Opera and Modern Spectatorship in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy

OPERA AND MODERN SPECTATORSHIP IN LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ITALY

At the turn of the twentieth century Italian opera participated in the making of a modern spectator. The Ricordi stage manuals testify to the need to harness the effects of operatic performance, activating opera’s capacity to cultivate a public. This book considers how four operas and one film deal with their public: one that in Boito’s Mefistofele is entertained by special effects, or that in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra is called upon as a political body to confront the specters of history; also a public that in Verdi’s Otello is subjected to the manipulation of contemporary acting, or one that in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut is urged to question the mechanism of spectatorship. Lastly, the silent film Rapsodia satanica, thanks to the craft and prestige of Pietro Mascagni’s score, attempts to transform the new industrial medium into art, addressing its public’s search for a bourgeois pan-European cultural identity, right at the outset of the First World War. alessandra campana is Assistant Professor of Music at Tufts University. She studied at the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” University of York, and Cornell University, and was a Junior Research Fellow at New College, University of Oxford. Besides her work in opera studies, her research spans more broadly the interfaces of sound and vision in theatre, film, and video. Co-chair of the Opera Seminar at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, she is an Associate Editor of The Opera Quarterly. CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN OPERA Series editor: Arthur Groos, Cornell University

Volumes for Cambridge Studies in Opera explore the cultural, political and social inﬂuences of the genre. As a cultural art form, opera is not produced in a vacuum. Rather, it is inﬂuenced, whether directly or in more subtle ways, by its social and political environment. In turn, opera leaves its mark on society and contributes to shaping the cultural climate. Studies to be included in the series will look at these various relationships including the politics and economics of opera, the operatic representation of women or the singers who portrayed them, the history of opera as theater, and the evolution of the opera house.

Published titles

Opera Buﬀa in Mozart’s Vienna Edited by Mary Hunter and James Webster

German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner John Warrack

Johann Strauss and Vienna: Operetta and the Politics of Popular Culture Camille Crittenden

Opera and Drama in Eighteenth-Century London: The King’s Theatre, Garrick and the Business of Performance Ian Woodﬁeld

Opera, Liberalism, and Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century France: The Politics of Halévy’s La Juive Diana R. Hallman

Three Modes of Perception in Mozart: The Philosophical, Pastoral, and Comic in Così fan tutte Edmund J. Goehring

Landscape and Gender in Italian Opera: The Alpine Virgin from Bellini to Puccini Emanuele Senici

Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime, 1647–1785 Downing A. Thomas

The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity Alexandra Wilson The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–1930 Susan Rutherford

Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu Edited by Victoria Johnson, Jane F. Fulcher, and Thomas Ertman

Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks Daniel H. Foster

When Opera Meets Film Marcia J. Citron

Situating Opera: Period, Genre, Reception Herbert Lindenberger

Rossini in Restoration Paris: The Sound of Modern Life Benjamin Walton

Italian Opera in the Age of the American Revolution Pierpaolo Polzonetti

Opera in the Novel from Balzac to Proust Cormac Newark

Opera in the Age of Rousseau: Music, Confrontation, Realism David Charlton

The Sounds of Paris in Verdi’s La traviata Emilio Sala

The Rival Sirens: Performance and Identity on Handel’s Operatic Stage Suzanne Aspden

Sentimental Opera: Questions of Genre in the Age of Bourgeois Drama Stefano Castelvecchi

Verdi, Opera, Women Susan Rutherford

Rounding Wagner’s Mountain: Richard Strauss and Modern German Opera Bryan Gilliam

Opera and Modern Spectatorship in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy Alessandra Campana

Opera Acts: Singers and Performance in the Late Nineteenth Century Karen Henson

Opera and Modern Spectatorship in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy

Alessandra Campana University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107051898 © Alessandra Campana 2015 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2015 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Campana, Alessandra. Opera and modern spectatorship in late nineteenth-century Italy / Alessandra Campana. pages cm. – (Cambridge studies in opera) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-107-05189-8 1. Opera – Italy – 19th century. I. Title. ml1733.4.c36 2014 792.50945009034–dc23 2014019427 isbn 978-1-107-05189-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. For Cecilia, Francesca, and Jane

CONTENTS

List of ﬁgures page x List of music examples xii Preface and acknowledgments xiii

1. Staging manuals and the public 1 2. The “ﬂeeting moment”: Arrigo Boito’s Meﬁstofele 15 3. Milan 1881: Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 48 4. Acting in Otello: on the rhetoric of the medium 106

5. The real of opera: Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 143 6. Faust again: the silent ﬁlm Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score 172

Postlude 191 Select bibliography 194 Index 203

ix FIGURES

2.1 Carlo Ferrario, sketch for the Prologue of Mefistofele (Milan, La Scala, 1881). Archivio Storico Ricordi © Ricordi & C. S.r.l. Milan page 26 2.2 Gestural score for Margherita, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Mefistofele” (Milan: Ricordi, 1881). Archivio Storico Ricordi © Ricordi & C. S.r.l. Milan 41 3.1 Final apotheosis in Excelsior (Milan, La Scala, 1881), L’illustrazione italiana 7 (February 13, 1881). Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 71 3.2 Girolamo Magnani, sketch for Simon Boccanegra (Milan, La Scala, 1881), Act 3. Archivio Storico Ricordi © Ricordi & C. S.r.l. Milan 76 3.3 Diagram for Act 3, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Simon Boccanegra” (Milan: Ricordi, 1881). Archivio Storico Ricordi © Ricordi & C. S.r.l. Milan 76 3.4 Light show; front page of L’illustrazione italiana (May 29, 1881). Biblioteca di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, Rome 78 3.5 Girolamo Magnani, sketch for Simon Boccanegra (Milan, La Scala, 1881), Act 1, scene i. Archivio Storico Ricordi © Ricordi & C. S.r.l. Milan 92 3.6 Copy of Girolamo Magnani, sketch for Simon Boccanegra (Milan, La Scala, 1881), Prologue. Archivio Storico Ricordi © Ricordi & C. S.r.l. Milan 93 4.1 Diagram for Act 2, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Otello” (Milan: Ricordi, 1887), 35. Archivio Storico Ricordi © Ricordi & C. S.r.l. Milan 114 4.2 Copy of Giovanni Zuccarelli, sketch for Otello (Rome, Costanzi Theatre, 1887), Act 2. Archivio Storico Ricordi © Ricordi & C. S.r.l. Milan 115 5.1 Plate for Act 1, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut” (Milan: Ricordi, 1893) 148 5.2 Plate for Act 2, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut” (Milan: Ricordi, 1893) 149 5.3 Plate for Act 3, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut” (Milan: Ricordi, 1893) 151 5.4 Diagram for Act 4, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut” (Milan: Ricordi, 1893) 153 5.5 Plate for Act 4, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut” (Milan: Ricordi, 1893) 153 5.6 Diagram for Manon’s arrival in Act 1, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut” (Milan: Ricordi, 1893) 155 x List of figures xi

6.1 Cover of the libretto of Rapsodia satanica (Rome, Cines, 1915) 174 6.2 At the piano; still from Rapsodia satanica, Part i 182 6.3 At the piano again; still from Rapsodia satanica, Part ii 185 6.4 Stills from Rapsodia satanica, Part ii, Finale 188 MUSIC EXAMPLES

3.1 Paolo’s racconto (lines 1–2 and 5–6), Simon Boccanegra, Prologue page 56 3.2 Paolo’s racconto (lines 11–14), Simon Boccanegra, Prologue 58 3.3 Amelia’s racconto (stanza 3), Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene i 83 3.4 Simone-Amelia duet (opening section), Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene i 86 3.5 Simone-Amelia duet (middle section), Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene i 88 3.6 Simone-Amelia duet (ending), Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene i 90 3.7 From Council Chamber Scene, Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene ii 98 4.1 Jago’s metamorphosis, Otello, Act 2, scene ii 118 4.2 Temptation Scene (lines 1–4), Otello, Act 2, scene iii 128 4.3 Temptation Scene (lines 5–9), Otello, Act 2, scene iii 129 4.4 Ending of Otello, Act 4 140 5.1 Manon’s arrival, Manon Lescaut, Act 1 157 5.2 From Manon-Des Grieux duet, Manon Lescaut, Act 1 159 5.3 From Des Grieux’s aria, Manon Lescaut, Act 1 160 5.4 Des Grieux awaits Manon, Manon Lescaut, Act 1 160 6.1 Mephistopheles’ theme, Mascagni’s score for Rapsodia satanica, Prologue 181 6.2 Quotation of Chopin, Ballade op. 23 no. 1, in Mascagni’s Rapsodia satanica 183 6.3 Quotation of Chopin, Valse op. 34 no. 2, in Mascagni’s Rapsodia satanica 186

xii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book claims that opera participated in the making of a modern public in post- unification Italy. More broadly, the goal of these pages is to provide an alternative historical account of the aesthetics of opera, one that considers opera’s construction of a mode of spectating. Recent contributions to opera studies have been particularly alert to the connections between opera and public life, especially in terms of cultural and political history, compositional processes, censorship and reception, and lately also performance and ideology. This book contributes to these threads of inquiry but also claims that by the end of the nineteenth century opera, especially in Italy, is accorded the status of an autonomous, reproducible cultural commodity that aspires to constitute its audience by regulating the way it addresses it. Crucially, Casa Ricordi’s publication of a series of staging manuals during the second half of the century – the disposizioni sceniche – is symptomatic of this newly felt need to devise and then control more precisely the moment of performance and its subsequent iterations. Chapter 1 introduces the staging manuals by considering their status as texts in relation to the performance they strive to control and to the public they aim to address. This leads to an examination of the staging manuals as a phenomenon pertaining both to a specific cultural policy and to a more general aesthetic turn. This book studies the detailed instructions of the manuals as textual traces of the theatrical conventions and solutions that were adopted to address and interpellate the public at the turn of the twentieth century. The central chapters examine more in detail how four of these operas and their staging manuals deal with their public: a public that in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele (1868–81)isopenly confronted in its aesthetic assumptions but also entertained and mesmerized by spectacular special effects, or that, in the case of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra (1857–81), is called upon as a political body, in its ability to confront the specters of history. But it is also a public that in Verdi’s Otello (1887) is subjected to the calculated emotional manipulation of contemporary acting theories and techniques, or one that in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (1893)isurged to question the very mechanism that keeps spectators engaged with what happens on the stage, both visually and aurally. The last chapter is dedicated instead to a peculiar experiment involving a “diva film” and an opera composer: the silent film Rapsodia satanica (1914–17), interpreted by the famous actress Lyda Borelli, with an orchestral score by Pietro Mascagni. This extraordinary film represents an attempt at transforming the new industrial medium from mass entertainment into art, thanks to the consummate craft and the

xiii xiv Preface and acknowledgments

cultural prestige of an opera composer. It also represents the effort to address a national mass audience in its search for a bourgeois pan-European cultural identity, right at the outset of the Great War. This book therefore is also about how Italian opera in the last decades of the nineteenth century shaped and responded to the necessities and anxieties of modernity. The stage manuals testify to the emerging ambition to harness and channel the effects of live operatic performance, and to allow opera to address and cultivate a public. This ambition is surely an aesthetic one, but it also forcefully involves political and cultural formations, both those specific to post-unification Italy (such as the “making of the Italians”), as well as those more general to Europe at the turn of the century. It is at this juncture that this book creates a dialogue with cultural history as well as with other disciplines – film studies, theatre and performance studies – traditionally preoccupied with the issues at stake here, such as spectatorship,visuality,performance,theatricalityandsoforth.Eachchaptertherefore establishes its own critical scene, where theoretical concepts and historical themes interact with the textual traces left by these four operas and one film – libretto, score, staging manual, reviews. The curious case of Boito’s Mefistofele is explored in Chapter 2 through a series of intersecting narratives: the story of the opera’s disastrous reception and subsequent revision, Balzac’s novella The Unrecognized Masterpiece, and Giorgio Agamben’s account of the crucial shift in the aesthetics of modernity. I argue that the opera includes and envisions its notoriously tormented creation and reception. The innovative and spectacular apparatus devised by Boito engenders a spectator who is enchanted by the abundance of special effects but is ultimately encouraged to question the stakes of aesthetic judgment. Chapter 3 argues that the story of Simon Boccanegra, the pirate turned doge, marred by the relentless demands of the past, stages what can be termed a spectral historicity. This is discussed in the context of a burgeoning culture industry and its contemporary celebrations of an enlightened, technological modernity: from the light shows of the National Exhibition of Industry and Art in Milan, to the performance of the gran ballo Excelsior, to popular mid-century optical spectacles such as diorama and phantasmagoria. This chapter’s critical scene at times shadows but does not engage directly with the Benjaminian arguments that are probably more familiar to the discourse of opera studies. This kind of theoretical “ghosting” is hardly casual and reflects instead this book’s attempt to attend to the specificity of Italian culture at this time. Turning from stagecraft to acting theories, Chapter 4 focuses on the poietic and empathic force of acting. The minute descriptions of gestures in the staging manual for Otello respond to contemporary controversies about acting, such as the one that developed around Denis Diderot’s Paradox of the Actor. In Verdi’s opera the conflict between Otello and Jago thematizes acting along the lines of those controversies, as the juxtaposition of what Lacoue-Labarthe termed passive and active mimesis. Otello, the victim of Jago’s calculations, is confined, on the one hand, to the transparent emotionality elaborated by great Romantic actors (such as Tommaso Salvini). On the Preface and acknowledgments xv other hand, he is the only character endowed with the capacity of empathetic reappro- priation of his past. Thus the opera raises issues that challenge the ethics and aesthetics of theatrical mimesis. Nowhere is the mimetic potential of a character exploited as much as in Manon Lescaut, and in the way of a tour de force in subject-construction. Chapter 5 introduces the gaze as a theatrical device, and discusses the relation of the heroine to the set in conjunction with a number of twentieth-century critical texts which are concerned with identity and spectatorship: from Jean-Paul Sartre’s notorious vignette of the voyeur to Jacques Lacan’s theory of subjectification in the realm of vision, and film theory’s elaboration of the concept of suture. From this perspective, what have traditionally been considered the opera’s most problematic aspects – the lack of continuity among the acts and the odd bareness and stillness of the last act – emerge as its most modern features. In this sense Manon Lescaut explores the limits of nineteenth-century operatic spectatorship and, in the nowhere of the last act, it reveals voyeurism as the necessary trick behind the operatic machinery. By closing with another variation on the Faustian theme, the silent film Rapsodia satanica, forty years after Boito’s Mefistofele, this book suggests that Faust’s dilemma assumed a special significance also in Italian experiments with an art of modernity. Chapter 6 turns to the theory and historiography of music in early film, examining the role of an opera composer at work with the new production system of cinema. The experiment was firstly an economic enterprise but it also constituted a new test of the very capabilities of music as a medium: the opera composer Mascagni invents a new working method, but also a new function for music in order to accompany the powerful mute images of the actress and diva Lyda Borelli. This book has been long in the making, typically for a first research project but also unusually so – perhaps because it took a while to realize that research on the performance potentialities of texts was destined to translate into a performance of endlessly potential texts. Hence previous versions of these chapters have assumed the form of conference papers, proceedings and journal articles, at different degrees of distance from their current status. Chapter 3 includes segments previously published in “Il menzognero incanto: Sight and Insight in Simon Boccanegra,” Studi verdiani 13 (January 2000), 59–87, and in “Amelia/Maria and the larve del passato,” Cambridge Opera Journal 14/1–2 (March 2002), 211–27, which reached rather different conclusions. Similarly, part of Chapter 4 appeared as “‘Intelligenti giuochi di fisionomia’: Acting in Otello,” in Verdi 2001. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Parma, New York, New Haven, 24 gennaio–1o febbraio 2001, Fabrizio Della Seta, Roberta Montemorra Marvin, and Marco Marica, eds. (Florence: Olschki, 2002), 879–901, developing another kind of argument, while Chapter 5 is based on my article “Look and Spectatorship in Manon Lescaut,” The Opera Quarterly 24/1–2 (Spring 2008), 4–26. Translations in the text are my own, unless otherwise indicated. xvi Preface and acknowledgments

The work for this book has accrued from the expertise, intellectual generosity and friendship of a large number of people. Prompts, ideas, reactions, discussions have traveled across the pond several times, encompassing a broad geographical as well as disciplinary network of colleagues and friends. Among those who directly dealt with these pages at some early stage are my maestri: first of all Pierluigi Petrobelli, with his ever inspiring passion and imagination, and more recently David Rosen, who with an incomparable mix of subversive humor and intelligent craftsmanship has shared his interests and discoveries and taught me the tools of the trade. Several families of scholars also contributed to this project: the Music Department at Cornell University, the SCR at New College, University of Oxford, the fantastic group of editors of The Opera Quarterly, the Opera Seminar at the Mahindra Humanities Center, the Music Department at Tufts University. Among these I wish to thank Roger Parker and Mary Ann Smart for their indefatigable support; Art Groos and Bonnie Buettner for their affectionate wisdom, professionalism and good humor; Mauro Calcagno, Gabriela Cruz, Gundula Kreuzer, Pierpaolo Polzonetti, Emanuele Senici, and Jessica Waldoff for their friendship and invariably insightful cross-cultural feedback; David Levin, Michael Steinberg, and Suzanne Steward-Steinberg for their ability to create occasions for friendly and serious dialogue and for their sophisticated way of writing and thinking with and through opera; Michelle Duncan and Christopher Morris for their passion for ideas, creativity, and willingness to collaborate; Anne Shreffler and Sindhu Revuluri for their collegiality and openness; Jeff Smith and Lea Jacobs, as well as Roberta Marvin and Rick Altman, for their availability for cross-disciplinary exchanges and for discussing with me versions of Chapter 6. The final phase of the work would not have been possible without the team at Cambridge University Press (Vicki Cooper, Fleur Jones, and Christina Sarigiannidou), the help of Justin Mueller and William Kenlon (bibliography and musical examples), and above all without my dear colleagues Joe Auner and Jane Bernstein and their incomparable intuition, knowledge, and infectious capacity to bring out the best. A special thank you to my loved ones, near and far: Thomas Peattie, benevolent reader and most inspiring partner in ever new listening adventures; Giancarlo, Giulio, Alvaro, Natalia, Mattia, Leo, Davide, and above all Cecilia and Francesca, the “fixt foot” of my compass. The labor and enthusiasms that went into this book are dedicated to the women in my life, in Rome and in Boston. 1 Staging manuals and the public

The audience is not so much a mere OPERA MEDIATIZED congregation of people as a body of thought and desire. It does not exist As a starting point for this exploration I propose that before the play but is initiated or historically the live is actually an effect of mediatization, precipitated by it; it is not an entity to not the other way around. It was the development of begin with but a consciousness recording technologies that made it possible to perceive constructed. The audience is what existing representations as “live.” ...Far from being happens when, performing the signs encroached upon, contaminated, or threatened by and passwords of a play, something mediation, live performance is always already inscribed postulates itself and unfolds in with traces of the possibility of technical mediation (i.e., response. That is a matter of 2 mediatization) that defines it as live. subjectivity but also of historical 1 process. If read in relation to today’s widespread dissemination of opera via digital technology (from video streaming to HD live broadcast, and the already obsolete DVD), Auslander’sreflection has the undoubted merit of freeing these fruitions from the stain of preempted aesthetic experiences, of mere second-hand thrills for opera collectors. More than that, in my view, it forces opera scholars and viewers to look back at live performance not (only) as an original experience of presence but as an effect of digital audio-visual technologies that leave multiple traces on the performance – from the camera-ready acting and set design, to singing techniques and sound design. And yet, Auslander’s repeated appeals for the emancipation of the mediatized from the “live” might be carried further. His argument programmatically coalesces mediatization with technology of reproduction, as if the former was instanti- ated only by recording devices. Conversely, the realm of the “live,” no matter how tainted by “technical mediation,” is defined by opposition to reproduction technology, and thus in its pristine promise of directness, of pure experiential presence. This book starts from the assumption that there is no such thing as unmediatedness on the stage, 3 and even less on the opera stage. At a most basic level, for instance, it is well known that

1 Herbert Blau, The Audience (Baltimore, 1990), 25. 2 Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, 2nd edn. (London, 2008), 56. 3 Thus the reclamation of unmediated live performance cannot be but a statement of poetics, a manifesto of a certain kind of theatre or performance art, an historically and culturally speciﬁc experiment aimed at eﬀacing the semiotics of the stage. The obvious example is the theatre of resistance and subversion advocated by Peggy Phelan and discussed by Auslander immediately after the passage quoted above.

1 2 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

opera theatres for over four hundred years have been consistently predisposed to adopt new techniques and technologies, on and off stage (stage machineries and lighting devices, theatre acoustics and orchestra sound, to name a few). More than that, medium in opera can be historicized as a function acquired by many of opera’s forms and devices (for instance singing technique and perspective painting, or even the cabaletta and da capo form). However, rather than settling for the generalizing claim that opera is always already “technically mediated,” even before or without being enmeshed with reproduction technologies, this book more specifically argues that a group of works produced in Italy at the turn of the twentieth century bring to the fore the very issue of the medium of opera. In relation to this specific historical juncture therefore opera is mediatized insofar as the adoption of ambitious techniques and devices, both theatrical 4 and musical, coincides with a reflection on their communicative and aesthetic powers. The sample discussed here of four operas and a silent film manifests similar concerns for their medial status and consequently for their capacity to engage with the audience and to participate in a broader movement of industrialization of culture. They foreground by different means the attempt to redefine their own capacity to affect by calling into question the interaction of music and acting, viewing and narrative unity, stagecraft and seeing the invisible, or the performative power of music (by an opera composer) when associated with an imagetrack. Symptomatic of these concerns for medium is the contemporary output of staging manuals, the disposizioni sceniche, booklets of instructions for the mise-en-scène printed by the publishing house Ricordi during the second half of the 5 nineteenth century. The following pages outline the way in which these documents are

See Peggy Phelan, “The Ontology of Performance: Representation without Reproduction,” in Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London, 1996). Relevant to the present claim is a discussion of mediation in the context of theatre studies: Roger Copeland, “The Presence of Mediation,” The Drama Review 34/4 (1990), 28–44; now reprinted in Performance: Critical Concepts in Literature and Cultural Studies, Philip Auslander, ed., vol. iv (London, 2003), 306–22. 4 In recent research in communication and media studies the term “mediatization” has been amply deﬁned. One of the most inﬂuential theorizations is that of Friedrich Krotz, who speaks of mediatization “as a historical ongoing, long-term process in which more and more media emerge and are institutionalized. Mediatization describes the process whereby communication refers to media and uses media so that media in the long run increasingly become relevant for the social construction of everyday life, society, and culture as a whole”; Friedrich Krotz, “Mediatization: A Concept with which to Grasp Media and Societal Change,” in Mediatization: Concepts, Changes, Consequences, Knut Lundby, ed. (New York, 2009), 21–40, here 24. 5 For a list of most of the existing disposizioni see Michaela Peterseil, “Die ‘Disposizioni sceniche’ des Verlags Ricordi: ihre Publikation und Ihr Zielpublikum,” Studi verdiani 12 (1997), 133–55. The series was inaugurated in 1856 by Verdi’s Giovanna de Guzman (a censored version of Les Vêpres siciliennes), and seven of the existing disposizioni sceniche are for Verdi’s operas: Un ballo in maschera, 1859; La forza del destino, 1863; Don Carlo, 1867 and 1886; Aida, 1873; Simon Boccanegra, 1883; Otello, 1888. These sources were rediscovered in the late 1960s by David Rosen; see David Rosen, “The Staging of Verdi’s Operas: An Introduction to the Ricordi Disposizioni sceniche,” in International Musicological Society, Report of the Twelfth Congress, Berkeley, 1977, Daniel Heartz and Bonnie Wade, eds. (Kassel, 1981), 444–53; and Staging manuals and the public 3 connected to larger changes in the production of culture, changes related to a new role of the publisher who acts as intermediary between the composer and the public. Similarly to the Parisian livrets de mise en scène, a long-running and larger series of instruction booklets printed in Paris, the disposizioni sceniche were meant to be rented or sold by the publisher to opera houses together with the score and the orchestral parts, 6 thereby providing guidelines for the operas’ subsequent stagings. They consist, in general, of a combination of diagrams and verbal descriptions, the former to illustrate the organization of stage space, position of props, wings and backdrops, and the movement of the actors. The more or less extensive verbal commentaries explain the diagrams, specifying the temporal order of events, coordinating the actors’ entrances, exits, and gestures, as well as mapping the time of the stage action onto the time of the music by explicit references to the score, or more often, to the sung text. Occasionally, these sections directly address the singers with instructions about their character’s emotions and motivations, and how to render them through gesture, facial expression, and tone of voice. The status of these manuals is therefore rather complex: placed between the traditional operatic text (score and libretto) and its performance, they are both descriptions of a performance and prescriptions for subsequent ones. Accordingly these texts have been discussed for their way of delimiting the opera text – for example in relation to critical editions – and questioned for their authority over contemporary 7 stagings – thus for their usefulness to generate stage renditions of the operas. It is their appearance and above all the commercial enterprise of compiling and printing these booklets that in my view deserve attention, in that they signal the mutated conditions of opera production and performance within a more complex cultural market. As intermediaries between the author(s) and subsequent performances, these manuals allow opera to approximate an autonomous product, a reproducible

David Rosen, “La disposizione scenica per il Ballo in maschera di Verdi. Studio critico,” in “Un ballo in maschera” di Giuseppe Verdi, David Rosen and Marinella Pigozzi, eds. (Milan, 2002). 6 For a survey of the French stage manuals, see H. Robert Cohen and Marie-Odile Gigou, Cent Ans de mise en scène lyrique en France (env. 1830–1930) (New York, 1986); H. Robert Cohen, “A Survey of French Sources for the Staging of Verdi’s Operas: Livrets de mise en scène, Annotated Scores and Annotated Libretti in Two Parisian Collections,” Studi verdiani 3 (1985), 11–44; livrets in facsimile are published in two volumes edited by H. Robert Cohen: The Original Staging Manuals for Twelve Parisian Operatic Premières (Stuyvesant, 1990) and The Original Staging Manuals for Ten Parisian Operatic Premières, 1824–1843 (Stuyvesant, 1998). For a discussion of the textual status of the French stage manuals, see Roger Parker, “Reading the Livrets,orthe Chimera of ‘Authentic’ Staging,” in Leonora’sLastAct(Princeton, 1997), 126–48. 7 See the essays collected in the volume Verdi in Performance, and especially: James Hepokoski’s “Staging Verdi’s Operas: The Single, ‘Correct’ Performance,” and David Rosen, “On Staging that Matters,” in Verdi in Performance, Alison Latham and Roger Parker, eds. (Oxford, 2001). Some of the manuals have been reprinted by Ricordi with the addition of critical commentaries: Verdi’s Otello, James Hepokoski and Mercedes Viale Ferrero, eds. (Milan, 1990); Simon Boccanegra, Marcello Conati and Natalia Grilli, eds. (Milan, 1993); and Un ballo in maschera, David Rosen and Marinella Pigozzi, eds. (Milan, 2002); and Arrigo Boito’s Meﬁstofele, William Ashbrook and Gerardo Guccini, eds. (Milan, 1998). See also Philip Gossett, Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera (Chicago, 2006), 450–61. 4 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

commodity. Thus on the one hand they supplement the opera texts with a guide for reenactment that is validated by the composer and by the rest of the creative team – that is to say, they add the stamp of conformity to authorial vision in the way of surplus value. On the other hand, the manuals supposedly allow for these opera texts to become independent of the author(s), to travel on their own while still carrying the composer’s imprint. For instance, the title pages of the disposizioni sceniche for Verdi operas published in the 1880s(Simon Boccanegra, Otello) immediately after the title and composer’s name specify that they are “compiled and arranged by Giulio Ricordi according 8 to the staging of La Scala theatre”–that is, a staging overseen by the composer. The publisher was the one to take responsibility for the notation, transmission, and dissemination of the authorial project, shaping the cultural and commercial enterprise in terms of originality of poetic vision. By supplementing the scores and librettos with these instruction booklets Casa Ricordi presented on the market an all-inclusive product branded with its own promise of authenticity: scores and parts could travel far and wide and still deliver the effect of proximity to their creator, the effect of coming from a single artistic agency. By the 1880s, through the leadership of Tito Ricordi and then of his son Giulio, Casa Ricordi had acquired extraordinary influence over the European opera market and the Italian publishing industry, and it had become a powerful operator in the shaping of culture politics for the new nation. In an essay from 1983, still one of the few devoted to the history of Ricordi, the musicologist Francesco Degrada ended his survey by remarking how in the course of the century Ricordi had taken over a role of intermediary between the composers and the system of production:

The beneficiaries were above all the renowned and well-established authors, for whom the publisher assumed more and more the role as a fiduciary in the management and dissemination of their works, both nationally and internationally. That was the case for Bellini, Donizetti, and above all Verdi, who published his whole opus with Ricordi (with the exception of Attila, IMasnadieri,andIl Corsaro published by Lucca) ... The function of impresarios and theatre managers, starting approximately between 1850 and 1860, would be reduced to the simple groundwork and local arrangements. Instead it was the publisher who, together with the authors, was in charge of the more complex cultural and economic policy. Besides the preparation of the orchestral and vocal scores, of the parts and of all kinds of adaptations and transcriptions, which favored an approximate but diffused fruition of the operas, their policy presumed a more ambitious cultural project, in dialogue with contemporary culture, ... involving the response to and formation of taste, by exercising a constant pressure on the opinion and the power of the

8 “Compilata e regolata secondo la messa in scena del Teatro alla Scala da Giulio Ricordi”; while for Meﬁstofele the title changes to “according to the instructions of the author” and for Don Carlo “According to the mise en scène of the Imperial Opera theatre in Paris.” Staging manuals and the public 5

public, both locally and nationally, for the recognition of the social and cultural primacy 9 of music. Casa Ricordi was probably the ﬁrst music publisher in Italy to take over the job that once belonged to the impresario but was not the only one. In the last decade of the century its competitor Edoardo Sonzogno succeeded in obtaining control over La Scala for a few seasons, restored and ran another opera theatre in Milan, the Canobbiana, and eventu- 10 ally settled on the Costanzi Theatre in Rome. As John Rosselli pointed out in several studies, this encroachment of the publisher on matters of commissions, seasons, casting, and staging is directly connected to the increasing tendency to stage repertoire operas, which translated into a higher demand 11 for the rental of scores and parts. It must be pointed out, moreover, that both Ricordi’s and Sonzogno’s operations included the press: both owned and directed prominent periodicals, including, for Sonzogno, the daily Il secolo, the highest-circulation news- 12 paper in Italy during those years. Music publishers’ ability to regulate the opera industry depended on an integrated production system that, in addition to the press, was still founded on the ownership, printing, and management of the scores. At this time Ricordi in particular was lobbying for copyright regulations appropriate to the new administrative and geopolitical structure of the nation. In April 1882, in Milan, a group of prominent artists, journalists, musicians and writers established the terms of these regulations in the statute of the ﬁrst national society for the tutelage of creative and intellectual labor (SIA, the Italian Society of Authors, later renamed SIAE, Italian Society 13 of Authors and Publishers). While creative and artistic production had already been recognized as intellectual property in the modern sense for almost a century, thus solidifying the author’s legal

9 Francesco Degrada, “Il segno e il suono: storia di un editore e del suo mondo,” in Musica musicisti editoria: 175 anni di Casa Ricordi 1808–1983 (Milan, 1983). On Casa Ricordi’s economic history see the recent study by Stefano Baia Curioni, Mercanti d’opera: storie di Casa Ricordi (Milan, 2011). 10 On Sonzogno see in particular Silvia Valisa’s ongoing research, and her recent essay “Casa Editrice Sonzogno: mediazione culturale, circuiti del sapere ed innovazione tecnologica nell’Italia unificata (1861–1887),” in The Printed Media in Fin-de-Siècle Italy: Publishers, Writers, and Readers, Ann Hallamore Caesar, Gabriella Romani, and Jennifer Burns, eds. (London, 2011), 90–106. For a more novelistic if informed account of music publishing at the end of the century, see Alan Mallach, The Autumn of Italian Opera from Verismo to Modernism, 1890–1915 (Boston, 2007), 208–24. 11 John Rosselli, The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarosa to Verdi (Cambridge, 1984), 175. 12 Ricordi owned La gazzetta musicale di Milano, one of the oldest periodicals dedicated to music. Moreover, in 1889 the Milanese publisher opened the Officine Grafiche, a lithographic laboratory for the composition and printing of posters and playbills. Since the late 1860s Sonzogno, besides the successful daily Il secolo, had launched a number of illustrated magazines devoted to the popularization of literature and the arts, such as L’illustrazione universale, Il teatro illustrato, La musica popolare, Il romanziere illustrato, L’emporio pittoresco. On this see Valisa, “Casa Editrice Sonzogno,” 93–7. 13 See www.siae.it/Siae.asp?click_level=0100.0200&link_page=Siae_Storia.htm; for a detailed chronicle see Irene Piazzoni, Spettacolo, istituzioni e società nell’Italia postunitaria (1860–1882) (Rome, 2001), 372 and ff. 6 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

and social status, the function of the author was also changing, shared more and more with the publisher, and not only in the context of the opera industry. A famous example is the case of Edmondo De Amicis’s novel for young readers Cuore, published by Treves in Milan in 1886. In a study of the processes that formed the Italian culture industry after unification, Fausto Colombo points out how it was the publisher Emilio Treves who 14 contributed to the shaping of the novel into a mass-cultural event. Treves coordinated a marketing campaign on the pages of his magazines (L’illustrazione italiana was one of them) just before the book was published, with previews, critical recognition, and teasers. Then, on the date of the publication, contractually established for October 15, the beginning of the school year, he flooded bookstores throughout Italy with copies of the novel. During the ensuing weeks he published reviews and commentaries on the pages of his periodicals, and, a year later, the novel’s first parody. In 1886–7 alone, De Amicis’s Cuore reached forty editions; no wonder its sentimental Catholicism and 15 middle-brow morality affected several subsequent generations of Italians. This kind of concerted control of the market is well known to historians of Italian opera: it is reminiscent of the media operation devised by Ricordi around Verdi and Boito’s Otello in 1887, or even, a few years later, of Ricordi’s and Sonzogno’sefforts to create and brand an heir to Verdi by promoting and managing the careers of Puccini and Mascagni. Thus the limited interest manifested by traditional historiography of Italian nineteenth- century opera towards print industry and cultural policy is an effect of its continued focus on the composers, with Giulio Ricordi and Eduardo Sonzogno as fundamental but nonetheless background figures. The industrial aspect of Ricordi’s policy is instead the main concern of an 1881 essay by the critic Filippo Filippi. Writing on music and musical institutions in Milan in a book published for the National Exhibition of Industry and Art of the same year, Filippi describes the workings of the Ricordi establishment in terms of control over the product, thus connecting publishing to staging:

Today the directives determining the fate of a production, the hiring of an artist, or the fortunes of a score originate from the Ricordi factory led by Commendator Giulio, a man of great intelligence and iron will. Owner of almost all the operas by Verdi and by other renowned composers, he does not let any theatre, either of a capital or provincial city, rent them unless he first approves their means of execution in every detail; that is: singers, chorus, orchestra and staging. It is the logic of summum jus summa injuria applied on a large scale to the vast art world of our times. It is easy to imagine how this influence or better interference of the publisher ...might annoy several people, and those who have to suffer it call it an

14 Fausto Colombo, La cultura sottile: media e industria culturale in Italia dall’Ottocento agli anni novanta (Milan, 2009), 71–4. 15 On this see for example Franco Cambi, Collodi, De Amicis, Rodari: tre immagini d’infanzia (Bari, 1985), 79–116. On De Amicis’s relevance for the political history of Italian identity, see the sophisticated study by Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, The Pinocchio Eﬀect: On Making Italians, 1860–1920 (Chicago, 2007). Staging manuals and the public 7

intolerable tyranny and a violation of the most sacrosanct of properties, the intellectual one ...And yet, it is a fact that every time the publisher has imposed his will and, more than that, he has taken charge of overseeing the rehearsals and the so called mise-en-scène of an important opera, we had perfect musical executions and splendid stagings. In Milan, where Ricordi takes care of this himself with meticulous care, we have had exemplary productions of Verdi’s and Ponchielli’s last operas, very different from those that ignorant and stingy 16 impresarios imposed on us, under the system of licenses. Filippi’s career started within the Ricordi firm: he was hired in the 1850s by Tito as a correspondent from Venice and then as a columnist and editor of Milan’s Gazzetta musicale.By1881, however, he was one of the most powerful and influential names in Italian journalism, director of a weekly art magazine and music critic for the daily La perseveranza. And yet his description of Ricordi’s policy as summum jus summa injuria (“supreme justice, supreme injustice”), as critical as it may sound, is hardly a manifestation of dissent. His report ends up justifying the lamented monopoly as a minor matter when compared to the advantages: better mise-en-scènes, in the interest of the producer/ author, rather than in favor of the short-term economic advantages of an impresario. Therefore the appearance of the staging manuals in Italy, especially the longer and more complex ones compiled by Giulio Ricordi in the 1880s, coincides with broader and crucial changes in the production of culture, changes that media historians have recently identified as marking the beginning of an Italian culture industry. Responding to the need to control and textualize performance, the compilation and printing of the manuals foreground and redefine the medium of opera. This late nineteenth-century episode of mediatization assumes the outline of a two-pronged process. On the one hand, it includes the author as the validation of opera’s artistic aspirations. The stage manuals, by representing the composer’s and librettist’s vision of the performance, enable the publisher to distribute a complete package and control the end-product for a broader market. Consequently, on the other hand, opera mediatized by way of the manuals aims at reaching the status of a cultural commodity that can be reactivated regularly and predictably at every performance, even at a spatial and temporal remove from the creators. The manuals then endow an opera with autonomy from the author(s) precisely by including an “author effect” into the staging. Connected to all this is of course an acute regard for the audience, or what contemporary commentaries repeatedly refer to as “the public.”

FACING THE PUBLIC

On March 6, 1881, La gazzetta musicale, the prestigious Milanese weekly published by Casa Ricordi, reported on the new production of Der Freischütz opening at La Scala the

16 Filippo Filippi, “La musica a Milano,” in Milano 1881 (Milan, 1881). 8 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

17 night before. The reviewer, Salvatore Farina, who ﬁrst heard the opera in the same theatre in the spring of 1872, begins by exalting its continued capacity to move and enchant:

Weber’s masterpiece has once again inspired in us that sense of wonder with which it had impressed us several years ago. In thinking of the long time that had gone by between the two productions we naively commented: “this archer does not age at all.” Introduced for the first time when it was already more than fifty years old, it still looked like a spring chicken; today it is sixty years old, and does not show a wrinkle. Everything that was imagined, developed and expanded since then on the stage can be found already in embryo in this 18 really prodigious opera. For the reviewer it is not so much the status of the work and of the composer and their cultural capital that sanctions the opera’s modernity and continued relevance. Instead it is the opera’s own continuous capacity to “inspire a sense of wonder,” its aesthetic potential, that confirms its place in the repertoire. And yet, this apologia is followed by a sudden shift, both in tone and in focus:

We are forced to add with some regret that the public at La Scala in these carnival days is not in the disposition to enjoy the serene beauty of an opera of this sort; on the contrary, during the opening night we noticed a restlessness, a carelessness typical of spectators caught between parties and dinners. Not daring to protest against the music, also because it had been applauded already several times before, they gave way to their uncontainable desire for laughter during the episode with the specters and with the spoken dialogue of Samiel and Kaspar counting the bullets. Thus while commenting on all those trappings (which by the way were not funny at all because presented with proper stagecraft) they missed that marvelous 19 episode of descriptive music that is the scene of the bullets. Rather than dwelling on the performance, Farina juxtaposes his own considerations of the opera’s timelessness with the reactions of the public, reactions that could attest to the opposite. The Wolf’s Glen Scene was incapable of working its magic and the apparitions were presumably seen as risible and ineﬀective, despite the music. Reasons for this disbelief are found at ﬁrst in the carnival atmosphere, but then, in another twist to the prose, in the very character of the Italians:

We Italians are a skeptical people; we have little faith in the fantastic and we easily laugh at the northern legends. Nothing bad with that, but nothing good either. In certain circumstances we can be serious and open the mind to tales and legends when these are conjoined with art. The fantastic subject of Freischütz should not detract in the least from the extraordinary value 20 of a music that is all melody, grace, elegance, and artistry.

17 18 19 20 La gazzetta musicale di Milano 36/10 (March 6, 1881), 95–6. Ibid., 95. Ibid. Ibid. Staging manuals and the public 9

In the space of a mere three paragraphs Der Freischütz has become the catalyst for a deﬁnition of national character. The Milanese public is taken as representative of Italians, provoked by the opera to manifest disbelief and lack of interest, that were in turn interpreted as a national trait (and perhaps a sign of narrow-minded provincialism). The reviewer, as representative of Casa Ricordi, is therefore ready to exhort the public (hence the Italians) to take seriously the music, no matter how foreign. These concerns are hardly exceptional, and they are similarly voiced for example by another review of the same production in Il mondo artistico, a smaller weekly magazine devoted to the arts. The journalist here opens with a complaint:

How mutable is the taste and the mood of the public! When Freyschütz [sic] was performed several years ago at La Scala, the public was much less knowledgeable and educated than today to appreciate this classic, severe music, and it was reasonable to doubt that they could be capable or willing to enter that ideal musical world, at once tranquil and sublime. Those predictions turned out to be false, because instead the La Scala public was so charmed and mesmerized by the musical atmosphere of Freyschütz, was pervaded to such an extent by a sweet peacefulness of true and eternal beauty, that, with no need to know about history or chronologies, they perceived that Weber was everybody’s forefather and that in the field of fantastic, poetic music, music inspired by a profound sentiment for nature, Weber was the one who had uttered the Fiat lux. This year, at a reprise of the opera, it was reasonable to think or at least to hope that the public, remembering those first good impressions, and more familiar with certain music, would have seen again with pleasure Weber’s masterpiece. But it was not to be. In the theatre on the night of the first performance a gloomy atmosphere of discontent, of prejudice and even of mockery, took over the spectators. Freyschütz was heard in an absentminded and restless way, and those who pretend to dictate the outcome of a performance kept saying that the music was impossible, boring, and the score should have been left on the shelves. Not even the relatively good execution, certainly not inferior to that 21 of carnival 1872, helped to stop the negativity of those gentlemen. Lamenting the unpredictability of the audience’s behavior was an old trope, and here it hardly masks the type of attention paid to the spectators: a masterful gaze observing and evaluating their reactions against the artistic value of the opera. Like the previous article, this one also ends with a reassuring note, approvingly reporting that subsequent performances received a better reception. The similarities of these texts give rise to two sets of observations. First of all, both reviewers take upon themselves the role of witnessing the interaction of Freischütz and its audience. In their dismayed descriptions the event of the premiere becomes the

21 Il mondo artistico: giornale di musica dei teatri e delle belle arti 15/10 (March 9, 1881). The rest of the review describes the opera by references to Berlioz’s famous commentary on Der Freischütz, in words that very closely echo an essay that Filippo Filippi had published in his book a few years earlier: Musica e musicisti, critiche, biograﬁe, ed escursioni (Milan, 1876), 100–17. Thus the article, signed simply with “F.,” might be by Filippi, the director of the journal, rather than by its editor Alessandro Fano. 10 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

contingent interaction of two interdependent performances, of two reenactments: that of the opera and that of the audience. Weber’s opera, which of course arrives at the stage of La Scala with complex cultural baggage, has the power to elicit a response, and it is the performance of this response that constitutes the group of spectators as an audience, 22 or better as a public, as in the Italian term “pubblico.” This public is then even taken as representative of the whole nation, whereby the manifestations of merry disbelief become a performance of Italianness. Secondly, both journalists appear to write as if from the position of a side box: their analytical gaze is cast as much on the public as on the stage. Not for a moment compromised by identification or empathy with the spectators, the reviews appear to maintain purposefully a professional voice that is duly and carefully separate from that of the public. As historians prying into the theatrical contingencies of more than a century ago we might be tempted to see these reviews as a trace left by that audience. But these writings do not voice the public, they judge it: they measure the audience’s capacity to manifest understanding and engagement in view of what is expected of a public – that is, the rightful representative of a nation. By the 1880s a review of a performance of Der Freischütz also came with complex baggage. The opera had already acquired the status of a locus classicus of transnational operatic encounters, and as such had been used by other illustrious commentators as a litmus test to evaluate the audience. Hector Berlioz published an essay in the Journal des débats a week after the premiere of a new production at the Opéra in June 1841 of a Freyschütz in French with his own recitatives. His essay not only champions the opera and in particular the music, but makes sure that the Parisian audience is instructed on 23 how to react, in order to avoid the fiasco of twenty years earlier. Berlioz’sinfluence is still readable in the two Milanese reviews of forty years later, not only for the promotion of Weber’s work as a timeless classic, but especially for the attention devoted to the audience’s interaction with this German opera. Berlioz starts with an encouraging note that congratulates the Parisian audience, which was able at last to make sense of and appreciate the opera’s beauty. His description of notable passages in the score then preempts any possible criticism by insisting on the obvious and unquestionable beauty and efficacy of the work.

22 The privileging of the term “public” is also consistent with the deﬁnition of Christopher Balme in his study of how theatre institutions shape the public sphere: “While ‘spectators’ and ‘audiences’ refer to individual or collective bodies inside the building or actively attending the performance ...the terms ‘public’ and even more broadly ‘the public sphere’ refer to a potential audience or perhaps not even that ...The public is a potential audience to be realized rather than an actualized one.” Christopher B. Balme, “Playbills and the Theatrical Public Sphere,” in Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography, Charlotte M. Canning and Thomas Postlewait, eds. (Iowa City, 2010), 37–62, here 40–1. 23 Journal des débats, June 16, 1841; the article was then included in his collection of essays À travers chants (1862) in a shorter version with the title Le Freyschütz de Weber. Staging manuals and the public 11

That same year Richard Wagner, also in Paris, on the occasion of the new production of Weber’s opera published not one but two essays, one in French and another in 24 German. If Berlioz’s goal, like that of the Milanese journalists, was to orient the audience’s taste in favor of the transalpine masterpiece, Wagner’s texts exude a defen- sive, overdetermined effort at cultural reclamation. His article for the Gazette musicale, published some two weeks before the premiere, was accompanied by an editorial note specifying that the journal had decided to include the piece even though it opposed the views of another article published earlier “because it is good to hear both sides, and it seemed to us that our readers would see with pleasure the Freischütz considered 25 uniquely for its German character.” But the defense of the opera’s national traits is far more than a cultural translation. After a colorfully minute presentation of the Freischütz legend and of its deep roots in the German folk, the essay addresses directly the French public and outright challenges their capability to understand, no matter how accurate the performance. What started as a lesson in German culture for foreigners 26 turns midway into a scornful declaration of radical, unbridgeable difference. The second essay, for the Dresden Abend-Zeitung of July of the same year, is addressed instead to the “glorious German fatherland,” and explains the previous piece for the Gazette as motivated by the need “to vindicate our national property in advance,” since the production was purportedly doomed to failure and misunderstanding. Here too the writer distances himself both from the performance – a disfigurement of the work in which he cannot and will not believe – and from the public – whose behavior and reactions he can neither share nor understand. The work, reified into cultural heritage, is placed in the position of mediator between complex intersecting expectations and responses. The event of the theatre performance acquires the contours of a tense encounter during which not only the work’s aesthetic value is measured, but also the reverse: the audience is measured as it deals with the aesthetic demands of the opera, under the watchful eye of such a severe witness.

24 The articles were then collected thirty years later in his Complete Prose Works as “Der Freischütz: In Front of the Parisian Audience” and “Der Freischütz: Bericht nach Deutchland.” See Richard Wagner, Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays, William Ashton Ellis, trans. (Lincoln, 1994), 167–204. On these texts as evidence of Wagner’s elaboration of a dramaturgy of absorption, see David J. Levin, “A Picture-Perfect Man? Senta, Absorption, and Wagnerian Theatricality,” The Opera Quarterly 21/3 (2005), 486–95, esp. 489. On the reception of Freischütz in light of nineteenth-century deﬁnitions of German national identity see: Stephen Meyer, Carl Maria von Weber and the Search for a German Opera (Bloomington, 2003), and Michael Tusa, “Cosmopolitanism and the National Opera: Weber’s Der Freischutz,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 36/3 (Winter, 2006), 483–506. 25 See translator’s note in Wagner, Pilgrimage to Beethoven, 168. 26 “Yet, if it were really to step before you in its pureness and simplicity ...would you then acquire a genuine understanding of the Freischütz? Would it rise in you that consentaneous volley of applause which the Muette de Portici evoked from us? Ah! I much doubt it.” Ibid., 181. 12 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Back in Italy, Arrigo Boito formulated even more clearly this reversal of agency, whereby it is the opera that evaluates the public. In an article published before the Milanese production of Freischütz of 1872, entitled “Il Freischütz davanti al pubblico della Scala” (“The Freischütz in front of La Scala’s public”), Boito starts by quoting in his Italian translation the first paragraph of Wagner’s second essay (“O my glorious German fatherland, How could I not love thee ... ”) and from there he pursues the Wagnerian task of educating the spectators on the story and its significance for 27 German cultural identity. But Boito is quick to swerve into a number of erudite references that move from Weber to Goethe and then to Victor Hugo, equating, perhaps ironically, a German brand of misty forests with a Romantic imaginary shared across national boundaries. Concerned about the impact of this “naive tale” that inserts the “dark and fearful” Wolf’s Glen Scene within “a serene atmosphere redolent of the fresh scent of the woods,” he emphasizes its familiarity, tracing connections with Rossini and Meyerbeer, with William Tell and Faust. His conclusion then is that the success of the opera will depend solely on the public’s willingness to be charmed by and absorbed in the world envisaged by the author. Fresh from the resounding fiasco of his Mefistofele of only four years earlier, he pleads with the La Scala public to yield to the aesthetic demands of the opera. Boito’s acute awareness of the stakes of the encounter between the audience and the work in the theatre will be discussed more in detail in the next chapter, in the context of the daring aesthetic venture that was Mefistofele. Here I simply want to point out how Freischütz has left a paper trail containing traces of the public. The present discussion of Freischütz’s reviews is motivated not by the sense that they are illustrative of more general trends. On the contrary, the opera came to constitute for the press a special case, framed as acanonizedforeignclassic– to be accepted despite or because of its foreignness – over the course of forty years, both in Milan and in Paris, both by professional journalists and by illustrious composers/polemicists. The press insists on the audience’s response, and therefore outlines the modality of the aesthetic encounter between opera and public. The public is neither the empirical multitude of diverse individuals in the theatre any given night, nor an abstract, faceless target predetermined by the production. Instead it here emerges as a combination of actual and potential opera-goers: it is a plural interlocutor that is in part addressed, or better interpellated by the opera in performance, and in part an interpreter, free to react or resist according to individual taste. These reviews, then, temporarily serve to trace a path across intricate matters of historical inquiry, such as the contingent relation between a performance and its spectators. They foreground how performance and public are taken as interdependent:

27 Published as well in the Ricordi magazine La gazzetta musicale (March 17, 1872), and reprinted in Arrigo Boito, Tutti gli scritti, Piero Nardi, ed. (Milan, 1942), 1214–18. Boito’s writings on this are also explored in the next chapter. Staging manuals and the public 13 it is the aesthetic experience of opera that constitutes a public, but the public in turn is the only guarantor of an opera’s topical power to affect. What is specific to this historical juncture is the way opera production embraces this inter-relatedness. The task of simultaneously interpreting and educating the public’s taste becomes part of the system of production. Fausto Colombo has brilliantly observed how the Italian entertainment industry at the turn of the century was regulated by a peculiar artisanal model, characterized by the development of a field of competences common to supply and demand. For Colombo the industrial artisan is epitomized by publishers of popular literature and comic strips, but the model is appropriate to what we know of Casa Ricordi at this time: “all these publishers use their specific cultural and media expertise as a thermometer to measure the taste of the public, and they make an effort to stay 28 within their own field.” The consequence of this commonality of interests is the peculiar type of relationship between production and consumption: the public is neither evaluated statistically in the way of an anonymous mass of consumers whose demand has to be met, nor instructed, patronizingly, in the appreciation of a product of high culture.

The relation between the competences of the production and of the fruition is what foregrounds the judgment of the public as a form of assessment of the quality of these products. A successful product always signifies the existence of certain cultural demands and taste, which the product satisfies. But the reasons why it can satisfy them are related to an “empathetic” relationship between production and its public ...This trend often rejects market analysis and instead trusts the possibility of a common feel among creator, producer and public regarding the potential of the specialized medium. If the public does not appreciate something, it is acknowledged, at times grudgingly, but it is not enough to devalue the product; rather, what is questioned is its timeliness and current compatibility. Otherwise in 29 some cases, the production insists until it manages to create this compatibility. What I find particularly interesting in these observations are two sets of issues. First of all Colombo’s analysis, based on a larger sample of cultural products over the course of a century, conceptualizes the discourse about the public in relation to these specific historical circumstances. The public emerges as the point of intersection of multiple strategies of address: it is listened to, interpreted, judged and at times prodded by the production process. This kind of inclusion and listening is translated into medial concerns, which redefine what is effective (the staging manuals are occasioned by this concern for opera to become an effective medium). Secondly, the introduction of an affective connection such as empathy not only strikes as cogent to what we know of the work of the Ricordi firm, but opens the way to more complex considerations on the aesthetics of opera, which might question well-established historiographical

28 29 Colombo, La cultura sottile, 27. Ibid., 35. 14 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

assumptions regarding the politics of opera between the Risorgimento and Fascism. An industry of culture and entertainment that gauges its output in terms of shared taste and “common feel” is also an industry alert to issues of cultural and social identity and which cannot rely on pre-established once-and-for-all ideological conformities. That is, as I explore more in detail in each of the following chapters, ideology is mediated by aesthetics. In this book the term “spectatorship” is used to refer to this complex of contingent and potential audience, and for the preoccupation that opera is effective as a cultural product that can both satisfy and educate the public. This introductory chapter has purposefully abstained from providing a review of definitions of the concept of spectatorship and defers to each of the ensuing chapters the work of delineating spectatorship as the variable relation between opera and public. Rather than stenciling an abstract model over different cases, spectatorship here is a matter of continual renegotiations. Spectatorship, to put it otherwise, is a way to name the performative instance of each opera as it “faces” the public, or, as in Boito’s Wagnerian review, as it is placed “in front of the public.” What is left of this encounter are traces: in texts that include scores and librettos with the addition of their staging manuals, with their aspiration to contain the authorial project up to the moment when opera and spectators meet. 2 The “fleeting moment” Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele

fi Why, in that case, be bold and dare! Me stofele represents a courageous Bind yourself to me, begin life anew: effort to renovate mid-century Italian You soon will see what I can do. opera according to eminently modern 1 No man has ever known a spectacle so rare. aspirations. Arrigo Boito conceived the adaptation of Goethe’s Faust as a challenge to expand the horizons of the foremost Italian cultural product by merging it with the masterpiece of German culture, and, in the process, to reconfigure the genre of opera, confronting the sacrosanct tradition of the fathers. Boito’s ambitions were far too radical to be limited to abstract matters of poetics, promulgated by literati from their desks. Mefistofele’s greatest effrontery consisted in its attempt to manipulate the very theatrical core of opera and to find new ways to address its spectators. In the brusque and grandiloquent tones of a manifesto, the twenty-year-old Boito on a gap year in Paris had already declared in 1862 that the relation between artist and public ought to be one of antagonism and resistance:

I love the struggle of the audience with the artist, whenever it is determined by the high question of the beautiful, whenever it has to do with the progress and future of an art form. Then genius, even in the midst of shouting and laughing, has a sublime task, because the struggle of genius with the audience is the struggle of truth against strength, of right against 2 number, of the new against the old – grand, necessary, inevitable struggle. This energy and belligerence progressively faded out of his writings over the years, seemingly reprised fifty years later with ominously greater ideological conviction in the manifestos of the Futurists. And yet, especially in the feverish years preparing Mefistofele, Boito was among those who pioneered the figure of the young progressive Italian intellectual: with his group of friends the “Scapigliati,” who shared at most a common concern for the future of Italian art, he gave voice to a genuine if short avant-the-avant- garde episode in Italian culture.

1 Goethe, Faust, Part One, David Luke, trans. (Oxford, 1987), verses 1671–4. 2 “Amo la lotta del pubblico coll’artista, quando è l’alta quistione del bello che la muove, quando c’èdi mezzo il progresso e l’avvenire d’un’arte. Allora il genio, anche fra gli urli e le risa, ha una sublime parte da compiere, perché la lotta del genio col pubblico è la lotta del vero col forte, del diritto col numero, del nuovo col vecchio, grandiosa, necessaria, inevitabile lotta,” in La perseveranza (March 2, 1862); quoted in Boito, Tutti gli scritti, 1078.

15 16 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

This chapter studies Mefistofele as a cultural project, preoccupied with the future of art and of opera in particular, that envisioned a different kind of exchange between the stage and the auditorium, between the artist and the public. Mefistofele was also a notoriously flawed project, elaborated over the course of more than a decade: the La Scala premiere in 1868 was a resonant fiasco, from which the opera re-emerged largely revised in 1875 in Bologna, and then, after a few more trials, it was finally sanctioned as a success back at La Scala in 1881. This long story of failures and laborious adjustments is in fact the story of the pre-announced and “necessary, inevitable struggle” of the audience with the artist. Indeed, the opera’s modernity lies in its double inscription of this “struggle,” both at the level of dramatic content, as an adaptation of Faust, and at the level of its performance and reception. Mefistofele reframes Goethe’s epic drama in terms of spectatorship. This chapter therefore will start from here: from a retelling of the story of the opera and of how it acquired the status of a failed, unrecognized masterpiece.

