Author: Dave Ekstrum

Nicholas Baragwanath. The Italian Traditions & Puccini: Compositional Theory & Practice in Nineteenth-Century Opera. Indiana University Press, 2011.

For quite some time I have been curious about how our favorite composers (and the performers who first sang and played their music) were trained. This question was often brushed aside as if everyone had always learned music theory and other musical skills in the same manner that we do today. As it turns out, that is not the case. For a long time, any discussion of this topic focused only on how music was taught in the German speaking countries (and occasionally France, if you include Rameau). (The exception of Early Music study is duly noted, as much of that historical material is on the Italian style of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.) In some ways this is not surprising. Musicology and Music Theory as we know them are disciplines that first appeared in Germany. The focus of music theorists is therefore mainly on works either from the Austro-German tradition or those from outside those countries that nevertheless conform to that style. 

So where does that leave Italian opera? Mostly ignored. That is a shame because that oversight has left too many unanswered questions and left singers, coaches and conductors with few tools to understand the music we perform. Most of the names and concepts that I will discuss over the next few weeks here are completely new to me, and most of the original works referenced by Dr. Baragwanath have never been translated into English. Fortunately, he does discuss them in detail. You will want to take some time with this book since many of the concepts will be new. I have already returned my library copy but have ordered my own since I know I will be referring to this volume again and again. 

In the introduction Baragwanath recounts some of the many Italian teachers and treatises on music. Despite having taken a semester long graduate course called History of Music, I had only heard of a few of those and all but one of those I had ever heard of because of Rachelle Jonck’s mentioning them here at BCBC. So imagine my surprise at learning that there is a long and rich history of pedagogical guides to steer young Italian musicians, singers, and composers. I will not give the rest of the list from before the 19^th century, although it will be of interest to those who sing a great deal of 17^th and 18^th century music (and can be found on pages 1-2). There were many schools and local styles, but by the beginning of the 19^th century most had faded into obscurity (although there were certainly some local holdouts) except for the Neapolitan and Bolognese schools. These are distinguished more by their approach to teaching music than by differences in resulting musical style. 

Young composers (and really all musicians as most musicians composed and most composers performed to some extent) were trained in an interactive method. Harmony and counterpoint were taught was “practice” rather than as theory. The dominant method of composition was based on the earlier partimento method (described in Baragwanath’s other book The Solfeggio Tradition). Francesco Durante (who you may know as the composer of “Danza, Danza” and “Vergin tutto amor”), a student of Alessandro Scarlatti, is usually crediting with having codified the partimento method that would dominate the 18^th century and early 19^th century throughout Europe. Music was conceived as counterpoint above a bass line rather than a progression of chords organized by root and their inversions as promoted by Rameau. 

By the 1860s more modern (translation: German) ideas about music theory and musical training began to take hold in Italian conservatories. As new conservatories were being formed throughout Italy in the nineteenth century, they were initially modeled after the Neapolitan schools. In this model, training was divided into three successive stages: 1) rudiments, harmony, and figured bass; 2) counterpoint and fugue; and finally, 3) composition. Counterpoint was mainly taught through singing and thus the instructor was most often a voice teacher. Harmony was taught at the keyboard and thus the instructors were usually those who taught accompaniment. Written work in harmony and counterpoint (using Rameau and German models) was considered scientific rather than practical music-making. There were a great many written manual for teaching these subjects, but the one that stayed in use the longest was Carlo Gervasoni’s La Scuola della Musica, in tre parti divisa. (It is available online at imslp.org.) Baragwanath also lists many other books in use at that time. The connection between this instruction and the music of Italian opera in the 18^th and 19^th centuries (he uses examples from operas by Bellini and Puccini) make for interesting study and diverge quite a bit from the usual Germanic-based studies of music we are used to, at least in the English-speaking world.

All that leads us up to Puccini, who is the main topic of this book. More on that in my next post. 

Poriss, Hilary. “Pauline Viardot, travelling virtuosa.” Music and Letters 96, no. 2 (2015): 185-208.

In the 19^th century as well as the 21^st, a career as a singer meant traveling far and wide. In this article, Hilary Poriss looks at Pauline Viardot’s visit to Warsaw in 1858 and 1859, a trip barely mentioned by Viardot’s biographers. As source material she relies on Viardot’s many letters. Pauline Viardot was a diligent letter-writer starting each day with her correspondence. The letters document not only her activities but her observations about various events. They offer a great deal of detail about her life, providing a detailed chronicle of her life and career, and therefore they make an excellent resource for biographers. 

As plentiful as the letters are, until recently they mostly remained in private collections and unavailable to researchers. However, in April 2011 Harvard University purchased many of her letters along with musical manuscripts (including songs, cadenzas (!) and pedagogical works), costume designs, journals, her own copies of musical scores, and other items. They are found in Harvard University’s Houghton Library in Collection Identifiers MS 232 and MS 264. 

MS 232: https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/resources/1387

MS 264: https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/resources/3178

(Note: There are also a number of Viardot’s letters on at https://gallica.bnf.fr.) 

Viardot’s repertoire in Warsaw included the title role in Bellini’s Norma, Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Azucena in Il trovatore. She also appeared in three concerts consisting of operatic excerpts and two soirées. The opera performances consisted of the traveling troupe performing in Italian with some comprimario roles and the choruses sung (or in the case of recitative, spoken) in Polish by local performers. 

Viardot’s Barbiere performances included an extended lesson scene in which she introduced a set of Marzurkas by Chopin which she had transcribed for her voice and set to popular Spanish lyrics. (Information about these arrangements can be found in Carolyn Jean Shuster, ‘Six mazurkas de Frédéric Chopin transcrits pour chant et piano par Pauline Viardot’, Revue de musicologie, 75 (1989), 265-83.) She then concluded the mini-concert with Chopin’s “Hulanka” (op. 74, no. 4). Viardot’s plan to please a Polish audience with music by their famous composer appears to have worked. “Encored, my knees are shaking from bowing so much. “Certainly, it must have lasted 10 minutes, men, women, everyone applauded, everyone shouted.” At the second performance she performed the same group again, adding one of her own Spanish songs “Jota de los estudiantes.” 

