in association with

Slipcase and CD faces : The Storm (1777) by Claude Joseph Vernet (Musée Calvert, Avignon, France/Bridgeman Art Library) Book cover : Scene from Il pirata with Imogene and Ernesto (Opera Rara Archive) Opposite and back of CD digipack : Vincenzo Bellini

–1– VINCENZO BELLINI IL PIRATA Melodramma in two acts Libretto by Felice Romani

Ernesto, Duca di Caldora ...... Ludovic Tézier Imogene, his wife , once lover of Gualtiero ...... Carmen Giannattasio Gualtiero, formerly Conte di Montaldo ...... José Bros Itulbo, companion of Gualtiero ...... Mark Le Brocq Goffredo, once Gualtiero’s tutor , now a hermit ...... Brindley Sherratt Adele, Imogene’s chief lady-in-waiting ...... Victoria Simmonds

Geoffrey Mitchell Choir Fishermen and their women-folk, Pirates, Knights, Ladies and Ladies-in-waiting

Renato Balsadonna – chorus director

London Philharmonic Orchestra Pieter Schoeman – leader Cor anglais obbligato – Sue Böhling

David Parry – conductor

–2– Managing Director: Stephen Revell

Producer: Michael Haas

Assistant conductor: Robin Newton Répétiteur: Nicholas Bosworth Italian coach: Maria Cleva Studio production assistant: Jim Barne

Article and synopsis: Benjamin Walton

Libretto translation: Jeremy Commons

Recording engineers: Jonathan Stokes and Neil Hutchinson Editing: Michael Haas, David Parry, Jonathan Stokes

The materials for this recording were hired from CASA RICORDI Milan (Universal Music Publishing Ricordi Srl) By arrangement with G. Ricordi & Co. (London) Ltd

Recorded at Henry Wood Hall, London March/April 2010

–3– CONTENTS

The Sound of the Pirate’s Voice by Benjamin Walton...... Page 9

The Story...... Page 44

Argument...... Page 49

Die Handlung...... Page 54

La trama...... Page 60

Libretto...... Page 66

–4– CD 1 39’02 ACT I Duration Page [1] Sinfonia 7’23 69 Coro d’introduzione [2] ‘Ciel! qual procella orribile’ 6’44 69 Scena e cavatina – Gualtiero [3] ‘Io vivo ancor!’ 2’20 73 [4] ‘Ascolta. Nel furor delle tempeste’ 3’05 76 [5] ‘Del disastro di questi infelici’ 2’01 77 [6] ‘Per te di vane lagrime’ 3’37 78 Scena e cavatina – Imogene [7] ‘Sorgete; è in me dover quella pietade’ 3’09 79 [8] ‘Lo sognai ferito’ 3’59 81 [9] ‘Cielo! è dessa!’ 1’17 83 [10] ‘Sventurata, anch’io deliro’ 5’19 83

–5– CD 2 46’49 Duration Page Coro di pirati [1] ‘Evviva!... allegri!...’ 3’41 84 Recitativo [2] ‘Ebben?... Verrà’ 1’44 88 Scena e duetto – Imogene, Gualtiero [3] ‘Perchè cotanta io prendo’ 5’34 88 [4] ‘Tu sciagurato!’ 2’57 91 [5] ‘Pietosa al padre!’ 3’28 92 [6] ‘Alcun s’appressa’ 1’04 93 [7] ‘Bagnato dalle lagrime’ 2’39 94 Recitativo [8] ‘Grazie, pietoso ciel’ 1’57 95 Marcia e coro [9] ‘Più temuto, più splendido nome’ 4’44 97 Aria – Ernesto [10] ‘Sì, vincemmo’ 2’16 98 [11] ‘Più temuto’ 3’43 98 Recitativo [12] ‘M’abbraccia, o donna...’ 3’17 99 Finale Primo [13] ‘Il suo disegno’ 1’59 103

–6– Duration Page Quintetto nel finale primo [14] ‘Parlarti ancor per poco’ 3’00 107 Stretta del finale primo [15] ‘Ebben; cominci, o barbara’ 4’37 109

CD 3 73’37

ACT II Coro d’introduzione [1] ‘Che rechi tu?’ 4’04 113 Recitativo [2] ‘Vieni; siam sole alfin…’ 1’46 114 Scena e duetto – Imogene, Ernesto [3] ‘Arresta’ 2’19 115 [4] ‘Tu m’apristi in cor ferita’ 4’57 116 [5] ‘Ah! lo veggo’ 2’56 117 [6] ‘Che rechi?’ 0’59 119 [7] ‘Io... sì... lo rinverrò’ 2’37 119 Scena [8] ‘Lasciami, forza umana’ 1’33 121 Scena e duetto – Imogene, Gualtiero [9] ‘Eccomi a te, Gualtiero’ 2’00 122 [10] ‘Vieni: cerchiam pe’ mari’ 5’17 124

–7– Duration Page Scena e terzetto – Imogene, Gualtiero, Ernesto [11] ‘Cedo al destin orribile’ 4’15 126 [12] ‘Parti alfine: il tempo vola’ 2’59 127 Recitativo [13] ‘Sventurata, fa core...’ 1’41 130 Coro [14] ‘Lasso! perir così’ 4’09 131 Scena [15] ‘Giusto cielo! Gualtiero!’ 1’54 132 Scena ed aria – Gualtiero [16] ‘Tu vedrai la sventurata’ 3’33 133 [17] ‘Già s’aduna il gran consesso’ 1’10 134 [18] ‘Ma non fia sempre odiata’ 4’13 136 Recitativo [19] ‘Udiste? È forza, amiche’ 1’01 136 Scena ed aria finale [20] ‘Oh! s’io potessi dissipar le nubi’ 8’38 137 [21] ‘Col sorriso d’innocenza 3’29 138 [22] ‘Qual suono ferale’ 1’44 138 [23] ‘Oh, Sole! ti vela’ 3’01 139 Scena ultima [24] ‘La tua sentenza udisti’ 3’10 141

–8– The Sound of the Pirate’s Voice, by Benjamin Walton

WHEN GUALTIERO , the tenor protagonist of Bellini’s Il pirata , staggers onto land during the opera’s first scene, freshly rescued from a shipwreck, his first words (‘And still I live! Even the elements I find my enemies’) are met with an exclamation: ‘qual voce?’. This might best be translated as ‘what voice is that?’ (or, more wordily, ‘where have I heard that voice before?’), and comes from the hermit Goffredo, who had formerly served as Gualtiero’s tutor, deep in the opera’s backstory. Hence the moment of vocal recognition, despite Gualtiero’s bedraggled and fearsome appearance on stage, piratically transformed during his exile to the high seas following his defeat by his arch-enemy Ernesto. The looks have changed, but the voice remains the same.

Goffredo’s words, however, could just as well carry a slightly different meaning, perhaps more in line with the thoughts of the audience gathered in the packed auditorium at La Scala, Milan for the work’s premiere, on the evening of 27 October 1827: ‘what a voice!’. Admittedly, the observation comes when Gualtiero has sung only a handful of notes, many on a single pitch. But in this case, the tenor in Gualtiero’s role was the great Giovanni Battista Rubini, and few of the people present would have needed reminding where they had last heard him. In Milan since the previous April (his first engagement at La Scala in over a decade), he had appeared in a string of works by Rossini, as well as in the hit of the 1827 season: Giovanni Pacini’s L’ultimo giorno di Pompei (first performed in Naples in 1825).

–9– On this basis, the audience knew exactly what to expect, and the hermit’s comment only heightened the anticipation, coming shortly before Gualtiero’s opening cavatina, ‘Nel furor delle tempeste’. Rubini did not disappoint: in a breathless letter written two days after the premiere, Bellini told his uncle that this number caused ‘an inexpressible furore’; by the end of Rubini’s Act I duet with Henriette Méric-Lalande, in the prima donna role of Imogene, ‘the audience, all shouting like madmen, made an uproar that seemed infernal’.

The first word sung by Gualtiero in the cavatina is ‘Listen’, an instruction designed to have the same effect as Goffredo’s ‘qual voce’ in concentrating the audience’s attention on the melody that he is about to sing. And sure enough, the following number gave Rubini full rein to demonstrate his unrivalled command of sustained expressive melody, along with his ability to sing up to a stratospheric top E as part of a final cadential flourish. (The whole aria was transposed down a tone for the published vocal score, to make the part a little more manageable for more mortal performers.)

Nevertheless, for an audience who had spent the past six months hearing Rubini effortlessly negotiate his way round the fearsomely florid tenor parts of Rossini and Pacini, such as Giacomo in La donna del lago , or Appio in L’ultimo giorno – both written originally for the equally renowned Giovanni David in Naples – the experience of listening to Rubini as Gualtiero must have come as a bit of a shock. For one thing, apart from a couple of brief runs – one including that top E – Bellini’s setting is largely syllabic, its expressive impact deriving from the close attention paid to the unfolding text. And on paper, this text

–10 – GIOVANNI BATTISTA RUBINI (1794 –1854)

Bellini’s first Gualtiero (Teatro alla Scala, 27 October 1827). He proved a vital influence on Bellini. During the composition of Il pirata he lodged with the composer, trying out each piece as it was written. looks conventional enough: during all the travails of the pirate’s life, Gualtiero has been guided by the angelic image of his beloved Imogene. In Bellini’s hands, however, Gualtiero’s love-struck reverie quickly throws the bluff minor-key opening far off course, wandering harmonically through distant tonal realms before returning to the opening material, only for the aria to drift once again to end in the relative major key, with Gualtiero lost in his fantasies. This is, in other words, no ordinary pirate; nor was Rubini taking part in an ordinary opera.

*

Put bluntly, the ordinary Italian opera of the 1820s sounded like Rossini. Such was the success of the composer’s works across the opera houses of Italy (and indeed the whole of operatic Europe) that there seemed little alternative. By 1827, the year of Il pirata , it was four whole years since the premiere of Rossini’s final opera for Italy, Semiramide : a long time in the frenetic world of contemporary operatic production. Yet nigh on half of the 240 performances given at La Scala during that year were of Rossini’s works. And while Pacini would later draw particular attention to some of the formal novelties that he introduced into his score of L’ultimo giorno , he also confessed that ‘in truth in some parts of the score you can see the influence of Rossini’. (Some contemporary critics levelled the same charge much more forcefully.)

Composers at the time were stuck in something of a double bind: write music that sounded like Rossini, and be criticised for being nothing more than an

–12 – imitator; or write music that didn’t sound like Rossini, and risk unpopularity and oblivion. Bellini was acutely aware of the problem, having been born almost exactly a decade after Rossini, with the result that his time as a student at the Conservatory in Naples coincided with the last years of Rossini’s seven-year tenure (from 1815 to 1822) as director of the Neapolitan theatres, for which he produced some of his most ambitious works.

Bellini would therefore have heard an awful lot of Rossini in his evenings spent at the San Carlo theatre. Yet back at the Conservatory itself, presided over by the aged Nicolò Zingarelli, the musical education on offer espoused an altogether older style – that of Giovanni Paisiello or Domenico Cimarosa – directly opposed to the noise and virtuosity of the Rossinian model.

This combination of contradictory influences proved constructive for the young Bellini, looking for a way to forge his own path in the operatic world. He had the detailed knowledge of Rossini necessary to imitate and seek to surpass his model, but also the lessons and aesthetics of the Neapolitan anti-Rossinians to turn to in search of something altogether different.

Later accounts of Bellini’s brief operatic career, cut short by his early death in 1835, have tended to plot his first works as a progressive distancing from the Rossinian model, from his student opera Adelson e Salvini , to his first commission for the San Carlo, Bianca e Fernando , and on to Il pirata , before culminating in the extreme concision and melodic simplicity of La straniera , also written for Milan, and premiered at La Scala in February 1829. To some

–13 – NICOLÒ ANTONIO ZINGARELLI (1752 –1837) Bellini’s teacher at the Naples Conservatory. Rossini and Zingarelli were influential in the creation of Bellini’s musical style. extent, Bellini then retreated from this type of experimentation, and settled down into a mature style that successfully absorbed Rossinian features into an unmistakably individual soundworld.

Such a story is accurate enough, and gives an indication of Bellini’s rapid rise to fame, yet inevitably oversimplifies, not least in implying that the influence of Rossini is somehow objectively measurable. In fact, the effect of the composer’s dominance during the 1820s caused critics to hear echoes of his music wherever they fancied. As a result, Bellini needed to emphasise his distinctiveness quite starkly in order to stand out as worthy of note, as can be sensed in this gloomy diagnosis on the state of music in Italy which appeared in the Parisian journal The Revue musicale , shortly after the success of La straniera , early in 1830:

Pacini, Mercadante and some others are only imitators of Rossini, and just repeat themselves... Those such as Donizetti and others of the same level scarcely merit being spoken of; Morlacchi hasn’t succeeded in most recent productions; Generali seems worn out; Bellini is the only one who shows some talent.

Some of the specific ways in which Bellini ‘showed some talent’ might seem relatively subtle to a 21st-century audience no longer steeped in the conventions of the 1820s. These include an increased presence of melody within recitative, for instance, and a heavy reliance on the chorus, within arias and duets as well as in their own numbers; in Il pirata there is also a relatively small number of

–15 – arias overall (two each for Gualtiero and Imogene, yet just one for Imogene’s husband – and Gualtiero’s nemesis – Ernesto).

But some of these supposedly novel features can also be found in works by Rossini, while many aspects of individual numbers – and even entire numbers – remain thoroughly Rossinian in outline and detail. As a result, another Rossinian juxtaposition, proposed by Philip Gossett, proves more helpful in getting at quite how striking Il pirata would have seemed in relation to the works that had come before: a comparison between the tenor Gualtiero and the famous Rossinian mezzo-soprano hero of 1813, Tancredi, who also arrives home from exile at the beginning of the opera and, like Gualtiero, launches into a beachside cavatina to his absent beloved. ‘Imagine the proscribed Tancredi as a pirate,’ Gossett writes, ‘and you can realize the contrast.’ 1

It’s worth pushing the point: Tancredi’s cavatina was one of Rossini’s most famous scenes, not least because of its catchy concluding cabaletta, ‘Di tanti palpiti’, which rapidly became one of the pop hits of early 19th-century Europe. But the beginning of the number was almost as memorable, introduced by a lilting orchestral barcarolle as Tancredi is brought to shore, and followed by a poignant accompanied recitative, initially addressed directly to his homeland (‘O patria, dolce e ingrata patria’) before he turns to Amenaide. In his Vie de Rossini , Stendhal described Giuditta Pasta’s performance of the opening words as even more moving than the aria itself; in search of a way to describe the ______1 Gossett, ‘Introduction’ to Il pirata , facsimile edition of the autograph manuscript (New York, 1983). –16 – effect of the opening, he reached for the example of Walter Scott, and specifically the balance in Scott’s novels between dialogue and description. By analogy, Tancredi speaks, but it is the orchestra that tells us what is going on in his soul.

Yet whatever depths of feeling are hinted at here, they remain contained within the character’s unimpeachable virtue. Tancredi is a hero you could safely take home to meet your mother. Gualtiero wouldn’t make it through the front door, and the difference is not simply one of degree; Il pirata is not just Tancredi with added skull and crossbones. Instead, Gualtiero seems at times more like Tancredi’s dark shadow, his love for Imogene twisted into obsession, and ultimately overshadowed by his desire for revenge on Ernesto. Rossini’s hero has become a Byronic anti-hero.

*

Both Scott and Byron had a hand in bringing the original version of Gualtiero to the stage. In 1814, the Dublin clergyman Charles Maturin had sent Scott the manuscript of a tragic play he had written called Bertram . Scott had various criticisms, but also much praise, particularly for the title character, whom he declared ‘highly dramatic, well-got up, and maintained with a Satanic dignity which is often truly sublime’. He also suggested that he would be ‘much honoured by standing godfather to Bertram ’, and sent the play on to Byron, who at the time was on the managing committee of the Drury Lane Theatre. Byron was similarly delighted with the work, and it opened at the theatre in

–17 – May 1816, with the title character played by Edmund Kean, a stalwart at the theatre since his memorable debut as Shylock two years earlier.

In the preface to an earlier novel, Maturin had laid out his aesthetic philosophy with great clarity:

If I possess any talent, it is that of darkening the gloomy, and of deepening the sad; of painting life in extremes; and representing those struggles of passion when the soul trembles on the verge of the unlawful and the unhallowed.

This was hardly unfamiliar territory at the time, after several decades of the Gothic fiction of Horace Walpole, ‘Monk’ Lewis, and others. Yet by the time of Bertram , the obvious point of reference was much more recent: it came in the form of Byron himself, and the brooding, semi-autobiographical protagonists of works such as The Corsair (1814), whose pirate hero Conrad is described as ‘that man of loneliness and mystery, / Scarce seen to smile and seldom heard to sigh.’

As a result, Maturin’s play received the same extremes of positive and negative opinion traditionally granted to anything deemed Byronic. The audience loved it, and the immediate critical reaction was generally favourable: the critic in The Times (10 May 1816) wrote of ‘rich and manifold beauties’, and the ‘matchless force and elegance of expression’ of the pseudo-Shakespearean language; the Morning Chronicle on the same day was even more effusive: ‘there

–18 – has not been a Drama exhibited for many years, possessing the passion and eloquence of this Tragedy… There are particular passages… of such burning and electrical effect, as to make it impossible to remain untouched by their force.’

Others were less convinced, drawing attention to problems with the plot, the blank verse or the characterisation, but appearing most exercised by the play’s lack of morality, as pinpointed in The British Review in August 1816:

[I]n dignity, propriety, consistency, and contrast, in the finer movements of virtuous tenderness, the delicacies of female sensibility, the conflict of struggling emotions, heroical elevation of sentiment, and moral sublimity of action, this play is extremely deficient.

The lengthiest – and most long-lived – attack on the piece, however, came from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose catalogue of complaints appeared across five issues of the Courier in 1816, and was then immortalised in the twenty-third chapter of his Biographia literaria; Or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions , published the following year.

There was history here: Byron had chosen Bertram for Drury Lane over a play by Coleridge, to the latter’s inevitable irritation. Nevertheless, his onslaught was remarkably relentless. At its heart lay Coleridge’s discomfort about the iniquity of a married woman (Imogine, in Maturin’s spelling) shown to be still in love with another man (Bertram), and, worse still, an audience that would

–19 – watch such a scenario with enjoyment: ‘melancholy proof of the depravation of the public mind’. Desensitised by the horrors of the tumultuous preceding years, theatre-goers had become ‘callous to all the mild appeals, and craving alone for the grossest and most outrageous stimulants’, Coleridge suggested; Bertram offered proof, then, that ‘the shocking spirit of Jacobinism seemed no longer confined to politics’. It was a clear enough political point, with the excesses of the French Revolution still fresh in mind, and one echoed by others: the unambiguously titled Anti-Jacobin Review found it hard to suppress ‘an involuntary expression of disgust’ at the sight of the ‘detestable character’ Imogine contemplating ‘with delight’ a portrait of her first lover.

