Verdi's AIDA: the Music

Verdi Forum Number 16 Article 4 1-1-1988 Verdi's Aida: The uM sic John Mauceri Scottish Opera Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/vf Part of the Musicology Commons, and the Music Performance Commons Recommended Citation Mauceri, John (1988) "Verdi's Aida: The usic,M " Verdi Forum: No. 16, Article 4. Available at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/vf/vol1/iss16/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Verdi Forum by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Verdi's Aida: The uM sic Keywords Giuseppe Verdi, Aida This article is available in Verdi Forum: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/vf/vol1/iss16/4 27 Verdi's AIDA: The Music John Mauceri What is it that holds an opera together tempo "feelings" was always given in paren structurally? Surely it is more than its theses ( J = 100 or J = 63 ). This is mise-en-scene, its characters and its musical particularly interesting because it is so very motives. In Verdi one finds a composer who specific (Wagner, for example, does not use wrote both quickly and fluently, but who metronome markings in any of his mature hardly made use of the complex motif-system works). What makes the issue so trouble developed by Wagner or the key relationships some for the conductor of today is that of Mozart. Is there something beyond the these tempos have very little to do with inherent structure of his well-crafted librettos current international expectations. We have that served as an underpinning for his many letters from Verdi asking if the tempos composition? were right at a performance of one of his During the 1985 season, when con operas which he did not attend. The ducting Rigoletto for the first time, we were metronome indications are generally con fortunate enough to make use of the newly sistent among the sources, and yet few seem published critical edition, edited by Martin to have ~bserved them during the past half Chusid. Besides the obvious interest in century. corrected dynamics, phrasing and text, the Are Verdi's tempo indications so overriding discovery was the support of important? In pursuing the issue regarding Verdi's tempo indications. Professor Chusid Rigoletto the conclusion that Verdi used pointed out that Verdi included metronome tempo as a structural element in his operas markings for his operas from La battaglia di became apparent. In an extensive article I Legnano to Falstaff and provided them for wrote for Opera Magazine one can see how Attila and Macbeth of the earlier works as certain speeds became the unique heartbeat well. These metronome indications were of the opera. For example, the opening always preceded by a subjective tempo pulse of the prelude to Act One ( .I = 63) indication, like Allegro moderato or Largo, is the same as the opening to the second but the precise speed of these subjective scene of Act One, the opening cantabile of •This article is reprinted from a program of the Scottish Opera for Aida, dating from 1987. Mr. Mauceri, who conducted the Aida performances, is Musical Director of the Scottish Opera and a member of the advisory board of AIVS. · 28 John Mauceri Act Two, the opening prelude to Act Three, considered acceptable in the realm of pitch, as well as the tempo of its major rhythm, or, for the most part, dynamics. ensemble("Bella figlia dell'amore") and the Thus a conductor who started Beethoven's final duet between Gilda and her father. This Fifth Symphony pianissimo or in a waltz single example of structural tempos is made rhythm would not be considered serious, but all the more fascinating since our twentieth it is perfectly acceptable to conduct a "slow" century traditions lead us to expect different or "fast" Fifth. tempos for all this music. Why is this? Does Even in the field of music theory and Aida support the idea of temporal structures analysis, which has spanned the entire period and do the Aida metronome markings work? of western music from the Greeks to the The answer to the first question of present time, very little thought has been where our performance expectations of given to temporal structures. Most writing Verdi's music come from seems clear enough. deals with pitch (intervallic and harmonic) Toscanini is the answer. His authority and structures. This must say something about influence is still the most powerful of any our music and the way we generally perceive opera conductor though the maestro has been it. After all, our music is rhythmically built dead for over thirty years. His influence in on a pulse and fractions of that pulse (in the major opera companies of the world America, like Germany, our nomenclature continues today in the attitudes and traditions for a note's duration represents this). of the very oldest maestri in our greatest Psycho-acoustics is a fairly recent field of opera houses who either worked with study, but it takes little investigation to Toscanini or his disciples. Toscanini was an realize that by changing the overall tempo anti-nineteenth century performer. In the human ear and brain hear different cleaning up the excesses of that century he things. A slow tempo can actually make the cleaned away the portamento from orchestral shorter, faster notes clearer and a faster string playing while setting up an expectation tempo can make the longer musical line more of driving intensity at all times in obvious. This apparent contradiction--a fast performances which came as an entirely new tempo brings out the "slow" notes and a way of performing music. Tempi were slow tempo brings out the "fast" notes--is at generally quite fast, i.e., faster than the heart of the matter of metronome indicated in the scores of Verdi, except when indications, and it is the responsibility of an they were markedly slower. In developing the artist to consider them without peril of most brilliant orchestral playing ever heard, giving up his interpretive license. After all, he made the conductor the most important it is still what happens within a tempo that personality in opera performance. Toscanini can make the difference. brought the nineteenth century into the But the issue of tempo choice becomes twentieth century by making it sound new even more critical when one is dealing with and relevant. a composer who made it as much the But now we are on the verge of another building blocks of his composition as his century, and we performers are faced with melodies and harmonies. This brings us back the overwhelming evidence that string to Verdi and Aida. portamenti were expected in the nineteenth These Scottish Opera performances century and that tempos had a much greater are based on a reading of Verdi's manuscript give and take than we are accustomed to as well as other contemporary scores. With hearing. We also know that Verdi's tempos Aida we are missing a number of important were what he insisted on and it seems time sources--a new edition is many years off- to give them a try. but we are fortunate in having the score The question of tempo is a particularly Verdi used for the Paris premiere, from interesting one. Most people consider tempo which he actually conducted. In hearing the personal choice of a conductor or soloist these performances there will be some even when the composer clearly requires a surprises regarding phrasing, dynamics and specific speed. This license would never be articulation. But the most startling Verdi's Aida: The Music 29 differences from what one has come to expect are easily available. The performers have from Aida will be some of the tempos. joined me in the journey of discovery, Do they function structurally as they do testing each speed and inevitably finding in Rigoletto? Yes. For example, the prelude that the score emerges in a wondrous way. (Andante mosso) moves at 76 beats a minute. New things are heard, fewer breaths are It is always associated with this Aida-theme, needed for some phrases, more text is but it is also the opening of Aida'a pivotal singable in another. It is possible to act: Act Three, and returns later in that act perform Aida many other ways and with for the magnificent conclusion of the almost guaranteed success. However, it is Aida/ Amonasro duet, just after she is thrown time, using all the information given us by to the ground. This music is traditionally the scores and by our colleagues who have taken much slower, but clearly is meant to spent their lives researching the history of return our heroine to her unhappy pulse, the performance practice, to consider the score one which pervades so much of her music. as the source of our performances rather Another example comes at the end of Act than an imitation of other performances. Three. Amonasro, Radames and Aida sing a Verdi should be allowed to speak directly to final trio at 120 beats per minute. Amneris' our time without the aid of interpretive interruption of six bars is at 144, followed middlemen. We owe it to him and we owe it immediately by a pulse of 120 to end the act. to our own time. When we see Amneris next, at the opening of Act Four, the music continues the speed of I am particularly grateful to the her Act Three "Traditor!" at 144. Later, American musicologist and conductor, David when Radames enters and sings of Aida, the Lawton, for making his research on Aida music returns to 120, the speed at which we available to me.

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