"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 of 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

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.

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.

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? [7]

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 2001 monolith 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.

---

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. 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.

"What have we done?": The Paying Guests

Sarah Waters in the Divinity School at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in 2014. Image source: The Independent

As regular readers are aware, the novelist Sarah Waters is an E&I favorite. I've written before about her novels Fingersmith (2002) and Affinity (1999), and the television adaptations of her 1998 novel Tipping the Velvet (BBC, 2002) and Fingersmith (BBC, 2005). 

Waters' novels can evoke not only specific historical periods, but particular novelists. Fingersmith alludes to Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, while Affinity suggests Henry James' Turn of the Screw (1898).

The Paying Guests (2014), set in the early 1920s, reminded me of Patricia Highsmith's novels and Alfred Hitchcock's films. Like Highsmith, Waters does not stint on gruesome details; and as in Hitchcock, feelings of guilt consume the characters. Of course, that means they have something to feel guilty about. . .

Cover of The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. Image source: Just Well Mixed

Frances Wray lost her two brothers in the Great War; her father also died a few years ago, leaving nothing to provide for Frances and her mother but the South London house in which they live. Frances is approaching 30, and is unmarried. She and her mother are just scraping by. Because they can't afford a maid, unlike their neighbors, Frances' life is a dreary round of cooking and cleaning in the days before vacuum cleaners or automated washing machines. She has just a few pleasures: her nightly cigarette, once a week going "up to Town" with her mother to have tea and see a movie, and occasional visits to her former lover Christina and Christina's new partner. The rest is an endless round of drudgery.

Waters is very good at evoking the domestic privations in a household barely able to cling to middle-class respectability. To take a bath requires going into the scullery off the kitchen where the tub is located, feeding shillings into the gas meter, and lighting the flame of the 50-year-old Vulcan geyser, "which was probably the top of the manufacturer's range in about 1870, but now looked like the sort of vessel in which someone in a Jules Verne novel might make a trip to the moon." But the geyser is "too expensive to light often"; Frances and her mother usually economize instead by using the (no doubt rusty) water from the boiler attached to their cast-iron stove. "They bathed, at most, once a week, frequently taking turns with the same bathwater" (pp. 27-28).

To make ends meet they take a young couple into their home as lodgers, the "paying guests" of the title: Leonard and Lilian Barber. The couple seems to embody the postwar freedoms that Frances has forsworn. They are also emotionally volatile and have tempestuous arguments. Frances is an unwilling eavesdropper on their fights, and also on their make-up sex (Frances sleeps in a second-floor bedroom across the landing from theirs). There's a seaminess to Len, who touches Frances without her invitation, and one night plies the two women with gin to inveigle them into a game of strip Snakes and Ladders. The game doesn't get very far and ends in drunken acrimony.

Spending the days at home together, Frances and Lilian are drawn to one another in sympathetic friendship. They begin to share confidences: Frances confesses to Lilian about her previous relationship with Christina, and Lilian tells Frances about the miscarriage that ended the pregnancy that brought about her marriage. As they grow closer, Lilian begins to bring Frances out of her confining routine: she gives Frances a more modern haircut, the women have a picnic in the park, and she takes her to a family party. Returning home after the party, with both Frances' mother and Lilian's husband in the house, an impulsive embrace and fervent kiss turns into furtive and near-silent lovemaking in the dark scullery.

When Lilian began to tense, the tension communicated itself to her, a muscular charge passing between them. And when Lilian cried out, their mouths were tight together; Frances took in the cry like a breath, and it became her own.

Aside from that they made no sound, did nothing to unsettle the silence of the house; Frances was certain of it. . .Finally they eased themselves apart, Lilian going weakly to the bath-tub, sitting down on the edge of it, pulling up the satin wrapper that had slipped from her shoulders.

'Oh, Frances,' she said, as Frances joined her. . .She was trembling. 'What have we done? We must be mad. We must be drunk. Are we drunk?'

'We aren't drunk,' said Frances. She was trembling too.

'What have we done?'

'You know what we've done. You know what it is. Don't you?'

She saw the curving gleams of wetness at Lilian's eyes and mouth. She saw her nod, heard her whisper. 'Yes.'

'I'm in love with you. I've fallen in love with you.'

