Session 3: Excerpts

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Broadcast (10/15/1932)
3 excerpts: total run time ~ 6 minutes
The inaugural performance in the War Memorial Opera House. This rare broadcast of Puccini’s Tosca stars Claudia Muzio with Company founder Gaetano Merola conducting.

• Featured Cast and Libretto Excerpts

  
  Inaugural Opening Night of the War Memorial Opera House
  
  TOSCA
  (In Italian)

  Music by Giacomo Puccini
  Libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa 

  War Memorial Opera House
  October 15, 1932 Opening Night (Broadcast Act I)

  CAST

  Tosca                           Claudia Muzio
  Cavaradossi             Dino Borgioli
  Scarpia                       Alfredo Gandolfi

  Conductor               Gaetano Merola
  Director                     Armando Agnini

  
  Clip 1: Tosca enters Rome’s church of Sant’Andrea della Valle looking for her lover, Mario Cavaradossi.

  Clip 2: Tosca sings of their house in the grove, a refuge from the world where she and Cavaradossi can be alone together. Cavaradossi and Tosca profess their love.

  Clip 3: Scarpia’s insinuations about Cavaradossi’s infidelity enflame Tosca’s jealousy. 

  Clip 4: Scarpia desires Tosca and envisions her in his arms while her lover hangs. The church procession around him startles Scarpia out of his reverie and he kneels and makes the sign of the cross.

  To access the featured libretto excerpts, click here.

  Original audio transfer and restoration by Ward Marston.

• Listener Response #1

  
  There are many reasons to treasure this precious broadcast: it’s the opening of the War Memorial Opera House; it’s one of the earliest surviving broadcasts of an entire act of an opera we have; but most of all, it is the only known example of Claudia Muzio, one of the most incandescent singers of the 20th Century, in live performance.

  She was known as the Duse of Song, linking her with the famous Italian actress Eleanora Duse. Muzio was quite famous as an actress, but even more important she was a great vocal actress. That is why her fame today largely has eclipsed her alleged rivals during her lifetime—her recordings allow us to viscerally experience her artistry for ourselves. One of her outstanding virtues as an artist, says Nigel Douglas, “is her knack of shedding light on everything she sings, so that the old and trite can sound suddenly new and intriguing.”

  That is certainly true of her performance in this precious, live Tosca. Not that Puccini’s opera is trite by any means. But when we listen to her, live on stage performing a role she had sung who knows how many times by 1932, one of the things we instantly notice is that she sounds utterly spontaneous. She simple IS the mercurial Floria Tosca—by turns girlish, enticing, jealous, cajoling, loving, suspicious, furious, terrified, confused. All these and so many more emotions flash across our mental stage as we listen to her sing, Nothing is routine, nothing is done because it’s the next page of the score. Everything is done because it’s what Tosca herself is experiencing—as is Muzio.

  Douglas also points out another aspect of the soprano’s artistry very much on display in this broadcast: that she was able to sing verismo operas in a way that gives them all the impact they need but without ever resorting to crude expression, “the emotion was shattering, but the artistry never splintered.” As the great tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpe, one of her frequent stage partners, put it so beautifully, her voice was “made of tears and sighs and restrained interior fire.” All of this comes through in her recordings, of course, but experiencing her live means her qualities are exponentially more vivid.

  We are fortunate this broadcast is from 1932. Only four years later, plagued by ill health and chronic financial difficulty (largely stemming from her unfortunate love affairs) she died in Rome, “almost certainly by her own hand,” writes Robert Tuggle in The Golden Age of Opera. She was 46 years old. But thanks to the foresight of Gaetano Merola, we can experience the legendary Duse of Song, live, for ourselves.

  
  Paul Thomason has combined a lifelong passion for music, his decades of experience in publishing, and his delight in storytelling to create a unique voice in writing and lecturing about opera. In addition to writing regularly for the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Aspen Music Festival and other companies in the US and Europe, he is also a regular guest on the award-winning podcast Aria Code and the London Wagner Society’s Zoom series.

• Listener Response #2

  
  For anyone with even a passing interest in historically important singers, these 1932 excerpts are like discovering gold. Beyond the significance of the occasion itself—the opening of the War Memorial Opera House, and the first live broadcast from San Francisco Opera—is the joy hearing the only extant live audio of a truly legendary artist.

   At the time of this performance, Italian soprano Claudia Muzio had only four years left to live. After an exceedingly busy international career, with triumphs in the major Italian houses, at the Metropolitan Opera, and in Buenos Aires (where her audiences’ admiration was more like worship), her vocalism was gradually turning somewhat variable and even a little fragile. This was no surprise, given that her own physical health was never robust and her repertoire had always been strenuous.

  In San Francisco, however, the moment we hear Muzio’s Tosca calling for her beloved Mario, it’s clear that the soprano is in rare form. No doubt encouraged by the audience’s applause at her entrance, she rewards them with a captivating portrayal. The antiquated recorded sound detracts little from our appreciation of this truly lovable heroine, who works her magic through apt vocal shading and matchless flexibility (listen to this Tosca’s unerring tracery of the notoriously difficult vocal filigree on the words “le voci delle cose,” early in the love duet). Muzio understands Puccini’s conversational style as few interpreters of this role have done. She’s careful never to give too much for her voice’s or her characterization’s own good, but when Puccini calls for her full voice, she can effortlessly oblige, as on the thrilling phrase “arde a Tosca un folle amor,” midway in her love duet with Cavaradossi.

