Schmidgall, Introduction Literature As Opera

Anything can be set to music, true, but not everything will be effective. Giuseppe Verdi Literature and Opera In the 188os Emmanuel Chabrier addressed Shakespeare's last and perhaps greatest play with the idea of turning it into an opera. He wrote to his publisher explaining his views about its stage-worthiness: I now know The Tempest by heart; there are many good things in it, but Blau has reason to want some expanding of the love story, other- wise papa Prospero would get to be a bore. As for drama properly so called, where is it? Are they genuinely dramatic, those conspiracies of the old fogies Alonzo, Antonio, Gonzalo, Stefano? And those two debauchees Caliban and Interpocula [i.e., Trinculo]—who cares about their peregrinations around the island? So the interest will have to be spiced up elsewhere: first, in the idyll between Ferdinand and Miralda [sic] which is of the finest order; second, in the whole nuptial atmosphere and the spirits of air in Act IV; third, in the buffoonery with the drunkards. Is that enough to make an opera?' The answer to the question appears to have been no. Chabrier never wrote his Tempest opera, and—to judge from his cavalier and omi- nously bumptious attitude—we can be thankful he did not. His letter is a reminder that when masterly literature is taken up for operatic treatment, literary values do not necessarily loom importantly in the process. In this case the composer seemed almost completely oblivious to the complicated levels of meaning in the source and has focused upon the least interesting aspects of the action: the clowning scenes and the Ferdinand-Miranda love affair, surely the most insipid in all Shakespeare. Chabrier's heart, here at least, was closer to the blithe spirit of the boulevard than to the grand style customary at the Paris Opera. Chabrier was not alone in his failure to come to grips with The Tempest. At least twenty-five operatic attempts have been made upon 3 Literature as Opera An Opening Perspective the play, more than for any other Shakespearean work. Mendels- doomed to fail if his purpose was to re-create Shakespeare's original sohn consulted three librettists (a Frenchman, a German, and an intentions, though he might have charmed the boulevardiers of the Italian) about setting the play, but he produced nothing. Our great- mid-188os with a comical-farcical travesty. The "real" Tempest was est loss, perhaps, is the Tempest opera Mozart contemplated just closed to him; his aesthetic and musical personality were not attuned prior to his death, though the libretto he had accepted was a pe- to its subtleties. culiar one. On the other hand, a composer may approach a work with just That no composer has succeeded in capturing the richness of the right key to its implicit operatic potency, and—if his musical Shakespeare's most musical drama seems at first glance paradoxical. personality blends naturally with the source—a masterpiece may re- One might explain this in various ways. The composer Ferruccio sult. Such was the case when Benjamin Britten chose to make a Busoni observed that "for the opera the only suitable subjects are version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. His crucial if obvious in- such as could not exist or reach complete expression without music," sight was that three worlds are interwoven in the play—those of the and it may be that the completeness of Shakespeare's dramatic vision fairy court, the noble Athenians, and the rustic laborers. Through his and the music inherent in his poetry are so self-sufficient that there keen power of orchestration and an almost unique gift for setting is no "room" for the interlinear music an operatic treatment would iambic pentameter verse, Britten was able to create one of the very provide. Or it may be that the levels on which Shakespeare is oper- few truly successful musical transformations of both Shakespearean ating in The Tempest (autobiographical, political, magical, sym- poetry and drama. bolic, philosophical) are simply too numerous; no "other" version of For some composers a fortuitous equivalence of literary and musi- the play could fit them back together with the playwright's dexterity. cal forms can make the transformation seem almost effortless; whereas, The Tempest is in a sense an artistic puzzle—easy to take apart but for others a disparity of artistic sensibilities causes an unbridgeable difficult to reassemble in its original compact form. No wonder, then, chasm. Again, Shakespeare provides an example for each case. Ros- that composers—adding with their music yet another important piece sini, whose Otello dates from 1816, was poorly suited for Shake- to the puzzle—have found it so difficult to reconstruct for their stage. speare's violent tragedy of passion. Stendhal, normally a Rossini In more practical terms, one might point