Italian Nights: Carnegie Hall Opening Night with Jonas Kaufmann

About the Work

La forza del destino (“The Force of Destiny”) was commissioned by the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg and first performed there in November 1862, the only Verdi opera to receive its premiere in Russia. Its sprawling plot, taken from a Spanish play by the Duke of Rivas, follows Leonora and her lover Alvaro, whose planned elopement ends when Alvaro’s pistol goes off by accident and kills her father. From that moment fate pursues all three principal characters (Leonora, Alvaro and her vengeful brother Carlo) across Spain and Italy, through battlefields, taverns and a monastery, to a catastrophe at the end.

When Verdi revised the opera for La Scala in Milan in 1869, he replaced the original short prelude with a full-scale overture, and it is this overture that has become one of his most popular concert pieces. Verdi rarely wrote independent overtures, preferring brief preludes that lead straight into the drama; this is the grandest of the exceptions. It works almost like a symphonic poem in miniature, weaving together themes from across the opera: the “fate” motif that haunts the whole score, Leonora’s prayers for mercy, the music of Alvaro’s pleading, and the monks’ solemn chorus. It is an ideal curtain-raiser for an evening of Italian opera, and it shows off every section of a great orchestra, from the brass chords at the start to the virtuoso string writing of the fate theme.

What to Listen For

Listen first to the stark unison calls in the brass, the summons of destiny, and then to the restless, twisting theme that follows in the strings. This is the “fate” motif, and it keeps returning throughout the overture, sometimes whispered, sometimes hammered out, like a pursuer that will not give up.

Against it Verdi sets a series of lyrical melodies from the opera. Listen for the long, soaring melodies associated with Leonora’s desperate prayers for mercy and peace, and for a warm, hymn-like passage that recalls the monastery where she seeks refuge. The fate motif keeps breaking in beneath these melodies, and much of the excitement comes from the way Verdi combines them. Near the end the pace quickens, the brass takes up the melodies in a blaze of sound, and the overture races to a brilliant close.

About the Work

Francesco Cilea’s L’arlesiana is based on a story by Alphonse Daudet (best known through Bizet’s incidental music to the play). Federico, a young man from a farming family in Provence, is obsessed with a woman from Arles: the “arlesiana” of the title, who never actually appears on stage. When he discovers that she has been the mistress of another man, his family pushes him towards the faithful Vivetta, but he cannot forget the woman he loved, and the opera ends in his suicide.

The opera was first performed in Milan at the Teatro Lirico on 27 November 1897, and the role of Federico was sung by the young Enrico Caruso, then at the very start of his career. The opera itself never became a repertoire staple, but Federico’s lament from Act II, “È la solita storia del pastore” (“It is the same old story of the shepherd”), has been a favourite of tenors ever since. Federico sings it after listening to his simple-minded younger brother fall asleep; he compares himself to the shepherd in a folk tale who tries to tell his story and falls asleep before he can finish. Then, alone, he admits that he cannot forget the woman who betrayed him.

It is a perfect example of the Italian verismo style around 1900: direct, intimate emotion, a singable melody, and a climax that pushes the tenor voice to the limit of its intensity.

What to Listen For

The aria begins very quietly, almost as recitative, over a gently rocking accompaniment; the orchestra recalls a simple, folk-like tune, the “shepherd’s story” Federico is telling. Listen for how Kaufmann shapes these opening phrases softly, almost as if he were talking to himself.

The mood changes when Federico stops talking about the shepherd and starts talking about himself. The melody rises, the orchestra swells beneath him, and the words become a cry: he wants to forget, but he cannot. Listen for the great climax at the top of the tenor’s range and then the sudden collapse into despair at the very end: the whole emotional arc of the opera compressed into about four minutes.

About the Work

Umberto Giordano’s Fedora was first performed at the Teatro Lirico in Milan on 17 November 1898, almost exactly a year after L’arlesiana, and once again the young Enrico Caruso was in the cast, this time as Count Loris Ipanov. Caruso had to encore “Amor ti vieta” on the opening night, and the role helped make his name. The opera is based on a play by Victorien Sardou (whose La Tosca Puccini would set two years later), originally written for Sarah Bernhardt: a melodrama set among Russian aristocrats in St Petersburg, Paris and Switzerland, full of intrigue, police spies and a heroine who takes poison at the end.

The Russian princess Fedora sets out to find the murderer of her fiancé, and her suspicion falls on Loris. In Act II, at a reception in her Paris house, she tries to trap him into a confession by flirting with him, and Loris, who is in love with her, declares himself in “Amor ti vieta” (“Love forbids you not to love”). It is one of the shortest famous arias in the repertoire, less than two minutes long, but its sweeping melody has made it a favourite of tenors ever since.

What to Listen For

Listen for the lush, sweeping melody from the very first bar, carried by the tenor with the strings doubling it closely beneath. Loris is not confessing to murder here; he is confessing his love, and the music has the directness of a love song rather than an operatic scene.

