Patrick Bade
Rigoletto, Part 2

Patrick Bade - Rigoletto, Part 2

- So we’re back in the second act of “Rigoletto”, and we’re in the Ducal Palace in Mantua in the private apartments of the duke. And as you will gather by now, he’s a rather sleazy, unpleasant character. He’s a narcissist. He’s a serial seducer. I suppose today we would say he was a serial sexual abuser. But he’s having a quiet moment of reflection. He’s heard that Gilda has been kidnapped, and rather uncharacteristically, he has a moment of real tenderness and sadness. Now, I quoted a letter of Verdi in the last talk where he said that Rigoletto was an opera pretty well without arias. And that is largely true, with the exception of the piece I’m going to play you now. The only full aria that we find in the whole opera that follows the usual pattern of an aria in a Bel Canto opera that is Respighi aria and Cabaletta is for the duke. And I’m going to play you the central section. It is actually very Bel Canto. It’s a very beautiful melody that is simply accompanied, very simply accompanied by the orchestra just going, boom cha cha, boom cha cha. So you want a tenor who can do something beautiful with this vocal line. Who can really shade it and make it interesting. And I’ve chosen here Ferruccio Tagliavini. Some people might regard him as poor man’s Gigli. He shares something of Gigli’s honeyed sweetness of tone. This is very graceful singing.

And he’s the duke in a complete recording which is a kind of runner up, I would say, to the Gobbi Callas one. I mean, some people even prefer it. They’re all three members of the cast, Tagliavini, are really superb. And actually, I think I do prefer Tagliavini in that set to Di Stefano. But again, I’m sure we’ll have differences opinion expressed at the end. But here is the very honeyed sweet voice of Tagliavini in the duke’s aria. The courtiers tell him that it’s they who have kidnapped Gilda. And in fact, they bring her gift wrapped to present to him for his pleasure. And that triggers the fast moving cabaletta that ends the aria. And then he disappears into his bedroom to await Gilda. And so in the next scene, Rigoletto arrives, and this is one of the greatest scenes I think that Verdi ever wrote. One of the greatest scenes ever concede for a baritone. You want a really great singing actor for this scene. And I’m going to present you with the one I regardless finest of all on record in this music, which is Tito Gobbi. So again, it’s not an aria it’s quite an extended scene. And it changes tempo and mood very drastically, more than once. At the start of the scene, Rigoletto comes in and he’s simulating nonchalance, he knows that the courtiers have kidnapped his daughter and he’s trying to find out what’s happened to her. But he comes in humming a jaunty tune Just to . Now it’s a great singing actor like, like Gobbi. It’s just amazing what he can get out of these changing the tone expressing an extraordinary range of emotions, defiance, fear, and so on.

Now, there comes a point where it suddenly clicks and he realises that actually Gilda is in the duke’s bedroom and is in the process of being either seduced or raped. And he desperately tries to burst into the duke’s bedroom to rescue her. And he’s held back by the courtiers and he turns on them in total rage and insults them. And this gets him nowhere, of course. And then he collapses and he grovels and he pleads and he weeps. I mean, this is the most incredible scene really. I said in his first act monologue that he had to run through a gamut of emotions. But the emotions here in this scene are even more extreme. Now at this point, Gilda bursts out of the duke’s bedroom, dishevelled, distraught she’s just been raped. And the the courtiers really are abashed. And the Rigoletto dismisses them, and they shuffle off rather sheepishly murmuring, and Rigoletto and Gilda are left alone together. And we get the second of the three great duets for Rigoletto and his daughter. And I quoted Verdi last week in a letter saying that the opera consisted largely, and the core of the opera is in these great and very intimate duets. I mean, somebody last time mentioned they’d been to see the production at Regents on this enormous set and how distracting the set was. ‘Cause the real absurdity of that set was that it was so huge, of course that singers were amplified and that Rigoletto and Gilda were like a quarter of a mile from one another. And of course that sense of intimacy between them was completely lost in that production.

