Romeo-Juliet Fantasy Overture
TCHAIKOVSKY 1840-1893
At its heart, Opera is an act of seduction. In the seventeenth century court of the Medici, fanciful plots and elaborate staging flaunted wealth and power. Music was the art of temptation. The first operatic composers set the drama in motion and suspended an audience’s disbelief with music. The gap between Orfeo the deity and Orfeo the man, whose joy in love and grief over loss could move us to tears, was bridged with music. In turn, the nineteenth-century Orfeos—Bellini, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Puccini—bent their musical skills toward making the ordinary fantastic once again. Like all fairy tales, romantic operas speak to familiar themes: love and loss, fidelity to family or nation, the desire for freedom, and the fear of evil. They do so with the introduction of intriguing and ambivalent characters, taking us to exotic locations or sending us deep into our own histories. From overture to ending, whether tragic or triumphant, the score persuades us to allow ourselves to be transported. And so the opera begins: “Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…”
The overture to Verdi’s Nabucco (1842) takes the listener both back in time and far away to the Biblical Middle East. (Although it is worthy to note that the story of the Israelite’s struggle for freedom against Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians would have resonated with Italian audiences during the early Risorgimento.) The choice of a Biblical plot allowed for both a sense of universality and the opportunity to exploit exotic scenes like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on the banks of the Euphrates. While the majority of the overture is a potpourri of themes from the opera, the opening chorale in the low brass adds a patina of age and solemnity to the whole. The familiar chorus of the Hebrew slaves, “Va pensiero,” emerges briefly as a pastoral theme in the woodwinds. It provides a hint of the anthem it will become for not only the characters on stage but generations of Italian audiences. Nabucco’s initial success may have partially depended on its exotic appeal, but it continues to speak to our simplest desires—the longing for home and freedom.
Verdi’s later opera, La forza del destino (1862; 1869), deals not with separation from home, but the plight of separated lovers. So too, does Puccini’s Tosca (1900). Both operas borrow the mysticism and awe of religion to move the listener. And, although both end in tragedy, one heroine seeks peace in death while the other prima donna rushes to her finale in a blaze of aesthetic glory. The tense string figures that precede Leonora’s aria “Pace, pace, mio Dio,” and which intrude again at the end, locate her plea within the turmoil around her. Having been cursed by her deceased father after he is mortally wounded by her lover, she escapes into isolation. Eventually she is reunited with Alvaro, only to unfortunately be immediately discovered together by her brother, Carlo. In the 1862 version of the opera all three died in a vengeful finale. However, in Verdi’s 1869 revision, Leonora dies by her brother’s hand in order to “redeem” Alvaro. The aria’s soaring melody is accompanied by harp and woodwinds. It converts its setting of a mountain vale into a cathedral, blending the natural and the sacred. As if the heavens are moved by this music, Leonora’s plea for peace finds its answer in the form of a tragic ending transmuted into a spiritual resolution. The finale of Tosca, however, is more theatrical than spiritual, despite the story begining in a church and ending with a sight of the Vatican at the Castel Sant’ Angelo. This focus on the beauty of the heroine’s fall from grace befits a drama that is as much about art as it is about love. Tosca is a desired singer and Cavaradossi is the master of his palette, just as Puccini was. In the hallowed interior of the St. Andrea della Valle church, the police chief Scarpia confesses not his piety but his baser desires, all against the swelling organ and choir of the Te Deum. Puccini endeavored to add some realism to such lurid scenes—canon shots and the dissonant clanging of church bells. In contrast to the police chief’s confession, Cavardossi’s “E lucevan le stelle,” is played out on a more human scale. It tells of a letter written to Tosca as he awaits his death in prison. The melancholy clarinet solo that begins the aria is the intimate version of the dramatically orchestrated melody that will accompany Tosca as she flings herself to her death from the battlements of the Castel Sant’ Angelo. However, here the music cues Cavaradossi’s memories of the early days of their love affair—a nostalgic presentation of the new love we never saw in the opera. As if reenacting the moment of seduction, the melody lingers on the mention of Tosca’s “baci dolci” and “languid carezze.” This aria is a short respite for Cavaradossi and for the audience. It presents a brief return to the traditional long lines and clear forms of Italian opera —the heart-wrenching melodies we have come to expect—in an otherwise continuous and sometimes dissonant score that was heavily influenced by Wagner. When Verdi and Puccini need to ensure either tears or rapture, they recall the familiar sound of Italian operatic melody, which originated with Vincenzo Bellini. It is a sound audiences almost instinctively desire. “Casta diva,” the entrance aria of the priestess at the center of Bellini’s Norma (1831), presents us with the Platonic ideal of a bel canto aria. The slow, gently arching melody is first introduced by the flute and does not demand technical virtuosity. Instead, it offers the singer an opportunity to display sensitivity and pure quality of the voice. This aria is also a quintessential nocturne. The scene takes place under the light of the moon, to whom Norma’s hymn is dedicated, and its texture reappears in many later serenades. In particular, the arabesques of the vocal line, accompanied by murmuring arpeggiations in the strings, echo in the nocturnes of Chopin. Ultimately, no matter how fantastic the Druid priestess may seem, the story of Norma and her Roman paramour revolves around the archetypal conflict between loyalty and love. Bellini’s bel canto style easily bridges the gap between ancient history and the emotional present.
Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (1890) and Puccini’s La bohème (1896) turn us away from the romanticized loves of the mid-nineteenth century. They allow the grittiness of the verismo literary movement to permeate operatic storytelling. Mascagni’s opera was a deliberate attempt to create a Sicilian version of Carmen. Both operas force us to look more realistically at the darker side of love: infidelity, jealousy, violence, and characters stripped of their innocence. Where Bizet played to the appeal of Spanish local color, Mascagni draws on the folk music, dances of Sicily, and like Puccini, on the inherently theatrical qualities of Catholic ritual. Since all the action takes place on Easter Sunday, Mascagni presents in the intermezzo a chorale-like version of the Regina coeli. Usually played with the curtain up, the serenity of this hymn to the Virgin Mary makes the ruined innocence of the peasant girl Santuzza all the more poignant. It allows us one last peaceful moment before, in the shadow of the church, violence rends the village square. Puccini’s flirtation with verismo, based on Henry Murger’s novel Scènes de la vie de bohème, is certainly less violent, but realistic in its choice of hero and heroine—Rodolfo, the poet so poor he must burn his discarded manuscripts for warmth, and the seamstress, Mimì. Their introduction is in a conversational style. It is controlled by the orchestra rather than the vocal lines and demonstrates how much Puccini had been affected by Wagnerian leitmotif. “Che gelida manina” includes the motive associated with Rodolfo. It is followed by Mimì’s presentation of the melody where we identify with her in “Mi chiamano Mimì,” which leads fluidly into their first duet, “O soave fanciulla.” Puccini’s ability to switch instantaneously, but still seamlessly, from continuous musical storytelling to more openly emotional and singing melodies makes moments like Rodolfo and Mimì’s first rapturous meeting all the more likely to touch our hearts.
As much as opera allows us to revel in professions of love, music often serves to heighten anticipation. Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (1879)—the story of a love never fulfilled—perpetually delays satisfaction in the most graceful fashion. The polonaises, waltzes, and schottisches of the St. Petersburg ballroom are elegant diversions. The brindisi, or drinking song, is a similarly masterful sleight of hand common to nineteenth century operas which allows us to celebrate but not to consummate. “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” from Verdi’s La traviata (1853) is among the most clever and appealing of these revels. And although they cut closer to the heart of the matter, both Cio-Cio-san’s haunting “Un bel di” and Radames’s impassioned “Celeste Aida” teach us the pleasures of expectation. The lovers in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904) and Verdi’s Aida (1871) must struggle to overcome the obstacles of family, nation, and culture. The music ensures we find even their failures beautiful. Finally, the love story that so inspired the Romantics—Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—features the same conflicts as in many of these operas and sees the lover’s united only in death. Tchaikovsky’s overture-fantasy (1878) presents themes for Shakespeare’s characters in a loosely constructed sonata form: the reverent prologue for Friar Lawrence, the clashing forces of the Capulets and Montagues in the first theme, and the lyric second theme for the two lovers, introduced by the English horn and violas and later accompanied by sighing figures from a solo horn. This melody is now a universal signifier of romantic love and a fitting end to this evening’s concert.