Opera Guide 6: Alcina

I can't believe that I've waited until the sixth entry in this series to discuss my favorite opera composer, Handel, and my favorite of his operas, Alcina (1735). The plot of Alcina is taken from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1532) and concerns the knight Ruggiero, who finds himself on the enchanted island of the beautiful sorceress Alcina. (The painting to the left is a detail from Niccolo dell'Abbate's "Alcina greeting Ruggiero," c. 1550). Ruggiero is lured--it's not entirely clear whether he's bewitched, or merely overwhelmed with desire--into abandoning his knight-errant quest and staying with Alcina in a delirium of sensual pleasure. Before long, though, his betrothed, Bradamante--in disguise as her brother, Ricciardo--and the sorcerer Melisso show up hoping to drag Ruggiero back to his martial (and marital) duties.

It turns out that Ruggiero is far from the first knight to have frolicked with Alcina; his predecessors have been turned into the rocks, trees, fountains, and animals that populate her lush island. Not only is Melisso out to rescue Ruggiero and liberate the other enchanted knights, he means to destroy Alcina's power as well.

In the 1999 Robert Carsen staging for the Opéra National de Paris, Alcina's former conquests remain as physical presences surrounding her and Ruggiero as they revel in their love during "Di cor mio, quanto t'amai."* The orchestra is the early-music ensemble Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie. The chemistry between Renée Fleming (Alcina) and Susan Graham (Ruggiero) is palpable, and is key to the success of this production. Because in Handel’s telling Alcina has changed; she's no longer the evil sorceress dallying with and discarding men at whim. She has truly fallen in love with Ruggiero, and in a departure from Ariosto, it is the diminishment of his love for her, rather than any counter-spell by Melisso, that causes her power to begin to wane. It's not hard to see her magic power as a metaphor for erotic power; and her sense of helplessness as Ruggiero's love inexorably slips away is anguishing.

In "Si, son quella!" Alcina has just been accused by Ruggiero of unfaithfulness, and is deeply hurt. And Alcina's great aria “Ah! mio cor” is sung just after she has learned that Ruggiero is planning to leave her. “Traditore! T'amo tanto,” she cries; “Betrayer, I love you so much.” Fleming gives an impassioned performance; the opening (A) and second (B) sections can be seen here, and the da capo repeat of the A section here.

Handel's portrait of Alcina is immensely sympathetic. I won't speculate on whether Handel, a life-long bachelor, had any personal experience of the agonies of a failing love affair that may have informed it. I will suggest, though, that at the time he wrote Alcina Handel may have been aware of another impending loss. His opera company was struggling; just a few years later he would stop writing Italian operas altogether and shift to English-language oratorios based on properly moral biblical stories. There would be far fewer roles for Italian castrati (who sang in English with difficulty) and much less of opera's splendid artifice: the spectacular scenery, the uncannily beautiful voices, the playful gender-bending plot devices. Perhaps Alcina is such an affecting character because Handel could see that his own “magic island” was disappearing, and through her he was mourning its loss.

"Verdi prati" is Ruggiero's farewell to the sensuous paradise that he's now leaving--only he sounds dismayed, if not despondent, at its imminent destruction. This is not the sort of heroic renunciation that might have been expected, especially if we think that Ruggiero feels that he's been deceived by Alcina. No: his sense of loss is all too palpable. Nonetheless, he proceeds with Melisso's plan to destroy Alcina's power, liberate the men she has transformed, return her lush island to desert, and leave her abandoned. “Verdi prati” was written to be sung by the castrato Carestini, who supposedly complained that this aria didn't offer enough opportunities for virtuoso vocal display. It's hard to imagine, though, any singer complaining about being asked to sing a song of such beauty.

As I mentioned in my post on Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, in recent years countertenors such as Andreas Scholl and David Daniels have begun to take on roles originally written for castrati. The only problem with this idea in a Handel opera is that Handel himself never used countertenors. When he couldn't get a castrato for a male role, he would cast a woman instead--inventing the so-called “trouser role,” a convention that went on to be used by Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, Verdi, Offenbach, and both Johann and Richard Strauss, among many others.

Apparently for Handel sound trumped gender in determining who should play a male role, and to his ears, a woman sounded more like a castrato than a countertenor did. That may be somewhat less true now than in the 18th century: certainly on a first hearing you wouldn't necessarily identify Scholl or Daniels as a man singing falsetto. They have developed their technique to a very high level, and don't have the hooty sound that used to characterize countertenors. But I have to say that, while I very much enjoy the eerily androgynous singing of countertenors, I think that having the “correct” gender isn't sufficient to qualify them to play high-pitched male roles. Where possible, we should continue to honor Handel's intentions. Insisting that male characters be played by men is impossibly dull and literal. Unlike Ruggiero (and some opera directors), we should value opera's magic island of artifice.

The Opéra National de Paris production has never been released on DVD, alas. The live audio recording (which includes Natalie Dessay as Alcina's sister Morgana, Kathleen Kuhlmann as Bradamante, and Laurent Naouri as Melisso) has been issued on the Erato label, and has divided opinion. Many early music purists are appalled by the vibrato-rich voices of the principals and their supposedly inauthentic ornamentation in the cadenzas and da capo aria repeats. For me those aspects pale into insignificance next to the singers' emotional commitment to their roles--I think that this is a superbly dramatic recording that truly brings the dilemmas of the characters to life.

Recently, a studio recording has been issued on the Arkiv label featuring the early-music ensemble Il Complesso Barocco conducted by Alan Curtis, with Joyce DiDonato in the title role, supported by Maite Beaumont (Ruggiero), Sonia Prina (Bradamante), Karina Gauvin (Morgana), and Vito Priante (Melisso). The excerpts I've heard seem to be sprightlier in tempo than those of Christie--and less dramatically compelling. I haven't heard the entire recording, though, so all judgement should be suspended. (You can hear DiDonato's "Ah! mio cor" here.)