RUINED COPIES

Although still performed in opera theatres, often as a showpiece for baritones, Mefistofele has never received much attention in critical discourse on nineteenth-century opera and 3 is often dismissed as a curiosity, the odd product of a fin-de-siècle contorted mind. The few critical studies that take the opera seriously tend to concentrate on its troubled reception and subsequent re-composition, thus linking the work with the story of its composition and performance, and consequently with the artistic biography of Boito. The “story of Mefistofele,” originated from a large number of reviews and reactions to the opera’s performance in 1868, is transmitted as a collection of facts that narrate how the audience was incapable of understanding its unprecedented originality, and how therefore the author had to tame its novelty in order to make the work acceptable. Interestingly, this link between the work and its story has remained substantially undisputed. It may be worth taking a closer look at this narrative, which, far from 4 being an innocent compilation of events, has the dynamics and import of mythmaking.

3 For instance David Kimbell describes Mefistofele as “a work of real, if not often persuasive originality,” ultimately unconvincing because the music is “more ‘interesting’ than beautiful, more curious than expressive or powerful”; Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1991), 573–5. According to William Ashbrook, with the exception of the Prison Scene in Act 3, “much of the work seems a pageant,” and “today Mefistofele survives to the extent that the star basses find the kitschy role a congenial vehicle”; “The Nineteenth Century: Italy,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, Roger Parker, ed. (Oxford, 1994), 198. 4 Most accounts stem from Piero Nardi’s riveting reconstruction of the events on the basis of numerous contemporary reviews and testimonies; Piero Nardi, Vita di Arrigo Boito (Milan, 1944), 249–95. See also: Guido Salvetti, “La Scapigliatura milanese e il teatro d’opera,” in Il melodramma italiano dell’Ottocento, Giorgio Pestelli, ed. (Turin, 1977), 567–604; Jay Nicolaisen, “The First Mefistofele,” 19th-Century Music 1/3 (Spring 1978), 221–32;Nicolaisen,Italian Opera in Transition, 1871–1893 (Ann Arbor, 1977;rpt.1980), 125–50; William Ashbrook, “Boito and the 1868 Mefistofele Libretto as a Reform Text,” in Reading Opera, Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 17

The 1868 performance was more than just a failure. A rich collection of chronicles describes how the opera’s premiere was preceded by Boito’s provocative declarations of poetic intent, advocating substantial renovations of the genre, figured as an abandon- 5 ment of the old “formula” for a new and more authentic “forma.” The libretto circulated weeks prior to the premiere, stirring up expectations among the Milanese public for a new opera that would confront a subject matter as weighty as Goethe’s 6 Faust, and scandalizing those who defended operatic conventions. After numerous rehearsals and several delays, the premiere took place on March 5, 1868, in an atmos- 7 phere of excitement and feverish anticipation. Boito himself conducted the performance, unperturbedly leading the cast, the chorus, and the orchestra through more than five hours of hissing, laughing, booing, and sparse applause. Most commentators nowadays find reasons for the clamorous negative response in the performance’s numerous shortcomings: Boito was an inexperienced conductor, the singers were not up to the task, and, the worst miscalculation, the opera was too long. These circumstances, however, are not unusual in the history of the genre, and would hardly suffice to explain the impact the premiere has had on the opera’s critical history. In fact, both past and present accounts convey the sense that the opera’s failure was the inevitable fate of a radically progressive work, and the necessary outcome of Boito’s utopian project. Not only did the provocative declarations of intent of the young Scapigliato antagonize a large part of the Milanese audience even before the performance, but the opera itself, with its programmatic avoidance of traditional “formulae” and its “foreign” subject matter, was predestined to fail. The first Mefistofele, in other words,

Arthur Groos and Roger Parker, eds. (Princeton, 1988), 268–87; Alison Terbell Nikitopoulos, “Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele: Poetry, Music, and Revisions” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1994); Gerardo Guccini, “IdueMefistofele di Boito: drammaturgie e figurazioni,” in “Mefistofele” di Arrigo Boito, William Ashbrook and Gerardo Guccini, eds. (Milan, 1998), 147–266; Rosa Solinas, “The Devil You Know,” in “Arrigo Boito: The Legacy of Scapigliatura” (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1999), 131–73. 5 The difference between “forma” and “formula” was first explained in an article published in La perseveranza (September 13, 1863), quoted and translated in Ashbrook, “Boito and the 1868 Mefistofele Libretto,” 274. A further bold pronouncement was published the following year in Figaro, where Boito declared that: “the opera ‘of the present’ must ...arrive at I. The complete obliteration of formula. II. The creation of form”; in Arrigo Boito, Tutti gli scritti, 1107–8; quoted in translation in Ashbrook, “Boito and the 1868 Mefistofele Libretto,” 273. 6 As a contemporary critic observed: “if you wish to know how much I am favorable to Mefistofele as a poem, imagine how hostile must be the admirers of the grand’aria di sortita, the apostles of the cavatina, the fanatics of the cabaletta”; Michele Uda in Il pungolo (February 15, 1868), quoted in Nardi, Vita di Arrigo Boito, 253. On other reactions to the libretto see also Solinas, “Arrigo Boito,” 136–40, and especially Ashbrook, “Boito and the 1868 Mefistofele,” 268–87. 7 The Gazzetta di Milano (March 5, 1868) reported: “Outside the theatre the anxiety was no less intense than inside the theatre. In many houses and some cafés people received news about the performance after every act; an hour after midnight the telegraph was still in motion, and until four in the morning people talked in cafés and in the streets about the great fall of Mefistofele”; Nardi, Vita di Arrigo Boito, 275. 18 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

foundered on the audience’s unwillingness or incapacity to comprehend and appreciate its novelty, a novelty that, in turn, was endorsed by such reactions. Boito’s often reported smile as a reaction to the whistling and booing at the end of the performance adds to the account a sense that the failure was calculated and expected. Motivated either by pride or by insolence, Boito’s “smile of sorts” becomes evidence of the composer’s satisfaction at a public outrage that ultimately confirmed the opera’s 8 uncompromising originality. Thus, it could well be argued that the failure of the 1868 Mefistofele represented for Boito a full success. Not only did the Scapigliatura advocate an art substantially independent of public understanding and appreciation, but it also 9 specifically manifested antagonism towards bourgeois opera spectators. Boito himself, as indicated by the passage from his Parisian review quoted above, had already assumed a similarly bellicose stance towards the audience. If read in these terms, the failure of the 1868 Mefistofele can only be the sign of the “grand, necessary, inevitable struggle” of genius, and a validation of the worth and “truth” of artistic endeavor. Consequently, the puzzle this opera poses is why and how it was then transformed into a success. Most accounts describe a process of revision that led to the opera’s acceptance as radical compromise, whereby the composer adapted the original to the taste and expectations of the audience. Boito, this time seeking the success he had snobbishly refused only a few years earlier, resolved to cut numerous sections that had been criticized, develop those that had obtained applause, and add a 10 few numbers of sure effect. Crucially, this operation is presented as an act of repentance: he entered his revisions directly onto the pages of the original autograph orchestral score, thus materially overwriting the scandalous text of 1868 in a way that 11 was irrevocable. That is why we are left with only sparse traces of what the first version might have been, and why most recent critical literature on Mefistofele shares the goal of rescuing the faded 1868 text from oblivion: even when the original is

8 Boito’s smile is reported by Carlo Tenca in a letter to the Countess Clara Maffei: “A friend and colleague who was at the premiere of Mefistofele told me that he was struck by Boito’s demeanor and by the smile of sorts with which he received the audience’s disapproval. [My friend] judged Boito severely, not knowing him; but the fact is that the audience’s judgment cannot have any influence on his creativity because he cannot understand art any differently”; quoted in Nardi, Vita di Arrigo Boito, 276. 9 See Salvetti, “La Scapigliatura milanese,” 602; the most insightful inquiry into Boito’s Scapigliatura poetics and (anti)Wagnerian leanings remains Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol, Musica e letteratura in Italia fra Ottocento e Novecento (Milan, 2000), esp. 51–69. 10 Solinas explains the oddity of Boito’s capitulation to success by reading it consistently with the opera’s plot: she suggests that Boito’s revision was motivated less by compliance with public taste than by devilish (Mephistophelian) impudence: the second version was not so much an adaptation to conventions as a subtle disguising of its original provocative message; Solinas, “Arrigo Boito,” 171. 11 Exemplary in this regard is D’Arcais’s 1877 review in Nuova antologia, which patronizingly praises the author for recognizing his guilt and making amends to the audience; Francesco D’Arcais, “Il Mefistofele di Arrigo Boito,” Nuova antologia di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2nd series, 5 (1877), 190–204. Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 19 not the primary object of study, Mefistofele is generally considered the revision of a 12 lost work. While it is hardly the only opera in nineteenth-century Italy that had a troubled reception and was then accordingly revised, Mefistofele’s peculiarity resides (then and now) precisely in this indissoluble link between the text and the story of its reception. The score has acquired the status of a pseudo-text, or better, of a palimpsest that we try to read “through,” searching for the traces of that former text and its promise of originality and novelty. As Giovanni Morelli acutely observed, both of Boito’s operas, Mefistofele and Nerone, convey the sense of an ideal not reached or fulfilled. They are:

two simulacra aspiring to the status of “ruined” copies of the originals; a couple of copies, original copies as much as one wants, but also exceedingly adulterated. In the artistic biography of the maestro the copies replace ...the true originals, for the text of [Mefistofele’s] first version (the true one) emphatically sank in the calculated and utterly catastrophic fiasco of the premiere, and the posthumous text [of Nerone], shown to the world too late, is also essentially unfinished and completely and emphatically swallowed up in the vortex of 13 incompleteness. Significantly, it is precisely by way of this peculiar status of “ruined copies” that Boito’s operas become emblems of artistic creation:

Boito’s two operas, which, one way or another, “are not there,” are, however, two monuments, two exemplary cases of two clear typologies of a genre that was important for the Romantics of the first and second generation: the “failed opera” / imaginary opera / “legendary opera.” On the one hand, in fact, we have, in all its nobility, a martyr-opera, lost like an Ifigenia in Aulide: a young sacrificial victim immolated on the altar of the incomprehensible modernity of a precarious aesthetic “enterprise.” ...And on the other hand we have, even more noble perhaps, an opera lost because it has remained – in a perennial and 14 senile way – unfinished. The number of valuable studies of what the 1868 opera might have been surely attests that Mefistofele is a typically “ruined copy” (and also “failed opera” / imaginary

12 I allude here to the list of sources stemming from Nardi’s first account and quoted in n. 2 above, whose revisionist approach is quite clearly suggested by the titles. Apparently, however, there have been earlier exceptions: in his 1977 study of Italian opera, Nicolaisen writes that, due to Nardi’s assertion that Boito destroyed the original score, earlier studies (not identified) had of necessity ignored the first version and limited their scope only to the 1875 revision (Nicolaisen, Italian Opera in Transition, 126; his view is later backed also by Solinas, “Arrigo Boito,” 150). Moreover, by way of more accurate analysis of the autograph score in conjunction with additional sources, Nicolaisen is able to discern which portions of the opera as we know it derive from the 1868 original, and to claim that “contrary to what has been believed for more than a century, then, it would appear that large sections of the original Mefistofele do exist” (Nicolaisen, Italian Opera in Transition, 127). 13 Giovanni Morelli, “Qualcosa sul Nerone,” in Arrigo Boito, Giovanni Morelli, ed. (Florence, 1994), 519. 14 Ibid., 520. 20 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

opera / “legendary opera”). But it is the “legendary” aspect I want to emphasize: the work, comprising both the palimpsest and the story of its reception, adopts the rhetoric of a myth, the myth of the artist and his struggle to come to terms with the two extremes of art and life. Mefistofele has become the manifestation and material record of the artist’s “effort,” of his striving for a higher ideal of art. That the work necessarily includes its author (as an incarnation of the artist) is suggested by how the literature devoted to Mefistofele searches untiringly through the vast corpus of Boito’s letters, reviews, and literary and poetic writings for evidence and explanations, reading the opera in light of the author’s intricate web of declarations of intent and literary output. Biography and criticism are so inextricably conjoined that the 15 opera ultimately appears to be about Boito. The allegorical plot from Goethe’s Faust obviously provides fertile ground for a reading that oscillates between myth and biography. If Mefistofele’s criticism incorporates the author and his creative process it is also because the opera itself does so, by way both of its dramatic content and of its status as “ruined copy.” In other words, the opera’s musico-dramatic content and the story of its creation and reception have become linked by a logic of necessity, so that an account that deals with the artist’s endeavor and its difficult relation with the audience duplicates the story already told by the opera. I believe that Mefistofele invites us to inquire into this myth of artistic creation, beyond, as Morelli proposed, its re-inscription in a notion of Romanticism. The artist’s ideal endeavor seems to hide a constant and crucial preoccupation with another myth of sorts: that of the audience and its inscrutable response.

UNRECOGNIZED MASTERPIECES

Meﬁstofele and its story can in fact be read as an exemplary “fable of modern art,” one that echoes another famous nineteenth-century account of artistic creation: Balzac’s Le 16 Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu. First published in 1831 and then revised over the course of more than a decade, Balzac’s novella has become a paradigmatic tale of modern artistic 17 creation, later embraced as a manifesto by Cézanne and Picasso, among others. The story concerns an elderly painter, Frenhofer, and the woman’s portrait he has been painting for over ten years. He believes it to be a masterpiece, an incomparable fusion of ideal beauty and truthfulness to life, and, above all, a successful eﬀort to overcome the

15 The only dissenting voice is represented by Nicolaisen, who laments the biographism generally informing the opera’s critical evaluation, and calls for an assessment based on “the music alone.” Italian Opera in Transition, 136–7. 16 Honoré de Balzac, “Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu,” in La Comédie humaine, vol. ix, M. Bouteron, ed. (Paris, 1950). 17 Of the vast bibliography on this see especially Dore Ashton, A Fable of Modern Art (New York, 1980), and Hans Belting, The Invisible Masterpiece (London, 2001). Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 21 material constraints of art and bring into being the living materialization of his imagination. He jealously conceals it from everyone, until two younger painters and admirers are eventually allowed to see the work. The crux of the story lies in the ensuing scene, at the moment when the masterpiece is offered to the sight of the two spectators. What Frenhofer thinks is a portrait of a living creature, more beautiful than any real woman, appears instead to his fellow painters as an indecipherable “wall of paint.” The only form they can discern, emerging in a corner of that chaos, is the tip of a foot, forgotten by the master in his destructive process of creation. The moment they claim to see nothing, Frenhofer, as if awakened from a dream, apprehends their look, and sees what they see. He sits down in despair and laments his failure. He dies during the night, after having set fire to his paintings. Both stories revolve around a fundamental conflict of perspectives, the artist’s and the audience’s, and around the traumatic moment when their radical divergence is discovered. On the night of March 5, 1868, Boito, like Frenhofer, sees the spectators of La Scala “seeing nothing” in the product of his work of almost a decade. Contrary to Frenhofer, however, it seems that Boito sees also the audience’s recognition of the “tip of the foot,” and, starting from there, “re-paints” his opera. In a study on the aesthetics of modernity, Giorgio Agamben views the conflict represented in Balzac’s tale as one of the manifestations of a new aesthetics and an 18 important change in the status of a work of art. For Agamben, at that crucial moment when the two painters declare that they see nothing, Frenhofer, by apprehending their look, momentarily places himself in the role of spectator, and the canvas acquires another “side”:

Frenhofer becomes double. He moves from the point of view of the artist to that of the spectator, from the interested promesse de bonheur to disinterested aesthetics. In this transition, the integrity of his work dissolves. For it is not only Frenhofer that becomes double, but his work as well; just as in some combinations of geometric figures, which, if observed for a long time, acquire a different arrangement, from which one cannot return to the previous one except by closing one’s eyes, so his work alternately presents two sides that cannot be put together into a unity. The side that faces the artist is the living reality in which he reads his promise of happiness; but the other side, which faces the spectator, is an assemblage of lifeless 19 elements that can only mirror itself in the aesthetic judgment’sreflection of it. This is the division enacted by the art of modernity, when the spectator’s contemplation “without interest” (as Kantian aesthetics would advocate) clashes with the artist’s painfully “interested” creative investment. Agamben traces this division to the oft-cited critique leveled by Nietzsche at Kant’s aesthetics, for having limited the definition of the beautiful solely to the side of the

18 19 Giorgio Agamben, The Man without Content, Georgia Albert, trans. (Stanford, 1999). Ibid., 11. 22 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

spectator. To Kant’s concept of the beautiful as disinterested pleasure (“that is beautiful which gives us pleasure without interest”), Nietzsche opposes Stendhal’sdefinition of the beautiful as “promesse de bonheur”–that is, the beautiful from the point of view of 20 the “interested” artist. Nietzsche then foresaw what was to be the radical reversal in the conception of art at the turn of the twentieth century: art abandons the perspective of the spectator’s apprehension and is invested with the creator’s existential values. Reflection on art thus shifts to a perspective centered on the artist who, like Frenhofer (and Pygmalion), seeks his own happiness, or, even more strongly, “an unlimited growth and strengthening of the vital values,”“the living reality of his thought and 21 his imagination.” For Agamben, this shift is reflected in the same definition of aesthetics, which also becomes “double.”

Aesthetics then not only would be the determination of the work of art starting from the ... sensible apprehension of the spectator, but also would include from the beginning an examination of the work of art as the opus of a particular operari (working), the artistic 22 operari. Mefistofele and its story encapsulate this aesthetic turn at the moment of the split of visions. The text of the opera as we now know it represents the traumatic division between the artist’s and the spectator’s points of view, but also contains them both. In its status as “ruined copy” it contains both the original creative work of the artist – with its “promise of happiness”–and its surrender to the spectator’s search for “disinterested beauty.” Whereas Frenhofer’s canvas ends up losing its integrity, irrevocably split into two sides that cannot be reconciled into a unity, Mefistofele is the product of the artist’s effort to recuperate such integrity. An attempt to distinguish what belongs to the revolutionary original conception from what is instead a concession to audience taste would not only become trapped in the circularity of its own premises, but would also end up missing precisely the opera’s uncompromising novelty – a novelty that cannot be narrowed down to what can be discerned through the palimpsest, since, as many have recognized, Boito’s revisions left untouched a large part of the early score, and the opera still represents a unique attempt 23 to reform “formulae” of nineteenth-century Italian opera. Similarly, an assessment narrowed down to the score’s formal structuring would seem to suffer from its own limitations. However, if we expand the scope from the score to include matters of theatricality, employment of stage technology, acting, and so forth, it becomes quite obvious that Mefistofele is a complex and visionary project that involves music with a

20 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (New York, 1989), 112–13. 21 22 Agamben, The Man without Content, 9. Ibid., 12. 23 For a tentative reconstruction of the 1868 score and a comparison with the 1875 versions see Nicolaisen, Italian Opera in Transition, 127–34. Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 23 deft employment of mise-en-scène and staging. And it is the staging manual that most patently attests to the bold originality of the opera. The disposizione scenica, compiled by Boito and by Giulio Ricordi, organizes to the minutest detail the integration of music, 24 words, gestures, and stage effects. Boito’s attempt to invent new “forms,” therefore, also has to be reconsidered in terms of spectacular apparatus: a newly devised apparatus that functions as a mediator between the “interested” artist and the audience, in the effort to expand the experiential horizon of opera well beyond its conventional confines, under the aegis of Goethe.

MODERN EPICS

Boito’s adaptation of Goethe’s Faust is arranged into four acts, preceded by the Prologue in Heaven, and closed with an epilogue. Similarly to Faust, Part i (Acts 1–3) deals with Faust’s experience of “Il Reale,” while the shorter Part ii (Act 4 and Epilogue) with “L’Ideale.” As is often remarked, by transposing both parts of Goethe’s tragedy Boito’s adaptation greatly exceeds the scope of its famous operatic precedent, Gounod and 25 Carré’s Faust. If Gounod’s version is a modest but wise attempt to extract from the model what was already conducive to operatic treatment, then Boito’s might be accorded the unwarranted ambition not only to translate and condense the German tragedy into Italian libretto-poetry, but also to ﬁt even the famously unperformable Part ii within the limits of a stage. This ambition is more than mere madness or naivety. Boito’s adaptation does not simply appropriate material from a prestigious classic; rather, it attempts to capture and adapt for the opera stage the distinctly epic quality of Goethe’s work. The epic in Meﬁstofele is not only a stylistic register, evident for instance in the deliberately paratactic sequencing of separate episodes, as described below. More than this, the opera strives to render the epic of Faust as a poetic aspiration, or better, to quote Franco Moretti’s famous formulation, as the temptation of modernity. In his study of canonized epic masterpieces of Western culture, Moretti proposes that a “modern epic” such as Goethe’s Faust aims at reviving the genre’s ancient legacy: to represent the incommen- 26 surate, expansive, universalizing scope of experiences under the aegis of a hero. Thus

24 Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Mefistofele” di Arrigo Boito (Milan, 1881); reprinted in “Mefistofele” di Arrigo Boito, Ashbrook and Guccini, eds., 35–146 (henceforth, DS-Mef; page numbers refer to the manual’s own pagination). 25 Premiered in Paris, at the Théâtre-Lyrique in 1859, it was first performed at La Scala in 1862; for a more detailed comparison between Gounod’s and Boito’s versions see Ashbrook, “Boito and the 1868 Mefistofele Libretto,” 270–1. 26 Franco Moretti, Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to García Márquez, Quintin Hoare, trans. (New York, 1996), 13. 24 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Boito’s ambition to include both Parts i and ii manifests an earnest conviction of the original’s capacity to evoke a multifarious experiential totality. Despite the necessary large omissions, the opera strives to exploit the modernity of Faust’s epic “temptation”– that is, the sheer range of different episodes, the totality of which constitutes what Moretti calls the epic’s “world system.” And, even more radically, by changing the title from Faust to Mefistofele, the opera hints at completing something Goethe had started. As Moretti explains, with Goethe the character of Faust undergoes a fundamental transformation: the self-possessed hero of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus had mutated into the inert spectator of Mephistopheles’ deeds. Where the former takes charge of the action, the latter is a hero deprived of poietic (and ethic) responsibility. As a consequence, the experiential array offered by Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is structurally limited to the confines of the hero’s imagination and desires. In Goethe, instead, these confines can be expanded immeasurably once the poietic agency is transferred to Mephistopheles’ magic. Thus Boito’s version takes this process a step further and with Mefistofele completes the transference of agency: the demiurge becomes the eponymous hero of the opera. The operatic adaptation thus enacts a fundamental double shift. First of all there is a shift of perspective, from the interest of the spectator to that of the author: the work becomes about the creator’s power and “interest,” about the artist’s “promesse de bonheur.” Secondly, it effects a medial shift, through which opera redefines its own power as a medium. Mefistofele’s magic is produced by means of the spectacular operatic machinery, which in turn is defined by establishing a relation of causality between its devices and technologies and the effects they would trigger in the spectators. But if Mefistofele’s role is that of the epic demiurge, roughly aligned with that of the artist and with opera’s potential as a medium, what role is left for the character of Faust? If Faust has become a spectator, in an opera that so overtly tackles its relation to the audience, then it seems that this function needs to be qualified. Moretti is quick to identify the function of spectator as one of utter passivity and mere reactivity, relying on the commonplace polarization whereby the doing/showing/speaking from the stage is set against the passivity of all the looking/hearing in the auditorium. Even though freed of poietic responsibility, Faust is hardly deprived of agency: rather, the “world system” conjured up by Mefistofele makes sense only insofar as Faust experiences it in its totality. In fact, through Goethe’s (and Boito’s) “refunctionalization” of Mephistopheles’ character, as Moretti calls it, Faust’s investment in the action has become an aesthetic one: he must make the final choice, for which the stakes are as high as his soul. In other words, Faust’s spectatorship is surely an activity of sorts: if the opera sets up a wager according to which the spectator has to be able to declare, “fleeting moment, / stop, you are beautiful,” then what sort of “fleeting moments” must be delivered and how, to be worth one’s soul? Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 25

MIRAGES

The most extraordinary aspect of Mefistofele’s dramaturgy is its bold appropriation of the notoriously disjointed original. Despite its classicizing organization into four acts, book- ended by prologue and epilogue, the opera makes little effort to provide a sense of overarching continuity or causal connection. It consists of a sequence of eight distinct scenes: Prologue in Heaven; “Easter Sunday” and “The Compact” (Act 1); Margherita’s Garden and The Sabbath (Act 2); Death of Margherita (Act 3); Classical Sabbath (Act 4); Epilogue. There is no attempt, either in the score or in the libretto, to integrate the separate episodes, and closure is effected simply by repetition: Faust’s journey ends where it started, in his study with Mefistofele. The staging manual, in addition, emphasizes this paratactic arrangement, so that the rather long and detailed set of instructions and diagrams describes a wide range of juxtaposed tableaux and scenes. It is hardly surprising that an opera about the devil’s magic power to conjure up arresting visions would deploy a variety of theatrical tricks. And Mefistofele’s staging manual does indeed represent a deliberate effort not only to access, fully and accurately, all the techniques and devices available to contemporary stagecraft, but also to reinvent and re-functionalize them. The instructions for the Prologue, for instance, ambitiously tackle the thorny matter of putting heaven on a stage. The solutions adopted are quite striking in the way they exploit the effect of spatialized sound, well before sci-fi sagas. The stage is transformed into a “nebula” in space: transparent curtains and veils are layered right by the proscenium arch, thus turning the stage into a translucent magic box that emanates sound (Figure 2.1). The veils are painted on the right with a cluster of clouds that hides a large choral mass and a series of stage instruments (a “fanfara,” an 27 organ, and a “fisarmonica”). The nebula, more lit on the top right, resounds with the voices of celestial phalanxes, cherubs, penitents, and, most aptly, a “Chorus Mysticus” as the voice of God. Mefistofele emerges from a trapdoor on the left side of the stage, visible through an opening in the clouds (the most transparent but darker side of the veils). Challenged by the Chorus Mysticus, he wages that he will succeed in tempting Faust, who is more vulnerable than the rest of humankind because of his “inexhaustible desire for know- 28 ledge.” The lights in the auditorium are lowered, as the manual recommends, thus enhancing the magic-box effect of the top-lit nebula, progressively animated by a

27 This solution was presumably elaborated e few years earlier in collaboration with set designer Pietro Bertoja for the 1876 performance in Venice, and then included in the staging manual. Bertoja made sure the curtains and veils were thin enough to allow for the sound of the large chorus fully to reach the theatre’s auditorium. Guccini, “I due Meﬁstofele di Boito,” 226–7. 28 “Inassopita / bramosia di saper il fa tapino / ed anelante”; henceforth, passages from the libretto (“L-Mef”) are quoted from the 1881 version, reproduced in “Meﬁstofele” di Arrigo Boito, Ashbrook and Guccini, eds., 19–32. Page numbers refer to the libretto’s own pagination; here, 7. 26 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Figure 2.1 Carlo Ferrario, sketch for the Prologue of Meﬁstofele

calculated and complex choreography of sound. Behind the veils the large chorus is divided into four groups, which, together with the stage instruments, are distributed according to specific positions and orientations in order to ensure an efficient spatialization of sound. Transparent curtains were a staple of much of nineteenth-century stagecraft, with its taste for fantastically remote visions, but here that stagecraft has to deal with acoustics. The extravagant novelty of Boito’s spectacularization of sourceless, acousmatic sound surely had some inherent technical limitations, since a note added to the staging manual recommends a backcloth of some sort be lowered behind the 29 chorus, so that the sound “is all pushed towards the auditorium.” In contrast the first scene of Act 1 seems instead to adhere to the most frequent of nineteenth-century operatic conventions: the topical opening with a colorful crowd scene in a village square – in this case, the Easter Sunday stroll outside the Frankfurt city gate. Besides the predictable hints of stereotypical Germanic turrets, the deep set

29 DS-Mef, 41–2. Guccini reports that in the 1876 Bologna staging the set for “the nebula in the Prologue was so heavy as to create a barrier to the chorus’s voices.” Guccini, “I due Mefistofele,” 211. Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 27 functions less as a realistic representation of place than as the efficient organization of stage space to showcase the crowd’s movement. In fact the orderly circulation of choristers and supernumeraries through wings and props and across the stage is the main event of this episode and also the main preoccupation of the lengthy instructions. The device of the veils is again adopted, but for conventional atmospheric effects: towards the end three veils of variable transparency are subsequently dropped in front of the set, serving a double purpose. Together with the dimming of the stage lights they signal the onset of night, while also allowing for an invisible open-curtain change of scenery, in preparation for scene ii, in Faust’s study. The theatrical device links the two parts of Act 1 in the way of a montage of two contiguous spaces and times, outdoor and indoor, both inhabited by Faust as the day ends. To this the score adds the connecting effect of the distant, fading echoes of the Easter crowd, by inserting fragments of the previous choruses sung from backstage during the change of scenery. This will be the last time that any concern is shown for spatial-temporal continuity between scenes: for the rest of the opera the staging manual seems to privilege instead rapid set changes, exploiting the effect of sudden, disparate ambiences. The instructions regarding the compact between Mefistofele and Faust (Act 1, scene ii) are all devoted to acting and blocking. The main concern here is character definition, especially Mefistofele’s: for instance, the defiant sarcasm with which the singer has to pound his foot on the stage to emphasize the end of verses in his entrance aria, or his mocking final whistle, which has to be produced with the utmost “violence,” and thus 30 should be assigned to a skilled stage hand. For Mefistofele’smagictricks,inparticular, the manual seems to resort to techniques of fair magicians and illusionists: the transformation from a grey friar into a knight recommends a technique used for disappearing 31 acts, using a costume that can be shed quickly without leaving the stage. For the more complex flight with Faust on the magic cape the manual simply places the two singers on a small platform lifted by a cable, and then corrects the crudeness of the effect by synching it to specific measures in the score and, most important, by coating the two ascending 32 figures in the red beam of an electric lamp. The Garden Scene opening Act 2 is a musical and visual divertissement centered on the two couples: Margherita and Faust, and Marta and Mefistofele. The music, constructed through symmetrical modules as in Act 1, scene i, focuses on the characterization and juxtaposition of the couples. The carousel-like continuous circular motion of the characters’ stroll through the garden is replicated in the almost mechanical succession of the two musical segments, diversified in melodic and metric contour. The effect of the whole scene culminates in a final “stretta,” where the more rapid movements

30 DS-Mef, 26. Nardi mentions how Giulio Ricordi was particularly keen on this whistle; Nardi, Vita di Arrigo Boito, 391. 31 32 DS-Mef, 24. DS-Mef, 29. 28 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

mirror the fast alternation of two-note fragments of voices and orchestra, again with ample use of the eﬀects of spatialization and musical reproduction of movement. The divertissement, however, encloses a short episode between Faust and Margherita, which 33 functions as a small dramatic and lyrical parenthesis. Here Faust voices his own 34 35 “credo” and declares his passion to Margherita in lyrical musical phrases that will later be emphatically recalled at Margherita’s apparition during the Black Sabbath, in the Act 3 Prison Scene, and in the Epilogue.

LIGHTING DESIGN

The most interesting and frequent special effect by far is electric light and lighting in general. The staging manual appears to be uncommonly interested in utilizing most of the lighting devices available to an opera theatre at the time. As is often noted, the first appearance of an electric light on an opera stage was the legendary arc lamp specially made for the sunrise in Le Prophète at the Paris Opéra in 1849. The device was 36 presumably soon imported to Turin for the opera’s Italian performance of 1853. At that time, however, electric lighting figures only sporadically, and mostly as an accessory emphasizing the opulence of a production. Despite its recognized advantages over gas (power, precision, and above all, no poisonous fumes and danger of fire) electric lighting had major technological limitations, owing to its small power supply, 37 and the extremely perishable and fragile parts. Then, around the 1870s, records of an “electric machine” on the stage of La Scala begin to multiply, even though only occasionally and for brief climactic segments of the performance. For instance, the disposizione scenica for I Lituani, published by Ricordi in 1876, prescribes that one “electric machine” cast a beam of white light over the corpse of the dead hero during the

33 Alison Nikitopoulos views this episode as the slow movement of a “solita forma,” therefore inscribing the whole scene into a four-movement sequence: the previous material would be the kinetic “preparation” (“tempo d’attacco”), the slow section the “Andante,” followed by a kinetic “tempo di mezzo,” and concluded by the stretta (Nikitopoulos, “Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele,” 188–203). However, I disagree with the claim implicit in her argument that the four sections are related to each other by way of musical or dramatic causality. 34 “Colma il tuo cor d’un palpito – ineffabile e vero / E chiama poi quell’estasi: – Natura! Amor! Mistero!” [“Fill thy heart with the quivering – true and ineffable and then name that ectasy: – Nature! Love! Mystery!”] L-Mef, 21; Arrigo Boito, Mefistofele, vocal score, Michele Saladino and Mario Parenti, eds. (Milan, 1875, plate no. 44720; rpt. Milan, 1962), 122–3 (henceforth, “VS-Mef”). 35 “Dì, non potrò giammai – dolce un’ora d’amore / Viver teco e confondere – il mio cuor col tuo cuore?” [“Tell me, am I never to be able – to live the sweetness of an hour of love with you, and unite – my heart with thine?”] L-Mef, 21; VS-Mef, 125. 36 Mercedes Viale Ferrero, “Stage and Set,” in The History of Italian Opera, vol. v: Opera on Stage, Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, eds. (Chicago, 2002), 32–3. 37 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the 19th Century (Berkeley, 1988), 200–3; Gösta Bergman, Lighting in the Theatre (Totowa, 1977), 273 and ff. Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 29

38 elaborate apparition of the Willis at the end. In 1878–9 the theatre was thoroughly refurbished but still relied on a sophisticated gas lighting system: a combination of 192 down-turned and 550 fan-shaped gas burners were used to provide light to the whole 39 stage surface. Then, only a few years later, an enthusiastic reviewer for Il teatro illustrato celebrated the installation of electricity at La Scala, inaugurated for the season’s opening night on December 26, 1883. The article pays more attention to the new system of “1893 Edison lamps” than to the performance of Gioconda and of the ballet Flik e Flok, neither a novelty but presumably revived by the 946 electric lamps on the stage and by 40 the new method for obtaining colored lights. Compiled a few years before,thestagingmanualforMefistofele attests to an “illuminotecnica” caught between old nineteenth-century technologies and the progressive electrification of the stage. But precisely because of this technological conjuncture, Boito and Ricordi were able to accumulate tricks and devices: to the well- tested capabilities of gaslight, colored flares and fires to work in agreement with current set design and painting, they added electric light, well in excess of that required by a climactic moment or final tableau. Moreover, the manual reveals an acute awareness of the plastic capabilities of lights obtained from different sources and devices, a plasticity that required of course the darkening of the auditorium, which is 41 in fact repeatedly recommended. Predictably enough, it is the night of the witches’ Sabbath that abounds in lighting wonders (Act 2, scene ii). The slow, chromatic ascending line of the orchestra’s opening measures has a visual counterpart in the wild, windswept landscape, the grey sky and

38 Premiered at La Scala in 1874, Ponchielli’s I Lituani was performed again at the end of the carnival season of 1876 (appropriately enough as a gala in honor of the German Emperor), just three months after a reprise of Le Prophète. See Disposizione scenica per l’opera “I Lituani” versi di A. Ghislanzoni musica di Amilcare Ponchielli, compilata e regolata secondo la messa in scena del Teatro alla Scala da Giulio Ricordi (Milan, 1876), 64; also mentioned in Viale Ferrero, “Stage and Set,” 42–3. On the first adoption of the arc lamps in Verdian mise-en-scènes, see Marco Capra, “L’illuminazione sulla scena verdiana, ovvero l’arco voltaico non acceca la luna,” in La realizzazione scenica dello spettacolo verdiano, Pierluigi Petrobelli and Fabrizio Della Seta, eds. (Parma, 1996), 230–64. 39 “Gas light on the stage consists of two ramps each with 19 Benghel [sic – perhaps Bengal or Argand burners] down-turned flames, and with 18 vertical and 7 horizontal rails, for a total of 192 Benghel flames and 550 fan-shaped ones”;inCenni sul Teatro alla Scala (Milan, 1881), 11–12. 40 Il teatro illustrato 4/37 (January 1884), 10. Among the very first cities in Europe and the USA, Milan was electrified in 1883 with the Edison system. An urban electric plant was installed near the Duomo and electric power was distributed to a large area in the city centre, providing for street lighting, public buildings, shops, cafés, theatres and some private apartments. Rinaldo Ferrini, “I progressi dell’illuminazione elettrica,” Rassegna nazionale 33/9 (1887), 122–6. 41 Mentioned at least twice: for example: “Starting from the first notes of the Prelude, the auditorium should slowly darken,” DS-Mef, 6. See Friedrich Kittler, Optical Media (Cambridge, 2010), 170–3, for a short chronology of lighting as it becomes “media technology” at the turn of the twentieth century – although maximized around the usual great masters, inventors and authors. 30 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

42 black cliffs of the scenery barely lit by the reddish light of a rising moon. The dark landscape is soon animated by the apparition of will-o’-the-wisps, with the unfailing musical correlate – a rapid figure in the winds – and by a “duet” in which Faust and 43 Mefistofele describe them. Overall, the frenzied nighttime reunion of witches and devils is all played out through different light sources, from a live fire in the middle of the stage to the recurring will-o’-the wisps, Bengal flares, and then the full intensity of colored electric beams. The escalation of special effects is nowhere more evident than in the stretta, which, like the other scene endings, displays all the spectacular traits of the tableau in a final synthesis and intensification. Here the “Ridda,” a frenzied dance for the 44 witches, is accompanied by a three-part fugue in the chorus. The staging manual maps every movement of the crowd onto the score, describing the choreography of the 45 dances measure by measure. The way the instructions slavishly match the score’s final crescendo with a “crescendo coreografico” would probably look, if taken literally, comically daunting. What is notable is the effort to integrate all ingredients of the spectacle into a sort of experiential saturation: to the growing volume and texture of the music by the orchestra and choruses corresponds a growing amplitude and speed of the gestures performed by the choristers and dancers, but also a multiplication of sound and visual effects. At the moment when the score reaches a fortissimo, the staging manual prescribes the deploy- ment of a thunder machine, a magic lantern projecting fast menacing clouds onto the backdrop, flights of owls and bats operated by hidden stage hands, dark purple electric 46 lights, and frantic gestures by the numerous choristers, dancers and supernumeraries. Soon after that, the light changes to green, yellow and then red, everybody keeps running around and up and down the practicable rocks, brandishing whatever object they carry – wands, serpents, pitchforks, Bengal flares, and so forth – to close on a final tableau where Mefistofele and Faust, like heavy-metal stars, stand on the top of a rock, surrounded by smoke and by a picturesque crowd lifting pitchforks and snakes. There is more. The extravagant tableau unabashedly displays all the wonders available to contemporary stagecraft and optics, including, besides the combination of

42 DS-Mef, 37: “The sinister contours of black cliffs stand out against the grey sky; a reddish rising moon casts a strange light on the scene.” The painter is instructed: “You should obtain lighting effects that are the most strange, mysterious, fantastic, and the overall fusion of backdrop, sets, and stage.” DS-Mef, 38. 43 “Folletto, folletto,” L-Mef, 23; VS-Mef, 139; DS-Mef, 40. The will-o’-the-wisps were supposedly obtained by igniting a sponge previously immersed in alcohol. The sponge, attached to a wire, was moved by a “fire-worker” hidden behind a prop. 44 45 VS-Mef, 182. DS-Mef, 53–4. 46 All this seems to be coming from the repertoire of stage trick of the Wolf’s Glen Scene in Weber’s Der Freischütz, performed at La Scala in 1872, and then in 1881, just a few months before Mefistofele’s revised version (see Chapter 1). Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 31

47 magic lanterns and electric lights, a phantasmagoria for the apparition of Margherita. In the midst of the “Ridda,” the image of Margherita is projected on the higher cliff upstage: like many another distraught Romantic heroine she is clad in a long grey gown, her hands tied with a rope. As the orchestra quotes the theme from Faust’s lyrical declaration from the Garden Scene (“Colma il tuo cor d’un palpito”), Faust, deeply disturbed, points to the apparition and describes it in an emotional recitativo declamato (“Stupor, stupor”). Witches and demons momentarily suspend their “Ridda” and, 48 composed into a “quadro plastico,” stand still, looking at the apparition. The staging manual suggests two methods for realizing this effect: the simpler one consists of projecting an electric light onto the back of a transparent canvas representing the cliff, 49 thus revealing the pre-painted contour of Margherita’s image. The technique of suddenly revealing images painted on transparent canvases by changing the light source was by this time of proven efficacy, and was generally employed to confer movement on 50 dioramas. But a second method is preferred:

If possible, it would be better to use the method of the phantasmagoria with mirrors, producing the apparition of the real figure of Margherita reflected on the top of the 51 praticabile C. The latter technique presumably refers to a kind of phantasmagoria by which the mirror 52 reflection of a figure off stage could be projected on a screen surface on stage. The final effect of the two methods is probably very similar, since both would conjure up the brief apparition of a specter. By recommending the second method, however, the staging manual opts for the more sophisticated technological apparatus, capable of projecting a far more vivid picture, where the artificiality of the image is less evident. But also, significantly, it opts for an image that is the immediate projection of the physical materiality of Margherita. Her apparition is not seen by Faust alone, but the entire

47 Robertson’s phantasmagoria was already included in the performance history of Goethe’s Faust; Marianne Mildenberger, Film und Projektion auf der Buhne (Emsdetten, 1961), 11. 48 L-Mef, 27; VS-Mef, 178; DS-Mef, 47. 49 DS-Mef, 39: “Nello spezzato X sull’alto del praticabile C, sarà dipinta in trasparenza la figura di Margherita, la quale comparirà agli occhi dello spettatore mediante una botta di luce elettrica che la irradierà per di dietro. La parte trasparente non sia regolare, ma deve solo disegnare i contorni della figura in modo che apparisca sulla roccia come un fantasma.” 50 See Donata Pesenti Compagnoni, Verso il cinema: machine, spettacoli, e mirabili visioni (Turin, 1995), 134–6; also, on Daguerre’s “Double-effect diorama,” see Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium (New York, 1997), 80. 51 DS-Mef, 47: “Ma, potendo, sarebbe preferibile usare il sistema della fantasmagoria coi cristalli, facendo apparire la figura vera di Margherita riflessa sull’alto del praticabile C.” 52 For a detailed description of this process see the inventor himself: Étienne-Gaspard Robertson, Mémoires récréatifs, scientifiques et anecdotiques du physicien-aéronaute E. G. Robertson, 2 vols. (Paris, 1831–3). 32 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

“satanic crowd on stage is most emphatically aware of it: they stop their dances and, 53 turning upstage, look at it in stupor.” This objectiﬁcation of the apparition seems even more notable if we consider that in Goethe’s text it is treated as Faust’s recollection, a vision emanating from the character’s interiority. In his commentary on Boito’s staging manual Gerardo Guccini points out the importance of such a change, which in his view helps to rescue the opera from dramaturgical incoherence. For him, the phantasmagoria of Margherita

is no more just a reminiscence but constitutes one of the structural bases of the spectacle, because it reinforces the links between the first and second tableau of Act 2 (Martha’s Garden; the Schirk [sic] valley) and Act 3 (the Prison), by defining their functions within the economy 54 of Faust’s journey. Thus Margherita’s image would function as a connecting element, a visual recall that provides temporal continuity to the otherwise juxtaposed episodes. The added emphasis and its spectacular contrivance are however more an element of disruption to that unity sought by Guccini. The phantasmagoria and the reaction of the crowd composed in a “quadro plastico” render the apparition a segment of the spectacle. The vision is taken away from the character, and rather than being conveyed as a product of his agency and subjectivity it is transformed, like everything else, into part of the experiential totality of the spectacle, produced by a machinery that transforms everything into theatrical effect and object of wonder. Several ensuing scenes again employ electric light as a special effect, precisely for its capacity to encase and isolate, thus affecting vision and perception. If the brightly colored beams ensure the supernatural grotesque effect of the bizarre congregation of witches, a white electric moonlight confers a neoclassical patina to the Classical Sabbath of Act 4. In this nocturnal Arcadian scene Faust encounters the beautiful Helen of Troy and eventually seduces her with the melodiousness of rhymed verses – which, according 55 to the long erudite endnote in the libretto, were unknown to Greek poetry. The intense beam of an electric light casts the initial tableau as an archeologist’s dream vision. Arranged in languorous poses, in a landscape replete with a Doric temple and sphinxes, sirens, fauns, and corytides surround Helen and Pantalis, and all sing an ode to the moon in classicizing verses. As soon as Faust and Mefistofele appear and thus inhabit 56 the archeological fantasy, the light is turned off. Finally in the Epilogue, back in his study and aware he is approaching death, Faust recollects: “I have known every mystery of a mortal life, the Real, the Ideal, the love of a virgin and the love of a goddess ...

53 DS-Mef, 47–8: “tutti infine formeranno un gran quadro plastico, rimanendo immobili a contemplare la visione”; then “I coristi saliranno assai lentamente sulle roccie, come per vedere meglio l’apparizione di Margherita, in atto di grande stupore.” When the vision disappears, “I cori con un gesto di stupore esclamano: Ah! volgendosi in pari tempo verso la platea.” 54 55 56 Guccini, “I due Mefistofele di Boito,” 160–1. L-Mef, 44. DS-Mef, 65–6. Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 33

57 yes ...But the Real was sorrow and the Ideal was but a dream.” But as the celestial throng, lit by blue light, slowly appears to lure Faust to redemption, Mefistofele makes a last desperate effort to win him back with the song of the sirens. This last trick is conveyed as a full-fledged apparition: a curtained niche on the right opens to reveal a 58 group of “sirens” lit by red electric light. Again, fantasies are not only evoked, but are re-presented as events to be seen and heard in their own right, endowed with the full materiality of theatrical technology. The ending, predictably perhaps, displays an electrified deus ex machina with the accompaniment of a shower of rose petals: two powerful electric beams placed laterally downstage right and left appropriately signal divine intervention by drenching in white transversal light both Faust, now dead, and Mefistofele as he disappears down the stage’s trapdoor. In sum, the disposizione scenica for Mefistofele, with all its lengthy and at times awkward descriptions, is an extraordinary text that constantly invokes a stagecraft that employs all the available techniques, practices and materials, while also elaborating and reinventing them. As a result, each of the eight scenes provides an occasion for the display of sheer theatrical invention. The following pages will suggest, moreover, that the score and the libretto are not merely quirkily unconventional, as much of the literature has persistently claimed. Music and words are also displayed in their materiality and ductility, always re-functionalized for their capacity to shape the perception of the spectacular mirages offered to the audience.

OPERATIC MATTER

Shortly after the disastrous premiere of 1868, the perspicacious critic Filippo Filippi observed that Meﬁstofele is a work “sui generis, with a general tendency towards plasticity and objectivity, which leaves hardly any room to the principal element of drama that is 59 heart, passion, ... the lively, continuous, pressing action.” Filippi appears to be describing precisely what I illustrated earlier with the example of Margherita’s apparition: the tendency to objectify theatrical events to the extent that all the passions and emotions that customarily drive the plot forward have disappeared. Boito’s experiment at a modern epic in fact manifests a general disinterest towards characters’ interior processes, in favor not only of a visualization of emotions that Italian opera had inherited much earlier from mélodrame, but also, well beyond it, of an exteriority that objectiﬁes emotions into spectacular events. In this sense, even those situations that are

57 L-Mef, 39: “Ogni mortale / Mister conobbi, il Real, l’Ideale, / L’Amore della Vergine e l’Amore / Della Dea ...sì ...Ma il Real fu dolore / E l’Ideal fu sogno.” 58 DS-Mef, 76. 59 “Sui generis, tutta plastica, tutta oggettiva, che lascia troppo poco spazio al grande elemento del dramma, ch’è il cuore, la passione, ...l’azione viva, perenne, incalzante”; La perseveranza, March 9, 1868; quoted in Guccini, “I due Meﬁstofele di Boito,” 197. 34 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

conventionally devoted to so-called character development or psychological truth, and that supposedly foster empathy in the spectators, are of little consequence. For example, the love duet between Faust and Margherita in the Garden Scene (Act 2, scene ii) or Margherita’s madness and death scene in Act 3 are hardly restrained or bloodless, yet they do not seem to facilitate any subjective transaction between stage and auditorium. It is as if the accumulation of theatrical wonders described by the staging manual is paired with a de-sublimation of music and words, which are instead showcased in all their sensuous materiality. Two passages offer an illustration of this aspect: the crowd scene of Act 1, and the beginning of the long solo episode for Margherita in Act 3. Both have obvious connections to conventions of mid-century Italian opera – an introductory number and the climactic tour de force for the prima donna – but only to the extent that tradition is also treated as a theatrical “found object.” Act 1 opens on a deep set representing a clearing outside Frankfurt, a square between the gate on the city wall and the grove, where a festive crowd walks back and forth on an Easter Sunday afternoon. The story of Faust thus commences with a specific operatic reference: the scene is mapped into a conventional evocation of place and time, whereby the strolling crowd and “local color” of the Germanic setting would constitute a context pertinent to events more central to the plot, such as the ensuing conversation between Faust and Wagner and their encounter with the mysterious grey friar. Conformity to tradition, however, ends here, for the events of this scene succeed each other without being really integrated, not even as background and foreground. This process of “sequencing” is notable first in the alternation of the crowd segments with the Faust- Wagner dialogue, but it is also at play on a smaller scale in the opening section. Up to the entrance of Faust and Wagner, this opening unfolds through segments of stage business defined mainly in musical and visual terms. After one measure of bells playing a motive that will recur frequently throughout, the curtain rises on a stage 60 already filled with groups of people walking back and forth. The diagrams of the staging manual delineate the path of this movement along a transverse line across 61 the stage, from the city gate upstage on the right to the trees downstage on the left. In the meantime, a group of male choristers is positioned on the front right, by a beer stand. The orchestra describes and regulates this stage business with a fast and heavy Marziale in ff, built on two groups of 4+4 measures, with a unison trill on the last note. These four-measure units have a distinctively bulky metric and rhythmic shape, derived from the repetition of cadential material, where the squaring out is undermined by rhythmic asymmetry. The return of the bell motive signals the movement of the male 62 choristers downstage, who, subdivided in two groups, have a brief exchange. Then a group of young women enter from the gate and walk across the square carrying olive 63 branches, as they intone a song to April – a new four-measure musical idea – followed

60 61 62 63 VS-Mef, 55. DS-Mef, 10–12. VS-Mef, 56/1/1–3. VS-Mef, 56/4/1–3. Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 35 by another short strand of conversation of the group of men. At the sound of trumpets, a crowd gathers around a herald on the right, and then around a mountebank on the left, 64 but the usual bells restart their strolling, while the orchestra reprises the Marziale. The thickening of the musical texture (the trills on the fourth measure are here replaced by fast quintuplets) is matched by a larger number of passers-by: officers, soldiers, and a 65 noblewoman with her throng of servants and pages. In almost Pavlovian fashion, the sound of the bells again enacts a change, closing the Marziale and signaling the entrance of another group of male choristers, who, gathered 66 like the others around the beer stand, offer toasts with unabashed enthusiasm. After this, the orchestra reintroduces a varied fragment of the Marziale, which, in twenty measures from pianissimo to fortissimo, accompanies the entrance of a mysterious grey 67 friar, welcomed by a group of women. The sound of trumpets from the distance prepares yet another event, the passing of a riding party. The entire chorus, divided in two groups upstage (tenors and sopranos on the right, basses and altos on the left), 68 announces its arrival, pointing downstage at the still invisible riders. The music shifts to a Vivace, also articulated in four-measure phrases, where the imitative writing of the voices exploits their position on opposite sides of the stage in a sort of stereo effect, with the added equestrian dotted-note pattern. After the parade of horses, the whole episode ends on a stretta, with unrestrained “Ah!” from the chorus, frantic bells, and tremolo of the orchestra on a fortissimo C-major chord, after which everybody swiftly disappears 69 inside the city gate. The stage now empty, the orchestra attacks the Moderato in pianissimo, and Faust and Wagner enter from upstage, seemingly unaware of the 70 previous excitement. Evidently, these first four minutes of music are hardly concerned with matters of subtle developmental procedures or thematic elaborations. Rather, the music is subjected like every other ingredient to the logic of linear structuring. Musical syntax is used here only insofar as it can sustain segments that almost never overlap. Everything that happens on stage is constituted as foreground in its own right, with little sense of dramatic direction and hierarchy. Moreover both score and staging manual are extremely detailed in establishing the exact choreography of this crowd scene, suggest- ing that rather than a mere context or prelude to the main action, this walking back and forth, dancing, and singing of a multifarious crowd on an Easter Sunday afternoon is the main action. In fact an endnote explicitly advises the stage director that the crowd’s movements have to be coordinated with particular care, so to give the audience a well- 71 designed and precise picture.

64 65 66 VS-Mef, 58/2/3–58/4/1. DS-Mef, 14–15. VS-Mef, 59/4/2; DS-Mef, 15. 67 VS-Mef, 60/3/3–61/4/2; DS-Mef, 16. 68 “Guarda / Quanti focosi destrieri scalpitan [là]!” etc. (“Look! How many ﬁery horses paw the ground over there”); VS-Mef, 61–2. 69 70 71 VS-Mef, 67. VS-Mef, 68; DS-Mef, 18. DS-Mef, 17. 36 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

The function of this and the ensuing segments involving the crowd resides precisely in their pictorial scenic effect, the seeming lack of dramatic content largely compensated by their prominent spectacular value. Every detail in the theatrical apparatus, music, and words collaborates in creating a grandiose “moving tableau.” Stage movement, in fact, is here not only a constructive principle, but also the primary object of the spectacle. Similarly to the moving images produced for instance by mid-century dioramas, the stylized movements of choristers and supernumeraries set in motion and animate the static scenery. By cueing the carousel motion of the crowd through the frequent use of stage sounds, the music locates this spectacle in time, adding to the tableau a sense of open-ended circularity. Each of the four-measure units in the Marziale, for instance, has the same metric and rhythmic pattern, generated not so much by a melodic idea as by the juxtaposition of binary and ternary meter and of cadential chords played by the full orchestra. The reiteration of these well-defined units determines the form of the Marziale, not, as might be expected in mid-century Italian opera, the unfolding of a 72 theme or motive. The same process of sequencing also organizes this episode on a larger scale, so that the whole passage examined above results from the paratactic succession of the various sections, each singled out by its own musical identity. If the small unit sets the music in motion and constitutes larger musical form, it does so without accessing the syntactical cohesiveness of developmental or variation procedures, either thematic or tonal. Form derives from the simple presentation and reiteration of different musical material organized sequentially, and, most important, it is the product of the distinctiveness of the musical material itself. Indeed, every musical section is clear-cut to the point of becoming a musical gesture, and as such it correlates to a specific gesture visualized on stage. The correspondence of visual and musical “gesture” is evident especially in the frequent integration in the score of sounds of bells, trumpets, drums, and the like. These sounds work both as points of articulation of the music and as “indexes” of instruments visible on stage and/or of the situation where they typically appear. For example, the sound of bells in the opening scene punctuates and defines the various musical units, occurring before and after the Marziale, insistently during the passing of the riding parade, and frantically in the final stretta. The staging manual employs the recurrence of this sound both as a signal for stage movement and as a connotative element, to establish the festive atmosphere of Easter Sunday. Thus the sound of bells has both musical and visual status, and it engenders a spectacle founded as much on visual as on sound effects. Similar observations could be made regarding the sound of trumpets echoing each other

72 Nicolaisen, not finding any recognizable musical telos, proffers veiled but unwavering objections to this peculiarity of Mefistofele’s musical language, which he defines as “rhythmic deficiency”: “the music fails to drive forward, as it nearly always does in Verdi, for example. Boito’s music seems deliberately, and often symmetrically, laid out, as if it were meant to be viewed by the eye at a single glance rather than perceived by the ear over a period of time.” Nicolaisen, Italian Opera in Transition, 137. Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 37 from the opposite sides of the stage. It obviously corresponds to the arrivals of the herald and of the juggler, but also represents an occasion for moving the crowd around on stage, for local color, and for the spectacularization of stage sound. The insistence throughout the opera on sound effects such as these is consistent with the patent attempt to create a spectacle of moving tableaux where sound and space, musical and visual media, interact closely to the point of losing any semiotic and aesthetic autonomy. The verbal text is often also deprived of its independence as a signifying system, and even appears at times to fold back over the musical-theatrical spectacle. In such instances, as Guccini has suggested, the libretto takes as its object the spectacle itself.

Boito ...tends to make the spectacular and performative element the one prevailing over any other referential level, and as a consequence, it ends up constituting the object of the literary text. It is not about implicit stage directions, like the ones that are interspersed in opera librettos ...Boito’s operation is more radical. Here the text, more than having a function similar to the stage directions, feeds from its own source, that is from the 73 spectacular event. But words that are uttered or, even more, sung on a stage cannot be considered only in their referential capabilities, or, to put it differently, there is more to their spectacular and performative potential. Every libretto by Boito has some famously special moment, perhaps what Jago would call a “ditirambo spavaldo e strambo,” when prosody and meter appear to overcome if not even cancel out reference, bringing to the fore the 74 almost tactile consistency of words’ sound and rhythm. In the case of Mefistofele,in particular, there are repeated instances when words seem to be selected and organized into verses for their sound more than for any other reason. For instance, the chorus’s utterances in the Easter Sunday scene opening Act 1 consist of nothing more than descriptions either of their own gestures or of the situation and scenery in which they appear. In the first dialogue, the two groups of male choristers upstage start by asking each other where they are directed, pointing to some destination downstage:

73 Guccini, “I due Mefistofele di Boito,” 192. 74 See for instance the duet between Faust and Margherita in Act 3 (“Lontano, lontano, lontano”) and the one between Faust and Elena in Act 4. In some instances prosody reaches onomatopoeia, as in the Cherubs’ chorus in the Prologue. Unforgettable if in a very different way is also the Sailors’ chorus in Act 2 of La Gioconda, “Siam qui sui culmini / Siam sulla borda, / Siam sulle tremule scale di corda. / Guardate gli agili mozzi saltar / Noi gli scoiattoli siamo del mar” [“We are here on the top, We are here on the gunwhale, We climb on wobbly ladders of rope. Look at the nimble seamen jumping. We are the squirrels of the sea”]. Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol makes an excellent point regarding this and other similar passages throughout Boito’s poetry: the “hyperexpressivity” of language seems to signal the emergence of a “double layer” of signification, often inhabited by ironic self-reflection. Guarnieri Corazzol, Musica e letteratura, 102–3. 38 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

– Perché di là? – Volgiamo verso il casin di caccia. 75 – E noi verso il mulino.

