Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance by Hilary Poriss (review)

Hilary Poriss’s book sheds light on an important but little-known and previously underexplored performance practice: aria insertion. The practice, as the author defines it, encompasses arias substituted for a portion of an opera, as well as interpolated pieces added in performance. Insertion arias have also been termed ‘trunk arias’ or arie di baule, because they were pieces of music that particular singers carried with them from production to production. In addition to complicating previous scholarly narratives that have celebrated the extinction of this practice the author argues that it was an essential part of a singer’s authority over the operatic ‘work’—the domain of the female singer in particular. A practice more peculiar than essential in operatic performance today, aria insertion was a common and even fundamental component of operatic performance during the first half of the nineteenth century. More than prevalent, it was an integral, planned, and expected part of the operatic work, ‘subject to the same praise or criticism as were authorial portions of a score’ (p. 6). As I will suggest in this review, such historical insight leads the reader to ponder the status of the performer as author, both in the nineteenth century and today. With a keen eye for detail and smart chapter organization, Poriss marshals convincing evidence of aria insertion from a variety of archival sources, including the contemporary critical press, libretti, printed and manuscript scores, anecdotal and biographical material, and other pertinent theatrical documents.

At stake in Poriss’s book is the authority of performance, an issue that has appeared frequently in recent scholarly literature on opera, perhaps most prominently in Susan Rutherford’s The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–1930 (Cambridge, 2006), Philip Gossett’s Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera (Chicago and London, 2006), and Roger Parker’s Remaking the Song: Operatic Visions and Revisions from Handel to Berio (Berkeley, 2006). Poriss’s monograph augments these wide-ranging histories by taking the subject of aria insertion as a concrete vocal performance practice that speaks volumes about the status of the performer as an author in nineteenth-century opera.

Employing the familiar opposition of performer versus composer, the first chapter of Changing the Score positions the practice of aria insertion within a gradually changing discourse, in which mocking satires complain about aria insertion, as well as other overreaching demands of singers who seem to thwart composerly authority. Poriss suggests that a power shift occurred in precisely this period of nineteenth-century Italian opera: singers began the century assuming a high level of authority in changing the score at whim, but by mid-century were more limited in their choices by an emerging sense of operas as ‘works—entities with a structure to which performers should at least attempt to aspire’ (p. 15). That is, performers lost authority over the course of the century to composers. One question that arises from this historical truism, to which I will return later, is whether Poriss believes that singers should change the score or adhere to it when performing early nineteenth-century Italian opera today.

The author observes manifestations of shifting power in singers’ contracts, noting that by the 1830s, singers as well known as Giulia Grisi were often required to sign contracts with clauses that prohibited aria insertion without the express approval of the impresario. Interestingly, it was the impresario, not the composer, who served as the final arbiter in these mid-century contracts. Although contracts maintained this type of stipulation for much of the century, Poriss shows that by the 1870s there was a slight shift in wording from impresario to ‘authors’, implying that the final arbiters in the late nineteenth century were the composer and librettist. In presenting source materials (e.g. contracts, theatrical manuals, and the critical press) that seem to argue against aria insertion, the chapter also demonstrates the popularity and pervasiveness of...