Quite as interesting for the purposes of tracing Bertram ’s operatic potential, however, are Coleridge’s other criticisms, which frequently threaten to overwhelm his central moral point. Some of these seem no more than incidental, such as his preoccupation with the monks’ unwavering candle flames at the play’s opening, while a storm rages. But then why open with a storm and shipwreck at all?

It is a mere supernatural effect without even a hint of any supernatural agency; a prodigy without any circumstance mentioned that is prodigious; and a miracle introduced without a ground, and ending without a result. Every event and every scene of the play might have taken place as well if Bertram and his vessel had been driven in by a common hard gale, or from want of provisions.

–20 – HENRIETTE MÉRIC -L ALANDE (1799 –1867)

For Bellini she created four roles: Bianca ( Bianca e Gernando , 1826), Imogene (Il pirata , 1827), Alaide (La straniera , 1829) and the title role in Zaira (1829). She went on to create the title role of Lucrezia Borgia for Donizetti (1833). The opening is, then, ‘a scene for the sake of a scene’, and the act’s ‘greatest and most sonorous picture’.

William Hazlitt also drew attention to the predominance of ‘scenic and extraneous’ stage-effects in his review of the play, reprinted in A View of the English Stage (1818). And he went further in developing the point into a theory of modern tragedy, which he suggests is not really tragedy, but something altogether different: romantic drama.

The old tragedy … is a display of the affections of the heart and the energies of the will; the modern romantic tragedy is a mixture of fanciful exaggeration and indolent sensibility; the former is founded on real calamities and real purposes; the latter courts distress, affects horror, indulges in all the luxury of woe, and nurses its languid thoughts, and dainty sympathies, to fill the void of action.

To seal the case, Hazlitt reaches for a comparison: ‘As the opera is filled with a sort of singing people, who translate everything into music, the modern drama is filled with poets and their mistresses, who translate every thing into metaphor and sentiment. Bertram falls under this censure.’ Or, to put it another way: from the start, Bertram was an opera waiting to happen.

*

–22 – There was still one more step, however, before Bertram would make it to the operatic stage. In 1821, two French authors, Isidore Taylor and Charles Nodier, produced a French translation of Maturin’s work, ‘freely translated from the English’. Both authors would later claim a place in the annals of French romanticism, Nodier for his own fantastical tales, and also for the literary salon that he ran during the 1820s at his apartment at the Arsenal library in Paris, where he was librarian from 1824. The younger Taylor, born in Brussels to English parents, would introduce romantic dramas by Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo and others to the hallowed stage of the Comédie-Française, which he ran from 1825.

In the introduction to their Bertram , they confront the question of the play’s romanticism head-on. But writing during a period of intense French polemics and counter-polemics between ‘romantics’ and ‘classicists’, their account of the play’s romantic credentials differs significantly from that offered by Hazlitt. Taylor and Nodier start by defining what they see as genuine romanticism: authentically post-French revolutionary art, which shows awareness of great authors outside the French tradition, such as Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe and Dante. In practice, however, they suggest that anyone who breaks accepted artistic rules gets labelled a romantic, with the result that a whole genre has grown up of supposedly romantic works that could be better described as ‘frenetic’: the sort of art that appears like the ‘delirious dreams of the feverish’.

The appeal of such works came down to the same reason proposed by Coleridge: since the Revolution, ‘people need to be stimulated by new violence’.

–23 – Bertram might seem to fall straight into this category, but the authors justify its publication on the shaky basis that they improvised it ‘almost from memory’ after seeing an overwhelming performance of the work; by the time they had a chance to reflect on what they had done, it had already been printed.

By such disingenuous reasoning, Nodier and Taylor did their part in blurring the already hazy line between the truly ‘romantic’ and the merely ‘frenetic’, although, unlike Hazlitt and Coleridge, they suggest that the work is in fact ‘horribly moral’; after all, the sinners – Imogene and Bertram – are punished, by madness and death. It was a claim that would come under direct scrutiny the following year. The two authors, now writing under the pseudonym of ‘Raimond’, adapted their translation as a melodrama for performance at the Théâtre du Panorama Dramatique, a short-lived venue opened on the Boulevard du Temple in 1821, which (not incidentally) included both Taylor and Nodier on its board. Bertram appeared there in November 1822, in a lavish production with parts of the scenery created by Pierre-Luc-Charles Ciceri, later the set designer for grand operas by Rossini, Auber and Meyerbeer. One review was quick to describe the melodrama as ‘one of the blackest ever performed’, and after three nights it was temporarily banned, on the grounds that a funeral procession for Imogene’s unloved husband, Aldini (Aldobrand for Maturin, Ernesto in Il pirata ) too closely resembled a religious procession. Other changes were also made to the original plot, such as recasting the candle-bearing monks and their prior as the fishermen and hermit who also appear at the opening of Bellini’s work.

–24 – In its transformation into melodrama, the piece also became more judgemental, by making Bertram a still more desperate figure, whose desire for revenge is shown to be unstinting and ruthless. As a result, and in good melodramatic style, there is little room for shades of vice and virtue: Bertram murders Aldini, and has to be brought to justice, in line with the fundamental melodramatic code concisely summed up in the Dictionnaire théâtral of 1824 as ‘the punishment of crime and the triumph of virtue’. Or so it appears until the final scenes. By that point, Bertram is suitably repentant, and happy to give himself up to Aldini’s soldiers, but at the last minute Bertram’s fellow pirates storm the stage and set fire to the entire palace. In place of Bertram’s triumphal suicide in Maturin’s version (his last line, and the last of the entire play, is: ‘I died no felon’s death – A warrior’s weapon freed a warrior’s soul’), in the melodrama Bertram falls instead from a burning staircase while the pirates close in, still bent on destruction.

And what about poor Imogene? She is made more virtuous for the melodrama, with no repetition of the scene in Maturin’s play that had so shocked Coleridge, where she gazed longingly at a portrait of Bertram. Yet as a result, her final descent into madness seems less just retribution than a response to the constrictions of an impossible moral code. And where in Maturin she had expired slowly, looking into Bertram’s eyes, in the melodrama she falls with him from the staircase, and therefore suffers the same implied descent into a fiery hell: crime punished, but innocence too.

*

–25 – On Bellini’s death in 1835, Felice Romani, librettist for all Bellini’s mature operas apart from the last, I puritani , composed an obituary that provides just about the only account we have of the initial stages of their first collaboration, on Il pirata (here in Herbert Weinstock’s translation):

When [Bellini] reached Milan from Naples already marked by his first studies, but devoid of all experience and not yet freed from the conventions that shackled him in his first theatrical work, Bianca e Fernando , I alone read in that poetic spirit, in that impassioned heart, in that mind childishly eager to soar beyond the sphere in which he was held by the school rules and servility of imitation: I perceived that a different drama was wanted for him, a poetry very different from that which had been introduced by the bad taste of the times and the tyranny of the singers and the ignorance of the theatrical poets and that still greater innocence of the composers of music. It was then that I first tested the young Bellini, writing for him Il pirata , which seemed to me a subject likely, so to speak, to touch the most responsive chords in his heart. Nor was I mistaken.

Romani’s account is both romanticised and self-serving, yet the idea of Il pirata as a particularly appealing libretto for the ardent young composer, determined to make an impression on his debut in Milan, seems hard to contest. Romani’s description conspicuously glosses over the work’s gothic and frenetic antecedents, however, in pursuit of the aesthetic high ground of good drama and good taste. And the choice of the ‘low’ genre of French tragic

–26 – melodrama as a model was in fact highly unusual at the time, needing careful handling, whatever the inherently ‘operatic’ qualities of the plot (including set pieces – such as a pirates’ chorus – added by Taylor and Nodier to their melodrama that would resurface in Bellini’s score).

It could be argued that the operatic version of the plot represented a further watering down of the gothic elements of Maturin’s original conception, a process that had started even before the play reached Drury Lane. In preparation for the first London performance, extensive alterations to his original script had led Maturin to complain that ‘all the wild and wayward shoots of Mind’ in the original had been reduced to one ‘smooth-shave Level’. Next came the transformation into melodrama, followed by a libretto which at times strives to clarify the moral categories still further. But where the melodrama went in the direction of Bertram as out-of-control renegade, Romani moved to make Bertram (now renamed Gualtiero) more sympathetic, in part by casting Ernesto as incorrigibly bad.

In the end, though, audiences for all versions of the play seem to have been less concerned with questions of morality than with the tragic charisma of the lead character. An early biographer of Edmund Kean recorded that after the first rehearsal of Maturin’s play at Drury Lane, the actor worried that his role was ‘but a secondary part’, and that Imogen would overshadow him. ‘He studied Bertram attentively for several days,’ the biographer recalled, a couple of years after the actor’s death, ‘determined to make the hero the most conspicuous object in the play; and he succeeded.’ Even the unsympathetic Anti-Jacobin

–27 – ANTONIO TAMBURINI (1800 –1876) At La Scala he created Ernesto (1827). He went on to create the role of Valdeburgo in Bellini’s La straniera , (Milan, 1829) and is shown here in the role of Riccardo in I puritani which he created for Bellini (Paris, 1835). Review credited Kean with ‘a masterly performance’, adding cattily that Maturin had the actor to thank for the success of the play. Once in Paris, the title role had gone to an actor named Gautier, whose own appearance as Bertram was cited a couple of years later in Maurice Alhoy’s Grande biographie dramatique as evidence that he deserved to be appearing in more prestigious theatres than the Panorama-Dramatique: ‘doubtless he might not have been one of the best tragic actors, but he would have been one of the best looking’.

Which brings us back to Rubini, on stage at La Scala in October 1829, in the role of Gualtiero. It seems plausible that Romani’s choice of name for his new Bertram might have been in tribute to Gautier’s memorable Parisian performance. Yet if Kean had terrified by force of personality, and Gautier had dominated by physical presence, Rubini could rely on neither. ‘He was in no respect calculated to please the eye,’ the English critic Henry Chorley would recall, ‘for the openness of his countenance could not redeem the meanness of features impaired by small-pox. His figure was awkward … [and] he rarely tried to act’. By contrast, the part of Ernesto was taken by the baritone Antonio Tamburini, described by Chorley as ‘a singularly handsome man… [whose] acting, whether tragic or comic, was sensible and spirited’. What chance, then, of any audience sympathy for the desperate plight of Gualtiero?

The answer, of course, lay in those opening words of the hermit: ‘qual voce’. And in the opening scenes of the opera, the contrast between ‘that voice’ and Rubini’s unruly appearance is exploited to the full. Imogene arrives soon after the tenor’s cavatina, to bring help to the shipwrecked pirates, and the hermit

–29 – hides Gualtiero from sight. He then briefly emerges and catches a glimpse of Imogene, but though she hears his cry of recognition she does not see him. When the two meet a little later, for their Act I duet, she initially fails to recognise him, but is drawn in by his story, and also by his voice. Her questions to him – ‘Who are you? What do you wish?’ – he answers by saying, ‘Must I speak again? My voice once spoke words which all could forget without doing wrong – all but you alone.’

Such a single-minded concentration on Gualtiero’s voice therefore worked for Rubini in exactly the same way as good looks had for Gautier: the audience could feel sympathetic about his entreaties to Imogene to run away with him, even as they, like she, knew that this could never happen. The disposition of numbers in the opera also gave Rubini a helping hand, with Tamburini as Ernesto not only getting fewer moments to sing (as would be expected for the baritone role), but also less interesting music. His single aria, in Act I, for instance, (‘Sì, vincemmo’) is uncomplicatedly and floridly Rossinian, and Bellini reported to his uncle that after the uproar which had greeted Gualtiero and Imogene’s duet, this number ‘though applauded, pleased but little’. Tamburini’s duet with Imogene in Act II, was received better, though again it remains firmly within the Rossinian mould, complete with virtuoso figuration.

There is a tension here, however, which mirrors the larger tension between Rossinian and non-Rossinian elements in the opera more generally. On the one hand, Bellini focuses the audience’s attention on Rubini’s voice; yet on the

–30 – other, he does not always allow Rubini the sort of virtuosic music that had previously brought him success (even if, later in the opera, the famous tenor was granted more chance to show his traditional vocal skills).

An anecdote from one of Bellini’s Milanese friends, Count Giacomo Barbò di Castelmorano, can shed some light on what the composer might have been after here. Published in a biography of Bellini in 1859, more than two decades after the composer’s death, the story exhibits the rich patina of multiple retellings, polished over time. Nevertheless, it is worth quoting at length, as a possible insight into the composer’s thoughts about Gualtiero, at a period for which almost no other documentary evidence survives. The story (again in Weinstock’s rendering) starts with Rubini’s arrival at Bellini’s apartment in Milan one morning, presumably during the late summer of 1827:

[Bellini] asked: ‘How are you this morning? Are you in the mood to do well today, and in my style?’ ‘Eh, dear signor Bellini’, [Rubini] answered, ‘you need someone else to satisfy you; nevertheless, I’ll do the best I can’ – and they began to rehearse the duet between Gualtiero and Imogene. But, behold, [Bellini] encountered the same limitations and the same difficulties [as on previous occasions]. Advice, prayers, repetitions were multiplied uselessly, whereupon Bellini could no longer contain himself: ‘You are an animal’, he exclaimed. ‘You don’t put into it half the spirit you have; where you should be driving the whole audience out of its mind, you are cold and languishing. Show your passion; haven’t you ever been in love?’ The other answered not a word,

–31 – but stood there confused. Then the Maestro adopted a somewhat gentler tone of voice. ‘Dear Rubini’, he added, ‘are you thinking about being Rubini or about being Gualtiero? Don’t you know that your voice is a gold mine that hasn’t been discovered yet? Listen to me, and some day you’ll be grateful to me. You are one of the best singers. No one equals you in bravura. But that isn’t enough.’ ‘I know what it is that you want, but I can’t pretend to be in despair or to fly into a rage.’ ‘Admit it’, Bellini went on, ‘my music doesn’t please you because it doesn’t provide you with the usual opportunities. But if it has entered my head to introduce a new sort of music which expresses the words very closely, and to make a unit of the words and the singing, tell me, must you be the one from whom I receive no help? You can do it. Enough. Forget yourself and throw yourself with all your soul into the character you are representing. Come along then, my friend.’ And he began to sing. Although his voice had no special quality, nevertheless, with his face and his entire body animated, he produced singing so pathetic that it constricted the heart and brought so much fire to the breast that it would have torn apart the hardest of men. Moved, Rubini joined in with his stupendous voice. ‘Bravo, Rubini, now you have understood me. I am satisfied. I expect you to do the same tomorrow. For the rest, remember to stand up when you practise and to accompany your singing with gestures.’

In this telling, then, Bellini celebrates Rubini’s voice, but as much for its potential for a new kind of expressivity as for its proven ability to sing Rossinian

–32 – passagework. Although Gualtiero could only succeed with the voice of Rubini, Rubini also had to become Gualtiero. And it worked: a review in the Gazzetta privilegiata at the end of Il pirata ’s run at La Scala, on 2 December, said that ‘it was this opera that introduced us to Rubini’s dual personality as a singer and actor, and it wasn’t his fault if, in other operas, he was restricted merely to the conventional execution of an aria and it wasn’t possible to hear more of his beautiful and delicate intonations’. Bel canto was no longer enough.

*

Hindsight lends the extraordinary progression of Bellini’s early career an air of inevitability, as student success leads to San Carlo and then straight to La Scala, with the years of apprenticeship of a Rossini, Donizetti or Verdi skipped over in the rush to European fame. Yet the summer and autumn before the premiere of Il pirata must have been a time of considerable pressure for the young composer, hugely in need of a success in Milan to justify the faith placed in him by the famous impresario Domenico Barbaja, who had brought him from Naples on the strength of Bianca e Fernando .

Sadly for the later historian, almost no correspondence survives from the period between April 1829, when Bellini arrived in the city, and the October premiere. But it seems safe to assume that alongside attending La Scala, Bellini spent time making himself known in Milanese society, and thereby building up support, as well as settling into composition. At the opera, he would have been able to study the responses of the audience, and also to hear all three of his

–33 – principals, although Rubini and Henriette Méric-Lalande he already knew well, having written for them in Bianca ; Rubini had also accompanied him for part of his journey from Naples.

Whatever the details, all the preparations worked: Bellini’s ecstatic account of the premiere to his uncle seems to have been barely exaggerated, and the critic in I Teatri pronounced it ‘a work of absolute intelligence and excellent taste’. News of the success also spread quickly around Europe, with reviews in the principal music journals. In an article that would reappear in translation in the London Harmonicon , the Revue musicale in Paris named Bellini as a young man ‘born to make a remarkable name for himself’, and the work as one that looked towards the simplicity of the previous generation of Italian composers, even if Bellini had yet to settle into his own style.

A review of the concluding months of the La Scala season in the famous Leipzig-based Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung found influence from a different direction. The journal’s Milan correspondent complained of the ‘wretchedness’ of the music of Pacini’s Ultimo giorno , and suggested that the audience only showed up to enjoy the set designer Sanquirico’s depiction of Vesuvius, whose explosion ended the work. But Bellini received very different treatment, and the critic devoted plenty of space to an account of the composer’s affection for German music, approvingly recording that volumes of the Breitkopf Mozart edition were lying around in the composer’s rooms. He also reported a conversation in which Bellini stated that he would like to get rid of cabalettas and other conventions of Italian opera altogether, but had to keep them for

–34 – GIULIA GRISI (1811 –1869) She sang the role of Imogene in Lucca. In Paris she created the role of Elvira in Bellini’s I puritani (1835) and for Donizetti Norina in Don Pasquale (1833) and Elena in Marino Falliero (1835) that part of the public who enjoyed them. This was all music to the ears of the anti-Rossinians who dominated Austro-German criticism at the time and it’s hard not to see Bellini already looking ahead here to winning over future audiences beyond Italy.

Operatic success, however, inevitably pulled the work away from the control of its author, though Bellini did not find it easy to let go. In the months after the premiere of Il pirata , he kept careful track of who would be singing the piece and where – noting, for instance, when ‘a certain Reina’ (his first mention of the tenor who would end up singing the lead role of Arturo in La straniera ) appeared as Gualtiero in Lucca, alongside soprano Giulia Grisi. At other times his concern could take a considerably more intrusive form. The good news, shortly after the end of the work’s run at La Scala in December 1827, that the piece would be performed at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna just two months later, led to an impassioned outburst from the composer in a letter to Rubini on 4 January 1828:

Please tell me, who are the other singers in the cast? Remember, the opera belongs to you, because it’s the only one that has been written expressly for the range of your voice. [It is] that opera where your ability can show itself in its full excellence, both through song in all the pieces apart from the recitatives, and also in action so that my dear Rubini, you could not desire anything more... And what will become of my Pirata if you have already started to prostitute it with other singers who are wrong for it? … Remember that, at La Scala, your enemies had the

–36 – opportunity to say that you triumphed only because you had an excellent partner, and that you yourself are capable of singing merely a cavatina. And all this because Lalande has been singing music that has been written for her and is suitable for her voice.