Now, I have to, at least at some point, in this opera play you Maria Callas and I’ve chosen this passage 'cause I think it really shows her at her best. She was not born to sing Gilda. She was born to sing Lady Macbeth. But I have to say that her interpretation in this recording is quite extraordinary. She does, much the time, really that succeed in colouring her voice so that she does sound like a young girl. Of course, 'cause the sound itself is controversial and in the extract I’m going to play to you where she describes what has happened to her and she expresses her heartbreak and her grief. I think Callas sings this very movingly, very beautifully. But of course as the voice builds up to the climax, you do get that rather curdled sound, which is the price you have to pay for a Callas performance. I know we’re going to get some quite differing and extreme opinions about that at the end. Now we come to the last act, which takes place outside an inn, beside a river outside of Mantua. You can see Mantua in the distance here. And this is the inn that belongs to Sparafucile, this very sinister character, that Rigoletto met down the dark alleyway in the first act and offered to have somebody bumped off, if he wants, if he’s willing to pay for it. So Rigoletto wants revenge on the duke. And Sparafucile’s methods are, he has a very sexy sister and she lures the victim to the inn and then the victim is murdered. So Rigoletto and Gilda arrive and they stand outside the inn and they look in and they can see what’s going on. And Rigoletto is uncomprehending that Gilda doesn’t seem to want revenge on the duke. And he questions her about this and she just answers him very simply. She says, I love him.

And Verdi said that he was great admirer of the singer Adelina Patti. Somebody once said to him who are your three favourite Sopranos? And he said, “First Adelina Patti, second Adelina Patti, and third Adelina Patti.” And they said, “Well, what’s so wonderful about Adelina Patti?” He said, “All you have to do is listen to her in the last act of Rigoletto, the way, she’s very simple, nothing showy vocally, the way she just says , the sincerity. This is what we really, really want in Gilda. We want somebody who sounds like a very simple, very sincere girl. We do not want a great diva. And as I said, 'cause Callas was a great diva, but I think disguises that very effectively at least in this recording. But then Gilda is very shocked to see the duke enter in and very plainly trying to make love to Sparafucile’s sister. And he sings, I suppose, the most famous number in the opera, probably I suppose the most famous tenor aria in the entire Italian repertoire, "La donna è mobile”, it’s of course, the woman is fickle, is the translation. Here are two very famous Dukes. Gigli on the left hand side and Caruso on the right hand side. And we are going to hear the very honeyed sweet voice, Beniamino Gigli in this famous aria. In the Jonathan Miller reduction which many of the Brits in the audience may have seen at the ENO.

'Cause it was set in Chicago in gangster land and it was a kind wonderful coup de théâtre in this performance when the duke sings the aria to the accompaniment of a jukebox. That Aria may strike some of you as hackneyed. It’s in a way, I suppose, over familiar but how wonderful to hear it like that. Not just the incomparable beauty and sweetness and individuality of Gigli timbre, but all the light and shade and expression. And try comparing that with any one of the three tenors in that area. And they sound very, very plain compared to that. This is full of light and shade. So then we come to another very famous number, which is the quartet. We have the duke who is in, you know, full action trying to seduce Maddalena. And she’s flirting with him. And we have Gilda, of course who’s desperately hurt and upset. She’s observing this from outside. And Rigoletto himself. Top is how it looked in a 19th century performance. And bottom is how it looked in the Jonathan Miller production at the ENO. Now, as I mentioned last week, Rigoletto was based on a play by Victor Hugo. And nowadays, I don’t think the play is ever performed as a play. It’s really only familiar to us in its operatic version. But Victor Hugo admired the opera very much. And he said he really envied Verdi, because Verdi could do something that no playwright can do. He can have four people singing simultaneously and expressing different emotion something that is impossible without a spoken dialogue.