'Yes.'

That was all they said.

But as they sit together silently in the scullery, Lilian puts her hand down on the tub cover, "and there was the muted tap of her wedding-band, a small, chill sound in the darkness" (p. 214). The sound is a foreboding reminder of Lilian's matrimonial bonds, which threaten to keep them apart.

After the first section of the slow deepening of the intimacy between the two women, The Paying Guests suddenly accelerates into a tense crime drama and a highly suspenseful police investigation and trial. This is where the comparisons to Highsmith and Hitchcock come in, and they are fully justified by Waters' descriptive vividness and psychological insight. Readers are forewarned, however, that she does not shy away from the graphic depiction of bodies, whether in the portrayal of the women's passionate encounters or the grisly details of the crime and its aftermath.

The Paying Guests was Waters' sixth novel in 16 years, and she has not published another in the dozen years since. She was 48 when The Paying Guests came out, and will turn 60 in July. Of course, I have no idea what health or other issues she and her long-term partner have faced over the past decade, or whether she simply feels that she's said what she had to say. Waters seems young to retire from writing: Philip Roth published his final novel at 77, Vladimir Nabokov at 75, and Patricia Highsmith at 74. But if The Paying Guests turns out to be Waters' final novel—we certainly hope not—it's a compelling one.

Delightful French films, part 2: The Crime Is Mine

Pauline (Rebecca Marder) and Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) in François Ozon's The Crime is Mine. Image source: RMITV.org

What if pleading guilty to a murder solved all your problems?

In The Crime is Mine (Mon crime, 2023), it's the mid-1930s, jobs in Paris are hard to come by, and everything is going wrong for Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) and Pauline (Rebecca Marder). Madeleine is a young actress still waiting for her big break, and Pauline passed the Bar a year ago but is yet to score a client. The roommates owe five months' rent on their 6th-floor walk-up garret and are facing eviction.

Madeleine goes to meet with the big-time theatrical producer Montferrand (Jean-Christophe Bouvet) and is offered a bit part in his new play—on the condition that she join him two afternoons a week in his bachelor apartment. She has to fight him off before she stalks out. Her weaselly lover André (Édouard Sulpice) visits with the news that he's getting engaged to a rich heiress to pay off his gambling debts, and plans to set Madeleine up as his mistress in an apartment owned by his future in-laws. "No rent!" he tells her enthusiastically.

"A dream life!": André (Édouard Sulpice) tries to convince Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) to become his mistress in François Ozon's The Crime is Mine.

Meanwhile, Pauline is having no better luck. She offers her legal services to a corrupt businessman who is about to be arrested, only to discover that thirteen lawyers have been there before her. And if Madeleine's love life is overcrowded with cads, Pauline's is "a desert."

"Let's be sensible and kill ourselves," Madeleine proposes, and puts a revolver to her head. Pauline ends the mock-suicide by offering Madeleine a ham-and-butter sandwich on baguette and an evening at the movies. In one of the many metacinematic and metatheatrical scenes in The Crime is Mine, they go to see Mauvaise Graine (Bad Seed, 1935), the first film directed by Billy Wilder. [1]

But then the producer Montferrand is found shot to death, and suspicion falls on Madeleine as the last person known to have seen him alive. Pauline sees the proceedings as an employment opportunity for Madeleine: after all, witnesses are paid 12 francs a day. The incompetent, pompous investigating judge Rabusset (Fabrice Luchini) interrogates Madeleine by conjuring lurid scenarios, which are visualized as black-and-white silent melodramas: she murdered him in cold blood for money, and she'll be sentenced to 20 years of hard labor; she was his pregnant former mistress who murdered him in desperation when he wouldn't take her back, and she might be sentenced to five years in prison.

Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) threatens Montferrand (Jean-Christophe Bouvet) in the vivid imagination of investigating judge Rabusset (Fabrice Luchini) in The Crime is Mine.

Then Pauline supplies a scenario that comes closest to the truth: Montferrand tried to rape Madeleine, and she killed him with his own gun in self-defense. On learning that if the jury accepts the plea of self-defense she might walk free, Madeleine confesses.

Pauline now has her first client, and plans to turn the courtroom into a theater to whip up a public fervor. Madeleine now has her first starring role. "Since no one will defend us," Pauline tells the all-male jury, "we women must defend ourselves."

