The complete idiot's guide to classical music (58 page)

It is Christmas Eve in Paris 1830, and the four penniless artists who share a garret in the Latin Quarter are enjoying an unexpected largesse of food and wine, courtesy of the musician, Schaunard, who has landed a job playing for a nobleman. His companions are Marcello, a painter, the philosopher Colline, and Rodolfo, a poet who until now has been feeding the stove with pages from his latest opus. Their celebration is rudely interrupted by the landlord, Benoit, demanding his back rent, but the foursome manage to befuddle him with wine and flattery, and then decide to continue the party at the Café Momus.

Rodolfo stays behind to finish some verses when a knock on the door brings in Mimi, asking for a match to light her candle. Love at first sight on Christmas Eve: What better way to set the scene for the unfolding of tragic destiny? The candle goes out, she drops her key, and their hands touch as they search for it. After back-to-back arias that are as famous as any in opera—“Che gelida mannina” (how icy your little hand is) and “Mi chiamano Mimi” (my name is Mimi)—Rodolfo and Mimi figure that two can live as pennilessly as one, and then leave arm in arm to tell the good news to their friends at the Café. Adding spice to the party is the arrival of the flamboyant Musetta, Marcello’s old flame, now being escorted by the elderly (and not overly bright) Alcindoro. Musetta, having attracted Marcello’s attention with a flashy waltz, sends Alcindoro on a manufactured errand, then waltzes off for another fling with Marcello. The others depart as well, after which the bewildered Alcindoro returns to find that the only thing awaiting him is the restaurant tab.

A few months later, there has been trouble in paradise. Marcello and Musetta have had an angry breakup, and Mimi and Rodolfo a more reluctant parting, Rodolfo fearing that Mimi’s poor health will be further undermined by the poverty in which they are forced to live. The four Bohemians are together again, trying to lift their lonely spirits with a rowdy dance and mock fight when Musetta bursts in with the news that the gravely ill Mimi has returned to die with her lover. Desperately, they try to save her: Musetta goes to sell her earrings for medicine, Colline to pawn his favorite overcoat, Marcello to summon a doctor. It is all too late. After recalling her ecstatic happiness with Rodolfo, Mimi dies quietly, and the curtain falls on the sobbing Rodolfo who calls out Mimi’s name one last time.

Bizet’s masterpiece is set in Seville in 1820 and has a classic theme: A man torn between innocent love and lethal lust. Don José is a corporal in a troop of dragoons and is engaged to the sweet and lovable Micaela. One day, though, he meets temptation in the form of a sultry Gypsy who works in the local cigarette factory. We all know that smoking can be dangerous to your health, and when Carmen throws him a butt (all right, make it a flower), the trap is sprung. Soon a fight breaks out among the cigarette workers, Carmen is arrested, and guess who is sent to guard her? This time around, Carmen’s wiles succeed. She promises to let Don José come up and see her sometime (in fact, as soon as possible, at a local inn), and the smitten corporal allows her to escape.

This gets him in hot water with his captain, naturally, and Don José has to desert his troop in order to keep his rendezvous with Carmen. A toreador also comes to the inn and is immediately attracted to the Gypsy girl, but she being faithful to one man (at a time), pays him no heed (well, only a little heed), and then runs off with Don José to hide in the mountains.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Carmen isn’t the only double-dealer in the operatic book. In Massenet’s
Manon,
the lovers are arrested for (allegedly) cheating at cards; and when
The Girl of the Golden West
wins the freedom of her lover in a poker game with the Sheriff, she definitely had a couple of aces up her sleeve. Gambling secrets are at the heart (and in the title) of Tchaikovsky’s
Queen of Spades,
and for more genteel shufflings, there’s Samuel Barber’s one-acter,
A Hand of Bridge
.

There’s not all that much to do in a smuggler’s camp, which is where they wind up, so Carmen reads her fortune in the cards. Better she should have stayed with the flowers: The death card appears each time. Meanwhile, that secret hiding place seems to be on every road map in the area, since presently Micaela appears looking for her lover, and the toreador shows up too, looking for Carmen. Don José and the Toreador start fighting, but the smugglers separate them, and as the bullfighter saunters down the hill singing his famous song, Micaela convinces Don José to go home to his dying mother.

