Sunday Classics: Remembering Margaret Price, Part 9 -- Verdi's "A Masked Ball" with two Prices and another luminary

VERDI: Aida: Act III, Aida, "O patria mia"

Margaret Price sings Aida's Act III aria, "O patria mia," in San Francisco, 1981.

by Ken

We're still remembering the Welsh soprano Margaret Price, and finishing up today with our listenback to her notable Verdi roles. Last night we sampled her Élisabeth in Don Carlos and heard more of her Desdemona in Otello. Today, as we did in Part 7, devoted to Otello, we're going to use our Margaret Price retrospective as an occasion to focus on the opera itself, in this case the middle-period gem A Masked Ball, based on the assassination of Sweden's King Gustav III, but transposed -- at the insistence of censors apprehensive about allowing the depiction of an actual royal assassination onstage -- to a wild and woolly colonial Boston, where the erstwhile King Gustav serves as the governor, Riccardo.

To get us in a Masked Ball kind of mood, let's listen to the brief orchestral Prelude, from a complete recording of the opera conducted by probably the most interesting Verdi conductor on records, Gianandrea Gavazzeni.

VERDI: Un Ballo in maschera: Prelude

Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, cond. DG, recorded 1960


FOR TONIGHT'S QUICK AMELIA-BASED
SAMPLING OF A MASKED BALL, CLICK HERE

REMEMBERING MARGARET PRICE: The series so far

Career beginnings (plus the Act I Love Duet from Verdi's Otello)
Part 1: From Handel's Messiah to Wagner's Tristan, emerging in Mozart
Part 2: The Countess in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro (plus "Or sai chi l'onore" from Don Giovanni)
Part 3: Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte
[Plus postscript: more of "Soave sia il vento" in the later post Sunday, Bloody Sunday and the depths of Mozart's humanity]
Part 4: Pamina in Mozart's Magic Flute
Part 5: Agathe in Weber's Der Freischütz
Part 6: Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos
Part 7: Verdi's Otello with Price and others as Desdemona
Part 8: Elisabeth in Verdi's Don Carlos and more of Price as Desdemona
Part 9: Verdi's A Masked Ball with Margaret Price, Leontyne Price, and Maria Callas as Amelia (today)
Still to come: Price the song-singer

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(1) Is Aida really lost to us for good in any meaningful way, and (2) does it matter?

Any history book, any Aida booklet note will tell you about the curious circumstances of the opera's birth, starting with the curious circumstance that Verdi didn't want to write it.

Not that he had anything against it--"it" didn't exist yet, of course. He was nearing 58 when he received the first, apparently secret feeler from the Khedive of Egypt about writing an opera to celebrate the openings of the Suez Canal and the new Cairo Opera House. (Okay, this age-old story turns out to have some kinks in it, but we'll come to that; you just can't entirely trust those history books and booklet notes. Eventually we're going to have to pursue it all the way into a footnote.)

Actually, I just consulted an Aida booklet note myself--to be exact, the typically chatty one by longtime Metropoolitan Opera Assistant Manager Francis Robinson accompanying the original RCA issue of its 1961 Aida recording--to which RCA lost all rights decades ago, back when there still was such a thing as RCA--conducted by (not yet Sir) Georg Solti, with Leontyne Price in her most famous role plus Jon Vickers, Rita Gorr, and Robert Merrill. This was my first Aida recording, and it's still my favorite. (No, the picture isn't of my trusty old RCA LP box. It's a Decca CD reissue--probably doesn't sound as good, and doesn't have chatty Francis inside either.)

In our Francis's chatty note I was reminded that the Khedive's plan was to approach what he considered the Big Three of contemporary operatic composition: Italy's Signor Verdi, France's Charles Gounod, and Germany's Richard Wagner. I was reminded too that we don't seem to know whether approaches were ever made to Gounod and Wagner.

This was back in 1961, remember. By now, we probably know every detail of these hypothetical correspondences, including that the Khedive took to addressing Wagner as "Poopsie." It was a less knowing time, that 1961. We knew less about these things, but of course hoped one day to know more, believing that it would make better people of us. Go figure.*

Anyway, all the sources will tell you the story: Verdi didn't want to undertake to write an opera for Egypt because he didn't want to undertake to write anything. Incredibly, he thought he was retired.