On video, the only version currently available in the US is the Staatsoper Stuttgart production directed by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito. While it is well performed, the appalling staging undermines Handel's drama at every turn. Even playing it with the picture off isn't an option, as several arias are disrupted with noisy stage business. Wieler and Morabito are guilty of many crimes against Handel--why two people who could not make more clear their disdain for Baroque opera in general and Alcina in particular should have been put in charge of directing it is anyone's guess. Avoid at all costs, and hope that someday the Carsen version will finally be released.

* All the audience videos I've linked to and several others from this production can be found here. But I have to ask again: where is the official DVD release of this production?

Opera Guide 5: L'incoronazione di Poppea

Claudio Monteverdi didn't invent opera, but with librettist Alessandro Striggio he did create its first masterpiece, L'Orfeo (Orpheus, 1607), and with librettist Ottavio Rinuccini its first hit song, Arianna's lament from L'Arianna (Ariadne, 1608). What's even more remarkable, though, is that at the end of his long life he returned to opera and surpassed his previous achievements, composing two of the greatest operas ever written: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland, 1640) and his final work, L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea, 1642). (I will write about Il ritorno d'Ulisse in a future Opera Guide.)

L'incoronazione di Poppea ends with "Pur ti miro" ("I gaze at you"), one of the most gorgeous love duets in all opera. It’s also one of the most perverse. The two characters involved are the Emperor Nero (yes, that one) and his new Empress, Poppea. Even without knowing anything more about the opera or Roman history, this duet might make you feel a bit uneasy. Nero was evidently not a good guy, and your awareness of this doesn’t make this beautiful duet less beautiful, exactly, but does give it a strikingly dark undertone.

Of course, Poppea isn't the only opera in which beautiful melodies are the vehicle for words or situations that are anything but. This disjunction is especially apparent in Poppea, though, which features a set of perhaps the most cynical and corrupt characters in all opera. Poppea herself is a ruthless minx who uses her lovers as mere stepping-stones to achieve her true aim: becoming Empress of Rome. Her elderly nurse Arnalta (usually played by a male tenor in drag) gives her comic and highly graphic advice about sleeping her way to the top. Even the relatively sympathetic characters, Ottavia (Nerone’s current, but by the end of the opera ex-, wife), Ottone (Poppea's ex-boyfriend, dumped for Nero), and Drusilla (Ottone’s ex-girlfriend, dumped for Poppea), are brought together in a conspiracy to murder Poppea.

And then, of course, there's Nerone (the Italian form of Nero). He sleeps with his subordinate Ottone’s lover Poppea, orders his disapproving advisor Seneca to commit suicide, and banishes Ottavia, Ottone, and Drusilla to exile. So the loving triumph of Nerone and Poppea at the end of the opera is complicated, to say the least, by everything that we’ve seen come before--and everything that Roman history tells us will come later. If the classical sources such as Tacitus are to be believed, the historical Nero killed his mother Agrippina, whose murderous machinations had made him emperor at 16; poisoned his stepbrother and rival for the throne Britannicus; ordered his wife Ottavia to be slain by the soldiers who were escorting her to exile; kicked Poppea to death while she was pregnant with his child; and fiddled--or rather, played the lyre, the violin not having been invented yet--as the fires set on his orders burned vast areas of Rome to the ground. Figuratively, as they sing so gloriously of their love, Nerone and Poppea are surrounded by the bodies of their victims, and this moment of Poppea's triumph is shadowed by our knowledge of her later violent death.

Knowing that listeners couldn’t help but experience some cognitive dissonance, Monteverdi* included some musical dissonance to underline it. As Nerone and Poppea sing “Più non peno, più non moro” (“No more pain, no more death”) their voices clash on “pain” and “death.” The opera may be ending “happily” but there will be plenty of pain and death to follow.

That dark undertone is emphasized by director Klaus-Michael Grüber in this version of the final duet from the 2000 Festival d'Aix-en Provence. In a debatable choice, Grüber drains the interaction of Poppea and Nero of all sensuality or passion; nonetheless, the music remains ravishing. Poppea is sung by soprano Mireille Delunsch, Nerone by mezzo-soprano Anne-Sofie von Otter; Marc Minkowski conducts Les Musiciens du Louvre:

You might wonder why Nerone is being sung by a woman in the video clip posted above. The part of Nerone, like almost every other leading male role in opera for the next 100 years, was written to be sung by a castrato--a singer who, as boy, had been castrated before his voice changed. Castrati were the heroes in opera because their voices combined the high, pure pitch of a female soprano or alto with the lung power of an adult man. In fact, castrati could sing louder and sustain notes longer than unaltered adults; there’s a famous and probably apocryphal story about the eighteenth-century castrato Farinelli outdueling a trumpet. Castrati were the most skilled singers of their day, capable not only of rapid, intricate runs and breathtaking high notes, but of lyrical, affecting slow singing. Castrati also tended to grow quite tall, and so had suitably heroic stature.

While it may seem odd to us that Nero and other operatic villains and heroes were sung by men with high voices, it wasn’t incongruous at all to early operagoers. If opera is designed to showcase great voices, castrati had the most astonishing voices ever. The Baroque obsession with soprano and alto voices meant that both male and female characters sang in that range, and so all sorts of gender-bending took place onstage. Women often played men: when, for example, Handel was unable to find a castrato for the male title role of Radamisto (1720), he cast the soprano Margherita Durastanti in the role. So having a woman sing a male castrato role accords with the practice of the time more faithfully than using a male counter-tenor or transposing the role into the tenor or baritone range.

