100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (48 page)

Time: the Feast of the Assumption (August 15) in the late 1860’s

Place: on a crossroad near Montalto, a village in Southern Italy

First performance at Milan, May 21, 1892

    One usually thinks of
Pagliacci
as beginning with the famous
Prologue—II pròlogo
, as Italian baritones denominate it quite simply. But as a matter of fact, there is a fairly long introduction to the
Prologue
, and in it are heard all the themes that will later be developed in the score-the love theme, the jealousy theme, the players’ theme, etc. For the young composer, writing in the 1890’s had been bitten by the Wagner bug and was using the leitmotiv as skillfully as any other fashionable opera man. He was also bitten by the
verismo
bug, which means that his story would deal with common folks doing ordinary everyday things—like making love to other men’s wives and committing murder.

PROLOGUE

Suddenly, in the midst of this orchestral introduction, the character of Tonio, the clown, steps out before the curtain and speaks directly to us. He tells us how the opera was written—from the composer’s heart. And in fact, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, who wrote both the libretto and the music, based his story on a criminal case that his own father, a district judge, had tried. Then Tonio goes on to explain that actors have feelings and passions just like everyone else. That is the theme of the entire opera. Finally, Tonio rings up the curtain—at which point there is great applause, for Tonio has finished the
Prologue
and sung a high G.

ACT I

Now the opera itself begins. In a small village in Southern Italy a crowd welcomes a troupe of traveling players. There are shouts as the troupe comes in, and the leader—a powerful tenor much given to hamming—invites everyone to come to the performance that evening. When Tonio, the clown, tries to help the leading lady out of the wagon, the leader kicks him aside. For this leading lady, Nedda, is the wife of the principal, Canio; and Canio warns everyone off his private preserves in the aria
Un tal gioco
. It is not a good idea, he says, to make love to his wife—not anywhere outside of a play, that is. Then he goes off to the village for a drink with friends, and the pretty
Bell Chorus
is sung by those who remain.

Now Nedda, the leading lady, is left alone; and she sings a happy song to the birds, known as the
Ballatella
. It shows her essentially carefree nature. At its close—enter the villain. This is our friend Tonio, the clown, who is an ugly hunchback. He tries desperately to make love to Nedda; but she first laughs at him, and then, when he persists, she sets on him with a whip. Vowing vengeance, he stumps off to the village to join his master.

There follows a long and melodious love duet, for Nedda
has a swain in this village named Silvio. As the duet closes, they make an appointment to meet that night after the performance.

Unfortunately, Tonio has brought back his master just in time to hear those last words. In fearful anger Canio chases after Silvio, but he cannot find him. When he returns, he demands to know the name of Nedda’s lover. Steadfastly she refuses to give it, until Canio, fearfully enraged, takes out a wicked-looking knife to threaten her. Nedda’s life is saved, however, just in time, by Beppe, another actor in the troupe, the one who plays juvenile leads. He reminds Canio and the others that it is time to prepare for the performance; and as the rest go off, Canio is left alone.

It is then that he has his famous laugh-clown-laugh aria,
Vesti la giubba
. Though his heart is breaking, he knows that the play must go on. Sobbing with anguish, he enters the now-hated theater to dress for his part.

ACT II

Before Act II there is an orchestral intermezzo based on the Prologue. This reminds us of the theme of the opera—that life off the stage is very much like life on it. When the action starts, the villagers are busily assembling for the evening performance outside the temporary stage set up on the roadside. Their hubbub is hushed as the play-within-a-play commences. Nedda, in the role of Columbine, listens to a serenade sung off-stage by Beppe, who plays the role of Columbine’s lover, Harlequin. Soon Taddeo—the clown, played by Tonio—comes in to make love to her, just as he did in real life only that afternoon. He is again repulsed, but this time he good-naturedly blesses the lovers. Columbine and Harlequin thereupon sing a pretty duet over their evening meal, when Taddeo, in mock terror, interrupts them. Columbine’s husband, Pagliaccio, is coming! Quickly Harlequin exits by the window. But Pagliaccio enters just in time to hear them arrange a rendezvous. This, again, is exactly what had happened that afternoon; in fact, exactly the same words are repeated. Canio tries hard
to act the part of Pagliaccio in the play, but the parallel is too terrible for him to bear.

Suddenly he tears off part of his costume and cries:
No, Pagliaccio non son:
“No, I am Pagliaccio no longer.” Pitifully, he recalls the early days of his love for Nedda—and the crowd applauds his realistic acting. Now Nedda tries to make him come to his senses by taking up the lines of the play. But Canio becomes more and more furious, demanding to know the name of her lover. Finally he draws out his terrible knife, and before anyone can interfere, he has driven it into her back. With her dying breath Nedda calls for Silvio’s help. Silvio rushes up, out of the audience—only to meet the same terrible knife. As Canio realizes that he has committed a double murder, he turns brokenly to the audience.
“La commedia è finita,”
he sobs. “The comedy is finished.” And the orchestra blares out the laugh-clown-laugh theme.

    
Postscript for the historically curious:
Leoncavallo, who said he was present, as a small boy, at the trial of “Canio” in his father’s court, used to tell the sequel to his tale. The culprit’s real name was Alessandro, and he had murdered his wife after the performance, not during it. He was found guilty, sentenced to a term in prison, and then cried: “I do not repent the crime! Quite the contrary: if it had to be done over again, I’d do it!”

After he got out of prison, he did not go back to the stage but became a servant in the ménage of one Baronessa Sproniere.