"Madeleine Verdier killed to defend herself": Pauline (Rebecca Marder) makes her closing statement to the jury in The Crime is Mine.

She frames Montferrand's murder as an act of protest and resistance against a French society "dominated and corrupted by men." The proceedings in the courtroom are frequently interrupted by applause (from the women in attendance) and booing (from the men). Madeleine's trial is now front-page news, and she an overnight succès de scandale. But then the prosecutor turns their feminist defense against them: Madeleine must be made an example of, or every man must fear being killed in cold blood by the women in his life. He calls for the death penalty. . .

All the actors clearly relish their roles, and amid the fast-paced farce there are some quieter, subtler moments. There's a scene during the trial when it comes out that Madeleine and Pauline share a bed. "The lawyer and the criminal are strange bedfellows," Inspector Brun (Régis Laspalès) notes slyly, while the prosecutor (Michel Fau) exclaims that the murder is now explained by their "unnatural pairing" and "hatred of men." Pauline leaps to her feet to defend herself and her client. The men making these accusations have never known hardship or poverty. Yes, the two women share a bed—to keep warm and save space in their tiny apartment. "Forget the banal insinuations of these pathetic men," Pauline tells the jury.

We begin to suspect, though, that there's a reason beyond her poverty and rather severe fashion sense for the lack of men in Pauline's life. When Madeleine calls her "darling" and kisses her forehead, Marder shows us Pauline's sudden flush of embarrassment; the kiss and endearment clearly mean something far different to her than to Madeleine. And when the two women take a bath together and Madeleine unselfconsciously gets out and dons a robe, the camera lingers on Pauline's wistful face as she gazes after her.

"Silence is far more eloquent": Pauline (Rebecca Marder) in The Crime is Mine.

Based on the 1934 play Mon Crime by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil, The Crime is Mine has a brilliantly clever script by François Ozon and his frequent collaborator Philippe Piazzo (they also co-wrote Frantz, one of my favorite films of 2017) and is wittily directed by Ozon. There's a reason Billy Wilder is invoked: with its sequence of surprising reversals, The Crime is Mine plays like one of Wilder's classic Hollywood comedies, which is high praise indeed. Many thanks to the dear friends who recommended this movie to us; let me pass on the favor by urging anyone who likes sparkling comedy to put it at the top of their watchlist.

Last time: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

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1. Mauvaise Graine has several plot parallels with The Crime is Mine, including an impulsively committed crime and a rich father who disowns his displeasing son.

Delightful French films, part 1: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

Agathe (Camille Rutherford) failing to make progress on her novel in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Image source: Film Obsessive

The French seem to do certain things better than almost anyone else: food, wine, women's fashion, perfume, not to mention political protests and universal healthcare. To this list we can add charming romantic comedies. We recently saw two excellent French films at the recommendation of dear friends; neither is flawless, but both are delightful.

Agathe (Camille Rutherford) reading outside Shakespeare and Company, Paris. Image source: Cinemaclock.com

Indeed, part of the message of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Jane Austen a gâché ma vie, 2024) is that nothing is, or should be, flawless, because then it would not be real. (By the way, the movie is not based on Beth Patillo's 2009 novel Jane Austen Ruined My Life; instead, it's an original film written and directed by Laura Piani.)

Agathe (Camille Rutherford) is a huge Jane Austen fan who works in the legendary Paris literary mecca Shakespeare and Company; somehow in the film the bookstore is never mobbed with tourists as it is in real life. Inspired by her love of Austen's writing, Agathe wants to follow in her footsteps and become a novelist. But as with many another would-be writer, she finds it almost impossible to actually put words to paper; she's too daunted by her model and too afraid of proving her lack of talent to herself.

Then her friend and coworker Félix (Pablo Pauly) finds the opening pages of a novel that Agathe has recently begun but made little progress on. Unbeknownst to Agathe, Félix applies on her behalf to a writing retreat, and sends her unfinished pages as a sample. To Agathe's astonishment she is awarded a two-week Jane Austen Residency on an English country estate owned by descendants of the Austen family. Filled with trepidation, but with Félix's encouragement/insistence, Agathe decides to go.