Opera may depend for effect primarily on the music, but one of the things I find most compelling about Poppea is how good the words are. Over the course of the opera librettist Giovanni Busenello gives every character their due: we see flashes of magnanimity in Nerone, murderous jealousy in the “good” characters Ottavia and Ottone, and the delightful shamelessness of Poppea herself. There’s a scene where Ottone, who has discovered that he’s now Poppea's ex-lover and is being blackmailed by Ottavia to kill her, asks his former girlfriend Drusilla for help. Drusilla has kept a torch burning for Ottone, and she’s overjoyed when he comes back to her. But she can’t quite believe it: “Do you really love me?” she keeps asking, and Ottone, unwilling to disabuse her, replies “I need you, I need you.” After Drusilla leaves, he confesses, “Drusilla’s name is on my lips, but Poppea's is in my heart.” If you’ve ever been in the position of choosing to believe a romantic declaration that you knew deep down was insincere (or have ever been in the position of offering one) that scene can be pretty uncomfortable.

I haven't yet seen a fully satisfying video version of Poppea. The Peter Hall/Raymond Leppard production, the sumptuous Jean-Pierre Ponnelle/Nicolas Harnoncourt version, and the Michael Hampe/René Jacobs version all feature tenors, not sopranos, in the role of Nerone. Transposition plays havoc with Monteverdi's harmonies, particularly in the all-important Nerone-Poppea duets, and so I can't fully recommend any of them. Despite its deliberately passionless final duet, the Grüber/Minkowski version seen above at least promises some excellent singing. And the 2008 Robert Carsen/Emmanuelle Haïm production from Glyndebourne which has just been released on DVD looks very promising; it features Danielle de Niese, a singer who seems born to play the kittenish Poppea.

On CD, Gabriel Garrido conducts the Ensemble Elyma in a lushly recorded version on the K617 label. His cast is packed with early music luminaries such as Guillemette Laurens (Poppea), Gloria Banditelli (Ottavia) and Emanuela Galli (Drusilla), and to my ears they offer a strikingly beautiful if somewhat emotionally cool performance. My first choice might be the live recording with the English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Eliot Gardiner on Archiv, featuring Sylvia McNair as Poppea, Dana Hanchard as a fierce, masculine-sounding Nerone, and Anne-Sofie von Otter as Ottavia. It has a leaner, sparer sound than the Garrido version, but Gardiner turns the emotional temperature up a notch. You won't be disappointed by either version.

* Early music conductor and scholar Alan Curtis has researched the provenance of “Pur ti miro” exhaustively, and come to the conclusion that it is probably not by Monteverdi at all. Instead, Curtis thinks that portions of the existing scores of Poppea were written or revised by younger composers, possibly including Francesco Cavalli, Benedetto Ferrari, and Francesco Sacrati. It is Sacrati who Curtis nominates as the most likely composer of Poppea’s final scene, including “Pur ti miro.” However, who contributed exactly what to the final opera may never be known. Since the vast majority of the music of the opera seems to be by Monteverdi, and there is no definitive answer to the question of whether or how other composers were involved, I’ve continued to attribute this aria and the opera as a whole to Monteverdi.

Update 25 August 2009: We've just seen the DVD of the 2008 Glyndebourne production, and it's excellent. Danielle de Niese is an exceptional Poppea--she not only sings the part beautifully, but the camera catches her many subtle and telling shifts of expression. Alice Coote convincingly portrays a particularly brutal Nero. The historical Nero was only in his 20s when the events of the opera took place, and Coote plays Nero as a tyrant who has never outgrown his adolescent petulance. Emmanuelle Haïm leads the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in a thoughtful and beautiful realization of Monteverdi's score. Finally, Robert Carsen's production is simple but effective--particularly in the closing moments. Highly recommended.

Update 24 May 2015: Alice Coote has written a fascinating article on playing male roles, "My Life As A Man" (The Guardian, 13 May 2015), which includes a video of the final duet from the Glyndebourne Poppea. From the article:

...I, by necessity, have had to dwell in a place where my mind feels increasingly separate from my sexual body. It has made it complex for me to return to daily life as a woman: I feel in sharp relief the way a heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual or transgender woman’s personal and public relationship power is utterly unlike that of a heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual or transgender male’s expectations and power relationship to the world. Cross-dressing on the stage reveals less to me about gender than it does power.

...Gender-bending sometimes seems to sexualise the performer. I have been on the receiving end of many forms of sexual fascination in response to my trouser-wearing in opera, mainly from women and gay men. It may be that I and other singers in similar roles appear stronger or more powerful or more sexualised because of our awareness of how to use our bodies and play with the idea of male sexuality – and that empowerment elicits excitement. In stepping outside our gender we also step beyond the social rules to which so many of us adhere, and this “transgression” is thrilling, even sexually liberating, for an audience.

I in turn have had to question my own femininity and what it consists of, both for me personally and for others, and to ask which part of me defines my female identity, and in what degree. Is it my body, my mind, my chromosomes alone, or the conditioning of society?

Opera guide 4: La Boheme

Puccini's La Bohème (literally Bohemia, but usually rendered as The Bohemians, 1896) hardly needs to have more words written about it. It's easily the most popular, most-produced opera in the repertory. Opera connoisseurs often claim that they can resist La Bohème's appeal, and some treat its frequent appearances with open disdain.

But that disdain is misplaced. La Bohème deserves its place as the most popular opera of all time. Its characters are compelling, its music is a soaring and unforgettable expression of passion, and its libretto—adapted by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa from Henri Murger's 1851 novel Scènes de la vie de bohème—is brilliantly witty. (In fact, I think the libretto would have been even better if it were longer: see below.) A good production with capable, committed singers rarely fails to be moving; one of the most effective productions I've seen was put on at a 400-seat theater by the tiny, under-budgeted San Francisco Lyric Opera company.