What makes this so incredible is that we know from our vantage point in time how much important work still lay ahead of Verdi: not just Aida itself, but the seemingly endless revision of his then-most-recent opera, Don Carlos (the most problematic creation of his career); the revision of another of his most personal operas, Simon Boccanegra; and, oh yes, the composition of the monumental Requiem and of two Shakespeare-derived operas, Otello and Falstaff, incomparable masterpieces written at the urging of, and with librettos by, the young writer-composer Arrigo Boito, who earned his stripes on the Boccanegra rehab project.

In fact, at the time of his "retirement" Verdi had more than two decades' worth of work ahead of him. When Falstaff, that improbable final masterpiece was introduced to the world, in February 1893, the composer was in his 80th year. At least as surprising is that this most pessimistic of creative artists rounded out his life's work with an incandescent comedy, shimmering with hope vested in the innocence of the young lovers Nannetta and Fenton.

So what, back in 1869, was all this business about retirement? As a matter of fact, Verdi sort of really meant it. What we think of as his "late" period is in effect a period of retirement--from, that is, the workaday world of operas hammered out in a frenzy of deadline chaos, making it almost impossible to get the damned things right, to make serious artistic statements of them.

We know how unhappy Verdi had been with his early creative years, the period before Rigoletto (1851), which he referred to as his years "in the galley." Even that period produced a lot of enduringly memorable work, including what seem to me three full-fledged masterpieces: Ernani, the first version of Macbeth, and Luisa Miller. Then, in the 18 or so years between Rigoletto and the time Verdi judged himself ready to "retire," he composed Il Trovatore, La Traviata, Les Vepres siciliennes, the first version of Simon Boccanegra, Un Ballo in maschera, both the first and revised versions of La Forza del destino, and the original Paris version of Don Carlos.

That's an awesome run by any standard. But it seems to have left Verdi increasingly disenchanted and frustrated with the real-world conditions of making opera. And it all seemed to him like one hell of a lousy way to create serious art.

In the end, thank goodness, he allowed himself to be talked into undertaking the Egyptian project, which became Aida. What with one thing and another--including the minor inconvenience of the Franco-Prussian War--it didn't come close to making the opening of the Suez Canal or the Cairo Opera House. (We're still going with the old story about the opera being commissioned for the dual openings. What? You mean you didn't read the footnote?)

And in the end, Verdi went through much of the familiar craziness of writing on commission, having to have the thing ready on someone else's schedule and dealing with all the casting crazinesses of real-world opera houses, rather than working in privacy, just him and his librettist, with the understanding that nothing was "ready" unless and until he said it was ready, the way he and Boito eventually wrote Otello and Falstaff.

Nevertheless, in Aida Verdi gave us a mighty demonstration of what he could do when he flexed his artistic muscles. For all that the opera can be seen as lacking in personal characterization (it isn't really, but you can see how it can be seen that way), the ambition is larger. In imagining his ancient Egypt, Verdi had to create in music an internally coherent civilization. Or rather two of them, Egypt and its archenemy Ethiopia, complete with political, religious, and social-class structures.

Verdi took the Egyptian setting seriously, and tried to imbue both the text and the music with as much authentic Egyptian character as he could. But it wasn't "authentic" history he was after. He had always been interested in the underpinnings of society, emphatically including politics, religion, and their intersection--at the core of that dark, bloody masterpiece Don Carlos. In Aida he trained his powers on characterizing the society's belief system.