This seems strong enough, even without the added twist that the new Imogene planned for Vienna turned out to be Adelaide Comelli, Rubini’s wife. Bellini then wrote to his closest confidant, Francesco Florimo, on 21 January to say ‘you can see what a horror it’s going to be… Comelli would ruin this opera, which was [Rubini’s] only joy in the world… That witch and ambitious ass of a wife may well persuade him to go ahead with the performance’.

Bellini’s fears appeared confirmed when initial reports of a first-night fiasco surfaced in a paper in Milan and were then broadcast round Europe. But after the third night, Rubini wrote to let Florimo know that in fact the production had been a great success, Comelli included, while the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung once again hailed the composer’s Germanic leanings: ‘such an unusual familiarity with the German school, so visibly approaching an idea of German manliness, [and] an undeniable preference in particular for the thought and approach of Carl Maria von Weber’ .

This did not stop Bellini campaigning against Comelli once more, when she was picked to play Imogene for the personally and professionally significant

–37 – premiere of the work back at the San Carlo in Naples, on 30 May 1828. Again, however, the work was a hit, and the Revue musicale reported that Bellini’s old teacher Zingarelli had sat through the performance with tears of pleasure running down his face.

*

As was usual at the time, new performers and new locations also brought about changes in the work itself. Imogene’s Act II mad scene, ‘Col sorriso d’innocenza’ – the prototype of many later examples, whose virtuosic concluding cabaletta provides a memorable example of how coloratura can itself be directed to electrifying dramatic effect – was originally followed by a brief finale, which seems to have been dropped early on. Bellini also cut down the first section of Imogene’s Act I cavatina, telling Florimo that Méric-Lalande made him shorten it ‘because she has no ability in the genre of delicate sentiments and she doesn’t understand it’. The autograph score, which he then sent to Naples, bears traces of more significant changes for the performances at the San Carlo, with parts of Act II cut, and, most extraordinarily, a further change to the work’s ending in which Gualtiero’s Act II aria ‘Tu vedrai la sventurata’ switches place with Imogene’s mad scene. Such a substitution makes little dramatic sense, but allowed Rubini to have the final word. When the work reached Paris, in February 1832, the ending had been changed again, this time with Imogene’s mad scene followed by a duet from Pacini’s Amazilia (1825), to sweeten the bitter tragedy, while Gualtiero – once more performed by Rubini – awaits his execution.

–38 – ADELAIDE COMELLI -R UBINI (1796 –1874) Married to Giovanni Battista Rubini, and never a favourite of Bellini’s, she however performed the role of Imogene with Rubini in Vienna (1828) and again at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples (30 May 1828). For some, this would still not have been sweet enough. 1832 also saw the premiere of Il pirata at the Richmond Hill Theatre in New York, performed by the company of Giovanni Montresor, and overseen by the 83-year-old Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist. Critics in general gave the work a good hearing, but the review in the New York Mirror on 15 December confessed that ‘we have an unpleasant, lurking suspicion, that it savors more of the olive than of honey and, therefore, may not be so readily swallowed as some other operas’. By that time, Bellini had himself entered what some regarded as a more honeyed, post -Straniera phase, and in the decades following his death, his reputation would at times verge on the sickly sweet, his music rebranded as nothing but languid sighs and tender lyricism. By 1862, for instance, the English writer H. Sutherland Edwards had reduced Rubini’s astringent, stripped-down arias in Il pirata to the sentimental status of ‘simple, touching airs’; a stepping stone en route to what Edwards described as ‘the beauties of La sonnambula [Bellini’s opera of 1831], so full of pure beauty and emotional music, of the most simple and touching kind… as unmistakably beautiful as a bed of wild flowers’.

The experimental Bellini, bullying Rubini into dramatic intensity, had by this time long disappeared, and the ‘German’ Bellini was also forgotten. Meanwhile, the passionate intensity of Il pirata had migrated elsewhere, to become the lingua franca of tragic Italian opera. Maturin’s original gothic horror got mixed up with a more general move towards the emotional extremes of the 19th-century lyric stage. As one Parisian critic wrote after seeing Il pirata in 1832: ‘Thwarted passion, sacrificed woman, jealous husband, desperate lover, all this is commonplace on the stage as in the world.’

–40 – And sure enough, new operatic versions of these resonant romantic themes would become canonical in the years to come, even as Il pirata itself faded quickly from view. At La Scala, after a single revival in 1830 (alongside La straniera ), the work resurfaced for 12 performances in 1840, but then not again until the famous Callas production in 1958, with Franco Corelli in Rubini’s role, pre-empted only by isolated productions in Rome in 1935 (for Bellini’s centenary), and in the composer’s birthplace of Catania in 1951.

But to reduce Il pirata to a set of stock situations – however influential – is ultimately just another way to fall into the trap set for the critics at the work’s premiere, of defining it only by blunt generalisation, national, historical, or musical. Not Rossinian, still too Rossinian; Germanic, Italian; melodic, harmonic; emotional, philosophical, and so on and on, to the detriment of the work’s true qualities. Better, instead, to close with a letter that Bellini wrote to Florimo in the wake of the first production: ‘Just notice in Il pirata, ’ the composer said, ‘how the verses, not the situations , inspire my talent.’

It is a rich comment, which sheds further light on the nature of Romani’s relationship with the composer. Yet it also indicates that what brings Il pirata to life are in the end not so much the large set pieces (such as the Act I finale), thrilling as some of these are, but the much smaller, more intimate moments, where music and poetry become closely woven together. Imogene’s Act I cavatina, for example, as she drifts off into a dream; or the increasingly desperate confrontations between her and Gualtiero, with her attempts at steadfast virtue pitted against his implacable desire for vengeance. At these

–41 – points, the opera is no longer just an example of its type, a departure from Rossinian practice, or an interesting historical rediscovery, but a drama brought to life by its individual performers; or, more precisely, and ideally for a sound recording such as this one, by their individual voices.

© Benjamin Walton, 2011

–42 – Stage design by Alessandro Sanquirico (Italian artist, 1777 –1849) for an 1827 production of Il pirata . The Story

ACT ONE

THE OPERA opens on a stormy Sicilian seashore, near the castle of Caldora; a ruined monastery can be glimpsed in the distance. As the tempest rages, fishermen and women gather to try to help a ship in distress. The hermit Goffredo, now the monastery’s sole resident, calls them to prayer, and shortly afterwards a skiff manages to reach the ship and rescues its crew. Those still on shore head for the castle to ask the Duchess Imogene for her hospitality towards the new arrivals.

The rescued sailors include Gualtiero, the former Count of Montaldo, who had been outlawed from Sicily ten years earlier after losing in battle to Ernesto, Duke of Caldora. In his absence, Ernesto has married and had a son by Imogene, Gualtiero’s former beloved; Gualtiero, meanwhile, has taken up as leader of a band of Aragonese pirates, and remains bent on revenge. The rescued ship is the pirates’ only surviving vessel, following a further defeat at the hands of Ernesto that now leads Gualtiero back to the land of his youth, and into his enemy’s territory.

Goffredo, who in happier times had served as Gualtiero’s tutor, quickly recognises his former pupil, and they greet each other joyfully. But the mood soon darkens, as Gualtiero dwells on his continued hatred of Ernesto, and his equally unshakable love for Imogene. The fishermen return with news that the

–44 – Duchess is on the way to visit the survivors. Keen to keep from Gualtiero the identity of Ernesto’s wife, Goffredo bids him to take refuge in his hermit’s cell. Imogene then enters, accompanied by her lady-in-waiting Adele, and asks Gualtiero’s companion Itulbo for details of his wrecked ship. She is also keen to hear of recent encounters with pirates, and particularly eager for news of the pirates’ leader. Itulbo responds evasively, and his suggestion that this leader may be dead upsets Imogene, leading her to recount to Adele a dream where she had seen Gualtiero wounded on a deserted shore. It is at this moment that Gualtiero emerges and sees Imogene; she hears (and half-recognises) his cry, and wants to investigate further, but is persuaded to return to the castle, having extended invitations to all the survivors.

At the castle that night, the pirates carouse. Itulbo seeks to restrain their entertainments, in order to conceal their piratical qualities. Imogene sends Adele to tell Gualtiero of her wish to see him; he enters, wrapped in his mantle. She offers him financial assistance, which he refuses; both confess the sorrow of their lives. It is only when she starts to leave, however, that Gualtiero discloses his identity. They embrace, but Imogene then reveals her marriage to Ernesto, unwillingly undertaken to save her father from death in prison. Gualtiero is horrified, not least by the realisation that all his hopes during his years of exile have been built on nothing. So great is his anger that when Imogene’s young son enters he reaches for his dagger; her cry leads him instead to embrace the child, before rushing out.

–45 – A distant military band proclaims the unexpected return of Ernesto from battle; Adele informs Imogene that the Duke awaits her. The scene changes to the illuminated exterior of the castle, where soldiers and Duke celebrate their victories over the pirates. Ernesto is disappointed to see Imogene so downcast. She pleads illness, and he promises to devote more time to her now that the threat from Gualtiero’s men has receded. Ernesto asks if she knows anything about the shipwrecked sailors, and calls for their leader to come before him.

The pirates enter, and Itulbo steps forward as their leader in place of Gualtiero, who stays concealed within the group. Ernesto initially declares that all of them will remain as prisoners in Caldora until their names and intentions can be ascertained. Imogene then appeals for clemency, and Ernesto agrees to let them leave the next day. All the pirates kneel before Imogene in thanks, and Gualtiero uses the opportunity to speak to her again, hidden from Ernesto by the hermit and Itulbo, to ask for a further meeting. She resists, and in response he calls for revenge. Imogene then faints and, as she comes round, all the characters express their conflicting thoughts and emotions: torment from Imogene, worry from Adele, suspicion from Ernesto, rage from Gualtiero, and from Itulbo and the hermit the desperate desire to escape. As the act closes, Gualtiero is led away by his friends; Imogene is taken off by her ladies-in-waiting. Ernesto is left on stage with his knights, deep in thought.

–46 – ACT TWO

LATE THAT night, outside Imogene’s rooms, her attendants seek news from Adele about the Duchess’s health, and pray that she can find peace. As dawn breaks, Adele tries to convince her to see Gualtiero, since otherwise he will not leave. They are interrupted by Ernesto, who accuses his wife of feigning illness while pining for her former lover. Imogene reminds Ernesto that he knew of her continued feelings for Gualtiero when he married her, and that they remain unchanged, although she lives without hope, and she looks forward to the end of her life. A knight brings news of Gualtiero’s presence in the area, which incites Ernesto to a furious call for the deaths of both his enemy and his wife.

The scene changes to a loggia in the castle, where Itulbo expresses disquiet over Gualtiero’s plan to keep all his men in readiness for possible action, dependent on the outcome of his encounter with Imogene. With the stakes now clear, Imogene and Gualtiero meet once more. Gualtiero says that either she should come with him, or he will fight Ernesto to the death. He tries to tempt her with the pleasures of a life on the high seas, but Imogene stands firm, and calls on Gualtiero to show forgiveness. She then tries to depart, but he prevents her. At the same time, Ernesto arrives to spy on their conversation, before stepping forward to interrupt their farewells. The two men turn on each other, thirsting for blood, and as they leave to do battle it is Imogene who finds herself alone, again calling for her own death; she faints, and when she comes round she can think of nothing but stopping the fight.

–47 – Knights and Ladies gather on the ground floor of the castle, which provides a view to a waterfall beyond. Ernesto has been killed by Gualtiero, and his soldiers bring his weapons in the form of a trophy. They call for revenge on Gualtiero, and are astonished when he enters the hall. He offers his own life in return for the free passage of his men. Ernesto’s men call for the Council of Knights to put him on trial, and Gualtiero asks Adele to tell her lady that he hopes for her compassion. As he heads to the Council, the chorus is struck by his courage, despite his crime; Gualtiero hopes that he will be remembered for his tormented life as well as for his ruthless actions.

Imogene enters with her son, having lost her mind. She imagines Ernesto calling for their child, and asks the boy to seek his father’s pity. With the news that Gualtiero has been condemned, she calls for him to be set free. Instead, she sees the scaffold that has been erected for him, and as her ladies-in-waiting try to lead her away she imagines his death and runs off. The Knights lead in Gualtiero, who asks only for a quick end; but before his wish can be granted, the pirates attack. Imogene and Adele enter again, to see Gualtiero and his men traversing the bridge out of the castle, over the waterfall. Gualtiero then kills himself; Imogene loses consciousness once more, and the opera ends with a tableau of collective dismay and horror.

© Benjamin Walton, 2011

–48 – Argument

ACTE I

LA SCÈNE d’ouverture se déroule alors que la tempête fait rage sur la côte sicilienne, près du château de Caldora ; un monastère en ruines se profile à l’horizon. Au plus fort de la tourmente, un groupe de pêcheurs et de femmes se rassemble pour porter secours à un bateau en détresse. L’ermite Goffredo, qui seul désormais réside au monastère, les appelle à la prière et, peu après, un canot, parvenu jusqu’au bateau, secourt l’équipage. Ceux qui sont restés sur le rivage se dirigent vers le château pour demander à la duchesse Imogene d’offrir l’hospitalité aux survivants.

Les rescapés comptent parmi eux Gualtiero, l’ancien comte de Montaldo, qui a été banni de Sicile dix ans auparavant après sa défaite contre Ernesto, duc de Caldora. Depuis, Ernesto a épousé la bien-aimée de Gualtiero, Imogene, qui lui a donné un fils ; durant ses années d’absence, Gualtiero a pris la tête d’une bande de pirates aragonais, bien déterminé à se venger. Le bateau secouru est le seul vaisseau dont disposent encore les pirates, après une nouvelle défaite contre Ernesto, qui oblige Gualtiero à se retrouver maintenant dans le pays de son enfance et en territoire ennemi.

Goffredo, qui, en des temps plus heureux, a été le tuteur de Gualtiero, reconnaît immédiatement son ancien élève et ils se réjouissent ensemble de ces retrouvailles. Mais l’atmosphère se tend à mesure que Gualtiero proclame sa

–49 – haine implacable d’Ernesto et son amour éternel pour Imogene. Les pêcheurs reviennent annoncer que la duchesse en personne va venir accueillir les survivants. Désireux de cacher à Gualtiero l’identité de l’épouse d’Ernesto, Goffredo l’invite à venir se reposer dans sa cellule d’ermite. Imogene fait alors son entrée, accompagnée de sa dame de compagnie, Adele, et interroge le compagnon de Gualtiero, Itulbo, sur les circonstances du naufrage. Elle est particulièrement curieuse de savoir s’il a rencontré récemment des pirates et de ce qui est arrivé à leur chef. Itulbo répond de manière évasive, suggérant que celui-ci est peut-être mort. Bouleversée par ce qu’elle vient d’apprendre, Imogene dit à Adele qu’elle a vu Gualtiero en rêve, blessé sur un rivage désert. À ce moment précis Gualtiero apparaît et aperçoit Imogene ; elle entend (et reconnaît à demi) son cri de surprise et voudrait comprendre, mais on la persuade de regagner le château, où tous les survivants sont invités.

Le soir, les hommes de Gualtiero font ribote au château. Itulbo cherche à les calmer, afin de ne pas révéler leur identité de pirate. Imogene envoie Adele auprès de Gualtiero pour lui dire que sa maîtresse souhaite le voir ; il entre, mystérieusement enveloppé d’un manteau. Elle lui offre de l’argent, qu’il refuse ; et l’un et l’autre dénoncent la tristesse de l’existence. Au moment de se séparer, Gualtiero lui dévoile son identité. Ils s’embrassent. Imogene lui révèle alors qu’elle a épousé Ernesto, forcée et contrainte pour sauver son père de la prison et de la mort. Gualtiero en est attérré, d’autant plus qu’il voit s’effondrer tous les espoirs qu’il a bâtis durant ses années d’exil. Il en conçoit une telle fureur qu’il porte la main à son poignard à la vue du jeune fils d’Imogene ; au cri de sa mère, il se ressaisit et embrasse l’enfant avant de quitter précipitamment la scène. –50 – Une musique militaire annonce le retour inattendu d’Ernesto, après la bataille ; Adele informe Imogene que le duc attend sa visite. La scène suivante se déroule dans la cour illuminée du château, où le duc et ses soldats célèbrent leur victoire sur les pirates. Ernesto est déçu de voir Imogene si abattue. Elle se dit souffrante et il lui promet de s’occuper davantage d’elle maintenant que la menace des hommes de Gualtiero est écartée. Ernesto lui demande ce qu’elle sait des marins naufragés et demande à voir leur chef.

Les pirates se présentent et Itulbo se déclare leur chef à la place de Gualtiero, resté caché parmi l’équipage. Ernesto commence par déclarer qu’il les gardera prisonniers à Caldora en attendant de connaître leur identité et leurs intentions. Imogene fait alors appel à sa clémence et Ernesto accepte de les laisser repartir le lendemain. Les pirates s’agenouillent devant Imogene pour la remercier et Gualtiero, caché de la vue d’Ernesto par l’ermite et Itulbo, en profite pour lui parler à nouveau et lui demander un rendez-vous. Quand elle refuse, il la menace de sa vengeance. Imogene s’évanouit. Tandis qu’elle reprend ses esprits, les autres personnages révèlent leurs pensées et leurs sentiments : Imogene est au supplice, Adele inquiète, Ernesto gagné par le soupçon, Gualtiero furieux, et Itulbo et l’ermite impatients de fuir. Pour finir, Gualtiero est entraîné par ses amis d’un côté et Imogene par ses dames de compagnie de l’autre, tandis qu’Ernesto, perdu dans ses pensées, reste seul sur scène en compagnie de ses chevaliers.

–51 – ACTE II

TARD DANS la nuit, dans l’antichambre des appartements d’Imogene, l’entourage de la duchesse s’enquiert de sa santé auprès d’Adele et prie pour son repos. À l’aube, Adele tente de convaincre Imogene de rencontrer Gualtiero, qui ne repartira pas sans l’avoir revue. Leur conversation est interrompue par Ernesto, qui accuse sa femme de feindre la maladie alors qu’elle se languit de son ancien amant. Imogene rappelle à Ernesto qu’il connaissait ses sentiments pour Gualtiero quand il l’a épousée, et que ceux-ci n’ont pas changé ; elle vit néanmoins sans espoir et attend la mort avec impatience. Un chevalier vient signaler à Ernesto la présence de Gualtiero au château. À ces nouvelles, le duc éclate de fureur et veut la mort de son ennemi comme de sa femme.

La scène suivante se déroule dans une loggia, au château. Itulbo est troublé par les plans de Gualtiero qui veut garder tous ses hommes en place prêt à l’action, en attendant le résultat de sa rencontre avec Imogene. Les enjeux sont désormais clairs : soit Imogene accepte de le suivre, soit il affronte Ernesto dans un duel à mort. Durant leur rencontre, Gualtiero s’efforce de tenter la duchesse en lui décrivant les plaisirs de la vie en mer, mais celle-ci reste ferme et le supplie de faire preuve de miséricorde. Lorsqu’elle tente de partir, il l’en empêche. Ernesto, qui a épié leur conversation, sort de sa cachette pour interrompre leurs adieux. Assoiffés de sang, les deux hommes s’affrontent et partent se battre. Imogene, restée seule, en appelle à sa propre mort avant de s’évanouir ; lorsqu’elle reprend conscience, elle ne songe plus qu’à arrêter le duel.

