Program notes

Don Pasquale

By Gaetano Donizetti

Selections: Overture; “Tornami a dir”; “Cheti, cheti, immantinente”

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) combined the vitality of Gioachino Rossini with the sensitivity of Vincenzo Bellini, while adding a theatrical grandeur that was completely his own. He composed more than 60 operas, including many historical dramas, but also wonderful light comedies. Among the latter was Don Pasquale (1843), his final masterpiece.

After one of the most ebullient overtures in Italian opera, we’ll hear two glorious vocal highlights from Don Pasquale. Certainly Donizetti knew about romance, which he often made sweetly wistful. Within this comic work is an exquisitely lilting, buoyant love duet for Ernesto (tenor) and Norina (soprano). The composer is using the maximum in elegant phrasing to connect two people — in their sound, text, control of the vocal line, and each singer’s total awareness of everything the other person is doing, musically and expressively.

Donizetti’s predecessor Rossini was a master of setting music in a patter style, and Donizetti continued that in his comedies, Don Pasquale included. The most famous example is the Act Two scene in which Dr. Malatesta (baritone) gives every indication that he will help old Don Pasquale (bass-baritone), who craves revenge on his new wife and the man with whom he thinks she’s about to have a romantic rendezvous.

Hérodiade

By Jules Massenet

Selection: “Ce breuvage pourrait … Vision fugitive”

One of French opera’s most prolific and successful composers, Jules Massenet (1842-1912) took a while to make his name. Prior to Hérodiade, he’d begun eleven stage works, but only five were actually performed. Massenet was feeling his way into creating theatrically viable drama, attempting to play to his audience’s desires. He was on the road to success with his tenth opera, the grandiose Orientalist romance Le roi de Lahore (1877), but it was Biblical characters that inspired him with Hérodiade (1881) and brought him a notable triumph.

The baritone among the work’s quartet of principals is King Hérode, husband of Herodias (“Hérodiade” en français), who is infatuated with his wife’s daughter, Salomé. He begins Act Two with the most celebrated soliloquy for baritone in French opera. In Hérode's apartment, a group of Babylonian maidens dance for him. One offers him a potion that she says will bring forth the image of his beloved. In his aria, he thrills to the possibility that he could have a vision of Salomé, whom he hails as “my only love, my hope.” His aria, “Vision fugitive,” remains a great favorite of baritones everywhere.

Don Giovanni

By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Selections: “Madamina”; “Là ci darem la mano”

One of the most magnificently successful composer/librettist collaborations in operatic history was that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838). They gave us three of opera’s greatest masterpieces: The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790). It’s the second of those works that has most often been labeled “the perfect opera,” perhaps because of its matchless balance between robust comedy and high drama, and the perfection of its musical proportions.

Given the fairly manageable range required, it’s no surprise that the title character and his servant, Leporello, have both been performed successfully by baritones, basses, and bass-baritones. Leporello’s so-called Catalogue Aria captivates with its sly humor, while demanding both vocal richness and vivid personality. It’s addressed to Donna Elvira, to whom Don Giovanni pledged eternal love before abandoning her. She has followed him to Seville, but upon discovering her, Giovanni makes a quick getaway. Leporello makes clear that she’s not the only one who has received this treatment. He pulls out a little book that lists his master’s innumerable amorous conquests, including 1,003 in Spain alone.

Midway in Act One, Giovanni and Leporello encounter a peasant couple celebrating their engagement. Giovanni has Leporello lure away the bridegroom, Masetto, so he can woo the bride, Zerlina. He does so in comparatively gentle but nevertheless exceptionally seductive terms. Musically speaking, their duet’s irresistible melody, “Là ci darem la mano,” remains arguably audiences’ best-loved moment of the entire opera.

Ariadne auf Naxos

By Richard Strauss

Selection: “Sein wir wieder gut”

In terms of dramatic content, variety was crucial in the operatic career of Richard Strauss (1864-1949). He moved happily and with complete persuasiveness from one theatrical realm to another. He tackled subjects from the Bible, from Greek mythology, and all manner of romance, from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. He was a phenomenal orchestrator, but the voice mattered even more to him as a vehicle for musical expressiveness.

An instinctive musical dramatist, Strauss was attracted to the world of the theater, and approached it with great relish in Ariadne auf Naxos. Produced initially as a one-act work in 1912, it was revised for a second premiere in 1916, in which a 45-minute prologue was added. Today it’s the 1916 version that opera houses almost invariably choose to produce.

The prologue presents a backstage area set up in the home of Vienna’s richest man who, for his guests’ entertainment, has engaged both a serious opera company and a comedy troupe. The former is to present a work entitled Ariadne on Naxos, and its young composer (a trousers role), is ecstatic to have this tremendous opportunity. Consequently he’s horrified when it’s announced that the opera and the comedy troupe’s performance must be performed simultaneously, to allow time for a fireworks display.

After a sweet but fleeting encounter with the comic actress Zerbinetta, the previously devastated composer is suddenly full of hope. Turning to his devoted teacher, he bursts into an exhilarating paean in praise of music, “holiest of the arts.”

Susannah

By Carlisle Floyd

Selection: “Ain't it a pretty night”

A Florida State University faculty member when not yet 21 years old, Carlisle Floyd (1926-2021) learned early on that he wasn’t willing to accept the atonality prevalent among composers of his time. During his long career, he succeeded brilliantly in his aim to write music that would be immediately accessible to a wide audience, balancing each of his operas between immediately appealing musical and dramatic values.

