The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (37 page)

During the time of the English Civil War, Elvira, daughter to the governor of the Puritan-held fortress at Plymouth, loves Arturo, a Royalist (or cavalier).
She, however, is loved by another Puritan, Riccardo, to whom she was promised by her father.

Arturo and Elvira are allowed to marry, but at the wedding celebrations Arturo is forced to help the disguised Enrichetta, the widow of Charles I, to escape from captivity.
Elvira misinterprets Arturo is interest in this mysterious lady and goes mad.
Arturo is condemned to death, and Riccardo and Elvira’s uncle Giorgio ride out to find him.

Three months later, Arturo returns from hiding and explains to Elvira the reasons for his peremptory departure from the wedding.
She recovers her sanity, only to lose it again when Riccardo and Giorgio arrive to arrest Arturo.
Elvira resolves to die with Arturo, but the situation is resolved when a messenger announces that the Royalists have been defeated and an amnesty is declared.
Elvira recovers her sanity again, and is finally united with Arturo.

What to listen for

The absence of an overture, the blurring of boundaries between aria and duet and several instances of remarkable rhythmic experimentation are features of this opera.

Elvira is a fine vehicle for a lyric coloratura soprano.
It contains two showpieces, the vivacious polonaise ‘Son vergin vezzosa’, with its chromatic scales, arpeggios and staccatos; and the long Mad Scene, memorably sung by Maria Callas, in which the slow aria, ‘Qui la voce sua soave’ provides a wonderful example of the achingly lyrical melancholy which so impressed Chopin.
Unusually, the opera also features a rousing martial duet for baritone (Riccardo) and bass (Giorgio), ‘Suoni la tromba’, which in the right throats can bring the house down at the end of Part Two.

The role of Arturo lies impossibly high for most modern tenors, requiring a voice which can rise to top Ds and even an F – notes which can only be sung in a light, almost falsetto head voice that only bel-canto specialists can produce.
Other tenors tend to find tactful substitutes.
Note also the way Arturo’s lovely ‘A te, o cara’ in the third scene of Part One is turned into a quartet, with choral accompaniment.

In performance

An opera tailored to the talents of a celebrated quartet of great singers who often performed together: soprano Giulia Grisi, tenor Gianbattista Rubini, baritone Antonio Tamburini, and bass Luigi Lablache.
Grisi (Elvira) was a great beauty and an accomplished actress, famous for her mad scenes (both on-and off-stage), Rubini (Arturo) had a light, high-lying, bright-toned voice of great flexibility, Tamburini (Riccardo) was prized for his immaculate legato and breath control, while Lablache (Giorgio) was a giant figure with a voice and personality to match.
Today,
Puritani
is often regarded as a vehicle for a star coloratura soprano (such as Joan Sutherland or Edita Gruberova), but properly performed, it emerges as a subtly calibrated ensemble piece.
For directors, the big problem is how to deal with Elvira’s psychologically implausible alternations between sanity and insanity.

Recording

CD: Joan Sutherland (Elvira); Luciano Pavarotti (Arturo); Richard Bonynge (cond.).
Decca 417 588 2

Giuseppe Verdi

(1813–1901)

Nabucco

Four parts. First performed Milan, 1842.

Libretto by Temistocle Solera

Verdi’s third opera,
Nabucco,
caught the rising tide of nationalistic feeling in Italy and went on to establish the composer’s fame all over Europe.
More than any other of his operas, wrote the Verdi scholar Julian Budden, it ‘resembles a series of vast tableaux, rather than a drama relentlessly moving towards its denouement’.
The character of Nabucco, or Nebuchadnezzar, bears a distant relation to an episode in the Old Testament book of Daniel, but the plot is more closely drawn from a popular ballet of the time.

Plot

Inside the temple of Solomon, the Hebrews pray for protection from the invading Babylonians, led by their king Nabucco.
The Hebrew high priest Zaccaria holds Nabucco’s daughter Fenena as hostage: she is in love with the Hebrew prince Ismaele, who vows to set her free.

Nabucco’s other daughter, Abigaille, also loves Ismaele and offers to help save the Hebrews if he will love her in return.
Ismaele rejects her.
The Hebrews are defeated, but Zaccaria threatens to kill Fenena if Nabucco enters the temple sacrilegiously.
For love of Fenena, Ismaele disarms Zaccaria.
The temple is destroyed and the Hebrews driven into exile.

In Babylon, Abigaille discovers to her fury that she is the daughter of a slave, not of Nabucco.
She vows revenge on him and Fenena, who has converted to Judaism.
When Nabucco returns, claiming to be the one true god, he is struck by a thunderbolt and goes mad.
Abigaille seizes his throne and tricks Nabucco into signing a warrant for the execution of the Hebrews.

Nabucco is full of remorse and prays to the Hebrew God
for forgiveness.
He is restored to sanity, rescues the condemned Fenena and the Hebrews and proclaims his conversion to Judaism with a promise to rebuild their temple.
The Babylonian idol Baal shatters.
The remorseful Abigaille takes poison, and dies begging the Hebrew God for forgiveness.
Zaccaria returns the crown to Nabucco amid rejoicing.

What to listen for

In the words of Julian Budden, this opera is ‘the supreme instance of the triumph of the whole over the parts’ – by which he means that despite several coarse and crude passages, an overall energy carries the score forward irresistibly.
The chorus dominates and gets the best tunes – notably the heart-rending ‘Va, pensiero’, which has come to mean to Italians much what ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ means to the English.
Although it is marked to be sung
sotto
voce,
with respect to the underlying melancholy, the tempo should not drag – this is music which should lilt on a wing and a prayer.

Nabucco is a fine role for a strong, rich-toned baritone, and the character’s descent into madness and then repentance offers great histrionic opportunities.
Zaccaria is the first of several dignified priestly basses to appear in Verdi’s
œuvre,
and he is graced with two magnificent and taxing arias which extend over a wide range.
This is not easy to cast well.
Even more problematic, however, is the killer role of Abigaille.
Aside from the young Maria Callas (who only sang three performances), it is hard to think of any soprano who hasn’t resorted to shrieking, shirking or skirting in order to negotiate the fearsome demands of range, agility and stamina that Verdi makes of her in the big aria of evil intent and the leaps and thrusts of her duet with Nabucco.
Ismaele is a tenor role of scant interest, but Fenena has a beautiful prayer to sing in the final scene, and the role is noticeably more lyrical than Verdi’s subsequent dealings with the mezzo-soprano range.

In performance

A grand spectacle of an opera, whose subject-matter regularly tempts producers (such as David Pountney for ENO, Tim Albery for WNO and the Royal Opera and Robert Carsen at the Opéra Bastille) to evoke visual parallels with the persecution of present-day Jews and the crisis in the Arab world.

Recording