–52 – Les chevaliers du château et leurs dames sont réunis dans une salle du château qui a vue sur une cascade à l’extérieur. Gualtiero a tué Ernesto. Les soldats du duc ramènent ses armes en trophée et jurent de venger sa mort. À leur stupéfaction, Gualtiero vient se livrer à eux en échange de la liberté de ses hommes. Les soldats demandent qu’il soit jugé par le Conseil des chevaliers ; Gualtiero prie Adele de dire à la duchesse qu’il aspire à sa compassion. Alors qu’il est emmené vers le Conseil, le chœur admire son courage, malgré son crime ; Gualtiero espère qu’on se souviendra de lui en raison des souffrances qu’il a endurées et non de sa cruauté.

Imogene apparaît accompagnée de son fils. Elle a perdu la raison : elle croit entendre Ernesto appeler leur enfant et demande à celui-ci d’implorer la pitié de son père. À l’annonce de la condamnation de Gualtiero, elle demande en vain sa libération. Elle assiste à la construction de l’échafaud et, tandis que sa suite tente de l’éloigner, imagine l’exécution de Gualtiero avant de s’enfuir, prise d’horreur. Les chevaliers amènent Gualtiero, qui leur demande de faire vite, mais l’exécution n’a pas lieu car les pirates attaquent. Imogene et Adele réapparaissent à temps pour voir Gualtiero et ses hommes quitter le château par le pont qui surplombe la cascade. Une fois le pont franchi, Gualtiero se donne la mort ; Imogene s’évanouit à nouveau et l’opéra s’achève une scène de consternation et d’horreur collectives.

© Benjamin Walton, 2012 Traduction : Mireille Ribière

–53 – Die Handlung

1. AKT

AN DER Küste in der Nähe der Burg Caldora auf Sizilien tobt ein Sturm. In der Ferne sieht man ein verfallenes Kloster. Fischer und ihre Frauen versammeln sich am Strand, um einem in Seenot geratenen Schiff beizustehen. Der Einsiedler Goffredo, mittlerweile der einzige noch im Kloster lebende Mönch, fordert sie auf zu beten, und wenig später gelingt es einem Ruderboot, sich zum Schiff vorzukämpfen und die Besatzung zu retten. Die Menschen, die noch am Ufer stehen, brechen zur Burg auf, um die Herzogin Imogene zu bitten, den Schiffbrüchigen Gastfreundschaft zu gewähren.

Zu den geretteten Seeleuten gehört auch Gualtiero, der ehemalige Graf von Montaldo, der vor zehn Jahren den Kampf gegen Ernesto, den Herzog von Caldora, verlor und deswegen aus Sizilien verbannt wurde. In der Zwischenzeit hat Ernesto Imogene, Gualtieros damalige Liebste, geheiratet und einen Sohn mit ihr bekommen. Gualtiero seinerseits, mittlerweile Anführer einer Gruppe aragonischer Piraten, sinnt nach wie vor auf Rache. Das gerettete Schiff ist das einzige, das den Piraten noch geblieben ist; sie haben gegen Ernesto eine weitere Niederlage erlitten, die Gualtiero jetzt in seine Heimat und auf das Territorium seines Widersachers führt.

Goffredo, der in besseren Zeiten Gualtiero als Lehrer unterrichtete, erkennt seinen einstigen Schüler sofort, überglücklich begrüßen sich die beiden

–54 – Männer. Doch rasch schlägt die Stimmung um, Gualtiero spricht von seinem wilden Hass auf Ernesto und seiner ebenso unvergänglichen Liebe zu Imogene. Die Fischer kehren zurück mit der Nachricht, die Herzogin sei auf dem Weg, die Schiffbrüchigen zu begrüßen. Goffredo möchte Gualtiero die Identität von Ernestos Gemahlin verheimlichen und bietet ihm Zuflucht in seiner Einsiedelei an. Dann erscheint Imogene in Begleitung ihrer Zofe Adele und fragt Gualtieros Begleiter Itulbo nach Einzelheiten über das in Seenot geratene Schiff. Zudem erkundigt sie sich angelegentlich nach Piraten, denen er in letzter Zeit begegnet sei, und insbesondere nach deren Anführer. Itulbo antwortet ausweichend, seine Mutmaßung, der Anführer könnte tot sein, verstört Imogene so sehr, dass sie Adele von einem Traum erzählt, in dem sie Gualtiero verwundet an einem einsamen Strand liegen sah. In eben diesem Augenblick erscheint Gualtiero und sieht Imogene, sie hört seinen Aufschrei, erkennt halb, wer ihn ausgestoßen hat, und möchte dem nachgehen, wird aber überredet, in die Burg zurückzukehren, in der sie zuvor allen Schiffbrüchigen Herberge angeboten hat.

Abends in der Burg sitzen die Piraten beim Zechgelage. Itulbo versucht sie zu mäßigen, damit sie nicht ihre wahre Identität verraten. Imogene schickt Adele zu ihnen mit dem Auftrag, Gualtiero zu bestellen, die Herzogin wünsche ihn zu sehen. Er tritt vor sie, hat sich aber in einen Umhang gehüllt. Sie bietet ihm finanzielle Hilfe an, die er ablehnt, beide beklagen ihr unglückliches Los. Erst als Imogene sich zum Gehen wendet, gibt Gualtiero sich zu erkennen. Sie umarmen sich, dann erzählt Imogene von ihrer Vermählung mit Ernesto, die sie nur gezwungenermaßen einging, um ihren Vater vor dem Tod im Kerker zu

–55 – bewahren. Gualtiero ist entsetzt, nicht zuletzt ob der Erkenntnis, dass all seine Hoffnungen, die er die ganzen Jahre im Exil hegte, auf Sand gebaut waren. So groß ist sein Zorn, dass er zum Dolch greift, als Imogenes kleiner Sohn eintritt, ihr Aufschrei jedoch bringt ihn zur Besinnung, er schließt das Kind in die Arme, ehe er hinausstürzt.

In der Ferne verkündet eine Militärkapelle die überraschende Rückkehr Ernestos aus der Schlacht. Adele überbringt Imogene die Nachricht, dass der Herzog sie erwartet. Die folgende Szene spielt sich auf dem erleuchteten Platz vor der Burg ab, wo der Herzog im Kreis seiner Soldaten seinen Sieg über die Piraten feiert. Enttäuscht muss er feststellen, dass Imogene sehr bedrückt ist. Als Entschuldigung führt sie an, dass sie sich krank fühle, und er verspricht, ihr jetzt, nachdem Gualtieros Männer keine Bedrohung mehr darstellen, mehr Zeit zu widmen. Dann fragt er sie nach näheren Auskünften über die schiffbrüchigen Seeleute und verlangt, dass deren Anführer vor ihn trete.

Die Piraten erscheinen, Itulbo gibt sich an Gualtieros Statt als Anführer aus; dieser verbirgt sich inmitten seiner Männer. Zunächst befiehlt Ernesto, dass sie alle als Gefangene in Caldora bleiben, bis ihre Namen und ihre Absichten bekannt seien, aber als Imogene für sie um Gnade bittet, willigt der Herzog ein, sie am kommenden Tag ziehen zu lassen. Dankbar sinken die Piraten vor Imogene in die Knie, und Gualtiero nutzt die Gelegenheit, um noch einmal mit ihr zu sprechen. Durch Goffredo und Itulbo vor Ernesto verborgen, bittet er sie um eine weitere Zusammenkunft. Das Ansinnen lehnt sie ab, woraufhin er nach Rache verlangt. Imogene fällt in Ohnmacht, als sie wieder zu sich kommt,

–56 – verleihen alle Anwesenden ihren widerstreitenden Gedanken und Gefühlen Ausdruck: Imogene Seelenqual, Adele Sorge, Ernesto Misstrauen, Gualtiero Wut und Itulbo und Goffredo den Wunsch, baldmöglichst aus der Burg zu fliehen. Der Akt endet, als Gualtiero von seinen Freunden und Imogene von ihren Damen fortgeführt werden. In Gedanken versunken bleibt Ernesto mit seinen Männern auf der Bühne zurück.

2. AKT

SPÄT IN der Nacht erkundigen sich Imogenes Zofen bei Adele nach dem Befinden der Herzogin und beten, sie möge Frieden finden. Im ersten Morgengrauen versucht Adele, ihre Herrin zu überreden, Gualtiero zu empfangen, da er sonst nicht gehen werde. In dem Moment werden sie von Ernesto unterbrochen, der seiner Frau Vorhaltungen macht, sich als krank auszugeben, während sie sich in Wahrheit nach ihrem früheren Geliebten verzehre. Imogene erinnert ihn daran, dass er schon vor der Vermählung von ihren Gefühlen für Gualtiero gewusst habe und diese sich nicht verändert hätten, obwohl sie ohne jede Hoffnung sei und das Ende ihres Lebens herbeisehne. Ein Ritter kommt mit der Nachricht, Gualtiero sei in der Gegend gesehen worden, woraufhin Ernesto wütend den Tod seines Feindes und seiner Frau verlangt.

Die Kulisse verlagert sich zu einer Loggia in der Burg. Itulbo äußert seine Besorgnis wegen Gualtieros Plänen, all seine Männer müssten kampfbereit Stellung beziehen, um abhängig vom Ausgang seines Gesprächs mit Imogene

–57 – angreifen zu können. Als das Treffen stattfindet, fordert Gualtiero sie auf, mit ihm mitzukommen, sonst werde er Ernesto auf den Tod bekämpfen. In verlockenden Tönen schildert er ihr die Freuden des Lebens auf dem Meer, doch Imogene lehnt beharrlich ab und bittet Gualtiero ihrerseits, Vergebung zu üben. Als sie sich zum Gehen wendet, hindert er sie daran, und in dem Augenblick erscheint Ernesto. Zwar ist er gekommen, um ihr Gespräch zu belauschen, doch nun tritt er vor und unterbricht ihr Abschiednehmen. Blutdurstig greifen die beiden Männer zu den Waffen und gehen zum Zweikampf davon, Imogene bleibt allein zurück und wiederholt ihren Wunsch zu sterben. Sie fällt in Ohnmacht, und als sie wieder zu sich kommt, hat sie nichts anderes im Sinn, als den Kampf der Männer zu beenden.

Die Ritter und die Burgdamen versammeln sich im Erdgeschoss der Burg, im Hintergrund ist ein Wasserfall zu sehen. Ernesto ist von Gualtiero getötet worden, seine Soldaten tragen seine Waffen in Form einer Trophäe herein. Sie fordern Rache an Gualtiero und sind erstaunt, als er tatsächlich den Saal betritt. Er bietet sein eigenes Leben im Gegenzug dafür, dass seine Leute unbehelligt ziehen dürfen. Ernestos Männer fordern, dass ein aus Rittern bestehender Rat ihm den Prozess mache, Gualtiero bittet Adele, ihrer Herrin auszurichten, er hoffe auf ihre Gnade. Als er aufbricht, um sich dem Rat zu stellen, ist der Chor beeindruckt von seinem Mut, all seiner Verbrechen zum Trotz. Gualtiero hofft, dass man seiner nicht nur wegen seiner ruchlosen Taten gedenke, sondern auch wegen seines unglücklichen Lebens.

–58 – Imogene tritt mit ihrem Sohn auf, sie hat den Verstand verloren. Sie glaubt, Ernesto rufe nach seinem Sohn, und rät ihm, seinen Vater um Erbarmen zu bitten. Auf die Nachricht, Gualtiero sei verurteilt worden, verlangt sie, er solle freigesetzt werden. Doch sie erblickt nur den Galgen, der für ihn errichtet wurde, und als ihre Zofen sie wegführen wollen, sieht sie seinen Tod vor sich und läuft davon. Die Ritter führen Gualtiero herein, er bittet um ein rasches Ende, doch bevor ihm der Wunsch erfüllt werden kann, greifen die Piraten an. Imogene und Adele kommen wieder hinzu, nur um zu sehen, wie Gualtiero und seine Leute die Brücke über den Wasserfall überqueren und die Burg verlassen. Daraufhin nimmt Gualtiero sich das Leben, Imogene verliert erneut das Bewusstsein, und die Oper endet mit einem Tableau kollektiven Entsetzens und Grauens.

© Benjamin Walton, 2012 Übersetzt von Ursula Wulfekamp

–59 – La trama

ATTO PRIMO

L’OPERA INIZIA su una spiaggia tempestosa in Sicilia, nei pressi del castello di Caldora; in lontananza si possono scorgere i ruderi di un monastero. Mentre imperversa la tempesta, i contadini e le donne si radunano per cercare di aiutare una nave in difficoltà. L’eremita Goffredo, unico residente del monastero, esorta tutti alla preghiera e poco dopo una scialuppa riesce a raggiungere la nave e a mettere in salvo l’equipaggio. Le persone rimaste sulla spiaggia si dirigono al castello per chiedere alla duchessa Imogene di ospitare i nuovi arrivati.

Tra i naufraghi soccorsi si trova Gualtiero, un tempo conte di Montaldo ed esiliato dalla Sicilia dieci anni prima, dopo essere stato sconfitto in battaglia da Ernesto, duca di Caldora. Nel frattempo Ernesto ha sposato Imogene, la donna amata da Gualtiero, e ha avuto un figlio da lei. Gualtiero, invece, si è messo alla testa di una banda di pirati aragonesi ed è tuttora risoluto a vendicarsi. La nave soccorsa è l’unico vascello rimasto ai pirati, sconfitti ancora una volta da Ernesto, e oggi riporta Gualtiero in quella che un tempo era la sua patria e oggi è terra nemica.

Goffredo, che in tempi migliori era stato istitutore di Gualtiero, riconosce subito il suo ex allievo e i due si salutano con gioia. Ma lo stato d’animo si incupisce ben presto: Gualtiero continua a nutrire un odio profondo nei confronti di Ernesto e un amore altrettanto incrollabile per Imogene. Tornano

–60 – i pescatori e annunciano il prossimo arrivo della duchessa che desidera incontrare i sopravvissuti. Desideroso di nascondere a Gualtiero l’identità della moglie di Ernesto, Goffredo gli ordina di ripararsi nella sua cella da eremita. Entra Imogene, accompagnata dalla damigella Adele, e chiede a Itulbo, compagno di Gualtiero, informazioni sul vascello naufragato. È desiderosa inoltre di avere notizie sugli ultimi avvistamenti dei pirati e soprattutto sul loro capo. Itulbo risponde in maniera evasiva, dicendo che potrebbe essere morto. Imogene, sconvolta, racconta ad Adele un sogno in cui aveva visto Gualtiero ferito su una spiaggia deserta. Proprio a questo punto esce Gualtiero e vede Imogene; la donna sente (e quasi riconosce) la sua esclamazione di sorpresa e vorrebbe sapere di più, ma viene convinta a ritornare al castello, dopo aver invitato tutti i sopravvissuti.

Durante la notte, al castello, i pirati gozzovigliano. Itulbo cerca di frenarli, per evitare che rivelino la loro vera identità. Imogene incarica Adele di incontrare Gualtiero per convocarlo alla sua presenza e l’uomo entra, avvolto nel suo mantello. Lei gli offre del denaro per aiutarlo, ma lui rifiuta; entrambi ammettono di essere infelici. Solo quando la donna sta per lasciare la stanza, però, Gualtiero rivela la propria identità. I due si abbracciano, ma poi Imogene rivela di essersi sposata con Ernesto contro la propria volontà, per salvare la vita del padre prigioniero. Gualtiero inorridisce, soprattutto perché si rende conto che tutte le speranze accarezzate nei lunghi anni di esilio sono castelli in aria. La sua ira è tale che, nel momento in cui entra il figlioletto di Imogene, fa per afferrare la spada; davanti al terrore della madre, abbraccia il bambino e poi corre via.

–61 – In lontananza, una banda militare annuncia l’inatteso ritorno di Ernesto dal campo di battaglia; Adele comunica a Imogene che il duca l’attende. La scena cambia: siamo davanti al castello illuminato, dove i soldati e il duca festeggiano le loro vittorie sui pirati. Ernesto è deluso nel vedere Imogene molto abbattuta. La donna dice di non stare bene e lui le promette che dedicherà più tempo a lei, ora che la minaccia degli uomini di Gualtiero si è allontanata. Le chiede notizie sui marinai scampati al naufragio e desidera che il loro capo si presenti davanti a lui.

Entrano i pirati: Itulbo si fa avanti e dichiara di essere il loro capo, mentre Gualtiero rimane nascosto nel gruppo. Ernesto dichiara che tutti rimarranno prigionieri a Caldora finché non saranno stati accertati i loro nomi e le loro intenzioni, ma quando Imogene gli chiede di essere clemente, acconsente a lasciarli partire il giorno dopo. Tutti i pirati si inginocchiano davanti a Imogene in segno di ringraziamento; Gualtiero coglie l’opportunità per parlarle di nuovo, nascondendosi tra l’eremita e Itulbo per non essere visto da Ernesto, e le chiede un altro incontro. La donna fa resistenza e per tutta risposta lui chiede vendetta. Imogene sviene e, quando riprende i sensi, tutti manifestano i loro diversi pensieri e sentimenti: tormento (Imogene), preoccupazione (Adele), sospetto (Ernesto), ira (Gualtiero), e desiderio disperato di fuggire (Itulbo e l’eremita). Al termine del primo atto, Gualtiero esce, accompagnato dai suoi amici; Imogene viene portata via dalle sue damigelle. Sulla scena rimane Ernesto, immerso nei suoi pensieri, in compagnia dei suoi cavalieri.

–62 – ATTO SECONDO

A TARDA notte, davanti agli appartamenti di Imogene, gli attendenti chiedono informazioni ad Adele sulla salute della duchessa e pregano che possa trovare pace. Mentre spunta l’alba, Adele cerca di convincerla a vedere Gualtiero, che rifiuta di allontanarsi. Le due donne sono interrotte da Ernesto, che accusa la moglie di simulare un malessere mentre in realtà soffre per il suo amante del passato. Imogene ricorda a Ernesto che il suo costante amore per Gualtiero non mai è stato un mistero, e che lui ne era consapevole quando l’aveva sposata. La sua è ormai un’esistenza disperata e lei attende con ansia la fine della propria vita. Un cavaliere annuncia che Gualtiero è nelle vicinanze, e questo spinge Ernesto a desiderare con ira la morte del nemico e della moglie.

