Re: Verdi's VESPRI SICILIANI?

On Mar 20, 12:37 pm, atsarisb...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
I have long thought of this opera as a mangled masterpiece. Verdi was
certainly Verdi, ljo -- he had just written his Big Three, and
attended a lot of Meyerbeer (attentively) so all the pieces were in
place and he knew what he was doing. But he was writing for the
grandest forces L'Opera had to offer (and look at Huguenots again if
you think Meyerbeer only focused on two or three characters).

Actually, it was not ljo who suggested that Meyerbeer only focuses on
a handful of characters, if that. 'Twas I. And I expressed myself
badly. What I mean is that it's rare when Meyerbeer chooses to pose
the nth degree of _contradictory_ vocal difficulty for more than one
character at a time. PROPHETE is one of the few exceptions. Here
it's two characters, the tenor and the mezzo, who both need the nth
degree of both heroic vocal weight and heroic agility. But even the
mezzo does not go through quite the same wild shifts in tessitura
(although her range is indeed formidable) as a soprano part like
Helene/Elena -- or even Jean in PROPHETE, where extended sequences
stand in sharp contrast to each other, unlike his always volatile but
essentially centered "mommy";-).

And in HUGUENOTS, only Raoul indulges in the sharpest shifts in vocal
style from declamatory to heroically agile. Valentine does not quite
match him here. When she is agile, she is not entirely heroic, when
heroic she is not fully agile. There is a "courtesy" maintained for
one versus the other that we don't hear in Raoul. Each of the other
characters in HUGUENOTS maintain more sharply defined vocal types;
they don't cross significant barriers at all. (Marcel does need power
and a trill; but even he does not go through the minimally ambiguous
tessitura terrain of a Valentine, let alone a Raoul.)

And he
was writing in French.

Part of the trouble with hearing a first-rate Vepres is that it is
very seldom done in French and really should be -- the Italian
libretto makes a mess of music composed for French verse. Tossed off
"female" final syllables are heavily emphasized.

I would agree on this. And it was one of the salutary things I
noticed when first hearing this in the original French with Miricioiu
and Casanova over the Web in 2002 over Radio 4 Netherlands. That
certainly makes the prosody of the score far more user-friendly, of
course. But there are still those appalling shifts in tessitura for
both principals.

Motivations are
[a mess]. It never has worked, and it's given the piece an
unfortunate reputation.

Sometimes, the conflicted feelings of certain characters do get too
confusing to be dramatically compelling. Yes. But I would still
maintain that the conflicted feelings in the Act IV duet for soprano/
tenor can be rendered effective if sung as imagined in my (frustrated)
mind's ear.

The other big problem is the hash Verdi
insisted on making of Scribe's original -- which ended with the
current Act III. (cf. Duc d'Alba) The additional two acts include a
180-degree character change for the soprano, that Verdi thought he
could cover with very elaborate music in two or three moods she had
not previously exhibited. Helene does not come over as complex; she
comes over as schizoid.

Even with the Callas set? I'm not an all-weathers Callas fan, but
hearing her tackle this at Florence in young, fresh voice, I am for
once convinced by what happens to this character here. I only wish
her tenor were similarly convincing, frankly.

Also, rare is the soprano who can manage all
that and still toss off the pointless bolero in Act V -- which can't
be omitted as it's the most famous number in the score.

The Siciliana is a rare moment of happiness for her (as is the case
for Henri/Arrigo's soft and tender -- and high -- solo in the same
scene). It adds something important to the character if done with
conviction. Is it brilliant as drama? Not really. But I don't find
it insuperable either.

So no, I haven't heard a perfect Vespri, but then I've only heard it
ten times, once in French (and once in German). The German
performance, by the way, in East Berlin, was one of the most exciting
things I've ever seen anywhere, but it omitted nearly all of Act IV,
and we know that's the best music in the opera.

Well, that's a copout! :-) I would like to know, though, what it was
that made this German revival especially effective in spite of all.

Love to hear Caballe and Domingo in it -- I heard them both live, but
separately. Arrigo is not an easy role either -- it KILLED Nicolai
Gedda -- Ochman was very good in it.

I would say that Henri/Arrigo is the hardest role in the piece. Yes,
the two principals are more evenly matched than not. But by a hair,
I'd say that Henri/Arrigo is even harder to cast than Helene/Elena. I
have heard a tiny handful of effective Helenes/Elenas. But I have
never ever heard anywhere an effective Henri/Arrigo. If anyone here
has -- one who follows every note and does it easily and expressively
-- I'd love to know. I've almost decided it's unsingable -- as
written ............... almost.

The cheap video with Studer isn't bad at all. She manages it.

I agree that she's in good control there and manages to make it
reasonably expressive in the bargain.

You can
fast forward through the ballet.

You see, the ballet to me is yet another instance where we have music
that may not be maximally effective, true, but is not a total loss if
handled by an imaginative choreographer and conductor. Once again,
VEPRES/VESPRI is not an infallible masterpiece, but it's not a
negligible work either. And the ballet is but one more hurdle that is
not absolutely brilliant, of course, but still not merely a throwaway
either. It's theoretically possible to integrate this sequence
reasonably effectively into the overall drama, just as one can
theoretically do the same with all of Henri/Arrigo's appalling vocal
demands, with Helene/Elena's sudden shifts in motivation in the last
two acts, etc., etc. These are all tough hurdles, of course, but they
_may_ not -- singly -- kill the work, if each of the hurdles are
tackled with really superb talent and conscientious rehearsal. In any
case, the point of a work like VEPRES/VESPRI, IMO, is to dare to
tackle the whole monster uncut and make it work as a whole, or tackle
it not at all.

Maybe I'm being too much an idealist here, but since I agree anyway
that the work can be easier if cuts are made for the ballet, for the
tenor, and for goodness knows what else(!), that ultimately leaves me
interested only in whether or not it's possible to perform it
effectively, and faithfully, precisely as the composer left it. --
And obviously, performing it in the original French makes yet more of
the innate expressions of genuine feeling in the work and the music
live again.

Cheers,

Geoffrey Riggs

.

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