Un Ballo In Maschera Research Articles

The role of Amelia in Giuseppe Verdi’s “Un ballo in maschera” - Vocality and Technical-interpretative Coordinates

Like all of Verdi's mature works, the opera “Un ballo in maschera” demonstrates notable progress in both vocal and orchestral writing. In terms of the vocality of the characters, Verdi creates remarkable solo roles, adapted to the various dramaturgical requirements. The role of Amelia is a key character, being assigned an extensive vocal discourse. Her vocality reflects a noticeable difference from the Verdian patterns used in the construction of female roles, up to “Il Trovatore”. The suppression of the well-known “cabaletta”, the abandonment of the demonstrations of vocal virtuosity and the intensification of the vocal writing in the middle register, offer a plus of uniqueness to this role. Thus, a new vocal pattern is materialized among the female characters representative in Giuseppe Verdi’s work, leaving behind the vocal portraits of the heroines inspired from the belcanto singing “tradition”. In this study we will analyze from a structural and interpretive point of view the main solo moments of the role.

Masked faces. Verdi, Uncle Tom and the unification of Italy

This article explores Italian images of America during the Risorgimento and the time of Italy's unification. At the centre of this investigation are two remarkably painful theatrical representations of life in the New World: Verdi's 1859 opera Un ballo in maschera, set in seventeenth-century Boston; and Rota's 1852 ballet Bianchi e neri, based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's epic novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Often performed together during the same evening, both works presented Italians with an extremely disturbing image of America, a negation of Italy's own cultural values. The article reads these theatrical representations of America within a wider context of Italian debates on the United States. Italians did not always look at life in America as a political, social or constitutional model; and if in the eyes of many Italians the United States became an epitome of modernity later in the nineteenth century, they did not necessarily identify with the particular model of modernity America stood for. The article argues that historians have tended to overlook some of the complexities of Italy's image of America.

The Bjorling sound: a recorded legacy

The Bjorling Sound: A Recorded Legacy. By Stephen Hastings. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012. xvii, 406pp (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-58046-406-2. $49.95 Stephen Hastings' The Bjorling Sound is the first attempt at an analytical study of the recordings of the Swedish singer, arguably the greatest lyric tenor on record. The Bjorling Sound is not a discography and, as such, does not attempt to document Bjorling's complete recorded output. Harald Henrysson's A Jussi Bjorling Phonography remains the definitive discography of the tenor, either in its second printed edition (Stockholm: Svenskt Muskhistoriskt Arkiv, 1993), or in the updated version available on the websites of the Swedish Jussi Bjorling Society (www.jussibjorlingsallskapet.com) and the Jussi Bjorling Museum (www.borlange.se/jussibjorling-english). Although the online versions have kept abreast of recent CD releases, Henrysson now lists only CD reissues. For original 78-, 45- and 33*/3-rpm catalog numbers, the printed second edition remains indispensable (the online version does list 78-rpm matrix numbers). The twenty-four chapters that make up the bulk of The Bjorling Sound are arranged alphabetically by composer. Not surprisingly, those devoted to composers whose operas were recorded complete by Bjorling are the longest; ninety-one pages are devoted to Verdi and seventy-eight to Puccini. Bjorling made eleven commercial opera recordings, one each of Puccini's Manon Lescaut, La Boheme, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, Verdi's Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and Aida, and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, plus two of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. Except for Madama Butterfly and Turandot, where no live performances with Bjorling exist, Hastings adds the known live performances to his discussions--five in the case of Il Trovatore. Of considerable importance are live performances of operas that are not part of Bjorling's commercial discography, including Gounod's Faust and Romeo et Juliette, and Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera and Don Carlo. Major non-operatic works are also added to the mix: Beethoven's Missa Solemnis (the 1940 broadcast with Toscanini and the NBC Symphony), and three performances of Verdi's Messa da Requiem, including the Decca commercial recording from 1960 with Reiner and the Vienna Philharmonic, plus the familiar 1940 Toscanini/NBC broadcast and an alternate Toscanini performance given at the Lucerne Festival in 1939, the last existing only in a primitive recording of a short-wave broadcast. In addition to analyses of the complete performances, Hastings offers discussions of recordings of individual arias and scenes. Many of the recordings in this category are from operas that Bjorling did not record complete, including Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, Massenet's Manon, Bizet's Carmen, and Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore. Song literature was an important part of Bjorling's repertoire, and is covered in separate chapters to Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Sibelius, Grieg, Rangstrom, and Alfven. Hastings has a thorough knowledge of the work and recordings of the major singers of the twentieth century allowing him to make meaningful, and often very specific, comparisons between Bjorling's recordings and those of other important tenors. Throughout his discussions, the level of detail is often exhaustive. One of many examples of Hastings' thoroughness is the section devoted to Bjorling's 1951 recording of the Act II duet from Verdi's Otello with Robert Merrill. He devotes nearly five pages to this recording, drawing comparisons to Caruso, Martinelli, Zenatello, del Monaco, Zanelli, Lauri-Volpi, Vinay, McCracken, Domingo, and Pavarotti. Leaving no stone unturned, he also offers comments on Francesco Tamagno's unpublished 1903 recording of the duet with an unidentified baritone (possibly Tamagno's brother Giovanni). This recording can only be heard in Historic Masters' collection of seven double-faced vinyl 78s devoted to Tamagno's complete 12-inch records (reviewed by me in the ARSC Journal, 2008;39[1]:169-172). …