Catulle Mendès threatened suit for plagiarism against Leoncavallo on the ground of a similarity of situation in his popular drama
La femme de tabarin
(with incidental music by Chabrier). In this play an actor also murders his wife during the course of a play-within-a-play. But there had been a much earlier nineteenth-century work using the same device; and, in fact, the idea goes back at least as far as Thomas Kyd’s
Spanish Tragedy
. Eventually Mendès withdrew his charges and offered a handsome apology.

PARSIFAL

Festival stage play in three acts by Richard
Wagner with libretto in German by the composer,
based on the poem
Parzifal
by Wolfram
von Eschenbach, on
Perceval, ou le conte
du Grail
by Chrétien de Troyes, and the
Mabinogion

Time: the Middle Ages

Place: Spain

First performance at Bayreuth, July 26, 1882

    Wagner did not call this work an “opera” but a “festival stage play.” Legend has it that he regarded it so much as a sort of religious ceremony, rather than entertainment, that he insisted on there being no applause and that it should never be given in any opera house less consecrated to noble music than his own Festspielhaus at Bayreuth, where only works by the master were to be performed.

The fact is, however, that Wagner himself liked to lead the applause at the end of the second act; and while the prohibition against applause is generally followed today after Act I (at least by that part of the audience which is aware of the tradition), everyone voices approval of the Flower Maidens
after Act II, and Act III is also generally clapped, though not at the august Metropolitan Opera House. As for the prohibition against playing
Parsifal
outside of Bayreuth, Wagner did have that idea once, but shortly before his death he seems to have given oral consent to the tenor-impresario Angelo Neumann to take it on the road. The change of heart never evolved into a written contract, and so that first extra-Bayreuth production took place at the Metropolitan on Christmas Eve twenty-one years after the premiere and over the futile legal gestures of Wagner’s widow. It was a gala and vulgarly publicized occasion. A special “Parsifal Limited” express was chartered from Chicago; the
Evening Telegram
brought out a “Parsifal” extra; and premium prices were put upon seats.

The religious and philosophical ideas of the libretto are a mixture of Christianity and Buddhism, while the symbolism of the cup and the spear is still older. But as the trappings of the Wolfram poem which inspired the story are essentially Christian, it is most convenient to remember that the beneficent Grail is the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper and in which Joseph of Arimathea is supposed to have caught His blood, while the spear is the one which pierced His side on the cross.

PRELUDE

The prelude, a slow, religious tone poem, is based on the themes sometimes identified as the motives of the
Love Feast
, the
Spear
, the
Grail
(which is the famous
Dresden Amen)
, and
Faith
. Wagner himself wrote a close for the prelude to be used in concerts, but when it is played in the opera house, the curtain rises on an unresolved chord.

ACT I

Scene 1
is near the castle of the Holy Grail at Monsalvat, in Spain. Gurnemanz, one of the knights of the Holy Grail, and several followers offer their morning prayers. They are ready to help Amfortas, the King of the Grail, to bathe in the
lake nearby, hoping to ease the pain of his wound. Kundry, a weird, ill-kempt woman, interrupts them. She, who serves both the Knights of the Grail and their enemy, Klingsor, has brought balsam from Arabia to help heal Amfortas. The King, who is now carried in on a litter, wishes to thank the woman, though he despairs of all help.

When he has gone, Gurnemanz tells his squires some of the history of the Grail. Old Titurel, the father of Amfortas, had received two holy treasures, the Cup—or Grail—from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, and the Spear which pierced His side. To guard these, Titurel built the sanctuary of Monsalvat and gathered a brotherhood of knights. Now Titurel has grown too old for his office, and Amfortas is King. But there had been a villain—Klingsor. He had failed, through his bad character, to be made a knight of the Grail, and, as a sorcerer, he had acted the part of enemy to the whole group. With the aid of beautiful women he had enticed Amfortas into his magical garden; he had captured the Spear; and he had inflicted the wound on Amfortas from which he still suffers. Only the recapture of the Spear and the aid of a pure and guileless innocent—or fool—can save the King and the order of knights.

At the end of Gurnemanz’s narrative there is a cry from the lake, and a dying swan falls before them. A youth follows quickly; and when Gurnemanz upbraids him for killing the bird, he cries out in his ignorance—for he knows nothing of evil. In fact, this lad, who is Parsifal, does not know even the names of his parents. Kundry, however, seems to know about him, and she tells him that his mother has died. It now seems to Gurnemanz that this boy may, indeed, be the guileless fool to save Amfortas. Solemnly he leads him to the castle, and the eloquent
Transformation Music
, during the change of scene, is heard.

Scene 2
Within the castle, in the great hall of the Holy Grail, the knights are assembled. Old Titurel, as though speaking from a tomb, urges his son to proceed with the ceremony. At first Amfortas demurs: he feels unworthy. But presently the Cup is revealed; the consecration of the bread and wine
is carried out; and Amfortas suffers bitterly. But Parsifal only stands foolishly by, takes no part, and seems unimpressed. As the long act closes, Gurnemanz, in anger, turns the boy from the door.

ACT II

Scene 1
finds Klingsor, the evil magician, in his castle. He summons Kundry to help him, and unwillingly she appears, subject to his magical powers. He demands that she change once more into a beautiful seductress, for she must help him in defense against a warrior who is invading him. Even thus had she once helped him when he overcame Amfortas.

Scene 2
The scene now changes to Klingsor’s magical garden. On its walls stands the victorious young Parsifal, who has slain some of Klingsor’s wicked knights. Klingsor’s maidens, who had loved these knights, at first upbraid him. But he seems so innocent that they come to like him and, dressed as flowers, they make love to him.