  Muzio must surely have been as delighted as the audience to hear her partner onstage, Dino Borgioli, respond to her passionate singing with a glorious high B-flat at “Ah, m'avvinci nei tuoi lacci, mia sirena” (“Ah, sorceress, I am bound in your coils”). To hear Borgioli even be comfortable—let alone thrilling—in music for spinto tenor is surprising, given that he’d made his fame in Europe in exclusively lyric repertoire, as a singer of Mozart and bel canto.

  Our Tosca returns for a brief aural glimpse of her initial encounter with Baron Scarpia. Again, Muzio’s innate good taste keeps “Tu non l’avrai stasera—giuro!” (“You shall not have him tonight—I swear it!”) from the vulgar shouting favored here by so many sopranos. Another moment frequently treated in an exaggerated manner is Tosca’s exit phrase, “Egli vede ch’io piango” (“God sees that I’m weeping”). Muzio doesn’t seem quite able to finish that phrase. One can only guess that, with the consuming involvement she brought to this deeply sympathetic portrayal, she must have been overwhelmed by Tosca’s despair at this moment.

  A singer unjustly forgotten today is the baritone member of this memorable Tosca’s all-Italian trio of principals. Alfredo Gandolfi sang baritone leads for 23 years in San Francisco (but only supporting ones—a single Scarpia excepted—at the Met). The close of the first-act finale shows his voice to be a classic Scarpia sound, full of color, powerful but never crudely roaring, and managing to cut through the mass of sound built up by San Francisco’s orchestra, authoritatively led by general director Gaetano Merola.
  
  Roger Pines, who recently concluded a 23-year tenure as dramaturg of Lyric Opera of Chicago, is a contributing writer to Opera News, Opera (U.K.), and programs of opera companies and recordings internationally. He has been on the faculty of Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music for the past three years.

• Listener Response #3

  
  Claudia Muzio was a veteran of La Scala, the Paris Opera, Covent Garden, and the Met when San Francisco Opera founder and director Gaetano Merola secured her services for the title role in Tosca, to inaugurate the War Memorial Opera House on October 15, 1932. Despite the audio quality of the sound clips—they document a performance given ninety years ago, after all—we can hear with what clarity Muzio enunciates, a vital asset in those days long before supertitles. What we do not hear are the opera’s first words, as the character Angelotti sings, “Ah! Finalmente!” The audience is said to have greeted that line with cheers, and although no such sounds are audible on the recording of the complete broadcast, one wants to believe the story. For surely those in the sold-out house were well aware of how long this moment had been postponed. Finally, San Francisco had an opera house. The clips you will hear are of the opening night’s Tosca, but this is really the story of a building and of civic commitment.

  As I wrote in Music for a City, Music for the World, a history of the San Francisco Symphony, whose musicians until 1980 doubled as members of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, the idea for an opera house was first floated in 1919. Funding commenced but soon stalled. Then civic leader Charles Kendrick, recently returned from the battlefields of the Great War, suggested that, if the opera house project became a memorial to those who had served in the European conflict, he would be able to raise support from fellow veterans. Fundraising ignited in 1920, but after more than $2 million in contributions, plans came to a halt for almost a decade, until, in 1927, private funding was complete. Now the project lay in the hands of San Francisco voters. They were presented with a bond issue to raise an additional $4 million. A two-thirds majority was necessary. It was exceeded by more than 2000 votes, demonstrating a popular devotion to the arts all but inconceivable today, anywhere in the United States. Construction began on January 2, 1931. So rapidly did work proceed that on the following September 9, the War Memorial Opera House was dedicated.

  After Merola gave the downbeat on that October evening almost a century ago, the Great Depression was put on hold and Puccini dominated the next several hours. San Francisco Opera history made a new start. Finalmente.
  
  Larry Rothe writes about music for the San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances. Visit www.larryrothe.com.

   

   

• Listener Response #4

  
  There is something so nostalgic about the crackly sound in older recordings. This trio of artists lead by the stunning Claudia Muzio gives us a Tosca that is full-bodied and gorgeous.

  
  Kenneth Overton is lauded for blending his opulent baritone with magnetic, varied portrayals that seemingly “emanate from deep within body and soul.”  Kenneth Overton’s symphonious baritone voice has sent him around the globe, making him one of the most sought-after opera singers of his generation. Amidst performing, Kenneth serves as co-founder and artistic director of Opera Noire of New York, a performing arts organization created to empower African-American artists to reach their full creative potential in a creative supportive environment.

• Broadcast Tour: NBC Radio, WMOH Opening Night Tour

  
  "Citizenry of San Francisco, join me in a greeting of welcome, and in extending you a cordial invitation to join us in the glory of the opera, a dream long denied fulfilled, and the opera house in which the most enthusiastic opera lover could feel a just and glowing pride.  Tonight, San Francisco celebrates the completion of the War Memorial group, the Veterans Building and the Opera House, at a cost of over $5 million. Two imposing buildings that add dignity and beauty to the already famous Civic Center, with its Library, State Building, Auditorium, and City Hall."
  