This is reflected in all seven of the opera's scenes, but in particular the matchless power and surpassing beauty of the opening scene, in which the King and the high priest Ramfis (the two authority figures both cast with basses) preside over the sendoff of the army against the invading Ethiopians (if you wanted to see Ramfis as a sort of Cheney-like warmonger, you might look at the Egyptian intel on which the decision to go to war is based, the Messenger's breathless account of the invasion of "the sacred soil of Egypt" by the "Ethiopian barbarians," laying waste to the fields and "already marching on Thebes," and wonder whether perhaps his testimony was coached); the Temple Scene (Act I, Scene 2), in which Ramfis seeks the blessing of the gods for their choice to lead the army into battle, the young captain Radames; the Triumphal Scene (Act II, Scene 2), in which the victorious army's return is celebrated, the Ethiopian prisoners are marched in and their fate decided; and the Judgment Scene (in Act IV, Scene 1) in which Radames is tried for treason and condemned to die.

It escapes me how anyone could fail to appreciate the power of these scenes, and it utterly confounds me why anyone who performs the piece wouldn't relish the challenge of bringing them to life. Which set me up for a fall a couple of years ago when I finally caught up with the current Met production.

I have to explain that I had all too many encounters with the production it replaced, a stripped-down travesty inflicted by hack director John Dexter. At the time I thought it represented some sort of artistic bottoming out in terms of a staging that fundamentally disrespected Aida. It didn't help that most of the time the show was additionally afflicted with the ain't-got-no-rhythm death grip of Maestro Jimmy L, which has drained the life out of so many Verdi operas at the Met.

Well, the replacement production let me spluttering with rage, almost nostalgic for its hateful predecessor. The people responsible for the present abomination don't even seem to feel any need to disguise their contempt for the piece, which they clearly think is so irredeemably STOO-pid that there's nothing to be done but to turn those public scenes into a giant fraternity par-tay!

The issue, I have to stress, isn't elephants vs. no elephants, as it's often perceived. It's a simple matter of basic respect for the work you're taking money to perform, for its lifeblood and that of the characters who inhabit it.

What made that performance all the more depressing was that, against normal expectations in these days, when casting Aida effectively is so difficult (a polite way of saying "impossible") a task, the cast wasn't absolutely hopeless. With some real artistic direction, those folks might have had some sort of Aida in them. Instead they were plunked into an environment that squealed with gleeful scorn at the utter silliness of it all.

Ever since, I've been trying to think of a good reason why the people responsible shouldn't be lined up on the roomy stage of the Met and machine-gunned into a better world. I'm sure there is a good reason; I just haven't thought of it. The best I've been able to come up with is: Where would you stop? Clearly the people who hired the perpetrators are every bit as responsible, but what about all the other enablers, on up to the critics and audiences who let them get away with such a travesty?

While I sat through it, I kept wondering: What would someone who had never encountered Aida before take away from this performance? What would such a person think of those of us who regard it as a cornerstone of our cultural heritage?

Now we don't want to end on this down note, so let's end with a video clip. Who doesn't like a video clip? Ours doesn't look so great, or sound so great, and for that matter it's not such a great performance. But it is unquestionably a performance of sorts, and I hope it communicates some of the power of Verdi's third-to-last opera.

The clip is from the telecast of Leontyne Price's last stage performance at the Met, on Jan. 3, 1985, nearly 24 years after her first Aida at the Old Met. This is from the Nile Scene (Act III), the scene that follows the Triumphal Scene. In that scene, Aida--an Ethopian woman, and the personal slave of Amneris, the daughter of the king of Egypt--was startled to see, among the captured Ethiopians, her father. The fact that Aida's father is among the captives was of great interest to the assembled Egyptians, suggesting that in the social hierarchy Aida, although a slave, is a person of some stature by virtue of her status as Amneris's slave.

What the Egyptians don't know is that Aida's father is in fact the Ethiopian king, Amonasro. And in the Nile Scene he moves in on her, making politics intensely personal. He knows, he tells her [0:28], that she is in love with Radames, and that he loves her, and that the daughter of the pharaohs is her rival. He tells her [0:53] that, if she wishes it, she can have it all: her fatherland, the throne, and love. [1:20] "You will see again the perfumed forests, the cool valleys, our golden temples." Aida herself imagines it [1:29]. Amonasro reminds her [2:05] of the ravages perpetrated on her homeland by the marauding Egyptians: houses, temples, and altars profaned; virgins raped and bound in chains; mothers, old men, and chldren murdered.