Uncle Tom on the Ballet Stage: Italy's Barbarous America, 1850–1900

Giacomo Puccini’s Fanciulla del West (1908), which featured the Californian gold fever of 1849, and Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera (1859), set in seventeenth-century Boston, are today probably the most famous Italian representations of America on stage. Although very different in character, both operas present American life as a mixture of exoticism, vice, and violence, far from the idea of a society founded on the high principles of the European Enlightenment.1 But it is another stage work that arguably had a more lasting effect on how Italians discussed life in the United States. In 1853 Milan’s Teatro alla Scala staged what was to become one of the greatest success stories in the history of Italian ballet: Bianchi e Neri, Giuseppe Rota’s adaptation of Stowe’s epochal novel of 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.2 Although

Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Zeminsky (review)

Reviewed by: Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Zeminsky Richard LeSueur Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Zeminsky. By David J. Levin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. [xix, 254 p. ISBN-10 0226475220; ISBN-13 9780226475226. $35.] Illustrations, index. In Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Zeminsky, David Levin has undertaken the task of explaining and justifying less than traditional approaches to operatic production and direction. Whether the opera goer is enthralled or appalled by what in some circles is referred to as "Eurotrash" and other non-traditional productions, it is a fact of operatic life. This is true more so in Europe than in the United States, but it must be remembered that although the (in)famous Peter Sellars productions of the three great Mozart comedies were video recorded in Europe, the original concept was originated and produced in the United States. Levin's basic premise is that with careful reading of the text and other source material nearly any approach to a work can be justified. To this end he looks at productions of four standard repertory operas and one that is very much on the periphery. Levin does not ignore traditional approaches altogether and does allow that there is a place for a well thought out production which follows the traditional take on an opera and these can be successfully accomplished. His complaint in regards to most traditional productions is that they have not been thought through but rather mirror other productions of the same work. On the other hand, he does not believe that just because a production is new and innovative that it is automatically good, but rather it must be justified in some manner. Levin also looks at the changing audience and the opportunities that arise because of the use of supertitles. He argues that today's audiences often come prepared for the theatrical experience as much as the musical experience. The use of supertitles allows for greater leeway in the handling of the text and promotes greater opportunity to look in depth for subtexts within the whole of the opera. The other side of this equation is not explored, that is to say by altering the translation to match the production, but not altering the original text which is being performed, the aficionado who knows the original language being performed is hearing one thing but is seeing something else on the stage. It can be as minor as the painting in Tosca already having dark eyes or having a character cry out he has been stabbed but the director has decided that a gun shot would be more effective theatrically. Occa sionally in standard operas the text is altered to match the production; a common example is in Giuseppi Verdi's Un ballo in maschera where the tenor is greeted on his first entrance as either "Il Conte" (the original text) or "Il re" (for productions which move the action back to Sweden, the original concept). However, these are rare examples, and usually the director does as he pleases without obvious justification in the text as performed. Levin brings to the fore the difference between what he calls the "opera text" and the "performance text" [End Page 757] (p. 164). The opera text is what the librettist and composer created, the bare bones which the director and conductor must start with in order to produce an opera. The performance text is what the director uses to create the particular production being viewed. It is instructive to look at which productions of each opera Levin has chosen to explore in detail and which points are the center of his discussion. For Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro he has chosen the moment of forgiveness in the final scene through the final ensemble, concentrating on the utter stillness and at the very end when only Cherubino is left without a partner. I agree completely with Sellars that as filmed this is an incredibly moving moment as each of the characters is shown going through a wide range of emotions. The display of the human emotional range Sellars is able to display is one of the joys of this film. However there...

