The Other Bennet Sister

The Other Bennet Sister (BBC, 2026). Left to right: Maddie Close (Jane Bennet Bingley), Poppy Gilbert (Elizabeth Bennet Darcy), Elizabeth Bruccoleri (Mary Bennet), Molly Wright (Kitty Bennet Buncock), and Grace Hogg-Robinson (Lydia Bennet Wickham). Photo credit: James Pardon. Image source: BritBox

I have ambivalent feelings about spoilers in commentary about novels, movies, and opera. I try to avoid them (not entirely successfully) in my writing for E&I, or where they are unavoidable given what I want to discuss, usually set them apart with "Spoiler alert!/End of spoiler" tags.

Of course, there are works of narrative art that are spoiler-proof. Would it ruin Joyce's Ulysses to know before undertaking to read it that Molly Bloom has the final word, and what that word is? Would it ruin an Astaire–Rogers musical to know whether, after their initial antagonism, Fred and Ginger wind up as a romantic couple? Would it ruin Tosca to know how many of the four main characters survive the opera? [1]

Perhaps this is why I've lost count of the number of times I've watched my favorite movies or experienced my favorite operas (although La Bohème would be my Puccini choice rather than Tosca). And it's perhaps why I read and reread the novels of Jane Austen: knowing the outcomes does not diminish the pleasures they offer.

But despite the numerous spoiler-proof examples among my own favorites, I try to avoid learning too much about a narrative work before I encounter it for the first time. Partly this is to preserve the enjoyment of the unfolding story without knowing what will happen. And partly it's to keep my thoughts about what I'm experiencing as free of preconceptions as possible. So when I heard that the BBC streaming service BritBox would be carrying a series based on Janice Hadlow's 2020 novel The Other Bennet Sister, which I hadn't read, I deliberately avoided reviews, promotional interviews, and trailers, and urged watching friends not to tell me about it.

Cover of the U.S. edition of The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow, Holt Paperbacks, 2021. Image source: Bookshop.org

As a result of avoiding others' thoughts on the series I independently came up with my own (mis)conceptions: I thought that the entire 5-hour, 10-episode series was a retelling of Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of Mary Bennet. Mary, of course, is the middle Bennet daughter, and is plain, bookish, and moralizing where her older and younger sisters are beautiful and kind (Jane), lively and witty (Elizabeth), and gossipy and flirtatious (Kitty and Lydia). Also, while Jane and Elizabeth have a close bond, and Kitty "follow[s] wherever Lydia leads," Mary is something of the odd girl out among the sisters, and does not have a close companion among them.

Austen is unsparing in her description of Mary:

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached. [2]

Seeing the action of Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of the introverted, socially awkward and often-overlooked Mary would have been brilliant enough, and indeed this is how the series begins. We watch the arrival of the Bingley party at the Meryton assembly, Mr. Collins' inept courting of every Bennet sister but Mary, her humiliation at the Netherfield Ball, and, finally, the carriages rolling off with her sisters and their new husbands, leaving her behind.

Title page of Pride and Prejudice: A Novel in Three Volumes. By the author of "Sense and Sensibility." T. Edgerton, 1813. Image source: Internet Archive

We also see a few scenes outside the two inches of ivory of Pride and Prejudice: the growing friendship between Mary and her optician, Mr. Sparrow (a character not in Austen's novel, played by Aaron Gill), quickly squashed by the overbearing Mrs. Bennet; and, of course, the news of Kitty's marriage to a Mr. Buncock (also Hadlow's invention). But by the end of the second 30-minute episode we have reached the end of the action of Austen's novel, which turns out to be the prelude to Mary's continuing story.

That story mixes elements from multiple Austen novels and their adaptations, primarily—spoiler alert!—Sense and Sensibility. Like Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters on the death of Mr. Dashwood, Mrs. Bennet (Ruth Jones) and Mary (Ella Bruccoleri) are forced to leave their home after the death of Mr. Bennet (an especially ascerbic Richard E. Grant) and the inheritance of the estate by a near relation, Mr. Collins (Ryan Sampson).

While staying in London with her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner (Indira Varma and Richard Coyle), Mary is introduced to Tom Hayward (Dónal Finn). Like Sense and Sensibility's Edward Ferrars, he is shy and unassuming, but Hayward's love of Wordsworth's poetry suggests hidden depths of feeling. Unfortunately, he also resembles Edward Ferrars in turning out to have an existing understanding of mutual commitment with another young woman.

Mary then meets a more available man, William Ryder (Laurie Davidson). Like Sense and Sensibility's Willoughby, he is charming, handsome and impulsive. Also like Willoughby, his attachment is genuine but his intentions are dubious.

—End of spoilers.—

The 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice series seems to have been a particular touchstone for the principal screenwriter Sarah Quintrell and casting director Kathleen Crawford. The actress portraying Mary, Ella Bruccoleri, bears a certain resemblance to Lucy Briers, who played Mary in that series:

Left: Ella Bruccoleri as Mary in the 2026 BBC adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister.
Right: Lucy Briers as Mary in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
Image sources: Left: Bristol Live; Right: Jane Austen Literary Foundation

In a knowing wink to fans, Briers herself appears in another role in The Other Bennet Sister: she plays the kindhearted family maidservant Mrs. Hill, who becomes a sort of surrogate mother to the lonely Mary.

