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Chan 3003 front.qxd 28/10/07 12:57 pm Page 1 Chan 3003 CHANDOS O PERA IN LEONCAVALLO ENGLISH Pagliacci Dennis O’Neill Rosa Mannion Alan Opie William Dazeley Peter Bronder David Parry London Philharmonic Orchestra David Parry PETE MOOES FOUNDATION CHAN 3003 BOOK.qxd 28/10/07 1:00 pm Page 2 Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857–1919) Pagliacci (The Touring Company) AKG Opera in a prologue and two acts Libretto by Leoncavallo English translation by Edmund Tracey Tonio (in the play, Taddeo), a clown ..................................................................Alan Opie baritone Canio (in the play, Pagliaccio), leader of the players........................................Dennis O’Neill tenor Beppe (in the play, Harlequin)..........................................................................Peter Bronder tenor Nedda (in the play, Columbina), wife of Canio............................................Rosa Mannion soprano Silvio, a villager ......................................................................................William Dazeley baritone Two locals......................................................................Paul Parfitt bass-baritone • Peter Hall tenor Geoffrey Mitchell Choir The Peter Kay Children’s Choir Ruggero Leoncavallo London Philharmonic Orchestra Brad Cohen assistant conductor David Parry conductor 3 CHAN 3003 BOOK.qxd 28/10/07 1:00 pm Page 4 Prologue 35:26 [p. 54] 13 ‘Be very careful, and then we can surprise them’ 5:00 [p. 57] 1 ‘Hello… Hello…’ 8:12 [p. 48] Tonio, Silvio, Nedda, Canio, Beppe Tonio 14 Introduction ‘Go on stage…’ 0:46 [p. 59] Canio Act I 35:26 [p. 54] 15 Aria ‘Put on your costume’ 2:59 [p. 59] 2 Chorus ‘Hey! They’re back! They’re back!’ 2:58 [p. 49] Canio Chorus, Canio, Beppe 16 Intermezzo 3:45 [p. 60] 3 Aria ‘Your most humble servant’ 2:48 [p. 50] Canio, Chorus, Beppe, Tonio Act II 35:26 [p. 54] 4 Cantabile ‘If he tried it I promise you’ 3:09 [p. 51] 17 Chorus ‘Ohe! Ohe! Quickly! Hurry!’ 4:07 [p. 60] Canio, Nedda, Chorus Chorus, Tonio, Beppe, Silvio, Nedda 5 Chorus ‘You hear them playing?’ 4:10 [p. 51] Chorus, Canio The Play 35:26 [p. 54] 6 Introduction ‘The ugly look he gave me’ 2:44 [p. 52] 18 ‘Pagliaccio, that’s my husband’ 1:40 [p. 62] Nedda Nedda (Columbina) 7 Aria ‘Swallow, fly away’ 2:23 [p. 52] 19 Serenade ‘O Columbina’ 2:45 [p. 62] Nedda Beppe (Harlequin), Columbina, Harlequin 8 Duet ‘It’s you! I thought that you had gone with Canio’ 5:02 [p. 53] 20 ‘She’s waiting. She is a goddess!’ 3:50 [p. 62] Nedda, Tonio Tonio (Taddeo), Columbina 9 Duet ‘Nedda!…’ 1:28 [p. 54] 21 ‘Arlecchin!’ ‘Columbina’ 1:57 [p. 63] Silvio, Nedda Columbina, Harlequin, Taddeo 10 ‘Why do you go on with this tormented life?’ 2:44 [p. 55] 22 ‘Pour the potion in his glass at midnight’ 3:04 [p. 64] Silvio, Nedda Harlequin, Columbina (Nedda), Pagliaccio (Canio), 11 ‘I must be strong’ 3:19 [p. 55] Tonio Nedda, Silvio, Tonio 23 Aria ‘No, we’re not in a play!’ 6:31 [p. 65] 12 ‘How can you tell me you ever loved me’ 4:18 [p. 56] Canio, Chorus, Silvio, Nedda, Beppe, Tonio Silvio, Nedda TT 79:45 4 5 CHAN 3003 BOOK.qxd 28/10/07 1:00 pm Page 6 activities of the British Army not forced him to in London in 1911 to conduct Pagliacci and Ruggero Leoncavallo: Pagliacci flee to Ismaila disguised as an Arab! Zazà at the Hippodrome and returned the Next he completed I Medici, part of his following year to conduct a new piece, Zingari trilogy, but though Ricordi had signed a (The Gypsies), written specially for that Another composer’s success and a court case Leoncavallo’s verismo technique is not contract for the work, he did not see fit to theatre. He sought in vain to repeat the were, in a very real sense, the progenitors of unexpected from a man with Leoncavallo’s publish it, more impressed with Leoncavallo as overwhelming success of Pagliacci, and his Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Had it not been for biographical and musical background. His a poet of the theatre than as a composer. After reputation will continue to depend on the Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (already father, as we have seen, was a judge, his mother three years attempting to get I Medici survival of his most noted work. available on Chandos’ Opera in English series a painter, famous at the time at Naples, where performed, he wrote Pagliacci, which he gave What is its fascination and worth? Let’s first on CHAN 3004), produced in 1890, it is the composer was born on 8 March 1857. He to Ricordi’s great rival Sonzogno. It proved an look at some contemporary opinions. doubtful whether the publisher Sonzogno studied with various piano teachers before almost immediate success when produced at Hermann Klein, a leading critic of the time, would have accepted Leoncavallo’s work or entering the Naples Conservatory. While a the Teatro dal Verme on 21 May 1892, wrote in his memoirs of its first London whether the composer would