  Listen in as the intrepid roving reporter takes us on a tour of opening night at the brand new War Memorial Opera House.
  (run time ~ 14 minutes)

  Listen
  Transcript

• Synopsis

  
  ACT I

  Angelotti, an escaped political offender, seeks refuge in the church. A sacristan enters, followed by Cavaradossi, who proceeds to put the finishing touches on his painting of the Magdalen. Tosca arrives unexpectedly, and, professing to see in the likeness of the portrait her fancied rival, accuses her lover of infidelity. After her departure Cavaradossi helps Angelotti plot his escape—but the sound of a cannon-shot discloses the fact that his escape has been discovered. People from the church rush in, headed by the sacristan. Suddenly there is silence; Scarpia stands there with Spoletta and his agents. During the search Scarpia finds the painter's basket emptied of food and wine. He also finds a fan of the Marchesa, and Tosca, jealous, departs in anger. Scarpia follows her and avows his love.

  ACT II

  Scarpia awaits Tosca's arrival for supper. Spoletta enters with Mario, Angelotti having eluded him. Mario is questioned without result, and sent to the torture-chamber. Scarpia describes to Tosca in detail her lover's anguish, until, utterly prostrated, she divulges Angelotti's hiding-place. Mario denounces Tosca for her betrayal of the secret. Distant drums announce the probable victory of Bonaparte over Scarpia's forces. Scarpia demands Tosca's virtue as the price of her lover's freedom; she finally pretends to yield. Scarpia orders a mock execution of Mario, and is persuaded to give Tosca safe-conduct for Mario and herself to leave the country. Then, biding her time, Tosca stabs Scarpia, mortally wounding him.

  ACT III

  Mario, awaiting execution at dawn, writes Tosca a farewell letter. She enters with the safe-conduct promised by Scarpia and explains to Mario that his execution is to be a mock affair. Soldiers enter, but they have Scarpia's orders for a real execution. Mario falls, the firing squad leaves, and Tosca bids Mario rise, but he is dead. Police enter to arrest Tosca for the murder of Scarpia, but she leaps from the castle wall to freedom—and death.

• Cast Page/Program

  
  To access the cast page and full program, click here.

LISTEN

Broadcast (10/07/1938)
4 excerpts: total run time ~ 8 minutes
Few broadcast fragments can match the frisson and vocal intensity of this one when Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli’s passionate singing brings the house down on opening night of the 1938 Season.

• Featured Cast and Libretto Excerpts

  
  ANDREA CHÉNIER
  (In French)

  Music by Umberto Giordano
  Libretto by Luigi Illica

  War Memorial Opera House
  October 7, 1938 (Broadcast Act I)

  CAST

  Fleville                                         John Howell
  The Abbé                                   Ludovico Oliviero
  Andrea Chénier                      Beniamino Gigli
  Countess de Coigny            Doris Doe
  Maddalena                               Elisabeth Rethberg

  Conductor                                Gaetano Merola
  Director                                      Armando Agnini

  
  Clip 1: At a party in the Chateau de Coigny, the novelist Fleville introduces party guests including the Abbé who brings ominous tidings from Paris.

  Clip 2: Brimming with excitement, Fleville introduces his pastoral pantomime performed by a chorus of shepherds and shepherdesses. 

  Clip 3: Maddalena asks the poet Andrea Chénier, who has been quiet since arriving at the party, to share one of his poems. He rebuffs her and Maddalena resorts to teasing him.

  Clip 4: Chénier consents to improvise a poem for the gathering. He begins with idyllic imagery before swerving into a condemnation of society’s selfish elites whose actions cause starvation and misery for the masses. At the end of his fiery oration, he chides Maddalena for mocking things she doesn’t understand, like love.

  To access the featured libretto excerpts, click here.

  Original audio transfer and restoration by Richard Caniell.

• Listener Response #1

  
  Excerpts from a 1938 radio broadcast of Giordano’s Andrea Chénier showcase the vivid playing of the orchestra under Gaetano Merola, along with fine work from the female chorus in their pastoral entertainment at the first act party. They exhibit lovely Italian style in their gentle portamentos, yet are much more precise in tuning and rhythm than choruses in Italy at this time.

  German soprano Elisabeth Rethberg uses her gorgeous sound commandingly as she chastises the reluctant poet Chénier by invoking the Muses. When he finally launches into his improvised poem, we hear the incomparable Beniamino Gigli at his best. Although the tenor was criticized for taxing his sweetly lyrical voice with heavy roles, in this excerpt we hear him pacing himself carefully through the long and emotional aria. He rides the glorious orchestral wave to declaim broadly “Ecco la bellezza della vita” and hangs dramatically onto the high B flat at “Amor, divino dono.” Listen to how he handles the lines that seem spoken or shouted – always secure in resonance, never gripping from the throat, and supporting the sound with controlled breath, just as in singing actual pitches. This is definitely a lost art.

  
  Judith Malafronte (mezzo soprano) has sung with opera companies, orchestras, oratorio societies, and early music groups throughout the world. Holding degrees from Vassar College and Stanford University, she has recorded for major labels in a broad range of repertoire and writes regularly for Opera News, Early Music America magazine, and other print and online outlets. After fifteen years on the faculty at Yale University, she now teaches voice in the Historical Performance department at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. 

• Listener Response #2

  
  There are times that a performance simply catches fire, the electricity sizzles between performers on stage and between the stage and the audience. The drama is so alive that singers can dare to take chances because something bigger has taken over, and is pushing the performance to even greater heights. Beniamino Gigli’s first act aria in this broadcast is a perfect example of this phenomenon. It is so overwhelming, so potent, that I am sometimes tempted to think it is the supreme example of an Italian tenor’s artistry in live performance.

