Complexity and Simplicity

Looking at the score of "I Gioielli della Madonna" one is struck by the enormous complexity to it at times. From the opening bars, it is chaos unleashed. Street vendors in Naples are shouting out their wares for sale, children are passing, choruses of townsfolk are commenting, Greek-chorus-like in the manner that all opening choruses act, a piper is piping, mandolins erratically enter and disappear. Truly it is a musical collage that fits together roughly with great effectiveness. If you can read music, take a look at the score, here (click on the bottom snippet to launch), and see what I mean.

And yet if you look at it, it's not the Schoenberg or Boulez manner of being complex. The meter is steady; the rhythms fit together well; it has 'windows' of visibility in it so that the layers can be heard. Very skillfully done. Then it all thins out when soloists come in, and lo and behold, there is a theme we hear! A theme that comes back again and again during the opera, which binds it all together. A simple, falling theme the kind of which has been known and loved since the days of Mozart.

Many of the canzones in the opera are ultra-simplistic: little waltzes, stornellos, serenades, many of which might have stepped from an operetta or an opéra-comique. Jostled side by side, it makes for an even more terrifying story. So much horror beside such common, quotidian melodies. It makes one very uncomfortable.

The ending, during which Gennaro commits suicide on stage with a knife he finds among scattered detritus on the floor, is accompanied by a celeste--the sunbeams falling on the jewels, on the Madonna. Enough to make you shudder.

I Gioielli will be performed by Teatro Grattacielo this month, on May 24th at the Rose Theater. You should go see it - there's only one performance, and it hasn't been performed in NY since 1926.

Intermezzi

In I Gioielli della Madonna there are two Intermezzi, one of which is torn from the material of the rest of the score, the other as though it were a piece from his trunk. Not that either one is inappropriate, but these Intermezzi were a feature of verismo operas, rather like the ballet in French opera. The first and most famous (discounting Carmen and La Traviata, of course), was that from Cavalleria Rusticana, Mascagni's 1890 shot over the bow for realism. That intermezzo had been written in 1888, two years before the opera was composed, but Mascagni had seen the Verga play in 1884 - and may have considered setting it as far back as that date. However, in the manuscript of the earlier intermezzo to Cav, which does differ slightly from the published version, it says as a tempo marking "imitating the prayer" - referring to the "Regina Coeli" ensemble of which this intermezzo is a reminiscence. So literally, did Mascagni write the intermezzo first and then retrofit everything else around it? Not unheard of.

In Wolf-Ferrari's case, there is no evidence that the slower intermezzo was written earlier, but it sounds as though it were referring to something else altogether. There are several YouTube versions of it. The Serenata Intermezzo which imitates not the prayer, but the ribald serenade that Rafaele sings to Maliella in the second act of the opera, seems more at home in the score, but is evocative in a playful way that seems to say that the composer is taking the side of the ruffian, not the moral center of the drama. That version is also rife on the Tube. (Thinking back to Bizet, it is hard not to compare this piece with one of the last Entrac'tes in Carmen, even down to the last two notes.) Perhaps each intermezzo is, then, a reflection of the characters in the opera, the men who are keen on gaining the attentions of Maliella.

Were there any doubt that the opera has moments of orchestral brilliance, there is also a Camorrist dance -- think of that, a sort of mafioso apache dance--that keeps the excitement up. Again, on line. Tell me that first part of it doesn't sound like it came from a draft of Carmen! (You may feel, 'all this needs is a tambourine' -- you don't have long to wait.)

Well, let us hope that the audience doesn't agree with the characters that sing in La Bohème, "Quest'intermezzi me fai morrir d'inedia."

The New Life of Wolf-Ferrari

"The works of Wolf-Ferrari have become, for quite some time now, superfluous, prey to the passage of time. It is useless to define him, as his faithful student Adriano Lualdi (1885-1971) did, as "the man most unadapted to earthly realities…a nostalgic by nature of pure, uncontaminated creativity" in order to rescue his works from the severe judgment of 20th century criticism that, for its part, did not understand how or where to place the works of a composer who confessed to have lived as a child until the age of 40..." Carlo Todeschi's comments on the composer of "I Gioielli della Madonna," which we will perform the end of next month, are all too true when one considers WF's huge popularity in his day, and the almost total neglect of his work in the 21st century (a neglect that began 50 years before).

His cantata "La Vita Nuova"--a quirky work--(you can see the score here)--was performed throughout Europe to great acclaim, and was even performed at the Metropolitan Opera in January 28, 1912, not without some contention. It seems that the 'MacDowell Chorus' was going to perform the U.S. premiere, but once the Met announced its intentions, they pulled out, leaving the road clear for the bigger brother to show off: - but the ace in the hole, of course, was the cast, with Alma Gluck and Pasquale Amato leading the way, and none other than Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari conducting, his only appearance at the Met. The reviews were lavish, although the language was rather equivocating:

"Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's cantata "La Vita Nuova," founded upon Dante's text, was given at the Metropolitan Opera House last evening before an audience that crowded the building to its utmost capacity. And although the work is not one that might be expected to appeal strongly to the audiences frequenting the Sunday-night performances at the Opera House, it gave an evident artistic pleasure."

Wolf-Ferrari, for all the ferocious music heard in "I Gioielli della Madonna", as you will hear on May 24th, was a quiet fellow who had a rather delicate constitution. There is a story about him at a rehearsal of the overture to "Il Campiello" during which he painfully asked the violas to play quieter. He stopped the next time round and asked them very softly to play quieter still. I know this sounds like a 'viola joke' but finally the performers simply moved their bows and played nothing at all, and Wolf-Ferrari said that that was fine, but he hoped that during the performance they would play even more quietly.