The complete idiot's guide to classical music (54 page)

If you’re up to a whole opera, start with
The Barber of Seville
. It’s funny, it has the tongue-twisting “Largo al Factotum” and other great tunes (a few of which were appropriated by Bugs Bunny) and some marvelous ensemble numbers. There are many superb recordings from which to choose.

Otherwise, get the flavor of his witty and animated music from the marvelous Overtures, including, besides those already mentioned,
The Silken Ladder
,
Semiramide, The Thieving Magpie
, and
William Tell
. Just for fun, sample some of the witty miniatures that Rossini tossed off during his retirement years under the umbrella title
Sins of My Old Age
. And for moments of inspirational guidance, listen to one of his final works that well atones for any sins Rossini may have committed earlier on:
Petite Messe Solonelle,
which is neither little, nor solemn, just very beautiful. Rossini attached to the score an open letter to God. “Here is my poor little Mass,” it says, “done with a little skill, a bit of heart and that’s about all. Be Thou blessed, and admit me to Paradise.”

Vincenzo Bellini, born in 1801, came of age in an era when opera was dominated by its stars, when singers felt free to embellish any music set before them or even to substitute a piece by another composer if the mood so struck them. In a very real sense, the operatic whole was often less than the sum of its parts; the parts, in fact, were what drew audiences to the operas. Bellini tried to transcend the tyranny of the tenor (or the sovereignty of the soprano, if you prefer), but he did so gently rather than with revolutionary ardor; as one of his librettists put it, “he tried to remedy the situation with courage, perseverance and love.”

Nonetheless, it was the interest of some of the most famous and popular singers of his day that brought Bellini international fame and a continuing supply of commissions. It was their presence that enticed the audience, and later in the 19th century when singers capable of doing the works justice were in far shorter supply, his works faded from the repertoire. They were not to emerge in significant fashion until a new crop of extraordinary artists, including Renata Scotto and Dame Joan Sutherland, took up their cause in our own time.

Bellini, while attempting to follow in Rossini’s operatic footsteps, added a whole new fount of lyricism. Steeped in Italian melody, Bellini developed a style we call
bel canto
(literally beautiful singing), where the voice almost becomes an instrument. Here purity of tone and ease of projection counts for more than dramatic passion; long, lovely phrases give way to brilliant passages of highly ornamented vocal embroidery. The composer was also beset by a melancholy soul, and much of his music, as Wallace Brockway puts it so vividly, has “a hushed, neurotic ecstasy, a kind of gently languorous orgasm in moonlit, bloom-pervaded gardens. Long before Verlaine, it was always crying in Bellini’s heart.”

 
Music Word
Italian for “beautiful singing,”
bel canto
denotes the (primarily Italian) vocal style of the 18th century, with emphasis on beautiful sound and brilliant technique, as opposed to dramatic or emotional expression.

Alas, Bellini’s heart beat only for a tragically short time: he died after what the coroner called “an acute inflammation of the large intestine” six weeks shy of his 34th birthday, in 1835.

You can find several recordings of Bellini’s first operatic success,
Il Pirato
(The Pirate), but you’re better off starting with his more popular works:

 

• the sleepwalking beauty of
  La sonnambula
  
 

• the revisionist history of
  I Puritani
  (The Puritans)
  
 

• the ardent Shakespearian love of
  Romeo and Juliet
  —as portrayed in
  I Capuletti ed i Montecchi
  (The Capulets and Montagues)
  
 

• the most famous of all—
  Norma,
  with fearsomely difficult roles for both soprano and mezzosoprano that can be thrilling with the right larynxes at play, and disastrous otherwise.
  

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
“It is easier to sing three Brunhildes than one
Norma
,” said the soprano Lilli Lehmann, who performed both roles at the Metropolitan Opera around the turn of the century.

A good way to ease into the full operas listed here (and elsewhere in this chapter) is to get one of the many highlight recordings on the market. That way you get all the best tunes and a couple of hours free in the bargain.