The popularity of La Bohème obscures some things about it that are truly unusual. For one thing, it's about ordinary people living in what was for Puccini's audiences an almost contemporary urban setting. There are no gods, kings, queens, or even aristocrats in evidence (though there is a viscount, who is never seen or heard). For another, Puccini's melodies are virtually continuous—there aren't really separate numbers (although certain moments are often excerpted). In a way, it's a return to a 17th-century, Monteverdian style of composition (a future Opera Guide will cover L'Incoronazione di Poppea). La Bohème also has an odd temporal structure: the first two acts take place over the course of a single evening; the next two span about eight months. The reason for that odd imbalance of elapsed time involves a missing act.

La Bohème opens on Christmas Eve in bohemian Paris. Four friends—Rodolfo the writer, Marcello the painter, Schaunard the musician, and Colline the philosopher—share a cold, underfurnished garret. In Act I, Schaunard returns to the freezing garret with a windfall; the bohemians head out to the Café Momus (Momus is the Greek god of satire and mockery, the god of writers) to celebrate. Rodolfo stays behind for a few minutes to finish an article—the hackwork he does to support his true calling, writing plays. He's surprised by Mimì, a seamstress neighbor, whose candle has gone out and who is looking for a light. Rodolfo contrives to extinguish his own candle, and Mimì (deliberately?) drops her key. While searching for the key (which Rodolfo finds and silently pockets), their hands meet in the dark (Rodolfo: "Che gelida manina" (What an icy little hand)). Rodolfo tells her about himself ("Chi son? Sono un poeta" (Who am I? I'm a poet)) and Mimì responds, at first hesitantly, and then with growing warmth ("Mi chiamano Mimì" (They call me Mimì)). Ardently, Rodolfo declares his feelings ("O soave fanciulla" (Oh gentle beauty)), his voice soon joined by Mimì's in a passionate love duet.

(Rodolfo: "Oh, gentle beauty, how sweet your face looks in the moonlight; you are the dream of love that I have always dreamed." Mimi: "His sweet words delight my heart. Love, you alone command us!" This clip is from the 1965 film directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Gianni Raimondo as Rodolfo and Mirella Freni as Mimì.) They leave to join the other bohemians at the café.

Act II takes place at the Café Momus and its surrounding square; we're introduced to Musetta, Marcello's on-again, off-again mistress, a woman who knows her attractiveness to men and exploits them to achieve her own desires ("Quando me n'vo" (When I stroll out alone on the street)). She's arrived at the Café Momus with her latest conquest in tow, the rich old man Alcindoro, but leaves with Marcello—sticking Alcindoro with the bill.

Act III occurs a month or two later in a neighborhood on the edge of Paris. Marcello has been hired to paint a mural in a cafe, and Musetta is staying there with him. Rodolfo arrives to tell Marcello that he and Mimì can't stay together. He claims that he's jealous of Mimì's flirtatious nature; Marcello tells him that he should treat love lightly, as he and Musetta do. Rodolfo then confesses (overheard by an eavesdropping Mimì) that he's really concerned about Mimì's health--the cold, drafty garret is making her cough worse. Living with him is killing her; he wants her to find a better situation. Mimì reveals herself to Rodolfo and they reconcile, resolving to put off their breakup until spring. Meanwhile Marcello becomes enraged by Musetta's flirtations with the customers of the cafe--so much for treating love lightly--and after a fierce argument they split up again (not for the last time, we suspect).

The final act is set in the early fall; Rodolfo and Marcello each commiserate with the other about the company in which their former girlfriends have been seen. (From the 1965 Zeffirelli film, with Raimondi as Rodolfo and Rolando Panerai as Marcello, conducted by Herbert von Karajan with the Orchestra del Teatro Alla Scala.)

Suddenly Musetta returns, with Mimì. Mimì is extremely ill now, and the bohemians rally to try to help her—fearing, though, that it's too late.

So Act I and Act II take place over about four hours on Christmas eve; Act III takes place in winter, and Act IV in late summer/early fall. What's missing, of course, is spring/early summer. And the original libretto included an act that filled in this missing time and revealed how Mimì found another lover.

In the missing act, the four bohemians arrive at Musetta's grand apartment for a party, only to discover that, after being abandoned by her new lover the Councillor, she's being evicted. They determine to have the party anyway, and arrange the furniture removed from her apartment into a makeshift ballroom in the building's courtyard. Schaunard conducts the orchestra and, when the building's tenants start to complain, they're all invited to join the party. One of the guests is the Viscount Paolo, who dances and flirts with Mimì as a drunken, jealous Rodolfo looks on. Marcello and Musetta reunite, while Rodolfo bitterly renounces his love for Mimì. As dawn breaks, the guests stagger away as auctioneers arrive and begin selling off the furniture.

Luigi Illica felt that cutting this act inflicted an "enormous wound" on his libretto. Not only is it filled with delightful incidents, it's structurally brilliant. It sets up a reversal of the situations of Rodolfo/Mimì and Marcello/Musetta at the end of Act III, provides another solo opportunity for Musetta as in Act II, and creates an alternation of intimate settings with public festivities from act to act. But Puccini never set it to music, perhaps recognizing that it slowed the opera's dramatic momentum. Given the effectiveness of the final version, it's hard to argue with Puccini's decision.

Many versions of La Bohème have been recorded. On CD, two remain at the top of my list. The first is Sir Thomas Beecham's 1956 recording featuring Jussi Bjorling as an ardent Rodolfo and Victoria de los Angeles as a vulnerable, girlish Mimì. In terms of pacing, the conviction of the singers and dramatic effectiveness this version remains unsurpassed. You won't even be aware that it's in mono. But if it's stereo lushness you desire, Herbert von Karajan's 1972 recording with Luciano Pavarotti as Rodolfo and Mirella Freni as Mimì will let you wallow in the sheer beauty of Puccini's music to your heart's content. Like many Karajan recordings, this one favors voluptuous sound over dramatic pace, but when the sound is this lovely it's hard to complain.