Describing her program for one of the soirées she writes, “Here’s my programme! The aria from l’Italiana, the beggar’s couplets from Prophète (requested), Russian arias by Dargomuiski [sic], and some Spanish arias. How do you like it?” At another less formal gathering “They made me sing, we were entirely among close friends. I sang Plaisir d’amour, Fortunilla, Margoton, Riqui riqui, Contrabandista.’” At the concerts she sang the final scene from La Sonnambula. (Her sister Maria Malibran had sung the role in an edition arranged for her. We may assume that she sang a similar adaptation.) She then repeated the lesson scene so that she could end her run of performances in Warsaw with “Hulanka.” “Plaisir d’amour” remains a well-known song (the only romance to have survived into the modern repertoire). “Fortunilla” is a song in Spanish either composed or arranged by Viardot. “Margoton” is a French folk song. “El riqui riqui” was a song she often performed, and it is often attributed to her, but it was in fact composed by Viardot’s father Manuel Garcia. “El contrabandista” is a Spanish folk song and can be found at imslp.org in an edition claiming to be as Maria Malibran sang it.

Her time in Warsaw was both a financial and musical success, but was not without a strain on her personally, being so far away from her husband and children. Still, it only added to her reputation as a performer and paved the way for the massive success she would soon have in Paris. (Part of the article is dedicated to this aspect of Viardot’s life. Then as now, performers who travel a lot must find a way to manage their professional and personal lives. Plus ça change….)

Again, the glimpse of the repertoire from an earlier time is interesting. The operas she performed in Warsaw remain popular. The songs, other than “Plaisir d’amour” are not well known. “Hulanka” is a charming song and can be easily found on imslp.org and YouTube. It is strophic and the few performances I found perform each verse the same, but it is inconceivable that Viardot would not have sung different ornaments and variations for each verse. 

I hope some BCBCers will seek out some of these songs to perform. I also hope others are as intrigued as I am about the treasure trove of Viardot papers available to scholars in Massachusetts. Cadenzas? In Viardot’s own hand? Who wants to plan a trip to the Houghton Library with me? 

Note: I came across another useful Viardot resource in preparing this blog post. It is an online catalog of her compositions.

https://prism.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/handle/1880/48502/Viardot_catalogue_2011.pdf;jsessionid=248BA452F861138350F7C093958DC58B?sequence=3

Melina Esse. Singing Sappho: Improvisation and Authority in Nineteenth-Century Opera. The University of Chicago Press, 2021.

As students most (if not all) of us were taught that there is a strict differentiation between composer and performer. The composer creates the work of art, and then the performers are expected to accurately represent what is in the score adding our own unique interpretation without straying too far from the pitches, rhythms, and other markings on the page. Bonus points for using the latest scholarly edition. Recent scholarship into the training of musicians in the 18^th century (see my previous post about Baragwanath’s The Solfeggio Tradition for one example) call into question the relationship between composer and performer and the extent to which improvisation shaped music in the long 18^th century (roughly 1680 to 1830). 

As a framework to explore improvisation in 19^th century Italy, Melina Esse employs the poet Sappho, known for her ability to create poetry extemporaneously. Sappho is either directly or indirectly the model for works as wide-ranging as the title character in Mme de Staël’s once-popular novel Corinne, or Italy, the character of Corinna in Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims, Bellini’s Norma, and Gounod’s opera Sapho. To what extent did artists improvise in live performance or where they merely (or perhaps even fraudulently) creating the illusion of improvisation. This makes for interesting reading for anyone interested in the performance practices of the 19^th century. 

The first chapter explores the early 19^th century phenomenon of women poets who improvised poetry in live performances. Chief among these improvasatrice artists was Rosa Taddei. She chanted or sang extemporaneous poetry for audiences on the streets and in the salons. This because a popular curiosity for foreign tourists who viewed it as a particularly Italian phenomenon. De Staël’s Corinne is “a hybrid of romance and travel narrative” telling a story of a love affair between the title character and a melancholy Scotsman. Even as many readers were fascinated by tales of these improvisatory poets, many above the Alps expressed skepticism. (This is similar to the skepticism expressed at the idea that Italian singers of the era were able to improvise ornaments and variations in performance.) The poets were accused of charlatanism: that they must have been quoting from previously composed or learned works. (I can’t be the only reader who read the description of poetry being improvised and spoken or half-sung over simple musical accompaniment as being very similar to rap.)

The second chapter recounts an operatic character loosely based on Mme de Staël’s heroine: Corinna in Il viaggio a Reims (1825). While the opera itself was not successful (for a variety of reasons) the French press gushed over Giuditta Pasta’s performance. 

“Listeners encountering Giuditta Pasta as Corinna were, however, struck by the overlap between diva and poetic improviser. The French press gushed over Pasta’s uncannily accurate re-creation of Staël’s iconic figure, both in her declamation and in her ability to convincingly embody pre-existing visual representations of Corinna. The visual aspects of Pasta’s performance no doubt occasioned so much comment because the final improvisation was purposely staged as a tableau vivant of Gerard’s famous portrait of Corinne improvising at Cape Miseno.” (p. 56)

At this point the subject of improvisation in Rossini arises. Stendhal’s invented anecdote of Rossini hating a singer’s variations on his melodies has been much quoted in spite of the fact that there is no truth in it. 

A consideration of the unified pedagogy of composers and singers—and how it relied on improvisational performance as a foundation—complicates the direction of influence assumed by scholars such as Gossett and Colas. It is not so much that composers wrote melodies that singers then varied, imitating the original, but that both composers and singers were trained to construct melodies by practicing a range of improvisational solutions to certain schemata. Instead of attempting to tease out the issue of whose ornaments are “better”—more sophisticated, more innovative—I would like to suggest that we understand Rossini’s ornamented style as participating in the same creative, improvisational practices that were used to train singers. One result of this shift in perspective is that the notion of an “original” and a “variant” becomes virtually meaningless….” (p. 62)

In the same opera, the role of the Comtesse de Folleville was created by Laure Cinti-Damoreau, also considered a master of Rossinian ornamentation. She wrote two treatises on that subject both of which can be found on imslp.org:

https://imslp.org/wiki/M%C3%A9thode_de_chant_(Cinti-Damoreau%2C_Laure)

https://imslp.org/wiki/Nouvelle_m%C3%A9thode_de_chant_(Cinti-Damoreau%2C_Laure)

Unfortunately, by the time of their publication, the practice of improvisation and even most ornamentation was falling out of favor, especially in France. They remain, however, useful guides into how singers were trained to sing in the bel canto tradition.

