100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (19 page)

Time: 19th century

Place: Italy

First performance at Milan, May 12, 1832

    Donizetti, literally, turned out operas by the dozen. According to the latest count, made by Gianandrea Gavazzeni in his new Italian biography, there were seventy altogether, and
The Elixir of Love
was number forty. The composer was only thirty-four when he wrote it, and a letter quoted by Gavazzeni shows how quickly the composer had to work. Addressing his librettist, Felice Romani, he said: “I am obliged to write an opera in fourteen days. I give you a week to do your share.…But I warn you, we have a German prima donna, a tenor who stutters, a buffo with a voice like a goat, and a worthless French basso. Still, we must cover ourselves with glory.”

Well, they did cover themselves with glory, and the tenor part was written for a hero who stutters!

ACT I

Scene 1
The action takes place in an Italian village just about the time the opera was written—that is in the thirties of the last century. The heroine, Adina, is a wealthy young woman who owns several estates. On one of them there is a chorus of her friends when the scene opens. They sing a charming number, led by Adina’s intimate, Gianetta. Meantime, Adina’s hapless peasant lover, Nemorino, sings of his love in a sweet aria
(Quanto è bella
—“How beautiful she is”).

Adina herself reads to the assemblage a version of the story of Tristan and Isolda. It tells how they were made to love each other through a magical elixir, and Nemorino, in an aside, wishes he had some of that magical drink.

Now—enter the military. Sergeant Belcore, head of the little garrison stationed in the village, blusteringly asks Adina to marry him. The girl lightly but flirtatiously puts him off; and when everyone else has left, poor, stammering Nemorino presents his suit. In a long duet Adina puts him off, too, for she is quite bored by Nemorino’s pathetic love-making.

Scene 2
takes us to the village square. Here the assembled villagers are excited by the arrival of a magnificent coach bearing one Dr. Dulcamara, who introduces himself with a celebrated comic aria
(Udite, udite)
. He is a medical quack—the Italian equivalent of the Wild West’s snake-oil salesman. And what has he to sell? Why, a magical elixir. Drink it, and you become invincible in love! Almost everyone becomes a customer at a very reasonable price, but the cunning Nemorino stays on and privately asks for Isolda’s love potion. At a much higher price—Nemorino’s last gold piece, in fact—he gets it. It is, of course, just like all the other bottles—that is, ordinary Bordeaux wine. But Nemorino takes a mighty dose of it, becomes slightly tipsy, and so, quite sure of himself now, acts in a very offhand manner with Adina. This new attitude piques the girl, and she immediately promises to marry Nemorino’s rival, Sergeant Belcore.

Poor Nemorino! Dulcamara had told him the elixir takes
twenty-four hours to work, but Adina has promised to marry Belcore that very night, for the Sergeant is ordered away for the next day. As everyone is invited to the wedding, and Nemorino begs—in vain—to have it put off for a day, Act I comes to a close on a concerted number.

ACT II

Scene 1
begins just a few hours after Act I ends. All the villagers are gathered at Adina’s house to help prepare for her wedding to Sergeant Belcore. Dr. Dulcamara takes a leading part: together with Adina, he reads off a brand new barcarolle—a very pretty duet beginning
Io son ricco e tu sei bella
—“I am rich and you are pretty.” When the arrival of the notary is announced, the distracted lover Nemorino consults Dr. Dulcamara about his predicament. Naturally, the quack recommends another bottle of his elixir—one that will work in half an hour. Unfortunately Nemorino has no more money, and so, when the doctor leaves him, he consults his rival, Sergeant Belcore. Belcore advises enlistment in the Army, for there is a bonus of twenty scudi paid to all recruits. In an amusing duet the agreement is made, and Nemorino gets his bonus.