The aria is so short that it grows in a single breath: the melody climbs steadily, the orchestra builds under it, and the climax on “l’amor ti vieta” is reached almost before you realise it. Pay attention to how the tenor balances passion and elegance: this is an aria that rewards line and legato more than sheer volume.

About the Work

Ottorino Respighi had lived in Rome for only a few years when he wrote Fontane di Roma (Fountains of Rome) in 1915–16, and the piece is in a way a newcomer’s love letter to the city. It was the first of what became his “Roman trilogy” of tone poems, later completed by Pini di Roma (1924), heard in the second half of this concert, and Feste romane (1928). The first performance in Rome in 1917 met a cool reception; it was a performance in Milan the following year under Arturo Toscanini that made the work famous.

Respighi’s idea was original. Instead of describing a story, he chose four famous fountains, each seen at a different time of day, and tried to capture “the sentiments and visions” that they suggested to him. The score has a short programme note by the composer for each section: the Fountain of Valle Giulia at dawn, the Triton Fountain in the morning, the Trevi Fountain at midday, and the Villa Medici fountain at sunset. The four pictures follow one another without a break.

Respighi, who had studied orchestration with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in St Petersburg, was a master of instrumental colour, and Fountains of Rome is full of shimmering effects (harps, celesta, piano, glockenspiel, divided strings and delicately interwoven woodwinds) used to suggest water, light and air. It is the quietest of the three Roman poems, beginning and ending in near silence, and its big climax at the Trevi Fountain is all the more overwhelming for it.

What to Listen For

The Fountain of Valle Giulia at Dawn. A pastoral opening: muted violins create a soft haze of sound, over which oboe and clarinet sing a simple, rustic melody. Respighi’s preface describes a pastoral landscape at daybreak. Listen for the gentle, rocking motion of the water flowing quietly in the half-light.

The Triton Fountain in the Morning. A sudden, loud horn call breaks the calm and the orchestra explodes into a bright, splashing scherzo. Respighi pictured naiads and tritons chasing one another and dancing among the jets of water. Listen for the glittering runs in the woodwinds, harps and celesta.

The Trevi Fountain at Midday. A solemn theme in the low woodwinds and brass slowly gathers strength until the whole orchestra bursts into a triumphant fanfare: Neptune’s chariot drawn by sea horses across the water, as Respighi described it. This is the climax of the piece; listen to how it rises and then fades away as the procession passes into the distance.

The Villa Medici Fountain at Sunset. A melancholy, evening mood. A flute and a solo violin sing over a gently murmuring accompaniment, a bell tolls softly, birds twitter, and the music gradually dissolves into silence as night falls over Rome.

About the Work

Ruggero Leoncavallo wrote both the words and the music of Pagliacci (“Clowns”), and the opera, first performed at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892 under the young Arturo Toscanini, made him famous overnight. It is the classic example of Italian verismo (“realism”), the movement launched two years earlier by Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, with which Pagliacci is still often paired: stories about ordinary people, violent passions and sudden death, told in compact, highly charged music. Leoncavallo claimed that the plot was based on a real crime judged by his father, a magistrate in Calabria, when the composer was a child.

The opera tells of a troupe of travelling players arriving in a village in southern Italy. Canio, the head of the company, discovers that his wife Nedda is in love with another man; that evening, during the performance of a comedy in which he plays a clown betrayed by his wife, he loses his grip on the difference between play and reality and murders Nedda and her lover in front of the audience.

The opera begins with a unique Prologue. Before the curtain rises, Tonio, the hunchbacked member of the troupe, steps out in costume and asks the audience’s permission (“Si può?”, “May I?”) to explain what they are about to see. The author, he says, wanted to paint “a slice of life”: actors are men of flesh and blood, with real passions and real tears. The Prologue is a manifesto of verismo and one of the great solo scenes in Italian opera; in the opera it belongs to the baritone who sings Tonio.

What to Listen For

The Prologue begins with a lively orchestral introduction that previews the opera’s main themes: first the bright, bustling music of the travelling players, then a sombre, sobbing theme for Canio’s heartbreak (you will hear it again in “Vesti la giubba” later in the evening), and finally a warm, sweeping love theme.

Then the singer steps forward with “Si può? Si può? Signore! Signori!” Listen for the way the vocal line moves between conversation and song: the explanation of the author’s intentions is almost spoken, but when Tonio talks about the actors’ real feelings, that they too are men of flesh and blood, the music opens up into a broad, passionate melody. The Prologue ends with a famous call, “Incominciate!” (“Let’s begin!”), which sends the curtain up.

About the Work

Between the two acts of Pagliacci, Leoncavallo places a short orchestral Intermezzo. In the opera, Act I has just ended with Canio’s devastating “Vesti la giubba”; the Intermezzo bridges the gap between that outburst and Act II, in which the villagers gather for the evening performance at which the tragedy will unfold.

