Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera

"It is my last book, but it could very well be the first. It’s not the first book you would go to in order to read about Verdi, but before reading about Verdi we should read about 19th-century Italian opera. Divas and Scholars is an absolutely unique book; it is the towering achievement of arguably the most pioneering and influential scholar of 19th-century Italian opera who ever lived. It is a book that talks about opera first of all with a level of passion and energy that I found absolutely captivating, and it is researched with greater breadth and depth than any other publication in the field. I’m partial, admittedly, because I knew Philip well—he was one of my principal mentors and a dear friend, and I serve as General Editor for the Verdi critical edition, which he founded and ran himself for many years. But there is something about the way in which he writes that is so vivid and energetic and powerful; it nails you to the chair in a way that the other books perhaps don’t. Some authors like Budden will capture you more for their grace and charm; Walker is unique for the abundance of documentary evidence; Baldini has the strong opinions; Gossett bursts with energy and passion, and is absolutely infectious. The book takes a very specific approach and it’s important to stress the full title. There is a great deal in it that discusses “texts,” manuscript and printed music scores, librettos as objects and written texts, and so on. But the central idea is that opera comes to life in performance and that research, knowledge, understanding, and editions can guide and enhance our appreciation of it. The idea that opera is an event has been theorised, sometimes in very complex ways—I’m no fan of over-theorisation—but what Gossett does is tell us how people have gone about performing Italian opera, the problems and challenges they have faced, different traditions and approaches, and how we can go about keeping Italian opera alive, or bringing it to new life in terms of expanding the repertoire we perform today or igniting new energy into familiar works in the light of current research. Divas and Scholars moves seamlessly from past to present, from the score to the stage, talking about Gossett’s first-hand experience working with some of the most prominent singers from the late 20th- and early 21st-century singers up until 2006 when the book was published. It’s really an extraordinarily broad read, because it tells us about the composers and their work; it tells us about the scores through which their work has arrived at us (and through which we sometimes misunderstand aspects of the operas); it talks about the work that scholars have to do in order to bring a certain level of probity to a repertoire that is as popular as it is misconceived. It also talks about the great conductors who might have had misguided assumptions about this repertoire—for instance, the habit of cutting portions of operas (a topic that we’ve already touched on with Alfredo’s cabaletta). But this is a book that, unlike the others we’ve discussed today, is about opera as a living practice, and how that practice thrives or can thrive on the basis of increased, deeper knowledge of how the composers worked, the cultural context in which they operated, the restrictions and pressures to which they were subjected, the challenges performers have to face, and so forth. It’s a great place to start. Even though it’s not a book specifically a book on Verdi, it gives the broader picture in terms of understanding Italian opera and in terms of placing Verdi in context. We’ve come full circle: we started by talking about myth and reality and the extraordinary life that Verdi had, and of Verdi as the peasant from Roncole. Gossett, in a way, does the same kind of work that Walker does, but on a completely different front, at a different level. He’s reminding us that Verdi is not alone and that the culture of opera is collaborative and complex. There are so many individuals and factors that contribute towards making Italian opera not only in the 19th century, but also today. One thing is clear to me: if you read Divas and Scholars , you’ll probably want to go to the opera! Honestly, whichever! I don’t think that you can go wrong. The question that you are asking presupposes that there are operas that are not approachable, and I don’t think that’s true. There are some that are stranger than others and that are performed less frequently than others. But the secret is to arrive at a performance having done a little bit of preparation, knowing the plot and understanding a little bit of how an opera by Verdi works. Nowadays, there is the question of production, when stage directors take a heavy-handed approach to the texts they stage, changing their location, the time of the action, but also twisting or layering the plot in ways that can be very challenging for the opera-goer to decode. If I have to choose, then I become subjective and even sentimental. Aida was my first opera so, of course, I think that it’s great. There is spectacle, there are the big choruses, and there are bits of ballet (depending on the production). It has the loud, rousing stuff but also extraordinary intimate scenes, it has exoticism, it has political themes, so that’s a great place to start. It might be a little bit overwhelming and it’s on the long side, so if you want something more concise and dramatic to the core, then maybe Rigoletto is your opera. If you want something more sentimental and thoroughly heart-rending, then La Traviata is your opera. But if you’re looking for theatre and psychological depth and are willing to embrace the grand opéra experience—in the French sense of the term—then maybe Don Carlos . That’s another fabulous piece. If you want to have fun, Falstaff is incredible. If you want to have bel canto and incredible vocal virtuosity, then an early Verdi opera might be very satisfying. One that I find extremely compelling and is not done nearly enough is I Lombardi alla prima Crociata. I Lombardi tells the story of interreligious love between a Christian woman and a Muslim man, although the man converts to Christianity before dying. How powerful can that be nowadays? How relevant is that to present-day concerns? Opera is theatre and one needs to think about the stories as much as one thinks about the music, there’s no question about that. I would encourage any reader to take the plunge and just go to the opera; go at least twice, and it is likely that, by default, one of the operas you land upon is going to be by Verdi; just see where things go from there."