Behind the red curtain

"In the operatic dictionary that has his name, Gustave Kobbé emphasizes Puccini's efficiency in mixing comic and dramatic registers: 'Having the Parisian Quartir Latin ambience, where it is proverbial the inseparability between drama and happiness, [the music registers] evolve in a mixing of laughs and tears that calls our attention for the fact that authors and composers capable of unravelling the passion raptures are a legion, but only a few are the ones owning the sutil gift of comedy. It is this comedy touch that distinguishes several of the score passages in Bohème, alternately exciting, passionate, and eloquent in moments of despair'." (Perpetuo)

"The [Grove] dictionary concludes [about La Bohème]: 'freed of the conventional narrative restrictions, the opera reveals the symbolic burden of a tragic event, which abruptly interrupts the flow of time. Rodolfo, and all of the others who share your feelings, doesn't have time to think: the tragedy breaks the action, and attaches the pain in the eternity of art'." (Perpetuo)

"Rodolfo, a poet, Marcello, a painter, Colline, a philosopher, and Schaunard, a musician, make a friend's quartet faithful to their dedication to art and philosophy. They live by their spirit not by material demands. Bohemia is not only getting drunk at night. It is getting drunk at night and live with 'loose women', because that is what true life philosophy asks for. It is that one which is not for sale for the bourgeoisie world, but it suffers the effects of its insensibility to the non-materialist spirit." (Pondé)

"It is exactly in this world that will be born the great social and aesthetic movements which will influence the Occidental world since the 19th century. The bourgeoisie, with its double face -- of revolutionary against aristocracy, and of conservative against socialism -- will have in the ideal of art for art's sake one of yours most cultivated positive images: of artistic and intellectual creation in its most pure form as haven against money's fury. Only when we discover that everything is for sale -- and we found this out with the advent of bourgeoisie --, we start to seriously ask ourselves about the limits of money." (Pondé)

"But, if the world was changing, with romantic and vanguard art revealing talents even in poorer social classes, all human beings are still the same in some way. Artist, philosopher, rich, poor, ignorant, all men and women love and desire and suffer by this, and die without pity. In La Bohème, because of women's presence, the eternal repeats itself even in a world in transformation. The woman, for the man who desires her, always represent a form of more concrete reality, the one that dominates both the body and the spirit." (Pondé)

"[Conrad] Wilson mentions Manon Lescaut, third Puccini's opera, and your first score to really consolidate him as a successful composer. Just before of the premiere, in February 1893, at Teatro Regio in Turin, the author met in a café, in Milan, the Neapolitan Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919), to whom he said that his next opera would be based in the novel Scènes de la vie de Bohème, by the French Henry Murger (1822-1861). Leoncavallo -- who just made success with 'I Pagliacci' -- was outraged." (Perpetuo)

"Puccini's Bohème reached the stage for the first time in February 1st, 1896 at Teatro Regio, in Turin, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. The one by [Ruggero] Leoncavallo premiered in May 6th, 1897, at Teatro La Fenice, in Venice. Although, in the beginning, the critics' reception for the creation of 'I Pagliacci''s author (among other reasons, because of its higher fidelity to Murger's original text) have being even more favorable than the one of his competitor, posterity would be ruthless, reserving space for only one Bohème -- the one by Puccini." (Perpetuo)

"The bourgeoisie was born already unhappy because of the shame that it feels by its love for money. The aristocracy 'was,' the bourgeoisie never rose to this condition because it depends of what it 'have,' and therefore never 'is.' This emptiness follows it in every expensive and fancy places that it goes, betraying the eternal condition of new rich. The artistic or intellectual talent is in the order of 'be,' as well as the noble blood: or it is a brilliant artist and intellectual or it isn't." (Pondé)

"The maximum intensity of affect, a characteristic of operatic drama, is a essential remark of the heroic human. The modern world was getting deeper during the 19th century, and in this way, as the Republic and Democracy were born little by little, the miserable would also start to receive real names in this life, which sometimes looks like 'a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing', how it was said by the miserable aristocrat Macbeth, in the tragedy that holds his name, written by the immortal Shakespeare, an ordinary man." (Pondé)

"(...) it is legitimate to see, in La Bohème, the compositor's nostalgia in relation to his own youth. Maybe it isn't misplaced understand as a personal tribute of Puccini to the times the theme that is heard just in the beginning of the opera (which works as a kind of leitmotiv of the four friends): it is derivative of an orchestral score of the composer, the 'Capriccio Sinfonico,' from 1883 -- time that he, as a student of the Milan Conservatory, shared room with [Pietro] Mascagni." (Perpetuo)