[Why do you go that way? We are going to the hunting lodge. And we towards the mill.] Then young women passing by with olive branches sing:

Seguiam d’April la traccia. Brillan sul suo cammino 76 Baldezza e leggiadria.

[We follow the path of April. On which boldness and beauty sparkle.] Soon afterwards, a second group of men gather around the beer stand, drinking and toasting:

– Qua un bicchiere! – Vogliam bere! – E fare un brindisi ... – Ai folli amor! – E alla beltà corriva! – Evviva! Evviva. E rallegrar così 77 L’ozio di questo dì.

[Give me a glass! / We want to drink! / And toast to our mad loves! And to indulgent beauty! / Hurrah! / Hurrah. And thus cheer up the idleness of this day.] And then the whole chorus similarly describes the riding parade, before and during its passage. To these examples we could also add the ensuing dialogues between Faust and Wagner, where they converse about the landscape in spring (i.e., the scenery), the crowd walking by (the visible stage business), the sunset (again the scenery), and then the grey friar appearing in the distance. The verbal utterances, rather than constructing a dialogue, an interaction that conveys dramatic content in the service of advancing the plot, here restate and translate, redundantly, what has already been seen and heard. That a poetic text written by a celebrated man of letters and eminent librettist could so clearly renounce its autonomy of meaning and dramatic investment constitutes the most patent indication that a diﬀerent kind of dramaturgy is at stake here. The passage is

75 L-Mef, 11. 76 The text is slightly different in the piano-vocal score: “Del vago April la traccia / Brilla e ride d’intorno / Baldezza e leggiadria.” VS-Mef, 56. 77 The two last lines are different in VS-Mef: “ Beviam, ridiamo, cantiamo.” VS-Mef, 60. Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 39 not Boito’s invention: it originates, verbatim at first, in the corresponding scene in Goethe’s Faust, Part i (“Outside the Town Wall,” vv. 808–902). But in Goethe it soon develops beyond mere phatic exchange and into dialogue that fleshes out the characters, as it were, as individual students, citizens, and so forth. In Boito instead, the crowd only describe stage business and scenery and thus refer back to the visual spectacle of which they are part, foregrounding it, and presenting themselves as elements of that spectacle. Also, the sound or even the musical compo- nent of the verbal text, its prosodic content, serves to articulate and define the musical segments of the chorus, giving it a voice. If the text therefore is relegated to the subordinate function of underlining and emphasizing something that has always already been shown, the performative force of the verbal utterance frames the spectacle as the object of the gaze and attention of the spectator. In other words, the act of restating by verbal means what is already visible and audible has the force of orienting and positioning the audience, so that the spectacle addresses the spectator directly; it presents itself as something to be looked at. The tendency to renounce the literary in favor of gestural and phatic discourse recalls what has often been characterized as the paradigmatic shift undertaken by twentieth- century theatrical avant-gardes. Erika Fischer-Lichte, for example, articulates this shift precisely in terms of privileging the performative function over the referential one, 78 brought about by a concern regarding theatre’s broader cultural relevance. Boito’s Mefistofele might be seen as a more nuanced, intermediate case, where the ritualized cultural event of opera encounters the literary legacy of a German masterpiece, but also where conventional operatic dramaturgy is opened up to the modes of the epic. The core repertoire of mid-nineteenth-century Italian opera, roughly put, almost uniformly espouses the dramaturgy of bourgeois theatre, what Peter Szondi in his influential Theory of Modern Drama theorized as “classical drama.” If classical drama is a closed system of signification founded on dialogue – that is, on the verbal interaction of characters enclosed in the world represented on stage – Mefistofele aims at a different 79 kind of theatre. By renouncing dialogue and using instead the verbal text as an act of self-presentation, the opera is no longer a closed system, but opens out towards the auditorium. The interaction on stage is replaced with another interaction, between stage and audience, where the world on stage asks the audience to watch and listen to it. In addition, once the world on stage is no longer a closed and autonomous system of

78 “The goal of the performance was to convey the sense and meaning of the literary text; the task of the audience was to understand it. The transformation of the theatre into a ritual, a festival, and other genres of cultural performances, shifted the dominance from the referential to the performative function”; Erika Fischer-Lichte, “The Avant-Garde and the Semiotics of the Antitextual Gesture,” in Contours of the Theatrical Avant-Garde: Performance and Textuality, James M. Harding, ed. (Ann Arbor, 2000), 82. 79 Peter Szondi, Theory of the Modern Drama, Michael Hays, trans. and ed. (Minneapolis, 1987). 40 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

relations, it does not (cannot) ask the spectator to enter the world of the characters empathetically. In fact, what often seems to be categorically excluded in Mefistofele, even in the most unremittingly pathetic episodes, is precisely the audience’s emotional involvement or any kind of sustained affective investment in the characters’ stories. The dramatic content of the series of moving tableaux resides instead in their very theatricality, which interpellates the spectators for the pleasure of watching from afar. Reiteration and redundancy, quite prominent in both the score and the libretto, become in this context devices that allow theatrical events, as sonic and visual matte, to solidify into spectacular objects. The accumulation and multifariousness of these spectacular objects offer the experiential saturation of an operatic “modern epic.”

ACTING OUT

The tendency in Mefistofele to exceed melodrama is well illustrated in the Prison Scene (Act 3). This episode is apparently the most emotionally charged of all, devised as a long pathetic solo scene for Margherita, with occasional interventions from Faust and Mefistofele. Typically, it is made up of a sequence of closed segments: first the opening orchestral prelude accompanies a pantomime of Margherita, alone and driven mad by 80 sorrow in a dark prison chamber, picturesquely lit from the side. An aria with couplets follows, “L’altra notte in fondo al mare,” in which she narrates the drowning of her baby (first stanza) and the death of her mother (second stanza). The couplets offer the occasion for a depiction of madness, with the conventional long coloratura passage and emphatically pictorial gestures, emphasized by the white gown, the now-typical costume for 81 such scenes. The staging manual gives a minute description of the gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice, reproducing a sort of annotated score, so that the aria is acted line by line and note by note (Figure 2.2). Faust’s arrival, announced by the orchestral quotation of his lyrical declaration from the Garden Scene (“Colma il tuo cor d’un palpito”), is followed by a slow-motion mute pantomime of recognition, emphasized by long rests in the orchestra, and culminating in Margherita’s own recollection of a theme from their lyrical interlude in the Garden 82 Scene. The encounter triggers memories of their first meeting, its pathetic effect derived from her acting and moving about the prison under the illusion of still being in the sunny garden, strolling with Faust, while the orchestra recalls the music of the stretta. She then suddenly shifts emotional register: in a slow declamato section, in broken and half-whispered words, she confesses to Faust her terrible deeds, and half-delirious

80 L-Mef, 28–31; VS-Mef, 206–9; DS-Mef, 56. 81 Guccini, “Iconografia del saggio,” in “I due Mefistofele di Boito,” 300. 82 VS-Mef, 212. The phrase is introduced by Faust at the words “Viver teco e confondere / il mio cuor col tuo cuore” (L-Mef, 21; VS-Mef, 125), and is then repeated by Margherita and again by both during the stretta (VS-Mef, 129). Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 41

Figure 2.2 Gestural score for Margherita, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Meﬁstofele” 42 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

tells him of the tombs he will have to dig. The staging manual again focuses on verbal and gestural delivery so that each line of her monologue is matched to instructions 83 illustrating every slight change in the tone of voice and gestures of the actress/singer. Then a shorter, more dialogic section, where she resists Faust’s attempt at carrying her off, is followed by the famous a due (“Lontano, lontano, lontano”) which concludes in a musical fading out, while the two remain silent, “embraced and absorbed in a long, 84 ecstatic, and most sweet glance.” After a short trio in which Mefistofele exhorts them, in a patter-like vocal line, to a quick departure, a change of light signaling sunrise functions as visual relay that activates the final episodes: Margherita’s Andante lento “Spunta l’aurora pallida,” ending in a tour 85 de force of pathetic acting. She prays in a broken and stifled voice, interrupted (not by chance on the word “moribund”)by“sobs of agony,” but she falls down as she utters the word “forgive.” She is trying with great effort to rise to her knees and finish her prayer, when “celestial harmonies” manifest themselves. At the orchestra’s reprise of the music 86 of the “Celestial Throngs” from the Prologue, Margherita

rises slowly, as if she were seeing the light of paradise: then, vacillating and taking two or three steps away from Faust, she says to him, almost speaking, Enrico ...mi fai ribrezzo! and 87 falls dead on the bed of straw. The act ends with the “Celestial Throngs” proclaiming Margherita saved, after which Mefistofele shouts “A me, Faust,” and they disappear through a trapdoor, wrapped in the magic cape. The unrelenting pathetic crescendo of Margherita’s death scene might suggest that the opera does, at least momentarily, yield to the drama of unmediated emotion. And yet, the sheer accretion and repetition of gestural tropes renders this scene comparable to the rest of the opera, resolving even Margherita’s story in a final intensification and condensation of effects. The acting skills of the soprano are prominently on display here, so that Act 3 is more than anything about a prima donna’s virtuosity. Mad scene, mute pantomime, love duet, and death scene are put one next to the other as a collection of bravura pieces for the soprano. Most importantly, the story of Margherita, the dramatic content of the act, is not only fully externalized and visualized through the actress’s gestures, but in the end seems to recede before the impressive theatrical and musical apparatus. It is as if the very devices of expression take over the interiority they are supposed to express.

83 DS-Mef, 59. 84 DS-Mef, 60: “abbracciati ed assorti in un lungo, estatico e soavissimo sguardo”; VS-Mef, 220. 85 86 DS-Mef, 63; VS-Mef, 227–9. VS-Mef, 6; 46. 87 DS-Mef, 63: “si alza a poco a poco come se vedesse un raggio di paradiso: poi vacillante e facendo due o tre passi indietro si stacca da Faust e gli dice quasi parlato: Enrico ...mi fai ribrezzo! e cade morta sul giaciglio.” Arrigo Boito’s Meﬁstofele 43

Acting is constituted here as an overdetermined, minutely controlled regime of expression. Each one of the segments corresponds to an entry from the soprano repertoire, familiar to any singer/actress of the time trained in Italian or French opera. And yet the staging manual, rather than consigning the details of the performance to the singer’s professional skills and sensibility, as other Ricordi manuals do in many comparable instances, here leaves as little choice as possible to the performer. Themanualevengoestosomelengthstointroduce new and more accurate notational systems: a gestural score of sorts and hypertrophic didascalias, which analyze the expressive range and variations to the minutest detail. The result is a tight weaving together of the singer’s voice and body into a texture of sounds and gestures connected by mutual reference, imitation, illustration, amplification. But this hypertrophic semanticization of emotion ends up giving material status to acting itself, thus undermining that invisibility of devices that allows for the effect of unmediated 88 emotion, sincere pathos, and so forth. The manual aims at the complete reproduci- bility of pathetic effect, and does so by making of each passage what could be called, in 89 Benjamin’sterms,a“quotable gesture.” The audience is once more presented with a wonderful theatrical object: this time a soprano acting out a divertissement on the pathetic. Any empathy with the misfortunes of the innocent heroine would probably be dispelled once the curtain rises on the next act, revealing the same singer/actress now in the costume of Helen of Troy. As if by magic, Act 4 (“The Classical Sabbath”) revives Margherita through its theatrical machinery and transforms her into her polar opposite in typically Boitian “dualistic” fashion. The tormented heroine of “The Real” comesbackasthegoddessof“The Ideal,” thebeautifulandcomposedElena,who sings in Greek meters.

FLEETING MOMENTS

In its entirety, Faust’s journey presents to the audience a journey through different theatrical ambiences, a slide show through “the world and its mirages.” The dramatic events are constituted as a foreground that lacks any background, either psychological or temporal. Everything is “out there,” emphatically and redundantly presented to the spectators as the object of their gaze, demanding no interpretive effort, no emotional involvement or identification, but only to be watched. But what does this slide show amount to at the end?

88 Guarnieri Corazzol terms a similar aspect of Boito’s libretti “hyperexpressivity,” which often borders on ironic self-reﬂexivity. Guarnieri Corazzol, Musica e letteratura, 103. 89 Walter Benjamin, “What is Epic Theater?” in Illuminations, Harry Zohn, trans., Hannah Arendt, ed. (New York, 1968), 151. 44 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Roland Barthes observes how Brecht’s theatre and Eisenstein’s cinema, which programmatically unfold through separate tableaux, do not acquire meaning from the sum of the individual tableaux:

Brecht indicated clearly that in epic theatre (which proceeds by successive tableaux) all the burden of meaning and pleasure bears on each scene, not on the whole. At the level of the play itself, there is no development, no maturation; there is indeed an ideal meaning (given straight in every tableau), but there is no final meaning, nothing but a series of segmentations each of which possesses a sufficient demonstrative power. The same is true in Eisenstein: the film is a contiguity of episodes, each one absolutely meaningful, aesthetically perfect, and the result is a cinema by vocation anthological, itself holding out to the fetishist, with dotted lines, the piece for him to cut out and take away to 90 enjoy. Boito’s opera is also a succession of tableaux, a “contiguity of episodes,” without “maturation” or “development,” but the “demonstrative power” of each episode seems to consist of nothing other than the sheer theatricality it displays, the effects it employs, the theatrical material of which it is made. Each episode, however spectacular and enjoyable, is a gratuitous and replaceable divertissement, and, at the end, each one turns out to be an exemplum in negative relation with the conclusion of Faust’s journey. When Mefistofele urges Faust in the “Epilogo” to come to a decision by presenting to him a musical-visual summary of his fantastic 91 journey, Faust, still hesitant after all the fuss, ends up choosing something else. Faust’s decision could hardly be more destructive: each episode is retrospectively interpreted as a disappointing experience, as a “fleeting moment” not worth losing one’s soul for, pleasing in its own right, but disavowed in the end. The journey is nearly pointless – closing as it does in Faust’s study where it started, as if nothing had happened – and the episodes are regarded as nothing but “miraggi,” dream visions projected on an immut- able present upon which they leave no trace. Such “irrelevance” of Mefistofele’s episodes, their lack of any content other than the theatrical matter of which they are made, brings us back to the (proto)modernity of Frenhofer’s unrecognized masterpiece. Agamben, commenting on how modernity confronts the mutated status of the artwork by questioning the relation between language and meaning, form and content, observes that

90 Roland Barthes, “Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein,” in Image-Music-Text, Stephen Heath, trans. and ed. (London, 1977), 72. 91 “Ogni mortale / Mister conobbi, il Real, l’Ideale, / [...]Sì...Ma il Real fu dolore / E l’Ideal fu sogno.” [“I have known every mortal secret, the Real, the Ideal, [...] Yes ...but the Real was sorrow and the Ideal was but a dream”] L-Mef, 39. Arrigo Boito’s Meﬁstofele 45

there are objects – for example, a block of stone, a drop of water, and generally all natural objects – in which form seems to be determined and almost canceled out by matter, and other objects – a vase, a spade, or any other man-made object – in which form seems to be what 92 determines matter. In Mefistofele it seems that both form and content are erased by matter, a matter that emphatically presents itself as a multitude of visual and musical effects, framed by a text that restates their “being there” and reaffirms their existence as objects offered to the spectators. The dream of the artist, according to Agamben,

is to create works that are in the world in the same way as the block of stone or the drop of 93 water; it is the dream of a product that exists according to the statute of the thing. This is the same dream of Frenhofer (and Pygmalion): to produce the living materialization of the creative process, an artwork seen as a “promise of happiness.” Mefistofele contains both the creator’s desire, his search for “a product that exists according to the statute of the thing,” and the spectator’s, who performs his aesthetic judgment. Mefistofele, the creator, relentlessly produces mirages, and thus materializes Faust’s fantasies as an exploration of possible aesthesis. In contrast to Frenhofer and Pygmalion, however, he is endowed with irony. Irony is not merely a sign of the demonic, but also and foremost a device that sets the artist apart from the product of his labor, that allows him to shift his “interest” from the sphere of subjective interiority, self-expression and so forth, to that of effectiveness, or in other words, that transforms Stendhal’s bonheur into Austin’s “felicitousness.” Faust, the hero-spectator, is asked to choose among the number of “spectacles” that have been offered to him as “things.” His choice, invested with moral significance, is expressed, however, in terms of aesthetic judgment: “holy fleeting moment, stop, you are beautiful.” Like the two painters in Frenhofer’s study, Faust rejects what has been presented before his eyes: he, too, “sees nothing.” This “primal scene” of Faust’s “seeing nothing” is staged as a climactic moment, becoming itself a segment of spectacle, a theatrical object offered to the audience. Unavoidably, Faust’s disavowal seems to prefigure the sensational rejection by the audience at La Scala in 1868, so that Mefistofele implies “the story of Mefistofele.” The opera thus stages – twice, as it were – that same split that Agamben sees at the core of the aesthetics of modernity: first on stage and then in the theatre, it represents the crucial moment when the perspective of the audience collides with the “interested” perspective of the artist. It is the double inscription of this split that makes Mefistofele such an intriguing work, a work that is able to present side by side a dazzling series of “fleeting moments” and their critical refusal, both on stage and across the proscenium arch, both in the text and in its story.

92 93 Agamben, The Man without Content, 8. Ibid., 9. 46 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

INTERESTS

The final lines of Boito’s “Prologue in the Theatre,” printed in the first version of the libretto for the 1868 performance, sound at first cannily preemptive. “The Author” addresses directly “The Spectator” with a request:

I do not ask you for indulgence, but attention. See, soon the curtain will rise; therefore go and sit yourself comfortably in your chair; do not chat with your neighbor ...; as for the beautiful ladies, you can look at them during the intermissions. For tonight restrain as much as you can the rush to express a judgment, refrain from any manifestation of praise or blame. Think that, either if you applaud a work unworthy of praise, or if you boo a work undeserving of blame, it is Art that would end up being offended. Let’s put, each of us, the interest of Art 94 above any individual vanity. The plea to “The Spectator” to suspend judgment is perhaps a preventive measure against a foreseen disaster, or even an ironic sneer at the programmed response of the audience. Boito’s concern with “the public,” however, appears to exceed the ironic concern of his fictional “Author.” Most of the essays and reviews he published between 1862 and 95 1874 include extended reflections on audience composition, reactions, and customs. One of the most significant statements occurs in the article for La gazzetta musicale (March 1872) in preparation for the performance of Der Freischütz at La Scala, titled “Freischütz in front of the audience of La Scala,” that makes reference to Wagner’s 96 famous essays on Freischütz of thirty years earlier. The short piece swiftly traverses Wagnerian anxieties about German art and cultural translations, by way of a long quotation of the description of the Wolf’s Glen Scene by “the Nostradamus of modern music,” which is then eruditely connected first to a similar passage from Victor Hugo’s 97 Le Rhin, and then, unsurprisingly, to Goethe’s Faust. At the end of the essay, Boito again addresses the public with a request, and a rather more forceful one, perhaps because he is involved as the translator of Kind’s libretto, but also in view of his own misadventures of 1868:

94 “Non vi chiedo indulgenza, ma bensì attenzione. Vedete, presto s’alzerà la tela; dunque andate ed adagiatevi comodamente nella vostra sedia a bracciuoli; non chiacchierate col vostro vicino ...;le belle signore guardatele soltanto fra un atto e l’altro. Frenate più che potete, per questa sera, la fretta del giudicare, astenetevi da ogni manifestazione di lode o di biasimo. Pensate che, tanto se applaudiste un lavoro indegno di applausi come se fischiaste un lavoro immeritevole di fischi, l’Arte ne resterebbe offesa. Poniamo, ciascuno di noi, al di sopra d’ogni vanità particolare, l’interesse dell’Arte.” The “Prologue in the Theatre” was omitted in the revised versions together with most of the paratextual material. The 1868 libretto is published in Boito, Tutti gli scritti, 95–179, here 102. 95 Published in Boito, Tutti gli scritti, 1069–223. 96 See above, Chapter 1; in Wagner, Pilgrimage to Beethoven, 167–204. 97 Boito cites Hugo’s description of a forest during a demonic nocturnal hunt. Victor Hugo, “La Légende du beau Pécopin,” in Le Rhin: lettres à un ami, vol. ii (Paris, 1876), 111. Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele 47

As for the good or bad reception of the audience, it will be a question if they are willing or capable of entering, yes or no, that blessed world inhabited by the author. If they will enter it, then they will like it, if they won’t enter it, they will not like it. The public of La Scala should be reminded often of this rhymed aphorism, worthy of Harlequin, and especially those in the boxes, whenever they yield to laughter and chatter. It would be truly shameful if that great voice teacher that is the public of La Scala were to be a ﬁasco (themselves, this time) in front of the august ﬁgure of Weber. Here is one of the cases when the author judges and 98 the public are judged. The rhetorical reversal and the condescending tone are indeed quite close to a Mephistophelian twist: the stake here is the pride and very identity of the Milanese bourgeoisie and their capacity to deal with broader cultural and aesthetic demands. This time Boito asks the spectators not just for attention, but to be willing and able to enter the fantasy world that the author conjures up in front of their eyes, an attitude characterized more as an activity, albeit one involving a renunciation of sorts:

It is befitting to enter the world; we like to repeat this sentence, in the way of Hamlet when he repeats “Get thee to a nunnery.”“Get childlike,” we wish to say to the public of La Scala for the first night of Freischütz. That is: “come to the theatre with an innocent heart and with a virgin intellect, desirous of ingenuous and wonderful stories. Come to the theatre with a candor of spirit proper of a child. Forget that you are the famous public of La Scala (pride clouds clear judgment) and you will take pleasure in a superior joy, in a powerful 99 artistic emotion. This demand to shed a preconstituted identity is Boito’s way of asking the spectators for “disinterest.” The absorption in the misty magic of Freischütz, as well as in the experiential saturation of Mefistofele, has nothing to do with passive abandonment to the tricks set up by the Author (via the machinery of the spectacle), and nothing as well to do with being manipulated into self-annulment. Mefistofele and its story advocate a theatre whose ambition is to interpellate the public beyond and against their conventional and institu- tional identity. Rather than confirming, containing, and enabling the ritualized constitution of a national bourgeois subject, the public is invited here to yield to the transformative powers of opera, to the pleasurable matters of theatre, and thus actively engage with the other and the elsewhere. Indeed, the novelty of Boito’s Mefistofele, of its modern aspirations and of its intensely committed cultural project, is to assign opera the task of emancipating the Italian public from the local and the traditional: in other words, to liberate the new Italians from an often too restricted Italianness.

98 99 Boito, Tutti gli scritti, 1217. Ibid. 3 Milan 1881 Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history

If politicians are historians (not only In one of the chapters of Operratics, a collec- in the sense of creating history, but in tion of informal reflections on opera, Michel the sense that by operating in the Leiris attempts a definition of “The present they interpret the past), Marvelous in Wagner and Verdi.” In his historians are also politicians and in swift and lucid prose the two dramaturgies this sense history is always “ ” 1 of the marvelous outline the contours of contemporary history, i.e., politics. two different anthropologies of theatre:

The magical side of the former – in the tradition advocated by Hoffmann for Romantic opera (see the Kreisleriana) – is reduced in Verdi to the intrusion of the supernatural in the destiny of the individual: for example, Monterone’s curse on Rigoletto (the cause of the misfortune leading Sparafucile to kill Gilda who is disguised as a man), the father’s curse in La forza del destino (the first in a series of evil spells ...), the evil prediction of the sorceress (consulted in jest) in Un ballo in maschera ..., etc. In Giovanna d’Arco, the theme of voices is combined with that of the father’s curse, Verdi’s apparent predilection for the notion of “ill-fortune,” an evil prediction or curse, a notion evoking the “jettatura” so common in Italy. The fairy world itself never appears, except in the form of a masquerade or carnival, as in the last act of Falstaff. How Mozart stands at the crossroads of these two types of marvelous: the fairy world (Die Zauberflöte, German opera), the real world visited by a fearsome, supernatural intruder (Don Giovanni, Italian opera). The Wagnerian marvelous is never presented as the breaking of the rules of the real world, for his entire work is bathed in a mythic or legendary atmosphere. Wagnerian heroes are either gods or fated individuals, never mere human beings accidentally attracting misfortune 2 to themselves. The marvelous emerges here as an element that is somehow measurable, that has a surface: all encompassing, enveloping, in Wagner; shrunk, “reduced” to an intruding ingredient, a trace subverting the everyday in Verdi. Leiris borrows from Hoffmann’s definition of opera buffa the idea that Italian opera, as opposed to German opera, was the genre that perfected “the intrusion of eccentricity on ordinary life,” almost as if the 3 formula could function as a recipe for centuries of operatic production.

1 Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Derek Boothman, trans. and ed. (Minneapolis, 1995), 383. 2 Michel Leiris, “The Marvelous in Wagner and Verdi”, Operratics (Los Angeles, 2001), 44–5. 3 Leiris (Operratics, 46) refers to Hoffmann’s Kreisleriana: “This incursion of eccentricity into everyday life ...contains ...the essence of true opera buffa”;inE. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, David Charlton, ed. (Cambridge, 1989), 202.

48 Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 49

And yet these observations appear particularly compelling for the way they detect an anthropological, non-metaphysical aspect of the supernatural. Like a thread running through several of Verdi’s operas, the supernatural appears most cogently in Simon Boccanegra, a famously tangled work, marked since its first performance in Venice in 1857 by a cautious if not even bewildered critical reception. That of the Genoese pirate turned doge is surely not a story enveloped in mythic mists: it is not about the heroic struggle with the preordained, eternal design of fate. Rather, Boccanegra’s life-story – for such is the temporal range of the opera – is impinged upon, again and again, by external forces. As Leiris notes, these supernatural forces in Verdi are seldom if ever shown. In Simon Boccanegra these forces are theatricalized as ghosts, imaginary more than real, that barely rise to the visible surface of the spectacle, to the appearances of the staged world. Their presence instead is felt through and by the characters as interferences that shape their sense of reality, and, in my view, that shape their story as eminently historical. Specters from the past, imagined and conjured up, stake opaque but inexorable claims on the characters’ present and future. It is in this most basic sense that the opera inhabits a temporality where the present is interrupted, interfered with by the past, and thus it is a present that is always connected with or even beholden to history. That of Simon Boccanegra is a haunted stage, which establishes through its theatrical devices a perception of history that can be defined as spectral. This chapter will delve into Boccanegra’s spectral historicity. An introductory section describes how right at the outset Paolo’s racconto constructs a look that sees ghosts. In the central sections this trope of spectrality is expanded to the concerns of the burgeoning culture industry in post-unification Italy. While the operas performed during the 1881 season at La Scala were unstinting in supernatural apparitions, exactly at that time Milan was celebrating with great pomp and magnificence its own claims to modernity and industrial power with the National Exhibition of Industry and Arts, ritualized in the gran ballo Excelsior. The final sections return to the revised Boccanegra and its staging manual for the way they constitute a context for the negotiations between modernity and the stakes of the past, between the light of progress and the ever present shadows of bygone times.

“ DO YOU SEE THAT SHADOWY PALACE?”

This interference of the supernatural in the everyday manifests itself with unparalleled eloquence as early as the ﬁrst number of the opera. At night on a square in Genoa, Paolo, leader of the plebeian party, is conspiring to have the pirate Boccanegra elected doge and gathers a group of commoners with the intent to persuade them to vote for Simone. But the crowd does not yield easily: they are not convinced that the patrician Fieschi could ever accept such a man as doge. After a rapid recitative dialogue Paolo rebuﬀs their anxieties with a narrative (racconto), punctuated by the crowd’s reactions. 50 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

The placement and function of this racconto is already notable, and for several reasons. On the one hand a narrative is not uncommon as, introductory number; for 4 example, Ferrando’s racconto at the beginning of Il trovatore. This kind of opening narrative offers many advantages at once: it furthers the delivery of dramatic content by creating the occasion for a swift and efficient summary of past events; it sets up a specific temporality, whereby the present emerges as a continuation and consequence of the past; most important, moreover, it presents a scene of listening right at the outset, thus framing the audience’s attention by way of the stage spectators and establishing a mode of address and an aesthetic contract between stage and auditorium for the rest of the opera. On the other hand, in this as well as in most of the other numerous narratives that punctuate Simon Boccanegra, this strategy of recounting past events seems to have little to do with dramatic economy. If viewed according to a logic of clarity of content and continuity of stage action, most of the narratives in the opera, including Paolo’s, appear quite superfluous to the plot and even devoid of any specific dramaturgical function. Their frequency is indeed another of those striking features of this opera that tempt us into a comparison with Wagnerian dramaturgy – a comparison already suggested by Leiris. Here I want to focus on how the racconto opening Simon Boccanegra is less about the story Paolo tells the crowd than about the mode of address it initiates. Paolo neither refutes nor even responds to the people’s doubts. And yet by means of his story and especially of the images evoked by his words, he manages to bring them to submission: the commoners agree and promise to vote for Boccanegra. Another advantage offered by an opening narrative number might be its appeal to the ability of words and music to conjure up images in the spectators’ minds, images that play with or against what is shown on the stage. Opera has consistently exploited this friction between the telling and the showing, as testified by the many instances of narratives throughout the genre’shistory– from the Messenger’snarrativeof Eurydice’sdeathinAct2 of Monteverdi’s Orfeo to,say,Isolde’s recounting to 5 Brangäne of her fateful encounter with Tristan. This kind of verbal conjuring is, however, hardly specific to opera: it had already been crystallized into a rhetorical technique in classical treatises instructing in the uses of hypotyposis, the figures of descriptionthroughwhichanoratorevokes vivid images that kindle the imagination 6 of the listeners.

4 Incidentally also derived from a drama by Gutiérrez; on the similarities between the two racconti see Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi (Oxford, 1992), vol. ii, 278. 5 Act 2 in Monteverdi’s Orfeo and Act 1, scene iii, in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. 6 Hypotyposis or enargia is deﬁned as a “vivid, picturesque description,” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (Springﬁeld, 1981). In rhetorical terms, it is about “emphasizing an object or an event narrated to the point of theatricalizing it in the listener’smind”; Alessandro Serpieri, “Otello”:l’eros negato. Psicoanalisi di una proiezione distruttiva (Milan, 1980), 55 n. 12. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 51

As attested by the way it shapes utterances of characters such as Shakespeare’s (and 7 then Boito-Verdi’s) Iago, hypotyposis is an eﬃcient tool for verbal manipulation. It is therefore unsurprising that Paolo, the character of the consummate politician versed in machinations, convinces his audience by means of conventional rhetorical devices. However, Paolo’s brand of operatic hypotyposis presents two distinct features: ﬁrst of all, the images evoked stem from what is concretely visible and presented on stage, the Fieschi palace. This results in the superimposition of two levels of the visible, which 8 might be termed mimetic and diegetic. Secondly, the racconto integrates into the orator’s speech the reactions of the audience, resulting in a process that unfolds through a double channel: Paolo’s persuading and the people’s escalating response. The description of the stage action in the Ricordi staging manual illustrates these two aspects:

Paolo gathers the people around and, pointing towards the Fieschi palace, says mysteriously: Do you see that shadowy palace? The chorus will be placed obliquely, looking at the palace: Paolo will go from one group to another, in order to excite the imagination of the crowd of commoners with his narrative. The people will answer with gestures of approval, indicating to one another the palace. 9 Everybody’s interest gradually grows, as does the terror awakened by Paolo’s words. The scene described here centers on the prop representing the façade of the palace: Paolo starts by pointing to it while he asks “do you see it?” and the chorus stands in front 10 of the palace and gestures towards it. The addition of a diegetic level of the visible (verbal description) to this mimetic one (the set) therefore results in the creation of an alternative way of seeing that palace. Paolo uses hypotyposis not to create abstract images in the mind of his listeners, but to transﬁgure the familiar façade in the eyes of his audience. Furthermore, the staging manual insists that the choristers show their increasing involvement: rather than being passive listeners they should answer with gestures

7 The classic example is his recounting of Cassio’s dream. 8 See in particular Michael Issacharoff, Discourse as Performance (Stanford, 1989), 55. In his semiotic analysis of theatre performance Issacharoff is concerned with how space and place are constructed via the manipulation of hearing and seeing. He distinguishes between “what is made visible on stage, the mimetic, and what is only described and not visible, the diegetic.” A recent brilliant discussion of the complex relation between diegesis and mimesis in modernist theatre, pertinent to the present concerns, is in Martin Puchner, Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality and Drama (Baltimore, 2002), esp. 22–8. 9 Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Simon Boccanegra” di Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1883) – henceforth DS-SB – 6. The manual was therefore first published two years after the La Scala premiere of the opera’s second revised version. More recently it was reprinted in a volume of the apposite Ricordi series: Simon Boccanegra di Giuseppe Verdi, Marcello Conati and Natalia Grilli, eds. (Milan, 1993). 10 In her critical essay included in the Ricordi reprint cited above, Natalia Grilli notes that for the 1881 performance of Simon Boccanegra the set designer Magnani put more emphasis on the palace’sfaçade. N. Grilli, “Le immagini per il Simon Boccanegra,” in “Simon Boccanegra” di Giuseppe Verdi, 189–207,here197. 52 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

of approval, growing interest, and fear, thus sharing the stage with Paolo as active participants. The efficacy of Paolo’s rhetoric is theatricalized by showing its effect: the people’s emotional reaction. In turn, it is only by showing its reflection in the eyes of his audience that Paolo’s alternative way of seeing the Fieschi palace can be staged. But what does he make them see? Here is the libretto:

[1] Paolo: L’atra magion vedete? ...de’ Fieschi è l’empio ostello, Una beltà infelice geme sepolta in quello; Sono i lamenti suoi la sola voce umana Che risuonar s’ascolta nell’ampia tomba arcana. [2] Coro: Già volgono più lune, che la gentil sembianza Non allegrò i veroni della romita stanza; Passando ogni pietoso invan mirar desia La bella prigioniera, la misera Maria. [3] Paolo: Si schiudon quelle porte solo al patrizio altero Che ad arte si ravvolge nell’ombre del mistero ...(+) Ma vedi in notte cupa (*) per le deserte sale (*) Errar sinistra vampa, (♯) qual d’anima infernale. [4] Coro: Par l’antro de’ fantasimi! ...Oh qual terror! ... Paolo: Guardate, La feral vampa appare ...(si vede il riverbero d’un lume) Coro: Oh ciel! ... Paolo: V’allontanate. Si caccino i demoni col segno della croce ... All’alba. Coro: Qui. Paolo: Simone. 11 Coro: Simone ad una voce. [in the score these comments by the Chorus are added: (+) “È vero!”;(*) “Oh cielo!”;(♯) “Gran Dio!”] [[1] Paolo: Do you see that gloomy palace? It is the evil residence of the Fieschi, where a mourning unhappy beauty is buried; her laments are the only human sound that is heard resounding in the wide mysterious tomb. [2] Chorus: Already more moons have passed since her gentle semblance enlivened the balcony of that lonely room; every compassionate passer-by in vain desires to see the beautiful prisoner, the unfortunate Maria.

11 All references are to the 1881 libretto, included in facsimile in “Simon Boccanegra” di Giuseppe Verdi, 109–23 – henceforth L-SB. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 53

[3] Paolo: Those doors open only to the proud patrician, who artfully wraps himself in shadows of mystery. (+) But one can see at dead of night (*) through the deserted rooms, (*) a sinister flame wandering, (♯) like an infernal soul. [4] Chorus: It resembles a cave of ghosts! How frightening! Paolo: Look, the fatal flame appears ...(a light is seen) Chorus: Heaven! Paolo: Now you must leave. Drive the demons away with the sign of the cross ... Until dawn. Chorus: Here. Paolo: Simone. Chorus: Simone in unison.] In the first stanza, through a shrewd word choice that insists on darkness and mystery in a typical mid-century libretto language (“atra magion,”“tomba arcana”) and on related emotional traits (“empio,”“infelice,”“geme”), Paolo describes the palace as containing a mysterious presence hidden beyond that façade: the “beltà infelice” whose laments are the only sound heard. Mystery and pity are the ingredients by which his narrative is able 12 to “excite the imagination of the crowd.” In turn, they all react, acknowledging his assertion as true: as they say in the second stanza, Maria has not appeared at the balcony for months, and “Passando ogni pietoso invan mirar desia / La bella prigioniera.” The crowd, therefore, immediately empathize with the “beltà infelice,” and in so doing they put themselves in the picture created by Paolo, assuming the role of compassionate spectators, frustrated in their desire to see that very character with whom they empathize. Paolo reprises his narrative in the third stanza (lines 1–2), reinforcing the image of the “tomba arcana” with his statement that the only human being who has been seen coming out of the palace is Fiesco, who “ad arte si ravvolge nell’ombre del mistero.” The crowd closes Paolo’s statement with “È vero!,” sanctioning once more their participation in the images he evoked. Up to this point the scene revolves around an absent spectacle. The palace’s façade functions as an empty stage, and the audience/chorus, placed in front of it, is told that something they cannot see is happening behind that façade. Starting with “Ma vedi” (second half of the third stanza), Paolo at last provides the people with a visible event: first he tells them how at night a sinister light can be seen moving through the empty rooms, as if it were an infernal soul. At this the crowd reacts with alarmed exclamations, and they describe the façade as resembling “l’antro de’ fantasimi” that terrorizes them (fourth stanza, line 1). Then, in a masterly coup de théâtre, the event only described as

12 DS-SB, 6: “eccitare la fantasia dei popolani.” 54 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

happening in some other time in the past now manifests itself, unsettlingly. Paolo shows the people the “feral vampa” precisely at the moment when the light becomes visible through the palace’s windows. After that, the scene quickly reaches a conclusion: Paolo makes the frightened bystanders cross themselves to chase the demons away and, their consent to vote for Boccanegra obtained, sends them home. The staging manual describes how the power Paolo has thus gained is to be visualized:

At the sight of the light, the Chorus backs away, frightened, exclaiming: Oh ciel; then they 13 again gather around Paolo and, still whispering, they accept his proposal. This gathering around Paolo, as if in search of protection, accompanied by the apotro- paic gesture and the whispered consent, is indeed the “political” goal of Paolo’s rhetoric: the crowd has become a group of followers. To summarize: the narrative conjures up an imaginary “cave of ghosts” that is superimposed onto the palace’s façade. The apparition of the lamplight functions as the actualization of the narrative, the jolt when the time of the racconto suddenly comes to coincide with the time of the performance, when the horror of the spectral events becomes suddenly present, intruding into the staged reality. Besides affecting the scene’s temporal structure, the light’s apparition involves also a shift of vision: a familiar public space, the Fieschi palace in the square, has been transformed into a “cave of ghosts,” into a place marked emotionally by its own history, traversed by its own ghosts. The racconto then quite extraordinarily manages to suture the time-space of the narrative to the time- space of the performed present, of the staged reality. And all this thanks to the ability of words uttered on a stage to stir up the spectators’ affective investment. Indeed, this is how Verdi’s music comes in, in that its main task resides in the foregrounding of how this whole event unfolds through a double process: the persuasive story of the orator intersects with the spectators’ availability to listen and see differently. Left almost untouched during the extensive revisions for the 1881 La Scala performance, this number still corresponds to what the critic Abramo Basevi in 1859 dismissed as verging on the Wagnerian. In his Studio sulle opere di G. Verdi, Basevi defined the racconto as

Lacking any beautiful eﬀect, and almost without form. A sequence of phrases with little connection: the sung melody often unfolds over a single note, a sort of pedal that Verdi was very fond of in the whole opera. One can ﬁnd in this piece a certain variety of instrumentation, 14 attesting the care of the maestro, which however does not add much to the expression.

13 DS-SB, 6. 14 Abramo Basevi, Studio sulle opere di G. Verdi (Florence, 1859), 269. “Privo di bell’eﬀetto, e quasi informe. ...un seguito di frasi con poco nesso: il canto si svolge spesso sopra una stessa nota, specie di pedale di cui fu molto vago il Verdi in tutta quest’Opera. Si trova in questo pezzo una qualche varietà d’istrumentazione, che attesta della cura del maestro; ma che non serve gran fatto all’espressione.” Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 55

Rescuing Verdi’s music from Basevi’s qualms about formlessness, Joseph Kerman has pointed out that the piece’s overall organization is an “unorthodox” ABA form. Section A corresponds to Paolo’s stanza, section B to the chorus’s, A to Paolo’s, and so forth – the form being “unorthodox” because there is no cadential closure at the end of the A and B sections. Moreover, he shows how irregular the employment of the lyric form is, since sections A and B contain only the incomplete form a a′ b, and the final phrase c is 15 supplied only in the last section, at the chorus’s words “Par l’antro dei fantasimi.” But what to Basevi sounded “unattractive, badly developed melodies, with their periods 16 loosely connected, without any vigor”–that is, as bad as the “music of the future” – by the time of the revised version of 1881 was considered a sign of the work’s modernity and of Verdi’s youthfulness, at least according to the progressive music critic Filippo Filippi. In his review of the revised version for La perseveranza Filippi reiterates what he had already written in 1857, that the music was “ahead of its time,” and decrees that the 17 Prologue “appears to be written not yesterday but tomorrow.” For him, moreover, “Verdi has followed the path of progress which his intelligence could not resist; he has understood the music drama, applying his style and individual inspiration to it in the same manner as Wagner, but with the natural, inevitable difference between an Italian 18 and a German.” Filippi, just returning from a pilgrimage to Bayreuth, had heard far more Wagner than Basevi, and recognizes the music’s individual modernity. The flexible or “unorthodox” formal outline is precisely what allows the music to enact Paolo’s rhetoric step by step and at the same time to voice its effect on the crowd. The chorus at first is provided with its own distinctive musical idiom, its ternary folk- song simplicity juxtaposed to Paolo’s calculated recitation. More precisely, the crowd’s G-major melody is rhythmically constructed on an iambic, upbeat motion, instead of Paolo’s dactylic downbeat steeped in a chromatic E minor (see Example 3.1a and 3.1b). With the third stanza, however, the people’s voice is captured within Paolo’s melody as they react to his story on the little four-note motive of the basses that had so far 19 punctuated his music every two measures (see Example 3.2). These choral interjections, not present in the libretto, are a quintessential Verdian touch. Their addition in the score has the effect of anticipating the moment when the crowd can voice its emotional participation, so that their inclusion is manifested as a gradual process. Moreover, the added exclamations manage to “convey the shuddering uneasiness of the hearers,” as Budden writes, precisely because they operate a shift

15 Joseph Kerman, “Lyric Form and Flexibility in Simon Boccanegra,” Studi verdiani 1 (1982), 47–62, here 55–7. 16 Basevi, Studio sulle opere di G. Verdi, 279: “melodie al tutto disavvenenti, male sviluppate, slegate ne’ periodi, senza vigore alcuno, prive di corrispondenza fra loro.” 17 Filippo Filippi in La perseveranza, March 25, 1881; quoted and trans. in Verdi’s “Otello” and “Simon Boccanegra” in Letters and Documents, Hans Busch, trans. and ed., vol. ii (Oxford, 1988), 666–72. 18 19 Ibid. “E’ vero! Oh cielo! Gran Dio!” 56 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 3.1 Paolo’s racconto (lines 1–2), Simon Boccanegra, Prologue Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 57

Example 3.1 Paolo’s racconto (lines 5–6)

between the little figure of musical articulation in the orchestra, external to the events, 20 and the exclamations, the emotion internal to the story narrated. Formal articulation becomes the vehicle for emotional feedback, but a feedback incorporated in the idiom of the narrator. This point of conjunction of orator and audience works as a hinge around which the narrative folds back over itself: from now on the racconto is about the engagement, the inclusion of the crowd into Paolo’s haunted stage. It is the fourth and last stanza that marks the culmination of the process: the crowd, describing the palace as a cave of ghosts, takes off from Paolo’s last note, now fully 21 absorbed into the more chromatic musical environment typical of his style. After the musical progression halts on a deceptive cadence, the “ghostly” woodwind chords, as Budden calls them, underscore not only Paolo’s words (“Look, the fatal flame appears”), but also the apparition of the light and the frightened stupor of the spectators. At this point the music makes it clear that Paolo has gained full power over his audience, as intimated by the matching of the first strong authentic cadence on the tonic E minor with the fulfillment of the narrative’s theatrical and political goal. The remainder is just an epilogue in which the chorus almost mechanically repeats Paolo’s chromatically ascending line while crossing themselves to drive the demons away, and where finally,

20 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, vol. ii, 278. 21 “Par l’antro dei fantasimi!”; see the fortissimo passage in Example 3.2. 58 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 3.2 Paolo’s racconto (lines 11–14), Simon Boccanegra, Prologue

on the very last cadential measures, they whisper their agreement to vote for Simone. And then, the orchestra’s subtle transformation of the four-note interjection into a tense low-register rendition of what Budden calls the “death ﬁgure” marks the entrance of Fiesco mourning his daughter’s death. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 59

Example 3.2 (cont.)

Paolo’s racconto is barely three minutes long but establishes a regime of theatre that is then restated and appropriated by each character entering this haunted stage. Again and again in the course of the opera each of the protagonists speaks about specters and how they still burden the present. The racconto, in other words, initiates with terse economy the opera’s relentless preoccupation with the demands of the past. Most important, by 60 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 3.2 (cont.)

taking the very contract with the audience as its theme – in fact, the so-called “suspension of disbelief”–it has momentous consequences. At a basic semiotic level, it establishes a theatricality founded on vision, thus toying with the attribute of theatrical objects to acquire diﬀerent meanings, both visible and invisible, both given to be seen Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 61

Example 3.2 (cont.)

(mimetic) and given to be imagined (diegetic). Rhetorically, the racconto functions like a gateway, an invitation to enter the fantasy, and thus it connotes opera as a potent mediator, a machine for conjuring ghosts. Like magic lanterns and phantasmagorias, or other optical instruments that had become the staples of popular entertainment over the course of the century, Simon Boccanegra engenders a spectator that is susceptible and available to imagining shadows between the lines of reality, that envisions the mimetic as always tainted with the diegetic. This conjuring up is devised as an act of manipulation and mastering of phenomenological reality and of present time, which are now entangled with the past. Moreover, it suggests opera’s ideological propensity for “folk- lore”: a public space is transformed into a place inhabited by stories and meanings transcending the everyday. The crowd becomes a political group of people, a public, as soon as they reach a consensus which is theatricalized in aesthetic terms, and, most powerfully, in terms of shared histories, of shared specters from the past.

MILAN 1881

In preparation for the National Exposition of Industry and Art in Milan, which opened in May of 1881, several Milanese publishers issued volumes of essays about the city, the so-called “moral capital” of a nation that was barely twenty years old. 62 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Eminent scholars, intellectuals, and writers were asked to describe all aspects of Milanese life and customs, its primacy in the sciences, industry, economy, arts, and lifestyle. The publisher Giuseppe Ottino, for instance, engaged more than twenty 22 of the best writers and journalists of the time for a volume entitled Milano 1881. Among them were Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana, the two Sicilian writers who had moved to the richer and more dynamic editorial market of the north at the start of their career. The latter contributed a chronicle of a typical day in the famous Milanese Galleria, while the former dealt with the countryside surrounding the city, the monotony of its landscape as the neutral background against which the city and its febrile excitement cannot but stand out. For a report on the Milanese musical scene, Ottino recruited the prominent music critic Filippo Filippi, whose writings and reviews have remained an inﬂuential reference for the reception of late nineteenth-century Italian opera to this day. His short report entitled “Music in Milan” is cleverly attuned to the exhibition’s pragmatic celebration of the progress of Italian industry and art. In an entrepreneurial and materialist vein, the essay is organized in terms of institutions (conservatory, La Scala theatre, publishers, musical societies) and of speciﬁc groups of professionals (composers, musicians, critics, spectators), both mapped onto a precise topography of resources and venues. What matters to Filippi is what he calls the “revolution” in the city’s “musical taste” of the previous twenty years, a revolution that his essay describes rather as an evolution from a local and provincial system of production based on individual craftsmanship into a national cultural industry in charge of public taste. This evolution for Filippi is evidenced in the recent much-needed broadening of the repertoire. It is worth considering an extended passage opening the essay:

I have been living in Milan for almost twenty-two years, and I can say that I have witnessed since then not only tremendous progress, but also a true revolution in musical taste. All music just until a few years ago was, one might say, concentrated in the theatre, where Verdi triumphed and dominated, in good right, with his operas of the first and second manner ... Several years before there had been some courageous efforts to perform symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and some artistic partnership was formed, but with no result or profit, and the great mass of the public was left in the dark, satisfied and content with the daily diet of cabalettas. Theatre, ever the great educator of the masses, was also the first to awaken from the long torpor, to free itself from that too tyrannical and limited exclusivity. The difficult, massive

22 Milano 1881 (Milan, 1881). This publication is one of several others issued on the occasion of the exhibition by a ﬂourishing editorial industry including publishers such as Treves, Sonzogno, Ricordi, Vallardi and Hoepli; on this see Ilaria Barzaghi, Milano 1881: tanto lusso e tanta folla. Rappresentazione della modernità e modernizzazione popolare (Milan, 2009); Giovanna Rosa, Il mito della capitale morale: letteratura e pubblicistica a Milano fra Otto e Novecento (Milan, 1982) Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 63

operas by Meyerbeer started to establish roots but had to suffer and overcome the long and obstinate resistance of those who found them unsuited, boring, heavy ... Once exclusivity was overcome and great Art, the universal product of genius, was ushered in, defying obstinate parochialism, then our theatre too was enriched by foreign masterpieces, and the great composer thanks to whom Italy can still claim its primacy, Verdi, was the first to ascend to still unexplored heights of the Italian Muse with his last works. A pity for the two deplorable events at La Scala, similar to the cold reception of Norma and Lucrezia Borgia in older times. I am alluding to the two flops of Wagner’s Lohengrin and Boito’s Mefistofele,in which old worries, inveterate biases and personal antipathies prevailed over a fair sentiment towards art, and therefore over a fair judgment. Time, the inexorable avenger, reduced the acrimonious reception of La Scala’s public to its true worth, thanks to the success subsequently obtained by Lohengrin in other important Italian cities, and to the triumph 23 obtained by Mefistofele wherever it was performed, not just in Italy, but around the world. It is hard not to perceive the influence of Boito’s own journalism of a few years earlier, especially in the strategy of reversing the relationship between work and spectators. The audience is judged by the work for their capacity to understand it (see previous chapter). Mefistofele and Lohengrin, disastrously premiered in the Milanese theatre in 1868 and 1873 respectively, have become in Filippi’s story two stains on the glorious and progressive history of La Scala’s public. Their judgment was resoundingly disproved by those works’ subsequent successes, and their very ability to judge was questioned if not even humiliated in the face of history. In sum, the progress in the Milanese musical “industry and art” corresponds for Filippi to the public’s newly discovered appreciation of works and compositions besides Verdi’s. The present and future success of an institution such as La Scala has to do with a public that cultivate their own cosmopolitan taste, rid themselves of their provincial isolation, and shed for good an identity fed uniquely and for too long on a diet of solely Verdi. This view may be somewhat tempered by looking at another contemporary publication. The third edition of Pompeo Cambiasi’s chronology Il teatro alla Scala: 1778–1881 was also published by Ricordi on the occasion of the 1881 exhibition. Cambiasi com- plains in the Preface that the misery the theatre was currently experiencing – a misery evidenced for him by the lack of programming for the autumn and spring seasons – 24 might have been countered only by a backward look at the theatre’s glorious past. A city assessor and member of La Scala’s Administrative and Executive Committees,

23 Filippi, “La musica a Milano,” 273–310. 24 Pompeo Cambiasi, Il teatro alla Scala: 1778–1881 (Milan, 1881). Incidentally, in 1881 the theatre remained open also throughout the spring and summer, to satisfy the demand for opera of the numerous visitors to the exposition. The omission of the precise dates for the spring season performances and of their outcome suggests that this edition of Cambiasi’s chronology went to press around March of 1881. It should be noted that a good part of this Preface was reprinted from the 1872 edition – a speedy way to conﬁrm unchanged concerns. 64 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Cambiasi is concerned about fundraising, and, with typically Lombard entrepreneurial wisdom, he ends the Preface with the exhortation to the municipality and to the society of box-holders to peruse the volume and remember that the institution needs their ﬁnancial support to build on their past glories and continue in the same way in the future. For him too the excellence of La Scala consists in its commitment to new works and new trends. But novelty here is not, as in Filippi’s essay, about moving into a progressive cosmopolitan modernity. Rather, novelty appears congealed into a cultural capital per se that ensures the life of the institution in a broader cultural market. Cambiasi emphasizes how the theatre, as a major institution at the center of the city’s life, is most of all a socioeconomic asset. In other words, if a steady ﬂow of new operas and new artists is what determines public taste, this is in turn converted into economic primacy: Milan is a cultural market where opera and all its trappings function as exchange value.