Scene 2
As everything should in the happy world of musical comedy, things turn out well in the final scene, which takes place the same evening. We learn, in the opening chatter-chorus for girls alone, that Nemorino has just inherited a fortune from an uncle. Nemorino himself does not know about it yet; and when he comes in—now more self-confident than ever through drinking the second dose of elixir—all the girls make love to him. He acts as though completely unimpressed by the attentions, even of his beloved Adina; and she, for her part, is quite upset by this turn of events. Dr. Dulcamara, seeing a chance for a new customer, offers Adina some of his elixir. In a delightful duet, she explains that she herself possesses a better elixir than his—to wit, a compound of various feminine wiles.

It is at this point that Nemorino, finding himself alone, sings the most famous aria in the opera
(Una furtiva lagrima
—“Down her soft cheek a pearly tear”). He has noticed Adina’s unhappiness, and he insists, in the aria, that he would gladly die to be permitted to comfort her. Nevertheless, when Adina approaches him, he maintains his attitude of indifference. Even when she tells him that she has bought his enlistment papers back from Belcore, he does not soften. Finally she breaks down and confesses that she loves him. The duet ends in impassioned happiness, of course; and now the opera draws quickly to a close. Belcore receives the news philosophically: there are plenty of other conquests available for a handsome soldier, he says. The news of Nemorino’s new-found wealth is shared with everyone, and good old Dr. Dulcamara takes credit for the happy outcome by claiming that the lovers were brought together through his chemical researches. As the opera closes, everyone is buying one more bottle of his celebrated Elixir of Love.

ERNANI

Opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi with libretto
in Italian by Francesco Maria Piave,
based on Victor Hugo’s tragedy
Hernani

Time: 1520

Place: Spain and France

First performance at Venice, March 9, 1844

    
Ernani
was Verdi’s fifth opera. With his third and fourth,
Nabucco
and
I Lombardi
, he had established himself in Italy as one of the foremost working opera composers, second perhaps only to Donizetti, for Bellini had died almost ten years before and Rossini had stopped composing operas even earlier. With
Ernani
, Verdi’s fame crossed the Alps; and though many northern connoisseurs found the score shocking—“brutal” was a favorite word—its sheer emotional power swept all before it.

Furthermore, it represented another victory for the romantic movement on the stage. Victor Hugo, on whose play the libretto is based, was one of the great leaders in this movement, along with Schiller and Dumas. Hugo and Schiller furnished forth the materials for many a successful opera; only Donizetti ever had any luck with a Dumas play, and this one effort
(Gemma di Vergy
, based on
Charles VII)
is now completely forgotten.

Today Hugo’s
Hernani
is still read in French schools, but it seems absurdly artificial and incredible anywhere else. The libretto for the opera is, of course, even worse in these respects.
Hugo himself objected strongly to the liberties taken with his play. Yet the power of a few of the arias and concerted pieces
(Ernani! involami, Infelice, O sommo Carlo
, and a few others) kept the work in the standard repertoire for over a century; it is still often given in Italy; it is periodically revived in other lands; and individual numbers from it are sung wherever opera stars do congregate.

ACT I

Scene 1
Ernani, the hero of the opera, is really John of Aragon, son of the Duke of Segovia, who has been slain by order of the former King of Castile. That is why John has changed his name to Ernani and taken up the semi-respectable operatic trade of bandit chief. In his mountain camp, not far from the castle of Don Ruy Gomez di Silva, his followers open the opera with a drinking chorus. Their leader then obliges with a song in praise of his beloved Elvira
(Come rugiada al cespite);
his followers assure him that they will collaborate in his plans to carry off the lady; and they all depart in force toward the castle.

Scene 2
Now, this lovely Elvira is a relative of the owner of the castle, and also his ward. A gray-haired basso, he is in love with the young girl, and plans are already afoot for the wedding. Elvira herself, however, is in love with Ernani, and she compares him with her guardian Silva as she sits alone in her room and sings the most famous aria in the opera
(Ernani! involami
—Ernani! fly with me). When a chorus of maidens arrives to congratulate her on the approaching nuptials, she responds graciously, though in an aside she reminds us that it is Ernani she really loves.