On DVD, the Metropolitan Opera production is beautiful to look at (the production is by Franco Zeffirelli) and despite some occasional signs of vocal strain the cast is generally marvelous; Teresa Stratas is an especially affecting Mimì. Renata Scotto's Musetta, though, seems more than a bit mature for her role, and vocally she's not at her freshest, either. The 1965 Zefirelli film, based on another of his productions (for La Scala), also has a wonderful cast; Freni's Mimì is especially lovely. As with many opera films of the time it was either lip-synched or post-dubbed, which some may find distracting. We're unbothered by the occasional mismatch between image and sound, and this remains our favorite version. Baz Luhrmann's Opera Australia production updates the proceedings to the 1950s and offers a youthful and attractive cast in a production that otherwise seems to be reaching half-heartedly for Brechtian alienation effects. David Hobson's lyric tenor is a shade light for Rodolfo, but he throws himself into the role with complete commitment, and Cheryl Barker offers a sympathetic Mimì. But as I mentioned at the start, no matter which version you favor it's hard to go wrong with La Bohème.

The Cambridge Opera Handbook on La Bohème edited by Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1986) is a wonderful companion volume to the opera. It discusses the opera's source in Murger's book and play, the origins and development of the opera (including a full libretto of the cut scenes), and its reception and stage history. The Handbook makes hearing or viewing the opera a richer experience; but of course, the dilemmas of Rodolfo and Mimì, Marcello and Musetta require no background or interpretation to be immediate, vivid, and emotionally affecting.

The Handbook also discusses Puccini's conflicts with fellow composer Ruggero Leoncavallo, who may have given Puccini the idea for the opera while in the process of writing his own Bohème. For a comparison of the two operas, please see The Other Bohème.

Opera guide 3: Der Rosenkavalier

Fans of Bollywood should find Der Rosenkavalier (The Rose-Bearer, 1911) to be strikingly familiar: central to the plot is an arranged marriage, which in the 18th century—the period of the opera's action—was common among the European aristocracy. The middle-aged Baron Ochs has come to Vienna to marry Sophie, the beautiful young daughter of the wealthy merchant Herr Faninal. From the marriage Ochs will gain Faninal's wealth and Sophie's youth and beauty; Faninal and Sophie will get a more exalted social status. It’s a straightforward business deal between the two men: Sophie herself doesn't have a say in the matter.

Or does she after all? In the comedies of Molière and Beaumarchais and Goldoni, the young girl destined to be united with a husband she doesn't love contrives to thwart the older man's desires and assert her own. And it was those comedies, along with Louvet de Couvray's novel Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas (1781), Mozart and da Ponte's opera Le Nozze di Figaro (1786), and William Hogarth's painting series Marriage à la Mode (1743-45) that librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal took as explicit models when he sent the first outline of what would become Der Rosenkavalier to the composer Richard Strauss.

The engine of the plot may be the plans of the Baron Ochs (pronounced "ox," and with good reason) to marry Sophie, and her attempt to escape the fate the Baron and her father have arranged for her. But the true centers of interest are the Marschallin, a woman past the first bloom of youth, and her adolescent lover Octavian—played, like Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, by a woman. In another Figaro parallel, the Marschallin, like Mozart's Countess, is trapped in an unhappy marriage and facing the loss of her youth and allure. Octavian is evidently neither her first nor probably her last lover.

In the first moments of the opera Octavian and the Marschallin are entwined in her bedchamber after a night of passionate lovemaking (strongly, not to say vulgarly, suggested in the opera's overture) when Ochs bursts through the door. He's made his unwelcome entrance to ask the Marschallin to nominate the person who will be the bearer of the silver rose that Ochs, by family tradition, will present to his new bride. The Marschallin, in a moment of perhaps deliberate incaution, names Octavian. Her choice will have far-reaching consequences for everyone involved when the 16-year old Sophie and the 17-year-old Octavian set eyes on each other. (The presentation of the rose, above; Octavian and Sophie becoming acquainted, at right.)

Baron Ochs is usually portrayed as a blustery, dim-witted and lecherous old man, an immediate figure of low comedy. But Ochs doesn't have to be such a buffoon. Strauss himself wrote of the Baron, "Most basses have presented him as a disgusting vulgar monster with a repellent mask and proletarian manners. . . This is quite wrong: Ochs must be a rustic Don Juan of 35, who is after all a nobleman, if a rather boorish one, and who knows how to conduct himself decently." But over time Ochs has become a role for aging basses, so that in most productions these days he seems to be at least in his 50s, and the coarse and clownish aspects of the character have become more prominent.

The jarring comedy of the Baron is all the more surprising because Hofmannsthal could write scenes possessing an incredible delicacy of feeling. In the first act the Baron's plans bring the Marschallin to the uncomfortable recognition of the ways in which her own life parallels Sophie's: she too was a young girl brought out of convent school to marry an older man whom she barely knew. This recognition makes her feel the passing of her youth all too keenly, and in a touching monologue at the close of the first act she laments the passage of time:

"How can it really be
that once I was little Resi
and that one day
I shall be an old woman?
An old woman, the old Marschallin!
'There she goes, the old Princess Resi!'
How can this happen?
How can our dear Lord make it so?
When I am still the same person?
And if He must make it so,
Why does He let me see it all
so very clearly?
Why does He not hide it from me?"

Strauss felt that this scene must be played, "not sentimentally as a tragic farewell to life, but with Viennese grace and lightness, half weeping, half smiling."