And I’m going to play it to you in another historic recording. Again, Gigli incomparably seductive in the opening section of the quartet. And the very lovely Galli-Curci again although this is towards the end of her career and her voice had had lost a little bit of its velvety lustre but it still sounds to me completely angeli. Great baritone Giuseppe De Luca. The fly ointment here for me a little bit is the American mezzo Louise Homer as Maddalena. She’s not my idea of a very sexy young girl. She sounds a bit like a hausfrau. So Rigoletto sends Gilda off, she’s dressed in male clothing. He sends her off on her own to Verona and he says he’s going to stay behind so that after the murder he can pay Sparafucile for the crime. And Rigoletto disappears, leaving Gilda who disobeys her father and does not go to Verona. She stays behind and she wants to find a way to thwart the murder of the duke. 'Cause despite his betrayal, she still loves him, and she’s still spying inside, what’s going on inside the inn. And the duke goes off to bed, leaving Sparafucile with Maddalena, and obviously the duke has incredible sexual charisma and Maddalena has fallen in love with him as well. And she pleads with Sparafucile. She says, please, please don’t murder him. Can we murder somebody else instead? And just give the body to Rigoletto and take the money? And Sparafucile takes some persuading to do this but he says, okay, if somebody arrives at the inn before midnight, we’ll murder that person and hand over that body in a sack to Rigoletto.

So Gilda has heard all of this and then Verdi whips up a wonderful storm. I think Trudy mentioned the flying Dutchman of Wagner the other day, which of course starts with a fantastic orchestral storm in the orchestra. And that was inspired by a real storm that a sea storm that Wagner had experienced actually on a sea voyage on the way to England. So Verdi’s orchestral means are very rudimentary compared with Wagner, but it’s still a wonderful storm. Actually loved this storm. It’s very, very convincing with an offstage chorus oohing and ahhing suggesting the sound of the wind. And at the height of the storm, we hear that the knocking on the door as Gilda, she deliberately sacrifices herself. She knocks on the door. She knows that she’ll be murdered when she goes in. We hear her cry as she is stabbed. And then we hear the dying away of the storm. In the final scene, Rigoletto returns and he knocks on the door, which Sparafucile opens, and hands him a body in a sack, and Rigoletto pays him. And he says, “To the river, to the river,” and he starts dragging the sack with a body in it towards the river. But in that moment, the Duke of Mantua wakes up and we get a little reprise off stage of his aria. Again, with the very ironic words and circumstances, , woman is fickle. He suddenly realises that he’s been cheated, that the body in the sack cannot be that of the duke. And he opens up the sack. And then of course, to his absolute horror it turns out to be his beloved daughter. And she, as is the way with operas, she has enough breath in her body as she’s dying to sing a final very beautiful duet with Rigoletto.

But she’s already in a way, left this world. She’s already up there in Heaven with her mother as she thinks she will be. And she has a very beautiful arching highline melodic line accompanied by a fluttering flute, arpeggio, it’s as though so she’s already sort of flying amongst the angels. And here I’m going to use the other recording which I strongly recommend to you which is the one with Giuseppe Verdi, Lena Palugi and Verucchio Callini, all three absolutely excellent in their roles. And I said, Callas, it’s really the triumph of art over nature with Callas, that she manages to make such a convincing Gilda. Whereas I think vocally, at least Lena Palugi, like Galli-Curci or like Henneberger, she is absolutely born for this role. She has a sweetness, a sort of naivety. She actually recorded the role twice. When she first recorded it in the 1920s, she was still a teenager. But this is a recording of the 1950s. As you can see from the picture, she probably wasn’t a very convincing Gilda visually on stage. She was a very large woman. She was an example of what Rossini described as the elephant that swallowed a nightingale. But she certainly makes a very heavenly effect in this recording of the final scene. So the very final word, the curse, the old man’s curse, which was, as I mentioned last week, Verdi’s original idea for a title for the opera.

Now I’m going to open up and see what questions…

Q&A and Comments:

Q: How do you define an aria?