However, he tells her, it can all be avenged and reversed, he tells her; their countrymen are ready to take arms. He just needs to know which route the Egyptians will take. And Aida is the one person who can provide the missing information. [2:20] "I know you are waiting for Radames here. And he loves you, and he commands the Egyptians. Do you understand?" Finally poor Aida does understand, and is horrified [3:15].

Amonasro now accelerates into open rage [3:59], conjuring the horrors her country and countrymen will suffer, all accusing her [4:24]: "Because of you the fatherland is dying." He conjures up the ghost of her dead mother [4:39], who curses her. Finally he hurls at her one of the most famous accusations in opera [4:58]:

"Non sei mia figlia. Dei faraoni tu sei la schiava!"
("You're not my daughter. Of the pharaohs you're the slave.")

Aida, broken, begs her father for mercy [5:33], and he comes back with one of Verdi's most famous, most beautiful, and at the same time, because of the situation, most ambiguous phrases [6:43]:

"Pensa che un popolo, vinto, straziato, per te, per te soltanto risorger puo."
("Consider that a people beaten and destroyed, through you--supported by you can rise again.")

That, of course, is the ballgame. Poor Aida doesn't have a chance.

What we have here is Price well past her prime, with conducting that barely qualifies as pedestrian, and it's that dreadful old production originally staged by John Dexter. Still, it's hard to ruin this scene, given a couple of performers who can deliver some of its basic requirements. And Aida was once one of Price's greatest roles, and bass-baritone Simon Estes is a sturdy Amonasro.


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*Actually, there's a funny story here. No, really, you'll laugh. I see via Wikipedia that Julian Budden, in Vol. 3 of his massive study of Verdi's operas, debunks the story that Aida was commissioned for the canal and opera-house openings. Apparently he informs us that Verdi summarily rejected the Khedive's invitation to compose some sort of occasional piece for the occasion, on the ground that he didn't compose occasional pieces. Then, I guess, the Khedive came back with the more substantive offer of an operatic commission. I wouldn't know, having dropped out somewhere between Budden's Vols. 1 and 2. Well, I eventually bought Vol. 2 (in paperback), but that doesn't mean I did more than dip into it. We all make choices, and if I have to choose between chatty Francis and finger-waggling Julian, well, that's not much of a contest.

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[5/15/2011] Remembering Margaret Price, Part 9 -- Verdi's "A Masked Ball" with two Prices and another luminary (continued)

The conjuring of the seer Ulrica (mezzo-soprano) Elena Obraztsova) at La Scala, 1978, Claudio Abbado conducting

What an opera! It's the only Somma/Verdi collaboration (Verdi had started, but never completed, setting Somma's King Lear libretto), which is a pity. The action is compelling and entertaining; the verse are sturdy, frequenlty elegant, and sufficiently varied in form to allow Verdi great freedom. Arias, scenas, and ensembles (what ensembles!) of every size, shape, and temper -- never before had Verdi written with such consistent harmonic and rhythmic boldness and assurance; the melodies are not only unfailingly, lavishly first-rate, but also intimately contoured to the lines of the story. It is worth noting that Ballo is Verdi's only pre-Aida opera regularly performed without musical tampering.

-- me, reviewing a reissue of the Callas-di Stefano-Gobbi-Barbieri-Serafin-EMI Ballo in the June 1974 High Fidelity

It amazes me that I can quote something I wrote this long ago without cringing, but this still says what I believe about A Masked Ball -- and about that recording. I wrote that Antonino Votto "shapes the music beautifully," and that --

only the best will do for the three principal roles, all among Verdi's greatest, and Callas, di Stefano, and Gobbi are vocally and dramatically superb -- in each case this may be the singer's best Verdi recording. This, [Fedora] Barbieri's second Ulrica, is the most securely sung on records. . . . [Silvio] Maionica and [Nicola] Zaccaria are imposing conspirators.

Oh, I wrote some stuff later in the review that I wonder at now, but we don't need to go into that.