Leoncavallo builds the Intermezzo from the opera’s themes of grief and inevitability, giving the orchestra a moment of reflection before the catastrophe. It is a lush, rich piece of string writing in the verismo manner, and like the intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana, it has become a popular concert item in its own right. In this programme it separates the Prologue from Canio’s great aria, a reminder that in Pagliacci the orchestra carries as much of the emotional weight as the singers.

What to Listen For

Listen for the solemn, weighty opening and then for the themes of grief from Act I, taken up broadly by the strings. The music swells to a passionate climax before subsiding into a quiet, sombre close. It is short, but it is one of the purest examples of the Italian orchestral sound of the 1890s: warm, emotional and unashamedly direct.

About the Work

“Recitar! … Vesti la giubba” (“To perform! … Put on the costume”) ends Act I of Pagliacci, and it is perhaps the most famous tenor aria of the verismo repertoire. Canio has just discovered that his wife Nedda has a lover, although he has not learned the man’s name. The performance for the villagers is about to begin, and he has to go on stage as the clown Pagliaccio, whose role in the comedy is to be the laughing-stock of a cheating wife.

Alone, Canio prepares himself. In the recitative he asks how he can perform when he is half out of his mind with grief; then, in the aria, he tells himself to put on the costume and the white face paint, because the audience has paid and wants to laugh. “Ridi, Pagliaccio”: laugh, clown, at your broken love. The contrast between the public mask and the private despair is the whole idea of the opera, and Leoncavallo expresses it in a melody of overwhelming directness.

The aria also has a place in the history of recorded sound. Enrico Caruso’s recordings of “Vesti la giubba”, made in 1902, 1904 and 1907, were among the best-selling records of the 78-rpm era, and did much to make the tenor voice the popular face of opera for the twentieth century. Jonas Kaufmann has sung the role of Canio on stage, and this aria is one of the great tests of any dramatic tenor: it demands both a huge climax and the ability to break down in real sobs at the end.

What to Listen For

Listen first to the recitative “Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio”: halting, broken phrases in which Canio can barely think straight, with the orchestra reacting to each outburst. Then comes the aria itself, built on the sobbing theme you heard in the Prologue’s introduction. The singer’s line rises steadily, reaching its climax on the words “Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto!” (“Laugh, clown, at your broken love!”), the highest and most exposed moment of the aria.

After that climax, the tenor often breaks into a real sob, and the orchestra takes up the melody in a great, grieving statement of its own as the curtain falls. Listen for the tension between singing and weeping: in the best performances you cannot quite tell where one ends and the other begins.

About the Work

Eight years after Fountains of Rome, Respighi returned to the city for a second tone poem, Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome), first performed at the Augusteo in Rome on 14 December 1924 under Bernardino Molinari. This time his subject was the umbrella pines that are among the most characteristic features of the Roman landscape, and once more he took four locations, each chosen, as he put it, as “witnesses of the principal events of Roman life”. Where Fountains moves through the times of a single day, Pines moves through time itself, from children playing in a modern park to the soldiers of ancient Rome marching into the city.

Pines of Rome is louder, bolder and more theatrical than Fountains, and it became one of the most popular orchestral works of the twentieth century, a showpiece for any orchestra with a strong brass section. It is also famous for a technical innovation: in the third section Respighi asks for a gramophone recording of a nightingale’s song to be played with the orchestra, one of the first times recorded sound was specified in a concert score. And the final march calls for extra brass instruments, the buccine (Roman trumpets, today usually played by flugelhorns or extra trumpets and trombones), which are sometimes placed around the hall to surround the audience with sound.

After the Italian operatic scenes of the evening, Respighi’s two Roman portraits frame the programme as an orchestral celebration of the city and its landscape, and give the Berliner Philharmoniker a chance to show off its full power in a grand finale.

What to Listen For

The Pines of the Villa Borghese. Bright, noisy, joyful music: children playing and singing nursery rhymes in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, marching like soldiers and dancing in circles. Listen for the dazzling, chattering orchestration, trumpets and all, which stops dead at the end.

Pines near a Catacomb. A complete change. Muted, low strings create a gloomy atmosphere, and a trumpet offstage sings a slow chant. Respighi imagined the pines standing over an early Christian catacomb, from which the sound of a mournful hymn rises. Listen for the chant growing into a huge, solemn climax before sinking back into darkness.

The Pines of the Janiculum. A night scene: a piano arpeggio, a warm clarinet solo, soft strings, the full moon over the pines on the Janiculum hill. At the end, listen for the recorded song of the nightingale that Respighi wrote into the score: a real bird singing over the orchestra’s hushed chords.

The Pines of the Appian Way. Dawn on the ancient Appian Way. Out of nothing comes a soft, heavy tread in the low strings, piano and timpani: the sound of a Roman army approaching. The march grows louder and louder as the extra brass (the buccine) enter in fanfares, until the whole orchestra, with organ, reaches a colossal climax as the legions march triumphantly up to the Capitol.