In browsing this book the reader will easily recognize the glorious traditions of our theatre, which for a long time has been the forerunner and model of all the transformations and progress in opera and in choreography. In fact in the list of performances we can find a great number of new productions, and among them several masterpieces, and the names of all the most renowned composers, singers, and dancers who arrived in Milan and passed the test of La Scala, and were baptized as artists and validated in their talents. Because of all this, Milan surely gained both morally and materially. From the splendor of its theatre Milan acquired that sophistication of taste and that exquisite artistic sense that have made the judgments of the Milanese public so highly regarded and that have made this city one of the 25 foremost centers in the world of impresarios, artists, composers, and music editors. The audience in Cambiasi’s words maintains its official well-polished identity as an enlightened bourgeoisie with exquisite taste, which, as we have seen, had been so harshly contested by Boito and Filippi, among others. In other words, Cambiasi addresses his readers and audience members as patrons and consumers, reassuring them of their cultural preeminence as long as they contribute financially to the institution’s continuous existence. While Filippi is concerned with educating the public’s taste, exhorting the readers to appreciate and understand new and unfamiliar works, Cambiasi reassures them that their cultural high status is safe as long as they continue to patronize the theatre. These essays by two figures who, despite their differences, probably spent their lives working side by side as active and influential operators in Milan’s bourgeois art world is reminiscent of a more recent narrative. The media theorist Fausto Colombo has portrayed the emerging culture industry of post-unification Italy as divided into two strategies of communication – one pedagogical, and the other aimed at mass

25 Ibid., iv. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 65

26 entertainment. The former was intent on renegotiating the role of social forces in the new nation: culture is produced by an elite with the intent of educating the masses and of creating a socially reconciled public. The latter was more simply addressed to a group 27 of consumers and was intent on satisfying their demand for entertainment. What is more interesting here than the division is the intense cohabitation of these two strategies especially at this juncture in the history of Italian opera. Filippi’s and Cambiasi’s essays suggest that La Scala of 1881 provided a stage for the nascent Italian culture industry, a stage shared by both strategies. A further look at the programming of that year suggests that this sharing was far more literal, and furthermore that La Scala assumed a complex function as an institution that mediated between authors and audience in the production of culture. Curiously, whereas recent studies of Italian opera at the end of the nineteenth century tend to read cultural politics mostly in terms of a Risorgimento nationalist agenda, research devoted to the sociocultural currents of post-unification Italy tend to misapprehend opera. For instance, Colombo’s sophisticated account of the last three centuries of cultural production and consumption looks at opera stereotypically as a proto-entertainment of sorts. Under the influence of Gramsci’s notorious diffidence towards “melodramma,” the latter is reduced to a reservoir of ready-made and well-tested populist topoi to be accessed by what for him were the leading sectors of the culture industry – that is, 28 publishing and later cinema. La Scala, however, one of the richest and most influential cultural institutions in Milan and then in Italy, not only participated in the effort to re- conceive the production of culture for the new nation, but acted as a model and catalyst, since it could already vaunt both an audience and a system of production, marketing and dissemination. This chapter is concerned with La Scala’s cultural policy at this juncture in the attempt to understand what products the theatre would offer to its illustrious pubblico. Verdi’s revised Simon Boccanegra constitutes a single entry in that year’s unusually rich programming, but a special one. Because of its status, Verdi’s Boccanegra reunited the old and the new, legacy and innovation: it had been composed a quarter of a century earlier by a composer who had since become the cultural hero and patriarch of the new nation, and who was now emerging from a period of silence in order to revise and

26 Colombo, La cultura sottile. 27 Colombo maps the birth of the Italian culture industry onto further dualities. Pedagogical strategies are articulated on the one hand according to the logic of an elite cultural production aimed at cultivating and emancipating a mass audience and, on the other hand, according to the logic of propaganda and ideological manipulation. Entertainment similarly converges around two strategies: a local, artisanal production of culture, which emphasizes the quality of the product as a sign of an empathetic relation between production and consumers, is opposed to a consumer-based, industrial and serial production. 28 Colombo, La cultura sottile, 19, 80 and throughout. 66 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

rewrite it. In addition, the old Verdi reappears on the scene led by the former apostle of the Milanese “disheveled” avant-garde, the now reformed Boito. In other words, this Simon Boccanegra of 1881, the “ghosting” of an older work onto which several novel elements were grafted, functions as the place of encounter of heritage and aspirations: a context itself for understanding the modernizing effort in the “moral capital” of Italy. Before returning to Boccanegra let us consider further what was staged during this special year. The list provided by Cambiasi’s chronology reveals that the carnival season started as usual the day after Christmas of 1880 with Il figliol prodigo, the premiere of a score by Amilcare Ponchielli to Angelo Zanardini’s libretto, which in turn was the adaptation of a Scribe libretto for Auber of thirty years earlier. In January came another revival, this time of Filippo Marchetti’s Ruy Blas of a decade earlier, the libretto adapted from Victor Hugo’s drama. During the months of February and March were three more revivals: Verdi’s Ernani, an old warhorse, as it were, also derived from Hugo; a month later, Weber’s Der Freischütz,asIl franco arciere, probably in the translation by Boito (see previous chapters), was followed by the much-advertised revision of Simon Boccanegra, reworked also with the assistance of Boito. Then Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Boito’s long-awaited reprise of Mefistofele were scheduled for April and May, during a specially 29 programmed spring season. But the stage and the resources of La Scala were not committed solely to opera. By this time the theatre’s administration could also boast a well-known professional ballet company, connected to an academy and to prestigious choreographers and teachers. During this carnival season in particular most of the resources of the theatre were devoted to staging a newly devised ballet, Excelsior, labeled a “choreographic, historical, allegorical, and fantastical action in six parts and eleven tableaux,” with music by Romualdo Marenco and choreography by the celebrated Luigi Manzotti. Excelsior, premiered in January 1881, turned out to be so successful that it became a craze: it was decreed as the main show for the National Exposition of Industry and Art, and its growing fame allowed the theatre to remain open for the spring. Over the course of 1881 it had more than 100 performances, then quickly spread to European and American theatres, became a silent film thirty years later, a sound film in the 1950s, and was 30 continuously staged, updated and revived until very recently. Hence, except for Ponchielli’s new opera to inaugurate the season, both carnival and spring feature old works, often with a troubled past, as if the ghosts of French and

29 The theatre exceptionally remained open during the spring on the occasion of the National Exhibition. Probably in order to go to press in time for the opening of the exposition, Cambiasi’s chronology does not provide complete information regarding the spring season (see n. 24). 30 The other ballet of the carnival season was a reprise of Sieba, by the same team of Marenco and Manzotti; Cambiasi, Il teatro alla Scala, 109–10. For a detailed history of Excelsior, see the extensive work by Flavia Pappacena, in particular: “Excelsior”: documenti e saggi (Rome, 1998) and “L’Excelsior di Luigi Manzotti,” in Excelsior (Turin, 2000), 9–17. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 67

German Romanticism were still restlessly haunting the Milanese stage. Der Freischütz was deemed by Cambiasi to have a sure success, consistently with its performance history at La Scala, but from the review in the Gazzetta musicale it appears that the audience of the first night, steeped in the carnival mood, launched into jokes and laughter during Samiel and Kaspar’s dialogue in the Wolf’s Glen Scene. The reporter Salvatore Farina complained that “we Italians are a skeptical people; we have little faith 31 in the fantastic and we easily laugh at the northern legends.” And yet, if the operas produced in 1881 have anything in common that was surely a penchant for the fantastic. The stage of La Scala was alternatively occupied by stories offering a broad range of supernatural manifestations: from Hugo’s plots of concealment, disguise, and paternal retaliation, where the protagonist’s crisis is theatricalized in terms of aural or visual hallucination, illusion, and disillusion (Ruy Blas, Ernani), to the blatant exploitation of all the tricks and special effects that current stagecraft could allow in order to fill the stage with phantoms, apparitions, devils, and all the rest (Freischütz, and then Don Giovanni and more than anything Mefistofele, as described in the previous chapter). The exception was again Il figliol prodigo, an opera more attuned to the iconography of the large canvases on biblical themes that had been so popular in Italian painting of 32 thirty years earlier. Despite the optimistic annotation by Cambiasi, who decrees the opera’s success, and the subsequent effort by the Ricordi firm to shape its reception as a 33 triumph, contemporary reviews appear more mixed. Il mondo artistico writes about Ponchielli’s new opera as if it was epigonic, not in tune with audience taste. If the music was surely of great merit, there was too much of it (thirty numbers, several of which were large concertatos or choral pieces), and it suffered from an exceedingly old- fashioned libretto. In its monumental conception of the biblical story, the opera was ultimately lacking in “theatrical vitality,” thus explaining the spare attendance at the first few performances. The journalist speculates:

We believe that the taste for grandiose spectacle, for serious and lofty art is decreased in great measure in the Milanese audience, and that they prefer to amuse themselves with less expense, attending instead of La Scala the Dal Verme [theatre], with opera and ballet, the Canobbiana, with comedy and ballet, the Castelli, with horses, and the Milanese, with the slapstick comedy of Fernaville ...If the forthcoming ballet by Manzotti, a spectacular sort of

31 La gazzetta musicale di Milano 36/10 (March 6, 1881). The review is quoted at length here in Chapter 1. 32 On Ponchielli and Il ﬁgliol prodigo see also Budden, The Operas of Verdi, vol. iii, 283–5. 33 Salvatore Farina, in La gazzetta musicale di Milano (the periodical directed by Giulio Ricordi), in the issue of January 2, 1881, devotes to Il ﬁgliol prodigo a long review opening with: “After the premiere of this opera we wrote the word triumph, and we did not regret it; we write it again, not because we are now more convinced, rather more certain, since this word tomorrow will not make the skeptics smile. And the skeptics are many, too many ...” 68 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

féerie, will please as can be predicted by the genius of that powerful artist, we will then see the 34 crowds rush also to La Scala. As it turned out Fano was exactly right – Excelsior was a huge popular success. More than that, he acutely interpreted what was offered by Milanese theatres in terms of appeal to the audience as consumers, perhaps not without a touch of irony. In this perspective Ponchielli’s biblical opera, despite its artistic and moral aspirations, had little or no relevance and thus ended up forsaking its own artistic value. The other works for the season, especially Verdi’s two operas and then Boito’s, probably had better chances of dealing with their own pastness without being obsolete, and their shared preoccupation with spectrality might have something to do 35 with it. But thematic consistency was not necessarily a concern for La Scala’s impresarios and directors, whereas what mattered for sure was the efficient employment of resources, especially singers. In fact the revival of Ernani was also a way for Verdi to test the new principal company in view of Simon Boccanegra and then of Otello, already looming on the horizon thanks to Ricordi’s prowess and foresight. It is again the perspicacious journalist of Il mondo artistico who reports that the old maestro was spotted one night in February at La Scala, hidden in the Ricordi box, while attending Ernani incognito “in order to hear the artists of the first company, whom he intends to entrust 36 with the performance of his Simon Boccanegra.” Only after that night, then, did the impresa announce the newly revised Boccanegra for March. The singers were all among the best that Europe could offer at the time: the soprano Anna D’Angeri, the tenor Francesco Tamagno, the baritone Victor Maurel, and the bass Eduoard de Reszke. And yet, Ernani did not manage to disguise that it belonged to earlier times – in fact almost

34 Il mondo artistico 15/1 (January 12, 1881). The article is signed just “F”: probably Alessandro Fano, the executive editor. The weekly was directed by Filippo Filippi. Incidentally, both had come to be known as members of “the coterie of the ‘effes,’” including also Leone Fortis, Paolo Ferrari, Franco Faccio, joined of course by the Boito brothers and earlier also by Emilio Praga. See on this Paolo Ferrari, “Il grande conciliabolo delle effe,” in Strenna-Album della associazione della stampa periodica in Italia (Rome, 1881), 206–21. 35 Actually Don Giovanni managed to remain on the stage only for two performances. The Gazzetta musicale of May 8, 1881 (36/19), announced that La Scala, after two tempestuous performances of Don Giovanni, remained closed and opened again only last night [Friday, May 6] for the gala in honor of the Sovereigns. In haste and almost furtively, what was staged for the occasion was a Sonnambula as back up, which was, however, well received.” A few months later Farina published in the Gazzetta a scorching critique of the impresa of La Scala and of the Committee for the exposition, for in September the theatre was showing the visitors of the exposition Excelsior and Rossini’s Semiramide (“we are still at the operas written by Rossini seventy years ago”). In other words, it is clear that the Ricordi firm had serious misgivings about the planning of productions during the exposition. In general, what emerges from this and other reviews from those months is the obvious difficulty of pairing any opera, no matter how well tested, with a blockbuster such as Excelsior. 36 Il mondo artistico 15/6–7 (February 16, 1881). The episode is also described by Budden, The Operas of Verdi, vol. ii, 267. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 69 forty years earlier. Contrary to Il figliol prodigo, here the issue is hardly the lack of theatrical vitality. As a review that appeared after the first night in Il mondo artistico lucidly puts it, it was the music that required a different performing and singing style:

The time that has gone by since the first appearance of Ernani has taken away also the traditions of how this music was executed, music which has already acquired its own performing style, different altogether from its predecessors – Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti – and 37 from its successors – Verdi himself, Gounod, Wagner, etc. Hence the weight of the past in the 1881 Ernani is audible: in the sluggish tempo of the chorus “Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia,” in the way the orchestra is too tightly in control of the singing, in the way D’Angeri excels in the cabaletta of her cavatina but misses the point of the Andante, sung too fast. As the review explains, the singers were surely the best and most celebrated of the time, “but they are also, for their great fortune, young, 38 and Ernani and its singing manner have white hair and wrinkles.” Of course we might have to inquire further about the reporter’s expectations and the style and technique of 39 those singers to gather a clearer sense of what he meant. What matters here, however, is precisely this acknowledgment that even a classic such as an early Verdi sounded its age. It is the newly perceived fracture between the work and its performance that raises the issue of pastness, that suggests that “time is out of joint.” Side by side with this celebration of specters in (and of) opera, aural and visual ones, the gran ballo Excelsior seems almost blinding in its gleaming and unconditional exal- tation of progress, of technology, and of a present inexorably and hastily running into the future. If the ballet soon became the master signifier of the Exposition, it was not solely for its celebrated kaleidoscopic effects and general spectacular value, which made it the perfect mass entertainment. Its subject matter, laboriously developed into a scenario by the genial choreographer Luigi Manzotti, may have appeared even too appropriate for the enthusiastic ritualization and celebration of the successes of Italian 40 industry. Four inventions of the century – the steamboat, the electric battery, the Suez Canal, and the Cenisio tunnel – are narrativized in the context of the battle between Light and Obscurantism and the triumph of Civilization. Such lofty matters are skillfully articulated according to a fast unfolding of eleven contrasting tableaux. Two initial tableaux set up the allegorical register: the dark and forebodingly bleak reign of Obscurantism mutates into the world of Light, splendidly decorated and illuminated, where

37 38 Il mondo artistico 15/5 (February 5, 1881). Ibid. 39 More practically even, Ernani was ﬁrst performed at La Fenice in March 1844 and then at La Scala in autumn of the same year. Both journalists of Il mondo artistico, Filippi (born 1830) and Fano (born 1841), were presumably too young then to understand and memorize the singing style as appropriate for early Verdi. 40 Manzotti’s twenty-page prose scenario was published by Ricordi: Luigi Manzotti, Excelsior: azione coreograﬁca, storica, allegorica, fantastica in 6 parti ed 11 quadri. Musica di Romualdo Marenco (Milan, 1881). 70 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Civilization thrives. Each invention is then choreographed in a couple of iconic and picturesque tableaux: a river across a village near Bremen and the New York harbor; an inventor’s lab and the telegraph square in Washington; a North African desert during a sand storm, and the Suez Canal; the final moments before the opening of the Cenisio tunnel under the Alps between Italy and France. The two final tableaux seal these stories of progress with another miming of the victory of Light over Obscurantism, followed by the apotheosis of Civilization, Progress, and Concord. Besides the sheer number of complex set designs and effects, the stage was for the most part filled with large masses of dancers: a feat that appears even more extraordinary when considering that it all happened in a mere hour and a half (Figure 3.1). The utter originality and ambitious piling-up of effects, however, were not enough to ensure such overwhelming success: as some critics observed before the premiere, the danger resided in the effect of an inordinate succession of vulgar rivista numbers. What the reviews reported instead was univocal amazement and admiration not only for Manzotti’s inventiveness, but especially for his and the composer Romualdo Marenco’s capacity to shape the material into a cohesive spectacle. The reactions of unabashed and pleasurable bewilderment were especially directed at the speed with which the tableaux would succeed each other, at the beauty of sets and costumes, and at the perfection of scene changes; at the extraordinary virtuosity of the prima ballerina as Civilization and at the military precision with which 450 people (dancers, supers, and even children) were made to move on stage; at the novelty of the very dance movements and of the kaleidoscopic choreographies devised by 41 Manzotti. Thus, in terms of representational devices, Excelsior’s phantasmagoric transfiguration of reality was invested with all the stock attributes of modern progress: speed, precision, technique, continuous transformation. Technology here forcefully takes center stage, and rather than a device it becomes spectacle itself. The similarities with the rhetoric of the exposition are even too obvious: expositions at the turn of the century functioned on the very presupposition that industrial technology could be turned into spectacle. Disassembled and relocated both in the halls of the exposition and on the stage of La Scala, the machines, usually confined to workshops and factories, are now isolated and extracted from their context. They become artifacts themselves, in a sort of magic fairground where space and time are defunctionalized, and human labor is replaced by play and wonderment. Moreover, the ballet’s extensive use of allegorical representation and the insistent iconic visualization of abstractions (symbols, insignia) are devices that

41 Pappacena, ed., “Excelsior”: documenti e saggi. As for Excelsior’s rhetoric in the context of Turin post- uniﬁcation expositions see Cristina Della Coletta, World Fairs Italian Style: The Great Expositions in Turin and Their Narratives, 1860–1915 (Toronto, 2006), and in the context of the Milan 1881 Exposition see Barzaghi, Milano 1881, 201. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 71

Figure 3.1 Final apotheosis in Excelsior 72 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

allow the creation of a readily accessible, shareable visual imaginary. This allegorizing is coupled with the use of tableaux vivants, which provide a tradition for the embodiment and performance of pictorial scenes, in an emotionally cogent visual summary. In terms of content, the battle between good and evil structures and narrativizes the scenes of technological prowess, which would otherwise result in a mere assemblage of vignettes. The allegorical figures of Obscurantism, Civilization, and Light are at odds with the realistic details of the scientific inventions, but produce an effect of coherence. This coherence is not only narrative but also and most notably an ethical statement, and has the ambition to structure the pleasure derived from wonderment. The victory of Light, therefore, is nothing but an expression of the technological sublime: an effect obtained by the Manichean moralizing of modernization and its demands for continual renewal. Hence Excelsior, a ritual of social harmony and unity as a function of progress, combined with the rhetoric of popular mass entertainment, stops just short of being propaganda. It is difficult today to share the enthusiasm of contemporary reviews, and perhaps unjustly so, since some of Manzotti’s inventions might be tainted by similarly choreographed mythmaking rituals of the intervening 1930s and 1940s. And yet, among its celebrated qualities the ballet manifests an uncanny potential for being continuously updated simply by replacing some of the inventions with more recent ones, as in fact has happened over the course of one and a half centuries of uninterrupted revivals and 42 adaptations. No matter how obscured by the shadows of the Fascist spectacles that followed, Excelsior had (and has) the potential for eternal renewal, for never looking outdated. Della Coletta observes that Excelsior is “an ideal case study for analyzing how national-popular myths are created, disseminated, validated, and transformed over time,” a study that might be particularly rewarding for current concerns in opera studies 43 with questions of national identity. In this context I am interested in the friction that this gran ballo, an odd midcult object, produces with the culture and aesthetics of opera. In many ways Excelsior functions as the opposite of the operas with which it shared the stage: the disarming simplicity of its ideological thrust (progress, industry, and capitalism are good) is matched to a saturation and accumulation of signs, to an overdetermined theatrical utterance. And it is precisely its overt confidence in spectacle’s power to eliminate shadows that suggests that its success was but a symptom of the widespread social and cultural unease. In short, both Excelsior and the exposition of 1881 respond with celebratory enthusiasm to deep- seated anxieties over the very significance of industrial progress in Italy. As several cultural historians have suggested, the mythmaking rituals of 1881 are attempts at shaping a place such as Milan as the new nation’s moral capital: a place where industrialization is

42 It appeared, for instance, quite recently in the 2011–12 season of La Scala. 43 Della Coletta, World Fairs Italian Style, 66. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 73 embraced by a socially integrated and reconciled society, under the aegis of the progressive Lombard high bourgeoisie. And they are also attempts at shaping industrialization in an eminently Italian way. As Barzaghi explains, the search for a model of “moderate industrialization” was the most pressing concern underlying the Milanese Exposition:

At the discovery of the grave social conflicts brought about by industrialization, the need to invent a model for development emerged: a model founded on the harmony of social classes and anchored on traditional values. Such a model would reject the solution of a large industry and its agglomerates of workers, where social concerns heavily conditioned economic prospects. Rather it is the ideology of moderate industrialization; the Milanese model of industrial development is founded on small industry and commerce ...which warranted that 44 the Milanese metropolis could be organized on a human scale, preventing social conflicts. Thus the fantasy of social concord in the name of progress that is Excelsior is the ideological core of post-unification industrial growth. But the extent of what is fore- closed by this gleaming phantasmagoria can be detected, if palely, only in contemporary spectral opera. What this chapter claims is that Simon Boccanegra constitutes the very context for understanding the Exposition and Excelsior: like the return of the repressed, Verdi and Boito’s revised opera brings back onto the stage the shadows of the past so carefully cancelled out, as it were, by the victory of Light. Whereas Excelsior advocates the erasure of the past, with the weight of its legacies and of its sins redeemed by the present and future, Simon Boccanegra thematizes its persistence, its demands always visible between the lines of the present. The following pages return to Simon Boccanegra and to its economy of double vision. Particular attention to lighting and the insistence on narratives and tableaux suggest that the opera simultaneously espouses and critiques a theatricality of visual self-evidence.

FATAL FLAMES, FESTIVE TORCHES

In addition to the “fatal flame” appearing at the window of the Fieschi palace during Paolo’s racconto, lighting in Boccanegra is often designed to exceed functional illumination, and yet it never equals the emphatic special effects and heightened visual dynamics described in the staging manual for Mefistofele (see previous chapter). The temporal scope here, despite its ambition to cover most of the lifetime of the corsair turned doge, is tightly framed by light as if to fit the convention of a twenty-four-hour temporal unity. Starting and ending at night (Prologue and Act 3), the drama is articulated by way of

44 Barzaghi, Milano 1881, 128; Barzaghi’s argument here is in agreement with Giovanna Rosa’sinﬂuential study of the Milanese editorial industry in those years: Rosa, Il mito della capitale morale. 74 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

symmetrical lighting. Opening with Amelia’scavatinaatdaybreak,Act1 is the only one in full daylight, whereas Act 2 reverses the process and opens at nightfall. But more than that, illumination is assigned a consistent dramaturgical function: on a frequently darkened stage, the abundance of torches and lamps is precisely what produces shadows, what summons specters. So, for example, at the end of the Prologue Simone has finally rid himself of the gloomy hostility of old Fiesco and exultantly enters the palace to meet his beloved Maria, unaware of her death. In a sort of nocturnal shadow play, he is shown entering the silent dark palace, and then, after unhooking the lantern on the balcony to shed light in the hall, he is heard from within as he discovers her corpse. The discovery may well be a ritual of initiation in dramatic irony: observed by a vengeful Fiesco hidden in the darkness upstage, Boccanegra sees by the light of the lantern a “frightful, horrible vision” which has the vividness of a nightmare: “This is a dream, yes, this must be a 45 frightening, atrocious dream.” Soon afterwards, a crowd carrying torches swarms into the square celebrating his victory and proclaiming him the new doge. But Boccanegra, still in the grip of his nightmarish vision, confuses the people for specters: “as if prey to a 46 vision, [he] utters ‘Go away, you phantoms!’” The Prologue closes on the contrast between the public celebrations of victory – the stage lit by a number of torches carried by the people surrounding the Doge – and the private tragedy of the protagonist, still 47 prey to his own ghosts. Similarly, at the end of Act 3 and the opera, Fiesco, appearing before Simone “like a phantom,” warns him: “By the light of festive torches you will see strange, fatal 48 portents.” At the dimming of the festive lights illuminating the city in the background, Fiesco and Simone finally reveal to each other what they had not been able to recognize so far. Fiesco is told that the Amelia Grimaldi he adopted is indeed his granddaughter, that same Maria he has long been looking for. Simone discovers that he has been poisoned and is dying. But they are soon interrupted by the arrival of a festive crowd which, like in the Prologue, enters with torches. And the light of the torches, in a sort of cyclic closure, once more illuminates a “cold corpse,” that of Simone, while Gabriele Adorno is celebrated as the new doge. Lighting is therefore used as a productive device, one that allows recognition of what is normally hidden inside or beyond reality. Like an oversized magic lantern, the stage becomes an apparatus producing a special kind of vision: artificial light allows us to see

45 DS-SB, 9: “una tremenda, orribile visione”;L-SB,12: “È sogno! .../ Sì; spaventoso, atroce sogno il mio!” 46 DS-SB, 10: “Boccanegra, come in preda ad una visione, dice Via fantasmi!”; L-SB, 13. 47 DS-SB, 11: “It is also of the essence that this last popular scene is executed with the greatest vivacity and with tumultuous movements: the contrast between this scene and the dark, dramatic tinta of the preceding scenes is the goal the maestro wants to achieve, and precisely from such contrast the aimed effect will be obtained.” 48 L-SB, 46: “come fantasima”; L-SB, 45: “Delle faci festanti al barlume / Cifre arcane, funebri vedrai.” Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 75 what is invisible in daylight. In a sort of ethical reversal, moreover, the artifice of lighting and optical technology is not equated as customary with delusion, trickery, ideology. Rather, it enables self-awareness and recognition, precisely insofar as they are enmeshed with illusion. It is in this sense that the spectral visions that haunt the characters are always caught up with desire, as will be discussed later. Verdian scholarship has often noted the “metaphorical” lighting of Act 3, with the splendidly illuminated harbor of Genoa at night visible through the windows of the 49 room in the Doge’s palace (Figure 3.2). Both the nocturnal view and the progressive dimming of the lights as visual referent to the dimming of the Doge’s life were much discussed by Ricordi, Verdi, and Boito during the months preceding the premiere of the new version. In his letters Ricordi reassured Verdi about the advantages offered by gaslight, a technology not yet available for the first production twenty-five years earlier, which had to rely on oil lamps, annoying the maestro with their smelly, smoky, and 50 inadequate light. In many ways the effect seems designed appositely for gaslight, its minutely measurable light emission still unmatched by the electric lights available at that time. The staging manual in fact devotes a page of instructions and a diagram to the luminaria, detailing the two parallel rows of jets and their position in relation to the backcloth and other elements of the set (Figure 3.3). For instance, the balustrade outside the Doge’s room hides a first row of gas jets illuminating the water in the harbor (marked “y” in Figure 3.3). The second row upstage behind the backcloth (“z” in Figure 3.3) had to have several dozen jets each independently controlled, giving variable lights to the city view and to the ships in the distance, while the room interiors downstage were kept in semidarkness. The arrangement suggests a use of backlighting and of light variations typical of dioramas and similar popular optical shows. Perhaps then it might be reasonable to assume that in order to maximize this careful control of light intensities across the surface of the stage and of the backcloth, the theatre auditorium had to be darkened during the performance, as was recommended in the staging manual for Mefistofele, redacted in these same years for a 51 production at La Scala a few weeks after Boccanegra. Thanks to the effect of random but progressive lowering of the city lights, ensured by the independently controlled jets that were to be turned down during Boccanegra’s final

49 On this see Rosen, “The Staging of Verdi’s Operas”; translated as “La mess’in scena delle opere di Verdi,” in La drammaturgia musicale, Lorenzo Bianconi, ed. (Bologna, 1986), 209–22. Along the same lines, see also Marcello Conati, “La disposizione scenica per il Simon Boccanegra di Verdi,” in “Simon Boccanegra” di Giuseppe Verdi, 29–54; and Capra, “L’illuminazione sulla scena verdiana,” 252–4. 50 See the letters published in Pierluigi Petrobelli, Marisa Di Gregorio Casati, and Carlo Matteo Mossa, eds., Carteggio Verdi-Ricordi: 1880–1881 (Parma, 1988), 130 ff. Relevant passages are quoted in Marcello Conati, “La disposizione scenica per il Simon Boccanegra di Verdi,” 42–6. 51 For the lighting instructions in the staging manual for Mefistofele see the previous chapter. Simon Boccanegra was staged from March 24 to April 12; Mefistofele opened on May 25. 76 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Figure 3.2 Girolamo Magnani, sketch for Simon Boccanegra, Act 3

(z)

I (y)

(x)

Q.a Q.a (a) (b) Panno Panno

Figure 3.3 Diagram for Act 3, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Simon Boccanegra” Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 77 encounter with Fiesco, the city is far more than a spectacular backdrop. Light provides the visual evidence of the pulsating, ritualized life of the city-state: the citizens extinguish the festive lights, independently and yet in obedience to the Doge’s edict to honor the dead. But this kind of visualization of the “polis” was not limited to the stage. Celebratory light shows were hardly a novelty, and may well be one of those uninterrupted public rituals of Italian urban life dating back at least four centuries. In 1881, moreover, thanks to the National Exposition, the Milanese participated in a similar light show that displayed the city like a stage. The celebrations for the opening of the Exposition, in fact, scheduled a special light show throughout the city for the night of May 7 (repeated by popular demand also on May 14): the “illuminazione fantastica” of buildings and streets, as it was called in the press. The contours and façades of Milanese landmarks (the Duomo, the Galleria) were embroidered with rows of lights. Lanterns lined the sides and top of streets and the paths 52 in the parks, and an electric beacon was placed on the top of the Duomo (Figure 3.4). The city was transfigured into a magic playground, an enchanted place for the performance of social harmony: more than 300,000 citizens and visitors strolled around in those two evenings. The creator of the show, Giacinto Ottino, was already celebrated as a virtuoso in such matters: among other things he designed the gaslight chandelier for La Scala and was the renowned creator of extravagant pyrotechnic 53 shows. Interestingly, just a couple of years later the same downtown area that 54 Ottino had lined with gaslights and oil lamps was the first to be electrified. Shows such as this exploited the possibility for the city to become spectacle and simultaneously for light to be mediatized as an expressive device. In Ottino’sshow light is a medium with the ability to theatricalize space: when treated with lighting design the urban fabric and the stage lose their functional specificity (loci deputati)and become porous, interchangeable. That is also to say that there might be no need to await Adolphe Appia or Gordon Craig a decade or two later, the protagonists of modernist staging reforms, to think of lighting as a sign that articulates the mise-en- scène. Lighting in Milan 1881, in the city as stage as well as on the La Scala stage, already exploited a range of semiotic possibilities, from utilitarian illumination to marking the passing of time and then to symbolic and metaphoric signification. The final lighting

52 The event had large coverage with articles and illustrations in several major magazines and papers; besides the engraving in L’illustrazione italiana 22 (May 29, 1881) reproduced in Figure 3.4, see also the Rivista illustrata settimanale (May 22 and 29, 1881), in addition to special publications issued for the Exposition such as those of Treves and Sonzogno. Barzaghi, Milano 1881, 223–35. 53 As a dazzled traveler reported, for the celebrations of the Cenisio tunnel in Turin in 1871, for instance, Ottino devised a model tunnel across the streets of Turin that was then set ablaze. Antonio Carlo Gallerga, Italy Revisited (London, 1876), 106–13. 54 A turbine plant was installed right in the city center, next to the Duomo in Santa Radegonda, and provided electricity to Edison lamps in the streets and storefronts around the Galleria and to the Manzoni Theatre and La Scala. 78 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Figure 3.4 Light show; front page of L’illustrazione italiana (May 29, 1881) Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 79 effect of Boccanegra, as has been remarked, is one of the latter instances. Rather than celebrating technological modernity as in the Exposition light show, or the triumph of Light over Obscurantism as in Excelsior,theendofBoccanegra makes a point of turning lights off. The darkening of Genoa’s harbor, laboriously justified dramatically as a sign of respect for the dead sanctioned by ducal edict, is assigned the function of visual amplification of the dying of the Doge. More that that, Simone’s life is equated with the city and the harbor, and these in turn are rendered visually as an extension of the Doge’sbody.

RACCONTI

Like specters, narratives in opera are also liminal manifestations of the past that act on the present. In the first half of Simon Boccanegra, retellings of past events appear with such frequency as to almost destabilize the drama, which continually vacillates between action and narration and proceeds according to a fragmented, recursive sense of time. The opera’s first two acts contain no fewer than five narratives. After Paolo’s racconto in the Prologue, Simone tells his enemy Fiesco of the disappearance of his daughter. Act 1, set twenty-five years after the events of the Prologue, adds three more: Fiesco tells the young Gabriele that the Amelia he loves is not really a member of the noble Grimaldi family with whom she lives; Amelia tells Simone the tale of her true origins, and, in the finale, gives the Council an account of how she was abducted. Of course this insistent recounting might be justified by the plot’s famous intricacies: hence the sometimes confused unfolding of the events is halted in order to explain and clarify through narrative. However, a closer look reveals that most of these stories are but different versions of only one: that of Amelia/Maria. Amelia’s central tale is given a momentous and complex recounting in Act 1 by Amelia herself, in her duet with Simone. She is living as a daughter of the noble Grimaldi family in Genoa, when Simone, now the Doge of Genoa, visits the Grimaldi to repeal the exile of Amelia’s adopted brothers. She finds herself drawn to reveal the secret of her identity to this man she has never met before, and her narrative is what Amelia employs to define herself, as well as what allows Simone to recognize her. But, as we shall see, rather than offering a privileged access to knowledge and identity, recognition here is caught between reality and illusion, past and present. Amelia begins by telling Simone that she is not a Grimaldi, then, in order to explain who she is, narrates a curious story: she was an orphan living with an old woman in a poor hut by the sea in Pisa, but the woman died and she remained alone. Far from adequately describing her identity, the story in fact fails to provide an alternative to the Amelia Grimaldi she is not: she does not define herself with a name, and the account of her past is hardly thorough. Rather, she delves into an episode that does not appear to have any causal link with her present situation: it is a fragment from the past, with no 80 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

before or after. Instead of explaining, for instance, why she ended up assuming a different name, her narrative drifts, halfway through, into a detailed account of a short tragic moment, a kind of close-up on the death of the old woman. Amelia then defines herself through the traumatic moment that made of her an abandoned orphan, a moment whose significance is ascribed to its pathetic content and potential to affect the listener.

[1] Amelia: Orfanella il tetto umile M’accogliea d’una meschina, Dove presso la marina Sorge Pisa ... Doge: In Pisa tu? [2] Amelia: Grave d’anni quella pia Era solo a me sostegno; Io provai del ciel lo sdegno, Involata ella mi fu. [3] Colla tremola sua mano Pinta eﬃgie mi porgea. Le sembianze esser dicea Della madre ignota a me. [4] Mi baciò, mi benedisse, Levò al ciel, pregando, i rai ... Quante volte la chiamai L’eco sol risposta diè. [5] Doge: (Se la speme, o ciel clemente, Ch’or sorride all’alma mia, Fosse sogno! ...estinto io sia 55 Della larva al disparir!) [1] Amelia: As an orphan, the humble roof of a poor woman sheltered me, by the sea where Pisa rises ... Doge: In Pisa, you? [2] Amelia: That pious woman, heavy with years, was my only support; Isuﬀered heaven’s wrath, and she was taken from me. [3] With her trembling hand she gave me a portrait. She said it was the semblance of the mother I had never known.

55 L-SB, 21–2. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 81

[4] She kissed me, she blessed me, she raised her eyes to heaven in prayer. So many times I called to her, but echo alone answered. [5] Doge: (Merciful heaven, if this hope which now smiles on my soul was but a dream! ...may I die as soon as the vision disappears.)] The shift of focus in her last two quatrains is also a rhetorical shift. Amelia does not merely report what happened, but compellingly presents to Simone what she saw, so that he too can see the old woman dying: the trembling hand that consigns the portrait, the last kiss, the blessing, her eyes raised to heaven, the last prayer, and then the silence as sole answer to the little girl’s pleas. By restaging the scene in such vivid detail, she makes Simone a witness and an empathetic spectator. The importance that Verdi and his librettist attached to this moment becomes all the more evident when we compare this passage from the 1857 libretto (unchanged in the 1881 revision) with the corresponding passage in the prose adaptation of the García Gutiérrez play that Verdi had prepared during a preliminary stage of work on the 56 opera. Whereas the libretto generally translates the prose synopsis almost verbatim into “operatic” language, or reduces it to a more synthetic poetic idiom, here it adds considerable emphasis to the vignette of the old woman’s death, expanding one rapid sentence of prose into two full quatrains:

Susanna [=Amelia]: Orfana e bambina fui allevata, fui allevata in povera ed umile stanza presso le sponde del mare in Pisa. Doge: In Pisa! ... Susanna: Una povera vecchia come ﬁglia mi amava, era il mio solo sostegno. Ma fu breve la mia sorte, ché di Dio la collera provai. Una notte la povera vecchia a sé mi chiamò; una medaglia mi porse, l’eﬃgie di mia madre; alzò gli occhi al cielo, mi benedisse, e morì. Doge: (Gran Dio! gran Dio! ...non sia questa illusione ...non togliermi 57 questa speranza, o fammi piuttosto morire.)

56 For a detailed discussion of the various phases of adaptation, from the original Gutiérrez drama to Verdi’sprosedrafttoPiave’s libretto, see Daniela Goldin, ‘IlSimonBoccanegradaPiaveaBoitoe la drammaturgia verdiana’,inLa vera fenice: librettisti e libretti tra Sette e Ottocento (Turin, 1985), 283–334. 57 The manuscript prose draft (Venice, Archive of Teatro La Fenice) was published ﬁrst as an appendix to Massimo Bogiankino, “Simon Boccanegra: il testo in prosa, i libretti, le prime esecuzioni delle due versioni al Teatro alla Scala e la critica milanese del tempo,” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosoﬁa della Università degli Studi di Perugia 14 (1976–7), 335–59; it later appeared, in a more accurate version edited by Daniela Goldin, in the program book “Simon Boccanegra”: Teatro Comunale di Firenze. Stagione lirica 1988–89 (Florence, 1988), 145–74, here 158. 82 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

[Susanna: As a child and an orphan I was raised in a poor and humble dwelling by the sea in Pisa. Doge: In Pisa! ... Susanna: A poor old woman loved me as if I was her daughter, and she was my only support. But my fortune was brief, since I suffered God’s wrath. One night the poor old woman summoned me; she gave me a medal, my mother’s portrait; she raised her eyes to heaven, blessed me, and died. Doge: (Good God! Good God! ...let it not be an illusion ...don’t deprive me of this hope, or allow me to die instead.)] The libretto transforms Verdi’s more straightforward report into a succession of melodramatic gestures, whose emotional content is conveyed through their emphatic visual meaning. This change of register and shift of focus midway through the narrative are predictably reflected in the music. The third stanza is preceded by a sudden change in orchestral accompaniment: the quiet melancholy of the oboe doubling the voice is replaced by an agitated motive of staccato notes in the basses that leads into the dreary atmosphere of the death scene (Example 3.3). The music changes again at the third line, when Amelia mentions the portrait of her 2 unknown mother (measure 6): the strings sustain the repeated d in the voice with a descending figure, and retreat to an emphatic silence punctuated by the basses at the end of the stanza. The music then turns to G major for the closing statement (measures 11 ff.), which is a new melody rather than a reprise. In sum, the orchestra, with its flexible accompaniment that changes along with the narrative, pursues the same rhetorical stance laid out by the libretto, and thus appropriates the look cast by Amelia on her past. One detail, however, suggests that the matter is not so straightforward: the change to G major occurs at the beginning of the fourth stanza. A tonal shift placed here is strangely out of synch with the unfolding narrative, since the text of Amelia’slast stanza is a continuation of the scene described in the previous quatrain. The change could certainly be explained in terms of formal and genre conventions, as the final stageinanelaborationofthe“solita forma” of the minor-major romanza,inwhichthe shift to major would be a necessary musical gesture for closure. Still, why this change precisely here, in the middle of Amelia’s restaging of the old woman’sdeath?The timing of the modulation appears instead to be more closely connected to Amelia’s audience: to Simone and the way he listens. The tonal shift signals that Simone is engaged and moved by the narrative: by occurring immediately after Amelia’s reference to the portrait of her unknown mother, it colors her ending strophe, leading and pointing to Simone’s reply. Again, as in Paolo’s racconto, the music pursues two ends: it conveys both the affective power of the events narrated, and the emotional response they elicit. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 83

Example 3.3 Amelia’s racconto (stanza 3), Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene i 84 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

But there is more. Simone’s ensuing aside introduces a new melodic idea, accompanied by cellos, as well as a new dramatic element. As his words well illustrate, what he sees is far more than just the scene conjured up by Amelia: “Ah! Merciful heaven, if this hope which now smiles on my soul was but a dream, may I die as soon as the vision disappears.” A phantasm has been summoned. In order to define herself, Amelia has conjured up a scene from her past and made Simone its empathic spectator. That change to G major, however, not only hints at his presence as a spectator, but also signals that the story has suddenly acquired a different emotional connotation. Amelia’s entire narrative, seen retrospectively from Simone’s hopeful eyes, now starts to resemble a projection of his desire. Simone wonders if the image that is taking shape in his mind is but a dream because it is too good to be true: it cannot belong to reality because it coincides too perfectly with the real of his desire. This desire that has power to transform – a characteristic of the Doge throughout the opera – has already appeared in the duet’s opening section, or “tempo d’attacco,” embodied in the orchestral pattern that ties together the fragmented parlante statements of the principals and lends a conversational veneer to their charged exchange (Example 3.4). As Julian Budden notes, this violin theme progressively filters into the voices, leading them to abandon their parlante texture: “as mutual understanding grows, so the voices 58 tend to double the orchestral theme more and more.” But this understanding is not mutual: what the music reflects is Simone’s “understanding” of Amelia, his capacity to win her confidence, and to make her speak – to reveal that she is not who she seems but, rather, who he hopes her to be. In this sense it is significant that Amelia joins the orchestral theme on the words “Ah! ...mi leggesti in core!” [“Ah! ...you have read into my heart!”]. And when the violin theme returns, varied and compressed, in the duet’s central transitional section (“tempo di mezzo”), it is when, following Amelia’s narrative, Simone recognizes her and gives her a name: Maria, a name she shares with her dead mother and Boccanegra’s lost love (Example 3.5). This “conversational theme,” therefore, frames the narrative, functioning as the driving force that compels Amelia to confess and recollect, and as the Doge’s desire to see in the orphan the long-lost daughter (and possibly a revenant of his long-lost Maria). Amelia’sstory,however,ishardlynew.BythetimeshegetstotellitinAct1 we have already heard it in the Prologue narrated by Boccanegra to Fiesco in very similar terms:

Simone: Del mar sul lido tra gente ostile Crescea nell’ombra quella gentile; Crescea lontana dagli occhi miei, Vegliava annosa donna su lei. Di là una notte varcando, solo

58 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, vol. ii, 298. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 85

Dalla mia nave scesi a quel suolo. Corsi alla casa ...n’era la porta Serrata, muta! Fiesco: La donna? Simone: Morta. Fiesco: E la tua figlia? ... Simone: Misera, trista, Tre giorni pianse, tre giorni errò; Scomparve poscia, né fu più vista, D’allora indarno cercata io l’ho. [Simone: On the seashore, among hostile people, that gentle child grew up concealed; she grew up far from my eyes, an old woman watched over her. Sailing by one night, I alone disembarked from my ship to that soil. I hurried to the house ...the door was locked, silent! Fiesco: The woman? Simone: Dead. Fiesco: And your daughter? ... Simone: Wretched, dejected, she wept for three days, three days she wandered; then she disappeared, and was seen no more, since then I have looked for her in vain.] It seems that both Amelia and Simone belong to the same story, or, conversely, that the same story belongs to both. Their racconti patently allude to each other, primarily by unfolding through a chain of identical details: the place by the sea, the old woman, her death. By providing two versions of the same story, one narrative defers to the other, so that the recognition scene in Act 1 functions as a recognition of narratives. The details that recur in both acquire the same function as a birthmark, the classic melodramatic sign of identity, and as such they are legible signs testifying to the story that pertains to both characters. Their very identity is played out in this exchange of recollections: once she is revealed as the daughter who had disappeared from Simone’s life twenty-five years before, Amelia steps into her new identity first of all by resuming her role in Simone’s story. And Simone, for his part, rediscovers not only his daughter, but also “Maria”–a part of his past and a part of himself. Where Simone’s racconto crucially differs from Amelia’sisinthevoidatitscenter, reiterated in terms of a visual opacity or absence around which the story revolves. The daughter “grew up far from his eyes,”“concealed”; one night he discovered the house shut and silent, and couldn’t see her; then, she “disappeared and was seen no more,” 86 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 3.4 Simone-Amelia duet (opening section), Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene i Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 87

Example 3.4 (cont.)

and he had “looked for her since.” And Simone’s racconto is triggered by Fiesco’s request for custody of his granddaughter, a child “he has yet not seen,” in exchange for his forgiveness. Immediately afterwards, Simone will decide to enter the Fieschi palace in order to see his beloved Maria: “Iwanttoseeher.” Simone’s recollection is centered on this “not-seeing” and the desire to see her. This desire to see not only leads to the recognition, but, more generally, as often happens in opera, theatre and 88 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 3.5 Simone-Amelia duet (middle section), Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene i

film, functions as a strategy to narrativize events. In the Prologue, Simone’sdesireto see induces him to enter the Fieschi palace where he will find the corpse – where, that is, he will not see Maria. The same unfulfilled desire allows him in Act 1 to see Amelia as Maria: his desiring look makes the orphan his daughter, and also the replacement of Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 89

Example 3.5 (cont.)

his lost Maria. These recurrent narratives, in other words, are anything but ways to consolidate a single storyline, or, even less, to reaﬃrmthedependenceofallona master narrative, in Wagnerian fashion. In Boccanegra retellings are primarily a performative device, propelling the story forward by constructing yearning for what the stories always lack. Moreover, reiterated narratives hardly simplify the opera’s temporality. Rather than positioning single events within a trajectory, each of them ﬁrmly related to some original beginning (the obvious example is again Wagner’s Ring), racconti conjure up the present as a coexistence of multiple temporalities and various histories. 90 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 3.6 Simone-Amelia duet (ending), Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene i

But what do the characters eventually see? Intrusions from the past seem to interfere again and again with the possibility of accessing and knowing reality through vision. By the end of their duet in Act 1, for example, the recognition seems grounded in the reality of the present: it has been established through the ocular proof provided Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 91

Example 3.6 (cont.)

by the portraits, and, even more cogently, the actuality of their reunion has been sanctioned through the music of the cabaletta, which gives the two characters the opportunity to perform their father-daughter relationship. The instrumental postlude tothecabaletta,however,undoesthissenseofpresentnessandplungesthereuniﬁ- cation back into the visionary, phantasmatic register. The characters’ valediction is accompanied by an orchestral restatement of the cabaletta’s ﬁrst theme, to which is added the eerie sound of a harp. Father and daughter embrace, and as Maria moves away to enter the Grimaldi palace on the left, they again call to each other in a high, lyrically expanded phrase. Simone watches Maria while she leaves, and then, as the stage direction in the vocal score announces, he says for the last time, “Figlia!” (see Example 3.6). The staging manual emerges out of silence at this point (there are almost no 59 instructions for the rest of the duet) and gives a curious warning:

Take care, however, that this entire ﬁnal part of the scene should not be played at the footlights, but by the backcloth on the right, from where Amelia will exit: the Doge will

59 DS-SB, 15–16: “The questions of the one, the replies of the other, the eagerness, the ever-increasing interest of the Doge are too clearly depicted in the music for it to be necessary to indicate in detail the movements to be carried out by the two actors”;trans.inBudden,The Operas of Verdi, vol. ii, 300 n. 92 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Figure 3.5 Girolamo Magnani, sketch for Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene i

remain still, ecstatic, as if contemplating the daughter entering the palace, and in this pose and 60 with the sweetest inflection he will sigh for the last time Figlia! ... What would be more obvious for the two actors than to deliver this moving climactic ending from downstage, closer to the audience? The most elementary reason for the staging manual’s uncompromising instruction is perhaps to allow the soprano to leave the stage in the time allotted by the music without having to run. However, the set for this first part of Act 1 is quite shallow (a “scena cortissima”), and she might easily have 61 disappeared behind the closest wing. Perhaps then there is more to the odd warning: by unequivocally positioning the actors upstage, even at the risk of destroying the forced perspective of the wings, it suggests that the spectacle of heavenly joy offered by father and daughter finally reunited needs to be viewed from afar. Hence, the stage manual makes sure they are placed well into the scenery, as far as possible from the audience. The prominent and unusual sound of the harp moreover endows this scene with a

60 61 DS-SB, 16. DS-SB, 12. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 93

Figure 3.6 Copy of Girolamo Magnani, sketch for Simon Boccanegra, Prologue

“celestial” quality, as James Hepokoski has suggested, and it functions as a shifter, an 62 aural ﬁlter that blurs the contours of the tableau. As a reviewer of the 1881 production also noted, this kind of musical ending goes against the grain of established conventions, 63 replacing the expected clamoring cadential ending with a suave musical fade out. The “celestial” harp projects over the ending a sense of unreality, so that the entire father- daughter encounter is ultimately perceived as the product of Simone’s subjective vision, as his dream. In a sense then, the doubt the Doge raises at the end of Amelia’s racconto remains: what if this is all just a dream, a phantom conjured up by my desire? Let us pause for a

62 “At the close of the coda father and daughter embrace to a beatiﬁed restatement of [the cabaletta theme] (notice the “celestial” harp – musica angelica)”; James Hepokoski, “An Introduction to the 1881 Score,” Simon Boccanegra, English National Opera Guide 32 (New York, 1985), 19–20. Moreover, the sound of the harp seems evoked by the two characters’ words: “Avrem gioie romite / note soltanto al ciel” [“we will enjoy undiscovered happiness known only to heaven”]. 63 Amintore Galli’s review for Il secolo 16/5368, March 25–6, 1881: “Il pezzo, in luogo di terminare coi soliti scrosci di trombe e tromboni, colle più o meno viete formole cadenziali, si chiude con un soavissimo e breve postludum della sola arpa.” Quoted in Petrobelli, Casati, and Mossa, eds., Carteggio Verdi-Ricordi: 1880–1881, 277. 94 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

moment on this final image of Simone rapturously looking at the palace façade (Figure 3.5). The scene designed by Girolamo Magnani for the 1881 La Scala performance depicts the palace by way of wings on the left side of the stage: we can picture Boccanegra in the middle of this scene, half-turned towards the arcades on the left, his look also directed to the left, where his newly found daughter has just disappeared. What he saw here is perhaps a dream, too good to be true. This image recalls a similar but much darker one from the end of the Prologue (Figure 3.6). Here too there is the arcaded façade of a palace, but this time on the right side of the stage. This arcade represents the entrance to the Fieschi palace, where Simone looked for his Maria and found her corpse instead; he emerged from this palace “terrified by a frightful, horrifying 64 vision.” What he saw was too horrible to be true and thus, again, a dream, giving shape to his worst fears (“Yes, this is a frightening, atrocious dream”). The two scenes not only present specular pictures of the same act of seeing, but also illustrate what characterizes Simone’s vision: a seeing too much that grasps something in excess, and is represented by way of the off-center position assumed by the character in looking at the palaces. To put it otherwise, the two scenes appear to literalize the 65 Shakespearean metaphor that inspired the title of a Žižek classic: Simone looks awry. Instead the opposite could be said about a character such as Fiesco. Driven by the relentless and single-minded demand for revenge, a demand more attuned to a ghost like the Commendatore or Hamlet’s father, Fiesco haunts the stage waiting to vindicate his daughter’s honor and reestablish the social order violated by the pirate turned doge. A ghost himself, then, the old patrician is endowed with a “straight look” that blinds him to Amelia’s identity until the very end, and thus excludes him from the economy of vision and desire of Simone and Amelia. Their seeing something in excess is constructed in some crucial moments throughout the opera as an instance of double vision, as the coexistence of the given-to-be-seen (mimetic) and the imagined (diegetic).

TABLEAUX: THE PEOPLE’ SVOICE

How much the staging manual relies on conventional melodramatic devices is apparent especially in the frequent recourses to tableaux. The ﬁnales of Act 1 and Act 3,in particular, are articulated around moments when the stage action stops and the characters on stage are positioned so as to produce an interesting tableau (“quadro”). The tableau is a device with a long and interesting theatrical history, whose

64 DS-SB, 9. 65 Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge, MA, 1998). The title quotes from a few lines addressed by Bushy to the Queen in Richard II, Act 2, scene ii: “Like perspectives, which, rightly gazed upon, / Show nothing but confusion; eyed awry, / Distinguish form. So your sweet majesty, / Looking awry upon your lord’s departure, / Find shapes of grief more than himself to wail, / Which, looked on as it is, is naught but shadows / Of what it is not.” Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 95 characteristics had already been described in early nineteenth-century satirical texts such as the Traité du mélodrame.

Attheendofeachact,onemusttakecaretobring all the characters together in a group, and to place each of them in the attitude that corresponds to the situation of their soul. For example: pain will place a hand on its forehead; despairwilltearoutitshair,andjoywillkick alegintheair.ThisgeneralperspectiveisdesignatedasaTableau.Onecansensehow agreeable it is for the spectator to take in at a glance the psychological and moral condition 66 of each character. Climactic moments call for halting the action, when movement is replaced by a condensation of meaning that is imbued in the actors’ gestures and positions on the stage in relation to the set. Similarly, verbal communication is suspended and replaced by pictorial signiﬁcation: what is given to be seen is the ostensive evidence 67 of the characters’ passions and conﬂicts, rather than their description or expression. The tableau, as Peter Brooks has famously argued, is a quintessentially melodramatic device in its reliance upon visual representation. In melodrama,

there tends ...to be a resolution of meaning in tableau, where the characters’ attitudes and gestures ...give, like an illustrative painting, a visual summary of the emotional situation ... In the tableau more than in any other single device of dramaturgy, we grasp melodrama’s 68 primordial concern to make its signs clear, unambiguous, and impressive. A similar tendency appears in Simon Boccanegra’s staging manual, especially on those occasions when it resorts to static pictorial poignancy as a way to conclude a dramatic 69 situation (“episodio drammatico”). And yet, this striving for visual self-evidence is both thematized and tainted by a sense of impossibility. In other words it would appear that as an insertion of the pictorial into the theatrical, the tableau is the device that manifests

66 A! A! A! [Abel Hugo, Armand Malitourne and Jean-Joseph Ader], Traité du mélodrame (Paris, 1817), 47: “Àlafin de chaque acte, il faut avoir soin de réunir en groupe tous les personnages, et de les mettre chacun dans l’attitude qui convient à la situation de son âme. Par exemple: la douleur placera une main sur son front; le désespoir s’arrachera les cheveux, et la joie aura une jambe à l’air. Cet aspect général est désigné sous le nom de Tableau. On sent combien il est agréable au spectateur de ressaisir d’un coup d’oeil l’état moral de chaque personnage.” Quoted in translation in Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination (New Haven, 1976; rpt. 1995), 61. 67 As for the music that generally accompanies tableaux in nineteenth-century French melodrama, see Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, 48, and, even more specifically, Emilio Sala, L’opera senza canto: il mélo romantico e l’invenzione della colonna sonora (Venice, 1995). 68 Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, 48. 69 Here I am not concerned with tracing a generalized genetic/generic relation of melodrama and opera, and Simon Boccanegra, even if the inclusion of melodramatic devices into opera has been widely demonstrated elsewhere (see, for instance, the work of Emilio Sala cited in n. 67). What interests me is the fact that the tableau is employed in Simon Boccanegra, and that the device is inherited from melodrama together with its specific connotation of “making evident.” 96 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

the opera’s stakes in representation and its way to interpellate the audience by the use of doubt and irony. One compelling example of this use of the old melodramatic device occurs at the center of the Council Chamber Scene, a scene in fact added specifically by Boito and Verdi for the 1881 revival. Here the formal possibilities offered by the tableau, stop- motion and full visualization, are integrated in the dramaturgy of the scene, thematiz- ing suspension and visual apprehension – in other words, their theatricality. According to the staging manual the tableau appears soon after the beginning of the scene. The Council session in the Doge’s palace has been suspended because of the clamoring crowd in the streets outside. As the sound of fighting grows in intensity, so does the agitation of the people in the chamber. Patrician and plebeian councilors respond to the outside tumult by drawing their swords, ready to fight. In the meantime, Paolo, fearing that his plot to abduct Amelia might be discovered, secretly tries to escape. But the Doge soon takes control: after forbidding anyone to leave the room, he orders the councilors to sheath their swords and, ready to face the dissent, sends a herald out into thesquaretoinvitetheriotingcrowdintothe palace. At this moment the action inside the Council chamber stops, while everybody’s attention is focused on the sounds coming from the square, waiting to hear the crowd’s response to the message delivered by the herald. This thick silence is punctuated by the Doge’svoice,who reconstructs the invisible happenings from what he hears, shaping the reception of all the others who are listening (“The herald’s trumpet sounds ...he is speaking ...”; 70 “Everything is quiet ...”). The manual designates this moment as a “picturesque” tableau:

The people’s cries from outside are now loud. Suddenly a blaring trumpet call is heard: four or ﬁve patrician councilors go to the window: a few plebeian councilors move away from their fellows: without changing his position, the Doge also turns towards the window in order to listen: they all remain motionless, waiting expectantly, and maintaining various attitudes of people listening with great attention. – It is recommended that this tableau, which has a very interesting eﬀect, be arranged in an 71 appropriate and picturesque fashion.

70 L-SB, 27: “Squillalatrombadell’araldo ...ei parla ...”; “Tutto è silenzio.” The classic convention of the teichoscopia, of a character reporting what the others cannot see, here is rendered in aural terms. 71 DS-SB, 22: “Le urla del popolo al di fuori sono oramai clamorose. D’un tratto s’ode un forte squillo: quattro o cinque Consiglieri nobili vanno alla ﬁnestra: alcuni dei Consiglieri popolani si staccano dai compagni: il Doge, pur rimanendo al posto, si volge anch’esso verso la ﬁnestra per ascoltare: tutti rimangono immobili ed ansiosi in varˆı atteggiamenti di persone che stanno ascoltando con sommo interesse. – Si raccomanda di disporre bene e pittorescamente questo quadro, che riesce interessantissimo.” (Emphasis is mine.) Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 97

The moment is thus a theatrical effect in its own right, a “still” for the stillness of waiting. The instructions are accompanied by a diagram showing how everyone turns left towards the window, some councilors even turning their backs to the audience, with virtually no one left facing it. The distinct and general orientation of the characters’ gaze, in conjunction with the stillness of their postures and the attentive and anxious expressions, delineates the councilors’ absorption with external events. Given to be seen is the attention for an event happening outside, somewhere else, the gaze and the ear redirected towards that window. This tableau has an important function in the overall temporal structure of the scene, in that it creates a momentary suspension before a resolution. The rapid sequence of events after the Senate session is interrupted, arranged in an emotional crescendo, and halted precisely at the critical moment before the resolution of the crisis – that is, before the rioting crowd accepts the Doge’s invitation to enter the palace with the cries of “Evviva il Doge.” Moreover, as a suspension of action at a climactic moment, this tableau fulfills the traditional function of providing a visual summary (the relationship between the outside and the inside, staging the attention and anticipation of the Council). As Emilio Sala observes, two types of tableaux are generally employed in 72 melodrama: the full-scale tableau at the end of an act, and the “flash.” The latter, which seems the most pertinent to the “silence tableau” of the Council Chamber Scene, is defined as a short “still” inside a scene, during which “the performed time is halted, while the time of the performance proceeds through an unreal duration on the wings ... 73 of the musical accompaniment.” Possibly also a “flash” in providing a short interval before the conclusion of a climatic moment, this “silence tableau” differs in important ways. Both performed time and the time of the onstage performance proceed according to the performed time or time of the performance of the events off stage; that is, the tableau lasts as long as it takes for the herald to deliver his message and the crowd to respond. This interval is precisely governed by the music, which, far from providing an “unreal duration,” follows, or even leads, offstage events approaching the effect of real time. The orchestral accompaniment to the clamoring voices outside – what Julian Budden calls motive “a”–stops on a diminished seventh chord on the last syllable of the crowd’s “Alla 74 gogna,” interrupted by the sound of the heraldic trumpet (Example 3.7). At this point, something curious happens. At first the brass section in the orchestra picks up

72 Sala, L’opera senza canto, 133. 73 Ibid.; for this distinction the author relies on J.-L. Bachelier, “Les Combles du mélodrame,” Revue des sciences humaines 162 (1976), 215, from which he quotes: “Ces deux temps (le tableau et le ﬂash) correspondent au comble fascinatoire de deux montées dramatiques.” 74 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, vol. ii, 310–11. 98 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 3.7 From Council Chamber Scene, Simon Boccanegra, Act 1, scene ii

the chord’s seventh (e♭), gradually transforming it into a trumpet call. A few measures later this sound passes to the offstage trumpet, thus finally becoming the “herald’s trumpet.” The score, in other words, arranges in sequence two different musical utterances: first, voiced by the orchestra, external to the action staged. Then, once the trumpet behind the scenes takes over, a sound produced off stage indicates the Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 99

Example 3.7 (cont.)

sound of a trumpet in the square outside the Senate chamber, heard by the characters on stage. In a basic sense, conformingly with the melodramatic conventions outlined by Sala, the transition of the trumpet call from the orchestra pit to backstage “spatializes the dramatic action,” articulating the relation of onstage 100 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

and offstage into inside/outside, an effect hardly surprising in nineteenth-century 75 opera. In addition, as the sequencing of two types of musical utterance – the shift from depicting the call to indicating it, from icon to index – it has several other interesting consequences. The seamless shift from external to internal utterance, especially within the emotional frame of the bystanders’ concentrated attention, constructs the musical discourse rhetorically, so that the manifestation of the sound event becomes the outcome of its musical narration, as if evoked by the same act of narrating it. Similarly to Paolo’s rhetoric in his racconto, where his words conjure the apparition of the “fatal flame,” here it is the orchestra that summons the herald’s trumpet. Thus the acoustic event is accorded the status of a spectral sound, its audibility depending on an invisible source, visualized as a desire to hear that is legible in the bodies of the listeners. Moreover, the onset of the tableau is characterized by this exchange between music and word in the role of narrative agent, and it is the music that takes charge of the narrative together with the mise-en-scène, while verbal utterance recedes to accompanying commentary. In this sense what happens here seems rather different from what both Brooks and Sala describe in relation to the music that typically accompanies tableaux in melodrama – that is, music that mostly underscores and adds emotional connotation to the 76 “mute” scene offered by the actors’ gestures and postures. The music here provides instead temporal and spatial coordinates for that stillness and that listening and theatricalizes what follows the trumpet call. The silence and expectation of the councilors listening in the chamber, as well as the silence of the crowd listening to the herald’s message in the square outside, are “signified” by silence – in other words, 77 by the lack of music, and especially by the lack of motive “a.” Far from limited to the role of emotional emphasis, music then embraces its indexical potential and becomes a theatrical effect that constructs two levels of the visible – the enacted and the imagined, the mimetic and the diegetic – and plays one against the other. In a typical striving towards what Brooks calls “resolution of meaning,” the tableau then stages the coincidence of three “silences”: the silence in the square, in which the crowd listens to the herald, and the silence in the Senate chamber, in which the councilors anxiously listen to the crowd’s reaction to the message, cannot but defer to the attentive, desiring silence of the public in the theatre. The tableau, however, also makes evident an absent event. On the one hand it foregrounds the outside/offstage, which, at the trumpet sound, becomes the site for the primary action. On the other hand, what is shown on stage is not about that primary

75 Sala, L’opera senza canto, 64. 76 Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, 48, 75; Sala, L’opera senza canto. 77 Introduced earlier; see Ex. 3.7. Ricordi piano-vocal score (Milan, 1996,plateno.47372) – henceforth VS-SB, 114–15. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 101 action, but about “not seeing” it. What is given to be seen to the audience is not the event but the expectation and desire to see it. If traditionally the tableau manifests a certain trust in the power that sight and visualization have in accessing the reality of events, emotions, and passions, oftentimes in Simon Boccanegra that reality is absent and imagined, and the audience is asked to access it as the (second-hand) product of desiring gazes and intent, eager ears. This wishful attending to reality is often followed by disillusion, its inevitable consequent, rendered in terms of ironic unveiling. A character such as Fiesco unsurprisingly makes irony a moral program, summarized in his last lines, “All happiness on earth 78 is a deceitful illusion.” To his “straight” look, the present is but the result of the tragic demands of the past. For the Doge instead the issue is more complicated, as epitomized by a short episode immediately after the “silence tableau.” Accepting the Doge’s invitation, the rioting crowd enters the palace at the cries of “Vendetta,” quickly swarming into the Senate chamber. What once was absent is ﬁnally present and visible; what once was imagined is confronted with its tangible counterpart. Simone, in an ironic aside, voices a sudden realization:

Quest’è dunque del popolo la voce? Da lungi tuono d’uragan, da presso 79 Gridio di donne e di fanciulli.