A: Well, in an Italian, in a context of the early 19th century, an aria has a particular form, which I described of the recitative central, slow, melodic section and a fast, moving, showy section. People use the aria, use the word very, very loosely in lots of different ways, but that’s how it would’ve been understood at the time, in the first half of the 19th century.

Somebody from Malta, yes Malta should be very proud of Joseph Calleja. He is a really wonderful singer. Last time I saw him in “Norma,” he completely out-sang the soprano and was very impressive indeed.

Q: Would you not call “Caro nome” an aria?

A: Not really, no. It doesn’t have the form that I described. And certainly it’s not how Verdi, himself, was quite strict about this when describing it. Herbert saying it’s a beautiful job of “Una furtiva lagrima”. Well, yes, Tagliavini like Gigli was quite willing to use the voix mixed or even falsetto. But I have nothing against that at all. But in fact, you know, as long as it’s done skillfully and as long as the voix mixed and the falsetto, which is producing a voice as a woman produces it, are properly blended into the voice. Margaret saying she could listen to Tito Gobbi for the rest of her life. I agree. He’s just completely in a class apart from… Of course there were many, many wonderful Italian baritones in the middle of the 20th century. But he is the special one.

This is Pamela saying, I agree with you that Cortigiani is one of the opera’s most moving and dramatic pieces. Every time I hear it I cry, especially with Gobbi. Well, you know, I’m always saying I want to come back in my next life as an opera singer. And I can’t make up my mind whether I want to come back as a baritone so that I can sing “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata” or if I want to come back as a mezzo and I want to sing the big monologues of in “Travatore.” Gobbi’s tragic aria was so moving, so beautiful. I mean, it’s so amazing the changes he goes through. And I think it’s about six minutes altogether, you know, from sarcasm to raging to weeping.

Q: Oh dear, Callas. Now what’s that mean? Is that positive or negative? Do you like her or not?

A: Margaret, one of the purest Callas recordings I’ve heard, not my favourite female singer. Yes, but even that of course, and she’s never really pure, is she? That is the problem. You have to be able to tolerate those vocal impurities. And in the right roles, it doesn’t bother me at all. 'Cause especially a role like Abigaile in “Nabucco” or Lady Macbeth, you actually want that kind of voice with a sort of cutting edge and a kind of rawness to it.

And greatest, this is Herbert saying it’s the greatest quartet in all of opera that is genius in all its glory. Blending the different parts of the quartet proceeds is pure genius. And the way the voices separate and go their separate ways and then come together again. I so agree with you. And it’s funny, Judy, yesterday, was talking about Jewish reactions to Wagner. Sometimes it seems to me, I mean I gave talks on the Jewish Cultural Centre for 20 years and I was always being asked to give talks on Wagner. And sometimes I felt it was almost like an unhealthy obsession with sort of love/hate with Wagner. And in 2013, they asked me to do a series of 12 morning lectures on Wagner, rather sort of groaning at the thought of it. I did agree, Margaret really came along and did some of them too. When I said I was only going to do it if they would let me do a whole day on Verdi who after all was born in the same year.

Q: Why is it that Wagner, it seemed to be totally unfair that Wagner was getting all the attention and that people were less interested in Verdi.

A: Yes. Interesting odd fact that Louise Homer she was a very distinguished mezzo at the Met for many years and sang with great cast, that she was the aunt of the composer, Samuel Barber. She’s one of those singer where I feel that she must have been better than the records suggests. She always sounds rather sort of bosomy and blousy to me on the records here.

Hear the dissonance from yes, from Madeline, thanks. Thank you, Barbara.

Best storms in music, you know that could be a whole talk. There’s a fantastic storm in Richard Strauss’s “Pastoral Symphony.” The Beethoven of course, no Strauss’s “Alpine Symphony.” Beethoven’s “Pastoral” of course is probably the most famous but there are quite a few. There’s a nice little storm in Rossini’s “Barber of Seville”.

This is Peter, I think Tito Gobbi was one of the greatest Rigolettos ever. I did see him in the this, yes, there is that movie. It’s very, very good, the movie.

