100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (53 page)

The story of the opera is based on Hogarth’s famous series of lithographs called
The Rake’s Progress
. Perhaps it would be better to say that it was inspired by that series, for it does not follow the narrative very closely. Rather, the mood, the setting, the morals, a few characters, and a few situations are the same. Mr. Stravinsky worked it out—in general—with the fine English-born poet Wystan H. Auden, and Auden, in turn, worked out the details with another writer, Chester Kallman It was done in English. Yet, even when it is sung in the original by an English-speaking cast, there is some difficulty in getting the words, for Mr. Stravinsky does not believe it is always wise to respect the accents of the language.

ACT I

Scene 1
In an English eighteenth-century garden we find a couple of lovers billing and cooing. Their names—Tom Rakewell and Anne Trulove. Anne’s father, on one side of the stage, expresses some doubts as to Tom’s making a quite reliable son-in-law. He therefore—after Anne retires into the house—comes forth and offers Tom a good, steady job. The boy refuses; and when he is left alone, he sings a defiant aria, saying that he will rely on fortune. Only, he adds at the end, he wishes he had some money. Immediately, as in
Faust
, Nick Shadow appears (that’s the Devil in disguise). He tells him, in the presence of Anne and Mr. Trulove, that a forgotten uncle has left him a fortune. This is the occasion for a quartet. Tom and Anne are, of course, delighted, but the father still has some doubts. It seems that it will be necessary for Tom to go to London to settle the business, and Nick offers himself as a servant. He even refuses to accept a definite wage. At the end of a year and a day, he says, Tom may decide what his services were worth. (Anyone who has read much about the Devil knows what
that
means.) As Tom goes off, Nick turns
to the audience and announces: “The Progress of a Rake begins!”

Scene 2
is inspired by the Hogarth picture that takes the hero to a brothel. A bawdy contralto known as “Mother Goose” is the madam of the place, and at the moment a chorus of whores and so-called “roaring boys” (that is, eighteenth-century London no-goods) is hymning the delights of Venus and Mars. Tom Rakewell has been under the tutelage of Nick Shadow for a while now, and Nick gets him to recite a sort of catechism of evil. He successfully defines Beauty and Pleasure; but when he comes to Love, he falters, remembering, perhaps, Anne Trulove. He wishes to leave because it is getting late; but Nick sets the clock back, the general reveling begins again, and the young neophyte is introduced to the gang. Tom now recalls his vows of love in an aria notable especially for the rippling figure in the accompanying clarinet. For a short while Tom’s new acquaintances sympathize; but Mother Goose herself takes Tom in hand, and the scene ends gaily as the chorus sings the refrain of the old ballad of
Lanterloo
.

Scene 3
belongs almost entirely to Anne Trulove. She is in her garden, badly missing her Tom, from whom she has not heard, and she delivers a formal recitative and aria on this subject. There is a brief interruption from her father, and then—in old-fashioned Italian-opera style—she has a brilliant cabaletta to the aria. She resolves, in this finale, to follow Tom to London.

ACT II

Scene 1
Tom Rakewell hasn’t found much happiness in London, making his rake’s progress, and he complains about it as he sits at breakfast in his bachelor’s quarters. He does not even dare think of Anne; and at the words “I wish I were happy” Nick Shadow appears. He shows Tom a broadside, advertising a circus that features Baba the Turk, a bearded lady. In his aria Nick advises his master not to be bound by conscience. What, in fact, could be more fun than marrying the
bearded lady? Again Tom falls under the spell of degeneracy that Nick Shadow throws about him, and the scene ends with a duet as his evil spirit helps Tom to dress and make ready to woo Baba.