In the great final scene of the opera, Sophie, Octavian, and the Marschallin all finally meet. Sophie realizes immediately that there's a disturbingly intimate connection between Octavian and the Marschallin; Octavian feels torn between his new love for Sophie and his sensual connection to the Marschallin; and the Marschallin realizes that the inevitable day of parting from Octavian has arrived far sooner than she anticipated. These characters express their bittersweet feelings in a trio which contains some of the most breathtaking music in all opera.

This is an excerpt of the final scene taken from the 1961 film of the Salzburg production directed by Paul Czinner, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and featuring Sena Jurinac as Octavian, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin, and Anneliese Rothenberger as Sophie:

https://youtu.be/31CtNc0Zp2c

As if this ravishing music weren't enough, at the end of this amazing scene the Marschallin withdraws, leaving Sophie and Octavian to sing one of the most tender love duets ever written.

There are many wonderful recordings of this opera to choose from. I can personally recommend two on DVD. The first is the 1979 Munich production conducted by Carlos Kleiber and designed by Otto Schenk. It has perhaps the greatest Octavian ever in Brigitte Fassbaender, who has the charisma of the young Elvis in the role; the heartbreaking Marschallin of Gwyneth Jones; and the Sophie of Lucia Popp, who may look slightly mature for the role (Sophie is, after all, supposed to be 16) but whose youthful voice and acting sweep away any hesitation. My second recommendation is the 1985 London production conducted by Georg Solti and designed by William Dudley and Maria Björnson. Anne Howells is not perhaps among the greatest Octavians, but Kiri Te Kanawa is a coolly regal Marschallin, and Barbara Bonney's beautiful (and beautifully sung) Sophie makes the "love at first sight" moment with Octavian in Act II perfectly convincing. The 1960 film excerpted above also looks well worth viewing in its entirety.

The classic 1956 studio recording conducted by Herbert von Karajan with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin, Christa Ludwig as Octavian and Teresa Stich-Randall as Sophie remains the standard version more than 50 years on. But this is an opera that should really be seen to be appreciated—live, if possible, but if not, via one of the superb DVD versions recommended above.

The photos in this post were taken by Terrence McCarthy during San Francisco Opera's 2007 production, which was adapted by Thierry Bosquet from Alfred Roller's original 1911 designs. The Marschallin was sung by Soile Isokoski (pictured above) and Martina Serafin, Sophie by Miah Persson, and Octavian by Joyce DiDonato. DiDonato writes a delightful blog, Yankee Diva, which I highly recommend.

Update 12 August 2009: Thanks to ruizdechavez, (most of) the final trio and duet of the 1979 Munich Rosenkavalier featuring Lucia Popp, Brigitte Fassbaender and Gywneth Jones has been posted on YouTube—watch it while you can:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZliEez2Vk

Update 21 August 2009: In my DVD recommendations I didn't mention the 1994 Wiener Staatsoper production conducted by Carlos Kleiber, with Felicity Lott as the Marschallin, Anne-Sofie von Otter as Octavian, and Barbara Bonney as Sophie, because I'd never seen it. Thanks to Anik LaChev's eye bags blog and YouTube's rwprof, though, I've just seen the final trio and final duet of that production, and they're exceptional—if the entire production achieves this standard, then this version would rank with the Munich Opera production discussed above as the best available.

Update 4 February 2017: Michael Reynolds has discovered that many of the key elements of Der Rosenkavalier were drawn from a little-known French operetta, L'ingénu libertin, and were provided to Hofmannsthal by his friend (and, it's now clear, collaborator) Count Harry Kessler; for more information please see The Rosenkavalier Trio.

Update 6 January 2018: On May 13, 2017, at the Metropolitan Opera, Renée Fleming and Elīna Garanča gave their final performances as the Marschallin and Octavian, respectively. For a review of the DVD release of this performance please see The Marschallin's Farewell.

Opera guide 2: Le Nozze di Figaro

Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786) is an opera I never grow tired of hearing. The opera is incredibly rich: musically, of course, because it's Mozart, and dramatically, thanks to librettist Lorenzo da Ponte and his source, Beaumarchais' play La folle journée, ou Le mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day, or the Marriage of Figaro, first performance 1784).

La folle journée had created a scandal, in equal measure because of its subversive social and sexual politics. In the play and the opera, it's the wedding day of the servants Figaro and Susanna. Figaro has been taken into the Count Almaviva's service after the events of Le barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville, 1775), and Susanna is the Countess Rosina's chambermaid. However, the amorous Count is relentlessly attempting to maneuver (or bribe) Susanna into bed with him. So Figaro and Susanna make an alliance with the neglected Countess to try to thwart the Count's wayward desires. The idea of servants and women joining forces to frustrate an aristocratic male wasn't new--it's the basis of many of Molière's comedies. But there's more than a hint of cross-class lust between the Countess and the adolescent page Cherubino (which is even more eyebrow-raising because in both the play and the opera Cherubino is played by a woman), and the play was banned because of Figaro's inflammatory language attacking aristocratic privilege.

That language is toned down somewhat in the opera, but there's still a surprising amount of class antagonism on display. Not to mention that Figaro gets the better of his master several times (only, of course, with the help of Susanna and the Countess). At the same time, Figaro is shown as being a bit too clever for his own good, and all of his schemes come to nothing. It is Susanna and the Countess who are the moral and dramatic centers of the opera, and who demonstrate that trust and forgiveness are essential components of enduring love.

Le Nozze di Figaro contains some of the most brilliantly structured and truly funny scenes in opera. The second act in particular, in which the Count thinks he's trapped his wife's lover in her bedroom closet, swings from near-tragedy to farce and back again several times; whenever the dramatic tension is apparently relaxed it's unexpectedly tightened once again. The final act takes place at night in the garden, where Susanna has finally promised to meet the Count. The plan is for the Countess to take her place, but darkness and disguise create erotic chaos--as though the garden is a miniature Forest of Arden.

