The Complete Opera Book Part 45

A storm now gathers. There are flashes of lightning; distant rumblings of thunder. The wind moans. (Indicated by the chorus, _a bouche fermee_, behind the scenes.) The _Duke_ has gone to his room, after whispering a few words to _Maddalena_. He lays down his hat and sword, throws himself on the bed, sings a few s.n.a.t.c.hes of "La donna e mobile," and in a short time falls asleep. _Maddalena_, below, stands by the table. _Sparafucile_ finishes the contents of the bottle left by the _Duke_. Both remain silent for awhile.

_Maddalena_, fascinated by the _Duke_, begins to plead for his life.

The storm is now at its height. Lightning plays vividly across the sky, thunder crashes, wind howls, rain falls in torrents. Through this uproar of the elements, to which night adds its terrors, comes _Gilda_, drawn as by a magnet to the spot where she knows her false lover to be. Through the crevices in the wall of the house she can hear _Maddalena_ pleading with _Sparafucile_ to spare the _Duke's_ life. "Kill the hunchback," she counsels, "when he comes with the balance of the money." But there is honour even among a.s.sa.s.sins as among thieves. The bravo will not betray a customer.

_Maddalena_ pleads yet more urgently. Well--_Sparafucile_ will give the handsome youth one desperate chance for life: Should any other man arrive at the inn before midnight, that man will he kill and put in the sack to be thrown into the river, in place of _Maddalena's_ temporary favourite. A clock strikes the half-hour. _Gilda_ is in male attire. She determines to save the _Duke's_ life--to sacrifice hers for his. She knocks. There is a moment of surprised suspense within.

Then everything is made ready. _Maddalena_ opens the door, and runs forward to close the outer one. _Gilda_ enters. For a moment one senses her form in the darkness. A half-stifled outcry. Then all is buried in silence and gloom.

The storm is abating. The rain has ceased; the lightning become fitful, the thunder distant and intermittent. _Rigoletto_ returns. "At last the hour of my vengeance is nigh." A bell tolls midnight. He knocks at the door. _Sparafucile_ brings out the sack, receives the balance of his money, and retires into the house. "This sack his winding sheet!" exclaims the hunchback, as he gloats over it. The night has cleared. He must hurry and throw it into the river.

Out of the second story of the house and on to the wall steps the figure of a man and proceeds along the wall toward the city.

_Rigoletto_ starts to drag the sack with the body toward the stream.

Lightly upon the night fall the notes of a familiar voice singing:

La donna e mobile Qual piuma al vento; Muta d'accento, E di pensiero.

(Fickle is woman fair, Like feather wafted; Changeable ever, Constant, ah, never.)

It is the _Duke_. Furiously the hunchback tears open the sack. In it he beholds his daughter. Not yet quite dead, she is able to whisper, "Too much I loved him--now I die for him." There is a duet: _Gilda_, "La.s.su in cielo" (From yonder sky); _Rigoletto_, "Non morir" (Ah, perish not).

"Maledizione!"--The music of _Monterone's_ curse upon the ribald jester, now bending over the corpse of his own despoiled daughter, resounds on the orchestra. The fool has had his revenge.

For political reasons the performance of Victor Hugo's "Le Roi s'Amuse" was forbidden in France after the first representation. In Hugo's play the princ.i.p.al character is Triboulet, the jester of Francois I. The King, of course, also is a leading character; and there is a pen-portrait of Saint-Vallier. It was considered unsafe, after the revolutionary uprisings in Europe in 1848, to present on the stage so licentious a story involving a monarch. Therefore, to avoid political complications, and copyright ones possibly later, the Italian librettist laid the scene in Mantua. _Triboulet_ became _Rigoletto_; _Francois I._ the _Duke_, and _Saint-Vallier_ the _Count Monterone_. Early in its career the opera also was given under the t.i.tle of "Viscardello."

IL TROVATORE

THE TROUBADOUR

Opera in four acts, by Verdi; words by Salvatore Cammarano, based on the Spanish drama of the same t.i.tle by Antonio Garcia Gutierrez. Produced, Apollo Theatre, Rome, January 19, 1853. Paris, Theatre des Italiens, December 23, 1854; Grand Opera, in French as "Le Trouvere," January 12, 1857.

