume.
It's not hard to think of candidates for the title. What I find kind of surprising is that, at least in my mind, there's not much question about the answer. And obvious as the answer seems to me, I can't offer any kind of rational defense of it. Tomorrow I will content myself with a couple of examples.