Next Esse takes a look at the creation of the aria “Casta diva” in which Bellini is called upon to create music that sounds as if it were being improvised by a singer who had fallen into a divine trance. The result is something quite different from most of Bellini’s melodies. This is followed by a look at the creation of Giovanni Pacini’s opera Saffo. Of particular interest is the importance of the singer’s influence on the compositional process. 

And finally, Esse explores two works created for Pauline Viardot: Berlioz’s adaptation of Gluck’s Orphée and Gounod’s Sapho. The process of creating a new version of Gluck’s opera was a clash of ideas about the roles of singer, composer, and adaptor and even more so conflict over the very nature of the character of Sappho. After much conflict in which Viardot often took the upper hand, the performances were a triumph for her. She even published her cadenzas which were later denounced by Berlioz even though he had a hand in their composition. This disagreement derailed a plan to adapt Gluck’s Alceste. 

Eight years earlier, Mme Viardot had helped Charles Gounod obtain a commission to compose and opera for her on the subject of Sappho. She asserted her ideas about the character and what the music would be like in ways that would later embarrass Gounod. In addition, their relationship was the subject of a great deal of gossip which created problems when Gounod was set to marry. The bride’s family demanded that he cut off all contact with the singer about whom so much malicious gossip had been spread. One of Viardot’s ideas that proved to be unpopular was the insertion of Gounod’s mélodie “Lamento” into the final scene (with new words). The inclusion of a well-known salon song into a dramatic moment in an opera was viewed as inappropriate by many critics and audience members. (Viardot would later compose her own setting of the poem.)

Lamento (Ma belle amie est morte) (Charles Gounod)

https://imslp.org/wiki/Ma_belle_amie_est_morte%2C_CG_404_(Gounod%2C_Charles)

Sapho: Final scene (Gounod)

Lamento (Ma belle amie est morte) (Pauline Viardot)

https://imslp.org/wiki/Lamento%2C_VWV_1139_(Viardot%2C_Pauline)

This is a fascinating look at performance, improvisation and the relationship between singers and composers. The approach is interdisciplinary which adds context beyond what is found in traditional sources on these composers, singers and the various works cited. Anyone looking to empower singers and their creativity will want to read this book. 

Nicholas Baragwanath. The Solfeggio Tradition: A Forgotten Art of Melody in the Long Eighteenth Century. Oxford University Press, 2020. 

Like many singers and teacher, I have long been curious about how singers in the past were trained. How is it possible that all singers were able to sing music that we consider so difficult that those who excel at singing florid music are given a separate category? The answers to their training can be found in the many treatises. We are learning a great deal from reading Garcia’s treatise together and of course from working through the Vaccai exercises. We can learn a great deal about the training and can duplicate it ourselves. But there is another question that is not only avoided but often dismissed. How were all musicians so able to improvise variations and even new pieces? We marvel at stories of Mozart as a boy improvising music in front of an audience. How was that possible?

I stumbled across The Solfeggio Tradition by accident. It contains some answers not only to those questions but quite a few I had never thought to ask. Baragwanath details the system in which many musicians were trained in the long 18^th century (roughly 1680 to 1830, or from Scarlatti to Bellini, if you prefer).  He makes a strong case that young singers in 18^th century Italy had mostly been trained from a quite young age to sing in church choirs. This involved learning to read chant melodies and other music from the Middle Ages to their own time using a system most of us learned about in a music history class: Solmization. The use of the moveable hexachord is usually only thought of as belonging to the Middle Ages, but it remained the training system for young choristers (many of whom later became the major singers, musicians and composers of their time) into the early decades of the 19^th century. 

The training is described here in great detail along with its importance in their training so that they were able to improvise countermelodies to cantus firmus melodies and also to figured bass. This allowed them to improvise with great facility (and also explains the speed at which composers in that era were able to compose). Most composers were trained this way and those who were not were usually taught by someone who had been. 

Baragwanath discovered that finding out about solfeggio in the 18^th century was challenging. Why the need to understand how solfege was taught at that time? “To me, they held out the promise of an answer as to how professional musicians in the past managed to compose so fluently, to improvise and embellish instantaneously, and to switch effortlessly between seven clefs.” (p. 3) Baragwanath cites some famous singing treatises as evidence of this usage: Mancini (1774, 55) and Corri (1810, 8). “Progression to vocalization (singing melodies with open vowels) depended on first having mastered the syllables of solfege.” (p. 5)

So what were young musicians taught as solfège? The evidence suggests that rather than the French “fixed do” or the moveable do most of us were taught in school, they were taught the medieval hexachord system.

The process of singing solfeggio was radically different from anything I had come across before. Because the singer had to rely on the vocal part, rather than the bass, modulations between scales must have been cued melodically. But where were the cues? Drawing on contemporary guides to solmization as well as my experience as a performer, I tried to work out the most plausible readings, one that would make pedagogical as well as practical sense. I soon realized that the syllables were not included merely to provide an even circulation of vowels and consonants for singers to practice their diction. They were central to each lesson. They functioned as mnemonic aids. The same patters occurred again and against, helping the student acquire an instinctive feel for the “right” ways to enliven a melody with tasteful chromatic touches, to color it by shifting from major to minor mode and vice versa, and to modulate from one scale to another. By singing these solfeggio with something close to their original syllables, I was learning how to create music like an eighteenth-century apprentice—learning the tradition way, by singing. (pp. 7-8)

“The technique is analogous to that used by modern jazz musicians, taking a chord progression as a conceptual framework, they are able to create music of astonishing complexity and variety by applying a few rules such as associated modes, chord substitutions, and guide tones.” (p. 9)

Eager to discover some 18^th century guide to this system, he searched eagerly for a textbook or treatise of some sort explaining the practice. What he found instead were cheaply produced booklets and handwritten notebooks setting out more or less the same rules of liturgical canto fermo for novice choirboys and trainee clergy.

