Alfredo CATALANI - Opera’s Great ‘Inbetweener’
by David Chandler
 |
Alfredo
Catalani, c.1889, by Vespasiano Bignami |
Woe betide
the creative artist who gets pigeonholed as a ‘transitional
figure’! Though Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart and Shakespeare are
all, arguably, ‘transitional figures’ and nonetheless recognized
as towering geniuses, more often a suspicion of ‘transitionality’
leads to an assumption that the artist in question was not quite
one thing or another, that he or she represented ‘unfulfilled
promise’. Greatness is looked for elsewhere.
Alfredo Catalani has long been afforded a brief part in the
story of Italian opera as a ‘transitional figure’. Born in 1854,
the year after
Il Trovatore and
La Traviata,
and dying in 1893, the year of
Falstaff and
Manon
Lescaut, he is acknowledged as a key figure in the transitions
from Verdi to Puccini and Mascagni, and from grand opera to
verismo. In another sense, too, Catalani has been squeezed
into musical histories as an ‘inbetweener’, for his great love
of Wagner led him to write operas which seek to reconcile the
Verdian tradition with the German music-drama. This lofty goal
has generally endeared him to neither the Verdian nor Wagnerian
camps.
Catalani established himself as a powerful and innovative presence
on the Italian operatic scene in the course of Verdi’s long
semi-retirement between
Aida (1871) and
Otello
(1887). He became famous in his hometown, Lucca, with a beautiful
early Mass (1872), and then achieved wider fame with
La
Falce (‘The Scythe’), the sensational one-act opera, with
libretto by Arrigo Boito, with which he graduated from the Milan
Conservatory in 1875. At this time, as his revealing letters
to Stefano Stampa spell out, and as
La Falce demonstrates,
Catalani was very prejudiced against Verdi, while at the same
time considering himself of Wagner’s ‘party’. One must suppose
that his feelings toward Verdi were shaped by what Harold Bloom,
in the literary context, has famously termed ‘the anxiety of
influence’: Catalani had to misrepresent Verdi in order to find
an alternative way forward for Italian opera. Later, he was
proud to know the older composer, and to have his approval for
La Wally. On Verdi’s side, too, there was increasing
admiration and understanding; after Catalani’s early death,
Verdi mourned him as ‘a good man and excellent musician’, and
obtained a commemorative bust.
La Falce led to the promising young composer being
picked up by Francesco Lucca’s publishing house, now run by
his wife, the formidable Giovannina (1814-94), who mentored
Catalani’s career over the following decade at the same time
as she tried to popularize Wagner’s operas in Italy. Catalani
was soon at work on the four-act
Elda, a supernatural
subject based on the Loreley legends of the Rhine. It was a
clear gesture of support for the Wagnerian cause, but the vocal
lines, which prompted comparisons with Bellini, are unmistakably
Italian, and overall
Elda impresses as the work of
a composer with a confidently individual vision. It was premiered
at the Teatro Regio, Turin, in January 1880, where it proved
reasonably popular and got good reviews. But it was a difficult
opera to stage, and did not get taken up by other Italian theatres.
Catalani, feeling that he needed a popular success (mainly for
financial reasons), went on to write the much more conventional
four-act
Dejanice, premiered at La Scala in 1883.
Dejanice,
though locally influenced by Wagner, is overall much closer
to the style of Ponchielli, and directly challenges comparison
with
La Gioconda - Mahler, an early admirer, thought
it much better. Catalani again tried something new with the
much slighter
Edmea, a rapidly-composed three-act opera
premiered at La Scala in 1886. An intensely lyrical but rather
introverted work,
Edmea was in some ways a surprising
popular favourite, but it was widely played both in Italy and
abroad, and achieved far more success in Catalani’s lifetime
than any of his other operas. Since his death, by contrast,
it is the one that has inspired least interest.
After
Edmea, Catalani’s close friend Giuseppe Depanis
(1853-1942), a Wagnerian critic, encouraged him to revise
Elda,
which was recast as the three-act
Loreley, a ravishingly
beautiful opera with a much more organic sense of form and greater
dramatic urgency. Unfortunately, Catalani now experienced a
hiatus in his career.
Loreley was finished in 1887,
but in spring 1888 Giovannina Lucca retired and sold her business
to her great rival, Giulio Ricordi. Catalani soon found that
Ricordi had little time for him, and he had to wait until the
debacle of Puccini’s
Edgar (April 1889) was over before
the publisher started to show an interest in promoting the much
superior
Loreley. From this time on Catalani was embittered
by Ricordi’s clear preference for his fellow townsman, Puccini.