Lucy Briers as Mrs. Hill in The Other Bennet Sister. Image source: TV Guide

Tanya Reynolds as Caroline Bingley has a supercilious and disapproving look that is not dissimilar to that of the brilliantly awful Anna Chancellor in the same role in 1995:

Left: Tanya Roberts as Caroline Bingley in the 2026 BBC adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister.
Right: Anna Chancellor as Caroline Bingley in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
Image sources: Left: Bristol Post; Right: Frock Flicks

And Charlotte Lucas's calmly appraising gaze when she's in the company of Mr. Collins is a feature both of the performance of Anna Fenton-Garvey in The Other Bennet Sister and that of Lucy Scott, who played Charlotte in 1995:

Left: Anna Fenton-Garvey as Charlotte Lucas in the 2026 BBC adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister.
Right: Lucy Scott as Charlotte Lucas in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
Image sources: Left: Oxford School of Drama; Right: TV Tropes

In The Other Bennet Sister, Mary gets to visit the Lake District with the Gardiners, the trip for which Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice must substitute "a more contracted tour" to Derbyshire. During the tour of the Lakes there are incidents that recall Catherine Morland's rain-drenched expedition to Blaize Castle in Northanger Abbey and Marianne Dashwood's accident in Sense and Sensibility. And Quintrell carefully weaves in throughout the series moments that echo Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion.

But The Other Bennet Sister is more than a pastiche of characters and scenes from Austen. In the series Mary is (largely) freed from the burdens of living with her belittling father and domineering, emotionally manipulative mother. While traveling and residing with her sympathetic aunt and uncle, and no longer subject to her parents' constant unfavorable comparisons of her to her prettier and more outgoing sisters, Mary slowly gains in self-confidence and self-knowledge. She grows beyond the character as imagined by Austen and as seen through the eyes of others in Pride and Prejudice. As Janice Hadlow writes in her novel, "There was no-one to judge her. Here, she thought, she might alter everything about herself if she wished to." [3]

The series is also unlike Austen and other Austen adaptations in the marked presence of people of South Asian heritage among the commercial and professional classes in London, among them Mr. Sparrow, Mrs. Gardiner, and the woman with whom Thomas Hayward has an understanding, Ann Baxter (a character not in Hadlow's novel, played by Varada Sethu). While such a prevalence would probably have been more characteristic of London at the end of the 19th century, decades after the Regency period in which The Other Bennet Sister takes place, it's a welcome reminder that Britain was then and remains now a multicultural society.

Richard Coyle (Mr. Gardiner) and Indira Varma (Mrs. Gardiner) in The Other Bennet Sister. Image source: Yours

Before seeing The Other Bennet Sister, I also thought that I knew how Mary's story would end. In A Memoir of Jane Austen, Jane's nephew James Austen-Leigh (her eldest brother James' son, who attended her funeral in Winchester as a 20-year-old) wrote of his aunt,

She certainly took a kind of parental interest in the beings whom she had created, and did not dismiss them from her thoughts when she had finished her last chapter. . .She would, if asked, tell us many little particulars about the subsequent career of some of her people. In this traditionary way we learned. . .that Kitty Bennet was satisfactorily married to a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary obtained nothing higher than one of her uncle Philip's clerks, and was content to be considered a star in the society of Meriton. . . [4]

Title page of A Memoir of Jane Austen by her nephew J. E. Austen-Leigh, Third Edition, 1872. Image source: Internet Archive

I hope it's not a spoiler to inform you that this is not Mary's fate in The Other Bennet Sister. As novelist Jo Baker writes in her review of the novel, living with the Gardiners allows Mary to "let down her defences. . .[and] become comfortably herself." And with that new comfort in her own skin comes the possibility of true happiness. [5]

Many thanks to the dear friends who enabled us to see the series (and no, BritBox, no passwords were shared). We found it delightful, and were happy to learn that we can expect a three-part (90-minute?) Christmas special in December.

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1. Spoiler alerts!
   
   • Ulysses: The famous final words of Molly Bloom's novel-ending monologue are ". . .yes I said yes I will Yes."
   • Fred and Ginger: Their producer Pandro S. Berman once said, "The minute the names of Astaire and Rogers go up on the marquee, the audience knows they belong together." In fact, in only two of their musicals do they not end the movie as a romantic couple, and in those two films their characters are husband and wife: The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) and The Barkleys of Broadway (1948). They don't end these two films together due to an untimely death in the former, and an amicable divorce in the latter.
   • Tosca: Of the four major characters—the artist Mario Cavaradossi; his lover, the opera diva Floria Tosca; Cavaradossi's friend, the escaped political prisoner Cesare Angelotti; and the head of the police, Baron Scarpia—none survive the end of the opera: two die by suicide, one by murder, and one by firing squad. SF Opera apparently does not think that widespread advance knowledge of the fates of the characters is any detriment to the box office: including 2026–27, Tosca has been scheduled in eight of the past 26 seasons, or about once every three years.
   —End of spoilers.
2. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Thomas Edgerton, 1813. Ch. VI, p. 52. https://archive.org/details/prideprejudiceno00aust_1/page/n61/mode/1up
3. Janice Hadlow, The Other Bennet Sister, Holt, 2020, Ch. 52.
4. J. E. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, Third Edition, Richard Bentley and Son, 1872, pp. 148–149; https://archive.org/details/memoirofjaneaus00aust/page/148/mode/2up. Exactly how Mary and her husband wind up living in Meryton, rather than in London where he is employed, is not explained.
5. Jo Baker, "The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow review – what happened to Mary after Pride and Prejudice." The Guardian, 11 January 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/11/the-other-bennet-sister-janice-hadlow-review

Behind the arras: Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

DVD cover (from Sweden) of Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Focus Features, 2022. Image source: Kvarnvideo

Business as usual

With the ever-growing attention paid to the Met Gala, and the Met's current "Costume Art" exhibit showcased in its prominent new Condé M. Nast Galleries, it seems that fashion is having (yet another) cultural moment.