  Gigli, of course, was a great favorite in San Francisco. He had appeared in San Francisco Opera’s first season and for the closing night’s Rigoletto the demand for tickets was so enormous that some people brought their own chairs to cram into any available space. In Arthur Bloomfield’s history of the company he tells the story that a young Italian man “became so excited during a Gigli aria he fell off his seat and was knocked unconscious.”

  I can believe it, given Gigli’s singing of “Un dì all’azzurro spazio” 15 years later. Gigli’s voice sounds like golden honey warmed in a summer sun. By turns he caresses phrases or ignites them, depending on the need of the moment. Every emotion, no matter how fleeting, is vividly expressed. When he refers to Maddalena as “giovinetta bella” his voice is like a feather being drawn over her cheek, and it’s obvious he has fallen in love with her. But that does not stop him from then declaring she knows nothing of love. The first time he sings “amor” it is on the note F at the top of the staff, and it is the clarion call of a poet that attention must be paid to emotion. But that is nothing compared to the second “amor” that follows. Seldom has a high B-flat been rocketed in an operatic theater like this one—as rich and sumptuous as it is stentorian. The intensity with which Gigli holds the note for a considerable time is simply overwhelming. It is a blazing moment one only gets in a live performance, a moment that, once heard can never be forgotten.

  How fortune we are it was part of the broadcast that has survived!

  
  Paul Thomason has combined a lifelong passion for music, his decades of experience in publishing, and his delight in storytelling to create a unique voice in writing and lecturing about opera. In addition to writing regularly for the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Aspen Music Festival and other companies in the US and Europe, he is also a regular guest on the award-winning podcast Aria Code and the London Wagner Society’s Zoom series.

• Listener Response #3

  
  Tenor Beniamino Gigli, who debuted at San Francisco Opera as Andrea Chénier in 1923, reprised the role the following season, but didn’t return to it for 14 more years with the opening night of the 1938 Season from which this partial broadcast of Act I survives. Chénier was one of 12 leading roles he performed in San Francisco, where audiences took him to their hearts in both lyric and spinto repertoire. Still in his prime during his San Francisco seasons, Gigli maintained an extraordinary standard that his successors in Italian repertoire have been hard-pressed to equal.

   “Streaming the First Century” has chosen to except Gigli’s performance of Chénier’s Act I poetic improvisation known as the “Improvviso,” in which his magnificent vocalism is imbued in every moment with stylistic authority, but also passionate yet never exaggerated dramatic commitment. In the few lines of recitative preceding the aria, Gigli instantly rivets the listener with unique sweetness of tone and unfailingly pristine delivery of the text. Gigli was essentially a strong lyric tenor, but Chénier perfectly exemplifies his ability to handle a spinto role with absolute security, thanks to his rock-solid technique and a thorough understanding of exactly how much pressure he could impose on his instrument. Indeed, the voice achieves surprising power with no loss in vocal control when Chénier sings in anguish of the “lagrime dei figli” (“the tears shed by the children [of France]”), the voice achieves surprising power. Gigli’s performance reaches its peak of emotional communication and vocal excitement in the final section, beginning with the words “Ecco la bellezza della vita” (“Here is the beauty of life”) and including a stupendous, intensely thrilling attack on the final climactic B-flat.

  By this time in his association with San Francisco, Gigli had established a close working relationship with Gaetano Merola, whose conducting worthily supports the tenor’s impassioned performance. As for Gigli’s colleagues onstage, we hear nothing of Gérard, sung in 1939 by the justly renowned American baritone Richard Bonelli, but quite a bit of lively recitative from German soprano Elisabeth Rethberg (Maddalena). She sounds in excellent voice—and charmingly girlish, too—at this late stage of her exceptionally distinguished career. The several supporting characters contributing to this scene are vigorously and distinctively handled, and the ladies of the San Francisco Opera Chorus make dulcet sounds in the shepherds’ chorus. The opening lines of the poet Fléville are nearly covered by the applause of the audience, no doubt responding to the sumptuousness of the scenery depicting the elaborate ball at the home of the Countess de Coigny.

  
  Roger Pines, who recently concluded a 23-year tenure as dramaturg of Lyric Opera of Chicago, is a contributing writer to Opera News, Opera (U.K.), and programs of opera companies and recordings internationally. He has been on the faculty of Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music for the past three years.

• Synopsis

  
  ACT I

  The footman, Gerard, is arranging the ballroom for a reception. Under the flunkey's livery beats the heart of a freeman, and at the sight of his father, stooped by sixty years of service, he bursts forth in bitter denunciation of the aristocrats. Madeleine, daughter of the Countess, comes in with her maid Bersi. Gerard's bitterness leaves him and he is conscious only of her gentle loveliness and the joy her presence gives him. The guests arrive: a dignitary of the Church, lords and ladies, and Andrea Chénier. The latter is out of place in the frivolity of the ballroom and stands unresponsive to the general chatter. Only when Madeleine, in a spirit of coquetry, goads him to reply does he launch into impassioned improvisation—an appeal for the poor. The guests are shocked; Madeleine alone being stirred by the rebuke. A crowd of ragged beggars appear and appeal for aid but are ejected. Gerard is hustled out with them and Chénier follows.