[Is this then the voice of the people? From afar the thunder of the hurricane, from nearby the cries of women and children.] Curiously his disillusion does not entail a choice, a hierarchy of the real and the imagined. Neither offstage sound nor onstage vision is privileged for truth content. Rather than dismissing the sound of voices from afar as “deceitful illusion,” as does Fiesco, the Doge’s disenchantment is about acknowledging how both the heard from afar and the seen from nearby are mediated, how both are effects that render “the voice of the people.” In turn, the utter theatrical quality of these manifestations, on and off stage, is adopted as a way of knowing: the people’s demands are both thunder and cries depending on the mode of listening to them. The theatre invoked here in the way of a doubled, spectral stage is a medium for confronting and acknowledging the deforming effect of desire. Moreover, the theatre invoked as medium for knowing is not just an optical device capable of producing ghosts out of desire to see; it is also an instrument that manipulates sound and creates a wishful, anamorphic hearing, a listening awry.

78 79 L-SB, 49: “Ogni letizia in terra / È menzognero incanto.” L-SB, 27. 102 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

SPECTRAL HISTORY

This theatre of illusion and disillusion recalls a similar moment earlier in the opera: the Prologue ends with the protagonist’s crushing discovery of the death of his beloved Maria by the light of a lantern, the pantomime of light and shadows described above. Afterwards, rather than being allowed to dwell on the devastating discovery, Boccanegra is immediately surrounded by the people of Genoa, who storm the darkened stage with raised torches to proclaim him doge. In a final chorus whose hopping vivacity is even more strident for the addition of festive bells, Boccanegra’s victory, the extraordinary ascent of a pirate to the highest office, is made to coincide with the loss of his beloved. And of course, with an ironic mistiming typical of Romantic drama, Boccanegra is made to lose precisely what had motivated his social ascent in the first 80 place. Far more than a momentary theatrical effect, then, the act-closing “contrasto” so sought after by the staging manual makes the ironic clash of political success and private 81 misfortune constitutive of the character of Boccanegra. His story as doge is marked from this moment on by the irredeemable conflict between the people’s demand and the demands of his own past. The ambition to stage political history is also inherited from Gutiérrez’s play. The plot develops this ambition as a drama of social trespassing: in the medieval city-state of Genoa a pirate elopes with an aristocrat, has a child out of wedlock and is then elected doge. Because of these public and private sins, he is haunted by the shadows of his past: Maria’s death and Fiesco’s revenge mark his present with unresolved demands for atonement. The female protagonist, Amelia, is unsurprisingly endowed with the power of redemption, but with an odd temporal twist: like a hinge between past and present she belongs to both as Maria and Amelia. The ending resolves the social and political transgression simply as the reparation of a private conflict, confirming and re- consolidating the social hierarchy. The dying Boccanegra invests an aristocrat (Gabriele Adorno) as the next doge, gives him his Amelia/Maria as bride and of course appeases Fiesco’s thirst for revenge with his life. Perhaps it was this final capitulation to

80 This conventional causal link between Boccanegra’s private and public story is spelled out by Simone during his earlier encounter with Fiesco. See the third quatrain in the Simone-Fiesco duet in the Prologue: “I have been hoping to sublimate myself for her on the wings of glory, I have been taking wreaths from Victory to the altar of love.” L-SB, 10. In a recent study on operatic mobs, David Rosen discusses the perceived “banality” of the music assigned to the chorus in this scene as part of this effect of contrast. David Rosen, “A Riot, a Harangue, and a (Failed) Uprising: Three Scenes from Nineteenth-Century Operas,” in Mobs: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Nancy van Deusen and Leonard Michael Koff, eds. (Boston, 2012), 315–16. 81 DS-SB, 11. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 103 the social status quo that inspired T. W. Adorno to declare the opera to have “a political 82 text that is not political.” The moralizing and reactionary ending, however, was destabilized much earlier, and precisely with the long finale to Act 1 added by Boito and Verdi for the 1881 revival. The Council Chamber Scene was supposedly the attempt to solve and compensate for the old version’s dramaturgical problems, but ultimately it undermines the plot’s trajectory. The 1857 version patently downplayed the sociopolitical aspect of Boccanegra’s ascent to power to focus instead on his private atonement for past deeds, but Boito and Verdi add a long scene that establishes the protagonist’s public function and performance of power. The addition gives the opera another kind of dramatic center, devoted to the political aspect of Boccanegra’s story. The Doge addresses the fratricidal conflicts of the clamoring crowd and the senators of opposing factions with a speech:

Plebe! Patrizi! – Popolo Dalla feroce storia! Erede sol dell’odio Dei Spinola e dei D’Oria, Mentre v’invita estatico Il regno ampio dei mari, Voi nei fraterni lari Vi lacerate il cuor. Piango su voi, sul placido Raggio del vostro clivo Là dove invan germoglia Il ramo dell’ulivo. Piango sulla mendace Festa dei vostri ﬁor, E vo gridando: pace! 83 E vo gridando: amor!

[Plebeians! Patricians! – People with a ferocious history! You have only inherited the hate Of the Spinola and the D’Oria, While ecstatically invited

82 T. W. Adorno reviewed a production in Frankfurt in Die Musik of January 1931 (translation quoted in David Levin, ed., Opera through Other Eyes (Stanford, 1994), 243 n. 7). But he saw the opera in Werfel’s German translation, a version which nullified even the final reconciliation by having Boccanegra simply renounce power (deemed in fact by T. W. Adorno “a final revelation that reveals nothing”). In her recent study of the German reception of Verdi’s operas, Gundula Kreuzer observes that in Werfel’s translation “instead of proclaiming a successor, the dying Boccanegra hands his power back to the people.” Gundula Kreuzer, Verdi and the Germans (Cambridge, 2010), 169. 83 L-SB, 30. 104 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

by the wide realm of the seas, You, in the fraternal home Tear each other’s hearts apart. I cry for you, for the soft sunlit Inclines of your hills Where in vain sprouts The olive tree. I cry for the mendacious Feast of your flowers, And I call for peace And I call for love.] This direct, formal address to the citizenship as a socially and politically integrated group (“Plebe! Patrizi!”) is characterized, however, by an uncommon performance of leadership. Rather than giving orders to his subjects, Boccanegra interpellates them as “people with a ferocious history:” a history marked by continuous bloodshed and violence as legacy of the ancestors, confined to fight in the fraternal homes despite the open sea’s “ecstatic” invitation. By providing them with a history, the Doge acknowledges the weight of the past and recognizes them as bound by an inescapable inheritance, but also initiates a process of empathetic identification culminating in the second stanza. With his “I cry for you” (set in the relative major) the Doge redefines his authority as the ability to mourn for the devastating irony of his people’s history. As if replicating the logic of contrast that structures the opera’s theatricality, the Doge weeps over a violence that taints as “mendacious” and illusory even nature’s generous gifts (the olive trees on sunlit hills, the abundance of flowers). By taking charge of this work of mourning on their behalf he can then plea for reconciliation (in the last two lines). And his plea indeed has the magic power to transform. The riot becomes a collective call for peace: catharsis is shaped in the way of a concertato postlude, in which the people’s voice is subsumed by 84 the Doge’s emotional plea. At the end of the Prologue Boccanegra was nominated by the people as doge, but in strident contrast with his private emotional vicissitudes. Here instead, public and private aspirations are reconciled. First the Doge hears his people, and acknowledges and interprets their desire to speak, to be heard and known, by inviting them into the Council room. Then, by way of this speech, he subsumes and embodies the people’s demand as his own, their story now shared and thus turned into collective history. Hence, in Boito and Verdi’s revised dramaturgy, this speech grants the former pirate and commoner the occasion to act as the ideal leader: the one who assumes responsibility by embodying the people’s history empathetically. To put it otherwise, Simon Boccanegra,

84 Chorus: “His moved voice is able to calm our anger; like a gentle breeze that pacifies the sea,” uttered in a pianissimo and dolcissimo that acts as background to the principals’ asides; VS-SB, 133–44. Simon Boccanegra and the specters of history 105 at that crucial “I cry for you,” incarnates the body politic in the way of a “body historical.” He identifies with the people’s “ferocious history” and his empathetic tears not only provide the welcome and expected catharsis, but more than that open the way to the potentiality hidden behind the shadows of their past. Those olive trees on the sunlit hills, the abundant flowers and the ecstatic call from the open sea stand in the place of an alternative, and the Doge’s power coincides with this capacity – rhetorical and emotional – to make room for potentiality within history. Then, in a condensation and interpretation of the proliferating narratives in the rest of the opera, the Doge’s narrative constitutes the very enactment of history as politics: a telling of the shared past for the future. 4 Acting in Otello On the rhetoric of the medium

While thus one spirit spake, In December of 1886, in prepara- The other wail’d so sorely, that heartstruck tion for the premiere of Otello at I through compassion fainting, seem’d not far 1 La Scala two months later From death, and like a corpse fell to the ground. (February 5), Giulio Ricordi brings the tenor Francesco Tamagno and other members of the cast to see the Othello of the actor Giovanni Emanuel at the Teatro dei Filodrammatici, a theatre in Milan traditionally devoted to spoken drama. Ricordi seems to think it might beneﬁt the singers to see the tragedy on stage, but both Boito and Verdi disagree. Boito thinks Emanuel is “a very mediocre 2 actor, cold, monotonous, unpleasant.” Verdi somewhat more cautiously warns Ricordi that if Emanuel’s Othello is, as many depicted him, “a weak man, and in certain passages 3 almost a whining old man,” then it would be the wrong lesson for the tenor. Only “the two giants” Ernesto Rossi and Tommaso Salvini, according to Boito, could have given 4 Tamagno a good example. Rossi and Salvini were not only two of the most prestigious actors of the time, but they were responsible for the successful introduction of Shakespearean drama into the Italian repertoire. Not an easy task, for they had to overcome centuries of staunch resistance that Italian audiences had opposed to Shakespeare theatre, that same resistance in fact that just a few years earlier had decreed the failure of the Othello staged by none other than Gustavo Modena, the most distinguished actor of the previous generation, and their revered teacher. Starting in 1856 Rossi and Salvini gradually inserted in their repertoire ﬁrst Othello, then Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Romeo and Juliet. By the

1 Dante, Divine Comedy: Inferno, canto 5, vv. 139–42, Henry Francis Cary, trans. (New York, 1909), 24. 2 Boito to Verdi, December 21, 1886: “è un mediocrissimo attore, freddo, monotono, antipatico”; Mario Medici and Marcello Conati, eds., Carteggio Verdi-Boito (Parma, 1978), vol. i, 119. 3 Verdi to Ricordi, December 26, 1886: “se Emanuel ha fatto d’Otello un uomo debole, ed in certi punti quasi un vecchio piagnucoloso (come l’han rimproverato) sarebbe una brutta lezione per Tamagno”; Franca Cella and Pierluigi Petrobelli, eds., Giuseppe Verdi-Giulio Ricordi: corrispondenza e immagini 1881–1890 (Milan, 1982), 59. 4 Boito to Verdi, December 21, 1886: “Rossi e Salvini, ecco due giganti! Da quelli Tamagno avrebbe potuto imparare qualche cosa, ma dall’Emanuel non può aver imparato nulla di nulla e non avrei voluto che egli assistesse a quella rappresentazione. Gli altri attori so che furono anche peggiori dell’Emanuel!!”; Medici and Conati, eds., Carteggio Verdi-Boito, 119.

106 Acting in Otello 107

1870s their interpretations, particularly Salvini’s, were renowned and celebrated both 5 in Italy and in the rest of Europe and North America. Othello in particular became one of their few favorites, and the perfect benchmark for an acting style such as theirs, centered, as contemporaries reiterated, on the expression of strong and violent emotions. Emanuel, who was younger and at this time far less influential than Salvini and Rossi, 6 advocated a simpler and more “natural” acting style. Salvini defined him “a revolutionary of form, a nihilist as to the classical genre,” and declared that, in spite of his intelligence, “he sometimes strives to look for a real which is too real, to create a new style which is in contrast with the customs and with the time in which the character 7 lived.” In fact, Boito and Verdi were not alone in considering Emanuel’s acting too modern and naturalistic for an appropriate rendition of the Shakespearean tragedy. In a study of Shakespearean drama performed in nineteenth-century Milanese theatres, Hilary Gatti has shown that, apart from the merits of Emanuel’s interpretation and its significance for a modernization of the Italian theatre, his adoption of a realistic aesthetic 8 for the staging of Othello was perceived as inherently problematic. In this regard, she quotes a contemporary review that warns against the awkward outcomes of this operation:

A man wearing a jacket or an overcoat, who speaks like you and me, then goes and kills his wife talking about Prometheus ...and making a pun about the lamp and his wife’s body, 9 would seem like someone from an insane asylum. The new anti-heroic actor, with his rejection of declamation and of stylized gestures and with his use of new and more “prosaic” Italian translations, was seen as working against the grain of Shakespeare’s text, neutralizing its poetic and theatrical force. Thus, Verdi and Boito’s reference to contemporary performances of the Shakespearean tragedy was not simply an attempt to validate their interpretation by linking the opera with the fortune of the spoken drama. Instead they made a precise

5 Claudio Meldolesi and Ferdinando Taviani, Teatro e spettacolo nel primo Ottocento, 2nd edn. ([1991]; Rome, 1995), 270–1; Roberto Alonge, Teatro e spettacolo nel secondo Ottocento, 2nd edn. (1988; Rome, 1994), 39–51. 6 Alonge, Teatro e spettacolo, 213–16; Gigi Livio, “Il teatro del grande attore e del mattatore,” in Storia del teatro moderno e contemporaneo, vol. ii: Il grande teatro borghese: Settecento–Ottocento, Roberto Alonge and Guido Davico Bonino, eds. (Turin, 2000), 633–7. 7 “Un rivoluzionario della forma, un nichilista rispetto al genere classico”; “talvolta s’ingegna a ricercare un vero troppo vero, a produrre un nuovo stile che contrasta coi costumi e coll’epoca, nella quale ha vissuto il personaggio.” Tommaso Salvini, Ricordi, aneddoti ed impressioni dell’artista Tommaso Salvini (Milan, 1895), 394. 8 Hilary Gatti, Shakespeare nei teatri milanesi dell’Ottocento (Bari, 1968), 166–7. 9 Jarro [Giulio Piccini], review of Emanuel’s Othello in L’arte drammatica, September 13, 1890; quoted in Gatti, Shakespeare nei teatri milanesi, 167. 108 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

choice, associating their interpretation of Othello with a specific theatrical style and poetics: that of the two “great actors” Salvini and Rossi who, by December 1887, were already becoming passé. It was the powerful performances of those “two giants” who could cast a “magnetic spell” over their audiences that constituted a model for Verdi’s 10 and Boito’s Otello. Nowhere is this influence more evident than in the staging manual: the disposizione scenica, published in 1887, shortly after the opera’s premiere, is unique among the 11 Ricordi staging manuals for its length (more than 100 pages) and thoroughness. Since Arrigo Boito collaborated with the publisher Giulio Ricordi in the redaction of the manual, such meticulousness might have something to do with him. Even so, the remarkable degree of detail used in instructing the actors/singers about the characters’ emotions and motivations and about how to render them through gesture, posture, facial expression, and tone of voice testify to the prominence and weight ascribed specifically to acting. In the essay accompanying the reprint of the staging manual, James Hepokoski not only reports how Ricordi took the cast to the theatre two months before the opera’s premiere but also demonstrates that Verdi’s and Boito’s notion of 12 acting in Otello was based on Salvini’s and Rossi’s style. Salvini’s interpretation, furthermore, is identified as one of the very sources for Boito’s re-writing of the tragedy, and a fundamental influence upon Boito and Verdi’s conception of the Shakespearean 13 tragedy and of the character of Otello. Salvini’sinfluence can be found, for instance, in the Preface to the staging manual, where Boito delineates the salient dramatic features of each character. Here Otello not only is depicted as the noble and virtuous hero, moved by strong and absolute passions, but most importantly Boito insists that his jealousy is not natural to his disposition: only after he has been “poisoned” by Jago does his pure love for Desdemona slowly metamorphose into its reverse passion, a jealousy that is equally strong and deeply 14 felt. Salvini also expressed similar concerns, pointing out in several of his writings that

10 The “magnetic spell” of the actor over the audience is a well-frequented trope of contemporary reviewers to describe Salvini’s art. See, for instance, Emma Lazarus, “Tommaso Salvini,” The Century 23 (November 1881), 111. 11 Available in facsimile reproduction in James A. Hepokoski and Mercedes Viale Ferrero, eds., “Otello” di Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1990). Henceforth, DS-O, with references to the pagination of the original document. 12 “Verdi e Boito concepivano sia la recitazione del teatro di prosa, sia quella operistica nei termini del poderoso stile elaborato da Rossi e in particolare Salvini”; J. Hepokoski, “La disposizione scenica per l’‘Otello’ di Verdi. Studio critico,” in Hepokoski and Viale Ferrero, eds., “Otello” di Giuseppe Verdi, 9–90, here 33. 13 See also James Hepokoski, “Boito and F.-V. Hugo’s ‘Magniﬁcent Translation’: A Study in the Genesis of the ‘Otello’ Libretto,” in Reading Opera, Arthur Groos and Roger Parker, eds. (Princeton, 1988), 34–59. 14 “Then, from that prodigious love will be born the terrible jealousy because of Jago’s deceit. Reason and justice drive Otello’s actions until the moment when Jago succeeds in dominating him.” DS-O, 4. Acting in Otello 109 the tragedy of Othello is not about irrational jealousy, but about a passion of love that is so deep and totalizing that when it ends it can lead only to destruction:

His is not a sensual love; it is the pure affection of a soul which unites itself to another, and without which he could no longer exist ...It has become for him as the air he breathes, an ever-present paradise ...Othello is often quoted as the personification of jealousy; but he is no more jealous than any other man in the same circumstances would be. The insinuations that have been poured into his ear would have caused doubt in the mind of 15 any one. As many spectators testified, his acting consistently put in sharp relief the heroic and noble side of the Moor and articulated the drama as his gradual downfall, induced and governed entirely by Jago’s machinations. In the 1887 special issue of the periodical L’illustrazione italiana on “Verdi e l’Otello,” the journalist and historian Ugo Pesci places the opera within a historiography of Shakespearean reception in Europe molded by the great actors of the last two centuries, rather than by the tragedy’s literary fortune and textual variants. Salvini is presented as the one and only Othello, his acting and famous gestures having acquired the status of model and standard for any imagining of the character:

Tommaso Salvini has epitomized Othello for two entire generations of spectators: he would also do so for a third one if he was not saving his still vigorous lungs for tournees outside Italy. Tommaso Salvini has the muscular, athletic figure, the thundering voice of the Moor of Venice, that is, of strong passion incarnated in a man ...Other actors will study a different interpretation of some passages of the tragedy; they will be able to deliver with enviable mastery several scenes: but Tommaso Salvini cannot be equaled easily in those scenes centered on the unrestrained and passionate energy that is incarnated in the Moor of Venice. Those who heard Salvini in Othello ought to commiserate those who cannot or do not enjoy 16 Shakespeare’s tragedy acted by others. The translation and adaptation of Othello, furthermore, was not only a matter of remediation; rather, it was conceived as an emblematic cultural operation, which entailed a full-fledged media coverage of the event. Coordinated by Ricordi and under the aegis of La Scala, by then one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the new nation, the opera’s performance (already on its own a big deal) was accompanied by an extraordinary amount of documents and records. Besides Casa Ricordi’s scores and staging manual, a number of newspapers published reviews signed by prominent critics who flocked to La Scala from all over Europe and America, and magazines issued richly

15 Tommaso Salvini, “Impressions of Some Shaksperean [sic] Characters,” The Century 23 (November 1881), 123. 16 Ugo Pesci, “Otello nel teatro drammatico e lirico,” Illustrazione italiana, numero unico: Verdi e l’“Otello” (Milan, 1887), 34. 110 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

illustrated special issues: all to bear witness, even monumentalize the event of the 17 performance. Otello the opera, in other words, is also about the mediatization of the “operatic,” an operatic that is the context of a burgeoning culture industry that includes several other media, among which the press and in general the publishing industry. The media and production resources involved on this occasion were already in place and well tested, as argued apropos of the 1881 season in the previous chapter, even though the degree of coordination and involvement of all the resources appears to exceed by a large measure those utilized so far. This chapter will pursue the relation of Otello with its own medium in four sections. Since acting was relevant for the making of the opera, the ﬁrst section most simply asks how acting is in Otello. Besides all the references to Shakespeare’s great actors, the opera maps a contemporary querelle about the theory of acting onto the polarization of the characters of Jago and Otello. The second section considers the score’s extraordinary economy of means and analytical approach to the theatrical event by looking closely at the beginning of the Temptation Scene, in Act 2. The third section explores how acting, as the technique of embodiment, is entangled with issues of mimesis; that is, with the aspiration and modes of becoming other and their ethical stakes. Lastly, since the opera foregrounds the conjuring of an illusion but also the horror left by its shattering, the closing section looks at the ﬁnal scene and at the famously cathartic recall of the kiss motive.

MASKS OR FACES

In December 1887, just a few months after the premiere of Otello, Longman’s Magazine in London commissioned from the psychologist and theatre critic William Archer a study of contemporary acting practices, in an attempt to clarify the terms of a heated debate that had recently engaged prestigious voices of European theatre. The controversy was centered on a speciﬁc problem: whether or not an actor should feel the emotions experienced by the character in order to be more eﬀective. Archer submitted a ques- tionnaire to famous actors in Europe and North America. The answers then were turned into a small book published the following year (1888) and entitled Masks or Faces? A Study 18 in the Psychology of Acting.

17 Several reviews, in addition to an English translation of the Ricordi staging manual and of Victor Maurel’s (the ﬁrst Jago) own version of staging instructions, are collected in Busch, trans. and ed., Verdi’s “Otello” and “Simon Boccanegra” in Letters and Documents. 18 W. Archer, Masks or Faces? A Study in the Psychology of Acting (London, 1888); reprinted in “The Paradox of Acting” by Denis Diderot and “Masks or Faces?” by William Archer: Two Classics of the Art of Acting, introduction by Lee Strasberg (New York, 1957), 73–232. Acting in Otello 111

The dispute had originated in the resurgence in popularity of Denis Diderot’s essay 19 Paradoxe sur le comédien. Written in the 1770s, but published posthumously only in 1830, it was championed by the French actor Constant Coquelin in a pamphlet published in 1880 as L’Art et le comédien. Disseminated also in English soon afterwards in the pages of Harper’s Monthly, it prompted a series of vehement responses by several star actors of the time (Henry Irving and Dion Boucicault, among others), culminating in Archer’s report 20 of 1887. The scandalous point made by Diderot’s Paradoxe and espoused by Coquelin consisted in a critique of “sensibility” in actors, which was considered the cause of 21 “unequal acting of players who play from the heart.” Diderot elaborated a theory of acting based on the strict control of an actors’ appearance, a control obtained only via the dissociation between the actor’s body and the character’s emotions. Through practice and technique, the actor shall reach the necessary independence of mind and body, whereby the mind is the ever-alert instrument of control over a body that responds with 22 the accuracy and promptness of a well-oiled machine. In Archer’s study the Paradoxe polarizes his informants into two camps. One is that of the “antiemotionalists”–the partisans of Diderot’s essay, such as Coquelin – who believe acting to be a “paradoxical” activity: the more detached the actor, the more moving the character. The other camp represents the “emotionalists”–Archer himself and most of the great actors of the time, including two eminent Italians, Tommaso Salvini and Adelaide Ristori – who believed that an actor can produce a “natural” physical rendition of a character only if she is moved by its passions. Archer’s project of expounding both views soon falls by the wayside, and the answers to his question- naire prompt him to examine the psychological aspects of the actorial praxis, or what he 23 calls a “psychology of art.” Moreover, in the eﬀort to confute the Paradoxe,he signiﬁcantly reduces the extent and scope of Diderot’s argument to the sole ideal of an emotionless actor, mocking the “antiemotionalist” view as “the theory of the musical-

19 D. Diderot, Paradoxe sur le comédien (Paris, 1830); trans. Walter H. Pollock in The Paradox of Acting, 3– 71. 20 Constant Coquelin, L’Art et le comédien (Paris, 1880). Among the opponents of Diderot and Coquelin was Henry Irving, the eminent English actor, who voiced his disagreement in the Preface to the 1883 English translation of the Paradoxe, reprinted in The Paradox of Acting, 5–10. For an historical overview of the genesis and reception of Diderot’s Paradoxe see Claudio Vicentini, “Teorie della recitazione: Diderot e la questione del paradosso,” in Storia del teatro moderno e contemporaneo, vol. ii: Il grande teatro borghese: Settecento–Ottocento (Turin, 2000), 5–47. A brief account of how the querelle was initiated in England by the translation of Coquelin’s pamphlet is given in Marvin Carlson, Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey, from the Greeks to the Present, expanded edn. ([1984]; Ithaca, 1993), 232–6. 21 Diderot, The Paradox of Acting, 15. 22 On Diderot’s acting theory in relation to his changing conceptualizations of sensibility in art and of the functioning of mind and body, see Joseph Roach, The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Ann Arbor, 1993), 116–59. 23 Archer, Masks or Faces, 79. 112 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

box actor who, having once wound himself up, can switch on at will any tune in his 24 whole repertory, and reel it off without missing the twang of a single note.” Both the debate outlined by Masks or Faces and Archer’s concerns about a “psychology of art” echo an important change in the understanding of the human body in relation to the mind: current research in physiology and psychology had established that mental and physical processes are unequivocally interdependent. Archer quotes widely from prominent scientific literature of the time, supporting his study with evidence offered by influential definitions of emotion, psyche, unconscious, and their relation to the body. For instance, the cause-effect relation between a feeling and its bodily manifestation is traced back to Darwin’s discovery of the reflex: a living organism reacts to the external world through involuntary reactions or symptoms. The tears shed by an actor as the natural reflex of grief are thus supposed to be more convincing and effective 25 than those mimicked at will. Moreover, Archer argues that an actor can re-create the psychological condition of the role and maintain it during the length of the performance by means of what Eduard von Hartmann had recently termed “autosuggestion”; that is, a sort of heightened concentration that provides access to a newly discovered category 26 of the mind, the unconscious. What is acting, then, for the “emotionalists”? In a passage from the final chapter of Masks or Faces, Archer recapitulates the process of embodiment as a “sympathetic contagion” of the part on the actor. This is staged as a double encounter between the Poet and the Actor, and between the Actor and the Character – who are, perhaps not by chance, Shakespeare, Salvini, and Othello. The passage reads:

The poet – say Shakespeare – fecundates the imagination of the actor – say Salvini – so that it bodies forth the great passion-quivering phantom of Othello. In the act of representation this phantom is, as it were, superimposed upon the real man. The phantom Othello suﬀers, and the nerve-centres of the man Salvini thrill in response. The blood courses through his veins, his eyes are clouded with sorrow or blaze with fury, his lips tremble, the muscles of his throat

24 Ibid., 114. However, as Roach has argued, the tremendous influence exerted by the Paradoxe is attested by the tendency of its most outspoken opponents to adopt concepts and terms derived from it. For instance, Archer’s “double consciousness,” his most innovative contribution to the “emotionalist” theory of acting, is a concept that defines the actor’s capacity to keep the performance under control while experiencing the most devastating emotions, and it is derived straight from Diderot. Roach, The Player’s Passion, 158. 25 Archer, Masks or Faces, 112, 166, 225; Archer quotes from Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London, 1872). See also Roach, The Player’s Passion, 177. 26 Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophie des Unbewussten (Tübingen, 1868); English trans. by William Chatterton Coupland (London, 1884). Quoted in Archer, Masks or Faces, 172. As Roach has noted, a similar procedure will be the basis of Constantin Stanislavski’s acting method for the creation of “the magic circle,” a mental space where the actor finds the character; Roach, The Player’s Passion, 179. Stanislavski’s reliance on nineteenth-century acting practice for the elaboration of his method is also attested by his admiration for Salvini for his capacity to reach a complete identification with the character; Constantin Stanislavski, My Life in Art, J. J. Robbins, trans. (New York, 1956), 271–4. Acting in Otello 113

contract, the passion of the moment informs him to the ﬁnger-tips, and his portrayal of a 27 human soul in agony is true to the minutest detail. Acting here is a kind of drama: an almost painful operation involving every ﬁber of the body and mind. It is literally a work of embodiment, where a living organism shares his/ her physiological and psychological processes and matter with a creation of the imagination. And the “sympathetic contagion” of the character on the actor will be transmitted to the audience, which feels in unison with the actor/character. Tommaso Salvini’s report of one particularly successful performance of Othello echoes Archer’s formulation:

It was ...as if an electric current connected the artist with the public. Every sensation of mine was transfused into the audience; it responded instantaneously to my sentiment, and manifested its perception of my meanings by a low murmuring, by a sustained tremor ... 28 Actor, Moor, and the audience felt the same impulse, were moved as one soul.

THE TEMPTATION SCENE

As some passages in Act 2 well exemplify, the dramatic core of the opera – i.e., Otello’s temptation and the beginning of his downfall through the action of Jago – is realized as the confrontation of two theatrical practices. One of the most prominent features of Act 2 is the continual presence on stage of Jago, who subjects the others, Otello in particular, to his controlling scheme. The score, libretto, and staging manual reiterate instructions about Jago looking, spying, or following with the eyes, unseen. And of course Jago’s gaze is also the visible sign, the theatrical materialization of the “poison” he injects into Otello. Starting from Act 2 Jago conjures for Otello another vision of reality, a different configuration of the visible. The spatial organization of the stage is also notable (Figures 4.1 and 4.2). In Giovanni Zuccarelli’s design for the set of the premiere, the stage is divided into two spaces: a room in the castle downstage, which opens through a large window onto the garden upstage. This spatial separation is further marked by lighting, so that the garden appears well lit as if by a radiant sun, while the hall is darker. The backdrop representing the windowed wall is made of transparent gauze, producing the effect of a slightly blurred 29 view of a sun-drenched garden.

27 Archer, Masks or Faces, 220. 28 Tommaso Salvini, Leaves from the Autobiography of Tommaso Salvini (New York, London, 1893), 166–7;in the original Italian unabridged version: Salvini, Ricordi, aneddoti ed impressioni, 221. 29 These details are speciﬁed by the staging manual in the note appended to the diagram for Act 2,in Hepokoski and Viale Ferrero, eds., “Otello” di Giuseppe Verdi, 274–5. As Mercedes Viale Ferrero has pointed out, this horizontal division of the stage was an important dramatic element for Verdi; on this and on Zuccarelli’s sketch for Act 2 see M. Viale Ferrero, “Le immagini dell’‘Otello’ di Verdi,” in Hepokoski and Viale Ferrero, eds., “Otello” di Giuseppe Verdi, 236–8. 114 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Figure 4.1 Diagram for Act 2, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Otello” Acting in Otello 115

Figure 4.2 Copy of Giovanni Zuccarelli, sketch for Otello, Act 2

Cassio’s encounter with Desdemona takes place outside while Jago inside exhorts Otello to look at the scene differently. During the Homage Chorus, Jago, having convinced Otello that there might be reasons to doubt Desdemona’s fidelity, answers Otello’s demand for proof with an exhortation to be vigilant: “Keep watch, honest and well-disposed minds do not see deceit: keep watch. Look carefully into Desdemona’s 30 words.” Jago’s words overlay the first notes of the chorus so that the whole ensuing scene plays out as a conflict of vision along the spatial division of the stage into outdoor and indoor. The tableau of Desdemona in the sunlit garden outside, surrounded by a worshipping crowd offering flowers and songs, is like a rear projection on the surface of 31 that gauze screen separating the darker castle room. Jago attempts to change the way Otello looks at that scene, forcing him to be vigilant and look for the signs of “deceit.” According to the controscena described in the stage manual, Jago keeps Otello under a 32 constant controlling gaze, checking his reactions. Otello for now ends up being moved by the spectacle, convinced of her purity, and fully reassured of the impossibility that

30 “Vigilate, soventi le oneste e ben create / Coscïenze non vedono la frode: vigilate. / Scrutate le parole di Desdemona.” All references are to the 1887 libretto, included in facsimile in Hepokoski and Viale Ferrero, eds., “Otello” di Giuseppe Verdi, 91–110 (henceforth L-O); all citations refer to the libretto’s own pagination, here, 30. 31 According to the stage manual, “il grazioso quadro nel giardino” [“the pleasing tableau in the garden”]; DS-O, 43. 32 “Spierà inquieto il volto di Otello” [“he will anxiously examine Otello’s facial expression”]; DS-O, 44. 116 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

33 such doubts could be well founded. Another powerful instance of Jago’s action on Otello’s vision is the oft-noted dream narrative towards the end of Act 2. Here, through hypotyposis, he presents Otello with “proof” of guilt by rendering him the witness and spectator of Cassio’s lust for Desdemona. Jago’s gaze is of course completely functionalized to his frequent changes in demeanor and aspect. As Boito intimates in the Preface to the staging manual, “one of his talents consists in the capacity he has to mutate in relation to whom he addressing, in 34 order to deceive or dominate them.” There is a moment for example at the beginning of Act 2 when he is at first alone in the castle room, and, observing through the window the serendipitous encounter of Cassio and Desdemona in the garden outside, resolves to go and entice Otello into the room. But he sees Otello approaching and suddenly his bearing and tone change. The staging manual describes a radical, visible mutation of his whole countenance. At first he starts moving quickly across the stage, satisfied with having successfully staged the meeting of Cassio and Desdemona in the garden; then, at the sight of Otello approaching, he suddenly stops and shifts his demeanor into pensive 35 stillness, staring apprehensively at that same scene while he utters, “This worries me.”

with a gesture of triumph he exclaims: Andiam ...and rapidly starts to set oﬀ to the door on the left, but he suddenly stops, and with joy in his eyes says: Ma il caso in mio favor s’adopra. He sees Otello in the distance and places himself at the balcony, motionless, staring towards the garden, where Desdemona and Cassio will have gone; at this moment Otello appears at the door on the left, and seeing Jago, slowly goes towards him; Jago, pretending that he has not seen Otello, and that he is talking to himself, exclaims: Ciò m’accora. Otello asks: Che parli? and Jago, almost simulating surprise and embarrassment, answers, turning around: Nulla ... 36 voi qui?

33 “Scorgendo Desdemona si va calmando a poco a poco” [“seeing Desdemona he will gradually calm down”]; DS-O, 43; then “sarà visibilmente commosso”, “si volge verso il pubblico facendo un gesto di soddisfazione” [“he will be visibly moved,”“he turns towards the audience with a gesture of satisfaction”], after which Jago will talk to Otello, who will answer “con una azione che significhi chiaramente come se dicesse: No ...sono tutte ubbìe ...vaneggiamenti: non è possibile che una simile creatura possa ingannarmi” [“with a gesture that clearly signifies: No ...they’re all imaginary fears, hallucinations: it is not possible that such a person could deceive me”]; DS-O, 44–5. 34 DS-O, 5: “una delle sue arti è la facoltà ch’egli possiede di mutar aspetto a seconda delle persone colle quali si trova per meglio ingannarle o dominarle.” 35 “Ciò m’accora”; L-O, 28. 36 DS-O, 39: “con gesto trionfante, esclama Andiam ...e fa per avviarsi rapido alla porta del lato sinistro, ma s’arresta subitamente e colla gioia negli occhi dice: Ma il caso in mio favor s’adopra. Esso ha scorto da lontano Otello e si colloca immoto presso il verone, guardando fissamente verso il giardino, per dove saranno andati Desdemona e Cassio: in questo momento Otello appare sul limitare della porta a sinistra, e scorgendo Jago, s’avvia lentamente verso di lui: Jago, simulando di non aver visto Otello, e fingendo di parlare fra sé, esclama: Ciò m’accora ...Otello chiede: Che parli? e Jago, quasi fingendo la sorpresa e l’imbarazzo, risponde voltandosi: Nulla ...voi qui?” Acting in Otello 117

Victor Maurel, the star baritone who famously premiered Jago and later Falstaﬀ, in his own set of instructions for the staging of Otello also acknowledges that the challenge in performing Jago consists primarily in rendering all the character’s “diﬀerent aspects”:

To show a jovial countenance with Cassio, to add a touch of irony when speaking with Roderigo, to appear good-natured, considerate, devotedly submissive with Otello, brutal and 37 menacing with Emilia, obsequious with Desdemona and Lodovico. To this general warning, however, Maurel adds a more subtle note: the risk in rendering all these mutations is for the actor to lose the measure of the character’s basic impassiveness:

He does not manipulate through his physiognomy, which instead remains impenetrable to his interlocutors; entirely thanks to the force of his reasoning, he presents himself as a witness who narrates what he sees or saw, but never as a participant in the events he narrates, nor does 38 he seem interested in the advice he gives. Thus the change in physical countenance cannot ever resolve into expressiveness: rather, the actor’s full control of his appearance ensures that the body remains for the most unreadable in its duplicity. The score foregrounds the very spectacle of Jago’s metamorphosis (Example 4.1). The swift, dynamic staccato eighth notes of the strings gradually rarefy and stop, giving way, as soon as Otello enters, to the Assai moderato, starting at “Ciò m’accora.” This introduces a very different musical environment: whereas the previous section was fast moving in rhythm, meter and harmony, now everything suddenly slows down, the strings holding a 6 7 cadential V4 –V in D major for no less than fourteen measures. This gesture of “calming down” of the musical accompaniment emphasizes Jago’s transition from triumphant excitement to motionless absorption and staring look. The sudden change of pace and the shift to the “suspended time” conveyed by the long dominant pedal set up the scene as a calculated and effect-driven performance. The orchestra underscores both the suppleness of the actor and the “deceit” of the character. Jago shows Otello the naturalness and spontaneity of his concern, which is nothing but the result of studied artificiality and control. And artificial spontaneity is precisely the main goal of the staging manual in describing Jago’s acting, not just here but throughout the opera, and especially in the subsequent Temptation Scene. In other words, Jago as a character thematizes an actor that uncannily approximates the ideal actor of Diderot’s Paradoxe:

37 Victor Maurel, À propos de la mise-en-scène du drame lyrique “Otello” (Rome, 1888), 55–6. For the study of Maurel as inﬂuential collaborator of Verdi’s in his later years see Karen Henson, “Verdi versus Victor Maurel on Falstaﬀ: Twelve New Verdi Letters and Other Operatic and Musical Theater Sources,” 19th-Century Music 31/2 (November 2007), 113–30. 38 Maurel, À propos, 56. 118 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 4.1 Jago’s metamorphosis, Otello, Act 2, scene ii

At the very moment when he touches your heart he is listening to his own voice; his talent depends not, as you think, upon feeling, but upon rendering so exactly the outward signs of feeling, that you fall into the trap ...He has learnt before a mirror every particle of his despair ...The broken voice, the half-uttered words, the stifled or prolonged notes of agony, the trembling limbs, the fainting, the bursts of fury – all this is pure mimicry, lessons carefully learned, ...the magnificent aping which the actor remembers long after his study of it, of which he was perfectly conscious when he first put it before the public, and which leaves 39 him ...a full freedom of mind. Like other gymnastics, it taxes only his bodily strength.

39 Denis Diderot, The Paradox of Acting, 19. Acting in Otello 119

Example 4.1 (cont.)

The “paradox” consists of this capacity to create the illusion of a complete embodiment while being instead completely uninvolved. The more his body shows the signs of passions, the more his mind is apathetic and vigilant. To Jago’sartiﬁce is opposed Otello’s sincerity, his unpremeditated and spontaneous utterances. Otello’spassions,hisreactionstoJago’s “act,” are immediately exterior- ized, minimizing any mediation between interiority and its exterior signs. Let us consider, for instance, the beginning of the Temptation Scene (Act 2, scene iii), a passage immediately following the one examined above and also concerned with the representation of a transition – this time Otello’s. This section of the libretto is a skillfully condensed but almost literal translation of Act 3, scene iii, of Shakespeare’s 40 Othello:

(simulando di non aver visto Otello il quale gli si sarà avvicinato) (ﬁngendo di parlare fra sé)

40 Corresponding to verses 35–40; 92–116; 131–2; 160–9; 177–8; 188–90. For a comparison of this passage in the two texts see Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama, revised edn. ([1956]; Berkeley, 1988), 118–19. L-O, 28–30. The translation given here is adapted from William Weaver, Seven Verdi Librettos ([1963]; New York, 1975), 353–5. 120 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Jago: Ciò m’accora ... Otello: Che parli? Jago: Nulla ...voi qui? una vana [1] Voce m’uscì dal labbro ... Otello: Colui che s’allontana [2] Dalla mia sposa, è Cassio? (e l’uno e l’altro si staccano dal verone) Jago: Cassio? no ...quei si scosse [3] Come un reo nel vedervi. Otello: Credo che Cassio ei fosse. [4] Jago: Mio signore ... Otello: Che brami? ... Jago: Cassio, nei primi dì [5] Del vostro amor, Desdemona non conosceva? Otello: Sì. [6] Perché fai tale inchiesta? Jago: Il mio pensiero è vago [7] D’ubbie, non di malizia. Otello: Dì il tuo pensiero, Jago. [8] Jago: Vi conﬁdaste a Cassio? Otello: Spesso un mio dono o un cenno [9] Portava alla mia sposa. Jago: Dassenno? Otello: Sì, dassenno. [10] Nol credi onesto? Jago: Onesto? Otello: Che ascondi nel tuo core? [11] Jago: Che ascondo in cor, signore? Otello: “Che ascondo in cor, signore?” [12] Pel cielo! tu sei l’eco dei detti miei, nel chiostro [13] Dell’anima ricetti qualche terribil mostro. [14] Sì, ben t’udii poc’anzi mormorar: ciò m’accora. [15] Ma di che t’accoravi? nomini Cassio e allora [16] Tu corrughi la fronte. Suvvia, parla se m’ami. [17] Jago: Voi sapete ch’io v’amo. Otello: Dunque senza velami [18] T’esprimi e senza ambagi. T’esca fuor dalla gola [19] Il tuo più rio pensiero colla più ria parola! [20] Jago: S’anco teneste in mano tutta l’anima mia [21] Nol sapreste. Otello: Ah! Acting in Otello 121

Jago: Temete signor la gelosia! [22] Èun’idra fosca, livida, cieca, col suo veleno [23] Sè stessa attosca, vivida piaga le squarcia il seno. [24] Otello: Miseria mia!! – No! il vano sospettar nulla giova. [25] Pria del dubbio l’indagine, dopo il dubbio la prova, [26] Dopo la prova (Otello ha le sue leggi supreme) [27] Amore e gelosia vadan dispersi insieme! [28] [(pretending that he has not seen Otello, who is coming towards him) (simulating that he is talking to himself ) Jago: This worries me ... Otello: What are you saying? Jago: Nothing ...you here? An idle [1] word escaped my lips ... Otello: That man going away from [2] my wife, is it Cassio? (while they both move from the balcony) Jago: Cassio? no ...that man started [3] as if guilty on seeing you. Otello: I believe it was Cassio. [4] Jago: My Lord ... Otello: What do you want? ... Jago: Cassio, in the ﬁrst days [5] of your love, didn’t he know Desdemona? Otello: Yes. [6] Why do you ask such a question? Jago: My thought is vague, [7] a whim, with no malice. Otello: Speak your thought, Jago. [8] Jago: You conﬁded in Cassio? Otello: Often he carried a gift or a word [9] from me to my wife. Jago: Really? Otello: Yes, really. [10] Don’t you believe him honest? Jago: Honest? Otello: What are you hiding in your heart? [11] Jago: What am I hiding in my heart, my Lord? Otello: “What am I hiding in my heart, my Lord?” [12] By heaven! You are the echo of my words, in the cloister [13] of your soul you harbor some terrible monster. [14] Yes, I clearly heard you murmur just now: this worries me. [15] But what worried you? You mention Cassio and then [16] you frown. Speak, if you love me. [17] 122 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Jago: You know that I love you. Otello: Then without veils [18] express yourself, and without hesitation. Let it come from your throat [19] your worst thought with the worst words! [20] Jago: Even if you held my whole soul in your hand [21] you would not know it. Otello: Ah! Jago: Fear jealousy, my Lord! [22] It is a dark hydra, leaden, blind; with its venom [23] it poisons itself, and an open wound tears its breast. [24] Otello: O misery! – No! Vain suspicions are no help. [25] Before doubt, enquiry, after doubt, the proof, [26] after the proof (Otello has his supreme laws), [27] let love and jealousy be dispelled together!] [28] The scene is built on the juxtaposition of Jago’s rhetoric with Otello’s directness: Jago suggests without saying while Otello keeps looking for clear and straightforward answers. He is tempted very early in the scene, in that he is led to be curious, then anxious and distressed, even before being able to process the meaning of Jago’s words. He is trapped not because he is unable to understand, but because he believes in what he sees – a troubled, “sincerely” concerned Jago – and he believes in the correspondence between words and thoughts. In fact, he keeps asking for a straightforward explanation, exhorting Jago to express himself “without veils,” to say the “worst thoughts with the worst words” (lines 18–20). In his study of Shakespeare’s Othello Alessandro Serpieri has observed how in this passage Jago’s strategy in tempting Otello is organized around rhetorical figures of 41 negation and blockage: suspensions, litotes, reticence, echoing. The strategy of reply- ing to the reiterated demands for clarification with additional barriers has the effect of forcing Otello to overcome those barriers and reconstruct the suppressed meaning into a story which, being “unspoken,” is also connoted as “unspeakable” and thus horrific. Moreover, as Serpieri acutely observes, this strategy is a subtle instrument of persuasion in that Otello, by actively inferring the story, is also persuaded of its veracity.

Litotes does not convey the message to the addressee, it instead conveys the censorship of the message; so that the addressee has to remove that censorship in order to construct – having become in turn sender to himself! – the interdicted message. Litotes forces the addressee to live emotionally what the sender had censored rationally within himself through “Freudian denial.” That is why Otello sinks into the unconscious (looking more and more like a

41 Serpieri, “Otello”:l’eros negato, 101–17. Since they all involve a barrier to communication, Serpieri groups these rhetorical ﬁgures together as “litotic method.” An assertion of the negative of the contrary is known in rhetoric as litotes. Acting in Otello 123

primitive) while Jago is always on the edge, often a slippery one, of the psychic depths (and looks 42 like a Machiavellian). Given the glimpse of a story, Otello is led to desire to know more, and keeps asking for an explanation, for a completion. And instead of explaining and providing a narrative that could be assessed or believed by Otello, Jago interprets Otello’s distress and fears by giving them a name: jealousy (lines 22–4). In a final touch, he shapes jealousy into an image: the “terrible monster” foreseen by Otello (line 14) is replaced by a more vivid “dark hydra” (line 23), the mental image of jealousy, a feeling that fractures Otello’s reality, his representation of himself and of his world, and poisons everything he is, and all that he has. Otello reacts to this with horror and attempts to regain control over his fears (“No! vain suspicions are no help”). He then pronounces his policy as a general law, according to which doubt must be preceded by inquiry and validated by evidence. The parenthet- ical expression in the third person “(Otello has his supreme laws)” (line 27) seems to reveal the effort to recall what he was, to recover the “other side” of himself, to find again what Otello-the-general would do, out of the emotional turmoil generated by the vision of the “monster.” Such rational, trial-like procedure has however an odd and inconsistent conclusion; its goal is not, as might be expected, a rational and just action – punish the guilty and reinstate the innocent. With “Let love and jealousy be dispelled together!” Otello not only abruptly shifts from general law to his individual emotions, curiously formulated as an irreconcilable opposition of love and jealousy, but he also declares that both of them will be eventually dispelled, whatever evidence he might collect. This final line has the characteristic of a slip of the tongue that undermines the previously stated intention to establish the truth of the matter, and suggests that no 43 reinstatement of love is ever going to be possible. Significantly, this first interaction of the two characters in the opera has the function of establishing Otello’s “position” regarding Jago and his phantasmatic story. Indeed, this position will remain fundamentally unaltered for the remainder of the opera. Otello, the authoritative and self- possessed leader of Act 1, is forced, from this scene on, to “live emotionally” a reality that is progressively contaminated by a monstrous story, a fabula that is devised by Jago 44 but that he appropriates and acts out himself. The dialogue is thus a carefully tuned

42 Ibid., 104. 43 It has often been noted that here the libretto diverges from the source; Shakespeare’s Othello concludes with the line: “Away at once with love or jealousy” (v. 193). On this see, for instance, Budden, The Operas of Verdi, vol. iii, 362. 44 As Serpieri has put it regarding Shakespeare’s text, “Othello is probably the ﬁrst stage-work where a tragic plot develops out of a non-existing, phantasmatic story. That is why it is a profoundly psychic drama (actualized through the codes of the time, and in particular the puritan episteme), that will unfold between two elements, at ﬁrst distinct and juxtaposed and then progressively similar: the sender of the fabula (Iago) and the addressee of the plot (Othello).” Serpieri, Otello: l’eros negato, 53. 124 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

process entrapping Otello in his own emotions; it stages how the character is doomed to subjugation by his own phantoms. The intensity and rapid pace of this ﬁrst exchange between Otello and Jago seems to be somehow slowed down by the instructions in the staging manual, which are mostly concerned with rendering Otello’s emotional transformation more gradual.

Please note that Otello, at the beginning of this scene, must always answer Jago with the greatest calm, since no doubt whatsoever agitates him, neither because of Desdemona, nor of Cassio: Jago will always talk in a tone of voice apparently timid, respectful, trying to win Otello’s soul, on whose face he will, from time to time and with quick glances, survey the effect of his words. Only at the word Dassenno will he exaggerate a little the accent of amazement: Otello, still calm, will ask him: Nol credi onesto? Jago, very hesitantly, answers imitating Otello’s accent, but in a doubtful tone: Onesto? Otello asks: Che ascondi nel tuo core? Jago answers as above. Otello, at this insisting of Jago, is distressed, and in turn imitating Jago, repeats with emphasis the same phrase: Che ascondo in cor, signore? then yielding to a fitof anger, stares at Jago and exclaims: Pel cielo tu sei l’eco dei detti miei. Then saying again: Ciò m’accora, imitates the accent Jago used in pronouncing these words: then yielding to the impulse of the heart, adds, raising his hands towards Jago: Suvvia, parla se m’ami. Jago, simulating as well great affection, without allowing any pause after Otello’s words, says with great expansion: Voi sapete ch’io v’amo. Otello walks towards Jago, and with all the transport of his soul says to him: Dunque senza velami t’esprimi ...[diagram] Jago vehemently answers: S’anco teneste [...], Otello with a cry moves backward and exclaims: Ah! [diagr.] Jago, at this cry, moves directly up to Otello, with his hands extended forward, and tells him in a dark and fateful tone: Temete, signor, la gelosia. [diagr.] Otello hides his face in his hands, while Jago, darkly adds: Èun’idra fosca, livida. [diagr.] Almost with a cry of anguish Otello exclaims: Miseria mia!! and steps towards the right: [diagr.] Then resolutely, and with imperious gestures, adds: No! il vano sospettar [...]: Jago will observe attentively, hardly hiding his malignant joy: at the words Amore e gelosia vadan dispersi insieme, Otello angrily walks towards the footlights, while Jago, with overconfident manner, 45 follows him to say: Un tal proposto ...[diagr.]. The goal of the instructions is to foreground the mutation of Otello’s interior state by making it proceed by degrees through changes in his voice, facial expression, and posture. The progressive creation of the “idra fosca” in the mind of Otello has a clear and precise correspondence in his physical expression; it is readable on his body. Otello should show signs of uneasiness only at the fourth quatrain: before that he is instructed to act with “the greatest calm.” This delay has the effect of establishing the character’s “normality” as the starting point of his progressive downfall.

45 DS-O, 40; emphasis is mine. Acting in Otello 125

Such emphasis on the timing of Otello’s change is hardly peculiar to the staging manual; instead, it alludes to a problem faced by most nineteenth-century actors dealing with Othello. In his 1875 On Actors and the Art of Acting, George Henry Lewes, inﬂuential drama critic and physiologist, pointed out that rendering Othello’s jealousy credible is a crucial question in the staging of the play, since it depends on the actor’s ability to show clearly the slow-growing suspicion, compensating for the fast pace of the text.