In the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, art critic Jed Perl seems disconcerted by the apparent corporate takeover of the first exhibition space encountered by visitors to the Met. He writes,

What’s troubling isn’t that there are fashion exhibitions at the Met. What’s troubling is that there is reason to believe that the fashion industry has bought what amounts to prime real estate at the Met—and bought it for the foreseeable future. . .Named galleries are nothing new in museums, but naming the galleries devoted to fashion for Condé M. Nast, a publisher instrumental in the development of the fashion industry, is anything but disinterested. . .The cost of the galleries, estimated at something like $50 million, was covered by companies and individuals, all or nearly all of whom have ties to fashion. [1]

Perl gives as an additional example of the influence of the fashion industry on curatorial decisions the designer Thom Browne, current chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Browne donated sufficient money to the building of the fashion galleries that one of them is named after him; he also has at least three pieces in the "Costume Art" show that is inaugurating the galleries. Perl asks, "But didn’t anybody worry about the impression of a quid pro quo? When it comes to fashion, does the Met regard this as business as usual?"

The short answer is yes. The Met has a long history of financial connections to the fashion industry, which has played a huge and determinative role in how fashion is collected and depicted at the Met.

In 1946 Dorothy Shaver, president of the department store Lord & Taylor, was instrumental in raising money from garment manufacturers and other fashion-associated businesses to establish the Costume Institute at the Met.

"What is the American Look? It is made of many things: Dorothy Shaver (standing) discusses with artist Dorothy Hood and Art Director Rodman virtues and flaws of girls applying as American Look models." Life, 21 May 1945, p. 88. Photo credit: Nina Leen. Image source: Internet Archive

Two years later, fashion industry publicist Eleanor Lambert organized the first Met Gala as a benefit for the Costume Institute. Lambert was already an influential tastemaker in art and fashion, and her sponsorship of the Gala ensured its continuing success.

Eleanor Lambert in a James Galanos floral evening gown, ca. 1952–53. Image source: The Bend Bulletin

Although the Costume Institute became a curatorial department of the Met in 1959, the powerful influence of the fashion industry continued. In 1972 Diana Vreeland, the former editor of Harper's Bazaar who had just been fired after a decade as editor-in-chief of Vogue, became a "special consultant" to the Costume Institute. She organized its annual exhibitions into the late 1980s. It was Vreeland who introduced the idea of annual themes for the Costume Institute exhibits and their associated Galas.

Diana Vreeland, ca. late 1970s. Image source: Mercht

In 1995, the then-current editor-in-chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour, became the chair of the Met Gala, a position she holds to this day. Vogue was and is the flagship publication of Condé Nast. In recognition of her fundraising for the Costume Institute, in 2014 the wing of the Met housing the Institute was renamed the Anna Wintour Costume Center. Wintour continued as editor-in-chief of Vogue until 2025, when she became Global Chief Content Officer and Artistic Director of Condé Nast. Now Condé Nast has funded the Met galleries in which the Anna Wintour Costume Center's collection will be exhibited. All very cosy and circular.

Clarissa Alcock, Anna Wintour, and Annette Reed at the 1995 Met Gala. Photo credit: Nick Haddow. Image source: Yahoo News UK

Fashion and sustainability

It's ironic that fashion is attaining unprecedented cultural influence at a moment when we are facing a global sustainability crisis. The core business model of the fashion industry is, of course, anti-sustainability: convincing us that the clothes we wore just last year are shamefully out of date and need to be replaced.

The fashion industry is not only predicated on planned obsolescence, but as designer Natsai Audrey Chieza has noted,

. . .the textile industry is one of the most polluting in the world [second only to the petroleum industry, according to some accounts]. Most of the ecological harm caused by textile processing occurs at the finishing and the dyeing stage. Processing textiles requires huge amounts of water. And since the oil age completely transformed the textile industry, many of the materials and the chemicals used to process them are petroleum based. And so coupled with our insatiable appetite for fast fashion, a huge amount of textile waste [in the US, roughly 85 percent] is ending up in landfill every year because it remains notoriously difficult to recycle.

The fashion industry has also outsourced the manufacture of its products to low-wage countries with few worker protections and lax environmental regulations. The finished clothes then are shipped around the world to the points of purchase, creating supply-chain emissions and waste.

The fashion industry's exploitative practices are not limited to the manufacture of its products, of course, but also feature explicitly in their promotion, in which profits are generated by portraying the bodies and fostering the insecurities of young women. In model Cameron Russell's widely viewed TED talk, she says that while half of 13-year-old girls in the United States express dissatisfaction with their bodies, by the time they are 17 that figure rises to nearly 80 percent. Her talk was given in 2012, just after the founding of Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp, and four years before the appearance of TikTok. A recent study has stated that among young women, "intensity of social media use has been shown to be associated with poorer psychological well-being, including more negative body image" [2].

Haute couture portrays itself as standing outside of this system; its designs are often one-of-a-kind, custom-sewn and -fitted creations. However, high-end fashion houses and the conglomerates that own them generally also produce ready-to-wear clothing. The haute couture collections can be seen as reputation-building loss leaders that promote more profitable ready-to-wear lines. High fashion has gone mainstream.

Which brings us to the subject of today's post:

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022) features E&I favorite Lesley Manville as Ada Harris, a charwoman in 1950s London. One day Mrs. Harris sees a Christian Dior gown in the closet of one of her employers, and is overwhelmed by the beauty of its design and the fineness of its materials and construction. It is unlike any dress that she has ever seen up close before, and she yearns to be able to wear one like it.

Lesley Manville as the title character in Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. Image source: Focus Features

With her war widow's pension and her life savings (multiplied by what turns out to be a fortunate bet), she travels to Paris to obtain an evening gown from the source: the Dior atelier.

