LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Lucia di Lammermoor: An Historical Perspective “Ah, quella voce m’è qui nel cor discesa!”

By Giorgio Migliavacca 1835 was a veritable Annus Mirabilis — a year of wonders — in the annals of opera. It began with the premieres of I Puritani, La Juive, and Marin Faliero in Paris and then continued with Ines de Castro and Lucia di Lammermoor in Naples. Donizetti spent the early part of that year in Paris where his Marin Faliero was well received but did not produce the same impact on the public as Bellini’s last opera. He was well aware of this but felt duly rewarded when he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Bellini wrote that after three performances everyone deemed Marin Faliero to be a funeral. The Sicilian composer was unable or perhaps unwilling to grasp that what he had described as a funeral was a dark hue that had been imparted to the score — the same “tinta” and mood that Donizetti was to use for Lucia di Lammermoor, and later on Verdi also adopted for many of his operas. Donizetti saw both I Puritani and La Juive: the first (in his own words) “shook him quite a bit”; the second made a strong impression on him for the grand scale production but left him indifferent from a musical point of view - an opinion that was later shared by Verdi. At the time Donizetti had signed a contract for a new opera to be performed at the Gaetano Donizetti (circa 1835) San Carlo in Naples in summer. After the unsavory Maria Stuarda experience the composer demanded as a pre—condition that he would be supplied with a libretto that had been approved by the censor, at least four months ahead of deadline. The 37-year-old composer had already written some fifty operas, twelve of them for the San Carlo including the exceedingly successful L’esule di Roma and Fausta. By early May two of the four months had elapsed and no libretto had been submitted to Donizetti. The Neapolitan opera 1

houses were under the incompetent management of the Società d’Industria e Belle Arti headed by the Duke of Torella. As a result the temple of opera seria had been desecrated when Lauro Rossi’s opera buffa Amelia inaugurated the 18341835 Carnival Season. It was a fiasco despite (and partly due to) Maria Malibran singing (and dancing, sic) the title-role. “You can imagine the indignation of all the big-wigs in attendance,” wrote music publisher Guillame Cottrau to his sister in Paris. Although there is no evidence of how Donizetti found the new libretto, there is no doubt that Salvatore Cammarano’s adaptation of Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor was the composer’s personal choice. 34-year-old Salvatore had just written the libretto for Giuseppe Persiani’s Ines de Castro and Donizetti had heard nothing but praise about the young poet. Persiani’s Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani, the first Lucia [from an 1838 print, London] most successful opera benefitted from a first-class libretto and Cammarano’s natural gift for dramatic propulsion. Indeed, it is quite rare at this point in time to encounter operas where the action is tight and the sequence is almost that of a movie and this must have been noticed by Donizetti who was becoming more and more skilled about the dynamics of his works. Cammarano was at the time working as a “concertatore” at the San Carlo. The job description included taking care of productions, being a discrete stage director, and coordinating the work for stage sets. The collaboration between Donizetti and Cammarano was a most fortunate and fruitful one as it produced major works such as Belisario, Roberto Devereux, Poliuto and Maria di Rohan, to name a few. Donizetti liked Cammarano’s poetry and the two men got on well. At the end of May the choice of the subject had been made, and in retrospect it seems mere coincidence that Donizetti chose a subject from the same writer who had inspired the libretto for I Puritani. In fact, in 1819 Rossini had also borrowed from Scott for his La Donna del Lago; 2

Gilbert Duprez, the first Edgardo

The wedding scene [London, 1847]

Pacini followed suit with other Scott’s inspired operas with his Vallace, Il Talismano, I Fidanzati, and Ivanhoe; not to mention Pavesi’s La dama bianca d’Avenello, Coccia’s Edoardo in Iscozia and Donizetti’s own Elisabetta al Castello di Kenilworth. The Italian translation of The Bride of Lammermoor had been published in Naples in 1826, and it did not go unnoticed by opera composers who were quickly moving the locale of their operas to England and Scotland. In 1829 the Paris audience cheered Michele Carafa’s Le nozze di Lammermoor, and in 1831 Trieste welcomed Luigi Rieschi’s La Fidanzata di Lammermoor, and an opera by Alberto Mazzuccato with the same title premiered in Padova in 1834. All these works got a lukewarm welcome and Cammarano’s work does not reflect the dramatic structure of any predecessor. Side by side, in less that forty days Donizetti and Cammarano finished the opera. Donizetti needed a quiet environment, and although he had moved to a new apartment, he was often guest of Monsieur Cottrau at his villa in the idyllic outskirts of Naples. There, during the day he wrote most of his Lucia di Lammermoor. By early June the newspapers had announced that the composer was working on Lucia di Lammermoor for Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani, Louis-Gilbert Duprez, Domenico Cosselli and Carlo Ottolini Porto. The premiere had been scheduled for late August but the Società was on the brink of bankruptcy and at one point it seemed as if the premiere would never take place. In mid-July Donizetti wrote, “the crisis is nearing, the public is fed up, the management is about to collapse, 3