Cambia la scena. In una loggia del castello, Itulbo è preoccupato: Gualtiero ha deciso di tenere tutti i suoi uomini pronti all’attacco, in base all’esito dell’incontro con Imogene. Ora che la posta in gioco è chiara, Imogene e Gualtiero si incontrano ancora una volta. Gualtiero le chiede di seguirlo; in caso contrario combatterà contro Ernesto fino all’ultimo sangue. Le prospetta i piaceri della vita sul mare, ma Imogene è irremovibile e chiede a Gualtiero di mostrare clemenza. Poi cerca di allontanarsi, ma l’uomo glielo impedisce. Contemporaneamente arriva Ernesto, che spia la conversazione, e poi si fa avanti per interrompere gli addii della coppia. I due uomini si avventano l’uno contro l’altro, assetati di sangue, poi escono per sfidarsi. Imogene si ritrova sola a invocare ancora una volta la propria morte; perde i sensi e, quando rinviene, non sa a pensare ad altro che a interrompere il duello.

–63 – I cavalieri e le dame si riuniscono al pianterreno del castello, da cui si vede una cascata in lontananza. Ernesto è morto, ucciso da Gualtiero: i suoi soldati portano le sue armi e ne fanno un trofeo. Chiedono vendetta contro Gualtiero, ma rimangono stupiti nel vedere quest’ultimo entrare nel castello e offrire la propria vita in cambio della libertà per i suoi compagni. Gli uomini di Ernesto esigono una sentenza del Consiglio dei Cavalieri e Gualtiero dice ad Adele di augurarsi che la sua signora possa alla fine provare compassione per lui, prima di dirigersi verso il Consiglio. Il coro, suo malgrado, rimane colpito dal suo coraggio; Gualtiero si augura di essere ricordato per la sua vita tormentata oltre che per le sue azioni spietate.

Entra Imogene con il figlio: ha perso il senno. Crede di sentire Ernesto che chiama il bambino e chiede a quest’ultimo di invocare la pietà del padre. Alla notizia della condanna di Gualtiero, chiede la sua liberazione. Alla vista del patibolo innalzato per lui, mentre le damigelle cercano di condurla via, immagina la sua morte, poi fugge inorridita.

Entrano i Cavalieri con Gualtiero, che invoca solo una morte immediata ma, prima che il suo desiderio possa essere esaudito, i pirati attaccano. Rientrano Imogene e Adele, mentre Gualtiero e i suoi uomini escono dal castello attraverso il ponte sulla cascata. Gualtiero si uccide; Imogene perde conoscenza e l’opera si conclude tra la costernazione e l’orrore generale.

© Benjamin Walton, 2012 Traduzione di Emanuela Guastella

–64 – David Parry (conductor) IL PIRATA Melodramma in two acts Libretto by Felice Romani First performance: 27 October 1827 Teatro alla Scala, Milan

ORIGINAL CAST Ernesto, Duca di Caldora, a partisan of the house of Anjou ...... Antonio Tamburini Imogene, his wife, once the lover of Gualtiero ...... Henriette Méric-Lalande Gualtiero, formerly Conte di Montaldo and adherent of King Manfredi, now an exile and head of the Aragonese pirates ...... Giovanni Battista Rubini Itulbo, companion of Gualtiero ...... Lorenzo Lombardi Goffredo, once Gualtiero’s tutor, now a hermit [Il Solitario] ...... Pietro Ansilioni Adele, Imogene’s chief lady-in-waiting ...... Marietta Sacchi A little son of Imogene and Ernesto...... non-singing role

Fishermen and their women-folk, Pirates, Knights, Ladies and Ladies-in-waiting.

The scene is set in Sicily, in the Castle of Caldora and its surroundings.

The action takes place in the 13th century.

Lines of the libretto not set by Bellini are preceded by double quotation marks.

–66 – ANNOUNCEMENT

Il duca Ernesto di Caldora, potentissimo Ernesto, Duke of Caldora, a most powerful signore siciliano, amava perdutamente la Sicilian nobleman, fell deeply in love with the bella Imogene e la desiderava in isposa; beautiful Imogene and wished to marry her; ma il cuor di lei era prevenuto per Gualtiero, but her heart was already given to Gualtiero, conte di Montaldo. Il duca di Count of Montaldo. To revenge himself on Caldora, per vendicarsi del preferito rivale, his preferred rival, who with Imogene’s che col vecchio padre d’Imogene seguiva elderly father espoused the cause of Manfredi, le parti di Manfredi, si pose a favorire i the Duke of Caldora set about favouring the disegni di Carlo d’Angiò; e tanto fece, designs of Carlo d’Angiò; with such success che, spento Manfredi, il partito angioino that, after the death of Manfredi, the Angevin trionfò in Sicilia, e Gualtiero, vinto in party triumphed in Sicily, and Gualtiero, battaglia, fu perseguitato e proscritto. defeated in battle, was persecuted and outlawed.

Fuggì questi in Aragona, il cui re, He fled to Aragon, whose king, an enemy of nemico degli Angioini, pretendeva al the Angevins, aimed to gain control of Sicily; dominio della Sicilia; ma non rinvenne but in that kingdom he failed to encounter the in quel regno la protezione che egli the protection he was hoping for. No other sperava. Altro partito non gli rimase per way remained for him to harry his enemies danneggiare i suoi nemici, che quello di than that of arming a band of Aragonese armare una squadra di Pirati aragonesi, pirates, with whom, plundering the seas and coi quali corseggiando per ben dieci anni, coasts for a full ten years, he waged fierce fece aspra guerra agli Angioini, sperando war upon the Angevins, always hoping to sempre di poter vendicarsi, e di ricuperare revenge himself and to regain Imogene. She, l’amante. Ma questa era per esso perduta, however, was lost to him, since the Duke poichè il duca di Caldora avea fatto of Caldora had imprisoned her old father, prigioniero il vecchio padre d’Imogene, and had obliged her, in her misery, to e costretta la misera a comprare la di lui purchase his life by giving him her hand. vita col dono della sua mano.

–67 – L’ardimento dei Pirati giunse a tale, che The boldness of the pirates reached such Carlo d’Angiò spedir dovette contro di loro a point that Carlo d’Angiò was obliged to tutte le forze della Sicilia, affidandone il despatch all the forces of Sicily against them, comando al duca di Caldora. Scontraronsi entrusting command to the Duke of Caldora. le due squadre sulle acque di Messina, e The two forces met and clashed in the straits dopo un lungo combattere Gualtiero fu of Messina, where after a long battle Gualtiero vinto, e obbligato a fuggire con un solo was defeated and forced to flee with a single vascello. Sopraggiunto quindi da una vessel. Overtaken by a storm, he was cast burrasca, fu gittato sulle coste della Sicilia, ashore upon the coast of Sicily, not far from non lungi da Caldora, ove egra ed afflitta Caldora, where languished the grieving and languiva l’infelice Imogene. unhappy Imogene.

A questo punto comicia l’azione. Quel The action begins at this point. What che poscia avvenisse, si vedrà nel subsequently transpired will be seen in melodramma. L’autore ha cercato di esser più the melodrama. The author has sought chiaro che per lui si poteva; se non vi è to be as clear as he could be; if he has not riuscito, se ne incolpi la necessità di succeeded, let his need to be brief bear esser breve. the blame.

–68 – CD 1 39’02 ACT ONE

[1] Sinfonia

SCENE I

The sea-shore in the vicinity of Caldora. At the front [and to the side] of the stage is to be seen an ancient monastery, now the cell of a hermit.

As the curtain rises a terrible storm has already broken. A vessel is seen in great danger, beaten back and forth by the winds and waves. The shore and the rocks are crowded with fishermen who make every effort to come to the aid of the unfortunates who are close to being shipwrecked. Goffredo the hermit [Il Solitario] encourages them. Little by little the entire stage becomes filled with people. The storm reaches its height.

[2] FISHERMEN & WOMEN Ciel! qual procella orribile Heavens! what an awful storm it is Terra sconvolge e mare! That overturns earth and sea! I miseri a salvar Every effort to save the poor wretches Vana è ogni cura. Is useless. SOLITARIO Non disperate, o figli, Do not give up hope, my children, Non son perduti ancor. They are not lost yet. CHORUS Vana è ogni cura. Every effort is in vain. Heavens! Non vedi, o ciel! qual procella orribile! Do you not see what a terrible storm it is!

–69 – SOLITARIO V’ha un nume protettor There is a protecting God Della sventura. Who presides over misfortune. CHORUS Deh! prega il Nume protettor Ah! pray to the protecting God Della sventura. Who presides over misfortune. MEN from the rocks Oh ciel! Urta la nave... Heavens! The ship has struck... MEN & WOMEN Ahi miseri! Alas, poor fellows! Pere ciascun... Quale orror! They perish one and all... What a disaster! SOLITARIO & CHORUS Ahi lassi! preghiam per lor. Alas, poor souls! Let us pray for them.

Nume che imperi ai turbini, O God, you who rule over the eddying seas, Che affreni i venti e i mar, You who curb the winds and the waves, Deh! non abbandonar, Ah! do not abandon, Oh Nume, gl’infelici. O God, these unhappy men. Di lor pietà. Have mercy upon them.

MEN from the rocks Lo schifo! Su, presto, The skiff! Quickly, Compagni, da bravi! Companions, let us up and be brave!

–70 – Brindley Sherratt (Goffredo, Solitario) ALL Lo schifo! Oh cielo! The skiff! Oh Heavens! Speranza v’è ancor. There is still hope. ALL THE MEN from the rocks, to those in the boat Coraggio! costanza! Courage! Do not give up hope! Al vento resiste... ”s’inoltra... si avanza.. It resists the wind... ”it makes headway... it advances... ”Evita gli scogli...” ”It skirts the reefs...” SOLITARIO & WOMEN Più cresce la speme... There is growing hope... MEN from the rocks Contrasta con l’onde... It buffets the waves... SOLITARIO & WOMEN Oh cielo! l’assisti. Oh heaven! help it. MEN from the rocks S’inoltra... s’arresta... It makes headway... it stops... ALL Più dubbio non v’ha. There’s no further doubt about it. Al Nume celeste – sien grazie rendute Let us render thanks to God in Heaven Di loro salute, – di tanta bontà. For their survival – for his great bounty. Notizie del caso – si rechi a Caldora. Let news of the occurrence be carried to Caldora. Accorra al riparo – la nobil signora. May the noble lady hasten to extend her protection.

–72 – Ospizio, ”conforto – nel proprio castello” Courteously she will extend hospitality “and consolation” Ai lassi stranieri – ospizio darà, To these unhappy strangers “in her own castle,” Che puote dar prova – di nova pietà. For it enables her to give proof of fresh compassion.

SCENE II

The chorus hastily departs. Meanwhile the shipwrecked sailors who have been rescued by the fishermen come from the shore. Gualtiero, supported by Itulbo, is among them. The Solitario hastens to greet them with great concern and solicitude.

[3] GUALTIERO Io vivo ancor! A me nemici io trovo And still I live! Even the elements I find Fin gli elementi. My enemies. SOLITARIO (Oh ciel! qual voce?) (Heavens! what voice is that?) ITULBO (Ah! taci; (Ah! be silent; Frenati per pietà... Tradirti vuoi?) Restrain yourself for pity’s sake... Do you wish to betray yourself?) GUALTIERO In quale lido giungemmo? Ove siam noi? What shore have we reached? Where are we? SOLITARIO ”(Ah! è desso!)” In seno amico, ”(Ah! it is he!)” Unfortunate man, Sventurato, sei tu. You are among friends.

–73 – GUALTIERO Quai detti! What words do I hear! ITULBO (Io tremo.) (I tremble.) SOLITARIO Ah! Gualtiero! Ah! Gualtiero! GUALTIERO Goffredo! Goffredo! SOLITARIO Al sen ti premo. I clasp you to my heart. GUALTIERO Oh! mio secondo padre, Oh! my second father, Mio saggio istitutor; tu in queste spoglie, My wise instructor... You in this garb, In sì povero tetto? Beneath such a poor roof? SOLITARIO Ah! te perduto, Ah! when I lost you, Ogni bene io perdei... Qui tristo e solo I lost all I valued... Here, alone and in sadness, A pianger vivo la tua morta fama, I live to weep over your vanished reputation, La tua vergogna, e la tua casa in fondo. Your shame, and your sunken house. E tu?... And you? GUALTIERO Di mia vendetta ho pieno il mondo... My world is filled with my wish for revenge... Ma indarno. Il vile Ernesto, But to no avail. Vile Ernesto, Il mio persecutor, vive ed esulta My persecutor, lives and exults in my Dell’ingiusto mio bando e di mie pene... Unjust banishment and my sufferings...

–74 – José Bros (Gualtiero) Ma di’... Che fa Imogene? But tell me... What is Imogene doing? Mi è fida ancora, e d’ogni nodo è sciolta? Is she still faithful to me, and free from all ties? SOLITARIO Misero! e pur pensi?... Wretched man! Do you still think of her? GUALTIERO A lei soltanto... Of her alone... [4] Ascolta. Listen. Nel furor delle tempeste, In the fury of the tempests, midst Nelle stragi del pirata, The carnage that is the pirate’s lot, Quell’imagine adorata That adored image Si presenta al mio pensier, Is present in my thoughts Come un angelo celeste As a heavenly angel, Di virtude consiglier. As a counsellor of virtue. SOLITARIO Infelice! ed or che speri? Unhappy man! and now what do you hope for? GUALTIERO Nulla io spero... E pure io amo, I hope for nothing... And yet I love, Io amo e peno. I love and I suffer. Ma l’orror de’ miei pensieri But this love at least dispels Questo amor disgombra almeno: The horror of my thoughts: Egli è un raggio che risplende It is a ray of light that shines Nelle tenebre del cor. In the dark recesses of my heart. La mia vita omai dipende My life now depends Da Imogene e dall’amor. Upon Imogene and her love.

–76 – SCENE III

The fishermen, returning, and those already on stage.

[5] CHORUS Del disastro di questi infelici The noble lady, informed by us of the Per noi conscia la nobil signora, Disaster that has befallen these unfortunates, Ella stessa ne vien da Caldora Comes herself from Caldora Le pietose sue cure a partir. To dispense her compassionate care. SOLITARIO (Oh! periglio!) Ti affretta a seguirmi. (Oh! the danger!) Come quickly: follow me. Sì, sei perduto, se a lei non t’ascondi. Yes, you are lost, if you do not conceal yourself from her. GUALTIERO Sì mutato chi mai può scoprirmi? So changed, whoever can discover me? SOLITARIO Ella al certo. She, certainly. GUALTIERO Ella? Chi è dessa?... rispondi. She? Who is she?... tell me. SOLITARIO Deh! nol chieder. Ah! do not ask. GUALTIERO Come? che dici? How come? What are you saying? SOLITARIO Sì, ti fia noto: or ti è d’uopo fuggir. Yes, her identity will be made known to you, but right now you must fly.

–77 – SOLITARIO & ITULBO Vieni, fuggi... sei solo fra nemici. Come, fly... you are alone in the midst of enemies. GUALTIERO Fra nemici! In the midst of enemies! Nè poss’io disfidarli e morir! And can I not confront them and die? [6] Per te di vane lagrime Still, my beloved, I feed myself Mi nutro ancor, mio bene: With vain tears for you: Speranza mi fa vivere The hope of again possessing you Di possederti ancor. Is the reason I [continue to] live. Se questo avessi a perdere If I were to lose this solace Conforto in tante pene, In the midst of so many sufferings, Ah! non potrei più reggere, Ah! I could bear up no longer – Vorrei la morte allor. In that case I should wish to die. SOLITARIO & ITULBO Deh! taci, incauto, e frenati; Ah! be silent, rash man, restrain yourself; Non dar di te sospetto: Do not excite suspicion: ”Mill’occhi in te s’affisano,” ”A thousand eyes are fixed upon you,” Ti svela il tuo furor. Your fury betrays you. Frena il tuo furor. Control your anger. CHORUS aside Donde sì cupi gemiti? Whence such gloomy groans? Ah, perchè? Ah, why? Ah! quel che l’agita That which agitates him

–78 – È certo smania, Is certainly a frenzied longing, Non è speranza, non dolor. It is not hope, or grief. (The Solitario leads Gualtiero into his dwelling, then returns to Itulbo .)

SCENE IV

Imogene, Adele, and Imogene’s ladies. All those already on stage. All go to meet the newcomers.

[7] IMOGENE Sorgete; è in me dover quella pietade Rise. That compassion which brings me to Che al soccorso m’invia degli stranieri The aid of strangers whom chance or tempest Che tragge a questo suol caso o tempesta: Casts upon these shores is a duty for me: Antica legge di Caldora è questa. It is an ancient law of Caldora. Chi siete, o sventurati? Who are you, poor fellows? Donde scioglieste? Whence set you sail? ITULBO La real Messina At dawn we quit Lasciammo all’alba; a Palermo volte Royal Messina, our sails set Eran le nostre vele. For Palermo. IMOGENE A Palermo! Ah! solcaste un mar crudele. For Palermo! Ah! you ploughed a cruel sea. Campo d’orribil guerra, Strangers, that sea is the scene O stranieri, è quel mar. Of a horrible war. ITULBO (Cielo!) (Heavens!)

–79 – Carmen Giannattasio (Imogene) IMOGENE V’occorse Did you encounter Di quei pirati alcun? Any of those pirates? ITULBO Essi fur vinti, They were defeated, Spersi... distrutti... Dispersed... destroyed... IMOGENE E il duce loro? And their leader? ITULBO Il duce? Their leader? (Qual mai richiesta?) È forse in ceppi, (Whatever enquiry is this?) Perhaps he is o spento. in fetters, or dead. IMOGENE Spento!... Dead!... ADELE to Imogene (Ah! che fai? ti frena.) (Ah! what are you doing? Restrain yourself.) IMOGENE (Oh mio spavento!) (Oh! I am filled with alarm!) (At a sign from Adele the pirates draw back; Imogene takes Adele aside .) [8] Lo sognai ferito, esangue, I dreamed [I saw] him wounded, his blood shed, In deserta, ignuda riva... Upon a barren, deserted shore... Tutta intrisa del suo sangue, All running red with his gore. De’ miei gridi il ciel feriva... I rent the heavens with my cries...