Q: Was the duke Mario Del Monaco?

A: I’m not sure about that. I hope not. He’s not a singer I care for at all. I do have that DVD upstairs. I think I might dig it out later.

Q: Which is my preferred chorus?

A: Oh, dear. I’d have to really think about that one. Of those two, well they’re so different. I really couldn’t compare them. But it’s, although I suppose you could say that they’re both offstage choruses, aren’t they? And they’re both to create mood and atmosphere.

This is Margaret. Thank you very much, Margaret, and I hope you’ll continue to enjoy Rigoletto.

Q: Who would I consider the great Rigoletto and Gilda today?

A: I don’t really know. I mean, I haven’t seen one for a very long time. There is that very good Hispanic baritone, Alvarez. That’s a terrific, terrific voice. Real first class voice. I’m not sure about Gilda. The last one I heard from the Met was that German soprano. Can’t remember her name at the moment. I didn’t care for her at all. I thought the voice was shallow and unsteady.

Thank you, Herbert, for your comments. It sacrificed woman at the end. Yes, that’s a big issue, isn’t it, with feminists? That so many heroines seem to come to a bad end. The recording you had with Toscanini he only recorded the last act and it’s very exciting. And the singer, I think it’s Jan Pierce and it’s Zinka Milanov, and that was very, very controversial. 'Cause traditionally the role of Gilda goes to a highline small voiced lyric corretora voice. Whereas Zinka Milanov was of course a dramatic soprano and she certainly never sang it on stage and would’ve been a very unconvincing Gilda on stage. But she certainly makes some lovely sounds. Thank you very much for your compliments. This is Judith saying that her father took her to the Gobbi film and and you still cry when you hear… You could probably fill a swimming pool with the tears that his singing has generated,

In the score did I, yes, but as I said, Verdi himself, as the rest that he, an aria, but it doesn’t take the normal form of an aria that you would find in an Italian opera of that period. Betty liking the quartet and Gobbi. I’d be surprised if anybody didn’t.

Not a question, but just a comment that Verdi himself believed he was cursed because lost both his children and his first wife within three years. Yes, and nearly gave, and also, of course, had a terrible disaster with a flop opera that followed on after that at the start, and nearly gave up composing after those events.

Lynette thinks there are better Gildas than Callas. Very nice comments. Thank you. I’ve got the love from your mother.

This is Ellie Strauss saying that her favourite was “Tosca”. I’m not sure you can say that Toscanini’s favourite soprano was Albanese. He had different favourites at different points in his career. 'Cause Albert, he only worked with Albanese right at the very end of his career in the 1940s. I haven’t seen the updated version of Rigoletto at the Met. And I think that is my last question for today. Thank you very much for your, oh no, there’s some more. Las Vegas and the rat pack, that would seem to go very well. But it sounds rather in the style of the Jonathan Miller one. Virginia’s saying an opera of extremities, dark and light. The court and the alleyways, the big people and the humble.

Q: Yeah, and I thought it was a very interesting comment, last time, somebody was saying, could Rigoletto be a Jew?

A: 'Cause as I said, he’s definitely an outsider. And as I said last time, Verdi has this, it would be an interesting take. It would be quite a daring one. I dare say, it would be quite controversial to do that.

Right. Oh, Piotr Beczała, I bet he could be very, very, very good. I last saw him in Vienna two years ago in “Tosca” and he was absolutely amazing. I mean because he’s at quite an advanced stage in his career. So I hope that at the end of 2022 his voice will still be fresh enough. But he’s certainly a wonderful artist who should be terrific.

This is Cyril saying I’m very happy to do “Carmen”. If I do another series “Carmen” would be an obvious one to include. This is Betty saying she hated the Las Vegas setting. Although, you know, it is one of those operas that is almost impossible to ruin. It’s just so perfect. Right, well I think that is it. Thank you all very, very much indeed. And I’m moving onto the terrible Wagner and “Lohengrin” on Sunday.