Verdi followed the example
of Rossini and Donizetti in re-working a successful piece
for his first assault on Paris. Like his illustrious predecessors
he was tempted to that city by the superior musical standards
and the greater money available for productions. In Verdi’s
case, he was also attracted by the lack of censorship that
plagued his work in Italy then under foreign occupation.
The work concerned, Jerusalem, a reworking in French
of I Lombardi plus additional music and the de
rigueur ballet, was premiered in November 1847. The plan
was for it to have been followed by a new original work by
Verdi. The upheavals in France, leading to the Second Empire
in 1848, made that impossible. Verdi did not go back to Paris
until 1852 when, during the composition of Il Trovatore,
he returned to negotiate the new contract. The Opéra were
desperate for a new Grand Opera, a work of four or five acts
with full ballet. At the height of his powers, and fully
aware of his own value in the international market, Verdi
drove a hard bargain. The full resources of the theatre were
to be put at his disposal and no other new opera was to be
performed at the theatre that year. Further, Verdi would
choose all the cast himself and there would be forty performances
guaranteed. The composer was also to enjoy the services of
Eugène Scribe who had been librettist for Halévy and Meyerbeer
for their ‘Grand Operas’ for Paris.
Les
Vêpres Siciliennes had
a chequered career in France and was not heard there in
its original language after 1865. Verdi was hindered in
its composition
by Scribe’s lethargy. The librettist, despite assistance
from Duveyrier, persistently failed to provide Verdi with
a dramatically taut final act to the extent that the composer
demanded release from the contract; its terms as originally
stipulated by him had not been met. Eventually matters
were resolved and the composer and poet reconciled their
differences with the plot being set in Palermo, Sicily,
in 1292 at the time of the French occupation. Verdi later
discovered Scribe had palmed him off with a libretto that
had been turned down by Hálevy and partially set to music
by the then ailing Donizetti as Le Duc d’Albe. In
any event it was first performed at the Académie Impériale
de Musique, Paris, (The Opéra) on 13 June 1855.
When
Rossini arrived in Paris he was slow to produce his first
opera in French. He had first to come to terms with the prosody
of the language. Verdi did not seem to have such difficulty.
This was perhaps due to his having read very widely in the
original language. He carried this capacity of matching the
musical line with the linguistic metre to the extent that
for the various revisions he made of Don Carlos, he
always had a text in French from which to work. That the
text was then translated into Italian may seem strange; it
certainly has an impact on the manner of the singing and
the matching of the music. French and Italian have common
roots and the words are produced in similar, but not the
same, part of the mouth. With German the situation is more
difficult when a singer has to match a translation with the
music. The distinctly glottal sound of the language and the
production of the words in the mouth are somewhat inimical
to the Verdian line and idiom. This is the first problem
faced here. I was initially hopeful with the first conversations
being in a semi-declamatory form (CD1 trs.1-2). But this
is not a singspiel but an opera of Verdi’s great middle period,
full of melody and requiring singers to caress phrases and
hold a legato line. Recordings of Verdi operas in English,
from Chandos, indicate that singers well versed in the Verdi
idiom can overcome, to a significant extent, the discontinuity
of the language and the musical line so as to convincingly
express the emotions of the work. This is the significant
failure with this issue. For example, the young Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau, who later on in his career recorded a number
of Verdi roles in Italian, is far too soft-grained of tone
to represent the character of Montfort. He also points the
music rather than letting Verdi’s melody and dramatic inflection
do the work. Likewise Gottlob Frick, who was noted for his
Wagner roles, is unable to caress the phrases or accommodate
the tessitura or legato of a Verdi basso cantante. His aria
on return to his homeland (CD1 tr.10) has no feel at all.
Hans Hopf, another well-known Wagnerian, sounds vocally strained
in his role whilst Hilde Zadek as Hélène
is seriously overparted.
What
strengths there are in this performance derive from Mario
Rossi’s feel for the music and the playing and singing of
the chorus and orchestra. Rossi’s reading of the well-known
overture is lyrical and sensitive and contrasts with some
hard-driven performances I have heard in the concert hall.
His conducting leaves me regretting that the ‘The Four Seasons’ ballet
music is not included. The mono recording is good for the
period although the orchestral sound is rather recessed.
The accompanying booklet has an essay on both the historical
background to the plot and, briefly, the writing of the opera;
these like the synopsis, not track-related, are given in
German, English and French.
Robert J Farr
BUY NOW
Guy de Montfort,
Governor of Sicily, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (bar); Duchesse
Hélène, sister of Duke Frederic, Hilde Zadek
(sop); Arrigo, a young Sicilian, Hans Hopf (ten); Jean Procida,
a Sicilian doctor, Gottlob Frick (bass); Bethune, a French
officer, Heinz Borst (bass); Vaudemont, A French officer,
Hermann Firchow (bass); Ninetta, Helene’s maid, Gisela Litz
(mezzo)
for
details