The Skeleton Score of Verdi's Una vendetta in domino : Two Surviving Fragments

For many years I have been fascinated by the kind of information to be found in auction and dealer catalogs. Unfortunately, we do not always have direct access to the manuscripts described in these catalogs. Nonetheless, even the descriptions (often with partial reproductions) can prove of great interest. four-page sketch of a duet from Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, for example, is known only from two auction catalogs, each of which reproduces a different page from the manuscript. (1) This material was enormously valuable as Alberto Rizzuti prepared the critical edition of the opera, which will appear early in 2008 in The Works of Giuseppe Verdi. When I received a grant in support of my research on Italian opera from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2004, I decided to gather as much of this information as possible and to make it more generally available through an online database. young Italian scholar, Daniela Macchione, has assumed primary responsibility for conducting the necessary research. She has described her work in the following terms: The status of sale catalogs still hovers uncomfortably between that of ephemera and that of significant bibliographical tool. (2) The importance, variety, and sometimes uniqueness of the information they contain, however, even if this information is directed primarily to those who aspire to acquire the items, make these catalogs precious resources for scholars, perhaps more precious for the difficulty scholars face in gaining access to them. With the support of the Mellon Foundation and in collaboration with the University of Chicago, I am currently responsible for realizing OperaCat, a database in which are gathered catalog descriptions of thousands of autograph manuscripts sold at auction or in the antiquarian book market over the past 150 years pertaining to the most important Italian opera composers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppe Verdi, and Giacomo Puccini. It is our intention that OperaCat will be freely available to scholars by the end of 2009. The material included in OperaCat is heterogeneous. Most is reproduced from descriptions (often with quotations and images) of letters, musical manuscripts, and documents. In some cases the material has been published or has ended up in accessible library collections. In many cases, however, these items-the only hint of whose existence is found precisely in these catalogs--have never been described in any other form. (3) This study was made possible thanks to information first gathered in OperaCat. In its catalog of spring 2007, the English antiquarian dealer Otto Haas included as item 118: A new source for Verdi scholarship: hitherto unknown Sketch for 'Un Ballo in Maschera,' referring to it as an Autograph music manuscript, 2 pp. on a large 2/3 folio leaf (34 x 15.4 cm; 1/3 of the leaf is cut off) written on recto and verso with intense corrections. The catalog description of the single leaf is inaccurate in many respects, but fortunately the dealer provided reproductions of both the recto and the verso of the leaf (although, as we shall see, their descriptions were reversed), so it is possible to analyze the source. (4) To clarify the nature of this leaf, however, it is necessary to recount some recent history. For the Verdi Festival in Parma marking the 100th anniversary of the composer's death, Ilaria Narici prepared under my direction a preliminary version of the critical edition of Un ballo in maschera for The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, in which the definitive version of Narici's edition will ultimately appear. Her preliminary version was first performed on 31 January 2001 at the Teatro Regio of Parma, under the baton of Valery Gergiyev. In the program accompanying that performance, I published an article in which I attempted to clarify the compositional history of the opera. …