  ACT II

  Five years have elapsed. From denouncing the tyranny of the aristocrats, Chénier has turned to attack the excesses of the revolution and Robespierre's spies are watching him. One sits at table with Bersi. In vain Chénier’s friend Roucher begs him to escape from France. But Chénier insists on keeping an appointment with an unknown woman with whom he has long corresponded. Roucher suggests that the unknown may be a detested aristocrat. The revolutionary leaders pass by, among them Robespierre and Gerard. While Bersi talks with Roucher, Gerard takes his spy aside and gives him a description of Madeleine whom he still hopelessly loves and seeks. The unknown arrives in disguise but identifies herself to Chénier as Madeleine by quoting the words of the poem he had improvised the night of her ball. A spy observes them. He sends word to Gerard who bursts in on them. Fighting with Chénier, Gerard is wounded, but begs Chénier to save Madeleine and the two flee.

  ACT III

  Mathieu and Gerard are exhorting the crowd for money for France. A spy informs Gerard that Chénier has been found, but without Madeleine, and persuades Gerard to write a denouncement of Chénier. Madeleine comes and Gerard informs her that her lover has been seized. He tells her also that she has been his one desire and to save Chénier she offers herself as the price of his life. Gerard is touched by her devotion. He would even save Chénier but it is too late. Chénier is brought to trial. Gerard confesses his jealous treachery against Chénier, but without avail. Chénier is condemned to die.

  ACT IV

  Chénier is writing his last poem. As he reads his verses to Boucher, Madeleine and Gerard enter the courtyard. Madeleine, so that she may share death with Chénier, bribes a jailer to let her take the place of a condemned woman. In the last few minutes the lovers have of life they give thanks for their love and the fate which brought them to each other's arms. The guards summon the prisoners and the two go forth to death, united.

• Cast Page/Program

  
  To access the cast page and full program, click here.

LISTEN

Audience recording (10/26/1971)
4 excerpts: total run time ~ 9 minutes
The artistry of Leontyne Price, who made her American debut with San Francisco Opera in 1957, is on full display in this performance of one of her greatest roles, Leonora in Verdi’s Il Trovatore.

• Featured Cast and Libretto Excerpts

  
  IL TROVATORE
  (In Italian)

  Music by Giuseppe Verdi
  Libretto by Salvadore Cammarano

  War Memorial Opera House
  October 26, 1971 (Audience recording)

  CAST

  Leonora                              Leontyne Price
  Count di Luna                 Raymond Wolansky
  Ruiz                                     Joe Pinedo

  Conductor                        Carlo Felice Cillario
  Production                       Paul Hager

  
  Clip 1: Act IV. Ruiz brings Leonora to the tower where Manrico is being held, awaiting likely execution. Alone in the gloomy night, she contemplates how to save him or die trying. 

  Clip 2: Act IV. “On the rosy wings of love, go, oh mournful sigh” – Leonora’s lament flies to her imprisoned Manrico, yet she hopes he feels her love and not the pain in her heart.

  Clip3: Leonora implores that the Count di Luna spare Manrico, but his rage is inflamed by the love she has for his rival. .

  Clip 4: After promising herself to the Count to save Manrico, Leonora rejoices that her beloved will live though she knows that she will die from the poison she has taken.

  To access the featured libretto excerpts, click here.
  
  

• Listener Response #1

  
  Nothing excites me more than LEONTYNE PRICE! We all know her as the quintessential AIDA, but I would argue that it is Leonora that was her best role. Here we have her in glorious form from top to bottom. The beautiful colors, the height, the florid passages, the sensual sound and burnished quality of the voice are all on full display. She often said that “Verdi was her best friend” and here is evidence of that. Not to mention, the best HIGH C in the business! VIVA Madame Price!

  
  Kenneth Overton is lauded for blending his opulent baritone with magnetic, varied portrayals that seemingly “emanate from deep within body and soul.”  Kenneth Overton’s symphonious baritone voice has sent him around the globe, making him one of the most sought-after opera singers of his generation. Amidst performing, Kenneth serves as co-founder and artistic director of Opera Noire of New York, a performing arts organization created to empower African-American artists to reach their full creative potential in a creative supportive environment.

• Listener Response #2

  
  Giuseppe Verdi wrote dynamic music to accompany the entirety of Leonora’s circuitous journey in Il trovatore, but these four excerpts chart her intensified tumult at the beginning of Act IV. Within a single scene, she careens from despair at Manrico’s capture, to determination to save him, to desperate pleading for his release, to realization that she must give herself to the Count, to secretly poisoning herself, and finally to exuberant joy that her self-sacrifice will enable Manrico to live. This sequence of events is anchored by two showcase numbers: “D’amor sull’ ali rosee” (Clip 2) and “Vivra! contende giubilo” (Clip 4).

  The Leonora in this 1971 S.F. Opera production was the 44-year-old African American soprano from Laurel, Mississippi, Leontyne Price, who made her Met debut in the same role a decade earlier and was closely associated with the part early in her career. In 1969, Price, proudly lauded in the Black press as “Our Greatest Opera Singer,” recorded Il Trovatore for RCA with Placido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes. As wonderful as this landmark recording is, to my ears, Price’s singing, highlighted by shimmering pianissimos and powerful high Cs, sounds even more dynamic and captivating two years later in the audience recording at the War Memorial Opera House, which captures her in top form.
  
