Class 6: Two Views of Verdi A. To a Distant World . 1. Title Slide 1 (Mestres Cabanes design for Act III) Today, I am going to look at two of the 29 operas by Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901). One is very well- known: Aïda (1871). The other, though popular in its time, is seldom performed today: Attila (1846). Like all his operas except La traviata, both are historical. In fact, both belong to distant times: Attila is set towards the end of the Roman Empire, and Aïda takes us even further back, to Ancient Egypt. 2. Rameses II and Attila the Hun Ancient Egypt or the heyday of the Huns, why should we care about either? In short, because there are human stories to be told. But the issue in each case is how to lead the audience into the world of the opera, how to make them care. The two productions I am going to show take different strategies. Last year’s season-opening production of Attila at La Scala uses contemporary stage techniques not merely to update the opera, but to do so in terms of images that will have emotional resonance for the audience. By contrast, the 2003 production of Aïda in Barcelona uses painted sets from over half a century earlier, and those a deliberate revival of a tradition from at least a century before that. It is thus as close as we can get on video to an “authentic” production. It works by seducing the audience with the loving detail of its craft, transporting us as though on a magic carpet. In contrast to the massive constructed sets by Franco Zeffirelli still used at the Met, those in Barcelona are painted on paper; any illusion of depth is purely trompe l’oeuil. They are the work of the artist Josep Mestres Cabanes (1898–1990). Let me start with the opening sequence in the video, shown over Verdi’s prelude, in which the stage crew fly in various pieces of scenery piece by piece. As you see, it is literally paper-thin, but not at all insubstantial in effect. 3. Verdi: Aïda, prelude with shots of technical rehearsal 4. Josep Mestres Cabanes: Aïda, design for opening scene The stage was still dark at curtain-rise, but here is Cabanes’ design for the opening scene. The DVD also contains a documentary showing the designs and actual stage pictures for the whole opera: 5. Liceu Aïda documentary: overview of Cabanes designs 6. Auguste Mariette Bey: costume designs for Aïda Although Verdi’s librettist for Aïda was an Italian, Antonio Ghislanzoni, he merely translated and versified a prose text by the French playwright Camille du Locle, who had completed the libretto for Verdi’s previous opera, Don Carlos, after the original author died. But the plot idea was not even du Locle’s; it came from the Egyptologist Auguste Mariette Bey, a distinguished scholar and apparently also — 1 — an artist, who also designed the costumes and supervised the accuracy of the scenery. So the premiere of Aïda in 1872 must have been as close to total immersion in the world of Ancient Egypt as you are likely to get. In his designs for Barcelona, Mestres Cabanes was pursuing a similar aim. If there seems an awful lot of French here, that is because Aïda was commissioned for the opening of the Suez Canal, which was then under French control. Verdi had already written one French-language opera for Paris in Don Carlos (1867); in every respect other than the language in which it is sung, Aïda is a French grand opéra through and through, the last great flowering of the genre. Think of it: it has an historical subject; it calls for seven varied and spectacular settings; it makes much use of the chorus; and there are ballets in three of the seven scenes. Let’s look at the opening of the grandest scene of all, the triumphal march of the Egyptian armies in the second scene of Act II. We shall stop after the first section of the five-minute ballet. 7. Verdi: Aïda, Act II, scene 2, opening 8. — still from the above Of course, having period scenery does not guarantee an authentic period production; there is also the question of how you handle all the people in front of that scenery. [I originally advertised a production of La forza del destino for this class, in a DVD from Saint Petersburg, where the opera was originally premiered, and reusing the set designs for that production. But it didn’t work. Although they showed the relevant design before each scene, the lighting was generally so dim that the sets were almost invisible. And while the handling of the people did not seem outrageous, it was clearly based on a 20th- century aesthetic, not a 19th-century one—and the handling of the swooping, zooming camera brought it into the 21st.] 9. Verdi’s annotated libretto for the entrance of Amonasro. Fortunately, we can get closer to authenticity with many of the later Verdi operas, because Verdi himself kept meticulous notes. Here is a page from the printed libretto with some scribbles in Verdi’s hand, made presumably during rehearsals for the first Italian production of the opera, noting the placement of the main characters and chorus groups in the scene that I am about to play, the entrance of the Ethiopian captives, with Aïda’s father Amonasro among them. Verdi has even jotted some notes on Amonasro’s interpretation, but I can’t read them. This is only a sketch made in the heat of the moment; I have made thousands like it. But Verdi also had his stage-manager make much more comprehensive notes on each change of the stage picture, and these production books are still available. Now I don’t say that the director in Barcelona, José Antonia Gutiérrez, followed the original production book, although the layout looks similar. But the use of flat painted scenery automatically creates an open space on the forestage, a kind of parade ground on which to place one’s forces, and in a large choral scene like this one, there are not very many ways of doing that. 10. Scene synopsis I shall show one more excerpt from this scene. You will remember that Princess Amneris loves the Egyptian general Radames, and hopes to marry him. But he is secretly in love with another princess, — 2 — Aïda, the daughter of the Ethiopian King Amonasro. She has been captured without her rank being known, and now serves Amneris as her personal slave. Radames requests that the captives be brought in. Among them is Amonasro. Aïda cannot help exclaiming that he his her father, but Amonasro tells her not to reveal his true rank. He introduces himself instead as a captain who had fought bravely, and begs the Pharaoh for mercy—a request that is endorsed by Radames but opposed by the Egyptian priests. This leads to one of those many-stranded slow ensembles which were Verdi’s especial strength, in which several groupings of principals, and several blocks of chorus combine in a huge edifice of sound. We shall hear an earlier example from Attila in the second hour. 11. Verdi: Aïda, Act II, scene 2, entrance of Amonasro 12. Summary of Act III Aïda/Amonasro duet But not even grand opera is all choruses and ensembles. I have always thought that the heart of Verdi is in his duets. Especially in the earlier operas, many of them take a similar form to the cavatina/cabaletta structure I remarked on for bel canto operas: a slow lyrical section, some kind of interaction that alters the situation, then something fast and driven arising out of that new situation. The scene between Aïda and her father in Act III has all these ingredients, but not in that pattern, and more subtly integrated. The scene is a temple on the banks of the Nile. Amneris has come for an all-night vigil prior to her marriage to Radames the next day. Aïda is outside the temple, waiting for a tryst with Radames, but Amonasro gets there first. In their nine-minute scene, he will manipulate her into obtaining details of the Egyptian troop movements from her lover, Radames. After a couple of pages of recitative, we come to the first of the three main sections. Here’s how it goes: SLOW. In a gentle cantabile, he bids her remember the pine-scented forests of her homeland. With hardly any change, he has her think of the tragedies her country has suffered. And with scarcely any greater change, he is talking about armed revenge. ACTION. This is actually the beginning of the action section, typically acting as a hinge between the two parts, but here we are hardly aware of getting into it. Though we are soon back into recitative, as he tells her to get the plans from Radames. She refuses. FAST. This is the equivalent of a typical cabaletta, but instead of the two singing together, he uses the music to terrify her, first with a vision of the Egyptian hordes, then by conjuring up her mother’s ghost. SLOW. In a slow coda, she drags herself to his feet and begs his pardon, which he grands in one of those great arching phrases that are Verdi’s gift to baritones. Note the hesitating motif of a single repeated note that is sustained through this entire section. We have not talked about the staging here, but look out for what the director does.