Vesuvius is producing clouds of smoke and an eruption is imminent.” He had forgotten to mention something even more serious — cholera was mercilessly lashing the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and threatening its capital — Naples. Meanwhile Donizetti was still traumatized by the move to his new apartment in the Via Toledo area and he limited his diet to boiled vegetables and meats because of cholera. A tentative date for the premiere was set for 20 August, but this had to be postponed causing frustration to the composer and the artists. The composer made an official complaint and King Ferdinand himself intervened. Rehearsals started, but shortly after the singers deserted the scene — “the management is bankrupt! Tacchinardi-Persiani has not been paid and will not sing, tomorrow I will send another official complaint….but only God knows if I will be paid,” the composer wrote to the Milanese music publisher Ricordi. Reharsals took place sometime in mid September and the re-opening of the San Carlo was scheduled to coincide with the premiere of the new opera. In a letter headed “Better late than never” Donizetti indicated that the dress rehearsal went very well and Lucia was about to be performed for the first time ever in a matter of hours. The premiere took place on 26 September and it was a huge success. The public was so enthusiastic that roaring applause erupted repeatedly despite a severe protocol that forbade any such manifestations when members of the royal family were in attendance. Although not a greatly refined actress Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani was a magnificent singer with immaculate technique, dazzling agility and seemingly endless talent. However, Donizetti was of the view that Duprez was the best of the cast and contributed in greater part to the success of these early performances. It must be noted that the composer was a bit unsure about Tacchinardi’s commitment since she was the wife of another composer — Giuseppe Persiani. But these were minor considerations because Donizetti had written for her Rosmonda d’Inghilterra and she had truly contributed to the success of that work. On that occasion critics had likened her to Malibran and Sontag and they had good reasons for doing so. In 1837 Donizetti wrote Pia de’ Tolomei for Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani who received the astronomic cachet of 32,000 francs for singing the title role at the Apollo in Venice (La Fenice had been damaged by a serious fire). And in 1842, with Donizetti adding “O luce di quest’anima” expressly for her, she was to be Linda di Chamounix for the Parisian premiere of that opera. In May 1837 she decided to substitute Lucia’s cavatina “Regnava nel silenzio” with Rosmonda’s aria di sortita “Perché non ho del vento”. This had become an aria da baule (a suitcase aria) for Fanny and the change received Donizetti’s blessing when it became part of his 1839 French version of the opera — Lucie de Lammermoor. In the meantime the soprano was taking the bride of Lammermoor to all the major European opera houses. In 1837 in Vienna, Lucia earned her the title of Kammersängerin of His Imperial Majesty, then followed the already mentioned Parisian debut with the introduction of the aria da baule, followed by London and Barcelona in 1838. Together with her husband’s Ines de Castro, Lucia had become a signature role for Fanny who took it to Madrid (1846), St. Petersburg (1850), Amsterdam (1852), The Hague (1853), Bordeaux (1855), and many other theatres. One aspect of Lucia di Lammermoor which is often conveniently overlooked is that in the 4

original score’ higher keys are routinely transposed down in repertoire practice. When Donizetti wrote Lucia, he knew all the natural charecteristics of Fanny’s voice and by using her great talent to suit the drama to the maximum advantage he was able to achieve something short of miraculous — a masterpiece. Her fresh and youthful voice, her legato combined with the qualities mentioned earlier, all added introspective and psychological dimensions so inherent with the drama while cutting a Lucia that is so true to life, so unique, and so much loved by the public. The flute obligato synonimous with the mad scene has been the subject of debates among scholars and there are those who insist that the composer had originally intended to use a glass harmonica. This may be quite accurate, but eventually and for some unknown reason, Donizetti crossed out the whole harmonica section and never replaced it with something else. The famous dialogue between Lucia and the flute at the end of “Ardon gl’incensi” required a cadenza that was added later and may well have been written by Fanny’s husband (Persiani) and - when necessary - changed to suit other primadonnas. Lucia has been sung by different types of singers, the soprano lirico-leggero, the so-called soprano coloratura which is more correctly described as soprano leggero, and the soprano liricodrammatico. Tacchinardi-Persiani was a lirico-leggero with a natural gift for vocal fireworks and belcanto embellishments. She was not the leggero type that later usurped the role because her voice had more body and her musicianship prevented her from sounding like an edelroller canary during the mating season. The shift to leggero (or coloratura) became necessary during the mid to late 1800 and a good part of 1900 when only that type of voice was able to sing such a belcanto role. Of course by mid-1900 the public had become aware that a weightier voice could do justice to the role. From wondrous harvest of the Annus Mirabilis three operas - I Puritani, Ines de Castro and Lucia di Lammermoor - have a common denominator: the main character loses her mind. Each in a different way and for different reasons, yet when you say “mad scene” everyone thinks Lucia di Lammermoor. One of the earliest examples of mad scene in opera is Francesco Sacrati’s La Finta Pazza (Venice, 1641). The dramatic development to the point of insanity afflicted both men and women and therefore we have mad scenes for Cavalli’s Egisto, Vivaldi and Händel’s Orlando, Paisiello’s Nina, Rossini’s Sigismondo, Coppola’s Pazza per amore (another huge success of 1835), not to speak of Donizetti’s Emilia (Emilia di Liverpool - 1824), Anna (Anna Bolena - 1830), Cardenio (Il Furioso all’isola di San Domingo—1833), Ruiz (Maria Padilla - 1841), Linda (Linda di Chamounix — 1842). Nevertheless Lucia’s mad scene is unique for a number of reasons. Donizetti had reached his musical and artistic maturity. Some elements of this mad scene are echoes from the past, including the larmoyante ravings of Paisiello’s Nina, Bellini’s Imogene and his own Anna, but here Donizetti goes many steps further dramatically and musically, delving into the psychological and introspective facets of the situation like no other composer before or after. The intensity of Donizetti’s portrayal of Lucia’s insanity is unprecedented and produces the most tormented and perturbing mad scene in operatic history. The opera has never left the repertory of most major opera houses and has become and still is a 5

true warhorse for sopranos — and for tenors too. In the midst of our search for lost operatic treasures it is time to recognize that Lucia’s everlasting permanence in the repertory has played a major role in the continuance and revival of the grand tradition of the golden days of opera more commonly known as Belcanto Renaissance. [A large portion of this article was published as liner notes to Edita Gruberova's "Lucia di Lammermoor", published by Nightingale in 2003]

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