The Great Lablache - Nineteenth Century Operatic
Superstar: His Life and His Times
by Clarissa Lablache Cheer
ISBN: 978-1-4415-0215-5 (hard cover)
ISBN: 978-1-4415-0214-8 (soft cover)
Publication Year: 2009
Number of Pages (with Appendices, Notes & Bibliography): 688
Price: £14.00 (paperback), £23.00 (hardback)
XLIBRIS CORPORATION, USA
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