Loreley was premiered at the Teatro Regio, Turin, in
February 1890, to considerable success, but it was slow to get
taken up by other theatres, in part because of Ricordi’s apathy.
Catalani was already well into the composition of his final
opera,
La Wally, an almost perfect synthesis of Italian
tradition and Wagner, premiered at La Scala in January 1892.
It contains by far his best known aria, Wally’s achingly beautiful
‘Ebben? Ne andrň lontana’, featured prominently in the cult
French film
Diva (1981) as well as in
Philadelphia
(1993) and
A Single Man (2009).
La Wally was
a popular triumph, but Ricordi again did little to promote it,
and it was soon overshadowed by
Falstaff and Puccini’s
Manon Lescaut. Catalani, who had been afflicted by
tuberculosis since his teens, and whose career had represented
a constant battle with illness, was unable to start work on
another opera. He died on 7 August 1893.
How to interpret and value a career like that of Catalani? Guido
Salvetti’s 1993 essay, ‘From Elda to Loreley: contradictions
of the passage’, epitomizes, in schematic fashion, the begrudging
recognition afforded Catalani by many opera scholars and opera
lovers. Taking as his reference points
Elda and
Loreley,
Salvetti implicitly concedes that Catalani was the key figure
in 1880s Italian opera, but at the same time argues that it
was a very unsatisfactory decade, a period of ‘crisis’ that
saw a dearth of ‘masterpieces’ and ‘a sort of messianic wait
for a redemption’ (‘una sorta di attesa messianica di un riscatto’).
Catalani’s operas reflect the crisis, but fail to offer plausible
solutions. ‘Redemption’ finally came in the shape of
Cavalleria
Rusticana, which arrived wonderfully pat in 1890, three
months after
Loreley, to put ‘an end to the fascinating
complexity of the 1880s’. Catalani is thus the ‘transitional
figure’ between
Aida and
La Gioconda on the
one hand and
Cavalleria and
Pagliacci on the
other.
The merit of such an argument, if it has any at all, is mainly
to produce a tidy, simplified, linear narrative. The problem
with it is that Salvetti confuses artistic and commercial success.
There is no question that
Cavalleria Rusticana has
always been much more popular than any of Catalani’s operas
– but anyone wanting to attach excessive importance to that
should remember that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s operatic musicals
have been far more popular still. Mascagni showed an astonished
world that opera was not yet divorced from popular culture,
but he did not resolve the artistic issues that Catalani had
been wrestling with since the mid-1870s. Indeed the best rebuttal
to Salvetti’s argument may be simply to consider the future
course of Mascagni’s own career, which rather than being a string
of
Cavalleria clones moved steadily toward ambitious
attempts at the sort of Italian Wagnerian opera Catalani had
aspired to write. In other words, one might say ‘the fascinating
complexity of the 1880s’ returned to haunt Mascagni, just as
it haunted the next generation of Italian opera composers. That
younger generation, headed by Italo Montemezzi, Franco Alfano,
Riccardo Zandonai and Ildebrando Pizzetti, were hardly influenced
by
Cavalleria Rusticana, or indeed Puccini, at all.
But they had no doubts about Catalani’s importance. Montemezzi,
who enjoyed the greatest success of these composers with
L’Amore
dei Tre Re (1913), admired Catalani above all his Italian
precursors, and as late as 1938 Zandonai was orchestrating Catalani’s
beautiful piano piece,
In Sogno, a great favourite
of Toscanini’s.
Catalani, then, far from being merely a ‘transitional figure’
who kept a seat warm for Puccini, actually did more than anyone
to set the agenda for Italian opera in the half century after
Aida. That agenda was to create a meaningful response
to the Wagnerian music drama.
Loreley and
La Wally
were superb demonstrations of what was possible, and I would
rank them, with
L’Amore dei Tre Re, among the greatest
products of Italian Wagnerianism. Remarkably, they enjoyed their
greatest popularity between about 1905 and 1930, when the fuss
over
verismo had subsided and Catalani’s more subtle
and spiritual qualities could be appreciated, almost, it seemed,
for the first time. It is the refinement of Catalani’s musical
language, his steady refusal (apart, perhaps, from in
Dejanice)
to over-egg his puddings and serve honey as sauce to sugar,
that distinguishes him from his immediate contemporaries. As
Toscanini, his friend and greatest champion, stated: ‘He [Catalani]
was the most simpatico of the composers, refined – he wasn’t
crude as the others, Puccini, Mascagni, Giordano, or even Franchetti.’