Well, you get the picture. Carmen has now pledged her amorous allegiance to the toreador. Don José is wildly jealous and—outside the bull ring, where the crowds are cheering the toreador’s exploits—he gives Carmen one last chance to return to him. She disdainfully refuses, throwing the ring he gave her at his feet. Pushed beyond all endurance, Don José stabs her to death, then sobs out his love for her as the curtain falls.

Fidelity is certainly the subject of Beethoven’s only opera, but the nobility and courage of the faithful wife was closer to the composer’s heart, which is why “Leonore” was his preferred title. In any case, the heroine is the wife of Don Florestan, a noble Spaniard who was captured by a political rival, Don Pizarro.

The opera opens in a 17th century fortress near Seville, where Florestan has been languishing in a dungeon for two years. He is rumored to be dead, but Leonore believes otherwise, and disguised as a boy, Fidelio, has wangled a job as assistant jailor at that same prison. Pizarro, having received word that the Minister of the Interior, Don Fernando, is coming on an inspection tour, determines to get rid of the evidence. He orders the jailor, Rocco, to dig a grave for the mysterious prisoner, and on the pretext of easing his workload, Leonore follows Rocco down to the dungeon. There, she realizes that the gaunt, chained man in the cell is indeed her husband, but their reunion is interrupted by mean old Pizarro, who is bound and determined to dispatch his enemy before the Minister arrives.

“First kill his wife!” Leonore cries, and when the shocked Pizarro attempts to accommodate her, she pulls a revolver and holds the villain at bay. You know how the cavalry rides to the rescue in a western? That’s what happens here, as a trumpet call announces the arrival of the Minister, and Don Fernando, having assessed the truth of the matter, frees Florestan, sends Pizarro off to his justly deserved fate, and releases the other prisoners. Everybody then joins in a chorus of rejoicing and gratitude to Leonore, the faithful wife who has saved them all. Surprise! Here’s one grand opera that does indeed have a happy ending.

The story takes place in Scotland at the end of the 16th century, and the Ravenswood and Lammermoor families have been feuding and fighting, so naturally Lucia (Lucy Ashton, a Lammermoor) has fallen in love with Edgardo (Edgar, the last of the Ravenswoods). Lucia’s brother Enrico (Lord Henry Ashton) wants to solidify his fortunes by marrying his sister off to the wealthy Arturo (Lord Arthur Bucklaw). And this all before the curtain goes up! When it does, Enrico finds out about his sister’s infatuation with his sworn enemy and Edgardo, while swearing his eternal love for Lucia, figures he’d better hightail it to France until the heat’s off. Meanwhile, back in the Lammermoor’s castle, Enrico shows Lucia a fake letter Edgardo supposedly wrote to another woman, and the gullible Lucia, never suspecting that her brother is a conniving rat, reluctantly agrees to marry Arturo.

The wedding takes place, and guess who comes to dinner? Yep, it’s Edgardo, back from France, furious at Lucia’s infidelity and lavishing curses on the entire Ashton family. Edgardo and Enrico start fighting, but are separated and agree to settle things once and for all in a duel at dawn. Back at the wedding party, though, Lucia has gone around the bend, dispatching her new husband with a dagger, then staggering downstairs for the mad scene that the audience has been patiently sitting through the rest of the opera waiting for. With a wild flourish of trills and roulades, she evokes past memories, conjures up ghosts, and generally carries on until she collapses, near death.

The next morning, Edgardo awaits the duel, hoping Enrico will kill him and thus end his misery, but when he receives word that Lucia has died, calling his name, Edgardo decides not to wait for Enrico and stabs himself to death. With nobody left to sing anything else, the curtain falls.