"Debussy, who wasn't exactly a fan of Italian composers of opera in that time, even claimed to the Spanish Manuel de Falla that 'no one have described better Paris of that time than Puccini in his La Bohème'." (Perpetuo)

"The time that Debussy have referred [and which is the time of the opera] is the reign of Luís Felipe (who is the monarch nominally cited in the work), between 1830 and 1848, when [Henry] Murger's youth happened and when he, with strong biographical elements, published his 'Scènes de la Vie de Bohème' initially as a newspaper series, between 1845 and 1849. The success of the work generated a theatrical adaptation in partnership with Louis Thèodore Barriére, in 1849, and the publication of the work in a book format, in 1851." (Perpetuo)

"Beyond putting himself as the poet Rodolfo, [Henry] Murger created his characters based in some real persons, such as the painter and composer Alexandre Schanne (prototype of Schaunard), the theologist Jean Wallon (mold of Colline), and the painter François Germain Léopold Tabar (model of Marcello). Without mentioning the Café Momus, which until its closure, in 1850, it was at number 17 of rue des Prêtres-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, between the Louvre and Pont Neuf." (Perpetuo)

"The Grove ['s dictionary] describes: 'to establish the individual or collective profiling of a group of artists without money, Puccini combined, loosely, different types of sounds: great lyrical melodies, flexible motifs, the tone as semantic tool, bright and diverse orchestral execution'." (Perpetuo)

"The two female characters, Mimì and Musetta, dominate the drama, each one representing a female archetype that populates the male imagery: the first, the fragile and beloved tuberculous, victim of an always unfair life, revealing our incapacity to protect her; and the second, the irresistible and unconquerable, who has the pleasure in torturing us, showing that we are not her owner." (Pondé)

"(...) The free art can do whatever, except winning death. By the hands of tuberculosis, Rodolfo knows the true 'spirit of art': knowing that we are limited to the condition that the matter itself (the body and not the money) imposes. Of course, if he was rich, it could comfort the suffering of his beloved Mimì, but as he being a miserable, she will suffer even more and will die young." (Pondé)

"(...) Boemia happiness is the prove that even starvation and cold (our four heroes start the libretto with hunger and freezing) aren't enough to destroy the free spirits. This is the aesthetics vanguard's dream joint by the romantic revolution that started already in mid-18th century in German ground." (Pondé)

"In Salome, that a Wilde's friend called 'breviary of decay', Herodes does not stop being to be a tragic figure: tormented by his crimes to hold his power, fearing the punishment of killing the brother to marry his sister-in-law, is driven mad by the desire for his niece." (Mutran)

"In summary, Herodes dedicated himself in calming popular mood and maintaining a pacific relation with Rome. However, the chroniclers of the time described him as a cruel and corrupt leader, which popularity was diminished as the time passed, and who was capable of realizing countless improvements (like paving roads opened by the Hasmoneans and creating new cities), doing the commerce flow, at the same time that decided condemning 46 of 71 Sanhedrin wises to death by not agreeing with a sentence announced by this court." (Mutran)

"In the Bible, the name of Salome don't even show up -- it came to us thanks to the Roman historian Flávio Josefo, and it is not rare that in some sources the character be mistaken with her mother, Herodíades. However, even designating her only as 'daughter of Herodíades', the New Testament make her responsible for the death of John the Baptist, in the Gospel of Matthew (14, 3-11) and Mark (6, 17-29), when she asked the prophet's head on a plate as a reward for him to have danced for her uncle and step-father Herodes, ruler of Judea, during a feast." (Perpetuo)

"Salome's idea had have being created from a meeting in Paris, in 1891, between Wilde and the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) - who, in that time, was working about the same subject, Herodíades. With a consolidated literary reputation after the success of The Happy Prince (1888), and having recently published The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Artur Savile's Crime and Other Stories, and Intentions, Wilde felt safely enough to risk himself in a new enterprise: a French play, written in one breath." (Perpetuo)

"Excited after a meal with young literati (among which was André Gide) in the French capital, in which he discoursed in length about his new work, Wilde arrived in this hotel and started writing Salome, interrupting the work only to have dinner at Grand Café, where there was live music. It says that, completely immersed in the subject, the writer asked the orchestra's conductor of the restaurant to play a song suitable for 'a woman who dances barefoot over the blood of a man who she desired and who she order to kill'. Legend has that the musicians played notes so frightful that drove away the other clients of the restaurant, while Wilde went back to the hotel and finished his creation." (Perpetuo)