She quickly learns from snooty atelier manager Madame Colbert (Isabelle Huppert) that Dior serves an exclusive clientele that does not include charwomen. However, Mrs. Harris is rescued by one of those clients, the Marquis de Chassagne (Lambert Wilson), who invites her to the presentation of the new collection as his guest. [3]

The Dior atelier is in some financial difficulties due to the habitually belated payments of their rich clientele, and Mrs. Harris's ready cash convinces Dior to accept her as a customer. Mrs. Harris desires a red dress called "Temptation," but it is claimed by a regular client, and so she selects an alternate dress in green—still very beautiful, but not the one she most wished for. Although at first she is treated with condescension and hostility by Madame Colbert, she ultimately wins over the staff, acts as matchmaker to a shy couple among them, and points the atelier to a way out of its financial bind by expanding its customer base. It is a lovely and sentimental story in which every catastrophe ultimately leads to a better outcome, and good will and solidarity win out over divisions of class and circumstance. Lesley Manville gives a delightful performance in the title role, and we enjoyed the movie very much.

Behind the arras

In reality, Christian Dior was bankrolled by one of the wealthiest textile manufacturers in France. The house, founded in late 1946, offered its "Corolla" collection just a few months later. The collection, which featured a tailored look on the upper body and narrow waists paired with full skirts, was referred by Harper's Bazaar editor-in-chief Carmel Snow as "The New Look." It was a decisive repudiation of wartime austerity, featuring luxurious fabrics and, for the skirts, shocking amounts of expensive yardage, and it made Dior instantly famous.

Dior's New Look, Spring-Summer 1947. Image source: Dior.com

The house quickly added added an accessories shop selling Dior-designed hats, scarves, handbags, jewellery and other accessories; later perfume and shoes were added. By 1949 Dior had opened a second store in Manhattan, and by 1950 according to one estimate accounted for 5% of France's entire export revenue. [4] So the house did not need Mrs. Harris's advice to improve its financial position; it was dominant almost from the first.

All this is not to say that everyone (and not just the wealthiest people in consumer economies) should not have beautiful, well-made, durable clothing. But in making fashion a mass-cultural obsession, the fashion industry—as so eloquently described by Cameron Russell in an interview with TED Radio Hour's Manoush Zomorodi—has instead developed a global system of gendered exploitation for its own profit.

It's a system that frequently has damaging consequences for those caught in it, as in the notorious sexual exploitation of young women in the modelling industry. The consequences can also be deadly: in 2013 a nine-story building near Dhaka, Bangladesh that contained five garment factories collapsed, killing over 1100 workers and injuring more than twice that number, mostly women. A report by Adiba Afros and Sifat E Nur Khanam published in The Daily Star (Dhaka) on 18 April 2026 and headlined "Rana Plaza, 13 years on: No justice, no memory," points out that "after 13 years, there has been little movement on accountability—not a single court has yet delivered a final judgment [against those responsible]. While humanitarian aid was provided, no compensation has been paid [to victims or their families] for the most devastating catastrophe in the history of the global fashion industry."

"Rescuers and volunteers navigate the catastrophic ruins of the Rana Plaza building in Savar following its collapse on April 24, 2013." Image source: The Daily Star (Dhaka, Bangladesh)

Among the brands for which the factories produced clothing were luxury retailer El Corte Inglés, Benetton, Mango, and The Children's Place.

But the fashion industry tries to mask the suffering involved in the manufacture and distribution of its products. And the presentation of its designs in the Met's Condé M. Nast Galleries, which (in Jed Perl's words) "have the pale gray walls and crisp architectural details of a Madison Avenue boutique," is a key element of this campaign. As Perl concludes, the Met has allowed itself to become "an infomercial for the fashion industry."

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1. Jed Perl, "Fashion Forward: Why has the Metropolitan Museum of Art sold prime gallery space to the fashion industry?" New York Review of Books, 23 July 2026. [subscription required]
2. Jaehee Jung, David Barron, Young-A Lee, Viren Swami. 2022. "Social media usage and body image: Examining the mediating roles of internalization of appearance ideals and social comparisons in young women." Computers in Human Behavior 135: 107357. Figshare.com
3. The film is a remake of Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, a 1992 CBS-TV movie of Paul Gallico's 1958 novel of the same title. In the role of the charwoman Ada Harris, the 1992 version offered Angela Lansbury, with Diana Rigg as Madame Colbert and Omar Sharif as the Marquis.
4. Leah McGrath Goodman, "A Surprisingly Modern Take on America From a Long-Dead Frenchman," Newsweek, 21 January 2015.

In memoriam: Robert Cole

Robert Cole in Zellerbach Hall, with the set from Mark Morris's The Hard Nut onstage. Set designed by Adrianne Lobel after Charles Burns. Image source: Cal Performances

On 16 July I learned of the death of Robert Cole at age 95. As the director of Cal Performances from 1986 until 2009, and the founder of the Berkeley Early Music Festival and Exhibition in 1990, Cole had a huge role in shaping my tastes in opera, music and dance.

It was Cole who brought the White Oak Dance Project to Berkeley in 1991. It was only the second time I'd seen Mikhail Baryshnikov perform (the first for my partner), and it was our first encounter with choreographer and dancer Mark Morris. The following season Cole invited the Mark Morris Dance Group to give only their second Bay Area performances (the first had been a part of Cole's 1987 Cal Performances season).

Seeing Morris's company for the first time was, for us, a life-changing event. As I wrote in my appreciation of his biographer Joan Acocella, "We were astonished by the range of tone, movement, and music represented in his dances, from the urgent questioning of Gloria (set to Vivaldi) to the funny, lewd, and touching Going Away Party (set to the music of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys). Morris immediately became our favorite living choreographer."