WE'RE NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING FANCY
IN OUR QUICK MASKED BALL SURVEY

Since we're focusing on the heroine, Amelia, to go with our Margaret Price excerpts, from the second complete Ballo conducted by Sir Georg Solti, I've chosen a performance featuring the greatest Amelia of my experience, Leontyne Price, and what seems to me Maria Callas's finest operatic studio recording. (The hoopla goes to the Tosca with Giuseppe di Stefano and Tito Gobbi, with Victor de Sabata conducting, and these folks might well have had a helluva Tosca in them, but this doesn't sound like it to me. I speculate that producer Walter Legge with his middlebrow control-freak "perfectionism" drilled the individuality and life out of everyone's performances. By contrast the Ballo finds all its contributors really contributing.)

Let's get listening now, and ease our way into our three performances by hearing the Prelude from each. The piece works out themes that will be heard in the opening scene, the first two representing two strains among the governor's court -- the first loyal, the second budding-insurrectionist, punctuated by the broad tune to which Riccardo, seeing her name on the invitation list for his upcoming masked ball, voices his infatuation for the beautiful Amelia, the wife of his closest adviser, confidant, and friend, Renato.

These recordings weren't chosen as the "best performances" of these excerpts, though I will certainly stand the Amelias of Leontyne Price and Maria Callas up with any I've heard, and while their associates here may not all be in the same class, they're not exactly zeroes either. One thing we could certainly have used is a really thundering Renato for the opening of Act III. I was sorely tempted to slip in Gino Bechi from the old recording with Beniamino Gigli and Maria Caniglia, but in the end I stuck to the principle of keeping it simple.

Un Ballo in maschera: Prelude

National Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded May-June 1982 and May 1983
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Feb. 26, 1966
Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Antonino Votto, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 4-9, 1956

SPLENDID FELLOW OR TYRANT? OR BOTH?

Of Verdi's roles for the lighter-weight lyric-tenor voice, there's no question that Ballo's Riccardo is the juiciest, and it's hardly surprising that tenors who can sing the role love it. Our governor thinks of himself as, well, a prince -- gallant, generous, and just. And some of his subjects think of him that way too. Others, however, see him as self-indulgent, arbitrary, and downright tyrannical.

Of course it's only in opera that a man may be secretly madly in love with his most cherished and trusted friend's wife. So let's indulge ourselves with this extraordinary and unheard-of spectacle, and as we focus on the object of Riccardo's passion, Amelia, we can see both his lighter and his darker sides. On the bright side, for a man who is evidently unaccustomed to denying himself, he has indeed loyally (and sensibly) kept his secret passion secret. On the dark side, when he happens to learn that his passion is requited, well, let's listen.

In the opera's second scene, the governor and his court decide as a lark to pay a visit to a local seer who has been brought up on charges before him. By coincidence -- and what would opera be without conicidence? -- during their jolly outing Ulrica, the seer, learns that she has a highly confidential client wishing to see her, and she has the room cleared for her. Except for Riccardo, that is, who recognizes the envoy as a servant of Amelia and stays behind, hidden. He learns that the desperate Amelia has come seeking help, seeking "peace," to be precise, from her secret passion for the man who rules them all. Ulrica directs her to a terrifying destination, a desolate field to the west of the city, the site of the gallows, where by moonlight, at midnight (when else?), she can pluck an herb that will give her the obliviousness she's looking for. Amelia expresses relief and hope; Riccardo, giddiness and excitement.

I apologize for not including English texts, as I usually do. It was just too much work, and would have occupied an overwhelming chunk of online real estate, and I never know whether anyone makes any use of them anyway. I hoped to find a convenient online libretto, but I didn't. If you want to complain, you have every right.

Act I, Scene 2: Ulrica-Amelia-Riccardo scene: Ulrica, "Che v'agita così" ("What trouble you so?"), Amelia, "Pace, svellermi dal petto" ("Peace, to root out of my breast") . . . Riccardo "Che ascolto! Anima mia!" ("What do I hear! My soul!")