Scene 2
takes place outside Tom’s London house. Anne has come to persuade him to return to the country, and she waits (for one aria) for him to come. As servants begin to carry packages into the house, she wonders what it is all about. She does not have to wait long. A sedan chair comes in and disgorges Tom. In the duet that follows, he begs her to return to the country, for he is not worthy of her. But Tom has not been alone in that sedan chair. Baba, the bearded Turk, sticks her head out; Tom admits that he has just married her; and in the ensuing trio Tom and Anne regret how things have turned out, while Baba expresses her dislike of being kept waiting. Finally Anne leaves, and Tom helps his rather spectacular bride out of the chair. As they enter the house, Baba unveils her beard for the benefit of the assembled crowd.

Scene 3
takes us into the not-so-happy home of Tom Rakewell and his bride. The recent benedict sulks at breakfast, while Baba jabbers away, in an aria, about the roomful of junk she has brought into Tom’s room—stuffed animals, china, gewgaws of all sorts from everywhere. Tom remains utterly uninterested, and finally she flies into a rage, smashing the worthless stuff. Spang in the middle of her tantrum, Tom covers her face with his wig, silencing her. Quite disillusioned, he goes to sleep, when Nick comes in silently with a strange machine. Into it he puts a loaf of bread and a sliver of china. A moment later Tom awakens to tell him of a dream about a machine that would change stone into bread and bring happiness to man. At once Nick turns the handle of his machine—and out comes the bread. Now, he suggests, Tom can make his fortune. Hadn’t he better tell his wife? “My wife?” asks Tom, “I have no wife. I’ve buried her.” And he points to Baba, still silent behind the wig.

ACT III

Scene 1
Things have gone from bad to worse with Tom. It is spring now—several months since the close of the last act. Baba still sits in the room, Tom’s wig over her face. But there is a crowd there too, for the contents of the room are about to be auctioned off. Among the crowd is Anne Trulove seeking her former fiancé, but nobody pays much attention to her. Then, enter Sellem, the auctioneer. In a fine, nonsensical patter—set to a silly waltz tune—he puts up an auk, a pike, a palm—even Baba herself, whom he describes simply as “an unknown object.” Much to everyone’s astonishment, she shoves aside her wig and begins singing in the middle of the phrase that Tom had interrupted months before.

Off-stage, the voices of Tom and Nick are heard singing a ballad. But the splendid bearded lady turns to Anne, says that she knows she loves Tom, and advises her to set him right. As for herself, Baba will return to the stage. Off-stage, Tom and Nick are heard again in their ballad, and Anne excitedly sings, to the assembled folk: “I go, I go, I go, I go to him!” As for Baba, she orders Sellem to get her carriage, shoos the crowd away, and tells them that
next
time they’ll have to pay to see her.

Scene 2
In a few bars of weird music for four string instruments Stravinsky sets the stage, which shows a dismal graveyard. Nick Shadow has served Tom for a year and a day. Now he demands his wages: Tom’s soul. Still—he offers Tom a chance by playing a game of cards. As Anne Trulove’s voice is heard off-stage, Tom wins three games. Sworn love, says Anne, can plunder hell itself of its prey. Nick sinks into the grave he had intended for Tom, but before he disappears, the frustrated Devil strikes his former master insane.

For a few moments the stage is in darkness. When the lights come up again, there sits Tom, on the mound of the grave, truly mad. He is putting grass upon his head, thinking it roses; and as he sings his ballad (the tune heard in the previous scene) he calls himself “Adonis.”

Scene 3
Our hero is now in Bedlam, the infamous lunatic asylum of eighteenth-century London. He still sings of himself as Adonis and asks his fellow madmen to prepare for his wedding to Venus. They only scoff; but soon the jailer brings in Anne Trulove. She addresses him as “Adonis”; he calls her “Venus.” It is a very odd love duet; and at its close she puts him on his straw pallet and sings him a soft lullaby. Her father comes to lead her home, and they bid the sleeping madman a farewell. When they are gone, Tom awakens and sings wildly of Venus, but his fellow madmen will have none of it; they do not believe she was there at all. Driven to com plete hopelessness, the broken man sinks back—dead.

