Remaking the Song: Operatic Visions and Revisions From Handel to Berio (review)

The esteemed opera scholar Roger Parker delivered a collection of talks as part of the Bloch Lectures Series in 2002 at the University of California, Berkeley. They were, according to the author, "a series of meditations on (also I hope celebrations of) operatic texts, in particular ways in which operas long known to us have been, and might in the future be, subject to change of one sort or another" (pp. 11– 12). Simple enough. Or is it? What constitutes "one sort or another" ranges from a single aria to an entire scene, and it is the argument and rationale that preoccupies Parker. The resultant publication, Remaking the Song, deals in those sorts of changes one might consider argumentative minutiae, but are fiercely important to the operatic world. Consider, for example, the fit opera producer Jonathan Miller threw over Cecilia Bartoli choosing to use two substitute arias in his 1998 production of Le nozze di Figaro. Mozart composed the arias for a production of Figaro in 1789, three years after the premiere. Miller saw them as evidence of a diva pressuring Mozart to accommodate her, and not belonging to the "true" work. Miller was still talking about it four years later in an interview (Martin Bernheimer, "Operating Theater," Opera News 66, no. 12 [June 2002]: 20–25). Parker heads into these issues with what he describes as "a chipping away at some very familiar works—testing places where they were and might still be liable to change, in particular finding new ways we might think about them in their altered circumstances" (p. 13).

His first stop is Verdi. Chapter 2, "Of Andalusian Maidens and Recognition Scenes: Crossed Wires in Il trovatore and La traviata," looks at the dichotomy scholars have imposed upon the two operas, pairing them as opposites, when upon closer inspection, they are inextricably linked. Due to illness and scheduling delays, Verdi had no choice but to compose La traviata while in the process of orchestrating and rehearsing Il trovatore for its Roman premiere. Recently published sketches reveal music from both operas appearing together on the same piece of manuscript paper. This leads Parker not to jump to conclusions about those precise pairings, but to examine what he refers to as "musical doubles" between the two operas. The first of these is La traviata's act 2 finale, in which the female Parisian guests perform a mock zingarelle (gypsy dance). Parker finds shared musical context between the introduction to the zingarelle and Ferrando's description of Azucena in Il trovatore. Further evidence of the operas bleeding into one another comes later in the finale, when the men (as story-telling matadors) share remarkably similar thematic material with Il trovatore's act 2 duet cabaletta between Azucena and Manrico. But wait, there's more: in the first half of Il trovatore's third act, as the Count di Luna and Ferrando interrogate Azucena, a series of ironically sweet chromaticisms and trills accompany the revelation of Azucena as avenger and mother of Manrico. Parker informs us that those same trills become "a prime symbol of Violetta's champagne and tears, her dissembling gaiety" (p. 37). All this serves to teach the reader there are cases that resist interpretative scholarship, and one should simply (as it were) enjoy the recognition.

Chapter 3, "Ersatz Ditties: Adriana Ferrarese's Susanna" delves into the substitute aria problem in Le nozze di Figaro. Parker finds the criticism following Cecilia Bartoli's use of "Un moto di gioia" for "Venite, inginocchiatevi" in act 2 and "Al desio di chi t'adora" for "Deh vieni, non tardar" in act 4 evinces a "cultural pessimism about music and opera, perhaps about all art: a mood that makes us miserly and grasping, fearful of loss. We attach fanatical reverence to the works precisely because we doubt that what is to come will ever be as good" (pp. 51–52). Parker...