  Mark Burford is a San Francisco Opera contributor and R.P. Wollenberg Professor of Music at Reed College. His research and teaching focuses on late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Austro-German concert music and twentieth-century popular music in the United States, with particular focus on African American music after World War II. 

• Listener Response #3

  
  The 100^th anniversary of San Francisco Opera offers a welcome opportunity to salute the contributions of innumerable great artists with whom the company has been fortunate to enjoy a particularly close association. Among them is Leontyne Price, whose incomparable artistry assured her of the San Francisco audience’s devotion throughout her operatic career. The Mississippi-born soprano’s limitless potential had been recognized by San Francisco Opera general manager Kurt Herbert Adler as early as 1957, when he presented her first appearance onstage with a major American company: Mme. Lidoine in Dialogues of the Carmelites, the first of 14 roles over the next 35 years. Price made numerous role debuts in San Francisco, including Giorgetta in Il tabarro and the title roles of Die Kluge, Manon Lescaut, and Ariadne auf Naxos.

  Price’s renown worldwide was due in large part to her glorious affinity for the heroines of Verdi, five of which she sang in San Francisco: Aida, Amelia in Un ballo in in maschera, Elvira in Ernani, and the Leonoras of Il trovatore and La forza del destino. When she returned to the company in 1971 to reprise Il trovatore, she’d just made a definitive recording of the opera for RCA. Her singing of the role proves doubly astonishing as captured live, in a performance that finds her putting her stamp on the role seemingly for all time.

  The three excerpts begin with Leonora’s vocally and interpretively exacting Act IV recitative and cavatina, in which she appears at the Count’s palace, determined to save Manrico from execution. As Leonora hopes that her loving sighs will waft their way to the tower where her beloved is imprisoned, Price truly disarms criticism. She embodies this lovestruck woman in the warm glow of her vocalism, the serenity of her legato phrasing, and the sheer conviction of her expressiveness. In the final phrase of the recitative, listen for the first example of the effortless ease in floating the voice that was always a hallmark of any Price performance. We hear it again as she nears the end of the cavatina with luminous B-flats, A-flats, and a high C with which so many other sopranos come to grief—it was invariably effortless with Price, as it is here.

  If ever Price’s singing deserved the adjective “angelic,” it is in the cavatina’s concluding phrase, with the sustained glow she brings to the words “le pene del mio cor” (“the suffering of my heart”). Throughout the cavatina, her concentration seems so firmly founded and her involvement in the role so magical that one can imagine the audience being afraid to breathe, for fear of breaking her spell.

  The exhilarating soprano/baritone duet closing the first scene of Act IV pairs Price with her compatriot Raymond Wolansky, who made much of his career in Europe but was also a familiar figure in San Francisco, singing 14 leading and featured roles between 1964 and 1973.

  His is a significantly lighter timbre than is typically heard as Count di Luna, but admirable in its cleanly focused tone. It couldn’t have been easy to keep up with Price in music so closely associated with her, but Wolansky definitely holds his own. The soprano herself displays a vivid urgency in her pleading with the Count. Once she agrees to give herself to him in exchange for Manrico’s life (and then swallows poison when the Count isn’t looking), she launches the last section of the duet—“Vivrà! Contende il giubilo i detti a me” (“He’ll live! I’ve no words to express my joy”)—with a rhythmic drive and a flexibility that could hardly be more exhilarating.

  
  Roger Pines, who recently concluded a 23-year tenure as dramaturg of Lyric Opera of Chicago, is a contributing writer to Opera News, Opera (U.K.), and programs of opera companies and recordings internationally. He has been on the faculty of Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music for the past three years.

• Synopsis

  
  Fifteenth-century Spain has been torn by a long and bloody civil war. On the Aragon side is the ruling, conservative class led by the tyrannical Count di Luna. The Biscay rebels, led by Manrico and his gypsy mother Azucena, seek freedom.

  ACT I

  "The Duel"

  SCENE 1—As midnight approaches in the Palace of Aliaferia, Ferrando, the captain of the guards, warns his charges to keep watch for a mysterious troubadour who has been serenading Leonora each night. Prodded by the soldiers, Ferrando recounts the rumors surrounding a gypsy who was burned at the stake for bewitching one of the children of the former Count (di Luna's father). It is said that the gypsy's daughter took revenge by stealing the current Count's brother and burning him at the very spot of her mother's execution. ("Abbietta zingara").

  SCENE 2—The Queen of Aragon is in residence in Aliaferia, awaiting the outcome of the war. A noble lady in the Queen's service, Leonora, walks in the palace gardens with her companion Inez. Leonora tells Inez the secret reason she has been able to repel the Count's frequent advances: she is in love with a mysterious knight whom she first saw at a tournament two years before. The war has prevented their meeting, but recently he has returned to serenade her again, and has re-awakened her strongest emotions ("Tacea la notte placida"). Inez warns of an evil presentiment.

  The women depart—Leonora to await her troubadour. The Count lingers in the garden, hoping to approach Leonora. But the troubadour's serenade "Deserto sulla terra" breaks through the night. Leonora runs to him, but confronts the Count in the darkness. The troubadour enters and accuses her of betraying him; she confesses fully her love for him and the Count is violently enraged. He demands to know the identity of the strange knight. Finding him to be not only his rival in love but also his arch enemy in war, Manrico, the Count challenges him to a duel.