The story started in 1888 with
Madame Chrysantheme,
a French novel by Pierre Loti, who had spent time in Japan as a naval officer. It arrived on the stage ten years later as a play by the American David Belasco, and continues today in its Broadway transformation as
Miss Saigon.
For opera lovers, though, the story of Madame Butterfly reached its pinnacle of dramatic poignancy in Puccini’s 1904 masterpiece
Madama Butterfly.

A 15-year-old girl named Cio-Cio-San (“Cio-cio” is the Japanese word for butterfly; “San” corresponds to Madame or Mrs.) has fallen in love with a U.S. Navy lieutenant stationed in Nagasaki. The callow young man, named Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, weds her in a Japanese ceremony, knowing that it is not binding upon him. Sure enough, when his enlistment is up, Pinkerton returns home with the vague promise of coming back to his bride “Un bel di” (one fine day).

That thought (and the gorgeous aria of that title) sustains Cio-Cio-San and her love child for the next three years as she looks out to sea and waits in vain for her lover’s return. Finally, the sound of a cannon announces the arrival of Pinkerton’s ship. Madame Butterfly is ecstatic, but Pinkerton, now stricken with remorse and unable to face Cio-Cio-San, rushes off without seeing her. He has left it to his American wife to tell Mme. Butterfly the real reason behind their return: To take the child back to America. Cio-Cio-San agrees, bids an impassioned farewell to her son, and intoning the inscription on a dagger, “death without honor is better than life with dishonor,” she commits ritual hari-kari, while a bit of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sounds in the background.

We’re now in 16th century Mantua, where the Duke is an unscrupulous libertine and his servant, Rigoletto, is a humpbacked jester who delights in playing tricks on the nobility at court. One of the nobles levels furious curses at Rigoletto, while others, deciding on some revengeful trickery of their own, arrange to abduct Gilda, whom they believe to be Rigoletto’s mistress.

But that was no mistress, that was his daughter, the light of Rigoletto’s life, the young and innocent Gilda. Unknown to Daddy, Gilda has been courted by the Duke, disguised as a student, and when the nobles bring the abducted Gilda to him, the Duke takes full advantage of the situation and deflowers her.

When Rigoletto discovers the truth, he vows vengeance on the Duke, going so far as to hire an assassin, Sparafucile, to get rid of the seducer. The scheme they concoct is for Sparafucile’s young and decidedly not-so-innocent sister, Maddalena, to entice the Duke into an assignation, where he can be conveniently stabbed to death. The scheme might have worked except that Gilda by now is actually in love with the Duke. The scene is now set for the famous Quartet. Inside the house where the dastardly deed is to be done, the Duke and Maddalena are playfully sparking; outside, Rigoletto is trying to convince his daughter of the Duke’s treachery.

The denouement is not long in coming. Maddalena, having herself fallen under the Duke’s spell, begs her brother to kill the hunchback instead. Being an honorable assassin, Sparafucile won’t agree to dispose of one of his own clients, but he does consent to a substitute murder if a convenient victim should come along. Gilda, who has been eavesdropping all this while, determines to save her lover’s life, knocks on the door, and becomes that victim, promptly dispatched by the assassin’s knife.

Soon Rigoletto returns, receives the body in a sack, and prepares to savor his revenge by tossing it into the river when he hears the Duke’s song coming from the house. In a panic he tears open the sack, where he finds his daughter with strength enough only to confess that she chose to die for the man she loves and to ask her father’s forgiveness. The nobleman’s curse (remember the nobleman’s curse?) had finally come home to roost.

 
Important Things to Know
Curses are almost as popular as cards in opera plots, especially since they usually come true. When Santuzza curses her false lover, you can be pretty sure that he won’t survive the duel with the other woman’s jealous husband. When Paolo is tricked into joining the Council of Genoa in wishing damnation on the villain in “Simone Boccanegra” (it’s Paolo himself, though nobody else knows it yet), you can bet your last lire that he’ll be hauled off to the gallows before the final curtain falls. And in Wagner’s opera, when Isolde curses herself and Tristan, you don’t really have to read the plot synopsis to figure out that several passionate love scenes (and three or four hours) later, the lovers will have to resume their romance in the next world.