So how exactly were 18^th century musicians trained? Those from musical families like the Bachs and Mozarts were mostly taught at home. Those less fortunate had few options, especially those who were disadvantaged or orphaned. Their one option was the Catholic Church. Churches needed singers and were willing to educated, house and feed them in exchange for their labor in providing music for the many daily services. Church music in Italy at this time ranged from Gregorian chant to various historical forms of polyphonic choral works to pieces in the current style. Haydn is an example of a musician trained this way. 

One reason this 18^th century solmization practice is not widely known is that when musicologists began studying medieval music in the 19^th century they ignored later practice as a corruption of the medieval style. Unfortunately the idea that chant belongs only to the medieval period ignores the currency of plainchant during the era of Haydn and Mozart. Often in church services the lower voices would sing the chant while the upper voices “adorned it with decorative countermelodies.” 18^th and 19^th century parishioners were accustomed to hear both old and new styles in the same service. Styles varied, of course. Simpler chant was used for ordinary days with more elaborate music performed on special days (of which there are many on the liturgical calendar). Knowing how to transform plainchant into “figured” music for simple festivals was a crucial skill for any choirmaster.

The practice of the moving hexachord seems bewildering to the novice, but in practice singers only ever encountered the two or three scales that occupy their particular voice range. 

Although the modes endures in theory as a means for classifying chants, in reality they were subject to so many accidentals that their defining intervallic profiles became meaningless. They were indistinguishable from major or minor keys. (p. 70)

Some sources claim that apprentices spent more than a year on nothing but spoken solmization. They did nothing but name the notes and beat time. Singers sang on solfege for as long as was necessary before moving on to singing on vowels. Zingarelli continued to teach in this traditional system until the 1830s. He indicated the old syllables and mutations in an autograph collection of solfeggio for tenor voice. 

The closing of the church schools in the early 1800s doomed the tradition. “Without a steady supply of apprentices it could not survive.” The old method was replaced by new tutorials mainly aimed at the new market of musicians who owned a piano and who wanted to learn to make music at home quickly and accurately. 

This topic, improvisation in general and in music of the long 18^th century is currently a hot topic in many fields, especially in those studying performance practice for early music. An effort is underway in Europe to use the old method in training. No doubt we’ll see published results over the next few years. This and many related books on the topic of Solmization, Partitura and Improvisation will be of interest to anyone wanting to master the ability to ornament and improvise in performance. 

This is the last of my posts about Philip Gosset’s Divas and Scholars. I would apologize for having written so much about this book, but there’s just so much worthy of discussion (and so much more I left out!). Anyone who loves opera, performs opera, or produces opera (so, anyone who would be on a site like Bel Canto Boot Camp!) must read this book, probably more than once. In this last installment I will try to summarize Gossett’s chapters concerning issues that arise when producing opera.

Opera has often been and sometimes still is performed in the language of the audience rather than the language in which it was originally composed. Translations of the libretto pose their own particular questions. For example, a number of operas by Italian composers were composed in French for a Parisian premiere but became better known in the Italian translation (even outside of Italy). Which version should be performed (assuming neither is the native language of most of the audience)? And then there is the issue of translating the opera into the language of the audience. The idea that audiences would attend performances in a language other than the one they spoke, is mostly a very recent one. The case of Italian opera in London was a brief one and led to a backlash (and the rise of the ballad opera form). One aspect of this practice not often acknowledged is how the widespread adaptions of Italian opera into French or German or English (or other) versions (sometimes with musical as well as text changes) influenced the music composed across Europe. Performances of the operas of Mozart and Rossini in French at the Odéon in Paris altered the course of French opera. 

One of the big questions around ornamentation is “when did it stop?” At what point did composer begin expecting that singers would perform exactly what was in the score and no more or no less? While it is not considered correct practice now to add ornaments or appoggiaturas to the operas of Verdi (after all, he writes in so many himself) that does not explain the curious notation found in the score for Rigoletto. In the scene preceding the trio in the last act, Verdi wrote in the autograph score (which is reprinted in the Ricordi piano-vocal score on page 218) “This recitative must be declaimed with the usual appoggiaturas.” (Quest Recitativo dovrà essere detto senza le solite appoggiature.) This is a curious (and unnecessary) notation if the practice of adding additional appoggiaturas had fallen out of practice by that time. 

As for variations and cadenzas, when performing Rossini the singer should be aware that in many cases we have ornamentation and cadenzas in Rossini’s own hand written out for specific singers. It is not necessary for 21^st singers to sing those exactly, but they do give us examples of the appropriate performance practice for singing the music of Rossini and his contemporaries. Those practices can and should be adapted to suit the particular singer’s unique voice and skills. Other useful examples come from the notebooks of singers of Italian and French opera and printed editions claiming to represent the ornamentation performed by a famous singer in that aria. We also have the examples printed in various treatises (like Garcia’s) which provide examples of the kinds of variations, ornamentation and cadenzas considered exemplary in that era. (Note: some of the published versions can be found at imslp.org. Many of those are quite interesting, for example, a published version of Nicola Vaccai’s “Api Erranti” with ornaments by the great castrato Velluti. Since there is text for two additional verses, one could sing a mostly plain first verse, a second verse with the singer’s own ornaments, and then the third verse with Velluti’s rather elaborate variations.)

By no means should a singer assume that one has to sing someone else’s ornaments, variations or cadenzas. As Laure Cinti-Damoreau wrote:

I do not offer them [examples of ornaments and cadenzas] to you to be performed at any cost, despite your physical capabilities and your character. I propose these models of variations, rather, so that later your taste will lead you, within your individual means, to invent others that suit you properly.” (p. 301)

(Note: Her treatise can be found here. https://imslp.org/wiki/Nouvelle_m%C3%A9thode_de_chant_(Cinti-Damoreau%2C_Laure) It has ample examples of exercises and includes multiple variations on the same melody illustrating the practice of ornamentation.)

Gossett provides the following caveat regarding ornamentation and appoggiaturas in recitative in modern performances.