"Other interest object for critics are the discussions about the play production by Wilde in 20th century, and its reference for painting, cinema and music due its modernity. Although he had died in 1900, Wilde pre-announced several trend in dramaturgy of 20th century. If is agreed that the genesis of Modernism is in the 1890s, it is worth defining some aspects of modernity out Salome." (Mutan)

"There are people that says that when Wilde chose the French language, the author of The Importance of Being Earnest wanted to challenge Flaubert and Mallarmé in their own area. In truth, Wilde was guiding himself by more pragmatic considerations: aspired to have the diva Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) as the protagonist of his play. (...) And Bernhardt, effectively, prepared herself for the premiere, in London - event cancelled by the British censorship based on an old law that forbade the representation of biblical characters on stage." (Perpetuo)

"The cocktail of luxury, incest, decapitation, and necrophile of Wilde's play had everything to scandalize and attract eager audience by new feelings in the beginning of 20th century. Who didn't find enough horrors in the facts that were unfolded on the stage could nevertheless be shocked with the agressive bitonality of the musical idiom of Strauss." (Perpetuo)

"[Leoncavallo] negotiations with the editor Giulio Ricordi for a debut of I Medici, nevertheless, didn't come through, and after the success of Cavalleria Rusticana, Leoncavallo decided to approach his contestant Edoardo Sanzogno - editor of [Pietro] Mascagni's opera - with a libretto of I Pagliacci, because, as Wagner did, Leoncavallo was also a librettist of his own operas (having yet collaborated with Manon Lescaut's libretto, by Puccini)." (Perpetuo)

"I Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana, passional operas, may be the best examples of this Italian process of using arts, especially music, like vectors of the search of its own soul - personal and national. Both were composed inside of an important cultural-literary movement created in Europa in the second half of 19th century: the Verismo." (Pellegrini)

"If Verismo had Cavalleria Rusticana as their founder title, I Paglicci can be considered, without excess, your aesthetic manifesto. In the prologue before the opera two acts, the baritone who will play Tonio's character works as the author's representative, singing a text which summarizes the worries and priorities of the so called Giovane Scuola. At the end of the drama, Leoncavallo closes the circle when Tonio announces that 'la commedia è finita' ('the comedy is over') - although Enrico Caruso, when singing Canio's character, has appropriated the phrase making that in some productions the expression be sung by the tenor." (Perpetuo)

"Under the baton of a young Arturo Toscanini, the premiere of I Pagliacci, in Milan, at Teatro dal Verme, in May 21st 1892, was a success -- helped, without a doubt, by a star cast, in which the French baritone Victor Manuel stood out in the character of Tonio (also singing the prologue), who is the creator of verdians roles like Iago and Falstaff, thanks to his friendship with Leoncavallo during his period in Paris." (Perpetuo)

"Adapted for the stage, Cavalleria Rusticana premiered in 1884, starting the verista theater. In 1886, it was time for the symphonic poem with the same name; in 1890, the melodrama Mala Pasqua and the triumphal opera by Pietro Mascagni, Cavalleria Rusticana; in 1907, another opera with the same title, by Domenico Monleone. With Mascagni, the verista ideas entered the opera world, in which, side by side of Mascagni, it is worthy mentioning Giacomo Puccini, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano, Francesco Cilea and others." (Fabris)

"The naturalistic ideas started to influence the unified Italian intellectual world around 1870 and being established since the debates about Realism that happened in the previous decade, which gave birth to Verismo (the term is a derivation of vero, in the reale sense = 'real', 'reality'). Although some French postulates adopted the movement, the Verismo had a regionalistic character, focusing more in portraying rural environments and the peasantry than the urban spaces where most social classes lived." (Fabris)

"Beyond the aesthetics similarities, a destiny's irony brought together Leoncavallo and Mascagni. Following the example of his colleague, he created several scores after I Pagliacci, without ever repeating the same success. Once in a while, famous tenors remember of recording his Mattinata, song composed, in 1904, to attend the requests of the growing music industry -- ordered by Gramophone Company (now HMV), it was registered the mythic Caruso with the composer himself in the piano. At the same way as Mascagni, Leoncavallo ended as a composer of 'one-opera wonder'." (Perpetuo)