Masked balls

In the course of his insightful analysis of Act II of Un ballo in maschera, Harold Powers recurs to two critics of earlier generations who hyperbolically describe how, to cite his more measured summary, ‘the drama has turned into music as the opera was being composed. The music is the drama for an audience habituated to its conventions, its style, its genres’. Powers first quotes Gabriele Baldini, who describes the libretto of Il trovatore as ‘a phantom libretto, which became completely engulfed by the music and, once the opera was finished, disappeared as an individual entity’, and then the earlier Bruno Barilli, in whose view ‘the grotesque libretto is only the causal element that provokes the explosion, after which it collapses, annihilated – a confused scattering of rhymes, syllables, babblings – to vanish forever without a trace’. Although Powers and other more recent scholars tend to pay operatic words greater respect, I begin with an invocation of views that might seem anathema to a scholar of texts for the inspiring idea that the text can be ‘annihilated’ as one moves to another level of the work. In what follows, I intend to annihilate both text and music in order to dissolve to a yet higher level of analysis and to recuperate a specific history in which Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, I maintain, participates.

‘Teco io sto’: Strategies of seduction in Act II of Un ballo in maschera

‘La sventurata rispose’ [the poor wretch answered]. This sentence, among the most famous of Italian literature, appears in chapter 10 of Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, first published in 1827 and revised in 1840), where it functions as stitches trying to heal the deep wound caused by a radical surgical intervention, the excision of pages and pages devoted to a description of seduction. In the best Gothic tradition, the first version of the novel, entitled Fermo e Lucia (1821–23), contained a long account of the seduction of the Nun of Monza by a young libertine, but religious and, apparently, aesthetic considerations convinced Manzoni to cut this episode and replace it with those three words. The rhetorical figure of reticence, so prominent in chapter 10 of I promessi sposi, dominates the tradition of Italian ‘high’ Classicist and Romantic literature, which seems to have considered seduction unfit as a literary theme, to be left to the gutter of the popular novel.

Social control and the censorship of Giuseppe Verdi's operas in Rome (1844–1859)

In the 1840s and 1850s, four operas by Giuseppe Verdi (I due Foscari, La battaglia di Legnano, Il trovatore, and Un ballo in maschera) premiered at the theaters Argentina and Apollo in Rome. Two of these works (I due Foscari and Un ballo in maschera) had been rejected at other theaters because the authorities did not consider them concordant with the censorial requirements, and none of the four would have been permitted in Rome had the authorities applied the usual criteria. That they accepted them anyway suggests the process of censorship did not follow strict rules but was handled arbitrarily. These premieres are even more astonishing when we take into account that Rome, in contrast to most other cities on the peninsula, had very rigorous standards of censorship.

Verdi's Middle Period, 1849-1859: Source Studies, Analysis, and Performance Practice

During the middle phase of his career, Guiseppe Verdi adopted new compositional procedures to create some of his best-known works. Focusing on the operas he composed during this period, this volume explores Verdi's work from three interlinked perspectives: studies of the original source material, cross-disciplinary analysis of musical and textual issues, and the relationship of performance practice to Verdi's musical and dramatic conception. In addition to offering new insights into operas such as Il Trovatore, La Traviata and Un Ballo in Maschera, this text also highlights works such as Luisa Miller and Les Vepres Siciliennes.

The Sea and the Stars and the Wastes of the Desert

Imagine the following. You are fortunate enough to be able to attend performances of Verdi's Un ballo in maschera in London, Milan, and then New York. The performances are all different — different casts, conductors, orchestras, staging teams — but you of course have expectations of both difference and sameness.