–81 – Nè una voce rispondea, But never a voice replied: L’aura istessa, il mar tacea. The sea, the breeze itself was silent. Era sorda la natura Nature was deaf Al mio pianto, al mio dolor. To my tears, to my grief. ADELE (Deh! cessa... scacciar procura (Ah! stop... try to banish Queste imagini d’orror.) These horrible pictures [from your mind.]) CHORUS (Ella geme; ignota cura (She groans; some unknown care L’infelice affligge ognor.) Constantly afflicts the unhappy lady.) IMOGENE Ah! senti ancora. Ah! hear yet further. Quando a un tratto il mio consorte When all of a sudden my husband Mi s’affaccia irato e bieco. Appears before me, angry and louring. Io, mi grida, io il trassi a morte, ’Twas I, he shouts at me, I who haled him to his death, E m’afferra, e tragge seco... And he seizes me, and drags me away with him... Ah! Ah! CHORUS Ciel! Ella geme, oh infelice! Heavens! She groans, unhappy lady! ITULBO (Qual sospetto io sento in core!) (What a suspicion I feel in my heart!) IMOGENE Muta, oppressa, sbigottita, Speechless, oppressed, dismayed, Lunge, lunge io son rapita... Afar, afar he carries me... E mi seguita sui venti And upon the winds there follows

–82 – Un sospir di lui che muor... A sigh from him who dies... Quel sospiro io sento ancor. That sigh... I hear it still. O mia fedele, questo sogno O my faithful Adele, I fully believe Avverato appien comprendo. That this dream foretells the truth. ADELE Vane larve tu paventi. These are empty nightmares that you fear. Ti calma, o Dio! O God, calm yourself! ITULBO (”Che intendea con quegli accenti?” (”What does she mean with those words?” Qual sospetto io sento in cor!) What a suspicion I feel in my heart!) [9] GUALTIERO appearing from the dwelling of the Solitario, who prevails upon him to re-enter Cielo! è dessa! Heavens! It is she! IMOGENE Oh Dio! che intendo?... O God! what do I hear?... Qual mai gemito suonò? Whatever was that groan? ITULBO Egli è un naufrago dolente... He is an unhappy survivor of shipwreck... Egro, misero, demente, Ailing, wretched, out of his mind, Che fortuna e il mar fremente Despoiled of all his possessions D’ogni bene lo privò. By fortune and the raging sea. IMOGENE Si soccorra... Oh cara Adele! Let me go to his aid... Oh, my dear Adele, Qual tumulto in me destò! What a tumult he has aroused within me! [10] (Sventurata, anch’io deliro, (In my misfortune, I too rave wildly, Tutta assorta in vano affetto: Totally plunged in pointless emotion: Io ti veggo in ogni oggetto, O you who are the torment of my heart,

–83 – O tormento del mio cor. I see you everywhere I look. Ah! sarai, finch’io respiro, Ah! for as long as I live, even when Anch’estinto a me presente: You are dead you will be here with me: La cagion eternamente For all time you will be Tu sarai del mio dolor.) The cause of my grief.) SOLITARIO, ADELE & CHORUS Al castel tranquilla riedi, Return to the castle in peace of mind, Gli stranieri aita avranno. The strangers will receive help. Tu lo vedi: il loro affanno You see that their suffering Tristo oggetto è omai per te. Is by now a source of sadness for you. (Imogene and her train of ladies depart .)

CD 2 46’49

SCENE V

A loggia in the Castle of Caldora opening on to the gardens. It is night.

The pirates enter, drinking and abandoning themselves to their disordered delights. Then Itulbo arrives to [try to] keep them in check.

[1] PIRATES entering in tumult, and drinking Evviva!... allegri!... Hurrah!... be merry!... Andiam pure, allegri, allegri! Yes, let’s go, be merry, be merry! Viva! viva!... Chi risponde Hurrah! hurrah!... Who is that who

–84 – A’ nostri evviva? Responds to our cheers? Ripetiamo... Viva! viva!... Let us repeat… Hurrah! Hurrah!... (They listen. The echo repeats their evvivas .) Egli è il vento... il suon dell’onde It is the wind… the sound of the waves Che si frangon sulla riva. Breaking upon the shore. Alla gioia de’ Pirati Land and sea both participate Prende parte e terra e mar. In the joy of the Pirates. Zitti, zitti/Zitto, zitto, sconsigliati, But softly, softly, rash mates, Non ci stiamo a palesar. Let’s not betray ourselves. Ascoltiam... alcun s’appressa. Let us listen… someone is coming. Egli è Itulbo... It is Itulbo. (They go towards him, and invite him to drink with them .)

Prendi, senti... Take a cup, listen… ITULBO Zitto, zitto, sconsigliati, Softly, softly, rash mates, Non vi state a palesar. Do not betray yourselves. S’avvicina la duchessa; The Duchess draws nigh; Separatevi, imprudenti. Disperse, imprudent fellows. CHORUS La duchessa! The Duchess! ITULBO Guai se viene Woe betide us if someone comes Chi noi siamo a sospettar! Who should suspect us! CHORUS Guai, sì, guai! tacer conviene: Woe betide us, yes! it’s as well to keep silent: Guai se viene a sospettar! Woe betide us if she comes to suspect us!

–85 – Mark Le Brocq (Itulbo) Bever tosto, e lungi andar. Let us down our drinks, and get well clear of here. Versa... versa... Pour... pour... Presto versa, versa e bevi, Quickly pour, pour and drink, Versa, tocca, e presto andiam. Pour… clink tankards… and quickly away. ITULBO ”Piano, amici... ”Quiet, my friends… CHORUS ”Un solo evviva.” ”A single evviva.” Senti, senti: Listen, listen: Chi risponde?... Egli è il vento, Who is that who replies?... It is the wind, L’onda infranta in sulla riva... The wave breaking on the shore… Alla gioia dei Pirati Land and sea both participate Prende parte e terra e mar. In the joy of the Pirates. ITULBO & CHORUS Zitto, zitto, sconsigliati, Quietly, quietly, rash fellows, Non vi state/ci stiamo a palesar, You must not/We must not betray ourselves, Versa, versa... Pour, pour... etc. etc. La bottiglia ci rintegri May the bottle reward us Da cotanto faticar. After all our fatigues. (They retire, their voices little by little becoming lost in the distance .)

–87 – SCENE VI

Imogene, then Gualtiero and Adele.

[2] IMOGENE Ebben?... Well?... ADELE Verrà. He will come. Lungi da’ suoi, sepolto I found him far from his men, In profondi pensieri, io lo rinvenni, Buried in deep thoughts, E il tuo desir gli esposi. And I informed him of your wish. IMOGENE Ed ei ti disse?... And what did he say to you?... ADELE Nulla. Nothing. In me gli occhi affisse Silent and perplexed, he fixed his eyes Muto, perplesso, indi sull’orme mie Upon me, and then, always without a word, Mosse tacito sempre, e a lento passo. He slowly followed my steps. IMOGENE Vanne, e veglia qui presso ad ogni evento. Go, and keep watch close by for anything that may transpire. (Adele leaves .) [3] Perchè cotanta io prendo Why do I feel such concern D’uno stranier pietà? Mesto sul cuore For a stranger? The sound of his sad Ancor mi suona il gemer suo dolente. – Groan is still present in my heart. –

–88 – Eccolo. – Oh! come io tremo a lui Here he is. – Oh! how I tremble in presente! his presence! (Gualtiero enters slowly at the back of the stage, and stops there, wrapped in his mantle. He does not look at Imogene .)

Stranier... la tua tristezza, Stranger... your sadness, in the midst of Nella gioia de’ tuoi, prova m’è certa Your companions’ rejoicing, is for me certain proof Che a te fortuna fu più cruda assai... That fortune was much more severe towards you.. Parla... T’avrebbe mai Speak... Can the sea have bereft you Tutto rapito il mar? Poss’io con l’oro?... Of all? Can I [assist you] with gold?... GUALTIERO Nulla... Il mondo per me non ha tesoro. In no way... The world holds no treasures for me. IMOGENE Intendo... Hai tu nell’onde I understand... Have you perhaps lost Perduto forse un adorato oggetto, In the waves someone you loved, Un congiunto, un amico!... Ah! non poss’io A relative, a friend?... Ah! I cannot Consolarti, o stranier... Io stessa, io stessa Console you, stranger... I myself, I myself Inconsolabil vivo. Live [out my days] in inconsolable sorrow. GUALTIERO È ver, d’ogni conforto il ciel m’ha privo. It is true, Heaven has deprived me of every comfort. Sono orrendi i miei mali... The wrongs I have suffered are horrendous...

–89 – IMOGENE Eppur, sollievo And yet, can you [not] hope Sperar puoi tu di tua famiglia in seno, For solace in the bosom of your family, Nel patrio suol... In your homeland?... GUALTIERO Io!... son deserto in terra. I?... I am alone in this world. Famiglia, patria, empio destin mi ha tolto. An evil destiny has torn both family and homeland from me. IMOGENE (S’accresce il mio terror se più l’ascolto.) (My terror will exceed all measure if I listen further.) Poichè d’alcuna aita Since it is not granted me to assist you Giovarti non mi lice, addio... Se un giorno With any form of help, farewell... If one day Fia che ti tragga degli altari al piede Your grief should draw you to the foot Il tuo dolore, prega, deh! prega per me Of the altar, pray, ah! pray for me – for che sono I am Più di te sventurata. Even more unfortunate than you. (She is on the point of leaving. )

GUALTIERO approaching her Odimi... t’arresta... Hear me... stop... Invan ricusi... a me fuggir non puoi. In vain you refuse... you cannot flee from me. IMOGENE Fuggirti non poss’io? Chi sei? che vuoi? I cannot flee from you? Who are you? What do you wish?

–90 – GUALTIERO Ch’io parli ancor? Voce suonava un giorno Must I speak again? My voice once spoke Che ognun potea scordar senza delitto, Words which all could forget without doing wrong – Fuor che tu sola... All but you alone... IMOGENE Giusto cielo!... Good Heavens!... GUALTIERO Ah! Imogene! Ah! Imogene! IMOGENE È desso, è desso! It is he, it is he! (She abandons herself trembling in his arms, then draws back in dismay .) [4] Tu sciagurato! Ah! fuggi... You, wretched man! Ah! fly... Questa d’Ernesto è corte. This is the court of Ernesto. GUALTIERO Lo so... Ma tu distruggi I know... But [I beg you], dispel Dubbio peggior di morte. A doubt that is worse than death. Qui, dove impera Ernesto, How come that you are here, Come sei tu? perchè? Where Ernesto holds sway? Why? IMOGENE Nodo fatal, funesto, A fatal, ill-omened knot A me l’unisce... Binds him to me... GUALTIERO A te!! To you!! No, non è ver: no ’l credo... No, that’s not true: I don’t believe it... No, non mi fosti tolta. No, you have not been taken from me.

–91 – IMOGENE Misera me! Unhappy that I am! GUALTIERO Che vedo! What do I see? Tu piangi? Oh furor! You weep? Oh how I rage! IMOGENE Ah! m’ascolta, Ah! hear me. Il genitor cadente, My failing father, In ria prigion languente Pining in an evil prison, Peria, se al Duca unirmi Would have perished had I continued Io ricusava ancor. To refuse to unite myself to the Duke. GUALTIERO Empia!... così tradirmi!... Wicked woman!... to betray me thus!... IMOGENE Periva il genitor. My father was dying. [5] GUALTIERO Pietosa al padre! e meco You showed such concern for your father! Eri sì cruda intanto! And at the same time you were so cruel to me! Ed io deluso e cieco While I, deluded and blind, Vivea per te soltanto! I lived for you alone! Mille soffria tormenti, I endured a thousand torments, L’onde sfidava e i venti, I braved the winds and waves, Sol per vederti in seno And all to see you in the arms Del mio persecutor! Of my persecutor! Perfida! hai colmo appieno Perfidious woman! you have added De’ mali miei l’orror. The final touch to the horror of my ills.

–92 – IMOGENE Ah! tu d’un padre antico, Ah! you were not trembling Tu non tremasti accanto; At the side of an aged father; Scudo al pugnal nemico He had no shield against his enemy’s dagger Ei non avea che il pianto... Except tears... I lunghi suoi tormenti His long drawn-out torments Non furo a te presenti, Did not take place before your eyes, Non lo vedesti pieno You did not see him subjected D’affanno e di squallor... To so much suffering, so much neglect... ”Non maledirmi almeno: ”At least do not curse me: ”Ti basti il mio dolor.” ”Let my grief be enough for you.” [6] Alcun s’appressa... Ah! lasciami, But someone comes... Ah! leave me, Guai se tu fossi udito! Woe betide us should you be overheard! GUALTIERO Or che tu m’hai tradito, Now that you have betrayed me, Nessun tremar mi fa. No one can make me tremble. (Imogene’s ladies enter with her son. Seeing him, she cries out in terror .) IMOGENE Ah! figlio mio! Ah! my son! GUALTIERO taken aback Che ascolto? What do I hear? Scostati... Stand back... (He seizes the boy, and fends Imogene off from him .)

–93 – IMOGENE terrified Oh ciel! Oh Heavens! GUALTIERO shuddering as he looks at the child Qual volto! Those features! IMOGENE Pietà!... Have pity!... GUALTIERO Figlio d’Ernesto... Ernesto’s son... (His hand clutches at his dagger. )

IMOGENE Ah! è mio... Ah! he is mine... È figlio mio... Pietà! He is my son... Have pity! (At Imogene’s cry, Gualtiero stops, perplexed. Then, moved, he restores her son to her. )

[7] GUALTIERO Bagnato dalle lagrime Wet with the tears of a heart D’un cor per te straziato, Torn apart on your account, Lo stringo a questo seno, I clasp him to my breast, Lo dono al tuo dolor. I surrender him to your grief. Ti resti per memoria May he remain with you as a reminder D’un nodo sciagurato; Of a disastrous marriage; Eterno fia rimprovero May he be a perpetual rebuke Del mio tradito amor. For the way you have betrayed my love. IMOGENE Non è la tua bell’anima, Your generous heart... No,

–94 – Non è, Gualtier, cambiata... No, Gualtiero, it has not changed... In queste dolci lagrime In these sweet tears Io la ritrovo ancor. I discover your heart once more. Deh! fa che pegno scorrano Ah! let your tears flow as a sign Ch’io mora perdonata... That I may die pardoned... Sian dono amaro ed ultimo Let them be the last and bitter gift D’un infelice amor. Of an unhappy love. (Gualtiero breaks from her, and leaves in haste .) [8] Grazie, pietoso ciel, grazie ti rende Thanks, merciful Heaven, this mother’s Il materno mio cor. Heart of mine gives you its thanks. [to her ladies ] Ite, vegliate Go, watch over Sull’innocente, e non ardisca alcuno, The innocent child, and let not any of you presume, Se pur cara le sono, If yet I am dear to her, Rammentar quel che vide. To remember what she has seen. (The sound of a military band comes from off-stage .) Ahimè! Qual suono! Alas! What sound is this? (Adele reappears .) Che rechi, Adele? What news do you bring, Adele? ADELE Inaspettato arriva The victorious Duke Il Duca vincitor. Arrives unexpectedly. IMOGENE Egli... Gran Dio! The Duke?... Good God! In qual momento ei viene! At what an inopportune moment he comes!

–95 – Victoria Simmonds (Adele) ADELE Il popol vola The tenantry hasten Incontro al suo signor, e di festiva To greet their lord, and Caldora is already decked out E lieta pompa già Caldora splende. With festive and joyous splendour. Vieni: te sola attende Come: the noble procession Il nobile corteggio. Waits for you alone. IMOGENE Andiamo. Ah! questo Let us go. Ah! this D’ogni fiero mio caso è il più funesto. Bodes worse than all my other ills. (They depart. )

SCENE VII

The illuminated exterior of the Palace of Caldora.

A military march, applauded by the Knights. Then Ernesto.

[9] CHORUS OF SOLDIERS Più temuto, più splendido nome Until now Sicily has never heard Del possente signor di Caldora A more feared, a more splendid name Non intese Sicilia finora Soar on the wings of fame Della fama sui vanni volar. Than that of the powerful lord of Caldora. La fortuna gli porse le chiome, Fortune has decked his head with her locks, La vittoria seguì le sue vele; Victory has attended upon his sails; Sallo appieno il Pirata crudele The ruthless Pirate who dared to challenge Che la possa ne ardiva sfidar. His sway [now] knows full well his power.

–97 – In un giorno le squadre fur dome In a single day the squadrons who were Che dell’onde usurpavan l’impero; Usurping the empire of the waves were tamed; In un giorno fu vinto Gualtiero, In a single day Gualtiero was vanquished, In un giorno fu libero il mar. In a single day the sea was set free. Più temuto, più splendido nome A more feared, a more splendid name Non s’udì per Sicilia echeggiar. Has not been heard echoing through Sicily. [10] ERNESTO Sì, vincemmo, e il pregio io sento Yes, we were victorious, and I feel Di sì nobile vittoria; [All the] prestige of such a noble victory; Ma che vostra è la mia gloria, But, yet further, I feel, Sir Knights, Cavalieri, io sento ancor. That my glory belongs to you. Se divisi nel cimento If in the fray we shared Fur gli affanni e le fatiche, Sufferings and exertions, Dividete in mura amiche Share with me now in these friendly walls Le mie feste e lo splendor. My celebrations and my splendour. [11] CHORUS Più temuto, più splendido nome A more feared, a more splendid name Non s’udì per Sicilia echeggiar. Has never been heard echoing through Sicily. ERNESTO Sì, vincemmo, etc . Yes, we were victorious, etc . CHORUS Come in guerra sei audace, Just as you are bold in time of war, Sei cortese nella pace, So you are courteous in time of peace, La bontà del tuo gran core, The generosity of your great heart

–98 – Va del pari col valor. Keeps equal pace with your valour. Come in guerra invitto, audace, Just as you are invincible and bold in war, Sei cortese e umano in pace, So you are courteous and humane in peace, La bontà del tuo gran core, The generosity of your great heart Va del pari col valor. Keeps equal pace with your valour. CHORUS Come in guerra sei audace, etc. Just as you are bold in time of war, etc .

ERNESTO ”(I vili Pirati ”(The vile Pirates ”Io vinsi furente; ”I conquered in my rage; ”Ma l’anima ardente ”But my ardent soul ”Saziarsi non può. ”Will never be satisfied. ”Tu vivi, o Gualtiero, ”You live, Gualtiero, ”Tu fuggi impunito. ”You flee unpunished. ”Quel sangue abborrito ”I have [yet] to spill ”Versato non ho.)” ”Your hated blood.)”

SCENE VIII

Imogene, Adele, Ladies, and those already on stage. Ernesto goes to meet Imogene.

[12] ERNESTO M’abbraccia, o donna... Che vegg’io?... Embrace me, my lady... But what do I dimessa, see?... Are my braves Afflitta tanto troveranno i prodi To find the consort of their Duke so

–99 – La consorte del Duca? Al mio trionfo Downcast and woebegone? Is this the way Tal prendi parte? You share in my triumph? IMOGENE Di vederti illeso I rejoice only to see M’allegro io solo; altro non lice ad egra You unharmed; other [rejoicing] is not permitted to a woman who is – Languente donna, ed a qual punto il sai. And you know to what extent – infirm and ailing. ERNESTO Tristo è il tuo stato, e m’è palese assai. Your state is pitiable, that is very plain to me. Ma volto in meglio ei fia, chè a te por But it will take a turn for the better, since mente henceforth I shall be able Quindi io potrò... nè più lasciarti io spero. To give my mind to you more... and I hope not to leave you henceforth. Il traditor Gualtiero The traitor Gualtiero is discomfited and on Fugge sconfitto, nè che più risorga The run, and I have no fear that he will A nuova guerra e ancor mi sfidi io temo. Recover to challenge me to fresh warfare. IMOGENE (E s’ei giungesse? Oh mio terrore estremo!) (If he were to come now? Oh! my terror knows no bounds!) ERNESTO Ma di’: qual sei pietosa But tell me: compassionate as you are, Desti a’ naufraghi asilo? You have given asylum to shipwrecked sailors? IMOGENE (Oh! Ciel!) (Oh! Heavens!)