Nineteenth-century practice is a guide for modern performers, not a recipe, and performers must never lose sight of who they are as musicians or of the audiences for whom they are performing. Appoggiaturas, after all, lend weight to phrase endings, applying stress and adding rhetorical emphasis to the poetic structure. Modern performance style, on the other hand, in the spoken drama as on the operatic stage, tends to flow more quickly, avoiding what today are perceived as excessive rhetorical devices. The emphatic Shakespearean declamation of John Gielgud, for example, reflected a powerfully different style from that of the more conversational Derek Jacobi.” (p. 304)

As for the matter of cadenzas, they were longer than those to which we are now most accustomed. A good many of the ones that were considered “standard” in the 20^th century are anachronistic. (The “standard” cadenza in “Una furtive lagrima” is a good example of that. It was borrowed from Verdi and inserted into a Donizetti opera. Gossett details some examples of cadenzas written by the composer or from the same time period which are more appropriate. Of course, this all depends on the individual singer. The process of constructing an original one is not that hard but it would require immersion into the style of the opera.)

Rossini provides us with the most examples of ornamentation. First, the ornaments written out in the score, and also those written for performances of his and other composers’ work, including a couple of examples of Rossini writing out ornamentation for music by Bellini. In Bellini’s autograph scores we can see alternations in which Bellini reworked music for particular performers and also alternations made for subsequent singers in the same roles. There are also changes in orchestra doublings or instrumentation (sometimes indicating that in the theater he found the orchestration too heavy. We have fewer examples of this in Verdi’s scores but there are similar alterations for Jenny Lind who created the role of Amalia in I masdanieri. 

As for alterations to the score like transpositions, punctature, and variations, they can mostly be explained by looking at how opera was performed in the 19^th century. Opera in 19^th century Italy was cast from an ensemble of singers hired for a season. Because of this sometimes a singer would find a role that they were required to sing sat uncomfortably high or how for them or at least had numbers out of their comfortable range. There were two ways to address this issue: transposition and punctature. Transposition is obvious enough and was quite common, and often happened with arias. But in ensembles where one singer’s music is too high or low but the music for the other singers is singable, they would alter the vocal line by changing the notes to other pitches that fit the underlying harmony. That is punctatura. We know that composers were aware of this and in many cases approved. We know, for example that when Verdi’s Ernani was set to premiere in Vienna in 1844 that Verdi made it clear that he would allow no cuts to the score, but in a separate letter to Donizetti, who was supervising musical matters at the theater at the time, that he trusted the older composer to make any necessary punctature. Gossett makes a strong case (with examples) that it is preferable to make a few minor alterations to the score rather than have a singer struggle with a note beyond their range (either too high or too low), an ornament they can’t manage or sputter to the end of a long phrase they cannot sing in one breath. There are limits. (And here as in many cases Gossett is not shy about calling out famous names!) He especially calls out Estelle Liebling’s edition of Una voce poco fa which one hopes has finally fallen out of fashion. 

Transpositions are a controversial matter, even though a good number of them are standard practice. (As in the previous mentioned version of “Una voce poco fa” in which the aria is transposed up to make it more suitable for a soprano voice.) This issue includes the problem of the constant rising of orchestral pitch. In Verdi’s day a=432 (even though in 19^th century Rome it was a=450). That is high enough to make the highest pitches in a singer’s range unstable if a particular theater is using higher than usual pitch. 

One argument in favor of allowing transpositions is that in Verdi’s sketches we sometimes see that he had begun work on an aria in one key and later changed it to suit the singer in the first performance. That means that the keys were chosen for the singers, not singers chosen to be able to sing the notes of the arias in the “original” key. One of the arguments against transpositions is the belief on the part of some musicologists that specific keys were chosen for deeper meanings. (For some composers that is true. Richard Strauss, for example. But other than the association of C major with Sir John Falstaff in Verdi’s final opera, I know of know evidence of such associations for Italian composers.) Gossett points out that there are no key associations for which someone could not find some relationship, whether it was intended by the composer or not. Again, Gossett is able to provide multiple examples of arias and even ensembles that were originally composed in one key and then modulated by the composer before it reached its first performance. Does that mean that all transpositions are okay? As an example of an ill-advised transposition, Gossett again brings up the issue of “Di quella pira” in which it is not uncommon for the cabaletta to be transposed down a half or even a whole step just so the tenor can interpolate a high C (now B or B-flat) that the composer never wrote. We also see examples of Bellini transposing his own music not only for the first performances but for later performances with different casts. If Bellini did not mind transposing his own music, should we not be allowed to change the key to make a role more singable? “Casta diva” is given as an example as it was originally composed in a different key than we now usually here it in performance. Donizetti did the same for “Regnava nel silenzio” from Lucia di Lammermoor for the soprano Fanny Tacchinardi Persiani. (She abandoned the aria altogether the next time she sang the role substituting “Perché non ho del vento” which Donizetti had written for her in Rosmonda d’Inghilterra.) Lucia’s mad scene was also transposed. Donizetti composed it in F major but it was transposed to E-flat major where it remains in most printed editions. 

A number of transpositions in bel canto opera occur in those roles written for Rubini (or those Rubini later sang but had been written for other tenors). Even in his own time Rubini’s voice was exceptionally high which means that a great number of transpositions exist in operas like Il pirata when tenors found the music composed for Rubini much too high for their voices. (And this was before the switch to tenors singing everything in chest voice!) Some of these changes were made by Bellini himself, some by others, and some by publishers (who must have realized that few tenors could manage the F above high C!). 

What then does that mean for modern theaters wishing to put on operas like I puritani, Il pirata or La straniera? Do we transpose the music to suit the tenor? What does that do to the tessitura of other parts in the ensembles? What changes might that require in the orchestration? There are no easy solutions. Part of what makes this book so interesting is that Gossett’s view is that we need to be informed about all aspects of how these operas were composed and performed not only at the premiere but in the many productions that followed during the composer’s own lifetime. Only then can we make practical choices that will ensure successful revivals of this music. Strict adherence to a critical edition is no more a solution than blindly disregarding the original score and making hack-work of the music. 