to the uncomfortably but partisan, was appalled by the opera: "It must have taken a lot of necessarily long expository second scene of the play, which may be savoir-faire on the part of the writer of the libretto to render insipid virtually impossible to translate into operatic theater. Nor was Cha- to this degree the most impassioned of all dramas. Rossini has sec- brier far wrong in wondering where the drama is in Shakespeare's onded him well." Byron added his bemused impression in a letter: strange late play: the dramatic conflict and development of character "They have been crucifying Othello into an opera: the music good, we have come to expect from this playwright are simply not present but lugubrious; but as for the words, all the real scenes with Iago cut in The Tempest. Its felicities and genius are of another though out, and the greatest nonsense inserted; the handkerchief turned into scarcely less impressive order. a billet-doux, and the first singer would not black his face, for some I have drawn attention to Chabrier's projected opera because it exquisite reasons." Though the opera was a success at the time of its instances vividly how qualities of excellence in a literary work may premiere and for years thereafter, its extreme decorative bias seems obstruct or render impossible an operatic translation, how a work may to us now to sap the original play of its tragic momentum. What be intrinsically ill suited to the sensibility of a composer, and how far Othello required was a more vigorous, flexible compositional style from the true greatness of a work may be the source of its attraction capable of gathering and containing tragic forces throughout an eve- for librettists or composers in a particular operatic era. Chabrier was ning. And yet it could not be divorced entirely from "number-opera" Literature as Opera An Opening Perspective structure, for there are splendid "number" speeches imbedded in Sorrows of Young Werther. The collection of Werther's letters Shakespeare's dialogue. Othello, in short, required the style of late which constitute the novella might seem problematic for a librettist, Verdi. The play is rich in what can only be described as operatic but in fact the flow of correspondence is highly operatic. That is, al- moments—for instance Othello's despairing renunciation: most all the letters represent a particular emotional climax—either of elation, depression, or a wracking mixture of both. They are the 0 now, forever passionate highlights of Werther's year-and-three-quarters struggle Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content! with a hopeless love. They describe exalted states of consciousness, Farewell the plumed troops and the big wars and this was exactly the potent material that Massenet turned into That makes ambition virtue! 0, farewell! the highly charged lyric explosions of his Werther•. Thus, for ex- Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, ample, Werther's letter dated October nineteenth—its full text is The spirit-stirring drum, th'ear-piercing fife, simply "Oh, this void, this dreadful void in my breast! Often I think The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war! [3.3.347-54] that if just once I could press her to my heart, it would be filled!"— becomes in the opera the hero's palpitating little aria in Act II, From this to Verdi's Ora. e per sempre addio in Act II is but a small J'aurais sur ma poitrine. Such verbal outpouring Massenet was able step—the playwright even giving Verdi hints for the orchestration of to transform frequently in his score. Indeed, the title role is made up his noble dirge. Introduced into the continuous texture of the opera of numerous highly affective but brief lyric moments which parallel are such standard operatic set-pieces—drinking song, love duet, the epistolary structure of the source. vengeance duet, prayer—as Shakespeare provided musical "space" Equivalence of musical style and subject may sometimes hinge for in his play. George Bernard Shaw emphasized the fortunate paral- upon the language itself, as when Stravinsky found himself delighted lelism between two artistic styles when he called Othello Shake- with the Latin translation of the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex for his speare's one tragedy written in the form of an Italian opera. 1927 opera-oratorio: This equivalence of sensibilities or form occurs in many ways. What a joy it is to compose music to a language of convention, al- The most obvious is in the actual insertion of "musical" moments in most of ritual, the very nature of which imposes a lofty dignity! One the original—for instance Desdemona's "Willow Song" or, to take no longer feels dominated by the phrase, the literal meaning of words another play, the King of Thule's ballad, the Song of the Flea, and .

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