The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (33 page)

A long opera, difficult to cast or stage satisfactorily and usually performed with substantial cuts, but one which offers irresistible opportunities to first-rate virtuoso singers.
For the director and designer, it is less gratifying: how does one depict Ancient Babylon without sinking into Hollywood biblical kitsch?

Recording

CD: Joan Sutherland (Semiramide), Marilyn Home (Arsace); Richard Bonynge (cond.).
Decca 425 481 2

Guillaume
Tell
(
William
Tell
)

Four acts. First performed Paris, 1829.

Libretto by Etienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Florent-Bis

In 1823, Rossini moved to Paris.
There he revised two of his earlier tragic operas (
Maometto
Secondo,
which became
Le
Siège
de
Corinthe;
and
Mosè
in
Egitto,
which became
Moïse
et
Pharaon
) and wrote two original pieces,
Il
Viaggio
a
Reims
and
Le
Comte
Ory,
in a lighter vein.
His last opera, a version of Schiller’s treatment of the story of the Swiss patriot William Tell, represents a remarkable new departure, tailored to the contemporary French taste for extensive choral and balletic episodes, spectacular processions and stage effects, all framed by subject-matter relating to the struggle for national self-determination.

Rossini later cut the opera to three acts, and various Italian abridgements were made during his lifetime, albeit without his authorization.
Today, one is most likely to hear a (lightly cut) performance of the original French version.

Plot

In thirteenth-century Switzerland, the cantons are suffering from the repressions of Austrian domination.
The freedom-fighter William Tell attempts to win Arnold, a young Swiss, to the cause of independence, but Arnold can only feign support because he is in service to Austria and in love with the Austrian Mathilde, sister to the evil governor Gessler.
Tell helps a man who has killed an Austrian caught trying to rape his daughter – a gesture which provokes horrible reprisals.

Despite his love for Mathilde, Arnold is finally so outraged at the Austrians’ murder of his father that he is converted to the cause of Swiss liberty.
Gessler orders humiliating celebrations to mark the centenary of the Austrian occupation, but Tell refuses to participate and is arrested.
Gessler sadistically commands Tell, on pain of death, to display his famous skill with the crossbow by shooting an apple placed on the head of his son Jemmy.
Tell succeeds in this ordeal, but Gessler treacherously arrests him anyway.
With Mathilde’s support, Arnold takes over the leadership of the Swiss uprising and uncovers a cache of arms hidden by Tell.

Tell evades captivity and kills Gessler.
The uprising succeeds and the Swiss hail the dawn of a new era of liberty.

What to listen for

After the famous Overture with its prestissimo ‘Lone Ranger’ climax, the opera gets off to a slow start with the overlong Act I.
But the drama soon builds momentum, and the subsequent acts contain some fine arias – for soprano, Mathilde’s exquisitely lyrical ‘Sombre forêt’ in Act II; for tenor, Arnold’s testing ‘Asile héréditaire’ in Act IV – and tautly developing ensembles, such as the trio in which Arnold learns of the murder of his father, or the scene in which Tell is obliged to shoot the apple from his son’s head.
Note also the charm of the folk-dances in Acts I and III, the austerely powerful chorus of oath-taking at the climax of Act II and the glowing hymn to liberty which brings the opera to a radiant ending.

Throughout the opera, there is a sense of a drama built on passionate declamation rather than pauses for vocal display interrupted by recitative – one of several respects in which
Guillaume
Tell,
a work enormously admired by both Verdi and Wagner, points the way forward for nineteenth-century opera.

Throughout his career, Rossini wrote for a particular type of Italian tenor more noted for flexibility than power and using a light, sweet, heady tone in the falsetto-ish upper register.
In Paris, however, a heavier, chestier, more masculine sound was in fashion, and at a performance of
Guillaume
Tell
in 1837, Gilbert Duprez as Arnold became the first-ever singer to sing a full-throated chest-supported high C.
Rossini hated the noise, and compared it to ‘the squawk of a capon with its throat cut’, but audiences went wild for it and have done so ever since, as the climax of ‘Di quella pira’ in
Il
Trovatore
illustrates.

In performance

Of all great operas, this is probably the least performed, and major houses like the Metropolitan and Opéra Bastille do not even have a production in their repertory.
Why?
Because
Tell
is a long piece without any obvious hit tunes outside the
Overture; because it requires large forces and a great conductor capable of keeping a firm grip on the piece’s occasional longueurs; and because the role of Arnold in particular is so difficult to cast – few of today’s tenors possess the power it requires in the higher register.

Recording

CD: Cheryl Studer (Mathilde); Chris Merritt (Arnold); Riccardo Muti (cond.).
Philips 422 391 2-4.
In Italian

Gaetano Donizetti

(1797–1848)

Anna Bolena
(
Anne Boleyn
)

Two acts. First performed Milan, 1830.

Libretto by Felice Romani

Anna
Bolena
was Donizetti’s thirtieth opera and first major international success.
It is one of three operas he drew from Tudor history, an era made popular by the novels of Walter Scott; the other two are
Maria
Stuarda
(1835), based on Schiller’s play about the confrontation between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, and
Roberto
Devereux
(1837), about Elizabeth’s affair with the Earl of Essex.
None of their plots bear close relation to historical reality, but they are none the less gripping and effective.

Plot

In Windsor Castle, the courtiers discuss Enrico’s (Henry VIII’s) neglect of his second wife, Anna (Anne Boleyn), and his flirtation with her lady-in-waiting, Giovanna (Jane Seymour).
Enrico plans to entrap Anna by recalling her former lover Percy from exile.
When Anna nobly resists Percy’s protestations, he draws his sword and threatens to kill himself. Enrico appears and decides to interpret the scene before him as a conspiracy.
Anna and Percy are arrested.

Giovanna visits Anna is prison and admits that Enrico has asked her to succeed Anna as his wife and queen.
Giovanna persuades her that if she pleads guilty to adultery, Enrico will be only too glad to grant her clemency.
At the trial, Anna’s infatuated page Smeaton claims to be her lover, but the ruse fails: Percy and Anna’s brother Rochefort are pardoned, but Anna is sentenced to death and they choose to die with her.

In her cell, the mentally unhinged Anna recalls former happy days with Percy.
She is restored to her senses by the sound of the cannon announcing Enrico’s marriage to
Giovanna, and as the hour of her execution draws near, she begs heaven to have mercy on them.

What to listen for