The complete idiot's guide to classical music (56 page)

As always, the press can give fame, and the press can take it away. After the premiere of
La Boheme
in 1896 (conducted by Arturo Toscanini, no less), one critic summarized his reaction to the opera with the remarkably inaccurate prediction that “Even as it leaves little impression on the minds of the audience, it will leave no great trace upon the history of our lyric theatre.” Ouch. What Puccini himself proclaimed “the finest opera I have ever written” drew even more dismal reactions, the distraught composer withdrawing the score after only two nights to escape the hissing audiences. The opera’s title?
Madame Butterfly,
which didn’t fly again for another four years.

 
Music Word
Verismo,
deriving from “vero,” the Italian word for “true,” refers to an opera (or indeed a work of literature) that deals with realistic subjects and people from everyday life (as opposed to the historical dramas and mythological legends favored by so many earlier composers). Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” (1890), dealing with scenes from peasant life, was one of the first verismo operas; another, coming two years later, was Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci,” about carnival people.

The operatic floppage was only temporary, of course. As we all know,
Boheme
and
Butterfly
were soon rehabilitated in public favor, and remain still among the most loved and often performed operas in the repertory. In fact, their heart-wrenching stories and eternal truths have engendered a number of theatrical children, among them the hit Broadway play
M. Butterfly
and two long-running musicals,
Miss Saigon
(
Madame Butterfly
) and
Rent
(
La Boheme
).

Speaking of truths, many of Puccini’s operas are in what is called
verismo
style. The Italian word is hard to translate precisely, but truthfulness comes close, or perhaps realism, or what literary folk call “a slice of life.” Instead of demons and dragons and netherwordly things that go bump in the night, Puccini wrote about people facing real problems with real emotions. It’s hard to imagine Wagner’s Valhalla gang riding through modern Berlin, but the starving writer, musician, painter, and philosopher who can’t pay the landlord of their Parisian garret in
La Boheme
transfer readily to the East Village denizens of
Rent.

H.L. Mencken, pressed for a single-phrase description of Puccini’s music, called it “silver macaroni, exquisitely tangled.” Puccini did indeed combine his inborn gift for soaring Italian melody with high theatrical flair and technical mastery. His operas are sentimental, but proudly, unabashedly so. They sing of real-life emotions with such poignancy and drama that one forgets all notions of stage or plot or production. His music sweeps us off into a very special world, and when the curtain falls, we leave that world with the greatest reluctance.

Puccini is probably a newcomer’s best introduction to the operatic stage. His approachable plots, logical libretti and strong sense of theatre help a lot, his soaring arias and brilliant orchestrations don’t hurt either. His works invite, rather than intimidate operatic freshmen, so come on in.

La Boheme,
with its fusion of high tragedy and low comedy, is an ideal starting point. Bring an extra handkerchief to
Madame Butterfly,
prepare to (mentally) hiss the vicious villain in
Tosca
, and for a touch of exoticism, go to China with
Turandot
and the closest thing to the Three Stooges in grand opera, her Imperial Ministers Ping, Pang, and Pong. Puccini even wrote a western, wherein an escaping outlaw woos and wins the manager of the Polka Saloon, also known as
The Girl of the Golden West.

Georges Bizet (1838–1875) grew up in a musical household—his father was a singing teacher, his mother a fine pianist—and his musical talents sprouted early. He was accepted into the Paris Conservatory at the tender age of nine, and while still in his teens collected prizes for his achievements at piano and organ, and his early composition efforts garnered him the prestigious Prix de Rome.

After that, it was pretty much all downhill. He wrote all sorts of piano pieces and a symphony, but nobody played them. He wrote an opera and a mass, and nobody sang them. The works that did get played and sung failed to produce any noticeable audience enthusiasm, nor did they fare any better at the hands of the critics. “M. Bizet is a young musician of incontestable worth who writes detestable music,” wrote the man in one Paris paper, describing his latest opus as “these chromatic meowings of an amorous or frightened cat.”

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
When Bizet won the prize that sent him to Rome, he carried with him a seal of recommendation from one of his teachers to an important Roman composer. What with the glorious sunsets and the pasta and the beautiful Italian women, Bizet never quite got around to contacting the composer or delivering the letter, but finally, just out of curiosity, he tore open the envelope to read the letter. “My dear friend,” it began. “I would like to introduce to you a pupil of mine, M. Georges Bizet. He is a totally delightful young man, intelligent, well-mannered and very friendly. I am sure you will like him immensely.

P.S. Bizet hasn’t got the slightest trace of musical talent.”

All that changed with
Carmen
, yes? Well, not exactly. First of all, the rehearsals were a nightmare, with the leading singers demanding constant rewrites of their arias and the women’s chorus almost going on strike because they claimed their music was too difficult. Then came the premiere, and all sorts of things went wrong. At one point, the tenor went two tones flat and the Carmen couldn’t find her castanets (she finally broke a dish and clacked the pieces together). The audience, shocked to see women smoking on stage and even more dismayed by the violent story, booed and hissed. The critics then proceeded to boo and hiss in print, and though the opera staggered on for another 37 performances, it has to be ranked among the more notable opening night fiascoes.