London, Covent Garden, May 17, 1855; in English, as "The Gypsy's Vengeance," Drury Lane, March 24, 1856. America: New York, April 30, 1855, with Brignoli (_Manrico_), Steffanone (_Leonora_), Amodio (_Count di Luna_), and Vestvali (_Azucena_); Philadelphia, Walnut Street Theatre, January 14, 1856, and Academy of Music, February 25, 1857; New Orleans, April 13, 1857. Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in German, 1889; 1908, Caruso, Eames, and Homer. Frequently performed at the Academy of Music, New York, with Campanini (_Manrico_), Nilsson (_Leonora_), and Annie Louise Cary (_Azucena_); and Del Puente or Gala.s.si as _Count di Luna_.

CHARACTERS

COUNT DI LUNA, a young n.o.ble of Aragon _Baritone_ FERRANDO, DI LUNA'S captain of the guard _Ba.s.s_ MANRICO, a chieftain under the Prince of Biscay, and reputed son of AZUCENA _Tenor_ RUIZ, a soldier in MANRICO'S service _Tenor_ AN OLD GYPSY _Baritone_ d.u.c.h.eSS LEONORA, lady-in-waiting to a Princess of Aragon _Soprano_ INEZ, confidante of LEONORA _Soprano_ AZUCENA, a Biscayan gypsy woman _Mezzo-Soprano_

Followers of COUNT DI LUNA and of MANRICO; messenger, gaoler, soldiers, nuns, gypsies.

_Time_--Fifteenth century.

_Place_--Biscay and Aragon.

For many years "Il Trovatore" has been an opera of world-wide popularity, and for a long time could be accounted the most popular work in the operatic repertoire of practically every land. While it cannot be said to retain its former vogue in this country, it is still a good drawing card, and, with special excellences of cast, an exceptional one.

The libretto of "Il Trovatore" is considered the acme of absurdity; and the popularity of the opera, notwithstanding, is believed to be entirely due to the almost unbroken melodiousness of Verdi's score.

While it is true, however, that the story of this opera seems to be a good deal of a mix-up, it is also a fact that, under the spur of Verdi's music, even a person who has not a clear grasp of the plot can sense the dramatic power of many of the scenes. It is an opera of immense verve, of temperament almost unbridled, of genius for the melodramatic so unerring that its composer has taken dance rhythms, like those of mazurka and waltz, and on them developed melodies most pa.s.sionate in expression and dramatic in effect. Swift, spontaneous, and stirring is the music of "Il Trovatore." Absurdities, complexities, unintelligibilities of story are swept away in its unrelenting progress. "Il Trovatore" is the Verdi of forty working at white heat.

One reason why the plot of "Il Trovatore" seems such a jumbled-up affair is that a considerable part of the story is supposed to have transpired before the curtain goes up. These events are narrated by _Ferrando_, the _Count di Luna's_ captain of the guard, soon after the opera begins. But as even spoken narrative on the stage makes little impression, narrative when sung may be said to make none at all. Could the audience know what _Ferrando_ is singing about, the subsequent proceedings would not appear so hopelessly involved, or appeal so strongly to humorous rhymesters, who usually begin their parodies on the opera with,

This is the story of "Il Trovatore."

What is supposed to have happened before the curtain goes up on the opera is as follows: The old Count di Luna, sometime deceased, had two sons nearly of the same age. One night, when they still were infants, and asleep, in a nurse's charge in an apartment in the old Count's castle, a gypsy hag, having gained stealthy entrance into the chamber, was discovered leaning over the cradle of the younger child, Garzia.

Though she was instantly driven away, the child's health began to fail and she was believed to have bewitched it. She was pursued, apprehended and burned alive at the stake.

Her daughter, _Azucena_, at that time a young gypsy woman with a child of her own in her arms, was a witness to the death of her mother, which she swore to avenge. During the following night she stole into the castle, s.n.a.t.c.hed the younger child of the Count di Luna from its cradle, and hurried back to the scene of execution, intending to throw the baby boy into the flames that still raged over the spot where they had consumed her mother. Almost bereft of her senses, however, by her memory of the horrible scene she had witnessed, she seized and hurled into the flames her own child, instead of the young Count (thus preserving, with an almost supernatural instinct for opera, the baby that was destined to grow up into a tenor with a voice high enough to sing "Di quella pira").