Mark Morris Dance Group in Gloria. Photo credit: Stephanie Berger. Image source: MMDG.org

I wasn't aware that this was a moment of crisis for MMDG. Morris's three-year contract as the Director of Dance at Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels had not been renewed at the end of the 1990–91 season. At La Monnaie, Morris had expanded the scale of his works and the size of his company. Its ability to perform the works he had created in Belgium, and indeed its very survival in its present form, were at stake. Cole began making MMDG performances annual (and often biannual) features of the Cal Performances season, and commissioning new works. Those bookings must have been a lifeline for the troupe.

Beginning in 1994, in three successive seasons Cole brought to Berkeley each of the three evening-length masterworks that Morris had created during his time at La Monnaie: the joyful L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato (to Handel's oratorio); a danced version of Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, in which Morris played both the tragic Carthaginan Queen Dido and her evil nemesis the Sorceress; and The Hard Nut, "Morris's highly entertaining—and funny, lewd, and touching—version of The Nutcracker" (a quote from the Acocella post), for which Cole himself took the conductor's podium. We quickly realized that we needed to get tickets to two different performances for each MMDG program in order to fully grasp what we were seeing and hearing.

Guillermo Resto as Aeneas and Mark Morris as Dido in Dido and Aeneas. Image source: Stage and Cinema

Dido and Aeneas was our introduction to Baroque opera; the pit band was the period-instrument Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under its longtime conductor Nicholas McGegan. Afterwards we immediately sought out the PBO/McGegan recording of the opera, still my favorite of the work, which featured the matchless Lorraine Hunt as Dido. This led to our discovery of the series of Handel operas and oratorios recorded by PBO under McGegan with Hunt as soloist, and then to the music of other Baroque-era composers: Monteverdi (Lorraine Hunt appeared in SF Opera's 1998 production of L'Incoronazione di Poppea), Gluck (in 1996 Cole presented Morris's production of Orfeo ed Euridice), and Rameau (in 1998 he presented Morris's production of Platée). Cole and Morris opened up the whole world of opera to us, which we continue to explore and delight in.

Cole commissioned many world premières from the company, and sponsored many West Coast premières as well. Among the latter, Mozart Dances deserves a special mention, and for a fuller description you can read my post on the performance. For the former, I should mention in particular Falling Down Stairs, Morris' choreographic response to Bach's Third Suite for Solo Cello, with the cello accompaniment played live by none other than Yo-Yo Ma. Here is the Prelude from this work:

https://youtu.be/CUkLdATMx58?t=1944 [Prelude ends at 35:40]

Remarkably, in the second half of this program Yo-Yo Ma went into the pit as just another of the musicians accompanying The Office (set to Dvorák) and Rhymes with Silver (set to Lou Harrison, another world première).

Another choreographer with whom Cole formed a lasting association was Merce Cunningham, whose regular visits with his company (generally accompanied by his life- and creative partner John Cage) we looked forward to eagerly. Especially memorable were Ocean (presented in the round in the university basketball gymnasium, music by Cage) and the computer-enhanced BIPED (music by Gavin Bryars).

Lyon Opera Ballet in Merce Cunningham's BIPED. Photo credit: Agathe Poupeney. Image source: The Dance Enthusiast

Cole also gave us the electrifying experience of seeing mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli perform live; the punk-rock Italian Baroque ensemble Il Giardino Armonico (who accompanied Bartoli on one tour); stunning recitals by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Philippe Jaroussky; concerts by gambist Jordi Savall and his wife and musical partner, the plangent soprano Montserrat Figueras; and many, many other memorable live performances. As with Morris and Cunningham, once an artist appeared on the Cal Performances stage they often returned in later seasons. Clearly Cole inspired a strong sense of loyalty among many of the artists he sponsored.

Jordi Savall and Montserrat Figueras in concert. Image source: RadioFrance

I vividly remember the annual excitement surrounding the first day of Cal Performances season subscription sales: people used to line up hours in advance, because the time stamp on your order (along with the size of your donation) determined the priority with which it would be filled, and your chances of getting your preferred seats. We were made to feel as though it was Cole and Cal Performances who were doing us the favor by allowing us the privilege of purchasing tickets. Of course, it was true.

The performing arts climate has changed since Cole's heyday. For many organizations subscriptions are declining sharply, and the cost and difficulty of the logistics of sponsoring international artists have grown significantly. It's unlikely that we'll see another impresario in the Bay Area who combines Robert Cole's excellent taste, keen eye for emerging talent, and both the drive and the seemingly limitless resources to realize his ambitious vision. It's our great loss.

"Farewell to hope": Baldassare Galuppi's L'Olimpiade

DVD cover for Baldassare Galuppi's L'Olimpiade (The Olympiad, 1747), with Romina Basso as Megacle (left) and Ruth Rosique as Aristea (right). Image source: Internet Archive

The 18th-century Italian composer Baldassare Galuppi is far less well known today than his contemporaries Antonio Vivaldi and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. The passage of time and changing musical styles caused Galuppi's work to fall out of fashion after his death in 1785, and until recently it had rarely been revived. But in the 1750s he was one of the most famous opera composers not only in Italy but throughout Europe. And his rise to international fame began with a crisis in the professional life of another composer: George Frideric Handel.

Handel's 30-year career of composing and producing Italian opera in London ground to a permanent halt with the failure of Deidamia in January 1741; at age 56 he was faced with having to reinvent himself. (For how he did so, please see the post Every Valley: Handel's Messiah.) You might think that if Handel couldn't make Italian opera succeed in the British capital, no one could. Remarkably, though, the failure of Deidamia was not the end of Italian opera in London, even temporarily. For the 1741–42 season Charles Sackville, the Earl of Middlesex, gathered a group of subscribers and brought the 35-year-old Galuppi to London.