On her arrival on the other side of the channel Agathe is met by Oliver (Charlie Anson). The son of the couple who run the residency and a professor of literature, Oliver has been tasked with driving Agathe to the house.

Oliver (Charlie Anson) and Agathe (Camille Rutherford). Image source: RogerEbert.com

As the journey begins he immediately gets on her wrong side. Despite being a descendant of the Austens, Oliver tells her that he doesn't think much of great-great-great-great Aunt Jane's novels: who cares which rich man the heroine marries? Agathe is angered by his dismissal of Austen's work, finding him arrogant and far too sure of his ill-informed opinions. Austen's novels, she tells him, were the first to depict women as fully realized human beings with both virtues and flaws, rather than as idealized beings or symbols.

(Brief aside: It's not quite true that Austen was the first to depict flawed but sympathetic women in fiction, as long-time readers of this blog know well. See posts on Fanny Burney, Charlotte Smith and Maria Edgeworth as some earlier examples; Burney and Edgeworth novels are mentioned (along with those by Ann Radcliffe) in Northanger Abbey, and the title of Pride and Prejudice may have been suggested to Austen by novels of Smith or Burney.)

We may begin to suspect that Oliver's resemblance to a certain handsome but haughty Austen character means that he and Agathe are meant to be together, once he allows himself to be a little more open and vulnerable. But the ardent yet unreliable Félix presents a complication, especially when he shows up at the residency's concluding Regency costume ball to dance with (and seduce?) Agathe.

Félix (Pablo Pauly) surprises Agathe (Camille Rutherford) at the Regency costume ball. Image source: CultureFly.com

But does Félix take love seriously enough? Will Oliver recognize that he has a few things still to learn, and not only about Jane Austen? And will Agathe choose to embrace romance, or will she give herself the space to make progress on her writing and sort out her feelings?

Had Piani's movie been only funny, literate, well-written and -acted, with an appealing heroine facing a difficult romantic dilemma, it would have been entertaining enough (though, of course, not flawless). But the final scenes of the film are extraordinary.

Back at Shakespeare and Company, Agathe organizes a reading by the San Francisco poet Jack Hirschman.

Poet Jack Hirschman at Caffe Trieste, San Francisco, 2016. Photo credit: Christopher Michel. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Hirschman is not a fictional character, although he passed away before the film was made and is portrayed by the renowned director Frederick Wiseman (!). (Wiseman himself passed away in February of this year, at age 96.) I encountered Hirschman on the page for the first time because he edited (and did much of the translation for) the Artaud Anthology published by San Francisco's City Lights Books. And I encountered him in person because he frequented the Caffe Trieste in North Beach, just a few blocks away from City Lights, where he could often be found distributing his drawings for free to the other customers.

I was astonished to see Hirschman appear as a character at the dénouement of a French romantic comedy. Hirschman (Wiseman) recites the poem "Path," which urges the reader or auditor to "learn sincerity of intent by letting/life enter," perhaps the lesson that Agathe (and we) have needed reminding of all along.

https://youtu.be/R1-f0EdHhT4

Path, by Jack Hirschman

Go to your broken heart.
If you think you don’t have one, get one.
To get one, be sincere.
Learn sincerity of intent by letting
life enter because you're helpless, really,
to do otherwise.
Even as you try escaping, let it take you
and tear you open
like a letter sent
like a sentence inside
you've waited for all your life
though you’ve committed nothing.
Let it send you up.
Let it break you, heart.
Broken-heartedness is the beginning
of all real reception.
The ear of humility hears beyond the gates.
See the gates opening.
Feel your hands going akimbo on your hips,
your mouth opening like a womb
giving birth to your voice for the first time.
Go singing whirling into the glory
of being ecstatically simple.
Write the poem.

Next time: The Crime is Mine

Ella Fitzgerald: Like Someone in Love

Cover of Ella Fitzgerald's Like Someone in Love, Verve Records, 1957. Photo credit: Phil Stern. Image source: Goatless

Technology can revolutionize not only artistic form, but content. The advent of the 12-inch 33 1/3 RPM long-playing record in the late 1940s and early 1950s is a case in point. The LP could hold up to 25 minutes of music on a side, in comparison to the 12 minutes of the 10-inch 45 RPM or the four minutes of the 78 RPM records that were then the standard formats. With its greater duration, the LP made possible whole albums of sustained moods or overarching themes.