The story of Susannah was one with which Floyd, a South Carolina native, instantly connected. He understood the kind of revival meeting led by the leading male character, Rev. Olin Blitch, as well as the bigotry and small-mindedness to which the residents of the opera’s fictional Appalachian town subject the heroine. Floyd’s third opera, Susannah premiered at FSU in 1955, with soprano Phyllis Curtin — destined to become the singer most closely associated with Floyd’s music — in the title role. Since then, the work has been produced with great success in companies large and small, across America and internationally.

Early in the opera, the heroine returns from a dance, having had a wonderful time there. Turning quiet, Susannah exhorts her friend, Little Bat, to look up at the stars. She then begins thinking of what the world might be like beyond her town. “Ain’t it a pretty night” is an aria long cherished by American sopranos for its superb vocal writing, abundance of floated soft phrases, and broadly scaled climactic phrases.

Le roi d'Ys

By Edouard Lalo

Selection: “Puisqu'on ne peut fléchir ces jalouses gardiennes…Vainement ma bien-aimée”

Edouard Lalo (1823-1892), known mainly for magnificent orchestral music, composed only three operas, of which Le roi d’Ys (1888) was the second. French audiences of the period were receptive to medieval romance, and this one attracted them greatly.

Performers must work hard to create three-dimensional figures not only of the princess Rozenn (soprano) and her beloved Mylio (tenor), but also of the nastier characters, Rozenn’s sister Margared (mezzo-soprano) and her betrothed, Prince Karnac (baritone). The latter two are, in fact, quite dramatic in scale and difficult to cast. This, combined with the stiff orchestral and choral requirements, has made Le roi d’Ys a rarity onstage.

Even if the opera is seldom produced nowadays, “Vainement ma bien-aimée” is a staple in the concert and recital repertoire of countless lyric tenors. Mylio’s exquisite, lovestruck serenade serves as a respite from the ceremonial grandeur and high drama that dominate Le roi d’Ys. The aria is sung on the morning of the warrior Mylio’s wedding to Rozenn. Handmaidens are guarding her door, but Mylio stands under her balcony and begs her to appear.

Sapho

By Charles Gounod

Selection: “Où suis-je … O ma lyre”

In 1851, eight years before Faust, Charles Gounod (1818-1893), having won the prestigious Prix de Rome, hadn’t yet gained major recognition in Paris. Convinced that the way forward for him in music lay in opera, he was fortunate in becoming acquainted with the incomparable mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot, who helped obtain a commission for him at the Opéra.

She also put him together with librettist Emile Augier, and she even hosted Gounod in her home while he composed Sapho. The piece premiered in 1851 and, despite the luminous Viardot in the title role, it failed to please. In our time Sapho has received little attention, whether onstage or on recordings.

Perhaps even more than with Le roi d’Ys, whatever public awareness we have of Sapho stems largely from one aria, “O ma lyre immortelle.” Sapho loves Phaon, but she has a rival in Glycère, a devious courtesan. In the opera’s final act, Sapho is cursed by Phaon and, when he leaves her forever, she commits suicide by throwing herself into the sea. Her aria — the last music heard in the opera — finds her turning to her beloved lyre, lamenting that it can no longer console her as it had so often before.

La traviata

By Giuseppe Verdi

Selections: Prelude to Act 1; “Lunge da lei ... De' miei bollenti spiriti”; “Libiamo”

It’s hard to believe that the audience in Venice for the world premiere of La traviata rejected the work vehemently. Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), whose 19th opera this was, had already scored immense successes with Nabucco, Rigoletto, and Il trovatore. The opening night of Traviata, however, was ill-fated, thanks in no small part to a 30-something soprano seemingly too old to play Violetta Valéry, a physically fragile courtesan in her early twenties.

It was the work itself, though, that also perplexed the audience – people had come to expect a more grandiose style of opera from Verdi, both dramatically and musically, than this comparatively small-scale domestic drama. Fortunately, within only three years, Traviata was being welcomed in all the major operatic centers, from Vienna, London, and Paris to New York.

Violetta is the heart and soul of Traviata, but the tenor who loves her, Alfredo Germont, also has his moment to shine. This comes at the opening of Act Two; living in the country with Violetta, he sings “De’ miei bollenti spiriti,” an aria describing how, ever since she proclaimed her desire to remain faithful to him forever, he has felt as if he were living in heaven. An aria bursting with youthful exuberance, this number is a gift for all shining-voiced lyric tenors.

Early in Act One (following the transfixingly beautiful prelude), we’re at a party in Violetta’s home. Alfredo has already loved her from afar, before this fateful first meeting. When Violetta’s current “protector,” Baron Douphol, declines her invitation to lead a drinking song, she turns to another guest, Alfredo, who responds by singing of the joys of love. Violetta responds in a verse of her own, exhorting everyone to enjoy life to the fullest. With the other guests joining in, the effervescent, rhythmically vigorous melody continues to an exhilarating conclusion.

^{Roger Pines writes regularly for Opera magazine (U.K.), programs of America’s most distinguished opera companies, and major recording labels. A faculty member of Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, he has also been heard since 2006 as a panelist on the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts’ “Opera Quiz”}