But the opera is still not quite over. Composer and librettist wanted to be sure their opera was a “moral” one, and so there is a little epilogue, a quintet for all the principals—Tom, Nick, Baba, and the two Truloves. And the moral is this:

For idle hands

And hearts and minds

The Devil finds

A work to do
.

RIGOLETTO

Opera in three acts (often given in four) by
Giuseppe Verdi with libretto in Italian by
Francesco Maria Piave based on the French
play
Le roi s’amuse
by Victor Hugo

Time: 16th century

Place: Mantua

First performance at Venice, March 11, 1851

    Everyone today knows the tunes of
Rigoletto
so well—
La donna è mobile
, the
Quartet
, and the others—that it is hard to believe it was once thought dangerous and shocking. Many an American school child has chirped the sweet little song “Over the Summer Sea” without knowing that the original words were about the joy of making love to featherbrained women. Nevertheless, the first readers of the libretto, who were the censors of Venice, found it so shocking that they insisted on some important changes. And some years before that, the play on which the opera is based had to be withdrawn after two performances in Paris. This in spite of the fact that the author was the great Victor Hugo.

This play was
Le roi s’amuse
(“The King Amuses Himself”),
and its principal figures were historical ones—King Francis I of France and his jester Triboulet. The story was essentially the same as the one told in the opera, and what bothered the censors both in Paris and in Venice was the unflattering picture it gave of a real French king. That was in 1832, when romanticism and revolution were both easily sniffed in the European air. The censors thought such pres entations would give inspiration to subversives. The libretto that the Venetians read had a different title—
La maledizione
(“The Curse”)—but the disreputable ruler was still Francis I.

Verdi was to meet similar troubles when he submitted the original libretto of A
Masked Ball
to the censors of Naples In the case of
Rigoletto
the changes demanded were comparatively easily met. The locale was moved to Italy; the King was reduced in rank to a duke and his name changed to that of a line which, if not fictitious, was at least extinct; and the name of the jester was changed to the wholly fanciful one of “Rigoletto.” This name, which someone suggested would “swallow as easily as, for example, soup and soft bread,” was also given to the opera.

In less troublous times Hugo’s play regained the stage, and it became very popular as a vehicle for Edwin Booth under the title of
The Fool’s Revenge
. He played the part of the jester.

ACT I

Scene 1
The profligate Duke of Mantua is giving a gay ball in his palace. His attitude toward women is shown in his lithe aria
Questa o quella
—“This or that one,” and he soon leaves the scene briefly, escorting the wife of one of his courtiers. Presently the general merriment and the dance music are interrupted by a stern voice. It is the old Count Monte rone, who has come to denounce the Duke on behalf of his daughter. Now the Duke’s professional jester, the hunchback Rigoletto, steps forward and makes cruel fun of the old man Monterone keeps his dignity; and though he is arrested at the order of the Duke, he turns on his tormentor and delivers a powerful curse on his head. It is the curse of a father, and
Rigoletto, who is a father himself and deeply superstitious, turns away in horror.

Scene 2
After Monterone’s terrible curse Rigoletto returns home. Just outside his house he is accosted by a tall, evil-looking man. It is Sparafucile, a professional cutthroat, and, as one professional to another, Sparafucile offers the court jester his services on any suitable occasion. As the sinister figure shambles off, muttering his own
name—Sparafucil’—on
a very low note, Rigoletto cries out
Pari siamo!
—“We are the same!”—and he sings his great soliloquy, cursing his own shape, his fate, his character. There follows then a long and beautiful duet with his daughter, the innocent young Gilda. She is all that is good in the jester’s life, and he wishes to protect her from the world and its evil ways. His last instructions, as he leaves the house, are to Gilda’s nurse, Giovanna, to keep all the doors locked.

His commands are in vain. Even before he has gone, the Duke of Mantua, disguised as a student, slips into the garden, bribes the nurse, and proceeds to make the most melodious love to Gilda. And when he leaves on account of some noises outside, Gilda sings her aria of ecstatic young love
(Caro nome
—“Dearest name”).