One defect in the play which has been felt by all critics is the rapidity with which Othello is made to believe in his wife’s guilt. Now, allowing for the rapidity which the compression necessary to dramatic art renders almost inevitable, I think Shakespeare has so exhibited the growth of the jealousy, that it is only on reﬂection that the audience becomes aware of the slight grounds on which the Moor is convinced. It is the actor’s part to make the audience feel this growth – to make them go along with Othello, sympathizing with him, and believing 46 with him. If Lewes is mostly concerned with the phenomenological and aesthetic outcome of the temptation, actors like Rossi and Salvini are preoccupied with reinforcing their character’s integrity. Both wrote in fact that Othello is not jealous “by nature” but becomes so, 47 and both discussed the danger of portraying him as over-emotional and hysterical. As a way to avoid this they made sure to stress Othello’s dignity and valor, and to initiate his 48 gradual transformation only after and because of Jago’s insinuations. In the character’s description prefacing the staging manual, Boito echoes the same concerns:

Reason and justice guide Otello’s actions to the moment when Jago (who appears honest and is believed so) is able to dominate him. Starting from that moment (the actor must put all his craft into this), from that moment the whole person mutates and it is precisely at Jago’s most

46 George Henry Lewes, On Actors and the Art of Acting (London, 1875), 156. Lewes praises Salvini’s performance of the Temptation Scene for “the subtle and varied expression of uneasiness growing into haggard grief, – desiring to learn all that was in Jago’s mind, yet dreading to know it, – trying to conceal from him the effect of his hints, and more and more losing all control, ...It was profoundly tragic, because profoundly natural,” 268. 47 “I have never envisioned Othello as jealous by nature. His jealousy was caused by his sincere, loyal, and generous disposition, which a wicked person could freely manipulate.” Ernesto Rossi, Studii drammatici e lettere autobiografiche, precedute da un proemio di Angelo De Gubernatis (Florence, 1885), 93. “Othello was descended from a royal race, of which honor, however, he never boasted. Devoted to a military life, he grew up amidst ‘the pomp and circumstance of glorious war,’ and without experience in evil himself, he had no idea of dissimulation in others.” Salvini, “Impressions of Some Shaksperean [sic] Characters,” 122. 48 The success of Salvini’s performance is often illustrated in terms of his ability to show the character’s downfall by degrees: “Then enters the tempter, hissing the fiendish lie in his ear, and from here to the end of the act Salvini sweeps the whole gamut of passions, from the frankest loyalty and simplicity of affection, through doubt, anguish, livid wrath, insensate jealousy, and blood-thirsty revenge to a sublime despair.” Lazarus, “Tommaso Salvini,” 114. See also the detailed description of Salvini’s performance of this scene in Edward Tuckerman Mason, The Othello of Tommaso Salvini (New York and London, 1890), 29–41. 126 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

perfidious word, in the second act, that this mutation starts to become noticeable: S’anco teneste in mano tutta l’anima mia nol sapreste! [“Even if you held my whole soul in your hand you would not know”] And Otello cries out and Jago immediately adds: Temete, signor, la gelosia. Jealousy! The word has been said ...The torture of Otello has begun. The man changes. He was wise and now is delirious, he was strong and now weakens, he was just and righteous and now commits a crime, he was healthy and contented and now moans, and falls, and swoons like a body that has been poisoned or has been seized by epilepsy. The fatal progression of that moral poisoning must be expressed in all its horror. Otello experiences, 49 stage by stage, the most horrible tortures of a human heart: doubt, anger, lethal despair. Then again, Jago’s manner and tone of voice are “apparently” timid and respectful. His behavior is as always determined by his goals, and never by his emotions. On the contrary, as the dialogue unfolds, Otello yields to the impulses of emotions, and his every gesture unmistakably reflects the movements of his soul. In describing his gestures, the staging manual relies on the same reciprocity and correspondence of appearance and interiority celebrated as the foremost principle of great acting in the late nineteenth century. If we read this passage in the light of the excerpt from Masks or Faces quoted earlier, it clearly appears how both require for Otello that same transparency of the body that reveals without mediation the turmoil of the mind. The Otello of the staging manual, similarly to the creation of an “emotionalist” actor, also “bodies 50 forth the great passion-quivering phantom of Othello”. The adoption of this acting style appears in conjunction with a key moment in the opera: when “tempted,” Otello is obliged to respond emotionally. Therefore not only is the positioning of Otello as an emotional character staged by recourse to an acting practice focused on the expression of emotions, but most important, the acting tradition that saw in the tragedy of Othello one of its paradigmatic texts is thematized in the very character of Otello. Verdi’s music for this episode deals with the mechanics of the temptation as the entrapment of Otello into Jago’s musical idiom. For all its apparent recitative-like simplicity, however, the music provides a rich and articulated interface between verbal utterance and gesture. Hepokoski has defined this section a “Duet,” specifying that it is treated musically “as a free, heightened recitative, now melodic, now declamatory, the 51 better to underscore every line of text.” And indeed the opera’s famous avoidance of closed forms is nowhere more evident than here, where the music functions as the aural close-captioning of those minute variations in the physical sign of the two characters. Of the six subsections into which Hepokoski divides the duet, I will focus on the first one, the Assai Moderato, corresponding to the first three quatrains of the libretto. The most striking feature of this first segment is the economy of material: most of the thirty-

49 50 DS-O, 4. Archer, Masks or Faces, 220. 51 James Hepokoski, Giuseppe Verdi: “Otello” (Cambridge, 1987), 148. Acting in Otello 127

52 four measures are based on versions of a motive that is especially prominent in Act 2. 53 Introduced in the orchestral prelude to Act 2, the motive soon reappears in Jago’s first 54 words addressed to Cassio (“Non ti crucciar”), and then again, insistently, in the 55 transition to the “Credo.” Its recurrence per se seems less meaningful than the way it is realized: the nuances of each of its reappearances shape the dynamics of the “temptation” and organize every utterance of the two characters. In the section corresponding to the first quatrain of the libretto, where Jago sets the stage, the dialogue unfolds over fourteen measures of sustained dominant pedal in the strings (Example 56 4.2): the sudden “slowing down” noted earlier that emphasizes Jago’s transformation and his calculated concern. But the apparently flat surface of the dominant pedal is just slightly disturbed in the third measure by the four-note figure of the first violins and cellos. This figure reminds of the already much heard motive, now slower and on the beat, and thus seems to point to the malevolent intention that lies below that surface of motionless and absorbed concern. Its progressive stepwise ascent phases in this intention ending on its goal: Otello’s utterance of the name (“Cassio”), his seeing what he was supposed to see. Then it does not come as a surprise when the little motive reappears on Jago’s first litotic trick, when by denying that it was Cassio he in fact asserts it, and precisely on 57 “come un reo.” Its shape now recalls Jago’s previous dialogue with Cassio by specifically replicating the downward seventh of Jago’s exhortation to talk to Desdemona 58 (“Pregala tu”) – that is, of what caused Cassio and Desdemona’s encounter. In other words, the vocal line renders the litotic text by proceeding on two levels, one denying the other. On the one hand the conclusive, reassuringly harmless gesture of the formulaic recitative-like contour, and on the other the shadow of a motive that ironically shapes the words “as if guilty” on the same melodic line on which another temptation was uttered, that of Cassio. In the section starting with line 5 of the libretto, Jago’s insinuations become more 59 pressing, leading Otello to the first manifestations of anxiety and doubt (Example 4.3). Jago seems to voice the cause of his concern; Otello answers promptly, and then asks why (“Perché fai tale inchiesta?”). But during the moment of silence interposed between 1 the two utterances, the cello intervenes with a piano e♯ which is sustained as the

52 Frits Noske has called it “the designing motive” and has associated it with Jago’s plotting; F. Noske, The Signiﬁer and the Signiﬁed: Studies in the Operas of Mozart and Verdi ([1977]; Oxford, 1990), 155–7. 53 All references are to the Ricordi vocal score: Giuseppe Verdi, Otello (Milan, 1996, plate no. 52105), 109; henceforth VS-O, with reference to page number or to page/system/measure whenever necessary. 54 “Don’t torment yourself”; VS-O, 110/3/2. Throughout this scene it is used consistently in Jago’s vocal line; see also VS-O, 111/2/1–2 (“Tu dei saper”) and VS-O, 111/3/2–111/4/1 (“Pregala tu”). 55 56 VS-O, 112/4/2–113/4/2. VS-O, 124/1/2–125/1/3. 57 “Cassio? no ...that man started as if guilty on seeing you”; emphasis added. 58 59 VS-O, 111/3/2–111/4/1. VS-O, 125/3/1–126/3/1. 128 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 4.2 Temptation Scene (lines 1–4), Otello, Act 2, scene iii

only accompaniment to the question. Then, with a slowly chromatically ascending line 1 1 1 (e♯ –f♯ –g♯ ), crescendo, the cello accompanies Jago’s reticent answer, “A whim, with no malice,” which introduces the possibility of his “malizia” by negating it. It concludes 1 1 2 with the three stepwise ascending notes of the motive (a♯ –b♯ –c♯ ), but ends suddenly, Acting in Otello 129

Example 4.3 Temptation Scene (lines 5–9), Otello, Act 2, scene iii

piano, on an A more than two octaves lower: the cello changes register and timbre and the motive sounds interrupted. Here, over this A on the cello, Otello urges Jago to speak 2 his mind on a vocal line that, starting from that C♯ left “suspended” by the cello, exactly quotes the “designing” motive. The cello line, clearly in the foreground for four 130 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

measures, traces a connection between Otello’s curiosity, Jago’s non-answer, and Otello’s request to speak by progressively putting forward the motive. A musical materialization of the force of Jago’s insinuations, it leads Otello’s musical utterance into the “Jagoesque” idiom. The force of the insinuations lies in the mechanism of the “as if”: Jago reassures Otello as if Otello’s questioning conceals suspicion, thus even- 1 tually forcing him to be so. This e♯ in the cello stands there like an “as if”: coloring an innocent question with a purpose, projecting over the calm and confident Otello the possibility of another meaning – a typically “Jagoesque” feature – which will ultimately make Otello’s vocal line sound like Jago’s. The ominous cello solo therefore enacts a split between Otello’s calm and composed gestures and his voice, already trapped in the motive. In other words, while the staging manual, in conformity with the great actors’ pronouncements, enforces control of exteriority in order to safeguard the integrity of Otello as a social subject, the orchestra taps into the very device of expression: it creates a gap between mind and body, and advances the possibility of a symptom. After this the cello proceeds with a quotation of Jago’s previous undulating vocal line, 60 marking the reprise of his questioning in unison with the winds. Otello replies on a melodic line that seems strangely at odds with the rest: accompanied in unison by the violins, he tenderly recollects in a short but lyrical parenthesis –“dolce” in the score – how he used to send gifts to Desdemona secretly with the help of Cassio. But his reverie is cut short by the dry “Really?” (“Dassenno?”) pronounced by Jago with amazement. What follows is Jago’s echoing, represented in all its chilling effect: the only musical device is Jago’s motive, obsessively repeated by cello and bassoon, which alternatively anticipate the characters’ questions, the former Otello’s, the latter Jago’s. The vocal lines are left mostly unaccompanied, but the two instruments exploit the slight timbral variation in the way of a distortion. The effect is that of transforming an already startling repetition into distorting mimicry, as if the cello and the bassoon are another mirror to Jago’smirroring. Everything seems to stall until the tension culminates in the next section,Otello’s first outburst “Pel cielo!” and the beginning of the Allegro molto più mosso. The Temptation Scene therefore marks the moment of intersection of two kinds of transformation: Jago, his duality delineated especially through the music, becomes the agency that governs Otello’s mutation. Starting from this scene the two characters are represented in their interaction in terms of agency and response. Otello is caught in the moment when he becomes the recipient and actor of Jago’s monstrous fantasy. While the libretto deals with his temptation as an interior, emotional transformation, and the staging manual is concerned with its gradual exteriorization, the music, with unparalleled analytical precision takes charge of the suturing of the two, as two interconnected but discrete processes.

60 VS-O, 126/3/1. Acting in Otello 131

ETHICS OF MIMESIS

Archer’s juxtaposition of “emotionalist” and “antiemotionalist” acting arguably encompasses the juxtaposition of two kinds of theatrical mimesis, of two conceptions of 61 becoming other on the stage. In “emotionalist” acting the actor’s body reproduces the symptoms of the interiority of the character. Through a circular process, the emotions are particularized by the individual humanity and physicality of the actor, who, by embodying the “phantom” of the character, renders it universal. Acting is thus 62 theorized as the reproduction of an organism’s behavior, universal in its uniqueness. “Antiemotionalist” acting instead starts oﬀ with the creation of what Diderot calls a modèle idéal: an ideal type of the character whereby art translates nature into signs, it 63 makes it “typical” and as such representable. The actor’s body therefore becomes the site of the almost mechanical reproduction of signs, not symptoms, that in their generality can communicate to the audience the passions of the character. To act means to reproduce with the precision of a machine: it is repetition of the modèle idéal through the technique of expression. But there is another, more radical aspect of Diderot’s ideal actor that needs to be considered, since it expands the ban on sensibility to identity itself. The actor’s capacity to embody many diﬀerent characters equally well with machine-like accuracy is due to a fundamental and peculiar absence of individual properties and attributes:

The Second: A great actor’s soul is formed of the subtle element with which a certain philosopher filled space, an element neither cold nor hot, heavy nor light, which affects no definite shape, and, capable of assuming all, keeps none. The First: A great actor is neither a pianoforte, nor a harp, nor a spinnet, nor a violin, nor a violoncello; he has no key peculiar to him; he takes the key and the tone fit for his part of the score, and he can take up any. I put a high value on the talent of a great actor; he is a rare being ... He who in society makes his object, and unluckily has the skill, to please every one, is nothing, has nothing that belongs to him, nothing to distinguish him, to delight some and 64 weary others.

61 Mimesis is obviously intended here not just as the synonym for “imitation” but, more generally, as the interface between reality and representation, between the actor and the character and even more broadly between identity and alterity. For a more articulate historical deﬁnition, see G. Gebauer and C. Wulf, Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society, D. Reneau, trans. (Berkeley, 1995); and Arne Melberg, Theories of Mimesis (Cambridge, 1995). Important for what follows is also Martin Jay’s revisitation of the concept through Adorno and Lacoue-Labarthe in Martin Jay, Cultural Semantics: Keywords of Our Time (Amherst, 1998), 120–37. 62 On this marked individualizing aspect of the “emotionalist” acting theory and in particular Salvini’s, see Vicentini, Teorie della recitazione, 45 and ﬀ. 63 64 Diderot, The Paradox of Acting, 15–16. Ibid., 46. 132 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Diderot’s actor, this “rare being” without qualities, is obviously an abstraction, the paradigmatic ﬁgure of a theoretical speculation on artistic creation. In other words, the central issue at stake in the Paradoxe is art as a process that competes with nature, where acting is the exemplary artistic creation, and the actor the ideal artist. A “being” that can be everything because it is nothing is able to materialize in ever-new forms: like nature, it incessantly creates, presents, produces, imitates. Thus, as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe has famously proposed, the paradox of Diderot’s actor ultimately is the very paradox of mimesis:

In order to do everything, to imitate everything – in order to (re)present or (re)produce everything – one must oneself be nothing, have nothing proper to oneself except an “equal aptitude” for all sorts of things, roles, characters, functions, and so on. The paradox states a law of impropriety, which is also the very law of mimesis: only the “man without qualities,” the being without properties or specificity, the subjectless subject (absent from himself, 65 distracted from himself, deprived of self) is able to present or produce in general. The great actor’s lack of “properties,” this void of qualities, becomes a propulsive force for artistic production; it becomes the prerequisite for the act of creation. “Jago is envy,” states the Preface to the staging manual, and then “Jago is the true author of the 66 drama.” Thus Jago too, like Diderot’s great actor, is conceived as “productive” force, as the agency of dramatic events. His unmotivated envy – and Boito’s libretto leaves no trace of motive for his will to ruin Otello – is desire without content, the 67 poietic energy of the drama. And Jago too “is nothing,”“a subjectless subject.” His “Credo,” rather than a sudden sincere manifestation of subjectivity, might well be taken as yet another ironic utterance: an unmasking that reveals another mask, an exercise in the demonic in his long chain of “as if,” a manifesto of “nothingness.” In light of these considerations, the conflict between Jago and Otello in Verdi and Boito’s opera cannot be exempted from further reflections on the ethics of mimesis. The opera as a whole in fact might be viewed as entangled in this conflict: Otello becomes the terrain of a battle with, on the one hand, poietic force, Jago, who is the driving energy of the drama, or what Lacoue-Labarthe defines as “active mimesis,” while Otello, on the other hand, is the site of expression, the “individual,” the reactive “subject,” hence “passive mimesis.” However, poietic force is connoted as unbound envy that generates in the “subject” a mutation that is dispossession, disaggregation, and alienation. This

65 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Diderot: Paradox and Mimesis,” in Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, Christopher Fynsk, trans. and ed. (Stanford, 1998), 248–66, here 258–9. 66 DS-O, 5. 67 In Shakespeare he clearly states “I am not what I am” (Act 1, scene i, 65), but also in Boito’s libretto, the more mitigated “non sono che un critico” might be similarly read, since the statement excludes all qualities but those of observation, judgment, or, as Diderot put it, “penetration and no sensibility.” In Shakespeare: “I am nothing if not critical.” Acting in Otello 133 kind of distribution and polarization of mimetic faculties in the opera intersects in utterly complex ways with a number of contemporary discourses that also deal with the stakes of defining self and alterity. The following pages briefly explore some of these intersections: the story of the first Italian colonial misadventures, Boito’s novella L’alfiere nero of twenty years earlier, but also the tightly controlled illusory (Jagoesque) aesthetics espoused by the opera overall, and the sense that technique of expression was perceived as a necessary evil both in the opera and in the theatre of the “great actors.” This quick perusal of the economies of mimesis in discourses surrounding Otello attempts to articulate a little more broadly the opposition that emerges at the core of the opera, as a symptom of a crisis of individuation. The power relationship that frames the juxtaposition of the two characters is quite obviously strongly connoted in racial terms – a connotation that the opera reinforces and reiterates. Jago’s manipulative, political skills, and thus his hegemonic position, are contrasted to Otello’s victimization as the “barbarian,” the one incapable of rational control, embodying the predictable set of stereotypes inherited from the Shakespearean tragedy and whose pertinence to turn-of-the-century Italy is hard to miss. It is not in the scope of this chapter to argue for the role of Verdi’soperain relation to the burgeoning if disastrous colonial ambitions of the young nation. And yet, if we look at Otello as a large-scale sociocultural rite and media event, one that through the press coverage reached much larger portions of the public than those attending its performances at La Scala, then it might be worth mentioning that racial policy in those years was also very much in the forefront of public life, and not just in the context of the specialized orientalist discourse of traders and geographers. For instance L’illustrazione italiana, the weekly magazine published in Milan that, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, dedicated a full special issue to Verdi’s Otello, two years earlier had devoted a special issue to “The Journey to Assab,” the Eritrean port town on the Red Sea that was then considered as the first Italian colony 68 in Africa. The magazine offered its mostly northern middle-class readership chronicles of travelers and experts supplemented with pictures of the landscape, 69 natural resources, and the life and costumes of the population. In the intervening years a steady stream of troops, engineers, and traders, but also nuns and friars, traveled to the region, but despite some territorial expansion the colonial enterprises

68 L’illustrazione italiana, special issue “In viaggio per Assab” (Milan, 1885). 69 Among the columnists was also Giovanni Battista Licata, a writer and explorer who spent several months in 1885 as member of the expedition to Assab, and who published a full report exhorting the government to exercise Italian rights on the region, as a way to fulfill the fantasy of a return to the glories of the ancients: Assab e i Danachili: viaggio e studii (Milan, 1885). He was killed the following year, during an expedition to Harar (see the entry in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. lxv. Online edition, 2005, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-battista-licata_(Dizionario-Biografico). Accessed March 27, 2013.) 134 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

suffered several brutal losses. Then on January 26, 1887 – and the temporal contiguity with the grand premiere of Otello does not need to be emphasized – acolumnof500 soldiers was almost completely annihilated by the Ethiopian army at Dogali. The traumatic event resurrected the patriotic rhetoric of sacrifice for the fatherland, and was widely memorialized by the press as well as by public rituals across the peninsula. Besides monuments and inscriptions, the following year the National Gallery in Rome commissioned Michele Cammarano to produce a very large painting depicting the 70 battle. ThemassacreofDogalihassincebeen considered the beginning of the first Italian-African war, a decade of military skirmishes that overall amounted to an exorbitant number of human losses, to the hemorrhaging of private and public financing, and to a series of humiliating failures in the Italian effort to match the other colonial powers in Europe – that is, roughly put, the failure to define Italy as a 71 nation with a status and influence comparable to that of its neighbors. Thus, to return to the opera, the adaptation and remediation of the Shakespearean tragedy contextualizes and complicates contemporary concerns not just by representing racial difference or even more simplistically blackness. More than that, it juxtaposes Otello’s reactive, emotional blackness to Jago’s manipulatory, controlling, evil white- ness. Especially as a reenactment of the current querelle on theatrical mimesis Otello touches with uncanny pertinence upon the even more current disastrous engagement with colonialism. The ethical dimension of the mimetic regime of the Verdian Otello is, in other words, already entangled with a crisis: crisis because the grand premiere of the Verdian masterpiece came ten days after the Dogali massacre, thus at a time when the country was in mourning – a detail thoroughly absent from the numerous reviews of the opera. But also because of the exorbitant losses that were at stake with such a failure. Some twenty years earlier Boito had already overtly embraced racial stereotypes in 72 L’alfiere nero, a short story in the experimental vein of Scapigliatura. The story is set in a spa in Switzerland where two characters meet by chance and decide to face each other in a tense chess game over the course of the night. They are the American Sir Giorgio Anderssen, a chess champion, and Tom, a freed slave who had inherited a large fortune from his master. Anderssen maneuvers his white pieces strategically, according to

70 The canvas is in the permanent collection at Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (www.gnam. beniculturali.it/index.php?it/23/gli-artisti-e-le-opere/172/la-battaglia-di-dogali). Accessed March 27, 2013. 71 On the early Italian colonial enterprises see Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa orientale: dall’Unità alla marcia su Roma (Rome, 1976); a provocative appeal to revisit Italian historiography of race is in Lucia Re, “Italians and the Invention of Race: The Poetics and Politics of Difference in the Struggle Over Libya, 1890–1913,” California Italian Studies Journal 1/1(2010). On this first African War and in particular the defeats of Dogali and Adowa and their role in the formation of national identity, see Giuseppe Finaldi, “Italy’s Scramble for Africa from Dogali to Adowa,” in Disastro! Disasters in Italy Since 1860: Culture, Politics, Society, J. Dickie, J. Foot, and F. M. Snowden, eds. (New York, 2002), 80–97. 72 Arrigo Boito, L’alfiere nero; published in 1867, the novella has since been anthologized in several collections; see for instance Novelle e riviste drammatiche, G. Brognolino, ed. (Naples, 1920). Acting in Otello 135 rational logic, while Tom plays emotionally and unpredictably, responding in bursts of passion to the unfolding of the game. Anderssen is close to winning but, absorbed in the chase of the black bishop, a piece he had inadvertently damaged at the start and that progressively becomes the focus of the game, he fails to notice another black piece. With that Tom checkmates the white king; but his victory is unacceptable to Anderssen who, under the spell of the game, pulls out a gun and shoots him. After years on the run Anderssen eventually returns to New York and is acquitted of the murder, but driven mad by guilt roams the streets of New York as if they were a chessboard, haunted by the ghost of the black bishop. The confrontation of the two characters seems less concerned with a portrayal of racial identity, confined to ready-made types, than with testing the allegorical potential of the two figures. The goal of the narrative is the exploration of a conflict, or better the staging of a scene of dualismo, the Boitian brand of unresolved antinomies – in this case black and white, slave and master, passion and reason – in order to see what might come out at the other end. The characters are observed as they struggle against the grain of their overdetermined and preconceived characterizations. Tom manages to win against all odds, but at the price of his life; and at the point of death he defiantly reveals his allegiance with the leader of the slave revolt in Jamaica. Anderssen instead regresses: unable to take defeat, he resorts to irrational violence and annihilates his opponent but loses his mind. Thus the novella starts on an opposition very similar to the one discovered in the Shakespearean tragedy through the lens of nineteenth-century theories of acting. In the end, however, the schematic scenario, based as it is on a thorough exploitation of all the biases of orientalist discourse, is pushed to its formal limits so that the two characters are forced out of their preordained types. Again, the outcome is the production of a crisis, and in both characters. A crisis that here is also transferred to the reader: despite the mounting intensification of the narrative, the reader is not allowed to invest affectively in any of the two characters. The narrative expedient of turning the chessboard around to describe the position of the other – that is, to change visual and strategic but also emotional perspective – becomes paradigmatic of how the reader is enticed but prevented from taking sides, from embracing ethically and affectively either one of the antithetical subject-positions. On the contrary, returning to Otello, there is little doubt as to how the spectator is addressed, in that the opera, even just from its textual traces, does indeed insist on the two characters’ juxtaposition but unwaveringly sides with Otello, the Moor, the tenor, the eponymous hero. The white, bourgeois audience is interpellated for their capacity to empathize. Otello’s acting-out of emotions, his directness and sincerity, are the elements that have the power to induce the audience to empathize with his story, despite (or because of) his incarnation of a passive mimesis, difference, otherness. Jago’s poietic power is instead deemed as unredeemably monstrous, and, especially by way of the “Credo,” tinged with the demonic, consistently placing the character within the long 136 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

lineage of operatic cattivi. In the liminal space of Cyprus, Jago’s utterly Western political skills are ultimately estranged and disavowed, in contrast to the emotional vulnerability and palpable humanity of Otello. But if the tragedy of Otello is the result and enactment of the poisonous effect of make- believe, of the treacherous power of theatrical simulation, then one might wonder what the opera does say about itself. It would appear, in fact, that the portentous theatrical machinery at play in the opera conceals a fundamental anxiety regarding the same fascination it engenders. The story of entrapment into Jago’s poisonous fantasy comes packaged in a hypertrophic apparatus that ensures the reality effect of that fantasy. After all, the painstaking tuning and pacing of gestures and proxemics in the staging manual, but also the studied sets and lighting, the precise poetic beauty of the libretto, the way the music interfaces gestures and emotions, as described earlier, are all part of a technique of make-believe, one that comes very close to Jago’s trickery and his capacity to make his interlocutor see differently. To put it otherwise, illusion is both disavowed in the story and fully embraced through the techniques of the operatic medium. If we briefly return to the querelle outlined by Archer, the two camps are of course not as polarized as Archer wished. What they shared is the unquestioned role assigned to acting technique: a technique in charge of producing the controlled embodiment of another interiority. Archer’s study of the querelle, then, with its forceful emphasis on the “emotionalist” solution, could be considered an attempt to rebalance a formulation of acting also in terms of inspiration and interpretation. But this rebalancing betrays far more than the fear of a machine-like actor: in the picture delineated by Archer’s research, as well as in the multitude of treatises, pronouncements, and memoirs published in those years, acting technique is placed in a mediating position between emotions and their expression. In other words, it constitutes the dangerous intermediary between the construction of an interiority and its translation into exterior signs, between the creation of an original and its reiteration. On the other hand, however, the technique’seffectiveness was unquestioned especially as a device to achieve the all-too-necessary reproducible spontaneity – that is, to standardize the level of the performance, night after night, venue after venue. Most importantly, as members of both groups emphasize, technique was the instrument by which acting and the theatre vindicated their status as art and their ethical and political 73 function in the nation states. As the theatrical system was rapidly imposing more and more demands on the actors, as well as higher numbers of runs and of roles, the need for a reliable method that helped deal with the deadening effects of repetition but also with

73 Both Coquelin and Rossi, for instance, preface their booklets with long statements regarding the status of the theatre. Here is an extract from Coquelin’s Preface to his L’Art et le comédien: “Je vais essayer de prouver que le comédien est un artiste et qu’il a sa place dans un État au même titre que tous les autres citoyens.” Acting in Otello 137

74 the complex mechanics of ensemble acting was perceived as a specific tool of the trade. Famous, for instance, is the story of what Salvini called “transmigration”: before each performance he would spend hours in his changing room slowly and gradually applying make up and putting on the costume, layer after layer, in front of the mirror. Such a well-planned routine was what enabled the actor progressively to enter the character, to adjust his body and demeanor to those of another and to maintain the concentration 75 throughout the drama. Salvini’s “transmigration” was just one phase of a much longer and complex process that guaranteed a stable starting point from which the actor could re-embody the same character consistently and effectively in its multiple reiterations. As many of the great actors emphasized, relying merely on inspiration or on the emotions retrieved on the spur of the moment was always at risk of producing an unequal, ineffectual, and thus unprofessional performance. Archer tends to ascribe to the antiemotionalists a higher degree of faithfulness to a model, while emotionalists such as Salvini would rely more often on improvisation and inspiration, changing little details at 76 every performance. But he soon has to invoke several exceptions. Salvini’s chroniclers also often emphasized his ability to reproduce his character consistently as evidence of his professional prowess:

And as he was a heaven-born actor, whose genius defied the restrictions of either traditions or prejudice, so was he a consummate artist, whose impersonations, leaving nothing to the promptings of impulse, revealed, in their minutest details, those just proportions, complete symmetry and apparent veracity which can only be secured by conscientious and deliberate design. The closest inspection could detect no difference between his portrayal of the same part at one time and another. Each characterization was finished to the nail and could be 77 reproduced with photographic accuracy. This last praise of “photographic accuracy” probably addresses also a different set of preoccupations, related to the need to validate the cultural translations of Salvini’s 78 performances for the benefit of American and British audiences. Still, what technique amounts to for several of Archer’s actors is the very ability to access and manipulate

74 For a slightly less summary account see Livio, “Il teatro del grande attore,” 614–15, and Lamberto Trezzini, “Il sistema di produzione,” in Storia del teatro moderno e contemporaneo, vol. ii: Il grande teatro borghese: Settecento–Ottocento, Roberto Alonge and Guido Davico Bonino, eds. (Turin, 2000), 1068–9. 75 Archer, Masks or Faces, 180. The story is often quoted in Constantin Stanislavski’s writings as paradigmatic of the system he was elaborating, and it has since become almost a commonplace after its subsequent “method” reincarnations. For Stanislavski and Salvini see n. 26. 76 “Mr. Irving, who has gone forth to battle with M. Coquelin on this very subject of inspiration, is himself (as I am assured on all hands) scrupulous in repeating night after night every minutest detail of attitude and gesture.” Archer, Masks or Faces, 209. 77 J. Ranken Towse, “Tommaso Salvini: A Great Tragedian,” Putnams’ Monthly 3/1 (October 1907), 19. 78 He would in fact recite his part in Italian in the context of English-language performances, possibly eﬀecting an interesting kind of double-orientalizing of the character. Moreover, the author of the 138 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

those interior processes that generate the appropriate exterior signs. To put it in Archer’s words, to give life to the “phantom” of the character by reproducing the “natural reflexes” that express its emotions. What matters most is to render the character as a unique individual, as a well-defined subject. Technique is therefore deemed both crucial to the process of individuation and simultaneously at risk of erasing and standardizing the very individuality it strives to express. That is probably why the emotionalist stance insists on invoking the actor’s emotional investment in the character. Empathy, for the emotionalist actor and especially Salvini, is what in the end manages to affect the audience, thus decreeing the success of the performance. Several commentators mention the magnetic spell that the actor could cast over the audience. In Archer’s vocabulary it is a matter of psycho-physiologies: sympathy of nerve-centers, sympathetic contagion, infectiousness 79 of emotion. Salvini, less versed in this medical language, uses repeatedly the metaphoric effect of electricity to describe the goal of his art. Electric current stands for that almost magic force that engenders the very theatrical event: the direct connection of all three: actor, character, and public. It is this connection that is at the core of the ethics of the theatre of the “great actors.” Their professional skills, their technique and method are transfigured into art only if and when they succeed in creating an affinity not only with the character but also and simultaneously with the spectators.

“ OTELLO FU”

Indeed what is striking about Otello is the way the spectator is always included in the conflict and juxtaposition between the two characters as the third element that structures their interaction. Jago’s progressive destruction of Otello is always addressed to someone else, either a third character or a crowd, as placeholders for the theatre audience. Even in scenes when they are the only ones on stage, such as the Temptation Scene, the very theatricality of their transformation and the way the music emphatically defines their differences and changes, at times to the point of mimicry, asserts and defines an addressee. This third element is summoned as the recipient for whom the crisis of individuation of the subject is staged. In other words, the opera interpellates its public as empathetic witness to the demise of the protagonist. This empathy is, in addition, perspicuously connoted as an ethical act, for, as observed earlier, the opera’s structure of address is complicated in its very functioning by the polarization of the characters. The agent of the illusion, and motor of the action, is connoted as evil.

article might have known a famous book on Salvini’s Othello by Tuckerman Mason, which described his performances over the course of a decade. Mason, The Othello of Tommaso Salvini. 79 “Paroxysms of passion tend to communicate themselves to those not primarily aﬀected through that subtle contagion which we call sympathy.” Archer, Masks or Faces, 220; see also the passage quoted on pp. 112–13. Acting in Otello 139

Hence illusion is both unavoidable and critiqued: embraced by deploying all the tricks allowed by the medium (theatre technology, acting, scoring), but also undermined from the inside, from the very story it conjures up. Except for the final moments: only at the end in fact is Otello freed from the controlling and malignant gaze of Jago – a gaze that has framed every move of the Moor since his triumphal entrance in Act 1. It is as if Jago’s monstrous story does not quite coincide with the whole dramaturgical arc of the opera and leaves out a short coda. At that point the audience is left to witness not only Otello’s death, a by now unavoidable outcome, but most importantly Otello’s disillusionment: his exiting of Jago’s story, or, to put it otherwise, the very moment when he traverses the fantasy. The question then is Otello’s disillusionment: what does Otello find on the other side of Jago’s phantomatic story? Which is also to say: what is the “subject” left with, in this moment between his downfall, a kind of social death, and physical death? Let us look a bit closer at the ending, a passage that has already received lots of 80 attention, especially in relation to the conclusive recall of the “bacio motive.” Jago has at last left the stage: faced with the public uncovering of his misdeeds he sneaks out of Desdemona’s chamber like a comic character, with the all-too-appropriate accompani- 81 ment of ad lib. orchestral tremolo, and runs away. Then it is Otello who takes charge of narrative closure, also controlling the register and reception of the events in front of his witnesses – Cassio, Lodovico, Montano, Emilia. First he announces the ending of his own story, shifting again to the third person (“Here is the end of my path. Oh! Glory! Othello was”), and then of Desdemona’s story, in a sort of belated recognition (“And you, how pale you are ...Pious creature born under a malignant star ...Desdemona! Ah dead!”). The abrupt drawing of the concealed dagger to stab himself is but the logical consequence, the unavoidable resolution of a tragedy consummated much earlier. Lastly, in a smooth but conspicuous montage, the orchestra takes over (see Example 4.4): the accompaniment narrativizes Otello’s dying gestures by shifting to a little motive heard at the start of the finale that accompanied his contemplation of 82 Desdemona asleep. The short motive, shaped so clearly by the string tremolo supporting the ascending phrase in the reeds with a yearning repetition of the last two notes (not uncommonly a minor ^6 to ^5), brings in a complex temporality. It reiterates the immediate past, the

80 See in particular Kerman, Opera as Drama, 7–9, 130–4; and Roger Parker and Matthew Brown, “Ancora un bacio: Three Scenes from Verdi’s Otello,” 19th-Century Music 9/1 (Summer 1985), 50–62.. 81 VS-O, 358/3/4; DS-O, 105: “Jago turns around and, with gestures that give the impression he wants to reply, he cunningly steps backwards to reach the exit. The others are so intent on hearing his explanation that they do not notice his movement. [diagram] (The orchestra tremolo should be prolonged for as long as it is necessary to this scene.) All of a sudden, with the speed of lightning, Jago shouts: No, extracts the sword, and swings it around so that nobody can approach him. He simultaneously leaps between the two guards and escapes through the door.” 82 VS-O, 363/1/5; heard earlier, soon after Otello’s entrance in Act 4: VS-O, 343/2/2. Budden comments on the “inﬁnite longing” of the repeated notes; Budden, The Operas of Verdi, vol. iii, 395. 140 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 4.4 Ending of Otello, Act 4 Acting in Otello 141

“sorrowful tenderness” of Otello’s gazing at Desdemona asleep, thus reminding us of 83 Otello’s underlying desire, despite everything. But it also creates expectations for the ensuing bacio motive, as heard before, which famously recalls verbatim, as if in a cyclic closure, the duet in Act 1, the only other moment in the opera when Otello is exempted from Jago’sinfluence. If earlier in the finale the orchestra’s recall of the bacio motive served as the aural captioning of Otello’s mute pantomime, here the character is provided with the capacity to recollect on his own, to organize verbally his dying moment as performance of memory: “Before killing you, my bride, I kissed you. Now, dying in the shadow in which I dwell ...A kiss ...a kiss again ...ah! another kiss ...” The orchestra’s expected and yet sudden registral opening of the tremolo into the kiss motive (and the “radiant turn” of the minor to major ^6), which seems to prompt the gesture even before Otello can speak about it, suggests the attempt at finding again what was lost in the monstrous story projected by Jago. Through this recall Otello is endowed with the capacity to recuperate his own past, his own history, and thus recover what was obliterated by the nightmarish scenario of 84 jealousy projected by Jago. Perhaps musical recollection here is an appeal to the conservative power of nostalgia: the kiss – the gesture, the event, the affect, but also the musical motive, a detachable “musical pearl” on its own – stands in for what could have been, and becomes a fetish of sorts for a past that has been lost. However, there seems to be more to it. In particular nostalgia does not account either for this moment’s unsparingly cathartic effect or for the way it connects events before and after death. What is brought back then at the threshold of life is the sense of temporal span: the return of the kiss motive brings with it the sense of its ineluctable pastness, and of the present’s unbridgeable distance from that perfect moment of the kiss, separated as it is 85 by death (Desdemona’s but also Otello’s). The music therefore constructs this ending less as nostalgia than as anamnesis: reminiscence is about recognizing a self across the divide of death, a before and after, the sum of which might account for a subject, unified by his own history. Opera is used as a temporal machine which, through music, is able to bring back the other half of the subject: less in a flash back than in a flash of inspiration

83 The staging manual minutely maps the character’s gestures and affects onto the score for this whole finale. In particular during the first utterance of this tremolo and reeds motive Otello has been looking at Desdemona asleep, when “a sense of sorrowful tenderness invades him and, still contemplating her, he walks to the head of the bed.” DS-O, 96. 84 As Kerman has pointed out, in the Shakespearean tragedy Othello’s final recovery of his integrity as a subject is pursued by way of the final soliloquies, starting with the famous “It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.” Kerman, Opera as Drama, 6–7. 85 Parker and Brown’s structural-analytical look at the final measures reaches a similar interpretation: “The poignancy of these final bars is not simply a matter of effective thematic recall. It is, rather, a culmination: the distance travelled by the theme since its appearance in act I and in particular its magnificently controlled preparation in the final scene, imbues it with layer upon layer of association and structural weight.” Parker and Brown, “Ancora un bacio,” 61. 142 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

or recognition that makes present with extraordinary vividness the remoteness of the self-in-the-past. It would not be difficult to imagine alternate ways to end the opera, more indebted for instance to the “melodramatic imagination” that informed Italian opera for most of the century. So one could envisage an emphasis on the protagonist’s despair for the belatedness of his recognition of Desdemona’s faithfulness, an indulging in the actor’s capacity to express the extremes of guilt, repentance, despair, and so forth. Instead the orchestra and the character advance the possibility of catharsis simply by enunciating the kiss as a lost object. Lost is not just Desdemona: the musical motive’s first utterance in Act 1 came as the culmination and seal of a love speech framed in terms of exchange of narratives. The motive corresponds to the dream of total empathetic exchange of stories 86 that is the duet, to the possibility of mutual impassionate absorption. What became lost and is restated at the end, then, is a form of spectatorship, the belief in empathy of storyteller and listener mediated by a story, thus a relation not just of imaginary identification but of “sympathetic contagion.” That sudden and yet familiar expansion into the bacio motive then suggests an opening up into a possible alternate mode of mimesis.

86 The illustrious and ever-present cultural reference here is of course the courtly love of Paolo and Francesca as narrated in Dante’s Inferno, canto 5. 5 The real of opera Puccini’s Manon Lescaut

In Being and Nothingness Jean-Paul Sartre formulated the problem of “the existence of Others” in terms of the subject’s relation to its visual ﬁeld; in particular, in the section entitled “The Look,” his argument proceeds through a series of vignettes in which “the subject” appears as if on a stage, confronted by the menacing presence of “the look of the 1 Other.” One of these vignettes is particularly poignant, in that it is shaped around an exquisitely dramatic turn of events:

Let us imagine that moved by jealousy, curiosity, or vice I have just glued my ear to the door and looked through a keyhole ...Behind that door a spectacle is presented as “to be seen,” a conversation as “to be heard.” ...The door, the keyhole are at once both instruments and obstacles ...Hence from this moment “I do what I have to do.” But all of a sudden I hear footsteps in the hall. Someone is looking at me! What does this mean? It means that I am suddenly affected in my being and that essential modifications appear in my structure ...All of a sudden I am conscious of myself as escaping myself, ...in that I have my foundation 2 outside myself. I am for myself only as I am a pure reference to the Other. The abrupt turn of events is triggered just by the sound of footsteps – but it could as well be the rustling of leaves, or the light movement of a curtain – a rather banal occurrence that signals the presence of others. But its effect is of far greater import, in that it entails a crucial revelation: the revelation that the self is “figured” from outside, that the image that represents the subject is conceived through the look of the Other.

I do not reject it as a strange image, but it is present to me as a self which I am without knowing it; for I discover it in shame and, in other instances, in pride. It is shame or pride 3 which reveals to me the Other’s look and myself at the end of that look.” I shall return to Sartre’s scene, but for now I want to pause on the feeling of shame that colors the ﬁnal revelation: shame at being caught as a voyeur, in a position of desire (while lurking, eavesdropping), but also at the discovery that the “I” is denied the possibility of control and knowledge over its own image. Shame of some sort seems to concern Jerry Fodor as well. In his review of Michele Girardi’s book on Puccini, the philosopher and opera lover claims that Puccini’s operas are powerful “theatrical machines” that elicit an ambivalent response:

1 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Hazel E. Barnes, trans. (New York, 1956), 259–60. 2 3 Ibid., 261. Ibid.

143 144 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

One is often moved to be sure; but there is also a sense of being complicit in something 4 not entirely nice. The puzzle about Puccini is why this should be so. A reason for this uneasiness is found in a dramaturgical feature – the gratuitous quality of the characters’ suﬀering:

The audience is required to acquiesce in a suffering that signifies nothing but itself. That, however, is the aesthetic of a voyeur. No wonder one feels spasms of ambivalence; no wonder 5 one feels jerked about and put upon. And Puccini knows his business. Like the protagonist of Sartre’sstory,Fodor’s spectator seems to have heard footsteps while looking through the keyhole. His, moreover, is a pretty common reaction to Puccini’s operas, which might be easily dismissed as just another intellectual’sapologetic confession or shamed admission. But the candor of the philosopher complaining that he feels manipulated into “something not entirely nice” by Puccini is compelling enough and particularly well suited to the case of Manon Lescaut. Probably not as calculated in its theatricality as Puccini’s subsequent operas, Manon Lescaut nonetheless experiments with an economy of vision and desire that includes and more firmly positions the spectator. As I will argue in this chapter, the staging manual strives more than any of those studied so far towards the constitution of an apparatus that regulates the opera’s system of address. It is commonly postulated that one of the main aspects differentiating theatre from cinema consists in the degree of control over the spectators’ apperception. Thus, contrary to cinema’s constitution of the viewer by means of the camera/projector, theatre is supposed to offer a scene, perhaps a tableau, within which the spectators are free to orient their attention and gaze. This oppositional model of spectatorship, in its generic attempt at some sort of definition of the specificity of the two media, fails most crudely to account for those theatrical (and in this case operatic) devices that function appositely to position and align the audience – its viewing, listening, emotional connection to the staged events – by 6 enacting a specific scopic regime.

COLLAGE

Puccini’s third opera, premiered in Turin on February 1, 1893, was a triumph, and contemporary critics pronounced its creator the foremost composer on the Italian scene. But such a promising beginning has not prevented the opera’s later critical reception

4 Jerry Fodor, “Not Entirely Nice,” London Review of Books 22/21 (November 2, 2000), 32; review of Michele Girardi, Puccini: His International Art, Laura Basini, trans. (Chicago, 2000). 5 Fodor, “Not Entirely Nice,” 32. 6 The reference to Christian Metz’s notion of “scopic regime” is not casual, since it was adopted to define cinema as opposed to theatre. For Metz, however, cinema’s scopic regime is constituted as different from theatre by “the absence of the object seen”; see The Imaginary Signifier, Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster, and Alfred Guzzetti, trans. (Bloomington, 1982), 61. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 145

7 from being colored by a degree of uneasiness. Today Manon Lescaut is generally thought problematic, its undeniable beauty marred by numerous flaws; it is, in sum, “not entirely nice.” Seen from the perspective of the operas that followed, it has been relegated to the status of an experiment: a “transitional work, leading out of the uneven 8 and ill-fated Edgar to set the compositional stage for La bohème.” Among its faults critics most commonly note the lack of a unified dramatic and musical design, as well as the numerous gaps and inconsistencies in the plot. Mosco Carner, author of a fundamental study of Puccini, sees the opera as a failed attempt to compete with Massenet’s setting of 9 the Prévost novel: “Massenet’s Manon is a masterpiece, which Puccini’s is not.” For Carner, not only was Puccini unable to create a suitable French atmosphere as background to the events, but he also miscalculated the effect of their dramatic progression: “misfortune comes to [the two lovers] too soon ...and thus renders the opera top-heavy 10 with grief and despair.” William Ashbrook, another authoritative Puccinian voice, shares similar concerns: the troubled genesis of the libretto –“three years and seven men 11 to complete”–is for him the main cause for the incoherent dramatic structure. Both critics focus on the lack of continuity between the acts, the consequent inconsistencies in the characters’ development, and above all the weakness of Act 4. Consisting of a long death scene in an improbable desert in Louisiana, Act 4 is for Carner “the biggest 12 dramatic blunder of all,” since, as Ashbrook adds, “there is a single mood, a single 13 color, no spectacle to engage the eye, no contrast.” In Italian Opera in Transition, Jay Nicolaisen has less severe pronouncements, but his overall view of the opera is none- 14 theless tinged by “mixed feelings.” Obviously influenced by the notion of “transition” in the book’s title, his account of Manon Lescaut enthusiastically acknowledges the modernity of the musical style: the musico-dramatic continuity, the dramatic efficacy of its tonal and thematic organization, and the assimilation of Wagnerian procedures into a more personal and “Italian” idiom. However, mainly because of the usual charges – the plot’s incongruities and the weakness of Act 4,a“moribund appendage”– 15 he concludes that “the opera remains a fine but flawed work.” A few voices, however, have attempted to reevaluate the opera. Michele Girardi defends it from the accusation of lacking unity by demonstrating that it is the music that

7 For a more thorough historical account of this opera’s early reception, especially in view of its alleged promotion of a post-Verdian national opera, see Alexandra Wilson, “Deﬁning Italianness: The Opera That Made Puccini,” The Opera Quarterly 24/1–2 (2008), 82–92. 8 Suzanne Scherr, “The Chronology of Composition of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut,” in Giacomo Puccini: l’uomo, il musicista, il panorama europeo. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi su Giacomo Puccini nel 70o anniversario della morte (Lucca, 25–29 novembre 1994), Gabriella Biagi Ravenni and Carolyn Gianturco, eds. (Lucca, 1997), 81. 9 10 Mosco Carner, Puccini: A Critical Biography ([1958]; London, 1992), 350. Ibid., 350. 11 12 William Ashbrook, The Operas of Puccini ([1968]; Ithaca, 1985), 32. Carner, Puccini, 349. 13 14 Ashbrook, The Operas of Puccini, 34. Nicolaisen, Italian Opera in Transition, 222–39. 15 Ibid., 225 and 239. 146 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

16 provides that much-desired unifying design even at the level of minute detail. A sophisticated use of leitmotivic techniques and tonal relations creates a web of cross- references that binds the four acts together, despite the gaps in the plot. And yet, the discrepancies in the dramatic sequence of events can hardly be ignored, despite one’s confidence in the referential value of recurring themes and tonal relations. Two other contributions suggest a different perspective. Gianfranco Musco and Roger Parker have both observed that the opera’s aesthetic value could reside precisely in what has been 17 regarded as a shortcoming, namely its discontinuity. Both indicate the possibility of seeing this discontinuity as the assimilation of the fin-de-siècle taste for collage, which for Musco is realized through the succession of separate tableaux. Parker, in particular, argues that the patchwork of dramatic events of the much-criticized libretto goes well with the wealth of ideas and variety of styles in the music:

If Manon Lescaut gives pleasure, it is surely on the basis of these levels of difference, on the variety of its music, its structures, its effects ...Everything encourages us to accept Manon piecemeal, to perceive each phrase of the drama as self-contained and ...to rejoice in a 18 challenging variety of musical pleasures. These voices represent a different kind of critical attitude, one not so much preoccupied in salvaging the opera from easy dismissal but rather in accounting for the pleasure it offers the spectator, despite (or perhaps because of) its faults. My discussion of Manon Lescaut will start at this critical juncture. This chapter argues that the sequence of four diversified and discontinuous acts, ending in the sudden void of Act 4, is precisely what compellingly calls into question issues of visuality and spectatorship. Not only does the opera ask to be looked at in a certain way, but its system of representation is organized by the act of looking, with the female protagonist always at its center. A description of the stage manual is followed by a more detailed study of the position and function the opera ascribes to the act of looking, in terms conceptualized by film theory and psychoanalysis. I will argue that, like in Sartre’s story, looking is closely if uncannily intertwined with identity, and their relationship controls not only the dramatic content but also the very activity of being a spectator in the theatre. Thus, the “dramatic blunder” of Act 4 is considered as a disruption of this relationship, which destabilizes both the identity of the heroine and that of the spectator. Casa Ricordi has not yet published a new edition of this stage manual, and so I will refer to the original document, which exists in two versions, probably printed in close chronological sequence. One is consistent with the opera’s first

16 Girardi, Puccini, 67. 17 Gianfranco Musco, Musica e teatro in Giacomo Puccini (Cortona, 1989), vol. i, 178–264; Roger Parker, “Manon Lescaut and the Patchwork Challenge,” liner notes to Giacomo Puccini, Manon Lescaut, Riccardo Chailly, cond. (CD Decca/London 421-426-1, 1988), 14–20. 18 Parker, “Manon Lescaut,” 19. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 147

19 version, and therefore might be dated as indicated in the Casa Ricordi publication 20 records: May 2, 1893, three months after the Turin premiere. The other version contains the variants of the Act 1 finale included in the third edition of the vocal score, variants first mentioned by Luigi Illica – one of the last contributors to the libretto – in a letter to Giulio Ricordi of late October 1893, which, as Girardi has indicated, were completed for the 21 Naples revival of January 21, 1894. This version therefore was published sometime after October 1893, following either the January performance in Naples or most probably the one at La Scala a month later. The two versions are almost identical except for the instructions related to the ending of Act 1.Thefirst version is missing some detailed guidelines for minor characters and supernumeraries that were added later, but unchar- acteristically includes an engraved drawing of the set at the beginning of each act. The engravings recall in a rough and rather cursory way the more detailed sketches for the set that were disseminated in color and still constitute a large part of the visual archive of nineteenth-century opera. Here, however, the inclusion of this shorthand version of the set design suggests that at least at an initial stage the opera’stextsaimedtocontrolas much as possible all that pertained to the visual, ensuring a certain precision in the characterization of each act as a self-sufficient tableau.

LOCAL COLORS: AMIENS– PARIS– LE HAVRE– LOUISIANA

The stage manual devises the opera in the way of a slide show, unfolding through four distinct tableaux, each constituting the dramatic events in diﬀerent spatial and temporal terms. Besides a few visual links and recurrences, the four-act sequence remains paratactic, shaped by the distinctiveness and dissimilarity of the sets. As has often been remarked, the score contributes to this eﬀect of juxtaposition, articulating 22 the opera into four separate parts, each with its distinct musical structure.

19 For a chronology of the score’s numerous editions, see Cecil Hopkinson, A Bibliography of the Works of Giacomo Puccini (New York, 1968), 8–13. 20 Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut” di Giacomo Puccini compilata da Giulio Ricordi (Milan, 1893, plate no. 96457), 54 pp.; Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan [Misc.1078.34]; henceforth DS1-ML. 21 This manual, same plate number but in a smaller format than the first one, was published with permission of its owner, Marcello Conati, in the exhibition catalogue Museo teatrale alla Scala: 1880–1930. Momenti della messa in scena (February 12–March 19, 1977), G. Carutti, E. Calza, L. Palma, C. Pozzoli, and S. Romano, eds. (Milan, 1977); henceforth DS2-ML; since there are no page numbers, those indicated are my additions. Girardi, Puccini, 85. 22 Parker, “Manon Lescaut,” 17. Ashbrook has also shown how the libretto defines each act down to the smallest detail by verbal means (Ashbrook, The Operas of Puccini, 34). The music of Act 1 has been described as “symphonic,” since it unfolds through four integrated sections roughly corresponding to the typical four movements of a symphony: first and slow “movements” followed by “Scherzo” and finale; on this see George Bernard Shaw, Music in London 1890–94 (London, 1950), vol. iii, 219, quoted in Ashbrook, The Operas of Puccini, 36, and in Girardi, Puccini, 70 n. 33; and especially René Leibowitz, “L’Oeuvre de Puccini et les problèmes de l’opéra contemporain,” in Histoire de l’Opéra (Paris, 1957), Italian trans. in Storia dell’opera 148 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Figure 5.1 Plate for Act 1, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut”

Act 1 consists of a deep set representing a large square by the inn in Amiens 23 (Figure 5.1). During most of the act – excluding the episodes when Manon and Des Grieux are alone – there is a great deal of activity on stage, with groups of townspeople, students, and young women sitting and drinking at the inn or taking a stroll in the square. The profusion of stage music during the ﬁrst part of the act functions like the setting in establishing the ambience of Manon and Des Grieux’s ﬁrst encounter. The student Edmondo opens with a madrigal; then he composes another, gallantly addressed to the 24 young women strolling in the square. Soon afterwards Des Grieux sings a facetious song to the still unknown “graceful and charming young girl” with whom he will fall in

(Milan, 1966); quoted and discussed in Girardi, Puccini, 69–70. Both Ashbrook and Girardi, however, argue against this large-scale symphonic view of Act 1. 23 DS1-ML, 5. 24 All references to the libretto (henceforth L-ML) are to the version published in Enrico Maria Ferrando, ed., Tutti i libretti di Puccini (Milan, 1984); translations are mine. All references to the music are to the Ricordi vocal score: Giacomo Puccini, Manon Lescaut ([1883]; Milan, 1996, plate no. 97321); henceforth VS-ML. Edmondo’s madrigals are “Ave, sera gentile” [“Hail, gentle evening”] and then “Giovinezza è il vostro nome” [“Youth is your name”], L-ML, 49, 50; VS-ML, 4, 8. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 149

25 love – almost an ironic foreshadowing of his fateful encounter with Manon. Eventually everybody joins in: students, townspeople, and girls sing about the pleasures of the night. The local color devised by this conﬂuence of the sonic, visual, and verbal relies on precise visual and musical references. This complex milieu not only prepares for the heroine’s entrance but also determines her identity: her image as a demure, innocent girl on her way to the convent appears to be generated by the environment itself. The references are also generic: it is not by chance that the thematic core of the opera – Des Grieux’s obsessive passion for Manon – originates within a context depicted in the mode of opera semiseria of half a century earlier, the lighthearted evening gathering on the village square. At the rise of the curtain for Act 2, the scenery makes a striking visual impact, in obvious contrast with the previous act: a shallow set represents a salon decorated in 26 Louis XV style, with gilded furniture and curtains in yellow damask (Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2 Plate for Act 2, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut”

25 “Tra voi, belle, brune e bionde / si nasconde / giovinetta / vaga e vezzosa, dal labbro rosa / che m’aspetta?” [“Among you, beautiful, dark- and fair-haired young women, is there hiding a graceful and charming young girl with rosy lips, who waits for me?”], L-ML, 51; VS-ML, 21. 26 DS1-ML, 21. 150 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

This scenery creates an effect of artificiality and closeness that is intensified by the unchanging lighting: any perception of time, usually conveyed through light change, is blocked out. Spatially and temporally the salon is independent of outside reality. Here Manon reappears as the mistress of Geronte: the modest girl of Act 1 now sits at the dressing table, sumptuously attired and applying elaborate makeup with powder and beauty spots. This new persona appears also as the effect of the scenery: Manon has adorned herself in the fashion of the room, as one among Geronte’s riches. The opulent salonissupposedtobe her private boudoir, but it lacks any sort of intimacy, any sense of being home. The 27 sequence of stage music of the first part of the act (madrigal, minuet, and pastoral song) turns the room into a stage upon which Manon is exhibited in front of Geronte’sfriends. The music of Act 2 consists of two parts: the first one, somehow “neo-rococo” in its rendition of an eighteenth-century ambience, is set in sharp opposition to the second one, which stages the passionate re-encounter of the two lovers. Des Grieux’s arrival triggers a sudden rhetorical and stylistic shift to the sweeping high-octane second part. 28 Now the “golden alcove,” as she calls it, has become a golden cage where she is kept and from which she is unable to escape. The ending in particular, with her frantic and futile effort to flee with Des Grieux from the police sent by the betrayed Geronte, dramatizes this sense of entrapment and claustrophobia. The room has “captivated” her with the lure of all its gold treasures. Act 3 is another matter altogether. After an orchestral interlude the curtain discloses 29 an outdoor setting in the last hours of the night. The deep set represents a square in Le Havre; on the left there is the prison, on the right a house and an alley, and in the 30 background the harbor, where a ship is docked (Figure 5.3). The change of lighting midway through the act separates the events into two phases: a nocturnal scene allows Lescaut and Des Grieux, clad in black capes, to plot the heroine’s rescue, and the lovers to meet by the prison’swindow.The lamplighter extinguishing the light in the square marks the approach of dawn and the transition to a second part. The stage suddenly becomes filled by a crowd of soldiers, bystanders, and sailors, and then the prison’s sergeant starts the roll-call, the public humiliation of the prisoners. Daylight, as is customary, interrupts the lovers and sets off the public embarkation scene, when Manon is once again on display center stage.

27 According to Girardi, most of these pieces are self-borrowings; see “La rappresentazione musicale dell’atmosfera settecentesca nel secondo atto di Manon Lescaut,” in Esotismo e colore locale nell’opera di Puccini, Jurgen Maehder, ed. (Pisa, 1985), 65–82; and also in Girardi, Puccini, 86–92. 28 L-ML, 68; “alcova dorata.” 29 In the score the “Intermezzo” is captioned with a passage from the Prévost novel which narrates the events following Manon’s imprisonment. VS-ML, 221. The music for this act is usually described as the combination of diﬀerent sections with at its center the extensive ensemble of the embarkation scene, when the female prisoners are called out one by one and board the ship that will deport them to America. 30 DS1-ML, 35. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 151

Figure 5.3 Plate for Act 3, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut”

The dramatic progression leading to Act 3 is for once fairly straightforward: we saw Manon being arrested at the end of Act 2, and we then see her in jail in Act 3, the night before her deportation. Continuity and dramatic progression are, however, disrupted by the insertion of the orchestral interlude and especially by Act 3’srepeated references to Act 1, which stall the action in a sort of circular temporality. For instance, the scenery clearly evokes Act 1: as opposed to the claustrophobic interior of Act 2, both are outdoors arranged around a central square, and both involve large crowd scenes focused on Manon. Also similar is the sequence of events, which 31 consists in both acts of the lovers’ encounter and eventual escape. A light change articulates the shift in both acts: in Act 1 nightfall ends Manon’s public moment and shelters the two lovers’ escape, while in Act 3 it is daylight that intervenes, leading to the fateful exposure of the heroine to public humiliation. The square of Act 3 thus recalls that of Act 1 as its distortion: the idyllic atmosphere and the admiring looks that were once cast on the virtuous maiden in the square of Amiens are pathologized and deformed in that of Le Havre. As for the controversial Act 4, the curtain opens on Manon and Des Grieux as they cross a desert plain in Louisiana, weak from fatigue. When Manon faints with

31 The pattern is recognizable in Act 2 as well, except that there the ﬁnal escape is thwarted. 152 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

exhaustion and thirst, Des Grieux goes in search of water. This solo scene is the occasion for an aria that proved most troublesome for Puccini: the first version was reworked many times, heavily cut, then even omitted from the score, and finally 32 reinserted several years later. When Des Grieux returns empty-handed, she dies in his arms. In this last act the scenic and visual apparatus that was so powerfully deployed in the previous acts is deactivated, and the whole charge of representing is left to the music alone. The music, besides lacking emotional variety, is almost entirely based on reminiscences. The use of recollections at the end of the opera characterizes nearly all Puccini’s subsequent operas, but, as Girardi has pointed out, in Act 4 this strategy is curiously appropriate to the dramatic content. The music has no present to account for because nothing happens; it can represent Manon’sdeathonly 33 by evoking the past. The theatrical vacuum that surrounds the heroine’sdeathhasa counterpart in the stage manual’s retreat into silence. There are no instructions except for a set diagram and a short note announcing that the libretto contains all the guidance the two actors/singers might need and that it is up to them to find the 34 right manner to express the deeply moving situation (Figure 5.4). The plate illustrat- 35 ing the set is also telling (Figure 5.5): in contrast with the over-defined, detailed depiction of the environment provided for the other acts, this set offers instead the 36 static picture of an undifferentiated space representing a “nowhere.” The one element that changes during the act is light. According to the stage manual the backdrop simply depicts a sunset, but it is the libretto, and specifically Manon’s

32 The aria was omitted in the vocal scores published between 1909 and 1919, and reinserted in 1923. See Suzanne Scherr, “Editing Puccini’s Operas: The Case of Manon Lescaut,” Acta Musicologica 52 (1990), 62–81. Also of interest for a discussion of the unconventional and open-ended character of the aria is Virgilio Bernardoni, “La drammaturgia dell’aria nel primo Puccini,” Studi pucciniani 1 (1998), 43–56. 33 Girardi, Puccini, 96. 34 “Non si crede necessario fare una dettagliata messa in scena del quarto atto. Il libretto contiene tutte le indicazioni sceniche necessarie. – È compito dei due artisti (Manon e Des Grieux) l’interpretare la commoventissima posizione drammatica intorno alla quale si impernia tutto l’atto: senza sentimento, senza una espressione vivace nel canto e nell’azione non si potrà raggiungere l’effetto voluto: né tali qualità si possono insegnare colla messa in scena, ma devono nascere completamente spontanee dal talento d’interpretazione dei due cantanti.” (DS1-ML, 51)[“It is not considered necessary to provide detailed instructions for the staging of Act 4. The libretto contains all the necessary stage directions. – It is the task of the two artists (Manon and Des Grieux) to interpret the moving dramatic situation around which the whole act is centered: without emotions, without a vivid expression in the singing and acting one will not be able to obtain the desired effect: on the other hand, such skills could not be taught by staging instructions, they should instead spontaneously originate from the interpretive talent of the two singers.”] This reluctance to instruct the performers is not uncommon in the Ricordi stage manuals; a similar disclaimer is given for instance for Jago’s “Credo” in the disposizione scenica for Otello.SeeHepokoskiand Viale Ferrero, eds., “Otello” di Giuseppe Verdi, 37. However, Manon’sAct4 remains the most extreme and extended example. 35 DS1-ML, 49. 36 For a study of the specifically American character of this otherwise odd Louisiana desert see the fine essay by Laura Basini, “Manon Lescaut and the Myth of America,” The Opera Quarterly 24/1–2 (2008), 62–81. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 153

A T T O Q U A R T O

3 3 3

3 3 2 4 4 4

In America. 1. Telone circolare: cielo infocato, verso il tramonto. 2. Sentiero praticabile. 3. Spezzati di terreno. 4. Sassi.