–100 – Ludovic Tézier (Ernesto) ERNESTO Contezza Do you know for sure Dell’esser loro hai certa? Who they are? IMOGENE Agl’infelici My [first] thought was Porger soccorso, e interrogarli poscia To give aid to the unfortunates, and then to Fu mio pensier. Question them later. ERNESTO A me dinanzi io quindi For this reason I am calling Il duce loro appello Their leader before me, together with Col Solitario, che dal mar fremente The Solitario, who was the first to pluck Li ricettò primiero. Them from the raging sea. Eccoli. Here they are.

SCENE IX

The Solitario, Gualtiero, Itulbo, Pirates and those already on stage. The newcomers halt at the back of the stage.

IMOGENE (Aita, oh cielo!) (O Heaven, help me!) SOLITARIO sottovoce to Gualtiero (Ardir, Gualtiero.) (Courage, Gualtiero.) (He advances .)

Degli stranieri accolti Of the strangers made welcome

–102 – Nell’ospital tua terra, eccoti innanzi, In your hospitable territory, here before you, Signore, il condottier. My lord, is the leader. ERNESTO A me s’appressi, Let him approach me E sincero risponda. And answer my questions honestly. (Gualtiero is about to present himself, but is anticipated by Itulbo .)

ITULBO Eccomi. Here I am. [13] IMOGENE (Il suo disegno, o Ciel, seconda.) (O Heaven, endorse his design.) (Gualtiero stays back among the pirates. Ernesto looks Itulbo up and down searchingly .)

GUALTIERO (Oh! furor! e ho da frenarmi?) (How I rage! And must I restrain myself?) ERNESTO All’accento, al manto, all’armi From your accent, your cloak and your arms, Tu non sei di questi lidi. [I perceive] you are not of these shores. ITULBO In Liguria il giorno io vidi. I [first] saw the light of day in Liguria. ERNESTO E tu sei? And you are? ITULBO Di quello Stato A captain of fortune Capitano venturier. Of that State.

–103 – ERNESTO Quelle terre asilo han dato Those territories have given shelter A un fellon, al vil Gualtier. To a felon – to the despicable Gualtiero. GUALTIERO (Vile!) (Despicable!) SOLITARIO (Ah! taci, sconsigliato.) (Ah! be silent, rash man.) ITULBO Là s’accoglie ogni stranier. Every stranger finds a welcome there. ERNESTO Ma soccorso ei vi rinviene But he finds help in the form Di navigli e di corsari... Of vessels and corsairs… M’è sospetto ognun che viene Everyone who comes from those shores, Da quei lidi, da quei mari... From those seas, is suspect to me… Finchè meglio a me dimostro Until I can better be certain Non è il nome e l’esser vostro, Of your names and your station, In Caldora resterete You will [all] remain in Caldora, Rispettati prigionier. Respected prisoners. GUALTIERO (Prigionieri!) (Prisoners!) IMOGENE (Ahimè!) (Alas!) SOLITARIO to Gualtiero (Ti frena.) (Restrain yourself.) ITULBO Cruda legge, o Duca, imponi. You impose a severe law, Sir Duke. to Imogene

–104 – Mark Le Brocq (Itulbo), Brindley Sherratt (Solitario), José Bros (Gualitero), Carmen Giannattasio (Imogene), Ludovic Tézier (Ernesto), Victoria Simmonds (Adele) Tu che sai la nostra pena, You who know what we have suffered, Nobil donna, t’interponi. Noble lady, intercede on our behalf. IMOGENE Ah! signor... così inclemente Ah! my lord… do not let these friendly folk Non ti trovi amica gente. Find you so lacking in clemency. Da fortuna afflitti, oppressi, Struck down by fortune, oppressed, Infelici assai son essi; They are [already] sufficiently unhappy; Il ritorno ai patrii lidi Do not deny these grieving men Ai dolenti non negar. Their wish to return to their native shores. GUALTIERO (Traditor!) (Two-faced woman!) SOLITARIO (Deh! taci!) (Ah! hush!) ERNESTO [to Imogene], after some thought Dunque il vuoi? You wish it, then? Partan dunque al nuovo albor. Let them depart, then, at first light tomorrow. ITULBO & PIRATES [to Imogene] Generosa!... a’ piedi tuoi Generous lady!... at your feet Rendiam grazie del favor. We thank you for this favour. (All the pirates kneel before Imogene, Gualtiero among them .)

GUALTIERO [sottovoce to Imogene ] (Imogene!... un solo accento...) (Imogene!... a single word with you…)

–106 – IMOGENE [to Gualtiero ] (Sorgi... oh Dio… non ti svelar...) (Arise… Oh God! do not betray yourself...) (Ernesto is surrounded by his men, to whom he manifests his suspicions and gives orders. The Solitario and Itulbo are prey to the greatest fear, and stand in front of Gualtiero and Imogene to hide them from the eyes even of those closest to them .)

[14] GUALTIERO (Parlarti ancor per poco (Before departing, I wish Pria di partir, pretendo... To speak to you once more for a little… In solitario loco, In some solitary spot, Qual più tu vuoi, attendo... Wherever you wish, I shall await you… Se tu ricusi... per te, deh! trema... If you refuse… ah! tremble… Per te, per lui, per figlio... For yourself, for him, for your son… Notte per tutti estrema For this night, cruel woman, will be Questa, crudel, sarà.) The last for all of you.) IMOGENE (Ti scosta... Oh Dio! te ’l chiedo, (Stand back… O God! I beseech you, L’imploro a te piangendo... I beseech you with my tears… L’ultimo mio congedo Receive my last farewell Abbi in tal punto orrendo. In this awful moment. Non t’ostinar, deh! ti prema Do not oppose me… ah! take heed Del tuo mortal periglio... Of your mortal danger… Della mia pena estrema, Have pity on my extreme anguish, Del mio terror pietà.) On my terror.) ERNESTO (Io volgo in cor sospetti (In my heart I am turning over suspicions Ch’io non comprendo: That I do not understand:

–107 – All’opre loro, a’ loro detti It behoves me to pretend, and to keep Giovi vegliar fingendo... Watch on their actions, on their words. Queti esplorar giovi vegliar It behoves me stealthily to be on the lookout Se approdi alcun naviglio: In case some vessel makes landfall: Se v’ha cagion di tema, If there is any cause for fear, Il nostro acciar li preverrà.) Our swords will anticipate their [every move].) KNIGHTS Queti esplorar ci prema It behoves us stealthily to be on the lookout Se approdi alcun naviglio: In case some vessel makes landfall: E se v’ha cagion di tema, And if there is any cause for fear, Quest’acciar li preverrà.) These swords will anticipate their [every move].) ITULBO & SOLITARIO Osserva... Ah! tutto ancor Observe… Ah! I feel all my fear Il mio timor riprendo… Growing upon me once more… Il periglio orrendo… The awful danger… S’asconda altrui la tema But let us hide from others Che palpitar ci fa. The fear that sets us trembling. Reggiam ancor. Let us bear up still. ADELE Misera! Ah! tutto ancora Ah! wretched that I am! I feel all Il mio terror riprendo… My fear growing upon me once more… Lo sconsigliato ignora In his rashness Gualtiero ignores Il suo periglio orrendo. His frightful danger.

–108 – ADELE & LADIES Questa prova estrema Let us unflinchingly withstand Reggiam con fermo ciglio: This extreme test: S’asconda altrui la tema Let us conceal from all others Che palpitar ci fa. The fear that sets us trembling.

[15] GUALTIERO about to throw himself upon Ernesto Ebben; cominci, o barbara, Very well, then… barbarous woman, La mia vendetta. You trigger my revenge. IMOGENE with a cry Ah!... io moro. Ah!... I feel I am dying. (She abandons herself into the arms of her ladies .) ERNESTO & CHORUS turning, and running to her Che avvenne? What has happened? ITULBO to Gualtiero, dragging him away (Insano!) (Madman!) SOLITARIO (Scostati!...) (Stand back!...) GUALTIERO (Oh! qual furor divoro!) (Oh! what anger must I swallow!) ERNESTO D’onde sì strano e subito What is the cause of this strange and sudden Dolore in lei! Perchè? Pain she feels? Why is she suffering so?

–109 – LADIES-IN-WAITING Egra, languente e debile Even more frail, weak and ailing Più dell’usato forse, Than usual, perhaps, Tal non dovea l’improvvida She ought not, so thoughtlessly, Al ciel notturno esporse... To have exposed herself to the night air. ERNESTO Alle sue stanze traggasi. Let her be taken back to her chambers. LADIES-IN-WAITING Vedi: ritorna in sè... See: she is coming round… (Little by little Imogene recovers... she looks about her in dismay for Gualtiero, and, seeing him at a distance among his men, cries out: )

IMOGENE Ah! partiamo, i miei tormenti Ah! let us leave… May my torments Sian celati ad ogni sguardo. Remain hidden from all eyes. Tremo, avvampo... gelo ed ardo... I tremble, my heart pounds… I both burn and freeze… Gonfio in sen mi scoppia il cor. My heart, swelling in my breast, is bursting. ADELE Per pietade, vieni, For pity’s sake, come. Ascondi il tuo dolore. Hide your grief. ERNESTO Imogene! quali accenti! Imogene! What words are these? Qual delirio in lei si desta? What raving is welling up in her? Pena, ambascia non è questa, This is not distress or anguish, Ma trasporto, ma furor. She is carried away by madness, by frenzy.

–110 – Ludovic Tézier (Ernesto), David Parry (conductor), Robin Newton (assistant conductor), Nicholas Bosworth (répétiteur), Carmen Giannattasio (Imogene) GUALTIERO Raffrenar mie furie ardenti My reason vainly tries La ragione invan s’attenta; To hold my burning rage in check; All’acciar la man s’avventa, My hand keeps rushing to my sword, Alla strage anela il cor. My heart pants for slaughter. ITULBO & SOLITARIO Vieni, fuggi... omai cimenti Come, fly… now you place Colla tua la nostra vita... Our lives at risk as well as your own… Deh! risparmia la smarrita: Ah! spare the disconcerted lady: Ella more di terror. She is dying of terror. KNIGHTS Infelice! quali accenti! Poor woman! What words are these? Qual delirio in lei si desta? What raving is welling up in her? Pena, ambascia non è questa, This is not distress or anguish, Ma trasporto, ma furor. She is carried away by madness, by frenzy. LADIES-IN-WAITING Ah! signor, sì strani accenti Ah! sir, forgive a suffering woman Tu condona a donna oppressa... For such wild words… (Per pietade di te stessa (Out of pity for yourself, Vieni, ascondi il tuo dolor.) Come – hide your grief.) (Imogene is led away elsewhere by her ladies. Gualtiero is dragged off by Itulbo and the Solitario. Ernesto, in the midst of his knights, is left deep in serious thought. )

End of Act One.

–112 – CD 3 73’37

ACT TWO

SCENE I

A hall leading to Imogene’s rooms.

Chorus of Ladies-in-waiting; then Adele.

[1] LADIES Che rechi tu? Non cessa What news do you bring? Has she Ella dal pianto ancora? Still not ceased from weeping? ADELE Meno agitata e oppressa [A little] less agitated and overcome, Sonno cercar sembrò. She seemed to be trying to sleep. Itene voi per ora; For the present, all of you go: Qui sola io veglierò. I shall keep watch here on my own. ALL Prolunghi il ciel pietoso May kindly Heaven prolong Il breve suo riposo: Her brief repose: Pace per lei sia questa, May this prove [a moment of] peace for her, Che desta – aver non può. Which, awake, she cannot enjoy. (The Ladies-in-waiting retire .)

–113 – SCENE II

Adele and Imogene.

[2] ADELE Vieni; siam sole alfin… Nell’atrio estremo Come; at last we are alone… At the furthest end of the atrium Scender potrem non viste. We can descend without being seen. IMOGENE trying to leave, but scarcely able to support herself Ah! no, non posso. Ah! no, I cannot. È da terror percosso, My heart is frightened – Sbigottito il mio cor. Dismayed by terror. ADELE Gualtier non parte, Gualtiero will not leave Se te non vede... Ei me’l giurò pur ora, Unless he sees you… He swore it to me just now, E vicina, tu il vedi, è già l’aurora. And already, as you see, the dawn is breaking. IMOGENE Funesto passo è questo, This is an ill-omened, fearful move, Spaventoso, me’l credi... Eppur m’è forza Believe me… And yet I must go through Compirlo, e prevenir colpa maggiore. With it, to avoid yet greater guilt. Andiam... Ma qual rumore! Let us go… But what noise is that? Alcun s’appressa. Someone is coming. ADELE A queste soglie! in quest’ In these halls! at such Ora sì tarda... Ah! fuggi, è il Duca. A late hour... Ah! fly, it is the Duke.

–114 – SCENE III

Ernesto, Imogene and Adele.

[3] ERNESTO to Imogene, who wishes to retire Arresta. Stop. (At a sign from Ernesto, Adele leaves .)

Ognor mi fuggi!... Omai venuto è il tempo You are forever fleeing from me!... By now it is high time Ch’io mi ti ponga al fianco, e squarci il That I place myself at your side, and tear velo away the veil Di cui ti copri del tuo sposo al guardo. With which you conceal yourself from your husband’s sight. Morbo accusar bugiardo It is no longer acceptable that you impute your grief Più del tuo duol non vale. Egro è il tuo To imaginary illness. It is your heart that cuore, is ailing, Il tuo cuor solo. Only your heart. IMOGENE Ah! sì, d’affanno ei muore. Ah! yes, it is dying from its suffering. Lontana, il sai, profonda You are well aware that my ills have a deep, E inesauribil fonte Long-standing and inexhaustible source. Hanno i miei mali. Una famiglia oppressa, The oppression of my family, Un genitor estinto... The death of my father...

–115 – ERNESTO interrupting her E un nodo, aggiungi, And add, too, a union Un detestato nodo, e il non mai spento You detest, and your never-extinguished Pel tuo Gualtiero amore... Love for Gualtiero... IMOGENE Oh ciel! che sento? Oh heavens! what do I hear? Che mai rimembri? Ah crudo! What would you recall to my mind? Ah! unfeeling man! Ti basti ch’io son tua, che madre io sono Let it suffice that I am yours, that I am Del figlio tuo; nè ritentar mia piaga... The mother of your son; do not probe my wound afresh... Ch’ella gema in segreto almen t’appaga. At least be satisfied that it groans in secret. [4] ERNESTO Tu m’apristi in cor ferita You have opened in my heart a wound Della tua più sanguinosa. That bleeds more copiously than yours. Empia madre, iniqua sposa, An evil mother and a wicked wife, Mal tu celi un cieco amor. You ill conceal your blind love. IMOGENE Quando al padre io fui rapita When I was wrenched from my father Quest’amor non era arcano: This love was no secret: Tu volesti la mia mano, You wished to gain my hand, but you Nè curasti avere il cor. Showed no concern to win my heart. ERNESTO Oh! furore! E il vil Gualtiero Oh! fury! And so you love Ami dunque... ed io t’ascolto! That vile Gualtiero...and [must] I hear you [avow it]? L’ami? parla... You love him? speak...

–116 – IMOGENE with great emotion which is constantly growing Io l’amo, è vero: I love him, that is true: Ma qual s’ama un uom sepolto; But as one loves a man who is in his grave; Ma d’amor che non ha speme, With a love that knows no hope, Che desio, che ben non ha: Which looks neither to gain what it desires nor reward: Col mio cor si strugge insieme, This love destroys itself with my heart, Col mio cor insiem morrà. Together with my heart it will die.

[5] ERNESTO Ah! lo veggo: per sempre m’è tolta Ah! I understand: all hope of a tender Ogni speme di un tenero affetto: Affection is denied me for all time: Non mi resta che il tristo diletto Nothing more is left me but the sorry satisfaction Di straziar chi dolente mi fa. Of torturing the woman who causes my grief. IMOGENE Ah! lo sento: fra poco disciolta Ah! I understand: soon my soul will be Fia quest’alma dal fragil suo velo: Released from this fragile housing of flesh: E trovar le fia dato nel cielo And may it be permitted to find in Heaven Quel riposo che in terra non ha. That repose it has not found on earth.

–117 – Ludovic Tézier (Ernesto) and Carmen Giannattasio (Imogene) SCENE IV

A Knight appears who delivers a paper to Ernesto.

[6] ERNESTO Che rechi? What news do you bring? IMOGENE (Ahimè! che fia?) (Alas! what can it be?) ERNESTO reading Gualtiero in queste sponde! Gualtiero here upon these shores! IMOGENE Cielo! Heavens! ERNESTO Nella corte mia The miscreant conceals himself Il malfattor s’asconde! Here in my court! IMOGENE Ah! no’l pensar... Ah! do not believe it... ERNESTO Oh rabbia! Che!... Oh! how I fume! What’s this! La sposa a lui parlò! My wife has spoken to him! Empia! che in man io l’abbia... Evil woman! Let me get him in my grasp... Parla... dov’è? Speak... where is he? IMOGENE No’l so. I do not know. [7] ERNESTO Io... sì... lo rinverrò. I... yes... I shall track him down.

–119 – TOGETHER IMOGENE Ah! fuggi, spietato, Ah! merciless man, shun L’incontro fatale; Such a fatal encounter; Ignudo il pugnale Unsheathed, his dagger Sul capo ti sta, sì! Hangs over your head. Yes! Di sangue assetato Thirsting for blood Già cade, già piomba; Already it descends, already it falls; Ah! teco alla tomba Ah! together with you it will Il figlio trarrà. Drag our son to the tomb. ERNESTO Al giusto suo fato A divine power guides him Un nume lo guida: To his just fate: Che più ci divida There is no barrier that can Barriera non v’ha, no! Keep us apart any longer. No! Trafitto, svenato, Run through, his lifeline cut short, Già cade, già langue... Already he falls, already he staggers... Col vile suo sangue And with his vile blood Il tuo scorrerà. Yours, too, will flow. (Ernesto breaks furiously from Imogene. She follows him in dismay .)

–120 – SCENE V

A loggia in the Castle of Caldora, as in Act One. Dawn is close to breaking.

Gualtiero and Itulbo.

[8] GUALTIERO Lasciami, forza umana Leave me: there is no human force Non può cambiar mia voglia. That can alter my wishes. ITULBO A morte esponi You expose both yourself Te stesso e i tuoi, se indugi ancora, And your men to death if you se fugge delay longer, L’ora prefissa dal feroce Ernesto. If the hour determined by that savage Ernesto passes. GUALTIERO Io no’l pavento: alla vendetta io resto. I fear him not: I stay to wreak my revenge. Ella sarà tremenda, It will know no bounds Se ricusa Imogene udir l’estrema Should Imogene refuse to hear my final Proposta mia... Non replicar. Stian pronti Proposal... Answer me not. Let our faithful I nostri fidi al cenno: a caro prezzo, Men be on the alert for my signal: if you, Se mi seconda Itulbo, Itulbo, stand with me, we shall sell our lives Venderem nostre vite a quel superbo. To that proud man at a heavy price. ITULBO La mia risposta io serbo I reserve my reply All’ora del cimento. Till the hour of the fray. GUALTIERO Odo di passi I hear an uncertain

–121 – Incerto calpestío... Sound of footsteps... È dessa, è dessa... Omai ti scosta. It is she, it is she... Now stand aside. ITULBO Addio. Farewell. (He leaves .)

