My first thoughts on receiving this weighty tome were that its
origins were as a university thesis. Certainly in the UK, when
that practice is followed, the book is slimmer than the thesis,
which, if properly supervised, would have rid the work of superfluous
detail. A closer look revealed a somewhat different story. The
author, Clarissa Lablache Cheer, was born in Southampton, England
and grew up there during World War Two. After attending Southampton
College of Art she launched a career as a freelance artist, dress
designer and muralist, living in Italy, France and Austria before
settling in California and establishing a successful interior
design business. In California she actively pursued her interest
in her operatic lineage and writing articles on the history of
opera. She became founder of the Chris Merritt fan club and continued
her research into her family origins with the aim of a first
biography in English of her ancestor, the great nineteenth century
bass, Luigi Lablache. Lablache’s name will be known to
many lovers of the operas of the so-called
bel canto period
as one of what became known as
The Puritani Quartet.
The subtitle, Nineteenth Century Operatic Superstar. His Life
and His Times really says most of what the book is about. It
certainly owes nothing to academe, which would surely, in the
interest of keeping to the point, have limited Cheer’s
frequent diversions. The narrative of the book is divided into
five of what Cheer chooses to call Books. These start with Lablache’s
beginnings, family and early years in Book 1. These chapters
(1-10) include his early successes and establishment as a force
in primo ottocento opera performances in Sicily and Italy. Later
Books (2-5) deal with his London debut, Paris and I Puritani
in Chapters 11-16, before Lablache’s activities in the
English Court of Princess, later Queen, Victoria. The concluding
two Books cover his visit to Russia, Covent Garden debut, the
end of his career and his final days. Each Book concludes with
several pages of black and white lithographs, photographs and
engravings, sometimes of doubtful relevance.
For me the many diversions in a text might have added character
and colour as well as interest in respect not only of her illustrious
relative, but also the detail of the historical and social milieu
in which Luigi Lablache was born, grew up and performed. Whilst
Cheer admits that she is not a trained musician and the focus
of the book is an attempt to provide a glimpse of opera in its
golden age through the saga of one of its greatest interpreters
(preface p.xvi); the devil is in the detail. What Cheer significantly
lacks is knowledge of opera composition and performance in general
in the period concerned as well as the general social milieu
in which it took place. This lack is shown in the diversionary
details she provides as picture painting to her main theme. A
few examples from Chapter 8 - 10 variously titled Naples, Vienna
and Beethoven (pp 50-62), Fame at the San Carlo (pp 63-70) and
Parma, (pp 71-11) will suffice to make the point.
First, page 52, Cheer quotes Black (Donizetti Operas in Naples.
London 1982) in stating of
Anna Bolena and
Lucia di
Lammermoor that:
both of these operas were proven successes
long before they reached Naples. The second of these was
actually premiered at the San Carlo, Naples, after a famous delay,
on 26 September 1835. I am not in a position to check what I
suspect, that she has misquoted Black. However, an error of that
magnitude indicates she has little detailed background knowledge
of opera performance in the period as a backing to her family
researches into Lablache’s career. This view receives further
confirmation when she states at p71:
During the years from
1817-1828, in just over a decade, Lablache further established
his reputation by singing in over fifty Rossini operas. It
might be debated that, with revisions in French, whether Rossini
wrote thirty-eight or thirty-nine operas, the latter was certainly
the maximum with his final work,
William Tell not yet
written in 1828. Lablache certainly sang, as Cheer records, more
than one role in some Rossini operas in various theatres. She
quotes, for example, that he sang both Figaro and Bartolo in
Il
Barbiere di Siviglia and also Dandini and Don Magnifico in
La
Cenerentola. However, even with Lablache’s renowned
diversity and size of repertoire I doubt if he sang fifty Rossini
operatic roles, particularly as Cheer in her own list of Rossini
operas sung by Lablache lists only twenty-three titles including
the Italian translation of the French language version of
Mosé in
Egitto performed in Parma in the Spring of 1829 (No. 48 Appendices
p. 623).
The errors also spread to matters of the social milieu of the
period. Chapter Note 81 (p. 654) states that Isabella Colbran
(1785-1845)
was mistress of Barbaja (the San Carlo impresario),
later
Rossini’s wife….
separated from Rossini and
divorced. It is generally accepted that Colbran had a relationship
with Barbaja and Cheer suggests a
ménage à trois. Colbran
certainly married Rossini, bringing a generous dowry with her,
but they could not be divorced, as the law of the time in Catholic
Bourbon Italy did not allow divorce. They were, however, legally
separated in 1837. Rossini had to wait until Colbran’s
death to marry Olympe Pélissier who had become his close
companion in the early 1830s. She was responsible for his return
to Paris in 1855 and her patient care of the ill and depressive
composer, and skills as a hostess, eventually enabled a compositional
renaissance for the great man (Rossini. Richard Osborne. Master
Musicians Series. London 1987. p 305). There are a number of
typographical errors that more careful editing would have picked
up. Examples are the date of the Naples service commemorating
Haydn’s death: given as 1909 instead of 1809 (p. 57). More
worrying is in the care given to the notes and references with
Note. 105 giving Ashbrook’s seminal
Donizetti and his
Operas being given as 1982 whilst the correct 1983 is given
elsewhere. Some of these errors are minor, but there is the danger
that this book will, in turn, be quoted by others who assume
the facts etc to be correct. In that manner errors are perpetuated
in the literature.
It is easy for me to pick on errors of fact from the period when
secondary sources are at issue. I cannot do that for the original
research that Cheer has carried out in family and other archives
and in respect of Lablache’s
Family Tree (p. 582)
and extensive
Chronology of Opera Appearances and Casts (pp.
583-617). These, together with reference to contemporary press
coverage on one of the accepted great singers of the bel canto
era might well be the vital contribution the book makes to the
literature. As to the many digressions Cheer makes within the
narrative, these are a mixed blessing as she often loses the
chronology in some diversions, at least for this reader. This
is so in respect of the family history (Chapter 1) when a more
explicit lineage of the family would have been welcome. It is
particularly so in respect of the family connections and politics
as French Jacobite sympathisers and their relationship with their
country of origin post the 1789 Revolution. Fears of revolution
moved towards the Royal Court of the Bourbon King Ferdinand of
the Two Sicilies, a kingdom that stretched from South of Rome
to the heel and toe of Italy, and included the island of Sicily.
These were palpable in Naples itself, which was the home of many émigrés
fleeing the horrors of France. It was certainly the focus of
the High Society of Europe, a regular on the Grand Tour and the
home of painters and poets (Chapter 2). Ferdinand was a regular
at his box at the San Carlo whilst his wife, daughter of Empress
Maria Theresa of Austria, was sister of the guillotined Marie
Antoinette. The French and revolution did come to Naples with
two fraught Republican periods wrought by Napoleon. During these
periods Ferdinand and his Court fled to Sicily, on one occasion
with the assistance of Nelson after the battle of Aboukir Bay
(p.11). Ferdinand was reinstated in 1815, again with the help
of the English, after the Battle of Waterloo.
The period of the Royal Court in Sicily was very important to
Luigi Lablache. A theatre had been built in Palermo for the use
of the king in exile. Whilst in Naples the young man had performed
in the smaller dialect-singing theatres of the city. It was during
this period that he met Rubini for the first time and married,
in 1814, his young singing teacher. She was the daughter of a
celebrated actor and singer. With the restoration of Bourbon
rule in Naples in 1815 the new theatre in Palermo came under
the domain of the impresario Barbaja who employed Luigi and sent
him to Sicily. There with the help of his wife and father-in-law
he learnt his trade as a formidable
buffo. By the time
Lablache moved on to Milan in 1821, where he was a joined by
Rubini, he had around twelve Rossini bass roles in his repertoire,
one of which was Figaro, sung in the first Neapolitan performance
of
Il Barbiere on 14 October 1818. The previous year,
at a birthday gala for the King he had sung at the San Carlo
in the Royal presence in a performance of Mayr’s
Il
sogno di Parteope alongside Isabella Colbran and Rubini (Chapters
5-6).
It is not the place of a reviewer to summarise the contents of
a book, but rather to give a flavour. Taken at face value, and
weeding the fact from the error, the story of Luigi Lablache
that emerges is one of interest to all lovers of the bel canto
period. He was without doubt one of the greatest singers of the
first half of the nineteenth century. His diversity of roles
and his life and performances in Paris and London give insights
into the cultural milieu in those cities in that period. Of more
than passing interest is Lablache’s connection as singer
and teacher with Princess, later Queen, Victoria and which echoes
Rossini’s connection with George IV during his visit to
London prior to taking up his position as Director of the Théâtre
Italien in Paris. Lablache’s season at Covent Garden (1854-55)
and the fact that his size and age allowed him the privilege
of a chair on stage,
the only singer in nineteenth-century
history granted this privilege (p. 441) has echoes in more
recent times. In 1847, after offering to introduce Verdi to the
Queen, Lablache created the role of Massimiliano Moor in the
composer’s
I Masnadieri, premiered at Her Majesty’s
Theatre, London on 22 July 1847 (pp.338-340). Lablache had remained
loyal to the theatre after Costa had walked out and set up a
rival company at Covent Garden (Budden. The Operas of Verdi.
Vol. 1 pp. 316-18). Cheer reports that the critics had a field
day with the large figured Lablache playing the part of a starving
man,
He had to do the only thing he could not do to perfection … represent
a man who nearly starved to death. It was the first time
since Weber’s
Oberon that a world famous composer
had written an opera for London and as Cheer reports the Queen,
her Consort and all the Royal family and high society were to
be there. Whatever the critics said Verdi, was offered a contract
for one opera a year for the next ten years but, disliking the
climate he would not be tempted, even by a large fee (
ibid Budden).
I do not wish to overstate the errors or the difficulties in
following a linear narrative in this book. However, it must be
said that the text would have gained immeasurably from both proof-reading
and strict editing. More importantly, it could also have taken
a more appropriate place among the literature if it had had the
benefit of perusal and correction from an academic such as Commons,
Gossett, Parker or their like, all of whom have the known facts
within their being and whose imprimatur would have given greater
veracity to the claims made for the singer. In this way a worthy
but general read could have become a valuable addition to the
operatic literature of the period and the singers involved, not
least Luigi Lablache. As it is, Cheer’s amateur, but wide-ranging
survey, leaves many questions and doubts, and misses the aim
of bringing a definitive contribution on the art of Luigi Lablache
to the English-speakers of the world.
Robert J Farr
see also review by Margarida Mota-Bull
