Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (review)

The collection of essays found in Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera offers a look at not only the music and librettos, but also the performing conventions of the nineteenth century and their continued influence on operatic performance today. All of the contributors look to the score (both manuscript and printed), libretto, or disposizioni sceniche. Disposizioni sceniche were staging manuals published by Ricordi to try to control stage directors and scenic designers by preserving the staging as conceived for premiere performances. It is interesting that these directions, which Ricordi tried to impose on all theaters, did not take into account the real-world difficulties caused by the physical limitations of each particular theater. However, they do convey a sense of the effects, both musical and visual, that the composer had in mind. One wonders what Ricordi would have thought of the concept productions found at opera houses around the world today. At the same time Ricordi was trying to stem the tide of performances of existing works fitted with new librettos or music borrowed from other works. Our concept of copyright did not exist to protect the composer and the publisher, and so Ricordi tried to control the entire production. Each of the essays is a gem, full of useful information on a topic which has not been explored in depth to this writer's knowledge. All of the essays are well documented with copious footnotes. It is interesting that many of the authors cite Philip Gossett's Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), a particularly fine source for information about performance practice and score notation in nineteenth-century Italian opera. Certainly this new volume should be required reading not only for musicologists and performers but also for the management of opera companies.

As with all books that deal with music, the reader's knowledge of the composer and the particular works being discussed plays into the understanding of the author's main points. Having printed music examples is helpful, but only true familiarity with the score allows readers to recreate in their own minds the ideas the author is proposing. The essays discussing various aspects of Aida, Otello, and even I Puritani were, for this reviewer, more readily assessable than the fascinating essay by Francesco Izzo, "Comic Sights: Stage Directions in Luigi Ricci's Autograph Scores," as the works were not in my mind's ear as I was reading. This is, of course, not the author's fault.

Looking into the past, Ellen T. Harris's "Viardot Sings Handel (with Thanks to George Sand, Chopin, Meyerbeer, Gounod, and Julius Rietz)" looks at the contemporary writings concerning Pauline Viardot's performances of not only Handel but also of Gluck. The discussion includes references to Viardot's source scores and to the reviews of her performances, which give insights into her own performance practices. The thought of applauding during the performance of a Gluck aria due to being overcome with emotion would be anathema today, but audiences still do so regularly after an unwritten high note toward the end of an aria, so perhaps times have not changed that much.

The lack of proper copyright protection and its consequences is tackled by Fabrizio Della Seta in "I falsi Puritani: A Case of Espionage." Della Seta compares unauthorized vocal scores of I Puritani from several publishers; these are typically based on excerpts published by Ricordi, with the rest filled in by anonymous hands relying more on operatic conventions than a musical inventiveness of Bellini's caliber. This demonstrates not only the difficulty that publishers had in earning their fair profit, but also the forward-looking nature of Bellini's final opera, as exemplified by passages that do not follow the conventions of the time. In the same vein, Roberta Montemorra Marvin discusses the issue of popular realizations of Verdi arias for home use in England in...