Previously I have surveyed the books available about the other members of the Garcia family: the father Manuel (I), and his daughters Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot. Unlike his sisters, Manuel Garcia II gained fame not for singing but as a voice teacher and especially for being the first to detail the mechanism of the singing voice. Unfortunately, the biographical sources for Garcia are sparse. The New Grove article is surprisingly short, and the two book-length biographies, one in English and one in Spanish, are well over one hundred years old. 

Manuel Garcia II was born in Madrid in 1805. He studied singing with his father and harmony with Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli in Naples in 1814 and later with François Joseph Fétis in Paris. He traveled with his family to North America where they presented Italian opera in New York in 1825. He abandoned pursuing an operatic career after an unsuccessful debut in Paris as Figaro (7 October 1828). He did however continue singing in amateur and student performances after that. 

After a few months of military service in 1830, he worked in military hospitals in France where he began studying the physiological aspects of the voice. He published Mémoire sur la voix humaine in 1841 which was the foundations of his subsequent work in the field of vocal pedagogy. In 1855 he invested the laryngoscope. He published his Traité complet de l’art du chant (1840-47) which BCBC is currently reading. He was a professor at the Paris Conservatoire from 1847-1850 and then at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1848 to 1895. His students included Jenny Lind, Hermann Nissen, Erminia Frezzolini, Julius Stockhausen, Mathilde Marchesi, Charles Bataille and Charles Santley. He died in 1906. 

Of the two biographies, only the English one can be found online:

M. Sterling Mackinlay. Garcia the Centenarian and his Times (Edinburgh, 1908)

https://archive.org/details/garciacentenaria00mack/page/n9/mode/2up?view=theater

The Spanish language biography is available in several libraries:

A.G. Tapia. Manuel Garcia, su influencia en la laringologia y en el arte del canto (Madrid, 1905)

I hope everyone will join us as we discuss Garcia’s main treatise. We are focusing on Part 2 which is an excellent guide to bel canto performance practice. If you sing any repertoire from the 18^th or 19^th centuries, you will find much practical information in this book. Please join us on Zoom on Sunday!

By the mid-20^th century, the Italian operas that had entered the standard repertoire had settled into standardized performing traditions. Many of the misprints in the scores were easily corrected by a teacher, coach, or conductor who was familiar with the errors. Books were published showing the cuts, alterations, and additions to the scores, and sometimes publishes included these in their editions. The fact that some of these were added to the scores decades after the death of the composer mattered little. Gossett documents a number of cases where attempts to return the score to something closer to the form in which it was first performed were often met with anger and derision. The “tradition” (such as it was) had now become canon. The prevailing attitude was “If it was good enough for Toscanini, it’s good enough for me.” In some cases, these additions alter the way a role can be cast. Two examples are found in Verdi’s most often performed operas. The interpolated high e-flat in “Sempre libera” in La traviata and the tenor high C in “Di quella pira” in Il trovatore. Verdi wrote neither note. Gossett comments”¦

Give me a tenor who can sing Manrico as Verdi conceived the part and chooses to add a singing high c, and I will join the loggione in applauding him. Failing that, let Manrico, in Rossini’s famous words to the same Tamberlick, leave the high c on the hat rack, to be picked up on his way out of the theater.”

Enter the critical edition. The first task of the editor is to locate reliable sources, in particular the autograph scores, wherever they may be: in libraries, public or private, collections of noble families, or even in bank vaults in Switzerland. Searches of libraries in the 1960s revealed scores thought to be long lost. In addition, part books belonging to famous singers (with alterations to the part written in by the composer), orchestral parts and other rich sources were hiding waiting for scholars to find them. Some of these finds included the source material for Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims (much of it reused in Le comte Ory), the tragic ending of Tancredi, and original materials necessary to reconstruct Verdi’s Stiffelio (which the composer had reworked into Aroldo). Verdi was a particular problem as Verdi’s heirs still own many of the original sources of his work and are reluctant to share them with scholars. 

In addition to restoring the opera to its original state, a critical edition more accurately represents the articulations, dynamics, and slurs of the original score. This allows Rossini to sound like Rossini, Bellini like Bellini, etc. Too often the cuts and alterations served to make Rossini sound more like Donizetti or Bellini, and Bellini or Donizetti to sound more like early Verdi, none of which is in any way an improvement. Fortunately, there is a growing acceptance of critical editions. Obviously, an edition is not a production and conductors, directors and singers must make choices among the available options and sometimes make cuts to conform to the realities of producing opera in the 21^st century, not least of which the overtime that kicks in begins when a performance lasts more than three hours. 

Many factors must be considered when deciding what of the many options to perform. One factor is the very different cultures in which these works were created. (19^th century audiences clearly had more stamina than 21^st century ones.)  Next, we must choose between the various versions of the opera, including those created by the composer, those created with limited input from the composer and those created without any input at all. (Donizetti supervised most productions of his operas while he was alive so there are fewer contemporary nonauthorial versions. Those exist much later and only in his most popular works.) This creates its own problems as sometimes singers, conductors and audiences are well attached to “traditions” that have nothing to do with anything the composer wrote. 

Gossett points out that we are under no obligation to recreate the opening night of any particular opera. Composers often made drastic changes to their own works to make them more appealing to audiences. This is especially true of works created for Italian theaters and later revised for Paris (in French translation). So which alterations to the score are acceptable and which are not? That is not a question easily answered.

Another aspect of 19^th century theater must be considered at this point. For the most part, works were performed by a roster of singers engaged for the entire season. (Season for this purpose does not necessarily mean the entire year but might only mean a few months of continuous performances, for example the carnaval season between the day after Christmas and the start of Lent. One ensemble of singers sang all the important roles. This practice often required alterations if a role had been written for a singer whose voice sat a bit higher or lower or who had exceptional skills that the current occupant of the role lacked. Such alterations are less often required in modern theaters where each opera is cast separately. If the theater is producing a role requiring special skills, the singers with those skills are hired. Transpositions and punctature were quite common in the 18^th and 19^th centuries (and a few transpositions are still commonplace).