Poor Elvira has the misfortune to be loved, not merely by her unwanted fiancé, but also by the present King of Castile himself, known as Don Carlos. As soon as the girls have left, he makes his appearance in the chamber, having got into the place by a complicated ruse I shall not bother here to go into. Elvira protests against this unwarranted invasion of her privacy, and the ensuing duet has scarcely ended when Ernani
appears through a secret panel. Elvira manages to avert bloodshed by snatching a dagger from Carlos, when Silva (entering reasonably enough through a door) embarrasses everyone by joining the party. He expresses his own sentiments in a particularly fine aria
(Infelice! e tu credevi
—“All unhappy, I believed you”). Then, when the group is further joined by a large number of members of the household, Carlos tells Silva who he really is; Silva acknowledges his liege lord; and in the final ensemble Ernani is permitted to depart unscathed.

ACT II

In the grand hall of the castle Elvira is preparing for her marriage to Silva, and the chorus of maidens again sings a congratulatory strain. Elvira believes that Ernani has been captured and killed by the King’s forces; but the real fact is that he has escaped, disguised himself as a monk, and come to Suva’s castle for refuge. It is only when Elvira enters in her bridal gown that he realizes what prospective ceremony he has accidentally come upon. He immediately tears off his disguise and offers Silva a wedding gift—his own life. Let him, he suggests, be turned over to Carlos for execution. But Silva is a Spanish grandee, bound by the laws of hospitality, and he nobly refuses to endanger the life of any guest of his. Fearing that his other rival, the King, may be planning a forced entry, he decides to defend his castle, leaving the two lovers alone for a sad, impassioned duet (
Ah, morir potessi adesso
—“Ah, to die would be a blessing”). When Silva returns to find the lovers making love, his anger is interrupted by the news that the King’s men are at the gates. He orders them to be admitted, but, still true to the laws of hospitality, he hides his own worst enemy from the pursuers. Even when the King himself demands that Silva give up Ernani, the old gentleman stoutly refuses. Carlos demands Silva’s sword and threatens him with execution, but the lovely Elvira interposes, and the King compromises by taking her as a sort of hostage to ensure Silva’s loyalty.

With the rest gone, Silva releases Ernani from his hiding
place, offers him a sword, and suggests a duel. But Ernani is also a noble Renaissance Spaniard. He refuses to turn on the host who saved his life and instead suggests that they combine forces to get Elvira away from the untrustworthy Carlos. Then, after they have succeeded, all Silva need do to get his revenge on Ernani is to blow the horn that he hands him and, no matter where he may be or what he may be doing, Ernani binds himself to take his own life. Silva agrees to this fantastic bargain (in his innocence he had not even suspected that the King might have fell designs on his ward and fiancée), and he orders his men to ride.

ACT III

In an opera replete with incredible meetings the most incredible of all turns out to be the most dramatic as well. The conspirators against the King have decided to hold their meeting in the vault of the cathedral at Aix la Chapelle, which contains the tomb of Charlemagne, Don Carlos’s most famous ancestor. Carlos, however, has got wind of this meeting, and he opens the act with a solemn soliloquy that only partially prepares us for his subsequent complete change of character (
Oh, de’ verd’ anni miei
—“Oh, of my youthful years”). He thereupon steps into the tomb itself to overhear what goes on.

The conspirators gather, sing an exciting male chorus
(Si ridesti)
, and decide that the King must be murdered. They then choose, by lot, who shall commit the murder, and Ernani’s name comes up. But outside there is the booming of cannon. The King steps solemnly forth from the tomb (suggesting to the conspirators that it is Charlemagne himself who has been eavesdropping) and strikes three times with his dagger upon the bronze doors of the vault. That booming of cannon meant that Carlos had been elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; and so, to the music of trumpets, the electors enter in procession, followed by soldiers and pages bearing the imperial insignia, torches, the imperial banners, and all the other objects of glory that the opera company can afford. Elvira, of course, is also an invited guest.