have even taken student he heard Tannhäuser at Bologna, an conducted by Toscanini. So successful was it performance in May 1893 (when the composer it to him. experience that made a deep impression on that the following year I Medici was at last was present): ‘The fame of Leoncavallo’s The story of the court case goes back to the him. A meeting with Wagner in the town staged – in the same theatre. As it proved a sensational opera had preceded it, and the composer’s boyhood. His father was a judge, shortly after made an even deeper impression. failure, Leoncavallo did not pursue the public expected something remarkable. They and Leoncavallo vividly recalled the trial of an Apparently Wagner said to him: ‘Voyez, je lutte remaining parts of the trilogy, Savonarola and were not disappointed. I have rarely seen an actor who, seized with jealousy, murdered his encore’ (See, I’m still struggling). The memory Cesare Borgia, but Chatterton was eventually audience so breathless with excitement over the wife at the end of a performance. The prisoner, of those words cheered Leoncavallo during his produced (1896) and then his version of La development of an opera plot.’ He then goes apparently a figure of tragic power, faced up to own years of struggle to gain recognition. bohème (1897), which suffered virtual eclipse on to describe and praise the cast, Fernando de the accusation, grief-stricken yet unbending. Shortly after completing his studies, when he in view of Puccini’s more inspired setting of Lucia as Canio, Melba as Nedda and Mario Leoncavallo remembered years later the man’s was eighteen, he wrote his first opera Chatterton, Murger’s novel. Zazà came next (1900) and Ancona as Tonio, adding that, ‘Leoncavallo, rough voice echoing through the court. This but efforts to get it produced proved abortive. these are the only works of the composer’s still modest and unassuming, waited quietly in the awesome figure, a model for Canio, arose in While earning his living by playing the seen in Italy today other than Pagliacci. background till the end, and then had to be his mind as a subject for a short, taut drama piano he began composing a Wagner-inspired He continued to write until his death in forced on to the stage by the artists to after Cavalleria rusticana had been produced. trilogy entitled Crepusculum, dealing with the 1919. His later works include such curiosities acknowledge the ovation that awaited him… He completed his own libretto and its setting Renaissance in Italy. At one point, while as Der Roland von Berlin, (1904), composed on I found him to be a man of great culture and in five months. Sued later for plagiarism, he touring in the Middle East (1882), he was an express commission from Kaiser Wilhelm strong intellect. He is a poet as well as a had only to tell the true story for the irate offered the post in Cairo as chief of military II, and Are You There?, an operetta written for musician, and in both arts he reveals the grasp author to drop his case. bands, which he might have accepted had the London in 1913. Leoncavallo had already been of a profound thinker.’ 6 7 CHAN 3003 BOOK.qxd 28/10/07 1:00 pm Page 8 Praising the work’s verismo (reality), the is a rudimentary use of Leitmotiv, and neither of Canio. In three moving passages, peace-making member of the troupe. Silvio is Daily Telegraph opined: ‘We appear to have the harmony nor orchestration could have Leoncavallo reveals an honest man felled by something of an operatic cipher though done for the present with legendary heroes and been as it is had Wagner never existed. jealousy and remorse, a fitting successor to Leoncavallo grants the handsome lover some of cloudy myths’ – a sally, of course, at Wagner – However, the work as a whole has a Verdi’s Otello, and requiring a heroic tenor of his most grateful music to sing. All play their ‘Their personages are too far removed; they are recognizably Italian flavour: the choral like mettle. In ‘Un tal gioco, credetimi’ (If he part in a piece whose dramatic conviction not flesh of our flesh and bone of our bones. passages, for instance, place the action tried it, I promise you), the tone of menace, a never fails to move an audience. Nowadays the demand is for Human unmistakably in Southern Italy and, whether warning unheeded by Nedda, shows us a Documents, for characters in tale and drama the composer is being unpretentiously and powerful man, one not to be trifled with. In © 1998 Alan Blyth that are our kin, not our exaggerated selves.’ sensuously tuneful as in Beppe’s (Arlecchino’s) ‘Vesti la giubba’ (Put on your costume), after Synopsis More recently, more succinctly the critic Spike Serenade or Nedda’s Ballatella, or strongly Nedda’s infidelity has been confirmed, a great The action takes place in a Calabrian village on Hughes wrote that Leoncavallo was fulfilling ‘A impassioned, as in the ‘Ridi, Pagliaccio’ (Make soul is racked with torment as the clown the eve of the Feast of the Assumption.