Another type of alteration made to accommodate the singers or the local taste was to cut portions of the score from performance. Cuts are made for a variety of reasons. The first of these is length. Modern audiences are not used to being in productions that last as long as what was standard in the 19^th century, and as previously mentioned, performances over three hours incur overtime for the orchestra, crew, and sometimes also the chorus. One place where cuts are often made is in the recitative. This can often be done judiciously, and some cuts are so standard that the audience may not be aware that anything is missing. It also brings the bel canto operas more in line with Verdi’s operas where there is far less recitative. 

Other cuts happen internally in numbers to make them shorter. Some of this is done for length and other times because of the difficulty in executing some passages. It is also quite common for repeated music to be excised from a production. In some cases, especially in Verdi, the entire cabeletta section of a two-part aria (like the cabaletta following Deh miei bollenti spiriti in Verdi’s La Traviata, is omitted. (In that case cut because many tenors struggled with it.) 

Sometimes entire numbers are cut. This is in some ways part of the shift in dramaturgy from the 18^th century into the 19^th. In 18^th century operas every character, including the servants, must have at least one aria to sing. By the mid-19^th century such parts are cut to a bare minimum. It is therefore understandable why 19^th century producers would find such moments in the opera unnecessary. This made earlier works sound a bit more contemporary to the audiences of the time. 

I have greatly condensed the material covered in Divas and Scholars, but even scratching the surface means that there will be two more blog posts to cover the main points. This book really is a must read for anyone involved in the production of opera in any capacity. 

Philip Gossett. Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera. University of Chicago Press, 2006

Whenever I have been cast in an opera, there are many questions about the production to discuss. The fee, the dates, schedule conflicts, etc. But some of the most important questions involve what exactly I will be singing. What edition of the score are we using? Are there cuts and if so, what are they? (I can only remember being in one opera with no cuts at all and that was The Rape of Lucretia). Will we be performing the “traditional” cadenzas and ornaments, or will we be creating new ones or will be doing none at all? These are not easy questions under the best of circumstances but when performing Italian opera there are many more problems that must do both with the circumstances under which the operas were written and the 100-200 years of “tradition” that are attached to most of the scores. 

If you have ever wondered why the published scores for so many operas are in the shape they are in (obviously wrong notes, discrepancies between editions and between those editions and the orchestral score, etc.), Philip Gossett offers the answers to these and many more questions about opera scores and opera in performance. Divas and Scholars explains what we find in the various editions and what we hear when we go to the opera. Philip Gossett spent his life not only studying Italian opera but advising on productions of those operas. His experience then is practical as well as academic. Gossett was strongly discouraged by his professors from choosing Italian opera as his research area. At first, he had no intention of attempting to create scholarly editions of Italian operas, but he eventually did find himself working on critical editions of the work of the bel canto composers. 

There are a great many factors to consider when studying opera. Gossett starts with the libretto. He makes a strong case for understanding the original text of the librettist before studying the many repetitions and changes made by the composer. (A practice also advocated at BCBC. Most of the material in the chapter on libretti will be familiar to Boot Campers, but it is worth reading in full.) Next comes the music. (Sometimes composers started composing from a complete libretto. At other times they were composing as the various scenes were sent to them piecemeal. In a few situations, the composer asked for arias or ensembles in a specific poetic meter as they had already composed a melody for that scene. As deadlines for composing, rehearsing, and performing an opera were often quite short (three weeks of rehearsals seems to be the norm and that includes composing arias custom-fitted to the singers and orchestrating the entire work. Ensembles and choral numbers were composed first. All of this was done in a rush which sometimes necessitated composers like Rossini to leave the composition or at least the completion of the work from a skeleton of the score and usually the secco recitatives to an assistant. Fortunately, composers in the first half of the 19^th century used high quality paper that has held up well. The same cannot be said for the paper available in the second half of the century. 

Rehearsals were chaotic and everything happened at breakneck speed. Of particular concern to us is that copyists were paid by the page not by the hour, incentivizing them to work as quickly as possible. It is therefore not surprising that mistakes crept into the scores, part books (a score with all the music for a particular role, usually with figured bass rather than a piano reduction), and orchestra parts. It is a great mystery is how any opening night ever came off well and is a testament to the abilities of everyone involved that things sometimes ran smoothly enough for the premiere of a new work to be a success. “Indeed, nineteenth-century performance materials actually used in the theater are so filled with mistakes that one wonders how the performers ever got through an evening.” (p. 73)

Due to the plethora of versions created for different productions in the years following the premiere, we are left with many alternate arias and scenes or simply variations on the same pieces. Even in the premiere production, composers made numerous changes during rehearsals for the premiere and then again for each subsequent performance with new casts and in new theaters. Some changes were to accommodate the singers and others to cater to local taste. (For example, changing a tragic ending to a happy one or vice versa.) In some cases, orchestrations were altered, usually adding instruments to earlier works composed for smaller orchestras.

Many changes were made by the composer hoping to make a more successful performance of his opera. Other changes, however, were imposed by the state. Censorship was common in the 19^th century. Subject matter deemed appropriate in Naples might be taboo in Rome or Paris necessitating, cuts, or alterations of the text. In the case of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera the setting had to be moved from Sweden to Boston! Other changes were made by the singers themselves (substituting arias or even whole scenes as in the case of Maria Malibran using Vaccai’s ending rather than Bellini’s for I Capuletti ed I Montecchi.) Still others were made by producers in other theaters (such as the so-called Malibran version of Bellini’s La Sonnambula that was created by Sir Henry Bishop for performances in England and in an English translation. Bellini did not object to the changes, but he had no part in creating them.)

Given the number of errors, alterations, additions, edits, and other variations made to these scores, it is surprising that over the decades that followed something of a “performing tradition” emerged of the most performed Italian operas. In addition, some ornaments, variations and even cuts because “standard.” None of this was based on any scholarly authority and only rarely were the composers’ manuscripts consulted. This is the musical culture into which Philip Gossett entered and attempted to prepare authoritative scores for the operas of Rossini and Verdi. 

There are a great many examples offered. Too many to discuss in this synopsis. And this is only the first of three posts I plan to make on this book. This really is a must read for anyone who sings, conducts, directs, produces, or just enjoys 19^th century Italian opera. (In other words, anyone who would be reading this blog!)

