Odyssey Opera program notes

Performed by Odyssey Opera in Boston, February 2020 ROSSINI

ELISABETTA, REGINA D’INGHILTERRA (1815)

Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra [Elizabeth, Queen of England] is a two-act dramma per musica or opera by Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) to a libretto by Giovanni Schmidt (c1775-1839). Schmidt was the official poet to the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, where the work premiered under Rossini’s direction on October 4, 1815 in a lavishly appointed opera house which was home to some of Europe’s finest singers and orchestral players.

Schmidt closely based his story on the four-act play Il paggio di Leicester [Leicester’s Page] by Carlo Federici, in the repertory of Naples’ Teatro Fondo from 1813-1815: in particular, the play’s third act provides an exact blueprint for the opera’s first act finale. Contemporaries such as Stendahl noted similarities between Il paggio and earlier sources, including a popular French play, the stories of Sir Walter Scott, and especially The Recess, Sophia Lee’s 1785 English novel about fictional daughters of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Five years later, playwright Federici further developed Schmidt’s libretto into a Venetian play, also titled Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra.

THE STORY

The well-crafted Italian libretto shows the private life behind the monarch, focusing on Elizabeth’s rivalry with her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587, and also Queen consort of France from 1559-1560). The opera sparkles with vocal fireworks that culminate in a virtuosic showdown between Elizabeth (soprano), her Councilor (the Duke of Norfolk, tenor), her lover (the Earl of Leicester, tenor), and his secret wife (Matilda, soprano). Mary remains imprisoned in the Tower, defeated and unseen: this parallels Napoleon’s recent capture (June 22, 1815) and his final exile to Saint Helena in the South Atlantic.

Before the action begins, Leicester and Norfolk have been busy. Sent as a general to Scotland, Leicester has both defeated the Scots and secretly married Matilda, the (fictional) daughter of Mary, Queen of Scots. His chief rival is the Duke of Norfolk, advisor to Queen Elizabeth. Norfolk is also secretly married (also fiction), to the imprisoned Mary, and they managed to have two children: Henry (Enrico, mezzo soprano) and... Matilda!

ACT ONE In the Throne Room of Whitehall Palace, London, the Earl of Leicester returns to court, celebrating his victory over the Scots (Più lieta, più bella). The Duke of Norfolk remains unmoved, jealous of his rival, so Guglielmo [William], the captain of the guard, questions him. Queen Elizabeth enters (Quant’è grato all’alma mia) and honors Leicester, with whom she is infatuated. He produces a group of Scottish hostages. However, he recognizes his (secret) wife, Matilda (in male attire), and her brother, Enrico, among the prisoners.

When they are alone, Leicester reproaches his wife (Incauta! che festi?). Because she is the daughter of Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots, she is in danger. Leicester decides that, to avoid suspicion, he will speak to neither Matilda nor Enrico (Separarci convien). Matilda tells Leicester that the Queen loves him, and mourns her ill fortune: (Sento un’interna voce).

Unwisely, Leicester confesses his secret marriage to Norfolk (Un di, dopo ostinato pugna), so Norfolk tells the Queen, who is furious (Perché mai, destin crudele). The Scottish captives and Leicester are summoned. The Queen offers to make Leicester her consort (Eccoti, eroe magnanimo), but he prefers death to separation from Matilda. Elizabeth accuses him of treason, and Leicester, Matilda, and Enrico are sent to the Tower.

ACT TWO

Norfolk is denied a royal audience (Perchè tremi, o mio cor?). The Queen has sentenced Matilda to death, demanding that she renounce her marriage in return for the full pardons (Vuole ragion del stato). She agrees, but Leicester tears the document up, and they are both re-arrested. The Queen banishes Norfolk for informing on Leicester (Oh indengo!).

People lament Leicester’s upcoming execution. Norfolk foments rebellion (Amici, io vengo). As Leicester languishes in prison (Della cieca fortuna), Norfolk arrives and convinces Leicester that he has begged the Queen to pardon him (Deh! scusa i trasporti). The Queen interrupts the meeting, at which Matilda and Enrico are hiding, and Norfolk is finally exposed.

Norfolk emerges with a sword drawn to stab the Queen, but he is disarmed. The Queen condemns Norfolk to death (Indegno! Fellon), and pardons Leicester and the Scottish prisoners (Bell’alme generose).

THE COMPOSER AND HIS TIME

Rossini was born in Pesaro, Italy, the son of a government meat inspector who was also the town trumpeter. Both parents performed in a wide variety of theaters: his mother sang throughout the Marche and Emilia-Romana regions from 1798-1808, and his father played horn (“primo corno da caccia”) and trumpet in Pesaro, Bologna, Lugo, and Faenza. As a student at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna, Rossini made an intensive study of the work of Haydn (conducting The Seasons in 1811) and Mozart (esp. the operas), and developed an enthusiasm for the vocal works of Cimarosa. Without effective copyright law, operatic composers made most of their money from new works and revivals they themselves directed. From 1810-1823, Rossini composed and directed thirty-four operas, and he was the Director of Paris’ Théâtre Italien from 1824-26. By the age of thirty-seven, he had given up writing for the theater, but continued to compose more than forty choral works combining Neapolitan sacred and opera styles, of which the Stabat mater (1831-42) and the Petite Messe solenelle (1863) are the most famous.

Rossini began the Neapolitan phase of his career in 1815 and was House Composer and Artistic Director of Naples’ royal opera houses until 1822 (composing nine operas). He introduced himself to the Bourbon court with both a new opera (Elisabetta) and revivals of older ones. The Giornale delle due Sicilie of October 31, 1815 asserted that Rossini's “Elisabetta regina d’Ighilterra is greeted with ever more applause on the stage of San Carlo, where, to the glory of Italy and to the admiration of all Europe, the great composers of music’s most wonderful epoch were formed and nurtured. And at the Teatro dei Fiorentini, which still resounds with the melodious accents of the imaginative Cimarosa and of the tender and passionate Paisiello, his Italiana in Algeri [is greeted similarly].” Since none of Rossini’s operas had been produced in Naples before, it is likely that he supervised both the new work and the revival the same season.

The opera’s subject matter, Elizabeth’s unreciprocated love for the Earl of Leicester and conflict with French/Scottish line of Mary, Queen of Scots, hardly seems a natural choice for a royal gala in Naples, but recent politics had made the English relevant again. From 1808-1815, Napoleon had been fighting a Coalition of a dozen European powers including Austria, Prussia, Russia, Naples, and Sicily, financed and often led by Britain. As Coalition forces gradually adopted British military tactics over a series of seven long campaigns, they were eventually able to defeat and imprison Napoleon. Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, had ruled as King of Naples from 1806, but the Congress of Vienna (June 9, 1815), had just restored the Bourbon Ferdinand IV as King of Naples.

The première of Elisabetta on October 4, 1815 was momentous not only for Rossini, who would spend the next decade in Naples, but also for his employer. Rossini had grown up in northern Italian cities under Napoleonic control, so Elisabetta helped to celebrate both Joachim Murat’s defeat at the Battle of Tolentino (March 3) and Wellington’s victory over Napoleon at Waterloo (June 18). Operatic life in Naples had been mostly dormant during the final phases of Napoleonic rule, and Elisabetta was the very first new opera heard at the Teatro San Carlo after Ferdinand IV’s restoration.

In the early nineteenth century, Italian opera was evolving toward a market system, and each major city had its own local theater. Stendhal traveled throughout the peninsula in the 1810s and lived in Milan for seven years, attending the theater and describing the very different Milanese, Florentine, or Neapolitan publics. In Rome, Naples, et Florence (1817), he described the theater where Elisabetta was premiered as “dazzling the eyes and enrapturing the soul.” Naples’ Teatro Real di San Carlo was built in 1737 to be the largest opera house in the world: its blue upholstery and gold decorations reflected the official colors of the Bourbons, and it originally had 184 boxes for the aristocracy, 1,379 seats, and sometimes held as many as 3,000, with half standing. The oldest continuously active opera venue in the world, it was connected to the royal palace by a private entrance. Unlike almost all other Italian theaters, it proscribed curtains in the house so that the sovereign could fully scrutinize his subjects.

Domenico Barbaja (1777-1841) managed Naples’ royal opera houses from 1809-1841, engaging innovative, sumptuous productions that attracted some of the best voices in Europe. Barbaja made his first fortune by running a successful coffee shop next to La Scala in Milan and inventing (or claiming to invent) the “Barbajada,” a new chocolate-flavored coffee topped with frothing milk (the mocha?).

As with all of Rossini’s early works, Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra was written for a specific house in a specific season, but he expected his operas to evolve over time, so he spent little time orchestrating or notating detailed elements of expression. His original score is held by the Liceo Rossini (formerly the Palazzo Micharelli) in Pesaro, Italy, and it has more in common with Monteverdi’s simple Baroque layout than it does with Wagner’s complex, minutely detailed Romantic orchestration. In his early career, Rossini never composed with permanence or immortality in mind.

Composers were contractually required to participate in a certain number of rehearsals and to attend their premieres and several performances, prepared to receive the public’s reactions. Audiences responded throughout the performance (even calling composers to the stage to be booed and cheered for a single new cabaletta). Rossini was less attentive to his audience than Donizetti, who warned the public in advance about production problems and exaggerated his successes (“denari a bizzeffe”/gobs of money) and failures (fiaschissimo/the worst fiascos). Bellini called his audience “the supreme judge,” and Verdi wrote of his success in Venice, “The box office is the real thermometer of pleasure.” Angelo Petracci, manager of the royal theaters in Milan, wrote to Rossini in 1817 that the public was growing “more difficult every day.” Rossini was even petitioned in 1824 by the Parisian “public” through newspapers; they “strongly asked that the music played by the stage band [an onstage military march in La donna del lago] be suppressed.”

Thanks to the Romantic aesthetic, Rossini became an international star as opera surpassed the prose theater in the Italian states and became the quintessential “social art” predicted by Schlegel in his influential Course of Dramatic Literature (translated into Italian in 1817).

MUSIC & STYLE

A common theme in the 1810s was the desire for brevity, with Rossini asking librettists for “two short acts” and Donizetti writing, “These days with eight numbers you can amuse a public, with ten you bore it.” Italian opera was also more ephemeral than other national traditions, since audiences enjoyed hearing the same words set by a new composer. Venetian and Neapolitan houses had insatiable appetites for “novelty,” with Luigi Zamboni (Rossini’s first Figaro), noting that the Roman audience “shows a particular enthusiasm for modern music,” caring little for “old-fashioned style.” Fixed casts and renowned prima donnas would not have met the expectations of the turbulent Italian public, which constantly demanded new arias and new singers.

Rossini wrote quickly and was notoriously economical when composing: he completed whole operas in less than three weeks by combining new ideas with repurposed earlier music. Self-borrowing (and re-texting music from earlier works) was a common technique in early bel canto opera: both Rossini and Donizetti worked so fast, and re-used so much music, that modern critics have accused their operas of being devoid of dramatic “truth.”

Both the famous overture that begins Elisabetta and half of Elizabeth’s unforgettable entrance aria were first composed for the 1813 Milan premiere of Rossini’s youthful Aureliano in Palmira, and they later became attached to Rossini’s hit Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816). The overture we hear today shares themes with the first finale of Elisabetta and by late 1817 had replaced Rossini’s original Barber overture, adapted from Spanish tunes and heard only at Barber’s Rome premiere.

Elizabeth’s double nature is already at center-stage in her entrance aria, the cabaletta of which would be reworked for Rosina in The Barber as “Una voce poco fa”. The pleasurable shock of hearing this music coming from the lips of Queen Elizabeth I presents us with a priceless opportunity to bridge the old scholarly divide between form and history. In this introductory scene, Elizabeth is heralded by admiring courtiers, and she responds in a well-behaved slow movement that expresses gratitude for Leicester’s military victory. Her aria is a carefully paced accumulation of musical energy that was one of Rossini’s specialties. Elizabeth ratchets up tension with each iteration, and then falls silent in a classic “Rossini crescendo”: the strings repeat a tiny melodic fragment, stoking the fires until a big cadential release.

Rossini’s music was so widely known in the early eighteenth century, that it had an oversized effect on the vocal evolution of the Italian lyric form (esp. melodic forms such as AA’BA and their typical harmonies). His melodies were highly ornamented and audiences expected vocal fireworks to be added in repeated passages. As bel canto opera evolved, contemporaries such as Bellini began to prefer more speech-like, syllabic settings of text (and when Bellini re-used his own music, he usually simplified it).

Some arias from Elisabetta had a second life as added interpolations in other nineteenth-century operas. Giuditta Pasta (1797-1865), one of the leading Italian sopranos of the 1820s inserted “Bell’alme avventurose” into her performances of Rossini’s Eduardo e Cristina, beginning at the Carnival of 1822 in Turin.

PERFORMANCES

Rossini wrote the title roles of Elisabetta (1815), Armida (1817), Ricciardo e Zoriade (1818), Ermione (1819), Zelmira (1822), and Semiramide (1822) for Isabella Colbran (1785-1845), reigning soprano in Naples, song composer, and (briefly) the mistress of Barbaja. Stendhal wrote of Colbran’s Elizabeth: “When Signorina Colbran spoke with Matilda, it was impossible to escape the conviction that this proud woman had, for twenty years, been a queen whose authority was absolute. It was the ingrained acceptance [ancienneté] of the mannerisms bred by despotic power which characterized the acting of this great artist.”

Colbran and Rossini worked closely together until her retirement in 1824 at age forty-two, and he considered her as the greatest interpreter of his music: she also created the roles of his Desdemona in Otello (1816) and Elena in La donna del lago (1818). Born in Madrid, she studied in Paris and had known Rossini since they were student singers in the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna (1806). With a three-octave vocal range, a mastery of trills and leaps, and a “sweet, mellow” voice with a rich middle register, she quickly became one of the leading sopranos of her generation. After eight years in Naples, she and Rossini married and accompanied the San Carlo opera company to Vienna and Venice. They lived together (mostly) in Paris until 1837, when Rossini began to pursue Olympe Pélissier, a Parisian model and courtesan who he married in 1846 (after Colbran died).

Norfolk was written for the influential author and “Rossini tenor” Manuel García (1775-1832). Also from Spain, García began to appear in Parisian operas from 1808, and he developed a following both as a voice teacher to the stars and an impresario in his own right. His children included the celebrated Maria Malibran (mezzo soprano), the dramatic star and pianist/composer Pauline Viardot, and his son Manuel, who became a leading writer on Rossini. Ten years after García premiered in Elisabetta, he was invited by Mozart’s librettist to introduce Italian opera to New Yorkers. The troupe traveled as far as Mexico, giving the first unabridged performances of operas by Mozart and Rossini in the Americas.

From the 1820s, opera expanded into more theaters and seasons, both in and out of Italy. The old type of comic opera had allowed groups of modest Italian singers to play to a extensive network of small towns at home and larger towns abroad (including Lima, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, and Macao) was fading due to changes of taste and politics. Serious opera, given new precedence by Rossini, was vocally more demanding but very popular worldwide. V. Jacquemont, a young French scientist who stopped in Rio in 1828, reported “a detestable Italian company, with a still more execrable orchestra, murder Rossini three times per week.” Singers transposed and interpolated roles in all of bel canto opera until Verdi, armed with a new copyright law, stopped this practice in the 1860s.

The holograph (autograph score in Rossini’s hand) of Elisabetta has been published as two volumes of Early Romantic Opera (New York: Garland, 1979) with a detailed introduction by Philip Gossett, who wrote his 1970 PhD dissertation on Rossini’s operas at Princeton. While the French had a long tradition of publishing full scores of operas produced in Paris (and used in the provinces), the Italians preferred manuscript copies. Rossini conceived his works to be a nexus of potentially interchangeable parts, adapted from earlier compositions depending on the requirements of singers and local censors. Given such fluidity, any printed score would be constantly taken apart and remade for each new production.

After the premiere of Elisabetta in Naples (October 4, 1815), the work traveled throughout Europe, with a notable first London performance at the King’s Theater, Haymarket (April 30, 1818) and a revival in Madrid in 1882. Several excellent recent performances are available in full on YouTube: RAI Milano (1953, with Maria Vitale di Venosa as Elizabeth), Palermo (1970, with Leyla Gancer), Naples (1991, with Anna Antonacci), and Sassari (2015, with Silvia della Benetta). The complete opera was first recorded in 1975 as part of Philips’ pioneering Rossini edition (with Montserrat Caballé), and OPERA RARA released a well-annotated 3-CD set featuring Jennifer Larmore in 2002.