  "The Gypsy"

  SCENE 3—At dawn in the camp in the Biscay mountains, Manrico is recuperating from his battles with di Luna. He won the duel but spared his rival's life. Showing no mercy, di Luna sent his troops in pursuit of Manrico who was then left for dead and rescued by the gypsy Azucena who had reared him as her son.

  The rebels, armed and reinforced, start the day's work with the "Anvil" chorus. Azucena warns them against overconfidence, and, as if in a trance, recalls the terrible crime di Luna's father perpetrated on her mother ("Stride la vampa"). She continues to recount her frenzy at realizing that she had burned not her enemy's child, but her own. Manrico, thoroughly alarmed by these revelations, demands to know whether she is in truth not his mother. Azucena insists that she is, but quickly turns the topic by asking Manrico why he did not kill di Luna when he had the chance. In "Mal reggendo all'aspro assalto", Manrico tells of the force that kept him from delivering the final blow. The next time, Azucena orders, he must kill.

  A horn signals the entry of Ruiz, who informs Manrico that he must take command of the defense of the castle Castellor, and reports that Leonora, thinking her lover dead, is about to take the vows at a convent.

  SCENE 4—The Count, also hoping to stop Leonora from becoming a nun, has invaded the convent with his soldiers. He thinks of the happiness that will be his when he carries Leonora away ("II balen del suo sorriso"). The nuns lead Leonora toward the chapel, but as she pauses to say goodbye to Inez, the Count and his men seize her. With precise timing, Manrico and the rebels tear Leonora away from the Count and escape with her.

  ACT II

  "The Gypsy's Son"

  SCENE 1—The rebels are losing the fight; and the Count has laid siege to the fortress of Castellor, where Manrico has taken Leonora. The forces of Aragon sing a chorus of their hopes of victory and march off into the distance. Violent commotion breaks out when Ferrando and his soldiers bring back a woman whom they have captured as a spy. Through questioning, the Count discovers her to be Azucena, and identifies her as the murderess of Garzia di Luna. Azucena cries out for Manrico, and the Count gloats at his double revenge. He sentences the gypsy to be burned at the stake.

  SCENE 2—Manrico and Leonora prepare for their marriage in the chapel of the stronghold of Castellor, but they are aware of the hopelessness of their situation and the immediate possibility of defeat and death. Manrico attempts to calm Leonora ("Ah si, ben mio"). Ruiz brings the message that Azucena has been captured and sentenced to burn. With his famous "Di quella pira", Manrico leaves everything and goes with his soldiers to the gypsy woman's rescue.

  "The Torture"

  SCENE 3—The rebels have lost the war and, with their leader, await execution in the dungeon tower of the Count's palace where Azucena has already been chained. Wearing a ring fitted with poison, Leonora waits outside with Ruiz in hope of rescuing Manrico ("D'amor sull'ali rosee "). Inside, voices begin to chant the "Miserere", and a bell tolls Manrico's imminent death. Leonora sings of her terror, while from his cell Manrico joins in with "Sconto col sangue mio''.

  The Count enters and Leonora begs for mercy for Manrico, finally taking her last resort: she offers herself to him in return for her troubadour's freedom. Di Luna agrees, and while he orders Ferrando to pretend to liberate Manrico, Leonora swallows the poison from her ring.

  SCENE 4—Manrico and Azucena await execution in their dungeon. The gypsy is terrified by visions of flames consuming her as they did her mother, but Manrico offers comfort, and she recalls happier days ("Ai nostri monti "). Azucena falls asleep, just as Leonora enters with word of Manrico's freedom. He is amazed—then, realizing what bargain was made in behalf of his release, he accuses Leonora of betrayal. But, the poison is taking effect, Manrico sees the extent of her sacrifice and pleads for forgiveness.

  The Count enters as Leonora dies, and orders Manrico immediately to the stake. He drags Azucena to witness the burning. "It is ended," says the Count. "He was your brother", cries Azucena; "You are avenged, o mother," and she too falls dead. The Count is horrified: "And I still live."

• Cast Page/Program

  
  To access the cast page and full program, click here.

LISTEN

House recording (November)
1 excerpt: total run time ~ 3 minutes
Nicola Luisotti made his house debut conducting this performance of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino. The dynamic and kinetic force heard in the overture foreshadows his work as Company music director from 2009–2018.

• Featured Cast and Libretto Excerpt

  
  LA FORZA DEL DESTINO
  (In Italian)

  Music by Giuseppe Verdi
  Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave

  War Memorial Opera House
  November 2005 (House recording)

  Conductor Nicola Luisotti*
  *San Francisco Opera debut

  Clip: Overture.

• Listener Response #1

  
  What a joy to hear Maestro Luisotti in his San Francisco Opera Debut in my favorite opera overture of all time! Here you have the orchestra firing on all cylinders with Maestro Luisotti extracting all the drama that has yet to unfold with each passing phrase. I had the awesome pleasure of singing under his baton at San Francisco Opera in La Fanciulla del West, and it remains a true highlight of my career. He is a musical genius. I only wished the excerpt was longer!