Portrait of Baldassare Galuppi, artist unknown, 1751. Image source: Sotheby's

Probably agents or friends of Lord Middlesex in Venice had heard Galuppi's two most recent serious operas: Oronte (1740) and Berenice (1741); it's also possible that Middlesex himself heard Galuppi's work when he travelled in Italy in 1737–38. In any case, Galuppi was invited to London and stayed for two seasons. In that time he supervised the production of 11 operas, two of which in each season were his new compositions. The first, Penelope, ran for nine performances at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket between December 1741 and February 1742, while Scipione in Cartagine (Scipio in Carthage) opened on 2 April 1742 and alternated with two other operas by different composers until it closed the season on 1 June.

Perhaps the most significant opera Galuppi introduced to London in his first season was Meraspe, overo L'Olimpiade, with a libretto by Pietro Metastasio and music by several composers including Pergolesi, who had died in 1736. Meraspe was one of the operas alternating with Galuppi's Scipione in the spring of 1742.

Title page of the libretto of Meraspe, overo L'Olimpiade, adapted by Paolo Rolli from Pietro Metastasio's original libretto, 1742. Image source: Gale Eighteenth Century Collections Online (subscription required)

Meraspe, overo L'Olimpiade was the first time Pergolesi's music was heard on a London stage; it had eight performances before the season ended for the summer, and was so popular that a collection of The Favorite Songs in the Opera call'd Meraspe, o[vero] L'Olimpiade was published by the London firm of John Walsh.

Title page of Favorite Songs in the Opera call'd Meraspe, o[vero] L'Olimpiade, Printed for I. [John] Walsh, London, 1742. From the collection of the University of Western Ontario. Image source: Internet Archive

The first two arias in Favorite Songs were by Pergolesi. "Tremende oscuri atroci" (Loathsome, dreadful, dark and drear) and "Se cerca se dice" (If she seeks, if she speaks) were both sung in Act II by the soprano castrato Angelo Maria Monticelli in the role of Meraspe, who in most versions of L'Olimpiade was named Megacle. Music historian Charles Burney wrote of Monticelli's performance that "the union of poetry and Music, expression and gesture, seldom have had a more powerful effect on an English audience." [1]

Print of castrato Angelo Maria Monticelli by John Faber Jr after an Andrea Casali mezzotint, published by John Bowles, London, circa 1740–1780. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG D14314, CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0

Meraspe, overo L'Olimpiade sparked widespread interest in Pergolesi's music in London; over the next decade his reputation continued to grow until he was probably the most famous Italian composer outside of Italy. As Grove Music Online states, "The almost universal fame he attained posthumously represented a new phenomenon in music history." [2]

In his second London season Galuppi composed Enrico, which became a hit and ran for 17 performances after premiering on 1 January 1743, and Sirbace, which ran for nine performances and closed the season. (In comparison, two years previously Handel's Deidamia had managed only three performances before closing.) A collection of arias from Enrico was also later published by Walsh.

Title page of Favorite Songs in the Opera Call'd Enrico by Sigr. Galuppi. Printed for I. [John] Walsh, London, ?1744. [3] From the collection of Westminster City Libraries and Archives. Image source: Wikipedia

Instrumental parts for his overture for Meraspe, overo L'Olimpiade were published along with those for the overtures of Enrico, Penelope, and Scipione in Cartagine, as well as two overtures from Porpora operas produced in London in the 1730s.

Title page from Six Overtures in Seven Parts. . .from the Late Operas Compos'd by Sigr. Hasse, Vinci, Galuppi & Porpora, Printed for I. [John] Walsh, London, 1748. [4] From the collection of the University of Western Ontario. Image source: Internet Archive

Although Enrico was a major success and Galuppi's other operas did respectably, at the end of the 1742–43 London season the Venetian composer returned to Italy. Galuppi's departure from London was likely made easier because he had a prestigious job waiting for him back in Venice: while in London he was formally on leave from his position as teacher and composer for the women of the Ospedale dei Mendicanti. [5]

Lord Middlesex would continue to produce Italian opera at the King's Theatre through the autumn of 1748 despite financial losses, a 1744 lawsuit he filed against his own subscribers, and a 1748 lawsuit filed against him by Monticelli for unpaid salary. Among those who replaced Galuppi as music director and chief composer were Giovanni Battista Lampugnani in the 1743–44 season, and after a year-long lawsuit hiatus, Christoph Willibald Gluck in the 1745–46 season. In Grove Music Online Carole Taylor writes that "Middlesex was more than usually susceptible to opera's attractions, but to his love of music and social distinction there was added an unfortunate mixture of recalcitrance, impetuosity and managerial ineptitude. . .The Italian Opera, in decline in the 1730s, struggled through the 1740s largely as a result of his energies, and it may have owed its further decline to his incompetence." [6]

"The Old Opera House": The Italian Opera House [King's Theatre], Haymarket, prior to the fire of June 1789. Pencil drawing and watercolor by William Capon, c. 1788. Image source: Victoria & Albert Museum S4169-2009

Back in Italy as the decade of the 1740s continued, Galuppi wrote sacred music for the Ospedale and adapted comic operas for Venetian theatres. He also composed opera seria setting the libretti of Pietro Metastasio. Every composer of opera seria set libretti by Metastasio because they were so well-written and -constructed. Between 1723 and 1843, Metastasio's 27 opera seria libretti were set to music a thousand times by more than 300 composers. [7]

L'Olimpiade was one of Metastasio's most popular libretti, set at least 57 times between 1733 and 1815. Perhaps inspired by the reception of the Meraspe, o L'Olimpiade pasticcio in London, Galuppi composed his own version of L'Olimpiade for Milan, which was given as the first opera in the 1747–48 Carnival season.