SCENE VI

Imogene and Gualtiero

[9] IMOGENE Eccomi a te, Gualtiero, Here I am with you, Gualtiero, L’ultima volta a te... Sian brevi i detti tuoi, But for the last time... Let your words be brief, Poichè scoperto sei. For you are discovered. Parla: che brami? Speak: what do you wish? GUALTIERO Omai saper te’l dei. Now you must know how things stand. Mi cerca Ernesto... Offrirmi Ernesto is looking for me... I must offer A lui degg’io... Pronto è l’acciaro... Myself to him... My sword is ready... lo vibro, Unless Se non mi segui. You follow me, I shall wield it. IMOGENE Oh! che di’ tu? Oh! what are you saying? GUALTIERO Due navi Two vessels

–122 – David Parry (conductor) and José Bros (Gualtiero) Mi raggiunser de’ miei... Pugnar poss’io; Manned by my men have reached me... I can fight; Pur vo’ fuggir... T’ama il crudele; ei provi Yet I prefer to flee... The savage man loves you: let him experience Di perderti l’affanno. The pain of losing you. IMOGENE Ah! no: giammai... Ah! no: never... Son rea, Gualtiero, ed infelice assai. I am [already] guilty, Gualtiero, and sufficiently unhappy. Parti. Depart. GUALTIERO Non lo sperar. Il mio destino Do not hope it. My destiny Qui m’incatena: qui vendetta o morte Chains me here: here ’ere long I shall Avrò fra poco. Either gain revenge or die. IMOGENE E speri tu?... And which do you hope for?... GUALTIERO L’ignoro. I do not know. Altro non so, che di te privo io moro. All I know is that without you I shall die. (Imogene would like to reply, but breaks into tears. Gualtiero is overcome with tenderness .) [10] Vieni: cerchiam pe’ mari Come: let us seek upon the seas Al nostro duol conforto, Some solace to our grief, Ah, mio ben, deh! vieni... Ah! my dear, yes come... Per noi tranquillo un porto The immense ocean will provide L’immenso mare avrà. Some peaceful port for us.

–124 – IMOGENE Taci: rimorsi amari Hush: bitter regrets Ci seguirian per l’onda: Would pursue us over the waves: Ah! lido che a lor ci asconda Ah! the immense sea has no shore L’immenso mar non ha. That may hide us from them. GUALTIERO Crudele! e vuoi?... Cruel woman! and what do you wish?... IMOGENE Correggere To correct L’error di cui siam rei. The error of which we are guilty. GUALTIERO E deggio dunque? Then I must? IMOGENE Vivere You must E perdonar tu dei. Live and forgive. GUALTIERO Ah! legge amara e barbara! Ah! your law is bitter and barbarous! IMOGENE Ma giusta... Addio. But just... Goodbye. GUALTIERO Ah! sentimi... Ah! listen to me... IMOGENE Gualtiero... Gualtiero...

–125 – SCENE VII

Ernesto at the back of the stage. Imogene and Gualtiero. Then Adele.

ERNESTO (Gualtier!... ) (Gualtiero!...) GUALTIERO Ah! Imogene... Ah! Imogene... IMOGENE Addio. Goodbye. GUALTIERO [to Imogene ] Ah! per pietà! Ah! for pity’s sake! Deh! sentimi! Ah! hear me! ERNESTO (È desso! (It is he!) Oh gioia! è in mio poter.) Oh joy! He is in my power.)

[11] GUALTIERO Cedo al destin orribile I submit to the horrendous destiny Che d’ogni ben mi priva, That deprives me of all that is good, Ma comandar ch’io viva, But, unfeeling woman, no, you cannot No, barbara, non puoi tu. Order me to live. IMOGENE Tutto è ad un cor possibile All is possible for a heart Quando lo guida onore: When it is guided by honour: Del tuo destin maggiore Virtue will render you superior Ti renderà virtù. To your destiny.

–126 – ERNESTO (Empi! su voi terribile (Evil wretches! already my fury Già pende il mio furor: Hangs terribly over you: Più spaventoso ei scende The more fearfully will it fall upon you, Quanto frenato è più.) The more [and the longer] it is restrained.)

[12] IMOGENE Parti alfine: il tempo vola. And now depart: time flies. GUALTIERO Ah! un addio! Ah! [we must say] farewell! ERNESTO advancing L’estremo ei sia. Let it be for the last time. IMOGENE Cielo! Heavens! GUALTIERO taking a step back Ernesto! Ernesto! IMOGENE stepping between them Ah! va: t’invola. Ah! go: fly. ERNESTO Fuggi invano all’ira mia. In vain you flee my wrath. GUALTIERO Io fuggir! Io! Io! I flee? I? I! Furente, insano, Raving and out of my mind, Ti cercai due lustri invano... I sought you full ten years in vain...

–127 – Nè la sete del tuo sangue Nor have ten years diminished Per due lustri in me scemò. My thirst for your blood. Esci meco. Come with me. ERNESTO Sì, ti seguo. Yes, I follow you. IMOGENE Ah! pietade. Ah! have pity on me. ERNESTO & GUALTIERO Sangue io vo’. I lust for blood. IMOGENE Ah! pietade! Ah! pietade! Ah! have pity! Have pity! Me ferite, me soltanto... Strike me down, but me alone...

Ferite me sola… Strike me down alone… Ah! ch’io perisca… io sola, io sola! Ah! let me perish… me alone, me alone! Ah! dal cielo, o sol, t’invola, Ah! quit the sky, O sun, Nega il giorno a tanto orror! Deny your light to so much horror! GUALTIERO & ERNESTO Va, t’allontana... è vano il pianto... Go your ways... your tears are in vain... Ah! io vo’ sangue, sangue il fato! Ah! I thirst for blood – fate demands blood! – Ah, sei pur giunto, o dì bramato Ah! you have indeed arrived, longed-for day Di vendetta e di furor! Of revenge and fury! (They leave together. Adele enters with the ladies-in-waiting. Imogene throws herself into Adele’s arms .)

–128 – Mark Le Brocq (Itulbo) and Victoria Simmonds (Adele) [13] ADELE Sventurata, fa core... Unfortunate lady, take heart... Alle tue stanze riedi... Ella non m’ode. Return to your apartments... She does not hear me. Pallida... fredda... muta... oh ciel! rimovi Pale... cold... speechless... Oh heaven! deflect Da queste mura l’infortunio orrendo From these walls the horrendous misfortune Che ne minaccia!... That threatens us!... IMOGENE recovering Ove son io? Che intendo?... Where am I? What do I hear?... Cozzar di brandi, e voci A clash of swords, and voices raised Di tumulto e minaccia... Ah ch’io divida, In tumult and threat... Ah! let me separate, Ch’io disarmi i crudeli. Let me disarm the unfeeling men. ADELE E vorresti?... What would you? IMOGENE Separarli, o perir. Invan m’arresti. I would separate them, or perish. In vain you [try to] stop me. (She leaves, despite Adele’s efforts to hold her back .)

–130 – SCENE VIII

A ground-floor vestibule in the Castle.

On both sides there are passageways leading to rooms; at the back of the stage, great arcades beyond which one can see [the landscape] outside, with a waterfall over which passes a bridge leading to the Castle.

To the sound of a mournful march, Ernesto’s soldiers enter, carrying his arms with which they form a trophy. Then come the Knights, all plunged in grief and brooding thought; then Adele and the Ladies. All gather in groups around the trophy.

[14] KNIGHTS & LADIES Lasso! perir così Poor man! to perish thus Degli anni suoi sul fior! In the flower of his years! E per chi mai? per chi? And by whose hand? By whose? Per man d’un traditor, By the hand of a traitor, D’un vil pirata! Of a worthless pirate! ADELE & LADIES Oh! sciagurato regno Oh! wretched kingdom Che perdi il tuo sostegno! Thus to lose your support! Ma tu per cui morì, But you, [Imogene,] even more unfortunate, In sì funesto dì, For whom he died Più sventurata! Upon such an ill-omened day! ALL Vendetta intiera, atroce, Let us swear/Swear with unanimous voice Giuriamo/Giurate ad una voce, A revenge both complete and appalling;

–131 – È vile, è senza onor He is vile, without honour, Chi non persegue ognor Who does not forever pursue Il rio pirata. The guilty pirate. (The Knights swear vengeance upon the arms of Ernesto .)

SCENE IX

Gualtiero comes forward from one of the galleries in the background. He is wrapped in his mantle, and is in a black and thoughtful frame of mind. Those already on stage.

[15] ADELE Giusto cielo! Gualtiero! Good Heavens! Gualtiero! CHORUS Gualtier! ed osi Gualtiero! and do you dare Mostrarti a noi?... Pera il fellon... To show yourself to us?... Let the felon perish... GUALTIERO in a commanding tone of voice Fermate, Stop, Nessun s’appressi. Uomo non v’ha che Let none approach me. The man does not possa live who can Nè spaventar, nè disarmar Gualtiero. Strike fear into Gualtiero, or disarm him. Largo al partir sentiero I have opened a broad path to departure Apersi a’ miei seguaci, all’ira vostra For my followers, [and now] I voluntarily expose Me volontario espongo. Myself to your anger.

–132 – Vendicatevi alfin: l’acciaro depongo. Avenge yourselves at last: I lay down my sword. (He throws down his sword .)

ADELE ”Che sento?” ”What do I hear?” CHORUS Oh! insano ardir! Oh! what insane boldness! GUALTIERO La morte attendo I await death Senza tremar. Without a tremor. CHORUS La merti! Eppur convien You merit death! And yet it is meet Che t’oda in prima, e ti condanni il pieno That first the full Council of Knights should De’ Cavalier Consiglio. Hear and condemn you. GUALTIERO Ebben, si aduni, Well then, let them assemble ”Senza indugiar”. Potria fuggirvi ancora ”Without delay”. Your victim could still La vittima di mano... ”Ancor possenti,” Elude your grasp... Warriors, I know my E a tutto osar capaci, Followers: they are ”still powerful,” Io conosco, o guerrieri, i miei seguaci. Still capable of attempting anything. (There is a brief silence. Gualtiero looks around him, recognises Adele and, moved, approaches her .) [16] Tu vedrai la sventurata You will see the unfortunate lady Che di pianto oggetto io resi, Whom I have made an object for tears,

–133 – Le dirai che s’io l’offesi You will tell her that if I offended her, Pur la seppi vendicar. I yet knew how to avenge her. One day, Forse un dì, con me placata, Perhaps, when her anger towards me has cooled, Alzerà per me preghiera, She will offer up a prayer for me, E verrà pietosa a sera And in her compassion will come at eve Sul mio sasso a lagrimar. To weep upon my tombstone. (A sound of trumpets is heard, coming from the Council Chamber .)

[17] ADELE & CHORUS Già s’aduna il gran consesso; Already the great council has gathered; Vieni e pensa a discolparti. Come and ponder how to exonerate yourself. GUALTIERO Condannato da me stesso, Condemned by myself, Io non penso che a morir. I think only to die. ADELE & CHORUS Ah! costretti a detestarti, Ah! though we are obliged to detest you, Pur diam lode a tanto ardir. We nevertheless give praise to such courage.

–134 – Michael Haas (producer) and José Bros (Gualtiero) [18] GUALTIERO Ma/Ah! non fia sempre odiata But/Ah! I hope my memory La mia memoria, io spero: Will not be hated for ever: Se fui spietato e fiero, If I was merciless and ruthless, Fui sventurato ancor. I was also unfortunate. E parlerà la tomba And my tomb will speak Alle pietose genti To compassionate men De’ lunghi miei tormenti, Of my drawn-out torments, Del mio tradito amor... Of my love betrayed. ADELE & CHORUS Ah, parlerà la tomba Ah, your tomb will also speak De’ tuoi misfatti ancor... Of your misdeeds. [19] ADELE Udiste? È forza, amiche, You heard? Perforce, my friends, we must Compianger il crudel, gemere è forza. Bewail the cruel man, perforce we must groan. Un magnanimo cor degenerato A magnanimous heart that has been corrupted Per avverso destin... Ma chi s’appressa?... By a hostile destiny... But who approaches?... La misera Imogene It is poor wretched Imogene, Assorta in suo dolor. Plunged in her grief. WOMEN Lassa! a che viene? Pitiable woman! What brings her here?

–136 – SCENE X

Imogene, holding her son by the hand, comes slowly forward, looking around her with a lost expression. She is out of her mind, and weeps. The women stand aside, watching her in tears. Imogene walks with irregular steps, and drops her son’s hand. He tries to console her, but she pays him no attention. He then runs to Adele, and draws her towards his mother, urging her to help. Adele embraces the child and approaches Imogene, but then, perceiving that she is not in her right mind, she stops short a few paces from her.

[20] IMOGENE Oh! s’io potessi dissipar le nubi Oh! could I but disperse the clouds Che m’aggravan la fronte!... È giorno, That weigh upon my brow!... Is it day, o sera? or is it evening? Son io nelle mie case, o son sepolta? Am I within my own walls, or in my grave? ADELE Lassa! vaneggia. Poor woman! she wanders in her mind. IMOGENE taking her aside Ascolta... Listen... Geme l’aura d’intorno... Ecco l’ignuda The wind moans about us... Here is the naked Deserta riva, ecco giacer trafitto And abandoned strand, here at my side lies Al mio fianco un guerrier... Ma non è A warrior slain... But this is not... questo, Non è questo Gualtiero... È desso Ernesto. It is not Gualtiero... It is Ernesto. Ei parla... ei chiama il figlio... He speaks... he calls for his son... Il figlio è salvo!... io lo sottrassi ai colpi His son is safe!... I rescued him from the malefactors’ blows...

–137 – De’ malfattori... a lui si rechi... il vegga... Let his son be brought to him... let him see him... L’abbracci e mi perdoni anzi ch’ei mora. Let him embrace him and forgive me before he dies. (Her son is brought to her. At first she does not recognise him, but suddenly does so, and after kissing him several times continues: )

Deh! tu, innocente, per me tu l’implora. Ah! you, my innocent, implore him for me. [21] Col sorriso d’innocenza, With your smile of innocence, Collo sguardo dell’amore, With your gaze of love, Di perdono e di clemenza, Ah! speak to your father Deh! favella al genitor. Of pardon, of mercy. Digli, ah! digli che respiri, Tell him, ah! tell him that you [live and] breathe, Digli che sei libero per me, Tell him that you are free through my doing, Che pietoso un guardo ei giri [Beseech him] to turn a compassionate eye A chi tanto oprò per te. Upon her who wrought so much for you. (Lugubrious sounds are heard issuing from the Council Chamber. Imogene in terror lets go of her son .) [22] Qual suono ferale What funereal sound is it Echeggia, rimbomba? That echoes and resounds? Del giorno finale Is this the trumpet È questa la tromba? Of the last day? Udite... Listen.

–138 – KNIGHTS from the Council Chamber Il Consiglio The Council Condanna Gualtier. Condemns Gualtiero. IMOGENE Gualtier!... oh periglio!... Gualtiero!... He is in danger!... Egli è prigionier!... He is a prisoner!... Spezzate i suoi nodi, Strike off his chains, Ch’ei fugga lasciate... Let him flee... Che veggo? Ai custodi What do I see? You deliver him In mano lo date... Into the hands of the guards... WOMEN Ah, no… Ah, no… IMOGENE Il palco funesto The fatal scaffold Per lui s’innalzò. Has been erected for him. ADELE & WOMEN Deh! vieni: riparati Ah! come: take shelter A stanze più chete: In quieter rooms: Procura agli spiriti Find relief Conforto e quiete – And silence for your spirits –

[23] IMOGENE Oh, Sole! ti vela Oh, Sun! veil yourself Di tenebre oscure... With darkening clouds... Al guardo mi cela Hide the barbarous axe La barbara scure... From my sight.

–139 – David Parry (conductor) and Carmen Giannattasio (Imogene) Ma il sangue già gronda, But already his blood spurts forth, Ma tutta m’innonda... It gushes all over me... D’angoscia, d’affanno, I shall die of anguish, of pain, D’orrore morrò. Of horror. ADELE & LADIES Deh! vieni: riparati Ah! come: take shelter A stanze più chete: In quieter rooms: Procura agli spiriti Find relief Conforto, quiete – And silence for your spirits – (”Delira, demente, (”She raves, she runs mad, ”Consiglio non sente...” ”She does not hear our counsel...” Al duol che l’opprime She can no longer bear up Più regger non sa.) Against the grief that weighs her down.) IMOGENE Là… vedete… il palco funesto… There… look… the fatal scaffold… Oh, Sole! Ti vela Oh, Sun! veil yourself etc. etc. (Imogene departs at a run, with her ladies in pursuit .)

SCENE XI

Gualtiero and the chorus of Knights; then the chorus of Pirates and Itulbo.

[24] KNIGHTS La tua sentenza udisti, You have heard your sentence, Il tuo destin t’è noto, Your fate is known to you, Ma noi possiam d’un voto But we can still render you happy

–141 – Farti contento ancor. With one [final] wish. Parla. Che vuoi? Speak. What do you want? GUALTIERO Null’altro fuorchè spedita morte. Nought else but a speedy death. Incontro alla sua sorte My heart pines to fly Vola ansioso il cor. To meet its destiny. KNIGHTS Pago sarai. Guidatelo Your wish will be granted. Conduct him Tosto a morir. Quai grida!... Speedily to his death. But what cries are these?... (Shouts are heard, coming from inside the Castle .)

CHORUS OF PIRATES from off-stage Viva Gualtier! Life to Gualtiero! KNIGHTS Ci assalgono His trusty followers I fidi suoi... Si uccida. Assail us... Let him be put to death. (The Pirates race on from various directions .)

ITULBO & PIRATES [to the Knights ] Voi, soli, voi morrete. You alone, you will die. KNIGHTS Ebbene, il difendete. Well then, defend him. (The Knights and the Pirates fall upon each other .)

–142 – SCENE THE LAST

Imogene, Adele, the chorus of Ladies, and those already on stage.

IMOGENE Lasciatemi! lasciatemi! Let me go! let me go! I wish Io vo’ saper chi muor. To know who it is who is dying. (Gualtiero crosses the bridge, followed by his men. )

Gualtier!... Gualtier! Gualtiero!... Gualtiero! GUALTIERO to the Pirates Scostatevi! Stand back! L’impone il vostro duce. It is your leader who commands you. Un’abborrita luce Thus I escape Fuggo così. The abhorrent light [of day]. (He stabs himself and falls from the bridge .)

ALL Che orror! What horror! (Imogene faints in the arms of her Ladies, and the opera ends with a tableau in which all express their dismay. )

END OF THE OPERA

–143 – Sir Peter Moores