But no matter how witty and humane the libretto, it's Mozart's music which makes Le Nozze di Figaro in my estimation the greatest opera ever written. Mozart is able to perfectly express the characters of everyone from drunken gardeners to unctuous music masters to flirtatious servants to the infuriated Count. But it is in the music of erotic yearning that Le Nozze di Figaro achieves its greatest power: the Countess's "Porgi amor" and "Dove sono"; her duet with Susanna, "Canzonetta sull' aria," as they write a letter setting up the garden assignation with the Count; and Susanna's "Deh vieni" as she awaits her lover in the garden are all moments of transporting beauty, tinged (as love inevitably is) with sorrow.

Here's a clip of the incomparable Lucia Popp singing a meltingly sensuous "Deh vieni," courtesy of Muezzab:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=R3NItbi7PDY

A translation of the words: "At last comes the moment when, without reserve, I can rejoice in my lover's arms: timid scruples, leave my heart, and do not trouble my delight. Oh! I feel this place, the earth and the sky, are responding to love's fire; the night conceals my secret joy. Come, my love, do not delay: love's joy awaits you. The sky is dark and all is hushed. Here the brook murmurs; the breeze plays, whose sighs soothe my beating heart; the flowers smile and the grass is cool; everything invites us to love. Come my beloved, amid these sheltering trees, and I will crown you with roses."

The opera has been recorded many times, but the version conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini with Anna Moffo as Susanna, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf as the Countess, Guiseppe Taddei as Figaro, Eberhard Wächter as the Count and Fiorenza Cossotto as Cherubino remains unsurpassed. Every choice of tempo, dynamics and phrasing, every vocal performance (with exception, perhaps, of Cossotto's beautifully sung but rather womanly Cherubino), just seems perfectly right. The later Georg Solti-conducted set features an astounding cast, with Lucia Popp, Kiri Te Kanawa, Samuel Ramey, Thomas Allen and Frederica von Stade in the main roles (and in the smaller roles, unknowns such as Kurt Moll, Yvonne Kenny and Philip Langridge--talk about luxury casting!). My favorite recent recording is conducted by René Jacobs, with Patrizia Ciofi, Véronique Gens, Lorenzo Regazzo, Simon Keenlyside and Angelika Kirschlager. That recording offers excellent singing and Jacobs' vivid conducting of the virtuosic period-instrument orchestra Concerto Köln.

For such a theatrically foolproof opera with so many good recordings, it's a bit of a surprise that there's no fully satisfying version on DVD. Surveying the four I own (I'm open to suggestions for a fifth):

The 1972 Peter Hall-directed Glyndebourne version has a young Kiri Te Kanawa as the Countess, the delightful Ileana Cotrubas as Susanna, a suave Benjamin Luxon as the Count and Frederica von Stade's famous Cherubino. However, Knut Skram is somewhat lacking in charisma as Figaro, the stage of the old Glyndebourne theater is too cramped to convincingly represent the Count's estate, and Hall has Susanna and the Countess actually switch dresses (not just cloaks) during the garden scene. When towards the end of the scene the Countess emerges after a few minutes in a pavilion having changed back into her own gown I find myself distracted by trying to figure out how, given the complexities of 18th-century women's dress, she would have accomplished it. Plus, having her return in her own clothes undermines the Count's recognition scene, when he realizes that the "Susanna" he'd been trying to seduce moments earlier was really the Countess. In short, Hall's changes simply make a mess of Beaumarchais', Da Ponte and Mozart's careful comic design. The audio, picture, and subtitle quality are also sub-par.

The usually reliable Jean-Pierre Ponnelle directed a film version in the mid-70s with Mirella Freni (Susanna), Kiri Te Kanawa (the Countess), Hermann Prey (Figaro), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (the Count), and Maria Ewing (Cherubino), and he makes the class distinctions (and sexual attractions) among the denizens of the Count's estate especially apparent. But although in terms of her delghtfully ardent acting Maria Ewing is convincingly boyish, her voluptuous curves are anything but. Less pleasant distractions are provided by Fischer-Dieskau's unfortunate wig and the decision to stage some arias as inner monologue voice-overs. Still, this earthy version intrigued me when, at Cherubino's age, I saw it broadcast on PBS.

The 1991 Glyndebourne production conducted by Bernard Haitink has a charming Alison Hagley and a young Gerald Finley as Susanna and Figaro, with Renée Fleming and Andreas Schmidt as the Countess and Count, and Marie-Ange Todorovitch as Cherubino. While strikingly sung and generally well-staged, here the problem is the frankly cheap-looking sets and costumes, including some which manage to make the gorgeous Fleming look dowdy.

Finally, there's the René Jacobs version, featuring Rosemary Joshua as Susanna, Luca Pisaroni as an especially virile Figaro, Annette Dasch as a girlish Countess (in the play she's barely 21, but she's usually depicted as significantly older than that in the opera), Pietro Spagnoli as a violent, wife-abusing Count, and Angelika Kirschlager as Cherubino. Like Jacobs' CD version, it's thrillingly conducted and well-sung, but conceits which (I can attest) worked in the theatre, such as having sets consisting of 18th-century artwork, come across as too artificial on DVD--the drama remains somewhat remote. And the brutality of the Count is such that you wonder why the Countess wants to win back his attention--she's better off without it. Definitely not a first choice.

It seems that the maxim that opera has to be experienced live to be fully appreciated is especially true in the case of Le Nozze di Figaro. But until San Francisco Opera sees reason and agrees to put it on once a month, I'll have to be satisfied with Giulini's superb recording and my own imagination.