"If the 18th and 19th centuries France could be recognized by the abundance of philosophers, Italy, in turn, deserved the same recognition, but in the opera circuit. In the big capitals of the peninsula, mostly in Milan, Naples, Rome and Venice, all national questions were presented and discussed on stage, in a realist format, symbolic or metaphoric, by the voices of the singers and by the music of opera composers." (Pellegrini)

"[The Verismo] For objectively expressing the focus only in a life fragment, the structure of the narrative demanded a new language: the writing was no longer far-fetched and the language adapted itself to the popular and dialectal speaking, as a way to enter the mentality of the new protagonists, incorporating the lexicon, phrases, proverbs and syntactical structures." (Fabris)

"The Verismo is a natural deployment of Positivism, a philosophical movement created with the studies of Carlos Henrique de Saint-Simon, a socialist and utopist philosopher (in other words, that harbored unrealistic ideas). He argued being necessary always start from the positivistic method (scientific) of Natural Sciences, Math and Physics for studying the man and human affairs." (Pellegrini)

"Son of a magistrate, Leoncavallo was a student of the composer Paolo Serrao (1830-1907) and Lauro Rossi (1810-1885) in San Pietro a Majella Conservatory, in his native Naples. Converted to the Wagnerian creed, he went to contemplate Wagner's Italian premiere of Rienzi, in Bologna, in 1876, planning to create an opera triptych with a Renaissance thematic which would be the peninsular equivalent of the tetralogy Ring Cycle: the three parts of Crepusculum would be I Medici (the only one finished), Gerolamo Savonarola and Cesare Borgia. At that time, he composed his first opera, Chatterton, which, however, it would be staged only two decades later, in 1896." (Perpetuo)

"[The Verismo] For objectively expressing the focus only in a life fragment, the structure of the narrative demanded a new language: the writing was no longer far-fetched and the language adapted itself to the popular and dialectal speaking, as a way to enter the mentality of the new protagonists, incorporating the lexicon, phrases, proverbs and syntactical structures." (Fabris)

"Besides excite Sanzogno, the composer text left the French writer Catulle Mendès (1841-1909) wroth, who decided to prosecute him by plagiarism of his La femme du tabarin (1887), even trying to prevent one presentation of the opera in Brussels. Some critics point out the similarities in the trama of I Pagliacci and the play Un drama nuevo (1867), by the Spanish Manuel Tamayo y Baus (1829-1898)." (Perpetuo)

"No wonder (...) that [Franz Brendel's] challenge have being answered by the one who would become one of the most prominent members of the New German School: Richard Wagner, ambitious Kapellmeister (in other words, conductor) of the Saxon's king court, in Dresden, who, in October 4th 1848, wrote a prose outline of that that would be your more absorbing and powerful aesthetic initiative, Der Nibelungen - Mythis: Als Entwurf zu einem Drama." (Perpetuo)

"The Rhine Gold is an opera about Germanic and Scandinavian myths Hellenized by Richard Wagner's passion for ancient tragedy (the greek tragedy 're-read' in romantic German of 19th century), therefore, it is a history about gods and goddesses immersed in never ending desires, as they are desires of immortal beings. Several times death is a blessing as we precisely turn to stone, and the stone doesn't have desires. The gods don't have the mortals luxury, and if they had, they would be terrified like us." (Pondé)

"Wagner does, in a certain way, a 'modernization' of the atavistic vision of the world as an immortal and repetitive conflict between forces that never rest. And these forces are both in the universe and within us. The gods and their myths are, in this way, mirrors of our agonies ('agon' in attic greek is conflict) which devastated human beings." (Pondé)

"The Rhine Gold's premiere [in 1869] (...) would mark one of the most tense moments between the composer and his royal patron. Ludwig II wanted that the opera had being produced in Munich, in 1869. Wagner made what he could to sabotage the initiative, claiming since medical reasons (he was under medical treatment, and a presentation without his presence would be doomed to failure) to aesthetics (the scenic effects didn't work properly). Having left Munich after of being left by Cosima, [Hans von] Bülow wouldn't conduct the debut; the responsibility was given to Hans Richter, who influenced by Wagner refused to conduct the opera on the eve of the scheduled date, forcing the postponement of the production." (Perpetuo)