Catalani deserves a hearing, and anyone with a serious interest
in Italian opera between 1870 and 1920 should acquaint themselves
with
Loreley and
La Wally at least: listening
with a view to appreciating this composer’s distinctive excellence
rather than seeking quick and damaging comparisons with Verdi
or Puccini.
La Wally is still revived reasonably regularly,
albeit not in the Anglophone world. All credit, though, to Opera
Holland Park for a stirring and well-received production in
2011. A good example of the way this opera can impress even
the skeptical was afforded by Rupert Christiansen’s review of
the production for the
Daily Telegraph. Christiansen,
who had been scathing about most of Holland Park’s revivals
of lesser-known Italian operas from this period, was overwhelmingly
positive about
La Wally: ‘Nine times out of 10, there
are good reasons why operas fall out of favour or languish neglected,
but Catalani’s
La Wally is the exception. … Covent
Garden should take it on now.’ There are several good recordings
of
La Wally available, most of them featuring Renata
Tebaldi in the lead role: my favourite is the 1968 studio recording
Tebaldi made with Fausto Cleva conducting the Orchestre National
de l’Opéra de Monte-Carlo.
Loreley is revived much less often, the main objection
to it generally being that it treats of supernatural events.
I have no patience with this objection, for like Catalani, and
like the earliest creators of opera, I feel the operatic medium
is superbly equipped to deal with the supernatural! There is
also no recording of
Loreley that I would unreservedly
recommend, but the various issues of the 1968 La Scala performance
with Elena Suliotis in the title role make a good case for an
opera that deserves to be much better known. It is noteworthy
that both Giuseppe Depanis, Catalani’s best critic, and Toscanini,
his best interpreter, considered the third act of
Loreley
to be the composer’s greatest single act. A good studio recording
is a real desideratum.
The rest of Catalani’s music has been surprisingly well served
by record companies, especially Bongiovanni. There are reasonable-to-good
recordings of
La Falce,
Dejanice,
Edmea
and the orchestral music available, good recordings of the piano
music and early Mass, and excellent recordings of the songs
and chamber music. But anyone new to Catalani is strongly advised
to start with
La Wally and
Loreley.
Catalani’s Operas
La Falce. 1 Act. Libretto: Arrigo Boito. Milan, Conservatory,
19 July 1875.
Elda. 4 Acts. Libretto: Carlo D’Ormeville. Turin,
Teatro Regio, 31 January 1880.
Dejanice. 4 Acts. Libretto: Angelo Zanardini. Milan,
La Scala, 17 March 1883.
Edmea. 3 Acts. Libretto: Antonio Ghislanzoni. Milan,
La Scala, 27 February 1886.
Loreley. 3 Acts. Libretto: Carlo D’Ormeville revised
by Angelo Zanardini and others. Turin, Teatro Regio, 16 February
1890.
La Wally. 4 Acts. Libretto: Luigi Illica. Milan,
La Scala, 20 January 1892.
David Chandler
Doshisha University, Kyoto
David Chandler has edited two books on Catalani (
reviewed
here), mainly consisting of translations of key Italian texts:
Alfredo Catalani: Composer of Lucca and
The First
Lives of Alfredo Catalani. Both are published by Durrant
Publishing: see
http://www.durrantpublishing.co.uk/
References
Translations of Catalani’s letters to Stefano Stampa can be found
in
The First Lives of Alfredo Catalani; Verdi’s description
of Catalani comes from a letter to Edoardo Mascheroni, quoted
often in the Catalani literature; Mahler’s preference for
Dejanice
over
La Gioconda is recorded in Henry-Louis de La Grange’s
biography; Guido Salvetti’s article, ‘Da Elda a Loreley: contraddizioni
di un percorso’, can be found in
Rivista di archeologia storia,
costume 21 (1993), 83-95; Montemezzi’s admiration for Catalani
is expressed in Charles Henry Meltzer, ‘Montemezzi and His Music’,
The Review 1 (1919), 587-88; details concerning Zandonai’s
orchestration of
Il Sogno can be found in Konrad Claude
Dryden,
Riccardo Zandonai: A Biography (Peter Lang, 1999);
the Toscanini quotation is from the Larry Weinstein film,
Toscanini
in His Own Words; Rupert Christiansen’s review of
La
Wally can be found at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/8674839/La-Wally-Opera-Holland-Park-review.html