  
  Kenneth Overton is lauded for blending his opulent baritone with magnetic, varied portrayals that seemingly “emanate from deep within body and soul.”  Kenneth Overton’s symphonious baritone voice has sent him around the globe, making him one of the most sought-after opera singers of his generation. Amidst performing, Kenneth serves as co-founder and artistic director of Opera Noire of New York, a performing arts organization created to empower African-American artists to reach their full creative potential in a creative supportive environment.

• Synopsis

  
  ACT I

  In the city of Seville and in the neighborhood of a mountain village in Spain.

  SCENE 1—The household of the Marchese of Calatrava. A moonlit night. The Marchese closes the window and bids his daughter good­night, telling her that the foreigner she has fallen in love with is unworthy of her. He blesses her and retires for the night. As she prepares to run away with her young lover, Leonora is filled with despair. Torn between her love for her father and her love for Alvaro, she foresees that she will become "a pilgrim and an orphan" if she abandons her father's house. When Alvaro arrives, Leonora begs him to delay their flight so that she can see her beloved father one last time. Distressed, Alvaro releases her from her vows of love. Leonora swears she will follow him to the end of the world. The Marchese surprises them and Alvaro throws down his gun in surrender, but it goes off as it hits the ground and kills the Marchese. As he lies dying, the old father lays a terrible curse on his daughter.

  SCENE 2—In the village. A year and a half later. The young villagers welcome the travelers (Alvaro and Leonora in disguise), dance with them, and invite them to partake of their evening meal. Carlo, Leonora's revengeful brother, is disguised as a student. Trabuco the muleteer sits apart, fasting since it is Friday. Preziosilla, the fortune­teller, arrives with news that war has broken out. "Long live war!" cry the enthusiastic young men, ready to follow Preziosilla into battle. After a procession of devout pilgrims goes by, Carlo tells his story: He claims to be the Pereda, a student helping his friend to find the murderer of his father. Preziosilla is suspicious of him.

  SCENE 3—Outside and within the monastery of the Madonna of the Angels. Frightened and alone, Leonora prays that the Virgin will not abandon her. Because she is not a woman, she's not permitted to enter the monastery. She begs the bad-tempered Friar Melitone to call the Father Superior, to whom she reveals herself. The Father Superior is appalled to learn that Leonora wishes to become a hermit. He warns her against such a terrible fate but reluctantly allows Leonora to go to the mountainside grotto—he will bring her food once a week and no one will ever know her name.

  The horrified monks are told that no man is to approach the holy grotto on pain of being forever cursed. No mortal will ever cast his eyes on the hermit again. Certain she will find redemption, Leonora departs alone for the desolate mountainside.

  ACT II

  In the forest near Velletri, Italy. Several years later

  SCENE 1—Believing Leonora to be dead, Alvaro has changed his name to "Don Federico Herreras" and is now a brave hero of the Regiment. The memory of his beloved Leonora torments him and he longs to be with her in death. A fight breaks out between rowdy soldiers gambling nearby and Alvaro saves the newly arrived adjutant from certain death. The adjutant is none other than Carlo, who now calls himself "Don Felice de Bornos.” The two men swear eternal friendship. The battle begins, and the badly wounded Alvaro begs his friend to look after his belongings, having sworn him never to open his sealed letters. Torn between his oath and his suspicions that his friend might indeed be his enemy, Carlo finally opens a parcel containing Leonora's picture. Suspicions now confirmed, Carlo awaits Alvaro's recovery so that he can avenge his father's death.

  Before dawn, Carlo tells Alvaro that Leonora is still alive. Overjoyed, Alvaro begs his friend to go with him in search of his beloved, but Carlo taunts Alvaro for his low social origins. The patrol interrupts their duel and, heartbroken, Alvaro turns his back on the world and resolves to dedicate his life to the church.

  After sunrise Preziosilla begins to tell fortunes and Trabuco, now a peddler, swindles the men out of their scant belongings. New recruits arrive on the battlefield distraught, but Preziosilla and the prostitutes engage them in lively dance. Friar Melitone chastises the soldiers for their lack of moral fiber. A fight breaks out between those who accept the Friar's admonitions and those who are angered by it. Preziosilla brings unity back to the regiment engages the men in a rousing march.

  ACT III

  In the neighborhood of the village in Spain. Several years later.

  SCENE 1—In the monastery of the Madonna of the Angels. Landless peasants and war veterans beg for charity while complaining about the soup Friar Melitone serves them. Melitone loses his temper and tips over the cauldron, scaring the beggars away. Melitone tells Father Superior that the mysterious Friar Raffael has been behaving strangely and that he is, with his bulging eyes, probably the devil in disguise.

  Carlo has tracked down his mortal enemy and now confronts Friar Raffael, who is indeed the repentant Alvaro in disguise. Alvaro refuses to fight. Kneeling he begs Carlo to depart in peace. To Carlo this only proves the baseness of his mulatto blood. The two men rush to the mountainside to fight a duel.

  SCENE 2—On the mountainside. In her solitude, Leonora realizes that all her suffering has been in vain and that her soul is still in torment. It is her fate to love Alvaro. As she prays for death to take her so she can finally be at peace, she hears men approaching and hides.

  Alvaro pleads with the saintly hermit to perform final rites on the mortally wounded Carlo, but suddenly recognizes that the hermit is Leonora. As he dies, Carlo, still unforgiving, stabs his sister. As Leonora dies, she asks Alvaro to kneel so that he may be forgiven.

• Cast Page/Program

  
  To access the cast page and full program, click here.