The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (35 page)

As Edgardo waits outside the castle for his duel with Enrico, he hears a funeral knell.
Raimondo tells him that it signals Lucia’s death.
Grief-stricken, Edgardo kills himself.

What to listen for

Lucia is a strongly characterized role, and a good interpreter will make the girl’s mental instability quite clear from the aria in the second scene.
Some accomplished prima donnas have themselves performed the harp obbligato on stage.
Her personality develops through superb duets with Edgardo and Enrico – the first expressing rapturously hopeful love, the second defiance melting into despairing resignation.
At the centre of the opera is the superb sextet which builds within itself from the first tenor–baritone duet and then moves into a grandly scaled finale which brings Act II to a close.
Act III opens with a sometimes omitted encounter between Edgardo and Enrico.
It continues with Lucia’s celebrated mad scene and concludes with an almost equally impressive aria for the mourning Edgardo.

There has been much debate in the last forty years over the type of soprano which should sing Lucia.
Its two most famous recent exponents, Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, both had large voices with extraordinary flexibility and fullness in the upper range, capable of sustaining heavy dramatic assignments such as Turandot, but the role was originally written for Fanny Persiani, who by all accounts had a thin, light, piercing soprano: Beverly Sills may therefore be considered a more ‘authentic’ Lucia than Callas or Sutherland.
Similarly, the role of Edgardo seems to have been intended for a lighter- and brighter-voiced tenor than is commonly cast today: certainly few of today’s exponents could reach anywhere near the top E flat dictated by Donizetti at the end of the duet with Lucia.

As notated in Donizetti’s manuscript score, the mad scene does not contain the famous extravagantly florid cadenza sung with flute obbligato – this evolved through the applause-seeking tendencies of several nineteenth-century prima donnas eager to show off their high notes and agility.

In performance

The characterization of Lucia – the overimaginative girl, mourning her mother’s death and prey to visions – sometimes leads producers such as Robert Carsen in Geneva or Francesca Zambello at the Met into the realms of expressionist fantasy.
Efforts to stay within the Scots setting usually end up reminiscent of the tartan shortbread biscuit box, and this is not an easy opera to stage well, unless the cast is led by singers whose acting falls the right side of ham.

Recording

CD: Maria Callas (Lucia); Herbert von Karajan (cond.).
EMI 63631 2

Don
Pasquale

Three acts. First performed Rome, 1843.

Libretto by Giovanni Ruffini and the composer

The last of the great comic operas in the witty, quicksilver Rossinian style.

Plot

In nineteenth-century Rome, the fussy old bachelor Don Pasquale is determined to marry in order to disinherit his nephew Ernesto, who has fallen in love with the spirited young widow Norina.
Pasquale asks his friend Dr Malatesta to help him.
Malatesta agress, although he is secretly in league with Ernesto and Norina, and the lady he introduces to Pasquale as his convent-educated sister Sofronia is none other than Norina in disguise.

Pasquale is smitten by this apparently demure creature whose only hobby is sewing.
But the moment he has signed the marriage contract, bequeathing ‘Sofronia’ half his fortune, she turns nasty, nagging him mercilessly, making extravagant
demands and turning his household upside-down.

When Pasquale catches ‘Sofronia’ in assignation with another man (in fact Ernesto), various complications and confusions ensue, all of them craftily engineered by Malatesta.
Eventually, Sofronia’s true identity is revealed and Pasquale ends up happy to divest himself of a troublesome wife by annulling the marriage and blessing the union of Norina and Ernesto.

What to listen for

The score was written in a couple of weeks, absorbing several pieces lifted from obscure areas of the composer’s
œuvre.
One would never know it: the music radiates an effortless unity of style, every bar is full of wit and charm, and there isn’t a dull moment.
The most memorable numbers include Malatesta’s baritone aria ‘Bella siccome un angelo’, Norina’s characterful soprano aria in the second scene and Ernesto’s serenade followed by his duet with Norina in the final scene.
All the roles are gratifying to sing, though Ernesto lies high for most modern tenors, and the cabaletta of his aria is frequently transposed down.
So many baritones with a comic touch want to sing the essentially bass role of Pasquale that they often cheat by leaving out some of the low notes!

Perhaps the very first comic opera to use strings, rather than the traditional harpsichord or fortepiano, as accompaniment for the recitative.

In performance

The scenario updates nicely: Patrick Mason’s production at ENO shows Norina running a souvenir kiosk and Malatesta riding a Vespa scooter, but such gags should be balanced by characterization which suggests the poignancy of Pasquale’s situation and a compassionate element in Norina’s personality.

Recording

CD: Mirella Freni (Norina); Riccardo Muti (cond.).
EMI 47068 2

Vincenzo Bellini

(1801–35)

I Capuleti e i Montecchi
(
Capulets and Montagues
)

Two acts. First performed Venice, 1830.

Libretto by Felice Romani

Only indirectly drawn on Shakespeare’s
Romeo
and
Juliet.
Although it contains its trite and formulaic passages, this opera offers music of grave and noble beauty to the singers of the two central roles.
Very rarely performed last century, until a revival conducted by Claudio Abbado in 1966 precipitated its return to the repertory.

Plot

In Renaissance Verona, Capellio, head of the Capuleto family, refuses to allow Giulietta to marry Romeo, a member of the rival Montecchio family.
Instead he orders her to marry Tebaldo, who has taken a vow to revenge himself on Romeo for the (accidental) killing of Capellio’s son.
Romeo cannot persuade Giulietta to elope, so he and his supporters storm the Capuleto palace as she is about to marry Tebaldo.
There is general outrage and the wedding is called off.
Romeo escapes.