Opera guide 1: Dido & Aeneas

This is the first installment in what is going to be an open-ended series on my favorite operas.

Henry Purcell's Dido & Aeneas (1689) is an oddity among 17th-century operas. Most Baroque operas are 3 hours long or more, and have a happy ending, however contrived; Dido takes less than an hour to sweep from the introduction of the characters to its tragic conclusion. The primary language of Baroque opera is Italian (although there's also a parallel French tradition); Dido is in English. As a result of its unusual qualities, Dido is an ideal starting point for anyone (or at least, any English speaker) interested in exploring opera, and particularly Baroque opera. Another reason it's ideal is that the music is very tuneful and, especially at key moments, ravishingly beautiful.

The outline of the story is taken from Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid. In Virgil's great poem, Aeneas, fleeing with a few followers the destruction of Troy by the Greeks, finds a safe haven in Carthage, ruled by Queen Dido. Against her better judgment Dido finds herself falling in love with the valiant warrior, a love that is fatefully consummated when, during a hunting party, the couple take shelter from a sudden storm in a secluded cave. Soon, however, Mercury--the messenger of Jupiter--appears to Aeneas and commands him to sail to Italy to found, in Rome, a new Troy. The abandoned Dido, angry, heartbroken and desperate, commits suicide out of "the grief / Of lovers bound unequally by love" (in Robert Fitzgerald's translation[1]); Aeneas, from the deck of his ship heading seaward, sees the smoke rising from her funeral pyre.

Purcell's librettist, the poet Nahum Tate, was famously called "a cold writer, of no invention" by Alexander Pope in The Dunciad. But Tate's changes to Virgil's story actually make it more dramatically complex and stageworthy. He introduces the character of a sorceress, who is Dido's sworn enemy and who plots to destroy her; the scenes in the witches' cave are delightfully dreadful. In the opera it is the sorceress who sends a spirit "in form of Mercury himself" to command Aeneas to leave Carthage; and in Tate's version it is not just Dido's pyre, but the entire city that burns (although Tate is discreetly inexplicit about the cause of Dido's death).

Any performance of Dido & Aeneas succeeds or fails on the basis of its Dido, and my favorite recording of the opera features Lorraine Hunt (later Lorraine Hunt Lieberson) in the role. She is a powerfully moving Dido, especially in her two great tragic arias: "Ah! Belinda, I am press'd" and "When I am laid in earth." Nicholas McGegan conducts the period-instrument Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra beautifully: he's sprightly in the dance sections, but brings out the full pathos of Dido's tragic arias. McGegan does go for a very characterful portrayal of the witches and sailors, which may bother some people. And while Michael Dean is a good Aeneas, Ellen Rabiner's Sorceress has a broad vibrato that makes her sound as though she's been airlifted in from some Wagner opera. But despite these minor stylistic issues and several other fine recordings, Lorraine Hunt's Dido makes this my first choice.

Here is Hunt's performance of Dido's first aria, "Ah! Belinda, I am press'd":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX2avHeJpHE

The words are, "Ah! Belinda, I am press'd / With torment not to be confess'd. / Peace and I are strangers grown; / I languish 'til my grief is known / Yet would not have it guess'd."

Many modern productions portray the sorceress as an aspect of Dido, and the roles are often performed by the same singer. Choreographer Mark Morris created a danced version of the opera in which he brilliantly enacted both Dido and the Sorceress; this is Dido's death scene (Dido is sung by Jennifer Lane):

The Mark Morris Dance Group, 1994

(Again, if the image doesn't load for some reason, here is a direct link.) Some of the commenters about this clip on YouTube are obviously nonplussed that Dido is being portrayed by a man. They are clearly unaware of how thoroughly gender was bent in Baroque opera. While a male Dido is unusual, a male sorceress is less so (perhaps it enhances her uncanniness). But even more surprising, in the first performance of Dido it's likely that the role of Aeneas was sung by a woman.

A single copy survives of the libretto from the first performance, "by Young Gentlewomen" at a boarding school for girls in 1689.[2] Recently a libretto for John Blow's Venus & Adonis was discovered which was printed for an April 1684 performance of that opera at the same girls' school.[3] The Venus libretto mentions that it was "Perform'd before the King. Afterwards at Mr. Josias Priest's Boarding School at Chelsey." Since Dido was modelled on Venus, some musicologists have speculated that Dido also must have been first performed at court. However, while both an early score and the libretto for Venus explicitly mention a court performance, the sole existing contemporary libretto for Dido does not. The 1684 libretto for Venus does have contemporary hand-written annotations indicating that the part of Adonis was sung by Priest's daughter; presumably the same practice--that is, having all the parts sung by women--was also followed in the 1689 Dido performance.

Alas, no score has yet been discovered that dates from Purcell's short lifetime (he died in 1695, in his mid-30s). The earliest surviving score is from around 1750, although it was apparently copied from a pre-1720 source.[4] There is a prologue in the libretto for which no music has been found, and other issues (such as the original range of the parts of Aeneas and the Sailor) that will remain a matter of speculation.

Nonetheless, what has survived is dramatically compelling and spectacularly beautiful. If you're unfamiliar with Dido & Aeneas, the Lorraine Hunt Lieberson recording is an excellent place to begin your acquaintance.

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1. Virgil. The Aeneid. Robert Fitzgerald, trans. New York: Vintage, 1983.

2. Ellen Harris. Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

3. Richard Luckett. A new source for 'Venus and Adonis'. The Musical Times, v. 130 (no. 1752), Feb. 1989, 76-79.

4. A. Margaret Laurie. Allegory, sources, and performance history. In Curtis Price, ed., Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas: An authoritative score (pp. 42-59). New York: Norton, 1986.