Books

Books The Story of Giuseppe Verdi: “Oberto” to “Un Ballo in Maschera” Gabriele Baldini Translated and edited by Roger ParkerNew York: Cambridge University Press, 1980 296 pages, $47.50 (cloth), $14.95 (paper) Virginia Montgomery Soya Virginia Montgomery Soya Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Opera Quarterly, Volume 5, Issue 2-3, Summer 1987, Pages 116–118, https://doi.org/10.1093/oq/5.2-3.116 Published: 01 July 1987

Un ballo in maschera

Journal Article Un ballo in maschera Get access Christopher J. Thomas Christopher J. Thomas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Opera Quarterly, Volume 5, Issue 2-3, Summer 1987, Pages 222–226, https://doi.org/10.1093/oq/5.2-3.222 Published: 01 July 1987

Motivic and Tonal Interaction in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera

Research Article| July 01 1983 Motivic and Tonal Interaction in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera Roger Parker; Roger Parker Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Matthew Brown Matthew Brown Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (1983) 36 (2): 243–265. https://doi.org/10.2307/831065 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Roger Parker, Matthew Brown; Motivic and Tonal Interaction in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 July 1983; 36 (2): 243–265. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/831065 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1983 The American Musicological Society, Inc. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Motivic and Tonal Interaction in Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera"

Motivic and Tonal Interaction in Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera"

Berlioz's Swan-Song: Towards a Criticism of Béatrice et Bénédict

Béatrice et Bénédict is the last work of a great romantic. Yet, like Verdi's Falstaff with which it is tempting to make comparisons, it is a neo-classical comic opera. With both composers surprise at this last turn in their careers-is tempered by knowledge of admirable comedy in earlier operas (such as Un ballo in maschera and Benvenuto Cellini); and Berlioz's overt nec-classicism is perhaps, after Les troyens, hardly surprising at all. What is remarkable is that Béatrice et Bénédict is Berlioz's only Shakespearean opera, and one of only two full-length works based on the poet he idolized for more than forty years. It is not the first time, however, that Berlioz had dealt with Shakespeare's comedies. Although his first introduction to Shakespeare, and his profoundest experience of him in the theatre, concerned Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, he was also inspired by plays he had only read, and his first Shakespearean composition was the fantasy-overture The Tempest (1830), followed by the overture King Lear (1831). Lines from The Merchant of Venice appear in Les troyens (no. 37). Berlioz almost certainly never saw Much Ado About Nothing, but as early as 1833 he asked a friend to lend him a copy, as he planned ‘a very merry Italian opera’ on the subject. The idea resurfaced in 1852. A full scenario survives from that period, but it bears no relation to the opera which reached the stage at Baden in 1862 beyond the two principal characters. The opera reached its final form in 1863, just thirty years after its conception; after the first performances Berlioz added two new numbers, of which the first, the Trio no. 11, is his last substantial composition, his swan-song.

Key Relations in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera

Key Relations in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera

Key Relations in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera

Research Article| November 01 1978 Key Relations in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera Siegmund Levarie Siegmund Levarie Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar 19th-Century Music (1978) 2 (2): 143–147. https://doi.org/10.2307/746309 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Siegmund Levarie; Key Relations in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera. 19th-Century Music 1 November 1978; 2 (2): 143–147. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/746309 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Content19th-Century Music Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1978 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Nineteenth-Century Operatic Violin Conductors' Scores

It has long been known that until the early or middle of the nineteenth century there was generally no separate conductor of an opera or symphony orchestra; 1 rather, the orchestra was led either by the first violinist alone, or jointly by the first violinist and the performer at the keyboard. What I believe, however, has not been generally known, at least by some students, is what the first violinist conducted from. Frequently no orchestral score, printed or manuscript, was available. The traditional first violin orchestral part would have been inadequate. I have found two examples of what the violin conductor used, each being designated Violino Principale. Each one contains cues indicating when the other instruments begin to play. One, for Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, is engraved and, on the basis of the Ricordi plate number, would have been published about 1859;2 the orchestral score of the opera was not published until about thirty-five years later.3 The other, for Rossini's Guglielmo Tell, with Italian text, is in manuscript; the orchestral score of the opera had been published probably in 18304 but with French text, and it is not known when the orchestral score was first published with Italian text. After extensive searches and inquiries at other leading libraries, one major opera house, opera music rental concerns, and private collectors,

Nemška opera v Ljubljani od leta 1861 do 1875

Nemška opera v Ljubljani od leta 1861 do 1875