"But what is a myth and what this flirtation with the overcoming of Christian world mean? Scholars of myths such as Mircea Eliade, Carl Gustava Jung, and Joseph Campbell understand the myths not as mere irreal fantasies, but as atavistic psychic structures (from which we never get freed) which describe deep and irrational processes of human soul since the pre-historic beginnings. They are, in this sense, a non-factual truth, but instead a espiritual one, which describes how we see each other as human beings -- narratives that answer to our desires, our affections, and our fears." (Pondé)

"Owners of the rights for presentation of The Ring, Ludwig II was angered by Wagner's his minions' rebellion and decided, in his own words, 'nip the evil in the bud', since he had never suffered 'such an affront'. The king have written: 'The way Wagner and the theatrical bastards are behaving is really criminal, and completely shamelessness. It is a disclosed challenge to my orders, which is something that I can't allow. Definitely, [Hans] Richter have to be banished from conducting again, and fired immediately. It is irrevocable. The theater staff must follow my orders, and not Wagner's whims'." (Perpetuo)

"The composer even went to Munich -- only to discover that his entrance in the rehearsals was forbidden. Back to Tribschen (close to Lucerne Lake, in Switzerland), where he lived, Wagner wrote a threatening letter to Franz Wüllner, the conductor that replaced Richter: 'Take off your hands of my scores! Take my advice, mister, or go to hell!'. He later added with his characteristic arrogance: 'People like yourself must take a lot of classes from a man like me until understand that you are not capable of understanding anything'." (Perpetuo)

"All the trama sequence, which will be unfolded in the last act, reveals the disorder which is the obsession for gold, for majestic housing, for youth and for love as a trophy. Having lost everything, the nibelung curses who have the ring, because who desires it will not have it and who have it will be unhappy. Thus like the nymphs the dwarf curse the one who have the possession of power." (Pondé)

"The resentment, a soul's deformation of the weak and ugly -- one more time, a Christian moral overcoming that preaches mercy for the unhappy --, an affection despised for both Wagner and Nietzsche and the other romantic Germans, dominate Alberich and he reveals your petty and revengeful nature. Creature of abysses' darkness, he represents the weakness of an impotent soul in seducing the nymphs." (Pondé)

"The nymphs, realizing Alberich's interest by the Rhine Gold, warn him that who wants to have it will need to abdicate of love. Being powerful, but being incapable of loving and being loved is the curse of who holds the Rhine's gold. Alberich, who already was humiliated, easily choose for the power of gold, going deep in his conscience that being loved for him is impossible." (Pondé)

"Therefore, nothing of music's primacy. As every other resources involved in the work, it was also subjected to a superior dramatic finality -- of which served it as motivation and justification. Wagner didn't want to 'simply' compose music, but he aspired producing the synthesis of all artistic manifestations: in one word, Gesamtkunstwerk." (Perpetuo)

"In the case of the Ring Cycle, the main sources are anonymous, Nordic, and German, possible compiled in 13th century, such as Edda, the primordial book of Icelandic mythology; or Volsunga Saga, also originated in Iceland in the 1300s. The name 'volsunga' (Wälsung) appears in The Valkyrie, but Wagner take from the book much more than only the name." (Perpetuo)

"If we remember the nietzschian reading of greek tragedy -- in a time that is sensible Wagner's influence under Nietzsche --, we will see that the oppositon between Apollonian (order, law, measure, reason) 'drive' ('Trieb', term posteriorly immortalized by Freud as being the 'substance' of psyche) and Dionysian (art, violence, mayhem, madness) 'drive' is present in the Wagnerian plot, in which gods and goddesses fight opposed tectonic forces: should we opt for love (impulse dictated by the god Dionysos, free and with no interests excepting the own joy of itself and of being loved) or the power (one excludes the other), features of the god Apollo, who everything controls, subjugating life to law and order?" (Pondé)

"Gods and goddesses are faced with privileged desires and power and the maleficent consequences of yours greatness projects. But the agony is not felt only by Freia. All the gods, Wotan, Fricka, Dooner (god of thunder) and Froh (Spring god), the later two Freia's brothers, they depend of the golden apples grown by her, without which they all will grow old and die. Thus the battle is for eternal beauty; Freia is the key of the gods' divinity. Human, all too human, Nietzsche would say." (Pondé)

"The Ring Cycle doesn't allow us defining a simple axiology (good and bad criterion), and thus it breaks with the Christian vision and it positions itself in the murky world of greek tragedy. And what is this world? The Gold of Rhine sings this murky world." (Pondé)