Title page of the libretto of L'Olimpiade from the Teatro Regio Ducale, Milan, with music composed by Baldassare Galuppi, performed during the Carnival season of 1747–48. Color adjusted from the source. Image source: Internet Archive

The backstory is given in the libretto's Argument, here taken from a 1770 London pasticcio of L'Olimpiade with "Music by several Eminent Masters":

Clistenes, king of Sicyon, ordered his son Phylinthus, an infant, to be exposed to the sea; the Oracle having foretold, that he should attempt to kill him; and [after the passage of two decades] refused Aristea, his daughter, to Megacles the Athenian, on account of the hatred he bore to Athens. Megacles on a journey, having been set upon and over-powered by ruffians, was rescued by Licidas, the supposed son of the king of Crete; whereupon, through gratitude and affection, there grew a strict [i.e., close] friendship between them.

Licida (giving him and the other characters the Italian forms of their names) learns that King Clistene is offering his daughter Aristea in marriage to the winner of the Olympic Games. To gain the bride, Licida asks Megacle, a renowned athlete, to compete in his stead and under his name. He doesn't realize that Megacle himself loves Aristea, and Megacle doesn't enlighten him. Owing his life to Licida, Megacle feels that honor requires him to do as his friend asks.

Singer Angelo Maria Monticelli as Megacle. From Giovanni Niccolò Servandoni?, Costumes of the opera L'Olimpiade by [Pietro] Metastasio and [Johann Adolf] Hasse, 1756, Plate 7. Hoftheater Dresden, premiere 16 February 1756. Artist: Francesco Ponte. From the collection of Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Image credit: Regine Richter. Image source: Deutsche Fotothek

In Crete Licida had been betrothed to Argene. She has followed Licida to the Peloponnesus disguised as a shepherdess in order to avoid a forced marriage decreed by the king of Crete to a man she doesn't love: none other than the Athenian champion Megacle. In the countryside near Sicyon she encounters Aristea, and the two women are soon sharing their sorrows.

With its coincidences, silences, disguises, cross-matched couples, and long-lost son, this plot sounds highly contrived on paper. But onstage it works remarkably well, as each of the major characters finds themselves in a succession of situations in which they face an intense conflict, either an inner dilemma or a confrontation with another character. And each emotionally fraught situation gives rise to an aria of sorrow, anger, hope, defiance, despair, or love.

At the end of Act I, Megacle meets with Aristea as he is preparing to leave for the Games. She is overjoyed at seeing him, but to her bewilderment Megacle bids her a sorrowful farewell. The duet "Ne' giorni tuoi felici" from the video of the Teatro Malibran production, with Romina Basso as Megacle and Ruth Rosique as Aristea:

https://youtu.be/pIrTm4JVaSg?t=4217 [duet ends at 1:18:41]

Megacle: Ne' giorni tuoi felici Ricordati di me. Aristea: Perchè cosi mi dici, Anima mia, perche? Megacle: Taci, bell' idol mio. Aristea: Parla, mio dolce amor. Megacle: Ah, che parlando Aristea: Ah, che tacendo À due: Oh dio! Tu mi traffiggi il cor. Aristea: (Veggio languir chi adoro, Ne intendo il suo languir.) Megacle: (Di gelosia mi moro, E non lo posso dir.) À due: Chi mai provò di questo Affanno più funesto Più barbaro dolor.

Megacle: In your happy future days, remember me. Aristea: Why are you saying this to me, my love, why? Megacle: Ask me not, my beautiful one. Aristea: Then speak to me, my sweet love. Megacle: If only I could speak— Aristea: What chilling silence— Together: O God, my heart is breaking. Aristea: (I see my beloved is suffering, but I don't understand why.) Megacle: (I die of jealousy, And I cannot say anything.) Together: Who has ever felt more deadly anguish, more barbaric pain.

Metastasio felt that Galuppi's music did not always ideally reflect the sense of the words, and indeed one could imagine this music accompanying a scene of reunion rather than parting. This scene, of course, is both.

In the Faber print of Monticelli above, he is portrayed holding the music for the phrase "E non lo posso dir" (And I cannot say anything) from this duet:

Detail of the print of castrato Angelo Maria Monticelli by John Faber Jr. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG D14314

The print, published in London, is based on a mezzotint by Andrea Casali, who was living in London in 1742. This suggests that the music depicted may be from the pasticcio Meraspe, overo L'Olimpiade. The music in the print shows a descending phrase that does not match the scores for this duet in prior settings of Metastasio's libretto by Antonio Caldara (1733), Antonio Vivaldi (1734), Pergolesi (1735), or Leonardo Leo (1737). Making a musical identification even more difficult, I noticed an apparent error in the musical representation. In the key signature I believe that a B flat rather than a D flat should be indicated. Also, the first word in the line does not look like "E" or "e" ("and," in Italian). There may be additional errors introduced in Casali's original mezzotint or in Faber's rendition of it for his print, and so the phrase as depicted may not accurately represent any version sung by Monticelli.

The closest match I have found is to Galuppi's 1747 score:

Music for the phrase "e non lo posso dir" from Galuppi's L'Olimpiade, 1747. Image source: Baldassare Galuppi, L’Olimpiade, introd. by Howard Mayer Brown. Garland, 1978. Facsimile score reproduced from a manuscript in the Conservatorio di musica Giuseppe Verdi, Milan. From the collection of the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library, University of California Berkeley.

The music in the Faber print may be intended to represent Monticelli's vocal ornamentation of this phrase. Might Galuppi have written the duet for the 1742 Meraspe pasticcio, and then reused it in his 1747 full setting of L'Olimpiade? Below I've mapped the two phrases on the same staff; the larger notes and thicker lines represent the pitch and relative duration values from Galuppi's score, the smaller notes and thinner lines those from the print's musical fragment, and the red arrows indicate the five notes that exactly match in pitch.