Christa Ludwig (ms), Ulrica; Margaret Price (s), Amelia; Luciano Pavarotti (t), Riccardo; National Philharmonic Orchestrta, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded May-June 1982 and May 1983
Mignon Dunn (ms), Ulrica; Leontyne Price (s), Amelia; Carlo Bergonzi (t), Riccardo; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Feb. 26, 1966
Fedora Barbieri (ms), Ulrica; Maria Callas (s), Amelia; Giuseppe di Stefano (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Antonino Votto, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 4-9, 1956

WHAT SHE DID TO GET OVER LOVE

Act II is set -- where else? -- in "a lonely spot at the foot of a steep hill, in the vicinity of Boston," by the gallows. "Here is the horrible place were death is coupled with crime," the heavily veiled Amelia declares in her dramatic recitative as she arrives at the spot designated by Ulrica. Everything around her fills her with loathing and terror, even of death. As midnight arrives, her imagination runs wild, and in the first of her two gorgeous arias, "Ma dall'arido stelo divulsa," she releases some of her dread. (The photo shows Leontyne Price as Amelia in Act II in San Francisco.)

Act II, Prelude . . . Recitative and Aria, Amelia, "Ecco l'orrido campo" ("Here is the horrible field") . . . "Ma dall'arido stelo divulsa" ("But when from the withered stem")

Margaret Price (s), Amelia; National Philharmonic Orchestrta, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded May-June 1982 and May 1983
Leontyne Price (s), Amelia; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Feb. 26, 1966
Maria Callas (s), Amelia; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Antonino Votto, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 4-9, 1956

RICCARDO TENDS TO GET WHAT HE WANTS

This excerpt follows immediately upon the preceding. At the height of Amelia's terrors, who should show up but . . . Riccardo? It may be that he wants nothing more than the satisfaction of hearing her own up that she loves him. Maybe so; they're interrupted before we, or they, can find out. (There turns out to be quite a mob hanging out on the horrid field this night.) Is it necessary to add that this scene develops into one of Verdi's most rapturous love duets?

Act II, Riccardo-Amelia scene: Riccardo, "Teco io sto" ("I am at your side")

Luciano Pavarotti (t), Riccardo; Margaret Price (s), Amelia; National Philharmonic Orchestrta, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded May-June 1982 and May 1983
Carlo Bergonzi (t), Riccardo; Leontyne Price (s), Amelia; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Feb. 26, 1966
Giuseppe di Stefano (t), Riccardo; Maria Callas (s), Amelia; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Antonino Votto, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 4-9, 1956

"BLOOD IS CALLED FOR, AND YOU WILL DIE"

The new arrivals who interrupted the Act II duet were, first, the ever-loyal Renato come to warn that a party of conspirators was drawing nigh to dispatch him and, then, the conspirators themselves. Before their arrival, Renato promised his friend to escort the lady back to the city without attempting to discover her identity, and when the veil slipped off and the paramour turned out to be Renato's wife, the thwarted would-be assassin-liberators at least came away with a hearty laugh for their trouble.

Now we're back home with Renato and Amelia, and rage doesn't get expressed with much more believably explosive musical violence than we hear in the orchestral prelude and then Renato thunders, "Sangue vuolsi e tu morrai" -- blood is called for and she will die.

Amelia attempts to reason with him -- "One instant, it's true, I loved him," she allows -- but Renato at present isn't a man susceptible to reason. In her second great aria, "Morrò, ma prima in grazia," Amelia owns that she will die but asks, as one last favor, to be allowed first to see their child one final time.

Act III, Prelude . . . Renato-Amelia scene: Renato, "A tal colpa è nulla il pianto" ("For such a blow tears avail nothing") . . . Aria, Amelia, "Morrò, ma prima in grazia" ("I will die, but first in pity")

Leo Nucci (b), Renato; Margaret Price (s), Amelia; National Philharmonic Orchestrta, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded May-June 1982 and May 1983
Robert Merrill (b), Renato; Leontyne Price (s), Amelia; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Feb. 26, 1966
Tito Gobbi (b), Renato; Maria Callas (s), Amelia; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Antonino Votto, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 4-9, 1956


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