Figure 5.4 Diagram for Act 4, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut”

Figure 5.5 Plate for Act 4, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut” 154 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

37 words, that describes and controls the growing darkness. Her perception of the decreasing light progresses together with her awareness of her imminent end, so that the night comes to coincide with her death: “I am dying: the shadows descend: night is 38 falling over me,” and again “Farewell ...dark is the night ...I am cold [...] tell me ... 39 my radiant youth? I shall not see the sun again.” The light change therefore marks time but hardly realistically. The mapping of the death scene onto the few moments when the sky grows darker manipulates the temporality of the ending and generates a perception of time that is expanded and subjective: a projection of the heroine’s interior process. So in sum what kind of spectacle is Manon Lescaut? The opera’s visual apparatus aims at an effect of differentiation and discontinuity, positioning the audience in front of a series of different spectacles. Most importantly, sets, blocking, and gestures consistently work to direct the audience’s attention towards the protagonist. She, in turn, adapts to the changing background, mirroring and fulfilling the expectations prepared by each setting. Her transformations are presented as the stages of a process that leads to her downfall, but the lack of dramatic justification for such a process results in the consec- utive display of static modes of being. On the whole, Manon appears to be a character without development, and hardly with a history. In addition, each act seems to reiterate the same sequence of events: the two lovers are temporarily joined and then are either forced to run away (Acts 1 and 3) or separated (2 and 4). Thus dramatic continuity is not simply lacking but is replaced by the reiteration of patterns of events in an ever-changing background, visually and musically defined. Manon Lescaut then seems much more than just a flawed opera, and even if we adopt a less dismissive critical attitude and regard it as a collage, these aspects seems to be the outcome of a more radical dramaturgical conception. At stake here is a fundamental change in how the opera engages its audience, how it asks the spectators to look. If Manon Lescaut consistently and insistently abdicates a conventional dramaturgical development and continuity, how does it capture its audience’s attention? Or, to put it another way, if it renounces the tight sequencing of events that typically ensures that an audience is absorbed in the drama and entertained by the spectacle, then what kind of

37 Her ﬁrst words are: “The air around us darkens ...and the day is dying!” [“L’aria d’intorno / or si fa scura. / ...e muore il giorno!”] Then, at the beginning of her aria, her statement “Around me the sky darkens” corresponds to the stage direction “the horizon darkens” [“l’orizzonte s’oscura”]. Both versions of the stage manual prescribe for the backdrop a “red ﬁery sky at sunset” [“cielo infocato, verso il tramonto”] (DS1-ML, 51;DS2-ML, 45), while stage directions in both libretto and score indicate a cloudy sky at nightfall (“cielo annuvolato. Cade la sera,” L-ML, 91; VS-ML, 274). The darkness and greyness suggested by the latter directions are probably more consistent with Manon’s reiterated references to darkness. 38 L-ML, 94; “Muoio: scendon le tenebre: / su me la notte scende.” 39 L-ML, 94–5; “Addio ...cupa è la notte ...ho freddo [...] dimmi ...la luminosa / mia giovinezza? Il sole più non vedrò.” Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 155 spectatorship does it call for? The key to this issue, as we shall see, lies in the construction of the very act of looking as the structuring device of both the system of representation and that of address.

ENCHANTED, TRANSFIXED, MESMERIZED

The stage manual is remarkably specific and consistent in providing instructions about the actors’ gesture of looking – a detail rarely found in other disposizioni sceniche. From her entrance in Act 1, Manon is presented through the way the other characters look at her, especially Des Grieux. His act of looking at her ecstatically is so often reiterated that besides representing his love for Manon it becomes a sort of recurring visual motive. A few examples from Act 1 illustrate the relevance assigned to this gesture. When the coach arrives, Des Grieux is standing downstage on the left, by the inn’s 40 open room, intent on reading a book (Figure 5.6). The sound of Lescaut’svoice calling the innkeeper catches his attention: he finally raises his eyes, sees Manon in 41 front of him, and “making a gesture of amazement, he looks at her ecstatically.” Then he crosses the stage still transfixed, and marveling at her beauty hides behind a 42 tree on the right in order to view her better. Manon stands upstage in the center, the focal point for the crowd on stage. Later on, when everybody leaves, she sits on the bench by the trees, and only then does Des Grieux, who has never turned his eyes

Figure 5.6 Diagram for Manon’s arrival in Act 1, Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut”

40 41 42 DS2-ML, 9. DS2-ML, 9; “facendo un gesto di meraviglia, la osserva estatico.” DS2-ML, 9. 156 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

43 away, approach her to begin their first duet. After this initial encounter, Des Grieux follows her with his eyes as she leaves, then turns towards the audience and bursts into 44 his aria “Donna non vidi mai” [“I have never seen before a woman like her”]. He remains there, ecstatic, while the students mock him. Similar is the lovers’ second encounter: Des Grieux is waiting in the square when Manon appears on the staircase: 45 “he is shocked and remains ecstatic, looking at her.” From then onwards, Des Grieux’s attitude towards Manon will be repeatedly marked by this enchanted gaze. The libretto emphasizes Des Grieux’s gesture and thematizes it, creating a direct connection between the verbalization of his feelings and his way of looking. He approaches Manon, saying “Forgivemywords,butIamdrawntoyoubyamysterious fascination. I even feel as if I have already seen your face before, and strange feelings 46 move my heart.” The trite pickup is contradicted soon afterwards in his aria’s first line (“I have never seen a woman like her”), but it is quite clear by this point that the character is in charge of controlling the very modality of looking. Looking is inextricably charged with both the dramaturgical momentousness of the lovers’ encounter and with the very positioning of desire in the visual register. The music is also involved with Des Grieux’s looking. The motive traditionally associated with Manon, which will recur almost obsessively throughout the opera, appears for the first time precisely when the coach arrives and she alights, watched intently by the 47 crowd. Beginning with the chorus’sword“Vediam,” this whole scene, including Des Grieux’s gesture of amazement described above, is constructed on the motive’s characteristic melodic cell, made of two descending notes in iambic rhythm (Example 5.1). The semantic association of Manon with this motive becomes obvious shortly afterwards, when, introducing herself to Des Grieux, she enunciates her name according to its characteristic contours (Example 5.2). The iambic rhythm of the music derives from the verbal rhythm of “Manon Lescaut”–each word has two syllables, with the stress on the second – so that the motive signifies the name, which in turn signifies the

43 L-ML, 52; “Gentle lady, accept my prayer: let your sweet lips tell me your name.” 44 L-ML, 55;DS2-ML, 12: “Des Grieux avrà sempre seguito Manon collo sguardo: appena essa è entrata nella camera del primo piano, Des Grieux si volge e con accento appassionato, esclama: Donna non vidi mai.” [“Des Grieux’s look has always followed Manon: as soon as she enters the room on the ﬁrst ﬂoor, Des Grieux turns and with passionate accent he exclaims: Donna non vidi mai.”] 45 DS2-ML, 15; “trasale e rimane estatico a guardarla.” 46 “Perdonate al dir mio, / ma da un fascino arcano a voi spinto son io. / Persino il vostro volto parmi aver visto, / e strani moti ha il cuore.” Similarly later on, after their re-encounter in Act 2, when Manon begs for forgiveness for having betrayed him, Des Grieux yields, acknowledging again in visual terms the power she has upon him: “Questo è l’antico fascino che m’accieca” [“this is the old fascination which blinds me”] (L-ML, 75), and then, “Nell’occhio tuo profondo / io leggo il mio destino” [“in the depth of your eyes I read my destiny”] (L-ML, 76). 47 For the “story” of this motive, see Ashbrook, The Operas of Puccini, 42–3; Musco, Musica e teatro, 200–2; Girardi, Puccini, 66–9, 72–8. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 157

Example 5.1 Manon’s arrival, Manon Lescaut, Act 1 158 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 5.1 (cont.)

image of the woman Des Grieux is beholding. When Des Grieux later recollects their encounter in his aria, he interpolates the quotation of Manon’s self-presentation (Example. 5.3). The motive is thus appropriated by Des Grieux in a reminiscence that involves not 48 only her “fragrant words,” but also the image of Manon as seen by him. When later on he waits for Manon in the square and, according to the stage manual, “looks up at the 49 inn’s first floor,” the orchestra will reveal the object of his thoughts and the direction of his look by quoting once more Manon’s motive (Example 5.4). This first encounter establishes for the rest of the opera how Des Grieux’sloveis envisioned – visually, verbally, and musically. Most importantly, it defines the look cast on Manon: enchanted, captivated, and absorbed in her image. The insistent foregrounding of this gesture renders the lovers’ fatalattractionasdesiretolook, and also controls the audience’s gaze by binding it to that of the characters. The diagram in the disposizione scenica previously described (see Figure 5.6)illustratesthis binding mechanism: at the coach’s arrival Des Grieux is standing downstage, almost at the footlights, his back half turned to the audience. He is positioned as close as possible to the spectators and, by looking at the stage from their viewpoint, momentarily assumes their role. When he first raises his eyes and sees Manon, his gesture of

48 49 L-ML, 55; “parole profumate.” DS2-ML, 15; “osserva il primo piano dell’osteria.” Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 159

Example 5.2 From Manon-Des Grieux duet, Manon Lescaut, Act 1 160 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 5.3 From Des Grieux’s aria, Manon Lescaut, Act 1

Example 5.4 Des Grieux awaits Manon, Manon Lescaut, Act 1

amazement intercepts the audience’s look, so that Manon is seen through the filter of his amazement and admiration. In other words, the audience is forcefully aligned with his eyes, their looking connoted by his emotions, entangled in the same desire. Similarly, and more conventionally, the village crowd’s fervent anticipation at the arrival of the couch, followed by their “Vediam” sung on the Manon motive and by their gathering around her in awe, consolidate the spectators’ position as coinciding with theirs. In sum, starting from the heroine’s entrance, the opera foregrounds the act of looking at her, binds the audience’s look to the one emphatically enacted by the onstage audience and, most important, to the enraptured gaze of her lover. If generally it is the role of dramatic continuity to bind the audience to the unfolding Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 161 ofthespectacle,hereitisthisdesiretolook at Manon that engages the viewers in the discontinuous succession of tableaux. However, this look that stitches together stage and auditorium, does it also invariably objectify the heroine, the end point and cause of their desire? And then what would happen to this rigid ideological positioning once the curtain opens on the darkening, starkly bleak Act 4? In order to think through these issues the following section brings back notions of suture and gaze that were elaborated in the context of film theory and psychoanalysis. Introduced to account for the way cinematic apparatus positions and subjectifies its audience, both notions seem particularly useful to account for this opera’s aspiration to entangle spectatorship with identity.

SUTURE AND GAZE

The procedure of addressing and positioning the audience by binding it to the system of representation has been traditionally discussed in film theory by means of the concept of suture. Imported from psychoanalysis in the mid-1960s, suture has been used to describe how a film closes (stitches) the gap between enunciation and the 50 enunciated content. The most elementary instantiation of suture in film is the so- 51 called field/reverse-field editing. Through this basic cinematic code, the actual though absent subject of viewing, the camera-projector, is always hidden behind a character who functions as stand-in, averting the audience’s perception that the view shown on screen belongs to a mysterious source, a perception that would disrupt their

50 The notion of suture was introduced in Lacanian psychoanalysis by Jacques-Alain Miller, “La Suture (éléments de la logique du signifiant),” Cahiers pour l’analyse 1 (1966), 37–49. It was then re-elaborated in the context of film theory by Jean-Pierre Oudart, “La Suture,” I and II, Cahiers du cinéma 211 and 212 (April and May 1969). About a decade later the film theory periodical Screen devoted a special issue to suture – Screen 18/4 (Winter 1977–8) – including English versions of the two essays above, with a response by Stephen Heath (“Notes on Suture,” 48–76) commenting both on Miller’s and Oudart’s essays and on other studies they had generated. Among these are Daniel Dayan, “The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema,” Film Quarterly 28/1 (Fall 1974), and William Rothman, “Against ‘The System of Suture,’” Film Quarterly 29/1 (Fall 1975); extracts of both have been published in the anthology Film Theory and Criticism, Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds. (Oxford, 1999), 118–36. See also: Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema (Bloomington, 1981), esp. Chapter 2 “Narrative Space,” and Chapter 3 “On Suture,” 19–112; and Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (Oxford, 1983), Chapter 5 “Suture,” 194–236. In the twenty years following these first theoretical elaborations the concept disappeared from the critical arena to resurface only recently in Slavoj Žižek’s lectures delivered at the British Film Institute in London in 1998 and published as The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kies´lowski between Theory and Post-Theory (London, 2001). 51 With the general term “film” I refer to mainstream Western cinema, or what is usually termed “classic narrative cinema.” See Susan Hayward, Key Concepts in Cinema Studies (London, 1996), 45–9. 162 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

52 involvement in the film’s narrative. In addition, field/reverse-field editing triggers and exploits the desire to see as the basic device of creating continuity out of discontinuity: of giving narrative coherence to an otherwise loose sequence of pic- 53 tures. One shot always leads to the next in that the second shot seems to show what the first was lacking: it appears to reveal the mysterious space that the frame of the previous shot had excluded, the place from where the previous view was observed. The spectator is addressed as the subject who makes sense of the sequence: a subject who not only does the suturing of the separate shots, but who is also, by this same process, sutured into the sequence. Turning to Manon Lescaut, suture functions as the mapping of the audience’s look onto the looking internal to the representation. The spectators are induced to see through the eyes of the characters and are sutured into the reiterated exhibitions of the protagonist by their very desire to see. It would then be reasonable to assume that this device also works to position viewers and viewed according to the usual hierarchy of active subject and passive object. The episodes in Act 1 described above, Manon’s entrance and her encounter with Des Grieux, would then constitute evidence for such a conclusion: Manon is always looked at and never seems to return the gaze; her image is appropriated by Des Grieux’s ecstatic gaze just as her musical motive is incorporated into his aria. The ideological import of this, especially in terms of representation of gender, certainly deserves attention, conforming as it does to a theoretical model developed forty years ago by classic feminist film theory that still largely informs cultural analyses of gendered 54 spectatorship. According to this model, in short, the point of view on stage is gendered as male, a code that constructs how the woman is looked at. The male spectator is the subject, the beholder of the gaze, who derives pleasure by looking at the woman, while the female protagonist is constituted as the object of desire and reassuringly cast as “the

52 Suture has been also used to account more widely for those procedures whereby the exterior is inscribed in the interior, both closing the gap between the two, and at the same time effacing the exterior, a threatening and unknowable absence. For a similar broader use of suture, see for instance Žižek’s discussion of the concept of hegemony as the suturing of intrasocial differences with what lies outside the social system, in The Fright of Real Tears, 32; and also Joan Copjec’s account of the “locked room” in detective fiction in “Locked Room/Lonely Room: Private Space in Film Noir,” Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists (Cambridge, MA, 1994), 163–200. 53 In the editing of classical film subsequent shots are made to appear as a seamless sequence also by conforming to other rules, like eye-line matching. These rules ensure that the sequence of diverse shots results in a spatially coherent and continuous narrative. See David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, “Continuity Editing,” in Film Art: An Introduction, 4th edn. ([1979]; New York, 1993), 218–29. 54 I refer here to the groundbreaking and now classic essay by Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16/3 (1975), 6–18, reprinted with afterthoughts in Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington, 1989), 14–26. For a demonstration that Mulvey’s reading of visual pleasure is pertinent to opera, see Mary Ann Smart, “The Silencing of Lucia,” Cambridge Opera Journal 4/2 (1992), 119–41. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 163 fallen woman.” To return to the case of Manon Lescaut, the heroine is, however, always endowed with agency in the definition of her identity and she is complicit in the performance of her personae. Even though each time the curtain rises her image seems to be determined by her environment, she in turn is the one who defines the significance of her surroundings as place, by commenting on and shaping it. Significantly, moreover, even though she never returns the gaze, the theatrical apparatus makes sure to convey her awareness of her position as the center of everyone’s desiring looks, an awareness that constitutes her as subject, that turns her from a passive object of desire into a subject actively engaged in negotiating her identity within the system of signs of her environment. This specificaspectofthe opera brings us to the second functioning of suture, the one operating at the level of representation. Through this process of fitting in, the heroine appropriates her environment and translates it into a self-image, thus suturing the semblance the setting confers upon her with her identity or, in other words, thus stitching together the exterior and the interior by way of appropriation and signification. The opening vignette from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness also deals with a process akin to the one described here and centered on the coinciding of becoming subject with an awareness of being subjected to the look of others. Sartre provides a vivid rendition of that terrifying moment when the subject realizes she is the object of a look, the look of a phantasmic Other whose presence is experienced as the sound of footsteps. The subject then realizes that its image is always defined from outside itself: “All of a sudden I am conscious of myself as escaping myself, ...in that I have my foundation outside myself. I 55 am for myself only as I am a pure reference to the Other.” The self is thus determined visually as the object of the Other’s gaze and is aware of having been dispossessed of 56 control over, and knowledge of, its own image. IciteSartremainlybecauseheoffers a terse and aptly theatrical illustration of a complex argument. More recently influential was the definition of the subject in the 57 visual domain formulated by Jacques Lacan in the mid-1960s, in part indebted to 58 Sartre. For Lacan, like Sartre, the subject is constituted as such the moment it perceivesthatitisseen:

55 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 259–60. 56 For an account of Sartre’s conception of vision as a critique of the ocularcentric tendency of contemporary French philosophy, see Martin Jay, “Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and the Search for a New Ontology of Sight,” in Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, David Michael Levin, ed. (Berkeley, 1993), 143–85 (on the vignette, 155–7); a slightly diﬀerent version is published as Chapter 5 of Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley, 1993), 263–328. 57 See in particular the four seminars of 1964 (Book XI), published in English as Jacques Lacan, “Of the Gaze as Object Petit a,” in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Alan Sheridan, trans., Jacques- Alain Miller, ed. (New York, 1996), 65–119. 58 Jay, Downcast Eyes, 346–9. 164 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

What determines me, at the most profound level, in the visible, is the gaze that is outside. It is 59 through the gaze that I enter light and it is from the gaze that I receive its effects. The invisible agency in this scene is again a gaze that originates from a place external to the self, one that has the power to determine identity by making visible, as a ray of light would do. The central issue in the Lacanian model is precisely this separation between 60 the gaze and the eye (or look): the eye is the apex of the cone of vision that includes and appropriates the object, while the gaze originates from a point other than the eye 61 and unremittingly captures the viewer in a different cone of vision. Thus the gaze has the unsettling power to subvert the eye’s position of mastery over the object and turns the viewer, too, into an object. However, the viewer becomes subject precisely at the moment when it perceives this loss of mastery and becomes aware of having been the object of the gaze all along. Therefore – and this is critical for the present discussion of Manon Lescaut – the realization that the gaze is separate and autonomous from the eye coincides with the perception of the self as divided. For a moment the subject perceives that the image of the self does not coincide with the one determined by the gaze and, in order to recover its own unity, has to come to terms with the alienating effect of the gaze by accepting and appropriating the external image as its own. To be specific, an episode near the beginning of Act 2 stages precisely this process in terms of the heroine’s relation to the environment. In this scene Manon perceives herself as the object of the gaze, and the look cast on her by the characters on stage and the audience in the theatre becomes 62 functionary of the gaze.

AT THE MIRROR

Assisted by her hairdresser, Manon sits at the mirror making herself up, when her brother arrives. He admires her beauty and expresses relief that she has abandoned Des Grieux for Geronte. His account of her past life with Des Grieux and her escape from their humble dwelling obviously ﬁlls in the narrative gap between the two acts. Lescaut’s words, however, have a crucial eﬀect on Manon, in that they trigger her 63 nostalgic recollection in the aria “In quelle trine morbide.” Here, distressed by the memory of abandoning Des Grieux, she expresses her regret in terms of ambience – by juxtaposing the present “trine morbide” (soft laces) and “alcova dorata” (golden alcove) with the past “mia dimora umile” (my humble dwelling), a comparison already

59 Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts, 106. 60 See in particular Chapter 6: “The split between the Eye and the Gaze,” in ibid., 67–78. 61 “I see only from one point, but in my existence I am looked at from all sides.” Ibid., 72. 62 63 Ibid., 84. L-ML, 68. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 165 presented in Lescaut’s narrative. Her distress comes from her inability to see herself in the gilded background: instead she recognizes as her own an image that belongs to the little house from the past. Her former life with Des Grieux is not shown in the opera (it was cut during the fraught composition of the libretto), and this elided past is presented exclusively as a recollection. As if to single this moment out, the libretto switches from the previous unrhymed verses to the unexpected regularity of seven-syllable lines:

(pensierosa) O mia dimora umile, tu mi ritorni innanzi gaia, isolata, bianca come un sogno gentile 64 e di pace e d’amor!

[(pensive) Oh my humble dwelling you return before my eyes happy, secluded, white like a gentle dream of peace and of love!] It is a dream of being at one with the setting, actualized by the orchestra’s quotation of a motive introduced a little earlier in Lescaut’s narrative at the words “A modest little 65 house / was then your dwelling,” also condensing her past story into a place. But if there Lescaut was frivolously describing her poverty, here Manon addresses the house in the second person: charged with emotion, its image seems to materialize before her eyes, replacing the rococo salon in which she “pensively” stands. That past appears to lack any causal connection with the present and is represented merely as a different episode, enclosed in the image of its environment. That former Manon is, in other 66 words, another reflection of a different setting. This recalling of the past is also realized through Lescaut’s subsequent reference to her lover. His quotation of Des Grieux’s words is duly accompanied by an orchestral recollection of the two themes that framed their first encounter in Act 1: the beginning of 67 his aria “Donna non vidi mai” and an elaboration of the often heard Manon motive.

64 65 L-ML, 68. VS-ML, 134/1/1 and 128/3/1; L-ML, 67; “Una casetta angusta / era la tua dimora.” 66 Jay Nicolaisen has observed that the music of Act 2 is organized in two “dramatic worlds,” which represent the protagonist’s two separate personae: sharp keys depict Manon as Geronte’s mistress, while ﬂat keys depict her as Des Grieux’s lover. Nicolaisen, Italian Opera in Transition, 230. 67 VS-ML, 135/3/2 and 136/1/2. 166 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

The music thus participates in the reenactment by referring unequivocally to the Manon of Act 1, the one presented as the object of Des Grieux’s ecstatic look. The ensuing ﬁnal a due section (Andante mosso) is conceived as the striking overlap of two contrasting narratives and registers: Lescaut’s fatuous telling of Des Grieux’s latest news, and Manon’s passionate and absorbed reminiscence. Her brother’s words immerse her even more deeply in her fantasy of the past: she now addresses her lover in fragmented lines, sensuously pleading with him to come to her again, longing for his kisses and 68 caresses in a patently physical recollection. At this moment Manon is split: she is part of the golden alcove but, at the same time, her image is displaced by the past one of herself as loved/seen by Des Grieux. This episode may seem to have no real closure: both music and libretto abruptly return to the rococo atmosphere of the act’s beginning. But it is the short pantomime described in the libretto’s stage directions and in the disposizione scenica that brings about an ending. After her passionate plea, Manon remains absorbed, saddened by her memories, longing for her lost love. Then,

I suoi occhi si soffermano allo specchio: la sua adorabile figura vi si delinea; le mani quasi incoscienti aggiustano le pieghe della veste; poi i pensieri si mutano, le labbra sorridono, gli occhi sfavillano nel trionfo della sua bellezza, e passando davanti allo specchio, domanda a 69 Lescaut: Davver che a meraviglia questa veste mi sta? [Her eyes linger over the mirror: her adorable figure is there delineated; her hands almost unconsciously adjust the pleats of the dress; then her thoughts change, her lips smile, her eyes shine at the triumph of her beauty, and passing before the mirror, she asks Lescaut: “Doesn’t this dress suit me marvelously?”] The radical change in mood, marked by the orchestra’s switch to the light, ornamental motive that opened the act, is the effect of a process represented primarily in the visual register. The music consists simply of four modulating measures that, from the initial shift to E major, quickly move to F minor for the reprise of the theme that opened the 70 act. Perhaps the passage could be seen as an example of transformation by way of a modulating passage, but the music is disengaged from the dramatic content of the pantomime. Manon’s change is instead mostly shown, and not by chance, since it fundamentally pertains to the definition of self in the visual.

68 “Per me tu lotti, / per me che, vile, ti lasciai: / che tanto duolo a te costai! / Ah! vieni! Il passato mi rendi, / l’ore fugaci .../ le tue carezze ardenti! / Rendimi i baci, / i baci tuoi cocenti .../ quell’ebbrezza che un dì mi beò! / Vieni! ...Son bella? / Resister più non so.” [“You are struggling for me, and I, coward as I am, deserted you, and caused you so much pain! Ah! come to me! Give me back my past, the ﬂeeting hours ...your ardent caresses! Give me back the kisses your burning kisses ... that bliss that once delighted me! Come to me! ...Am I beautiful? I cannot resist any longer!”]; L-ML, 69; VS-ML, 138–41. 69 70 DS2-ML, 22. VS-ML, 141/2/3–141/3/3. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 167

Manon suddenly sees herself in the dressing table mirror: her gestures reveal a gradual acknowledgment that the reflection is actually hers. Recognizing in the mirror the movement of her hands over the dress’s pleats as her own act, made in the present, she sees herself in the image reflected and reidentifies with it. As the disposizione scenica recommends, the change of mood corresponds to a change of persona:

L’artista che interpreta Manon, deve in questo punto, con molta abilità, cambiare pose, movimenti, ﬁsionomia: è la civetteria che deve in essa dominare. Dopo essersi guardata nello specchio, passerà pavoneggiandosi nel mezzo della scena, mentre il fratello andrà 71 ammirandola.

[At this moment the interpreter of Manon with great ability should change her posture, movements, features: it is coquetry that dominates in her. After having looked at her image in the mirror, she will walk towards center stage parading herself, while her brother admires her.] Manon metamorphoses, according to what she sees in the mirror, into the image she sees reflected, which in turn is a reflection of the rich salon. By doing so she is able to reconstitute the oneness of her persona with the ambience that the image of the past had disrupted. It is in this sense that this moment of pantomime manifests the heroine’s perception of the gaze and thus also stages how she constitutes herself as subject. The gaze, materialized by the salon, is indeed what “determines [her], at the most profound 72 level, in the visible.” Her relation to the setting, which is taken for granted each time the curtain rises, is here dramatized as the resolution of a division. She first senses herself as separate from the image she has so carefully prepared at the dressing table but then recaptures her connection with it by reidentifying with the image at the mirror. This episode also illustrates another important aspect of the formation of the subject in the visual: as soon as the subject recognizes itself in an image, the image appears inadequate to represent it fully. Identification with an image is never com- 73 plete and permanent: it needs continually to be iterated and reactivated. The episode of the mirror brings to the surface a crucial point for understanding the opera: we might even say that the opera enacts the process of constitution of the self as reidentification. Every act stages the protagonist’s renewal of identity by her mirroring of the setting, and it presents to the audience the way the heroine belongs to the changed background. In other words, her blending with the dramatic and visual traits 74 that characterize each act stages her perception and appropriation of the gaze. In Act

71 72 DS2-ML, 22. Quoted earlier, see n. 59. 73 On the mirror phase as iteration see for instance Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics, 161: “the identity of the subject is sustained only through the constant repetition of the same identifications by means of which it first finds itself.” 74 See also the question of “mimicry,” in Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts, 73–4, 98–100, 107; “It is not a question of harmonizing with the background but, against a mottled background, of becoming mottled,” 99. Lacan also stresses the human subject’s capacity to adopt mimicry actively: “he maps 168 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

1 she is the “graceful and charming young girl” anticipated in Des Grieux’s first aria, fitting the carefree atmosphere of an evening in the village square. In Act 2 she is part of the gilded salon: a beautiful jewel among an old man’s many treasures. In Act 3 she is the desperate heroine unjustly condemned: at the roll-call she crosses the stage humiliated, her eyes lowered. In Act 4 the void of visual and theatrical connotation seems to free her from the requirements of the ambience, and the stage becomes a space that echoes her search for identity; but ultimately she mimics the outside void with death. What is more, by staging the reconnection with her rococo image, this episode also stages the process of suture. Just as she is sutured into her imaginary reflection, the audience is also sutured into the opera through the eyes of their stage doubles, in this case Lescaut. The spectators are repositioned and reconstituted as such – placed in front of the new tableau – at each rise of the curtain. Each of the opera’sfouracts enacts identity as the product of suture at the level both of representation and of address, both for the protagonist and for the audience. This identity assigned to the audience, however, often depends on the presence of stage onlookers – that is, it is inherited from the other characters. For the first three acts this looking is safely placed behind that of the fictive audience: watching the heroine through the admiring and enchanted look of the stage spectators means seeing their look, constructed as the gaze of the Other. More that that, perhaps, the audience is guaranteed a position of mastery over the heroine as object, a position coinciding with the point from which the gaze originates, as if it were that phantasmic Other that surprises the subject in Sartre’s scene. The gaze falls on the side of the auditorium, as if exempting the spectators from realizing that they are also, like Manon, subjected to it, looked at by the Other. By being sutured in the diegetic reality of the opera, the spectators are temporarily safe from the alienating intrusion of the gaze, from the need to renegotiate and reestablish their identity.

THE DESERT

But then there is the “Louisiana desert.” As the curtain opens on the bleakness of Act 4,it is clear that the abrupt change also brings in a radically diﬀerent kind of spectacle. Deprived of an ambience, the heroine cannot ﬁnd an image with which she can identify. The desert – a scenery that substantially departs from that theatrical and operatic tradition so heavily exploited in previous acts – is not just an empty stage, but comes to symbolize the dissolution of the symbolic, the absence of that complex system of visual signs that had shaped the previous three sets. The visual void also corresponds to a linguistic

himself in it. How? In so far as he isolates the function of the screen and plays with it. Man, in effect, knows how to play with the mask as that beyond which there is the gaze,” 107. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 169 impasse: in fragmented words Manon attempts to reconstitute a self out of her past; the 75 music also keeps referring to its own past, trying to shape itself into an aria. What is happening to the audience? The impact of this sudden symbolic void on that position that had been assigned to the spectators over the course of the previous three acts is as significant as the hearing of footsteps in Sartre’s story. It entails a revelation: no longer hidden behind the look of onstage spectators, those in the theatre are abruptly deprived of that illusion of mastery over the scene that they had been surreptitiously and repeatedly granted thus far. But there is more: as in Sartre’s vignette, this revelation brings with it shame. As if caught while looking through the keyhole, the audience is caught while watching the heroine’s exhibition in the safe darkness of the theatre, enmeshed within the economy of desire established by the visual apparatus. Sutured within the exchange of desiring gazes, the spectators are suddenly surprised in the position of those who are seeing too much. No wonder some critics attending the premiere complained of an excess of raw emotion: once the stylizing theatrical apparatus is lifted, the heroine’s death scene hits the spectators with its “excessively violent vehemence,” and the entire act is but an “expression of 76 desperate anguish.” But others saw in this effect of unexpected unmediatedness the opera’s promise of novelty and modernity. As Alexandra Wilson has observed, Casa Ricordi branded Puccini’s debut opera as an event to be felt rather than discussed, 77 “appealing to listeners at precisely this sensual, instinctive level.” The anonymous reviewer for the publisher’sownGazzetta musicale di Milano openly embraced the position of a lay person in the stalls, and as such declared his unreserved surrender to Puccini’s music. Like the ideal spectator advocated by Boito about twenty-five years earlier, the one who is unconditionally ready to believe, the writer is unashamed to dwell in a double identification, both with an average audience member and with the protagonist. Wittily paraphrasing Manon’s words in the desert, he finds himself at the end of the opera “alone, confused, dazed, astounded, and most important deeply 78 moved, moved to tears.” Perhaps then this is what Jerry Fodor meant with the proposition that Puccini’s operas render the spectator “complicit in something not entirely nice”: but that “something” is the very act of spectating. What should not be missed is the ideological import of Act 4: its non-conformity to dramaturgical conventions is not enough to make it either a “dramatic blunder” or on the other hand an avant-garde experiment. And yet this purposeful divesting of theatricality and the adamant erasure of the spectacular have

75 On the effect of dynamic stasis introduced by the aria see in particular Arman Schwartz, “Manon in the Desert, Wagner on the Beach,” The Opera Quarterly 24/1–2 (Winter–Spring 2008), 51–61. 76 Giovanni Pozza, “Manon Lescaut,” review in Il corriere della sera, February 2–3, 1893. 77 Wilson, “Defining Italianness,” 87. 78 “Ed io sono qui, solo, confuso, intontito, sbalordito, e ciò che più importa profondamente commosso: commosso fino alle lagrime”; [signed as] “C”, Gazzetta musicale di Milano 48/6 (February 5, 1893), 83. 170 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

the effect of admitting how opera functions, how the theatrical and spectacular elements are activated. Act 4 reveals how the operatic machinery is necessarily founded on voyeurism. Bypassing the older musicological puzzlements and embarrassments outlined at the start of this chapter, recent studies have offered a more articulate critical engagement 79 with this early Puccini opera, fruitfully attending instead to Manon’s theatrical history. Two essays in particular pursue Manon’s relation with its formidable precedent, Verdi’s Traviata, by following different disciplinary paths. Susan Rutherford, in “Non voglio morir: Manon’s Death,” explains Manon’s last aria as it resonates with Violetta’s “Addio del passato,” constructing a genealogy that connects the two heroines’ stories and gestures in a double chronology. “La dame aux camélias” had found inspiration and solace in Prevost’s Manon, as much as Puccini’s Manon relies on Violetta’s language to face death. Arman Schwartz, equipped with a kind of Adornian, skeptical enjoyment of Puccini’s music, presents a lucid interpretation of the last aria, attentive both to the subtleties of the musical language and to the peculiar theatricality of the act in the desert. In particular his argument brilliantly includes Manon in a discussion of broader cultural negotiations of gender in nineteenth-century art: here both Violetta and Manon (like Nana and Olympia, among others) are invested with a perilously fascinating sociocultural mobility by way of their inscription both in the figure of the prostitute and in their surroundings. For Schwartz, the novelty introduced by this opera is that “Manon is 80 collapsed into her surroundings,” that she “is the desert.” The strength of these genealogies brings to the fore the possibility of a history of femininity that connects tropes of the femme fatale in theatre, opera, and film across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because of this strong heritage, Puccini’s opera (that is, its textual traces including the staging manual) introduces however a radical shift: it is its emphasis on the iterability of subjectification, as this chapter proposes, that marks the difference with its predecessors. Puccini’s opera stages the necessary repetition of the suturing of an interiority with its external signifiers (gestures, words, costumes, sets, landscapes, style, etc.), endowing the heroine with an uncontainable, infinite potential for becoming other. On the contrary, Violetta’s mutability is still an aspect of a unified subject, contained within traditional polarizations such as prostitute versus virgin, artifice versus sincerity, technique versus emotion. Like her nineteenth-century sisters, she is still a manifestation of a femme fatale who is fully integrated within a patriarchal system of representation. Manon instead transforms this figure into a continuous,

79 Most of them have been occasioned by a recent double issue of The Opera Quarterly devoted to the opera and guest-edited by Roger Parker – 24/1–2 (Winter–Spring 2008) – which also included a version of the present chapter. Besides the essays by Basini, Schwartz, and Wilson cited above, the issue contains: Laura Protano-Biggs, “Manon’s Choice”; Susan Rutherford, “Non voglio morir: Manon’s Death”; and Roger Parker, “Manon Lescaut: La Scala 1930.” 80 Schwartz, “Manon in the Desert, Wagner on the Beach,” 58. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut 171 dizzying movement of subjectification, emancipated from patriarchal containment. The “movement” of the character from one subject-effect to the next is what constitutes the spectacle – a spectacle possible as such only thanks to the consolidation of a visual culture of museums, but also steeped in the peculiar temporality endowed by opera, a temporality that can shift in a heartbeat to the expanded time of raw emotions. As a femme fatale of modernity, therefore, Manon Lescaut is a precursor to figures like Lulu and the many heroines populating the narrative, theatrical, and filmic experimen- tations of the early twentieth century. Like vengeful Galateas, they are manifestations of a femininity that becomes dangerous because of its extraordinary ability to metamorphose – not just by effect of the machinery of theatre, but precisely as the force that sets that machine in motion. 6 Faust again The silent film Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score

In February 1914, in Rome, the director of Cines, Baron Alberto Fassini, summons the famous composer and conductor Pietro Mascagni to discuss a business proposition. The prestigious film production company is considering appointing Mascagni as chief 1 musical director – a position that will be created especially for him. After complicated negotiations, however, the collaboration will result in the music for one film only, Rapsodia satanica (“Satanic Rhapsody”). Starring the famous actress Lyda Borelli, and advertised as representative of a “new cinema-lyric art,” the film was screened for the press in 1915 and then released only in July of 1917, at the Teatro Augusteo in Rome. With Rapsodia satanica Mascagni is involved in a complex operation of cultural and economic policy at the moment when the new rising industry of cinema intersects with the definition of an Italian public, right at the outset of World War I. The story of “the making of” Rapsodia satanica, rarely explored in film and music historiographies, promises to offer a window into early film’s artistic aspirations and into music’s relevance for the new industrial, “mechanical” medium. In the context of this book, the story of the film and its score represents an experiment of cultural policy that overlaps in several ways with the production of opera described in the previous chapters. Like opera at the turn of the century this film was supposed to function as a bridge between high culture and entertainment. The sudden arrival of film into the post- unification culture industry opened the way to a new set of compelling questions about medium and art. Casa Ricordi had aligned the interests of the culture industry with those of opera production by guaranteeing the artistic status of operatic performance, also by means of the staging manuals. Rapsodia satanica instead appears from the start as an artifact in search of identity: the question then is what the film industry wanted from an opera composer and what he could do with film. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to understand the operational aspect of this film as an aesthetic product, and then to inquire into the status of music. Rather than searching the contextual evidence for a validation of the film’s declared artistic aims, I am interested in the procedures, crafts, works, and expertise that were devised or

1 Letter to Lina Mascagni, Rome, February 7, 1914 (no. 485), in Pietro Mascagni, Epistolario, Mario Morini, Roberto Iovino, and Alberto Paloscia, eds. (Lucca, 1997), vol. ii, 4. Only a couple of months later Mascagni refused a similar oﬀer from the competition, Filmart in Paris, to become artistic director of their new concert hall, and possibly to oversee the scoring of new ﬁlm projects. See letter to Lina Mascagni, April 21, 1914 (no. 496), ibid., 7.

172 Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score 173 employed in order to articulate this “new cinema-lyric art.” It is in this context that it might be worth asking how the placing of music was negotiated in relation to the film’s aesthetic and ideological project. Rapsodia satanica in fact, both in its status as a diva film, and in its declared goals and adopted devices, condenses and displaces contemporary anxieties about the medium of film, its uncanny ability to constitute an audience, and the role of artistic production.

A ROMAN DREAM-FACTORY

By 1914 Cines had reached the peak of its productivity and commercial success, with one of the highest release rates per week, one of the largest studios in Europe and a distribution network reaching out to the Americas. Started barely a decade earlier as a small shop of film stock and cameras by the manufacturer and inventor Filoteo Alberini, it was the first company of this sort in Italy to embark on the production of new films (La presa di Roma, 1905). Around 1906 Cines was transformed into a joint-stock society, supported by financial capital from the electromechanical industry, investment banks, and above all the Roman aristocracy. Baron Alberto Fassini became the general director in 1911 and, with the financial backing of the Bank of Rome, he initiated the company’s lasting commitment to educational and cultural policy, a commitment that was programmatically divorced 2 from financial and economic interests. It was at this time that Cines specialized in historical and epic feature-length films such as Quo vadis? (Guazzoni, 1913). In the five 3 years preceding the war these historical “super-spectacles” became both instruments in the constitution of an eminently Italian mass culture, and export commodities, or as 4 Brunetta has put it, “vehicles for the dissemination abroad of Italian culture.” Meanwhile, however, both Cines and the other major production companies in Rome and Turin were developing another genre of film, one that is nowadays associated with the first manifestations of cinematic divas, such as Francesca Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. The rather large number of the so-called diva films produced in the few years immediately preceding the war hardly fits together into a set of specific generic conventions. For sure they represented a specific economic strategy through which studios developed production’s trends in addition to the historical

2 Gian Piero Brunetta, Cent’anni di cinema italiano (Bari, 1995), vol. i, 26: “During its entire history the cinema industry never reached some form of uniformity, because there never was a clear relation between capital, investments, and product ...This constituted its fragility but also its charm and its ‘diﬀerence’: a cinema that developed with the goal of valorizing intellectual capital has always managed to ﬁnd also those who invested real capital.” 3 Giuliana Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari (Princeton, 1993), 14. 4 Brunetta, Cent’anni, 52. 174 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Figure 6.1 Cover of the libretto of Rapsodia satanica

“super-spectacle,” in an attempt to saturate the market and meet the increasing demand with a diversified offer. Most importantly, in my view, they address the newly constituted Italian film spectators in their middle-class aspirations, with the lure of a cosmopolitan and pan-European “Art Nouveau” visual language, aimed at transforming the new mechanical device into the medium of a new art. These concerns are nowhere more evident than in Rapsodia satanica.Atthefilm’s first (and probably last) public screening at the Augusteo in Rome in 1917,theaudience was provided with a program booklet containing a poem in three parts, introduced by a classicizing preamble. Baron Fassini had commissioned the poet Fausto Maria Martini not only to write the intertitles, but also to adapt the film’s scenario into a narrative in verse, which was then distributed at the Augusteo like an opera libretto (Figure 6.1). Several chronologies place the creation of the poem before the shooting of the film, as expected in the compositional tradition of, say, dramas or operas. Other sources, however, reveal that the operation was carefully staged by Fassini in order to resemble a Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score 175

5 theatrical event when in truth the film came first, then the music, and last the poem. The poem narrates in irregular eleven-syllable verse the story of the aging Countess Alba d’Oltrevita (“Dawn Beyondlife”), a female Faust who promises the devil she will renounce love in exchange for eternal beauty. The Prologue ends with her magic transformation into a younger self. Part i is devoted to depicting her carefree life of dance and frolicking in the company of two admirers, Tristano and Sergio. Plot and story are patently secondary to an organization that proceeds from one tableau to the next. Emphasis is on the actress and her choreographed movements within pictorial spaces (salons and gardens, fountains and drawing rooms). The script in this sense participates to the broader movement of Italian film in the 1910s, away from the 6 theatrical and towards the definition of what was specifically cinematic. Utterly novel in conception is Part ii, which consists in a fifteen-minute-long solo scene for the diva. The lack of plot or events to drive the film narrative is compensated by an even closer focus on the heroine, her acknowledgment of love and renunciation of eternal youth, ending in death. The Faust story is but a pale reference, substantiated by the scene of the wager and a few grotesque apparitions of Mephistopheles, whose main function is instead to justify the cinematic “rhapsody.” The slim plot treats the Faust story like a short parenthesis of suspended time, in which the female Faust is simply reenacting (or acting out) “youth.” The register is that of the fantasy, and, in an all too elementary equation, film like the devil brings back one’s past. Martini’s poem, however, is generally rather feeble, indulging in D’Annunzio-like overwrought metaphors and literary clichés. But the function and significance of these odd verses seems to reside elsewhere than their poetic ambition. More than just providing verbal captions that give narrative shape to the mute images, the last-minute addition of a printed verbal text was apt to confer a higher status on the film screening, borrowing from practices well rooted in theatrical tradition. If hiring a poet for the intertitles was a practice generally adopted by several studios in those years, in this case the poet’s validation exceeds any precedents. Baron Fassini (a.k.a. “Alfa”), in order to make the film a “total” artistic event, recuperated operatic practices (such as the printed libretto and the live orchestra) and grafted them onto the film screening, thus ritualizing the opening into a premiere. The “preamble” to the poem makes this even more explicit:

With the certainty in our hearts of providing a valid contribution to the intellectual improvement of the cinematographic work, by now closer to reaching its transformation into

5 On this see, for instance, Mascagni’s letter to Lina of December 23, 1914 (no. 530): “Last night I went to the Excelsior with Fassini and I played Rapsodia: it was an extraordinary success: they were all enthusiastic about my music. There were: Fassini, Cines’s procurator Amati, Oxilia (the author of the ﬁlm, who described to me the beautiful new ﬁnale they are preparing), the deputy Medici, and Fausto Maria Martini, who will compose a poem on Rapsodia.” Mascagni, Epistolario, vol. ii, 20. 6 On this tendency in the 1910s towards a new kind of “cinematographic story” based on ambience see Silvio Alovisio, Voci del silenzio: la sceneggiatura del cinema muto italiano (Milan, 2005), 60. 176 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

pure art, we present to the public this Satanic Rhapsody, an essay of a very new cinema-lyric art, conceived and developed with the intentions of serious research ...A matter of great importance will be taken over by this Rhapsody: the possibility to reunite in one cinematographic work the sensations of all arts; the possibility to make of a projection room a magic melting pot of all artistic sensations [unified] into a very new totality, never attempted so far and today obtained for the first time. To the public, who have been manifesting the desire that from this modern medium of the cinematographer would finally emerge an art fundamentally new, complex and modern, we entrust this work born 7 of the fervor and genius of such high minds. The film, moreover, makes use of all the “attractions” the industry could make available. For instance, if the addition of colors is hardly unusual, here each frame was dyed using two different techniques (tinting and pochoir). Every episode in Alba D’Oltrevita’s short second life is marked by the synesthetic suggestions of different color patterns (yellow for the dances in the garden, blue for the boating trip on the lake). Still, the main attractions were the diva, Lyda Borelli, and the original symphonic score by Mascagni. Lyda Borelli’s story as an actress is not a long one: born into a theatre family, she started acting on the stage very young with prestigious companies. In 1913 she was engaged for 8 her first film and five years later quit her career to become the Countess Cini. Her success as film actress was immediate and sensational, to the point that she generated a growing number of imitators. Women on and off the film set were said to attempt the idiosyncratic expressivity of her gestures, of those movements that, as we will see soon, 9 involved her whole body in stylized postures. A term was coined –“borelleggiare” – expressly to describe this fashion. In other words Borelli, more than any other actor (except perhaps Bertini), managed to create a link between her dream-like images on the screen and the “reality” of bourgeois drawing rooms – between the D’Annunzian feminine cipher, the “rare creature,” and its mass consumption and reiteration. Borelli worked at Cines for most of her short cinematic career, collaborating with Fassini in the 10 selection of scripts and even in the hiring of actors and directors. It would not be surprising if she was the one who proposed the scenario of Rapsodia satanica, since the film was conceived for, or even “on,” her. The adaptation of the Faustian themes into a feminine boudoir drama depends on the recognizable image of the diva as its indispensable and unique physical vehicle.

7 Quoted in V. Bagnoli and G. Manzoli, “Era Alba D’Oltrevita nel castello d’Illusione,” in Cinegraﬁe, vol. ix: Viaggio nel cinema delle terre di mezzo: schermi della Mitteleuropa (Ancona, 1996). 8 José Panteri, ed., Lyda Borelli (Rome, 1993). 9 Brunetta, Cent’anni, 105; he quotes the entry on Borelli in Alfredo Panzini’s Dizionario moderno (Milan, 1925): “the languorous movements of females as they take as model the aesthetic and aﬀected postures of the most beautiful actress Lyda Borelli.” See also www.casapanzini.it/it/dizionario- moderno/html. Accessed June 16, 2014. 10 See the letters from Archivio Fassini published in Panteri, Lyda Borelli. Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score 177

But the element that most testifies to the effort of making of this film an artistic product is the original score. The year before, Itala Film in Turin, directed by Giovanni Pastrone, had set a powerful precedent with the release of the colossal Cabiria, “auth- ored” by D’Annunzio himself and with music by the then celebrated opera composer Ildebrando Pizzetti. Coerced by D’Annunzio to join the enterprise, Pizzetti eventually managed to compose only the so-called “sinfonia del fuoco” for one scene, forcing 11 Pastrone to find at the last moment some other standard musical accompaniment. Similarly to Pastrone’s company in Turin, Cines was making every effort to enlist prestigious names among not only writers and artists, but also musicians. Mascagni’s name was supposed to increase the cultural capital of the production, adding a further element to the artistic validation of the film. Most significantly, the orchestral accompaniment endowed the projection with the liveness of musical performance and allowed for the use of prestigious venues. The Teatro Augusteo was certainly a temple of high culture, built over the tomb of Emperor Augustus, in the center of Baroque Rome.

MASCAGNI AT WORK

Throughout the first decade of the century, the vertiginous development of the new industry of cinema, despite its dependence on intellectual labor, generated a large number of disparaging declarations from writers and artists. Even those who on occasion lent the prestige of their signature to films’ intertitles or scripts made sure to disavow as publicly as possible the new entertainment for the masses. In his critical study of scriptwriting in Italian silent cinema, Silvio Alovisio half-humorously organizes these attitudes into three degrees of distanciation: from those who simply tolerated their work being adapted for the screen, to those who would also agree to make the adaptations (like Verga), and lastly those who even allowed their name to be used in 12 the promotion of the film as authors (like D’Annunzio). Despite the nuances, most Italian intellectuals professed the commonplace belief of cinema as a non-artistic medium because it was regulated by market laws, and as ultimately immoral in manipulating the emotions of the masses. Luigi Pirandello and Gabriele D’Annunzio offer the most interesting articulations of this phenomenon. Pirandello voiced a mixture of bitter disdain and curiosity in Quaderni 13 di Serafino Gubbio, operatore (“The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Camera Operator”). Here the man behind the camera lens becomes the unwilling onlooker and narrator of

11 The rest of the score was composed by Manlio Mazza; see Sergio Miceli, Musica per film: storia, estetica – analisi, tipologie (Milan, 2009), 100, 142 n. 112. 12 Alovisio, Voci del silenzio, 38–41. 13 Published first in installments in Nuova antologia with the title “Si gira ...” (June 1–August 16, 1915), and a decade later in a volume with the current title: Luigi Pirandello, Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio, operatore (Florence, 1925). 178 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

intrigues on and off the film set. Pirandello cannot avoid seeing in the mechanical device a dehumanizing voracious eye. The camera not only falsifies and distorts an already complex visual regime, but it devours all that is placed in front of its lens. Most interestingly, early on the novel zeroes in on the schism between the camera’s potential to record and thus witness “grim reality,” and cinema’s contamination of that same 14 reality with the trappings of the set, the fictive interactions, the “stupid” stories. The scandal of cinema, for Pirandello, lies not so much in the disingenuous aspirations (capitalism masked as art) but in the split between the precision of the mechanical gaze and the way it appropriates, deforms, and empties the life it gazes upon. A notoriously different position is that of Gabriele D’Annunzio, the most influential of the group and the shrewdest in navigating between his tiresomely well-groomed image of artist for the elites and the self-appointed role of national bard. The vicissitudes of his collaboration with Pastrone at the “super-spectacle” Cabiria are both too famous 15 and too convoluted to retrace in this context. His attitude towards cinema is best summarized in his own words. In a statement on cinema he quickly assembled after the overwhelming success of Cabiria, he wrote:

Even I – in the name of that red meat that must excite the bravery of my greyhounds – I allowed that some of my most famous plays were meddled with and adapted into films. But this time (oh dishonor! indelible shame!) I took pleasure in a direct experiment. A Turin production company, directed by a cultivated and energetic man who has an extraordinary instinct for plasticity, will give an essay in popular art on an original 16 historical subject provided by me. Pastrone, the “energetic man,” was actually the one who conceived and realized the film in its entirety, in addition to hiring the poet to act as the film’s author. It is then both surprising and refreshing to find that Pietro Mascagni, once faced with the prospect of working for the cinema, occasionally betrayed indecision but never appeared to indulge in disdain or public abjuration. The letters he wrote to his wife and to his lover while working on the score are candidly matter of fact: like D’Annunzio he needed the money, and the contract with Cines seemed advantageous. Nevertheless, what also emerges from his correspondence is his continuous monitoring and management of his role as one of the authors of the film. The terms of his contract with Fassini were primarily financial, but Mascagni made sure it also safeguarded his authority in the selection of the films, and tried to arrange for the continuity of his engagement with Cines. For instance, he did agree to work on Rapsodia satanica, despite the initial

14 Pirandello, Quaderni, 25. In English: Luigi Pirandello, Shoot!: The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, trans. (New York, 1926), Chapter 6, 31. 15 Paolo Cherchi Usai, ed., Giovanni Pastrone: gli anni d’oro del cinema a Torino (Turin, 1986). 16 Gabriele D’Annunzio, “Del cinematografo considerato come strumento di liberazione e come arte di trasfigurazione” (1914), in Usai, ed., Giovanni Pastrone, 118. Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score 179 disappointment at the film’s preliminary viewing, but only on the condition that the whole final section (that he found “dull and vacuous”) was completely reworked in 17 accordance with his suggestions. Several months later, as soon as he completed the work on the score, he demanded yet another revision of the film’s ending. Also, in preparation for the premiere, he made sure he had the appropriate orchestra and stipulated in advance the number of rehearsals necessary to synchronize the performance to the film. In other words, he reclaimed a power typically endowed to an opera composer, but hardly customary for musicians working in the cinema at the time. On the other hand, once faced with a medium so different from opera and which in many ways resisted his authorial control, he managed to invent a working method. Several of the letters he wrote from May 17, 1914, to the beginning of the following year report on the hours or even days spent in a small room with a projector, a stopwatch, and a piano, measuring durations of scenes, gestures, camera movements.