Thwarted for the moment in her vengeance, _Azucena_ was not to be completely baffled. With the infant Count in her arms she fled and rejoined her tribe, entrusting her secret to no one, but bringing him up--_Manrico, the Troubadour_--as her own son; and always with the thought that through him she might wreak vengeance upon his own kindred.

When the opera opens, _Manrico_ has grown up; she has become old and wrinkled, but is still unrelenting in her quest of vengeance. The old Count has died, leaving the elder son, _Count di Luna_ of the opera, sole heir to his t.i.tle and possessions, but always doubting the death of the younger, despite the heap of infant's bones found among the ashes about the stake.

"After this preliminary knowledge," quaintly says the English libretto, "we now come to the actual business of the piece." Each of the four acts of this "piece" has a t.i.tle: Act I, "Il Duello" (The Duel); Act II, "La Gitana" (The Gypsy); Act III, "Il Figlio della Zingara" (The Gypsy's Son); Act IV, "Il Supplizio" (The Penalty).

Act I. Atrium of the palace of Aliaferia, with a door leading to the apartments of the _Count di Luna_. _Ferrando_, the captain of the guard, and retainers, are reclining near the door. Armed men are standing guard in the background. It is night. The men are on guard because _Count di Luna_ desires to apprehend a minstrel knight, a troubadour, who has been heard on several occasions to be serenading from the palace garden, the _d.u.c.h.ess Leonora_, for whom a deep, but unrequited pa.s.sion sways the _Count_.

Weary of the watch, the retainers beg _Ferrando_ to tell them the story of the _Count's_ brother, the stolen child. This _Ferrando_ proceeds to do in the ballad, "Abbietta zingara" (Sat there a gypsy hag).

_Ferrando's_ gruesome ballad and the comments of the horror-stricken chorus dominate the opening of the opera. The scene is an unusually effective one for a subordinate character like _Ferrando_. But in "Il Trovatore" Verdi is lavish with his melodies--more so, perhaps, than in any of his other operas.

The scene changes to the gardens of the palace. On one side a flight of marble steps leads to _Leonora's_ apartment. Heavy clouds obscure the moon. _Leonora_ and _Inez_ are in the garden. From the confidante's questions and _Leonora's_ answers it is gathered that _Leonora_ is enamoured of an unknown but valiant knight who, lately entering a tourney, won all contests and was crowned victor by her hand. She knows her love is requited, for at night she has heard her _Troubadour_ singing below her window. In the course of this narrative _Leonora_ has two solos. The first of these is the romantic "Tacea la notte placida" (The night calmly and peacefully in beauty seemed reposing).

[Music:

Tacea la notte placida, E bella in ciel sereno;]

It is followed by the graceful and engaging "Di tale amor che dirsi"

(Of such a love how vainly),

[Music: Di tale amor che dirsi]

with its brilliant cadenza.

_Leonora_ and _Inez_ then ascend the steps and retire into the palace.

The _Count di Luna_ now comes into the garden. He has hardly entered before the voice of the _Troubadour_, accompanied on a lute, is heard from a nearby thicket singing the familiar romanza, "Deserto sulla terra" (Lonely on earth abiding).

[Music: Deserto sulla terra]

From the palace comes _Leonora_. Mistaking the Count in the shadow of the trees for her _Troubadour_, she hastens toward him. The moon emerging from a cloud, she sees the figure of a masked cavalier, recognizes it as that of her lover, and turns from the _Count_ toward the _Troubadour_. Unmasking, the _Troubadour_ now discloses his ident.i.ty as _Manrico_, one who, as a follower of the Prince of Biscay, is proscribed in Aragon. The men draw their swords. There is a trio that fairly seethes with pa.s.sion--"Di geloso amor sprezzato" (Fires of jealous, despised affection).

[Music]

These are the words, in which the _Count_ begins the trio. It continues with "Un istante almen dia loco" (One brief moment thy fury restraining).

[Music: Un istante almen dia loco]

The men rush off to fight their duel. _Leonora_ faints.

Act II. An encampment of gypsies. There is a ruined house at the foot of a mountain in Biscay; the interior partly exposed to view; within a great fire is lighted. Day begins to dawn.