A key early example is Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours (1955), an album of meditations on lost love that was precipitated by his failing marriage to Ava Gardner. Filled with melancholy ballads in arrangements by the brilliant Nelson Riddle, the album's mood is reflected in the cover art featuring a pensive Sinatra smoking a cigarette late at night under a lamppost on a deserted urban street.

Cover of Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours, Capitol Records, 1955. Image source: Amazon.ca

Sinatra wasn't the only one exploring the possibilities of the longer format. The year after the release of In the Wee Small Hours, jazz producer Norman Granz began showcasing Ella Fitzgerald on his new Verve label in a thematic project enabled by the LP: the Song Book series. Each entry in the series was devoted to the work of a single songwriter or songwriting team of the Great American Songbook. Ultimately the series consisted of eight releases comprising 15 hours of music on 19 LPs: double albums for Cole Porter (1956), Rodgers & Hart (1956), Irving Berlin (1958), and Harold Arlen (1961); a four-LP boxed set for Duke Ellington in both big band and small ensemble modes (1957); a five-LP set for George & Ira Gershwin (1959); and single albums for Jerome Kern (1963) and Johnny Mercer (1964).

Cover of Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, Verve Records, 1956. Image source: "Celebrating Ella Fitzgerald's Life Through the Objects That Defined Her Career" by Lily Rothman and Liz Ronk, Time, 25 April 2017.

The first albums in the Song Book series were immediate successes. But in the middle of recording the series—in fact, in the same month she recorded The Duke Ellington Song Book—Ella went back into the studio with an orchestra playing arrangements and conducted by Frank DeVol. On 15 October 1957 they recorded eleven tracks (!), four with Stan Getz on tenor sax; returning almost two weeks later on 28 October, they recorded another eight tracks with Ted Nash on alto sax. Fifteen of the nineteen tracks recorded in these sessions were released as the album Like Someone in Love in early December of the same year. Thirty-four years later the album would be released on CD, with the addition of the remaining four tracks from the 28 October session. And thirty-five years after that, I would come across the CD at my local public library sale and discover anew the brilliance of Ella Fitzgerald at her peak.

Like Someone in Love is Ella's In the Wee Small Hours, an album of torch songs that creates a hushed mood. The songs express anticipation and yearning; the joys of dawning love and the sorrow of inevitable loss. Ella's inimitable voice had gained warmth but lost little of its purity as she entered her 40s. Cushioned by DeVol's lush string arrangements and accompanied on four of the tracks by Stan Getz's understated soloing, Ella's singing is seductive, caressing, and sometimes mournful.

Another notable aspect of the album is its song choice. Where each album in the Song Book series focuses on one songwriter, the expanded CD version of Like Someone in Love features songs by seventeen different lyricists and eighteen different composers (Johnny Mercer and Johnny Burke are the two lyricists each represented by two songs, and Jimmy Van Heusen the only composer represented by two songs). I had never before knowingly heard the work of many of the songwriters, as with the first track, "There's a Lull in My Life," with lyrics by Mack Gordon and music by Harry Revel:

https://youtu.be/b3Q3FD2Tdko

Some of the songwriters who would later feature in the Song Book series are also represented here: Mercer, of course, supplying lyrics for Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke's "Midnight Sun" (re-recorded for the Johnny Mercer Song Book arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle) and Van Heusen's "I Thought About You"; George & Ira Gershwin's "How Long Has This Been Going On" (re-recorded for the Gershwin Song Book, also arranged and conducted by Riddle); and Irving Berlin's "I Never Had A Chance" (which was not re-recorded for the Irving Berlin Song Book):

https://youtu.be/PBu7cKEjdoE

For me, among the delightful new discoveries on the album is "Then I'll Be Tired Of You," with music by Arthur Schwartz (composer of "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan" and "Dancing In The Dark") and words by Yip Harburg (lyricist of "April In Paris" and "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"):

https://youtu.be/BdaXz-Du7XU

I'll never be tired of hearing Ella Fitzgerald. Like Someone in Love is 70 minutes of Ella captured in the era of her peak vocal artistry: pure pleasure.