A terribly meticulous and precise operation, because I have to notate what happens to the smallest [1,000th] fraction of the second; otherwise I cannot give the right feeling to the music. Meanwhile I can compose: I find and develop the themes; but then I have to cut, adjust, repeat, stretch them, etc. until I obtain perfection in aligning [collimare] music with the 18 images on the screen. These recurrent references to the labor involved in preparing the score might suggest that he was painstakingly searching for ways to synchronize (in his words, “to colli- mate”) the two tracks: perhaps in the way of a somewhat realistic conjunction of the music and the images, or perhaps with some degree of mickey-mousing, or at least with several well-defined synch points. But the score tells a different story. The music patently avoids any suggestion of iconic sounds by constantly foregrounding and restating its own externality to the film, 19 and relegates synchronization mostly to a matching of two temporal dimensions. Mascagni’s wall-to-wall score keeps the film at a distance, as it were, carefully avoiding the possibility of either being incorporated by the visuals – introjected by the film as a

17 Letter to Lina Mascagni, April 28, 1914 (no. 501): “If I accepted this last one, we would immediately sign a contract; but I do not dare to accept it: I would debase myself with such a work.” Mascagni, Epistolario, vol. ii, 9–10. He was contractually bound to provide the scores for other Cines films, which he however discarded after a first viewing. On this see Carlo Piccardi, “Mascagni el’ipotesi del ‘dramma musicale cinematografico,’” in Atti del convegno internazionale di studi “Musica e Cinema,” Siena 19–22 agosto 1990, Sergio Miceli, ed. (Florence, 1992), 453–97. 18 Letter to Lina Mascagni, May 22, 1914 (no. 507), Mascagni, Epistolario, vol. ii, 12–13; also quoted and discussed in Piccardi, “Mascagni e l’ipotesi del ‘dramma musicale cinematografico.’” 19 According to Jost, for instance, in order for sound to be perceived as anchored in the images it must meet three conditions: iconicity, redundancy, and temporal coincidence; François Jost, “The Voices of Silence,” in The Sounds of Early Cinema, Franck Le Gak and Wendy Schubring, trans., Richard Abel and Rick Altman, eds. (Bloomington, 2001), 48. 180 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

musical object, or as a “sound effect,” almost like Pizzetti’s “sinfonia del fuoco” in Cabiria – or becoming just an emotional amplification, an aural projection of the images. Moreover, since, as he states, his goal was the realization of a “symphonic-cinematic production,” then the operation programmatically implied the unambiguous aesthetic 20 autonomy of music. In his status as the famous composer and co-author of the experiment in a “new cinema-lyric art,” Mascagni then strives to provide an orchestral score that stands in relation to the film as a distinct medium, with its own aesthetic and 21 discursive baggage. Then why the laborious operation of synching? I believe that Mascagni was searching for a novel audio-visual regime, one that was available to him only thanks to his long and eclectic experience in the theatre. Carlo Piccardi, for instance – the first who studied the score at some length – suggests that the precise joining of music to frame sequences 22 might be read as a search for a new sort of musical connotation. And of course this film’s generic anti-realist and symbolist stance almost demands that the music shun any denotative grounding of the images. More than this, it is indeed some kind of musical connotation that might describe the musical material that Mascagni, ever the craftsman, could have drawn from his own operatic toolbox, such as identifying and recurring themes (“leitmotivs”) and local color – that is, ways in which the music is metaphorically or metonymically associated to character types, affect, and place. On an elementary, “lexical,” level, thematic recurrences allow the score to function in parallel to the film and yet in its own terms. Themes, however, are for the most part elaborated according to a modular logic, so that they can be developed temporally without excessive use of transitional episodes. The thematic material is then organized in larger units, which coincide with the film’s three parts (Prologue, Parts i and ii) and borrow formal features from the symphonic suite. The Prologue is set as a Gavotte – which provides the couleur locale to the opening party in the Countess’s castle – with the addition or insertion of shorter, condensed thematic utterances. One in particular, the grotesque bassoon theme for Mephistopheles’ wager, is the only one that hints at the musical doubling of a character’s gestures (Example 6.1, rehearsal no. 5). Part i is roughly matched to a Scherzo-Trio-Scherzo, to coincide with the ternary sequence of the visual narrative (spring dance in the garden – by the lake – back to the garden). Part ii, the contested ending, is assigned a more fragmented, or perhaps more

20 The term “produzioni sinfoniche-cinematografiche” had been introduced in a letter to Lina Mascagni of April 21, 1914 (no. 496), as one of his ideas for his role at Cines; Mascagni, Epistolario, vol. ii, 8. 21 And in fact a piano version of the score was published by Cines in the year of the first public screening. 22 Piccardi, “Mascagni e l’ipotesi del ‘dramma musicale cinematografico.’” On the matching of music and image see also the study of Stefano Vaccarino, “Un metodo d’analisi del rapporto musica-immagine per Rapsodia satanica di Mascagni-Oxilia,” in A nuova luce: cinema muto italiano, Michele Canosa, ed. (Bologna, 2000), 267–84. Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score 181

Example 6.1 Mephistopheles’ theme, Mascagni’s score for Rapsodia satanica, Prologue 182 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

fluid, score that besides referring largely to the same thematic material, still manages to include an “Andantino pastorale” and a Minuet. There is no documentary evidence that the composer was in any way familiar with current customs in musical accompaniment to the moving picture, or even that he ever 23 saw cue-sheets or repertoires of music for film. And yet, his widespread adoption of dance rhythms (Gavotte, Polonaise, Menuet) and especially the abundance of idiosyncratic expression and tempo markings seem to invoke musical topoi from film accompaniment anthologies. The score is littered with indications such as “Misterioso” and “Brillante,” but also “with expression of sorrow,”“sweet and festive,”“sweet and doleful,”“with elegance,”“with aching passion,”“very heartfelt,”“with expression of regret,” and so forth. It is not clear how much Mascagni relied on notational conventions, be they cinematic or symphonic, but it is quite clear that the score strives to supply verbal guidance to the performance in order to disambiguate the links between the two tracks, and compensate for the music’s possible blindness to the imagetrack. Mascagni’s preoccupation with synchronization, however, becomes evident in at least two brief passages – the only two instances when the score gives voice to the film’s sound world. Of course these occasions were too good to be missed: in Part i, in a short preamble to the plot’s climactic seduction scene cross-cut with Sergio’s death, the Countess Alba D’Oltrevita lingers at the piano (Figure 6.2 and Example 6.2).

Figure 6.2 At the piano; still from Rapsodia satanica, Part i

23 Casa Ricordi published the Biblioteca cinema only in 1926, while the Erdman-Becce collection dates from 1919. Miceli, Musica per ﬁlm, 59, 56. Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score 183

Example 6.2 Quotation of Chopin, Ballade op. 23 no. 1, in Mascagni’s Rapsodia satanica 184 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 6.2 (cont.) Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score 185

The insertion of the famous tune opening Chopin’s Ballade op. 23 no. 1 resembles the pastiche of contemporary cue-sheets, and suggests the attempt at winking with an erudite quotation at the bourgeois cognoscenti in the audience who perhaps doodled 24 some Chopin at the keyboard in their drawing rooms. But the unexpected if smooth entrance of the piano, absent from the score until now, emphasizes a sudden shift in the music from an utterance that was thoroughly and purposefully external to the image to one that is solidly anchored to it. More than just assuaged with a witty reference, the spectators are jolted into self-recognition. This sudden coinciding, this yielding of the music to the image, lasts however only a few seconds. Soon the strings join in, as if the orchestra is reaching out to the screen to re-absorb or reappropriate the sound of the piano – and thus also the control over the diegetic content. It is difficult not to hear this fade-in of the orchestra as a self-referential moment: a moment when the music is allowed to talk about itself as cinematic score. By weaving in and out of the imagetrack, the music then stages, in the way of a surprising special effect, its own freedom from the image. The second passage (in Part ii) is also a brief interjection of the piano quoting from a Chopin favorite, which is also similarly reappropriated by the orchestra after just a few measures. But this second instance puts a strain on the effect of surprise and outlines the crucial tension between the score and the emphatic gestures of the diva (Figure 6.3 and

Figure 6.3 At the piano again; still from Rapsodia satanica, Part ii

24 Similar is perhaps Breil’s quotation of “Where did you get that hat?” in the score for Birth of a Nation. See Miceli, Musica per ﬁlm, 79. 186 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Example 6.3 Quotation of Chopin, Valse op. 34 no. 2, in Mascagni’s Rapsodia satanica

Example 6.3). The Countess is now alone immersed in regrets and nostalgic recollections, to which Mascagni swiftly matches Chopin’s Valse op. 34 no. 2. Here too music signifies itself, but this passage brings to the fore a problem that the composer must have faced during his long hours spent in the narrow room with projector, stopwatch and piano, and that is the acting of Lyda Borelli. In Part ii, plot, drama and action – orthelittletherewasofthem– retreat into the background, possibly relying on the audience’s familiarity with the Faust legend. All that is left is the constant presence of the actress, seldom and briefly joined by the character of Mephistopheles. The film’s ending, like an opera finale, is entirely 25 conceived as the climactic showpiece for Borelli and her “pictorial” acting style.

25 As conceptualized by Lea Jacobs and Ben Brewster, Theatre to Cinema (Oxford, 1997). Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score 187

In a slow-paced scene, Alba surrenders to love and wrapped in veils walks out of her castle to meet the mysterious horseman (Figure 6.4). Such an ending encapsulates all the elements of Borelli style: her famous countenance and postures, the idiosyncratic condensing of expression into calculated movements of hands and eyes, the Liberty costumes, with veils and pleats that amplify her movements, her typical slow dance-like pacing across the frame, coming closer to the camera, or 26 walking away from it. In spite of Borelli’s training in the old classical theatre tradition of the great nineteenth-century actors such as Adelaide Ristori, Tommaso Salvini, and then Eleonora Duse (with whom she often shared the stage), a training founded on verbal delivery, Borelli had re-created for herself a compelling and individual acting style in the absence of voice. The power and effectiveness of her gestures consisted in a controlled amplification of the melodramatic “text of muteness,” but now under the 27 close scrutiny of the camera. In an article from 1916 she described the difficulty of working in front of the camera, without the support either of dialogue or of the audience: “at the cinema studio we are alone. In front of us is a cold, black machine, which is always just an indifferent recorder and never an adviser, neither a friend nor an 28 enemy.” In the meantime of course, critics and theorists were celebrating the expressive possibilities of the new medium. One in particular, Sebastiano Arturo Luciani, of avowed Futurist sympathies, famously and enthusiastically declared that:

The art of the cinematographer has rendered us very susceptible to the dynamic beauty of the human face, in the same way that the theatre made us susceptible to that of the voice. And if once we saw nothing but more or less expressive masks, both in art and in life, 29 today we can say we can only see faces. But Luciani’s enthusiasm for this new intimacy is met by Borelli’s keen awareness of its dangers. On the one hand, in order to compensate for the missing voice, the actor’s face is in charge of the totality of expression, and thus burdened with signiﬁcation: “every part of our physical organism has the possibility of becoming a transmitter of passion 30 and emotion.” Even more sophisticated is Borelli’s sense that what is replaced is

26 The costumes were presumably designed by famous costume and fashion designers Caramba and Fortuny. On this last scene as influenced by Loie Fuller’s cinematic dances, among many other things, and as a statement about a feminine modernity, see Angela Delle Vacche, Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema (Austin, 2008), 240–2. 27 On the diva film’s structural dependence on earlier theatrical acting see Cristina Jandelli, Le dive italiane del cinema muto (Palermo, 2006), 119 and throughout. 28 Lyda Borelli, “Bellezza ed eleganza,” L’arte muta 1 (1916), 6–7; reprinted in Jandelli, Le dive italiane, 139–42, here 141. 29 Sebastiano Arturo Luciani, L’antiteatro: il cinematografo come arte (Rome, 1928), 76. 30 Borelli, “Bellezza ed eleganza,” reprinted in Jandelli, Le dive italiane, 143. 188 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

Figure 6.4 Stills from Rapsodia satanica, Part ii, Finale Rapsodia satanica and Mascagni’s score 189 the sound and rhythm of the spoken words: “the shape of our gestures, the line of our 31 plastic expression, have a rhythm that must harmonize with the word they replace.” But on the other hand, the over-signifying body is subjected to an ulterior denaturing when it is transformed into cinematic image through the distorting closeness allowed by the camera. The danger is that the actress’seﬀorts result in the eﬀect of an aberrant, pathological body:

Whenever a true aesthetic sentiment did not monitor this delicate and powerful psychological function of hands and eyes, we would run the risk of mistaking a dramatic film for the phases 32 of an epileptic convulsion. Mascagni’s score assumes in regard to the imagetrack precisely this role of a “monitor- 33 ing”“aesthetic sentiment” advocated by Borelli. In passages like the final part of Rapsodia satanica the music is urged to act as a symbolic mediator: a mediator that fine-tunes that intimacy with the image by endowing it with meaning, affect, and narrative direction. But also a symbolic mediation that is able to create a new vocabulary of expression by drawing from the long operatic and symphonic tradition. Thus Mascagni’s preoccupation with synchronization can also be seen as a preoccupation to find the right place for music, and in particular, to reinvent the status of music as medium, this time deprived of singing voice, of verbal anchoring, but confronted with the overdetermined visual language of Fassini’s film. The fragility of the whole operation is quite evident: Mascagni’scarefully synchronized score is ultimately entrusted to the interpretation of performers. What is left is a printed record of the music, but the film in the meantime lost about 100 frames, so that the matching of soundtrack to images is doomed to approximation. And yet Rapsodia satanica remains an extraordinary experiment, which, in the development of industrial and national popular ideologies of early twentieth-century Italy manages to take a different stance. Mascagni’s work on the film suggests that the new medium has the potential for becoming a new kind of artifact, which can emerge only from the friction between the controlled, calculated temporalities of two separate tracks. By remaining separate, unsutured from the imagetrack (except for the two Chopin quotations), the musical score acquires an extraordinary power over the film. With a musical narrative based on thematic recurrences and inter-textual references it establishes music’s autonomy from the image, and therefore ensures the film’s artistic status. Music, moreover, is in the position to control and contain the images aurally, thus fulfilling film’s aspiration to

31 32 Ibid., 141. Ibid., 142. 33 For a similar distancing of the orchestral accompaniment, but from the singer’s gestures on the opera stage, see the excellent study by Mary Ann Smart, Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Opera (Berkeley, 2004). 190 Opera and Modern Spectatorship

become more than a recording of reality, but also, on the opposite side, masking the perils of technological mediation. By way of the orchestral sound, interposed between the screen and the audience, Mascagni harnesses the imagetrack within a tight, measured musical outer frame and simultaneously creates a live “aural scene” to which images are but a supplement. Postlude

What makes it possible to pronounce FAUSTIAN ENDEAVORS the spectator seated in her place inactive, if not the previously posited If Boito’s Mefistofele encompasses the author’s inter- radical opposition between the active est and labor like Frenhofer’s Unrecognized and the passive? Why identify gaze Masterpiece in Balzac’s novella, as suggested in and passivity, unless on the Chapter 2, fifty years or so later the other Faustian presupposition that to view means to project that is Rapsodia satanica delineates a different take pleasure in images and fi appearances while ignoring the truth model of artistic endeavor. Mascagni treats the lmic behind the image and the reality and feminine version of Faust in the way of outside the theatre? Why assimilate Pygmalion, shaping and containing the cinematic listening to passivity, unless through image within the boundaries of high culture and the prejudice that speech is the 1 within the expressive horizons of opera. The trajec- opposite of action? tory pursued by the two chapters at the start and end of this book allows us then to measure the utopian, self-reflective charge of the Faust legend against the different delimitations of the tasks of the opera composer and of the spectator over the course of half a century. The story inherited from Goethe posits the aesthetic moment as the climax: the hero Faust is interpellated by the creator Mephistopheles in the way of a spectator, endowed with the power to judge, among the conjured-up visions, that which is beautiful. Boito’s Mefistofele, as argued in Chapter 2, pursues this same Goethean dream of approaching an experiential totality, and places the hero/spectator in front of a “world system”: that aspiring to an expansive and universalizing span of experiences 2 that Franco Moretti deems crucial to the “modern epic.” Fassini and Oxilia’s film instead aligns a rather conservative view of the Faust story with the experimental thrust of the cinematic form and medium. Countess Alba d’Oltrevita asks the devil for the gift of eternal beauty, a beauty that the film visualizes as the feminine Art Nouveau ideal: a precious objet d’art accessible to a bourgeois, pan-European cinematic spectator. Similarly to Manon Lescaut, the other femme fatale in this book, Alba d’Oltrevita is entirely constituted in the visual register and as part of the setting. The eternal beauty for which she renounces love then is identified quite precisely with fashionable décor and luxury goods. The music domesticates her story even further, as argued in the

1 2 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator (London, 2009), 12. Moretti, Modern Epic, esp. 34–7.

191 192 Postlude

previous chapter, by smoothing the edges of Borelli’s commanding screen presence and thus confining within the established limits of high art the allegory of a feminine “insatiable desire for knowledge.” And yet it might be argued that the project maintains its utopian promise precisely in its idiosyncratic manipulation of the film idiom. The cinematography and mise-en-scène, the lighting, tinting, and editing, the close-ups and especially the sensuous movements and gestures of Borelli, choreographed to perfection as they traverse the frame: all this still manifests that aspiration of the modern epic to offer an experiential expansion towards a newly defined perceptual “world system.” The film spectator is placed in front of a spectacle that includes the film’s medium, and the magic powers of the creator are transferred from Mephistopheles, now a clownish figure, to the projector and the actress. The reader who has reached these last pages has surely realized that this book does not aim at propounding one theory of opera spectatorship. Rather it relies on a certain multifariousness, whereby each chapter sketches the broad and always potentially broader and mutating contours of what might be entailed in the relation between the performative instances of an opera and its public. The goal of the book, then, is perhaps in the order of a Mephistophelean effort to guarantee variety, but the framing Faustian theme intersects with several other threads in pursuit of the relation between opera and public. One of these threads, diaphanous but most compelling, is the way spectatorship has to do with degrees of distance or proximity between performance and public. The rare excursions of opera studies into matters of spectatorship have been tinged by a certain bias against theatre’s power over its audience. For instance, the recurrent appeals to the absorption/theatricality opposition and the persisting and unwavering critique of enchantment (Wagnerian and non) both rely on what Rancière has called the “paradox 3 of the spectator.” The spectator is simultaneously deemed an indispensable constituent of theatre and yet condemned for being tricked and subjected by the stage action. This paradox, what Rancière calls the “one basic formula,” finds an undisputed premise in the relation between stage and auditorium defined as active versus passive: the moving and speaking bodies of the actors are opposed to the static gazes and passive ears of the spectators. Against this bias Rancière has famously proposed the concept of emancipation, which, roughly put, consists in reclaiming the gap between stage and auditorium: a gap that subverts the deterministic link between the apparatus and the audience and accounts for a fluid, variable relationship between the two. This book instead strives to historicize the relation that is at the core of modern spectatorship and to provide a more nuanced articulation of how Italian opera at the turn of the twentieth century placed itself in front of its public. The complex regulation of enchantment against aesthetic judgment that is crucial to Boito’s Mefistofele also entails a naive but active spectator – available to take the journey and believe in it, as

3 Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, 2. Postlude 193 it were. The opera’s textual traces, however, strictly partition the tasks of stage and auditorium, tasks that are also doubled by those of Mefistofele and Faust. Simon Boccanegra stages the irreducible distance between the spectating crowd and Boccanegra as an “actor” of history. The former is manipulated, moved, involved, while the latter is in control of the apposite techniques and disciplines (rhetoric, politics). And yet this division is blurred by phantasmal intrusions that bring to the fore empathetic listening and desirous looking: Boccanegra is the ideal leader in the way of a spectator. Otello transfers the locus of this empathy onto the very body of the actor, who acquires the capacity of becoming other by way of technique, and simultaneously allows the spectator to bridge the gap with the stage by way of “sympathetic contagion.” Then in Manon Lescaut the body of the heroine and femme fatale is caught in a continual play of subjectification: it first establishes enchanted absorption as the mode of apperception and then exposes scopophilia as the underlying contract with the spectator. Lastly, in Rapsodia satanica it is the musical score that renegotiates this contract in aesthetic terms, containing and giving artistic status to the filmic images of the diva, to her absent closeness. In sum, the aspiration of this book is to propose that spectatorship, historically and contingently defined, is always already “emancipated” from the stillness of the usual opposition of passivity and activity. The event of opera has the potential to interpellate the public in always variable ways: affectively, mimetically, critically, and especially beyond the binaries active/passive, doing/watching, speaking or singing/listening. And a continual engagement with opera spectatorship, also beyond the scope of this book, has the potential to re-open the question of the politics of aesthetics. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

A!A!A! [Abel Hugo, Armand Malitourne, and Jean-Joseph Ader]. Traité du mélodrame. Paris: Delaunay, 1817. Agamben, Giorgio. The Man without Content. Trans. Georgia Albert. Stanford University Press, 1999. Alonge, Roberto. Teatro e spettacolo nel secondo Ottocento [1988]. 2nd edn. Rome: Laterza, 1994. Alovisio, Silvio. Voci del silenzio: la sceneggiatura nel cinema muto italiano. Milan: Il Castoro, 2005. Archer, William. “Masks or Faces? A Study in the Psychology of Acting” [1888]. In “The Paradox of Acting” by Denis Diderot and “Masks or Faces?” by William Archer: Two Classics of the Art of Acting. Introduction by Lee Strasberg. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957. 72–232. Ashbrook, William. “Boito and the 1868 Mefistofele Libretto as a Reform Text.” In Reading Opera. Ed. Arthur Groos and Roger Parker. Princeton University Press, 1988. 268–87. Ashbrook, William. “The Nineteenth Century: Italy.” In The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera. Ed. Roger Parker. Oxford University Press, 1994. 169–205. Ashbrook, William. The Operas of Puccini [1968]. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. Ashbrook, William, and Gerardo Guccini, eds. Mefistofele di Arrigo Boito. Milan: Ricordi, 1998. Ashton, Dore. A Fable of Modern Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980. Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture [1999]. 2nd edn. New York: Routledge, 2008. Bachelier, Jean-Louis. “Les Combles du mélodrame.” Revue des sciences humaines 162 (1976): 205–18. Bagnoli, V., and Giacomo Manzoli. “Era Alba D’Oltrevita nel castello d’Illusione.” In Cinegrafie, vol. ix: Viaggio nel cinema delle terre di mezzo: schermi della Mitteleuropa. Ancona: Transeuropa, 1996. Baia Curioni, Stefano. Mercanti d’opera: storie di Casa Ricordi. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2011. Balme, Christopher. “Playbills and the Theatrical Public Sphere.” In Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography. Ed. Charlotte M. Canning and Thomas Postlewait. University of Iowa Press, 2010. 37–62. Balzac, Honoré de. “Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu.” In La Comédie humaine, vol. ix. Ed. Marcel Bouteron. Paris: Gallimard, 1950. Barthes, Roland. “Diderot, Brecht, Einstein.” In Image-Music-Text. Trans. and ed. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana, 1977. 69–78. Barzaghi, Ilaria. Milano 1881: tanto lusso e tanta folla. Rappresentazione della modernità e modernizzazione popolare. Milan: Silvana, 2009. Basevi, Abramo. Studio sulle opere di G. Verdi. Florence: Tofani, 1859. Belting, Hans. The Invisible Masterpiece. London: Reaktion Books, 2001. Benjamin, Walter. “What is Epic Theater?” In Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. 147–54.

194 Select bibliography 195

Bergman, Gösta. Lighting in the Theatre. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977. Berlioz, Hector. “Le Freyschütz de Weber.” Journal des débats, June 16, 1841. Blau, Herbert. The Audience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Bogiankino, Massimo. Appendix to “Simon Boccanegra: il testo in prosa, i libretti, le prime esecuzioni delle due versioni al Teatro alla Scala e la critica milanese del tempo.” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Perugia 14 (1976–7): 335–59. Boito, Arrigo. “L’alfiere nero” [1867]. In Novelle e riviste drammatiche. Ed. Gioachino Brognolino. Naples: R. Ricciardi, 1920. Boito, Arrigo. “Il Freischütz davanti al pubblico della Scala.” La gazzetta musicale, March 17, 1872. Boito, Arrigo. Mefistofele [1862]. Ed. Michele Saladino and Mario Parenti. Vocal score. Plate no. 44720. Milan, Ricordi, 1962. Boito, Arrigo. Tutti gli scritti. Ed. Piero Nardi. Milan: Mondadori, 1942. Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. “Continuity Editing.” In Film Art: An Introduction [1979]. 4th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993. 218–29. Borelli, Lyda. “Bellezza ed eleganza.” L’arte muta 1 (1916): 6–7. Braudy, Leo, and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism. Oxford University Press, 1999. Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination [1976]. Reprint. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Brunetta, Gian Piero. Cent’anni di cinema italiano. 2 vols. Rome: Laterza, 1995. Bruno, Giuliana. Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari. Princeton University Press, 1993. Budden, Julian. The Operas of Verdi. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Busch, Hans, ed. Verdi’s “Otello” and “Simon Boccanegra” in Letters and Documents. Trans. Hans Busch. Vol. ii. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Cambi, Franco. Collodi, De Amicis, Rodari: tre immagini d’infanzia. Bari: Dedalo, 1985. Cambiasi, Pompeo. Il teatro alla Scala: 1778–1881. Milan: Ricordi, 1881. Capra, Marco. “L’illuminazione sulla scena verdiana, ovvero l’arco voltaico non acceca la luna.” In La realizzazione scenica dello spettacolo verdiano. Ed. Pierluigi Petrobelli and Fabrizio Della Seta. Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1996. 230–64. Carlson, Marvin. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey, from the Greeks to the Present [1984]. Expanded edn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Carner, Mosco. Puccini: A Critical Biography [1958]. London: Duckworth, 1992. Cella, Franca, and Pierluigi Petrobelli, eds. Giuseppe Verdi-Giulio Ricordi: corrispondenza e immagini 1881–1890. Milan: Teatro alla Scala, 1982. Cenni sul Teatro alla Scala. Milan: Commissione Teatrale, 1881. Charlton, David, ed. E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings. Cambridge University Press, 1989. Cherchi Usai, Paolo, ed. Giovanni Pastrone: gli anni d’oro del cinema a Torino. Turin: UTET, 1986. Cohen, H. Robert, ed. The Original Staging Manuals for Ten Parisian Operatic Premières, 1824–1843. New York: Pendragon Press, 1998. Cohen, H. Robert, ed. The Original Staging Manuals for Twelve Parisian Operatic Premières. New York: Pendragon Press, 1990. Cohen, H. Robert, and Marie-Odile Gigou. Cent Ans de mis en scène lyrique en France (env. 1830–1930). New York: Pendragon Press, 1986. 196 Select bibliography

Colombo, Fausto. La cultura sottile: media e industria culturale in Italia dall’Ottocento agli anni novanta. 4th edn. Milan: Bompiani, 2009. Conati, Marcello, and Natalia Grilli, eds. Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Simon Boccanegra” di Giuseppe Verdi [1883]. Milan: Ricordi, 1993. Copeland, Roger. “The Presence of Mediation.” The Drama Review 34/4 (1990): 28–44. Copjec, Joan. “Locked Room/Lonely Room: Private Space in Film Noir.” In Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994. 163–200. Coquelin, Constant. L’Art et le comédien. Paris: 1880. D’Annunzio, Gabriele. “Del cinematografo considerato come strumento di liberazione e come arte di trasfigurazione.” In Giovanni Pastrone: gli anni d’oro del cinema a Torino. Ed. Paolo Cherchi Usai. Turin: UTET, 1986. 113–22. D’Arcais, Francesco. “Il Mefistofele di Arrigo Boito.” Nuova antologia di scienze lettere ed arti, 2nd series, 5 (1877): 190–204. Darwin, Charles. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray, 1872. Dayan, Daniel. “The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema.” Film Quarterly 28/1 (Fall 1974): 22–31. Degrada, Francesco. “Il segno e il suono: storia di un editore e del suo mondo,” in Musica musicisti editoria: 175 anni di Casa Ricordi 1808–1983. Milan: Ricordi, 1983. Del Boca, Angelo. Gli italiani in Africa orientale: dall’Unità alla marcia su Roma. Rome: Laterza, 1976. Della Coletta, Cristina. World Fairs Italian Style: The Great Expositions in Turin and Their Narratives, 1860–1915. University of Toronto Press, 2006. Diderot, Denis. “The Paradox of Acting” [1880]. In “The Paradox of Acting” by Denis Diderot and “Masks or Faces?” by William Archer: Two Classics of the Art of Acting. Trans. Walter H. Pollock. Reprint. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957. 3–71. Diderot, Denis. Paradoxe sur le comédien. Paris: Sautelet, 1830. Disposizione scenica per l’opera “I Lituani” versi di A. Ghislanzoni musica di Amilcare Ponchielli, compilata e regolata secondo la messa in scena del Teatro alla Scala da Giulio Ricordi. Milan: Ricordi, 1876. Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut” di Giacomo Puccini compilata da Giulio Ricordi. Plate no. 96457. Milan: Ricordi, 1893. Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Manon Lescaut” di Giacomo Puccini compilata da Giulio Ricordi. In Museo teatrale alla Scala: 1880–1930. Momenti della messa in scena. Exhibition Catalogue. Ed. Giuseppina Carutti, Enrico Calza, Lucia Palma, Carla Pozzoli, and Sebastiano Romani. Milan: Arti grafiche Ghezzi, 1977. Disposizione scenica per l’opera “Mefistofele” di Arrigo Boito. Milan: Ricordi, 1881. Ernani [Review]. Il mondo artistico 15/5 (February 5, 1881). Ernani [Review]. Il mondo artistico 15/6–7 (February 16, 1881). Farina, Salvatore. Review of Il figliol prodigo. La gazzetta musicale di Milano 36/1 (January 2, 1881). Farina, Salvatore. Review of Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber. La gazzetta musicale di Milano 36/10 (March 6, 1881). 95–6. Ferrando, Enrico Maria, ed. Tutti i libretti di Puccini. Milan: Garzanti, 1984. Ferrari, Paolo. “Il grande conciliabolo delle effe.” In Strenna-Album dell’associazione della stampa periodica in Italia. Rome: Forzani, 1881. 206–21. Select bibliography 197

Ferrini, Rinaldo. “I progressi dell’illuminazione elettrica.” Rassegna nazionale 33/9 (1887): 122–6. Filippi, Filippo. “La musica a Milano.” In Milano 1881. Milan: Ottino, 1881. Filippi, Filippo. Musica e musicisti, critiche, biographie, ed escursioni. Milan: Brigola, 1876. Finaldi, Giuseppe. “Italy’s Scramble for Africa from Dogali to Adowa.” In Disastro! Disasters in Italy since 1860: Culture, Politics, Society. Ed. John Dickie, John Foot, and Frank M. Snowden. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 80–97. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. “The Avant-Garde and the Semiotics of the Antitextual Gesture.” In Contours of the Theatrical Avant-Garde: Performance and Textuality. Ed. James M. Harding. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 75–95. Fodor, Jerry. “Not Entirely Nice.” London Review of Books 22/21 (November 2, 2000), 32. Der Freischütz [Review]. Il mondo artistico: giornale di musica dei teatri e delle belle arti 15/10 (March 9, 1881). Gallerga, Antonio Carlo. Italy Revisited. London: S. Tinsley, 1876. Galli, Amintore. Review of Simon Boccanegra. Il secolo 16/5368 (March 25–6, 1881). Gatti, Hilary. Shakespeare nei teatri milanesi dell’Ottocento. Bari: Adriatica, 1968. Gebauer, Gunter, and Christoph Wulf. Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society. Trans. Don Reneau. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. “Giovanni Battista Licata.” Dizionario Biografico degli italiani, vol. lxv. Online edn., 2005. www. treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-battista-licata_(Dizionario-Biografico); accessed March 27, 2013. Girardi, Michele. Puccini: His International Art. Trans. Laura Basini. University of Chicago Press, 2000. Girardi, Michele. “La rappresentazione musicale dell’atmosfera settecentesca nel secondo atto di Manon Lescaut.” In Esotismo e colore locale nell’opera di Puccini. Ed. Jurgen Maehder. Pisa: Giardini, 1985. 65–82. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust, Part i. Trans. David Luke. Oxford University Press, 1987. Goldin, Daniela. “Il Simon Boccanegra da Piave a Boito e la drammaturgia verdiana.” In La vera fenice: librettisti e libretti tra Sette e Ottocento. Turin: Einaudi, 1985. 283–334. Goldin, Daniela, ed. “Manuscript Prose Draft of Simon Boccanegra.” In “Simon Boccanegra”: Teatro Comunale di Firenze. Stagione lirica 1988–89. Florence: Teatro Comunale di Firenze, 1988. 145–74. Gossett, Philip. Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera. University of Chicago Press, 2006. Gramsci, Antonio. Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Trans. and ed. Derek Boothman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Guarnieri Corazzol, Adriana. Musica e letteratura in Italia fra Ottocento e Novecento. Milan: Sansoni, 2000. Guccini, Gerardo. “I due Mefistofele di Boito: drammaturgie e figurazioni.” In “Mefistofele” di Arrigo Boito. Ed. William Ashbrook and Gerardo Guccini. Milan: Ricordi, 1998. 147–266. Hartmann, Eduard von. Philosophy of the Unconscious. Trans. William Chatterton Coupland. London, 1884. Hayward, Susan. Key Concepts in Cinema Studies. London: Routledge, 1996. Heath, Stephen. “Notes on Suture.” Screen 18/4 (Winter 1977–8): 48–76. Heath, Stephen. Questions of Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. 198 Select bibliography

Henson, Karen. “Verdi versus Victor Maurel on Falstaff: Twelve New Verdi Letters and Other Operatic and Musical Theater Sources.” 19th-Century Music 31/2 (November 2007): 113–30. Hepokoski, James. “Boito and F.-V. Hugo’s ‘Magnificent Translation’: A Study in the Genesis of the ‘Otello’ Libretto.” In Reading Opera. Ed. Arthur Groos and Roger Parker. Princeton University Press, 1988. 34–59. Hepokoski, James. Giuseppe Verdi: “Otello”. Cambridge University Press, 1987. Hepokoski, James. “An Introduction to the 1881 Score.” In Simon Boccanegra, English National Opera Guide 32. New York: Riverrun Press, 1985. 19–20. Hepokoski, James. “Staging Verdi’s Operas: The Single, ‘Correct’ Performance.” In Verdi in Performance. Ed. Alison Latham and Roger Parker. Oxford University Press, 2001. 11–20. Hepokoski, James, and Mercedes Viale Ferrero, eds. “Otello” di Giuseppe Verdi. Milan: Ricordi, 1990. Hopkinson, Cecil. A Bibliography of the Works of Giacomo Puccini. New York: Broude Brothers, 1968. Hugo, Victor. “La Légende du beau Pécopin.” In Le Rhin: lettres à un ami, vol. ii. Paris: Hachette, 1876. 43–107. Issacharoff, Michael. Discourse as Performance. Stanford University Press, 1989. Jacobs, Lea, and Ben Brewster. Theatre to Cinema. Oxford University Press, 1997. Jandelli, Cristina. Le dive italiane del cinema muto. Palermo: Epos, 2006. Jay, Martin. Cultural Semantics: Keywords of Our Time. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998. Jay, Martin. “Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and the Search for a New Ontology of Sight.” In Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 263–328. Jost, François. “The Voices of Silence.” In The Sounds of Early Cinema. Trans. Franck Le Gak and Wendy Schubring. Ed. Richard Abel and Rick Altman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. 48–56. Kerman, Joseph. “Lyric Form and Flexibility in Simon Boccanegra.” Studi Verdiani 1 (1982): 47–62. Kerman, Joseph. Opera as Drama [1956]. Revised edn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Kimbell, David. Italian Opera. Cambridge University Press, 1991. Kittler, Friedrich. Optical Media. Cambridge: Polity, 2010. Kreuzer, Gundula. Verdi and the Germans. Cambridge University Press, 2010. Krotz, Friederich. “Mediatization: A Concept with which to Grasp Media and Societal Change.” In Mediatization: Concepts, Changes, Consequences. Ed. Knut Lundby. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. 21–40. Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: Norton, 1996. Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. “Diderot: Paradox and Mimesis.” In Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics. Trans. and ed. Christopher Fynsk. Stanford University Press, 1998. 248–66. Lazarus, Emma. “Tommaso Salvini.” The Century 23 (November 1881): 110–17. Leibowitz, René. “L’Oeuvre de Puccini et les problèmes de l’opéra contemporain.” Histoire de l’Opéra. Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1957. 330–54. Leiris, Michel. Operratics. Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2001. Select bibliography 199

Levin, David J. “A Picture-Perfect Man? Senta, Absorption, and Wagnerian Theatricality,” The Opera Quarterly 21/3 (2005): 486–95. Levin, David J., ed. Opera through Other Eyes. Stanford University Press, 1994. Lewes, George Henry. On Actors and the Art of Acting. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1875. Licata, Giovanni Battista. Assab e i Danachili: viaggio e studii. Milan: Treves, 1885. Livio, Gigi. “Il teatro del grande attore e del mattatore.” In Storia del teatro moderno e contemporaneo, vol. ii: Il grande teatro borghese: Settecento–Ottocento. Ed. Roberto Alonge and Guido Davico Bonino. Turin: Einaudi, 2000. 614–37. Luciani, Sebastiano Arturo. L’antiteatro: il cinematografo come arte. Rome: La Voce, 1928. Mallach, Alan. The Autumn of Italian Opera from Verismo to Modernism, 1890–1915. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2007. Manzotti, Luigi. Excelsior: azione coreografica, storica, allegorica, fantastica in 6 parti ed 11 quadri. Musica di Romualdo Marenco. Milan: Ricordi, 1881. Mascagni, Pietro. Epistolario. Ed. Mario Morini, Roberto Iovino, and Alberto Paloscia. 2 vols. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1996–7. Mason, Edward Tuckerman. The Othello of Tommaso Salvini. New York and London: Putnam’s, 1890. Maurel, Victor. À propos de la mise-en-scène du drame lyrique “Otello”. Rome: Editrice Romana, 1888. Medici, Mario, and Marcello Conati, eds. Carteggio Verdi-Boito. Parma: Istituto di studi verdiani, 1978. Melberg, Arne. Theories of Mimesis. Cambridge University Press, 1995. Meldolesi, Claudio, and Ferdinando Taviani. Teatro e spettacolo nel primo Ottocento [1991]. Rome: Laterza, 1995. Metz, Christian. The Imaginary Signifier. Trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster, and Alfred Guzzetti. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Meyer, Stephen. Carl Maria von Weber and the Search for a German Opera. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Miceli, Sergio. Musica per film: storia, estetica – analisi, tipologie. Milan: Ricordi, 2009. Mildenberger, Marianne. Film und Projektion auf der Buhne. Emsdetten: Lechte, 1961. Miller, Jacques-Alain. “La Suture (éléments de la logique du significant).” Cahiers pour l’analyse 1 (1966): 37–49. Miller, Jacques-Alain. “Suture (Elements of the Logic of the Signifier).” Screen 18/4 (Winter 1977–8): 24–34. Morelli, Giovanni. “Qualcosa sul Nerone.” In Arrigo Boito. Ed. Giovanni Morelli. Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1994. Moretti, Franco. Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to García Márquez. Trans. Quintin Hoare. New York: Verso, 1996. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16/3 (1975): 6–18. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. 14–26. Musco, Gianfranco. Musica e teatro in Giacomo Puccini, vol. i. Cortona: Calosci, 1989. Nardi, Piero. Vita di Arrigo Boito. Milan: Mondadori, 1944. 200 Select bibliography

Nicolaisen, Jay. “The First Mefistofele.” 19th-Century Music 1/3 (Spring 1978): 221–32. Nicolaisen, Jay. Italian Opera in Transition, 1871–1893 [1977]. Reprint. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Nikitopoulos, Alison Terbell. “Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele: Poetry, Music, and Revisions.” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1994. Noske, Frits. The Signifier and the Signified: Studies in the Operas of Mozart and Verdi [1977]. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Oudart, Pierre. “Cinema and Suture.” Screen 18/4 (Winter 1977–8): 35–47. Panteri, José, ed. Lyda Borelli. Rome: MICS, 1993. Panzini, Alfredo. Dizionario moderno. Milan: U. Hoepli, 1925. Pappacena, Flavia. “L’Excelsior di Luigi Manzotti.” In Excelsior. Turin: Teatro Reggio di Torino, 2000. 9–17. Pappacena, Flavia, ed. “Excelsior”: documenti e saggi. Rome: Di Giacomo, 1998. Parker, Roger. “Manon Lescaut and The Apotheosis of Private Man.” In Una piacente estate di San Martino. Studi e ricerche per Marcello Conati. Ed. Marco Capra. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2000. 315–22. Parker, Roger. “Manon Lescaut and the Patchwork Challenge.” Liner notes to Giacomo Puccini, Manon Lescaut. Cond. Riccardo Chailly. CD, Decca/London 421-426-1, 1988. 14–20. Parker, Roger. “Reading the Livrets, or the Chimera of ‘Authentic’ Staging.” In Leonora’s Last Act. Princeton University Press, 1997. 126–48. Parker, Roger, and Matthew Brown. “Ancora un bacio: Three Scenes from Verdi’s Otello.” 19th-Century Music 9/1 (Summer 1985): 50–62. Pesci, Ugo. “Otello nel teatro drammatico e lirico.” In Illustrazione italiana numerico unico: Verdi el’“Otello”. Milan: Treves, 1887. Pesenti Compagnoni, Donata. Verso il cinema: macchine, spettacoli, e mirabili visioni. Turin: UTET Libreria, 1995. Peterseil, Michaela. “Die ‘Disposizioni sceniche’ des Verlags Ricordi: ihre Publikation und Ihr Zielpublikum,” Studi verdiani 12 (1997): 133–55. Petrobelli, Pierluigi, Marisa Di Gregorio Casati, and Carlo Matteo Mossa, eds. Carteggio Verdi- Ricordi: 1880–1881. Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1988. Phelan, Peggy. “The Ontology of Performance: Representation without Reproduction.” In Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. New York: Taylor and Francis, 1996. 146–66. Piazzoni, Irene. Spettacolo, istituzioni e società nell’Italia postunitaria (1860–1882). Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 2001. Piccardi, Carlo. “Mascagni e l’ipotesi del ‘dramma musicale cinematografico.’” In Atti del convegno internazionale di studi “Musica e Cinema,” Siena 19–22 agosto 1990. Ed. Sergio Miceli. Florence: Olschki, 1992. 453–97. Pirandello, Luigi. Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio [1915]. Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, 1925. Puccini, Giacomo. Manon Lescaut [1893]. Vocal Score. Plate no. 97321. Milan: Ricordi, 1996. Puchner, Martin, Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality and Drama. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Select bibliography 201

Rancière, Jacques. The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso, 2009. Re, Lucia. “Italians and the Invention of Race: The Poetics and Politics of Difference in the Struggle over Libya, 1890–1913.” California Italian Studies Journal 1/1 (2010): 1–58. Roach, Joseph. The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. Robertson, Étienne-Gaspard. Mémoires récréatifs, scientifiques et anecdotiques du physicien-aéronaute E. G. Robertson. 2 vols. Paris: E. G. Robertson, 1831–3. Rosa, Giovanna. Il mito della capitale morale: letteratura e pubblicistica a Milano fra Otto e Novecento. Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1982. Rosen, David. “La mess’in scena delle opere di Verdi.” In La drammaturgia musicale. Ed. Lorenzo Bianconi. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986. 209–22. Rosen, David. “A Riot, a Harangue, and a (Failed) Uprising: Three Scenes from Nineteenth- Century Operas.” In Mobs: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry. Ed. Nancy van Deusen and Leonard Michael Koff. Boston: Brill, 2012. 305–38. Rosen, David. “The Staging of Verdi’s Operas: An Introduction to the Ricordi Disposizioni sceniche.” In International Musicological Society, Report of the Twelfth Congress, Berkeley, 1977. Ed. Daniel Heartz and Bonnie Wade. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1981. 444–53. Rosen, David, and Marinella Pigozzi, eds. “Un ballo in maschera” di Giuseppe Verdi. Milan: Ricordi, 2002. Rosselli, John. The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarosa to Verdi. Cambridge University Press, 1984. Rossi, Ernesto. Studii drammatici e lettere autobiografiche, precedute da un proemio di Angelo De Gubernatis. Florence: Successori Le Monnier, 1885. Rothman, William. “Against ‘The System of Suture.’” Film Quarterly 29/1 (Fall 1975): 44–50. Sala, Emilio. L’opera senza canto: il mélo romantico e l’invenzione della colonna sonora. Venice: Marsilio, 1995. Salvetti, Guido. “La Scapigliatura milanese e il teatro d’opera.” In Il melodramma italiano dell’Ottocento. Ed. Giorgio Pestelli. Turin: Einaudi, 1977. 567–604. Salvini, Tommaso. “Impressions of Some Shaksperean [sic] Characters.” The Century 23 (November 1881): 117–25. Salvini, Tommaso. Leaves from the Autobiography of Tommaso Salvini. New York: The Century Co., 1893. Salvini, Tommaso. Ricordi, aneddoti ed impressioni dell’artista Tommaso Salvini. Milan: Fratelli Dumolard, 1895. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956. Scherr, Suzanne. “The Chronology of Composition of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut.” In Giacomo Puccini: l’uomo, il musicista, il panorama europeo. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi su Giacomo Puccini nel 70o anniversario della morte (Lucca, 25–29 novembre 1994). Ed. Gabriella Biagi Ravenni and Carolyn Gianturco. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1997. 81–109. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the 19th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Schwartz, Arman. “Manon in the Desert, Wagner on the Beach.” The Opera Quarterly 24/1–2 (Winter–Spring 2008): 51–61. 202 Select bibliography

Serpieri, Alessandro. “Otello”:l’eros negato. Psicoanalisi di una proiezione distruttiva. Milan: Il Formichiere, 1980. Shaw, George Bernard. Music in London 1890–94. London: Constable, 1950. Silverman, Kaja. “Suture.” In The Subject of Semiotics. Oxford University Press, 1983. 194–236. Smart, Mary Ann. Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Opera. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Smart, Mary Ann. “The Silencing of Lucia.” Cambridge Opera Journal 4/2 (July 1992): 119–41. Solinas, Rosa. “Arrigo Boito: The Legacy of Scapigliatura.” D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. Stanislavski, Constantin. My Life in Art. Trans. J. J. Robbins. New York: Meridian Books, 1956. Stewart-Steinberg, Suzanne. The Pinocchio Eﬀect: On Making Italians, 1860–1920. University of Chicago Press, 2007. Szondi, Peter. Theory of the Modern Drama. Trans. and ed. Michael Hays. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Towse, John Ranken. “Tommaso Salvini: A Great Tragedian.” Putnam’s Monthly 3/1 (October 1907): 18–20. Tusa, Michael. “Cosmopolitanism and the National Opera: Weber’s Der Freischütz,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 36/3 (Winter 2006), 483–506. Valisa, Silvia. “Casa Editrice Sonzogno. Mediazione culturale, circuiti del sapere ed innovazione tecnologica nell’Italia uniﬁcata (1861–1887).” In The Printed Media in Fin-de-Siècle Italy: Publishers, Writers, and Readers. Ed. Ann Hallamore Caesar, Gabriella Romani, and Jennifer Burns. London: Legenda, 2011. 90–106. Verdi, Giuseppe. Otello. Vocal Score. Plate no. 52105. Milan: Ricordi, 1996. Verdi, Giuseppe. Simon Boccanegra. Vocal Score. Plate no. 47372. Milan: Ricordi, 1996. Viale Ferrero, Mercedes. “Stage and Set.” In The History of Italian Opera, vol. v: Opera on Stage. Ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli. University of Chicago Press, 2002. 1–123. Vicentini, Claudio. “Teorie della recitazione: Diderot e la questione del paradosso.” In Storia del teatro moderno e contemporaneo, vol. ii: Il grande teatro borghese: Settecento–Ottocento. Turin: Einaudi, 2000. 5–47. Wagner, Richard. “Der Freischütz: In Front of the Parisian Audience.” In Pigrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays. Trans. William Ashton Ellis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. 167–204. Weaver, William. Seven Verdi Librettos [1963]. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975. Žižek, Slavoj. The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kies´lowski between Theory and Post-Theory. London: BFI Publishing, 2001. Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. INDEX

Adorno, Theodor W., 103 Casa Ricordi, 5, 13, 68, 109, 169, 172 Agamben, Giorgio, 21, 44 and copyright regulations, 5 Alberini, Filoteo, 173 and Italian culture industry after unification, 5–7 Alonge, Roberto, 107 and the production of staging manuals, 4–7 Alovisio, Silvio, 175, 177 Cella, Franca, 106 Archer, William, 110, 111, 112, 131, 136, 137, 138 Cherchi Usai, Paolo, 178 Ashbrook, William, 3, 16, 17, 23, 25, 145, 156 Cines, 177, 178, 180 Ashton, Dore, 20 Cohen, H. Robert, 3 audience, 1, 2, 10, see also spectatorship, public Colombo, Fausto, 6, 13, 64, 65 Augusteo theatre, see Teatro Augusteo Conati, Marcello, 3, 51, 75, 106, 147 Auslander, Philip, 1 Copeland, Roger, 2 Coquelin, Constant, 111, 136 Baia Curioni, Stefano, 5 Balme, Christopher, 10 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 177, 178 Balzac, Honoré de D’Arcais, Francesco, 18 Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, Le, 20 Dal Verme theatre, Milan, 67 Barthes, Roland, 44 Dante Alighieri, 106, 142 Barzaghi, Ilaria, 62, 70, 73 darkening of auditorium, 29, 75 Basevi, Abramo, 54, 55 De Amicis, Edmondo, 6 Basini, Laura, 152 Degrada, Francesco, 4, 5 Belting, Hans, 20 Del Boca, Angelo, 134 Benjamin, Walter, 43 Della Coletta, Cristina, 70, 72 Bergman, Gösta, 28 Della Seta, Fabrizio, 29 Berlioz, Hector, 10 Delle Vacche, Angela, 187 Bernardoni, Virgilio, 152 Diderot, Denis, 44, 110, 111, 112, 117, 118, 131, 132, 196 Bertini, Francesca, 173, 176 disposizioni sceniche, 2–7, see also Manon Lescaut, Bertoja, Pietro, 25 Mefistofele, Otello, Simon Boccanegra Blau, Herbert, 1 and autonomization of opera, 4 Boito, Arrigo, 12, 15, 23, 37, 106, 108, 116, 125, 133, 134, 169, as supplement, 4 see also Mefistofele diva films, 173 Borelli, Lyda, 172, 173, 176, 187 Duse, Eleonora, 187 acting style, 186–9 on voiceless acting, 187–9 electric lighting, 28, 29, 32, 77 Brooks, Peter, 95, 100 Emanuel, Giovanni, 106, 107 Brunetta, Gian Piero, 173, 176 Excelsior, gran ballo, 49, 66, 68, 69–73, 79 Bruno, Giuliana, 173 Budden, Julian, 50, 55, 57, 58, 67, 68, 84, 97, 123, 139 Fano, Alessandro, 68, 69 Farina, Salvatore, 8, 67 Cambiasi, Pompeo, 63 Fassini, Alberto, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178, 191 Cammarano, Michele, 134 figliol prodigo, Il, 66, 68 Canobbiana theatre, Milan, 67 Filippi, Filippo, 6, 7, 9, 33, 55, 62, 63, 68, 69 Capra, Marco, 29, 75 Filodrammatici theatre, Milan, 106 Capuana, Luigi, 62 Finaldi, Giuseppe, 134 Carlson, Marvin, 111 Fischer-Lichte, Erika, 39 Carner, Mosco, 145 Fodor, Jerry, 143, 144, 169

203 204 Index

Freischütz, Der, 7, 9, 11, 12, 30, 46, 66, 67 Magnani, Girolamo, 94 Arrigo Boito’s review, 12 Manon Lescaut, 143–71, 191, 193 Hector Berlioz’s review, 10 desert of Act 4, 168–70 Richard Wagner’s review, 11 and the femme fatale, 170–1 gaze, 155–64 Galli, Amintore, 93 “mirror phase”, 164–8 Gatti, Hilary, 107 set design, 147–55 gaze, 85–94, 143–4, 155–64 suture, 161–4 gazzetta musicale, La (Milan), 5, 7, 8, 12, 46, 67, 169 Manzotti, Luigi, 66, 69 Gioconda, La, 29, 37 Marenco, Romualdo, 66, 70 Girardi, Michele, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 152, 156 Martini, Fausto Maria, 174, 175 Gossett, Philip, 3 Mascagni, Pietro, 172, 175, 177, 178–80, 182, 189, 190, 191, Gramsci, Antonio, 48 see also Rapsodia satanica Grilli, Natalia, 3, 51 Maurel, Victor, 68, 110, 117 Groos, Arthur, 17, 108 Mazza, Manlio, 177 Guarnieri Corazzol, Adriana, 18, 37, 43 mediatization, 1, 2, 110 Guccini, Gerardo, 3, 17, 23, 25, 26, 32, 33, 37 of opera, 2 Gutiérrez, García, 50, 81 Meﬁstofele, 12, 15–47, 66, 73, 75, 191, 192 Act 1, scene i, 26, 34, 37 Hartmann, Eduard von, 112 Act 1, scene ii, 27 Heath, Stephen, 161 Act 2, Garden Scene, 27 Henson, Karen, 117 Act 2, scene ii, 29 Hepokoski, James, 3, 93, 108, 126 Act 3, Prison Scene, 40 Hopkinson, Cecil, 147 Act 4, Classical Sabbath, 32 hypotyposis, 50 acting, 40–3 and the Artist’s interest, 24, 45, 46 Illica, Luigi, 147 Epilogue, 32 illustrazione italiana, L’, 6, 77, 109, 133 and Goethe’s Faust, 15, 23, 31, 39 Irving, Henry, 111 and Gounod’s Faust, 23 Issacharoﬀ, Michael, 51 lighting design, 28–30 as “modern epic”, 23–4 Jacobs, Lea, 186 and modular sequencing, 35 Jandelli, Cristina, 187 Prologue, 25 Jay, Martin, 163 as “ruined copy”, 16–20 Jost, François, 179 stagecraft, 25–8 as “unrecognized masterpiece”, 20–3 Kerman, Joseph, 55, 119, 139, 141 Meldolesi, Claudio, 107 Kimbell, David, 16 Menichelli, Pina, 173 Kittler, Friedrich, 29 Metz, Christian, 144 Kreuzer, Gundula, 103 Meyer, Stephen, 11 Krotz, Friedrich, 2 Miceli, Sergio, 177 Miller, Jacques-Alain, 161 La Scala, Milan, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 23, 28, 29, 46, 49, mimesis, 131–42 62, 63, 65, 67, 68, 69, 72, 77, 106, 108, 109, 147 Modena, Gustavo, 106 1881 season, 66 mondo artistico, Il, 9, 67, 68, 69 Lacan, Jacques, 163, 167 Morelli, Giovanni, 19 Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, 132 Moretti, Franco, 23, 191 Leiris, Michel, 48, 49, 50 Mulvey, Laura, 162 Levin, David, 11 Musco, Gianfranco, 146 Lewes, George Henry, 125 Lituani, I, 28, 29 Nardi, Piero, 16 Livio, Gigi, 107, 137 National Exhibition of Industry and Art, livrets de mise en scène, 3 Milan, 6, 61, 77 Luciani, Salvatore A., 187 Nicolaisen, Jay, 16, 19, 20, 22, 36, 145, 165 Index 205

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 22 Rosen, David, 2, 3, 75, 102 Noske, Frits, 127 Rosselli, John, 5 Rossi, Ernesto, 106, 125 Oettermann, Stephan, 31 Rutherford, Susan, 170 Otello, 6, 106–42, 152, 193 Ruy Blas, 66 and acting theory, 110 and L’alfiere nero, 134–5 Sala, Emilio, 95, 97, 100 ending, 138–42 Salvetti, Guido, 16 and ethics of mimesis, 131–8 Salvini, Tommaso, 106, 107, 108, 109, 112, 125, and the first African War, 133–4 137, 138 and Shakespeare’s Othello, 107, 109 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 143, 144, 146, 163, 168, 169 Temptation Scene, 113–30 Scherr, Suzanne, 145, 152 Ottino, Giacinto, 77 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 28 Ottino, Giuseppe, 62 Schwartz, Arman, 169, 170 Oxilia, Nino, 175, 191 Serpieri, Alessandro, 50, 122, 123 SIAE, 5 Pappacena, Flavia, 66 Silverman, Kaja, 161, 167 Paradox of Acting, The, 111, 117, 131 Simon Boccanegra, 48–105, 193 Parker, Roger, 3, 16, 108, 139, 146, 170 and the 1881 revision, 65, 96, 103 Pastrone, Giovanni, 177, 178 Act 1, Amelia-Simone duet, 79 perseveranza La, 7, 55 and anamorphic listening, 100–1 Pesci, Ugo, 109 Council Chamber Scene, 96 Pesenti Compagnoni, Donata, 31 haunted stage, 49–61, 73 Peterseil, Michaela, 2 and history, 102–5 Petrobelli, Pierluigi, 29 lighting design, 73–9 phantasmagoria, 31, 32, 61 narratives, 79–94 Phelan, Peggy, 1 and the National Exposition, Milan 1881, 61–73 Piazzoni, Irene, 5 “Plebe! Patrizi!”, 103 Piccardi, Carlo, 179, 180 Prologo, 49 Pigozzi, Marinella, 3 tableaux, 94–101 Pirandello, Luigi, 177–8 and spectatorship, 59 Pizzetti, Ildebrando, 177 Smart, Mary Ann, 162, 189 Ponchielli, Amilcare, 29, 66 Solinas, Rosa, 17 Prophète, Le, 29 Sonzogno, Edoardo, 5 public, the, 3, 5, 7–14, 15, 16, 46–7, 61, 62, 65, sound effects, 36, 100 100, 113, 118, 138, 172, 192, 193 spectatorship, 14, 24, 39, 43–5, 59, 142, 144, and reviews, 10 192–3 Puccini, Giacomo, 170, see also Manon Lescaut staging manuals. See disposizioni sceniche Puchner, Martin, 51 Stanislavski, Constantin, 112 Stewart-Steinberg, Suzanne, 6 Rancière, Jacques, 191, 192 suture, 161 Rapsodia satanica, 172–90, 191, 193 Szondi, Peter, 39 and Borelli’s acting, 186–9 Chopin, Ballade op.23 no.1, 185 Tamagno, Francesco, 106 Chopin, Valse op.34 no.2, 186 Taviani, Ferdinando, 107 and Cines, 173–6 Teatro Augusteo, Rome, 172, 174, 177 ending, 179, 186 teatro illustrato, Il, 29 and music as symbolic mediator, 189 Terbell Nikitopoulos, Alison, 17, 28 synchronization of music to film, 180–6 Tommaso Salvini, 107, 109, 111, 113, 187 Re, Lucia, 134 Trezzini, Lamberto, 137 Ricordi, Giulio, 6, 7, 23, 29, 106, 108, see also Casa Ricordi Tuckerman Mason, Edward, 125, 138 Ristori, Adelaide, 111, 187 Tusa, Michael, 11 Roach, Joseph, 111, 112 Robertson, Étienne-Gaspard, 31 Vaccarino, Stefano, 180 Rosa, Giovanna, 62, 73 Valisa, Silvia, 5 206 Index

Verdi, Giuseppe, 4, 7, 48, 62, 68, 75, 97, 106, 139, 194, see Vicentini, Claudio, 111, 131 also Otello, Simon Boccanegra Ernani, 66, 68 Wagner, Richard, 11, 46 Traviata, La, 170 Wilson, Alexandra, 145, 169 Verga, Giovanni, 62, 177 Viale Ferrero, Mercedes, 3, 28, 29, 108, 113 Zuccarelli, Giovanni, 113