Every summer I try to take some time to look for new or less overused songs and arias to assign my students. This summer that included discovering recently purchased anthologies of music by African American women (Margaret Bonds, Florence Price, Jacqueline Hairston) and soon will include the new (ordered and on its way) anthology of music by composers of the African Diaspora in an effort to replace the tired, and in many cases cringe-worthy “standard” English language art songs assigned to undergraduates. (For an overview of anthologies of art songs for the voice studio I recommend Madeleine Grey’s blog (https://divamum.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwAR0R2DUXbq-LxBRhMuXznH4a23KoJKTXuabBiL2VtlayWAs9DwjaNwZcbWI). 

While thinking about that, I’m reminded that I always plan on assigning more than the same seven or eight songs from the 24 Italian Songs and Arias (Now 28). In conversations about the full Parisotti three-volume anthology (from which most of the famous Schirmer volume is drawn) I realized that many people are not aware that there’s a third volume, and I had assumed that most of the ones not in the 24/28 volumes are not often assigned. But as usual, a little research revealed a very different story than what I had assumed. 

Alessandro Parisotti (1853-1913) is no longer remembered except for his Arie Antiche in which he published 99 songs in three volumes. All of these songs were rarities at the time he published his arrangements of them, although now many are standards and in a few cases the operas, especially those by Handel, are regularly performed. I found a good many professional recordings on YouTube of songs not in the famous 24. (There are likely many more if I did a deeper search.) Dame Janet Baker wins the prize for having ventured well beyond the most famous pieces in these volumes, although just about every singer of note at one point sang a few of these either on recordings or in recitals preserved on video or audio recordings.

I easily found YouTube videos of every number in Volume I (although the versions of Plaisir d’amour were in French rather than Italian and rightly so). Many were by students, (NATS being online for the past few semesters means there are tons of options for those. I have only shared clips sung by famous singers. There are some real gems here and many that I like better than some of the ones too often assigned.

Bononcini: Deh più a me non v’ascondete https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsQhyTx7BNw

Alessandro Scarlatti: Son tutta duolo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIm3bW4jjZM

Alessandro Scarlatti: Spesso vibra per suo gioco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuO-8zelmSk

Alessandro Scarlatti: Se tu della mia morte https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KjWiAPAHKE

Vivaldi: Un certo non so che https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbffFxluaxE

Caldara: Selve amiche https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4_7vZQ3HPU

Handel: Alcina; HWV 34: Ah! mio cor! schernito sei https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLrymlRE5QQ

Pergolesi: Ogni pena più spetata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS7EFPZTI3I

Pergolesi: Stizzoso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1NsPkfSlG8

Piccinni: Notte, dea del mister https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igxZ5rVhcCY

Paisiello: Chi vuol la zingarella https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzULAUn-8tM

Paisiello: Il mio ben quando verrà  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdA_MLil2Gg

The same goes for Volume II. It was easy to find videos of all the songs although many were only student recordings (many of those very good). Even so, I’m sharing performances by famous singers for your enjoyment and edification.

Falconieri: Pupillette https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynI9QIm7D04

Tenaglia: Quando sarà quel di https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFP2yK8TZZ4

Stradella: Ragion sempre addita https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGNmoHpPhDw

Fasolo: Cangia tue voglie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5VYKqjHi7c

Scarlatti: Su, venite a consilio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzn82JORyLQ

Bassani: Dormi, bella https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMI1yXUfOTk

Bassani: Posate, dormite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjK570NuXWs

Gasparini: Lasciar d’amarti https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK7wdNfkw1U

Sarro: Sen corre l’agnelletta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWqYRlsjFdQ

Marcello: Non m’è grave https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIrZZRMh-c

Paradies: M’ha preso alla sua ragna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glD4iTFKxMs

Piccinni: Alessandro nelle Indie: Se il ciel mi divide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSJsobo5N6Y

The songs in Volume III are less well represented on YouTube, but better than I would have thought. Only one aria from this volume, “O leggiadri occhi belli” is in the 28 Songs and Arias collection. Piangerò is widely available and widely performed. There’s quite a bit of Handel in this volume as well as songs by Caccini, Traetta and Cimarosa. Many of these are more difficult than in the first two volumes but Boot Campers will know how to manage the ornaments found in these arias from their Vaccai work. I present these as a challenge (and recommend singers look through the entire collection. There is some excellent recital rep here. More than enough for a group recital like the one we did over the summer with the songs of Bellini.

Caccini: Tu che hai le penne, Amore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d9O5A8XEqo

Fasolo: Lungi, Amor da me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acXzQ6c47vk

Tenaglia: Begli occhi, mercé https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TZlJNMa-C4

Rosa: Vado ben spesso congiando loco  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl1B-4LeTOg

Antonio Sartorio: Oh che umore stravagante https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAsEG905lnk

Scarlatti: Toglietemi la vita ancor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xVJQRLnhHU

Scarlatti: Se delitto è l’adorarvi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juq70E-9Nrw

Handel: Chi sprezzando il sommo bene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvrqC7lMxso

Vinci: Teco, sì, vengo anch’io https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxw8o7ICcz8

Traetta: Ma che vi costa, signor tutore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx4oDKTlPL0

Dalayrac: Quand le bien aimé reviendra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2iFqu6r2cI

Cherubini: Ahi! che forse ai miei di https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG2Z8EugF1g

I trust that at least a few of these will pique interest from BCBCers. Personally I am obsessed with Rosa’s “Vado ben spesso.” I’ll be posting a video singing it soon. I really would like to hear more Traetta and Jomelli programmed. They were the leading composers of their day and don’t deserve the neglect they have suffered for 200 years. (The same can be said of most of these composers.) In addition to these I recommend some of the other collections as well. It’s easy to criticize early 20^thcentury collections as anachronistic, but I find them well written for the piano and also good for teaching purposes. A more scholarly edition might be preferable for a student with great confidence who is secure enough to sing with little support from the accompaniment, but for most teachers of beginning or even intermediate voice students, that is not the case, especially those of us who teach high school students or music education majors not so experiences as solo singers. Another collection, also in three volumes, is Knud Jeppesen’s La Flora. However, since those editions are quite expensive, the public domain Parisotti remain more practical for budget-minded teachers and students.