Remember Telemann, who could dash off a fugue as quickly as a normal soul would take to write a letter? Gaetano Donizetti was that way with operas, churning out over 70 of them within a span of three decades. “Writing music is nothing,” he said once, “It’s the damned rehearsals that are so difficult.”

It’s a good thing, too, because with Rossini’s early retirement and Bellini’s early death, Donizetti (1797–1848) pretty well had the operatic field to himself. (At least until Giuseppe Verdi came along and showed everybody what operatic drama was all about.)

The fact that Donizetti was speedy didn’t necessarily make his operas good, and the bulk of his work has fallen into not unreasonable obscurity. Heinrich Heine called Donizetti’s fertility “not inferior to a rabbit’s.” Even the gentle, good-natured Mendelssohn took issue with his Italian colleague. “Donizetti’s operas may be hissed,” he said, “but that doesn’t matter as he gets paid all the same and can go about having a good time and writing more trash.”

Donizetti, however, knew the pulse of the public, and he could whip off catchy tunes that exalt the glory of the singers’ voices even as they caressed listeners’ ears. He was especially good at comedies, such as the still delightful
La Fille du regiment
(The Daughter of the Regiment), and
L’Elisir d’amore
(The Elixir of Love), but almost any story was grist for the Donizetti mill. Do you like English history? He turned Mary Stuart and Anne Boleyn into
Maria Stuarda
and
Anna Bolena.
Want to hiss the villainess? Try
Lucrezia Borgia.
Enjoy travel? You can follow Donizetti plots to France, Spain, India, and dozens of other spots around the globe.

Although Donizetti was by no means the first composer to insert a mad scene in his operas, he came up with one of the longest (about 14 minutes) and certainly the one most often played out on stage. Once again, thwarted love is the cause, as Lucia di Lammermoor murders her fiancé and pleads insanity with a wild display of vocal virtuosity that, as Herbert Weinstock put it rather sourly, “Only an insane woman would think of singing, but that no insane woman would have the control to sing.”

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
The first operatic mad scene appeared in
Nina
(1786), by the Frenchman Nicolas Dalayrac, the heroine being a lady who goes crazy for lack of love. The composer used to spell his name d’Alayrac, by the way, but that didn’t seem too smart when the French Revolution came along, so he quietly ditched the “d’ ” symbol of nobilty. Dalayrac also wrote a bunch of patriotic songs, to make sure everybody knew he was one of the good guys.

Sadly, life imitated art in Donizetti’s case, and the composer played out his own mad scene: His body and mind ravaged by syphilis, he was taken to an asylum in 1846 and died two years later, invalid and insane. Donizetti brought few innovations to his music, nor did his works change the course of operatic history; on the other hand, a handful of his works have been cherished by audiences for 150 years, and that is cause enough to be grateful.

In the opera house, costumes, sets, and other visual trappings help shore up the less interesting musical moments, so you might want to start with one of the many collections of Donizetti arias, catching such memorable high points as “Una furtiva lagrima” (A furtive tear) from
The Elixir of Love,
and another gorgeous declaration of love “O mio Fernando” in
La Favorita.
The mad scene and the equally famous sextet will give you a
Reader’s Digest
version of
Lucia,
and in the aria “Ah, mes amis” (Ah, my friends), the tenor shows off no less than nine high Cs to the suitably impressed
Daughter of the Regiment.

 
Music Word
Aria
means “air” or song, but in opera, you’re not just whistling Dixie: The term suggests a melody of some complexity and length, often designed to express a particular emotion or to carry forward some element of the plot line.

The complete opera sets are the next step along the Donizetti line, and to those previously mentioned, by all means add the cheery comedy of
Don Pasquale
and the high English tragedy of
Anna Bolena
(although it is a bit difficult to think of Henry VIII as Enrico).

It was Rossini, tongue firmly in cheek, who said “How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.” If you want to apply that dictum to Donizetti, there are collections of his opera overtures, and a number of rather quaint chamber pieces that sound like operas for instruments. This includes a Sonata for Violin and Harp, a Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano, and a Concertino for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra.