Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is playing for our opera favourites theme!
21 February, Sidney Myer Music Bowl - FREE
For those packing their picnics for this treat, here's a summer gift. For each item on the program, I've added brief notes, a pointer to the words being sung and a link to an online performance.
Why bother? I'm always frustrated to attend a concert performance of opera extracts, however brilliant the singer, if I don't know the words being sung and their story. Opera pieces don't extract without loss, since they are within a drama set to and understood through music. "Opera" translates as just a "work" but it's always a collaborative work - composer's and librettist's. The great opera composers write music that tells drama and brings words alive as it unfolds. You need to know the story, to see the action, to understand the words in context. What's going on? Why is she so sad? How has their love lit their lives? The music can't do it alone.
So here's my annotation of the MSO's program of wonderful Puccini pieces. Have a great picnic!
Manon Lescaut Intermezzo
A sweet/sad beginning, very Puccini – one of his most complex emotional pieces. It’s start of Act 3 of Manon Lescault. Everything is going wrong for the student, des Grieux, who fell for young Manon, took her to Paris where she left him for a wealthy lover. Des Grieux came to rescue her but she delayed to get her jewellery (!) - and was arrested, to be deported.
The Intermezzo tells us all about this catastrophe, and what’s to come… (see below).
Interested? Here’s Tony Pappano from ROH taking us through this most Puccini piece.
Now listen to the Met orchestra playing it in a performance in 2008 (James Levine conducting).
Turandot: 'Nessun dorma'(None shall sleep)
Everyone knows this show-off aria for tenors. But do you know what he’s singing about? “None shall sleep” until Calaf’s name is discovered – this was the command of the ice princess he’s madly in love with. Why is she so desperate? When she knows it, she can have him beheaded. (Like an idiot, he’s given her this way out of agreeing to the rules she set for the contest for her hand in marriage. Never mind that the lovely servant girl Liu, who cares for his ancient father, will have to kill herself to avoid telling his name.) He wins, tells the princess his name and she improbably melts and loves him.
Here are the words he’s singing and lots more about the aria. Here’s Pavarotti in one of many Three Tenors concerts (1994).
Manon Lescaut: 'Sol perduta abbandonata' (Alone, lost, abandoned)
We left Manon at the Intermezzo before Act 3. And inevitably, everything else has gone wrong. She was deported, he followed, they have now escaped, into the American desert, facing death. Here are the words of her famous final aria, and here is Christina Opolais at the Met 2015.
Tosca: 'Recondita armonia' (Hidden harmony)
Mario Cavaradossi is an artist (and a parttime political radical). He’s painting in the church an image of Mary Magdalen, inspired by a beautiful unknown blonde woman worshipping there. He contrasts her with the dark beauty of Floria Tosca, his diva singer lover. (Pity Tosca doesn’t hear this aria, as her jealousy will have terrible consequences.)
Here are the words - and Pavarotti. Here’s Jonas Kaufmann at Royal Opera House 2021.
Tosca: 'Vissi d'arte' (I’ve lived for art)
The evil Baron Scarpia has captured Cavaradossi, in an attempt to seduce Tosca. This is her desperate call for heavenly help. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t come so she just stabs him.) Angela Gheorghiu was Tosca at that Royal Opera House performance, 2021.
Tosca: 'Mario! Mario'
Flashback – in their first act meeting, Tosca accuses Mario of infidelity with the woman in the painting, he lovingly dismisses her anxiety and they sing a beautiful love duet. (But no, that’s not the end of her jealousy or the opera.) Here’s Martina Serafin with Andrea Carè. Don’t bother with the words, you can tell she’s ever suspicious, deeply religious and a diva who has to win. (Her exit line is a demand that he paint the blonde model’s eyes dark.)
Fascinated by this opera? More in our earlier blog here.
Crisantemi Chrysanthemums)
More sadness, not in opera but in a sweet little elegy Puccini wrote for string quartet. (Some passages later were used in Manon Lescaut.) A brief comment about it here, with a very good recording.
La Boheme 'Che gelida manina'
(Your tiny hand is frozen)
Probably the best known tenor aria after ‘Nessun Dorma’. The bohemian men live in a garret to which Mimi has come asking for a candle to be lit. Rodolfo is the only one home, and when she drops her key accidentally (?) they search for it in the dark. He finds her cold hand and offers to warm it, so they tell each other about themselves.
Here is American Michael Fabiano with Australian Nicole Car at the Royal Opera House 4 years ago. Want to know what she says? Here’s Nicole Car with Mimi’s story. But she doesn't include that she has consumption and it's not curable in 1896.
Madama Butterfly Intermezzo
In the first act, Pinkerton, an American naval officer, ‘marries’ a 15-year-old Japanese girl, Cio-Cio-San (called Butterfly). She lovingly enters what she thinks is a legally binding marriage, he sails off to return to his American wife. Years on, Butterfly has adopted American customs, has a child by him and is isolated from her friends and relatives. Now, his boat returns. This is the waiting music, as she waits all night for him to come up the hill from the harbour to reclaim her.
Madama Butterfly: 'Un bel dì' (One beautiful day)
Flashback: earlier, Butterfly dreams of how it will be when he returns, ending with a defiant cry that he will do so, despite the doubts of her maid and the clear evidence that he’s no good.
Madama Butterfly: 'Viene la sera' (Night is falling)
Back to the beginning: the love duet at that ends the first act with their ill-fated nonmarriage. For the voices of a young Mirella Freni and Plàcido Domingo (dubbed) in a rather weird film with von Karajan conducting, go to the full film here – and the duet is from 39 to 55mins. For those who just want great voices, here are Jussi Björling & Victoria de los Angeles singing "Viene la sera".
Lyn, 13/2/24
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