Three months to the day after the premiere, at almost precisely the moment when Carmen sees death in the tarot cards, Bizet himself died at the age of 37. He was never to know that his opera would be translated into dozens of languages, acclaimed in every corner of the world, and considered by later generations to be “the Queen of Operas.” On the other hand, he never lived to see his glorious music for
Carmen
set forth in jazz instrumentals or fitted out with pop lyrics, so just possibly he was ahead of the game after all.

Carmen
is the big gun, of course, and even if you hate singing, you can enjoy its magnificent melodies in the two
Carmen
Suites for Orchestra, and the dazzling “Carmen Fantasy” for violin and orchestra by the Spanish composer Pablo de Sarasate. There’s also a much less well-known Bizet opera called
The Pearl Fishers
, which is worth looking into.

Otherwise, look for Bizet’s delightful suites of incidental music to “L’Arlesienne,” his youthful (and charming) Symphony in C, and the delectable suite called “Jeux d’enfants” (Children’s Games), which is available both in piano and orchestral form.

Some operas, like some wines, just don’t travel well. If you go to Prague, you’ll probably find several Dvorak and Smetana operas on the boards, but only the latter’s
Bartered Bride
has crossed the Atlantic with any frequency, mostly on the strength of its sparkling Overture and instrumental dances. Spain is in love with the zarzuela, a kind of cross between grand opera and operetta, but even the ardent championing efforts of such high-profile artists as Placido Domingo have failed to infiltrate any of these very attractive pieces into the American mainstream. Want to hear some great operas by Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, and other Slavic composers? With a few exceptions, (such as Mussorgsky’s
Boris Godunov
and Tchaikovsky’s
Eugene Onegin
, you’ll either have to track them down to Mother Russia, or wait for visiting Russian companies to bring them to us.

Going to an opera is a little like enjoying a meal at a fine restaurant. You sit down at the table with high expectations—if the ingredients aren’t fresh or haven’t been prepared by a master chef, if the entrée is over-or under-spiced, if the service is slow, even if your favorite waiter is on vacation, you may well make a mental note to try the place down the block next time. Countless operas have been relegated to the dust-bins of history because some part of their complicated makeup didn’t quite work. Schubert lavished more and more beautiful melodies on more and more stupid plots, so his operatic efforts came to naught. Other composers were foiled by incomprehensible librettos, or else, even when they had good ones, the spark of inspiration didn’t burn quite brightly enough. After Rossini’s
Barber of Seville
, nobody wanted to hear Paiseillo’s opera of the same title any more, and Puccini’s
La Boheme,
quickly relegated Leoncavallo’s
La Boheme
to dust-gathering on library shelves.

It took Beethoven four Overtures, 11 years, and countless revisions to get
Fidelio
right, and it taught him a lesson: He never wrote another opera. Brahms, Chopin and Liszt were even smarter: They didn’t compose operas at all.

There were many others who did write operas, of course. In fact, they wrote lots and lots of operas, but only rarely did all of the ingredients mesh perfectly, which is why there are so many composers whom we know almost entirely on the basis of one operatic success. Twenty-five-year-old Pietro Mascagni had a smash hit with
Cavalleria Rusticana,
then spent the rest of his life in a vain attempt to come up with its equal. Ruggero Leoncavallo wrote the other half of the frequently encountered
Cav-Pag
doubleheader,
Pagliacci
, but don’t expect to find any of his other dozen other operas at the Met either.

Tchaikovsky doubled that success rate, with both
Eugene Onegin
and
The Queen of Spades
receiving many American productions, but Mussorgsky hit the operatic jackpot only once, with his stunningly dramatic portrayal of the Czar
Boris Godounov
. Engelbert Humperdinck (the composer, not the pop singer), might as well have retired from the operatic battlefields after
Hansel and Gretel,
ditto Gounod after
Romeo and Juliet,
Saint-Saens after
Samson and Delilah,
and Bizet after
Carmen.

The astonishing thing about many of the composers profiled here—plus Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss, whom we discussed in earlier chapters—is that they were able to mine so many gems from the operatic fields. Look down the roster of any opera house in the world, and the great bulk of the repertoire (at least in the U.S.) represents the work of those masters.

 

• Opera began as a collaboration between a group of Italian poets, singers, scientists, and composers.
  
 

• Rossini’s
  Barber of Seville
  is funny and has great tunes.
  
 

• Bellini’s
  Norma
  has a very difficult part for the soprano.
  
 

• The
  Daughter of the Regiment
  by Donizetti is a showcase for the tenor.
  
 

• Verdi wrote
  Rigoletto, La Traviata
  and
  Aida.
  
 

• Puccini wrote
  La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, Tosca,
  and
  Turandot.
  
 

• Bizet’s
  Carmen
  is one of the most famous operas of all time.