This is speculation, but the pitches of the two phrases map reasonably well, certainly for the first half of the phrase ("e non lo") and the syllable "-so"; they diverge on "pos-" (Galuppi has two 16th notes descending from F to D, while the print has a 16th and two 32nd notes descending from C to B flat to A) and "dir" (Galuppi writes a C, the print has an A). I also note that both phrases seem to have one and a half beats per measure. Those who are more musically knowledgeable than I am are invited to investigate further.

As the video of the Megacle-Aristea duet demonstrates, the playing and singing on the DVD recording from the Teatro Malibran are excellent. There are especially strong vocal and acting performances by the four principals: Basso, Rosique, Franziska Gottwald (Licida), and Roberta Invernizzi (Argene).

The production, though, frequently undermines the singers. Director Dominique Poulange, herself an actress, sometimes places singers behind scrims, and too often her blocking sends the singers into shadows (it's as though she and lighting designer Fabio Barettin never consulted one another about where the singers would be standing). In one scene in Act III, Aristea is placed behind a scrim during the entirety of her lovely 9-minute aria "Caro son tuo cosi" (Dearest, I am yours), while in front of the scrim Argene and Megacle are sitting motionless and staring fixedly and sorrowfully into space. Shouldn't that positioning have been reversed? [8]

Francesco Zito's handsome costumes suggest a cross between Ancient Greece and the 18th century, and are especially flattering on Ruth Rosique. But his sets are often puzzling. A gray slab looking a little like the monolith from Stanley Kubrick's 2001 on its side appears onstage in Act I during scenes set in a woodland, a garden and the countryside. Is it supposed to be a very symmetrical rock? Equally odd, in the first part of Act II a three-foot by twelve-foot slot appears across the middle of the stage which then magically disappears midway through the act, the only hint that we've changed location. (Perhaps it is supposed to represent a stream? Supporting that interpretation, Argene sits on the edge and dangles her legs in it.) In Act III the slot reappears, this time representing Licida's prison—but it's only thigh-deep, and Licida could step out of it any time he pleased. Abstract sets can work, but (like all sets) they have to enhance the action rather than distract from it.

This video remains, so far as I am aware, the only full recording of Galuppi's L'Olimpiade. Although the production is at times problematic, the excellent cast and orchestra are strong recommendations to anyone interested in 18th-century Italian opera.

Credits

Work: L'Olimpiade, libretto by Pietro Metastasio, 1733, music by Baldassare Galuppi, 1747.

Cast: Romina Basso (Megacle), Ruth Rosique (Aristea), Franziska Gottwald (Licida), Roberta Invernizzi (Argene), Mark Tucker (Clistene), Furio Zanasi (Alcandro), Filippo Adami (Aminta)

Musicians: Venice Baroque Orchestra conducted by Andrea Marcon. Score preparation and revision by Clarie Genewein and Andrea Marcon.

Production: Teatro Malibran, Venice. Stage direction: Dominique Poulange; video direction: Tiziano Manoni. Set and costume designer: Francesco Zito. Lighting designer: Fabio Barettin.

Video: Dynamic 33545. Recorded 2006, issued 2008.

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1. Charles Burney, A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period, Vol. 2, Dover Publications reprint, 1957, p. 840; originally published 1789. The other arias included in The Favorite Songs in the Opera Call'd Meraspe o L'Olimpiade were "Immagini dolente" (Painful thoughts) by Giuseppe Scarlatti, sung by tenor Angelo Maria Amorevoli in the role of King Clistene; "Superbo di me stesso" (Proud of myself) by Giovanni Battista Lampugnani, sung by Monticelli; "Per novo amor delira" (Smitten by a new love) by Leonardo Leo, sung by Lucia Panichi ("La Moscovita") in the role of Argene; and "Si mi lascia, o padre amato" (You leave me, beloved father) by Francesco Feo, sung by Caterina Visconti in the role of Aristea. Of note is that no arias sung by the castrato Giovanni Battista Andreoni in the secondo uomo role of Licida were included.
2. Helmut Hucke and Dale E. Monson. 2001. Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista. Grove Music Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.21325 (subscription required)
3. The British Library catalog record for this collection of arias from Enrico states that it was published in 1744. However, it pretty clearly uses the same title page engraving plate as Favorite Songs in the Opera Call'd Meraspe, o L'Olimpiade seen above, with the opera title changed. The British Library catalog record for the Meraspe collection states that it was published in 1742. Galuppi was no longer in London in 1744, and so it would have been a curious time to bring out sheet music of his year-old opera; I wonder whether it was published instead in 1743, the year Enrico was staged.
4. Despite the claims of the title page, according to the catalog record on the Internet Archive the publication does not contain overtures by Johann Hasse or Leonardo Vinci. The catalog record also states that this publication was not issued until 1748, five years after Galuppi had left Britain. That timing also seems curious; perhaps it was issued a few years earlier?
5. The Mendicanti was one of the four large Venetian orphanages where women abandoned as infants were raised and trained as musicians. Performances by the women of the Ospedali were famous, and were a sought-after experience by international visitors to Venice.
6. Carole Taylor. 2002. Middlesex, Earl of. Grove Music Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O903065 (subscription required)
7. Don Neville. 2001. Metastasio [Trapassi], Pietro. Grove Music Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.53181 (subscription required)
8. In her DVD booklet notes, Claire Genewein mentions that the music for this aria was taken from one of the Walsh Favorite Songs collections, but it was not included in Meraspe o[overa] L'Olimpiade, nor in Volumes 1, 2, or 5 of Le delizie dell' opere: Being a Collection of all the Favourite Songs in Score, which is advertised on the cover of Favorite Songs.