Peter Dvorský sings French & Italian Operatic Arias
Giuseppe Verdi came to dominate the world of opera in 19th
century Italy. The flowering of his career largely coincided with the movement towards
Italian national unity and it was soon observed that the composer's name itself formed an
acronym for the new king, Vittorio Emanuele, re d'ltalia.
The opera Rigoletto,
based on Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse, at
first met difficulty from the censors, with its original story of a profligate king.
Eventually the villain of the piece became the Duke of Mantua, served by the hunch-back
court jester Rigoletto, a willing assistant in his disreputable amorous escapades. The
story, at first under the title La maledizione, The Curse, announced in the opening
Prelude, deals with the curse placed on Rigoletto by the father of one of the Duke's
victims. Gilda, Rigoletto's closely guarded daughter, is wooed by the Duke in disguise,
and then, without his knowledge, abducted by his courtiers, anxious to be even with
Rigoletto, whose malicious tongue has antagonized them. Rigoletto plots revenge for the
abduction and assault on his daughter, but the planned murder of the Duke miscarries, and
it is Gilda who is murdered. La donna e mobile (Woman is fickle), expresses the Duke's
light-hearted view of women. The well known aria recurs with particular dramatic point,
overheard by Rigoletto, when he thinks the Duke already lies dead in the sack that he is
about to cast into the sea. Opening the sack, he finds his own daughter, dying, murdered
by the ruffians he had himself employed. The Duke's earlier ballata Questa o quella (This or that) establishes in the
first scene his carefree attitude to love and contempt for conventional morality.
The opera Aida was written in 1871 for the new opera house in
Cairo. The Egyptian subject was suggested by the French egyptologist known as Mariette Bey
and deals with a conflict of loyalties that leads to the death of the hero, Radames,
immured in a tomb, with his beloved Aida. The opening Prelude is based on a theme
associated with Aida, a slave of the Egyptians, and music for the Egyptian priests, whose
inexorable law brings about the death of the lovers. In the recitative Se quel
guerrier io fossi Radames expresses his hope that he may be chosen to lead the
Egyptian armies against the invading Ethiopians, led by the father of Aida. As his reward
for victory, he hopes for the hand of Aida.
The French composer Bizet achieved his greatest success with
his last opera, Carmen, mounted in 1875, the
year of his death. The drama ends with the murder of Carmen, who, having trifled with Don
Jose's love, has turned her attention to the toreador Escamillo. The Intermezzo leading to
the third act of the opera introduces a scene in the mountains, where the gypsies, engaged
in smuggling, take rest. The famous Flower Song, La fieur que tu m'avais jetee,
(The flower that you threw me), is sung by Don Jose to Carmen. In the first act she had
thrown him a flower, which he had treasured. In the factory, after her return to work,
Carmen had knifed another girl. Arrested, she had been allowed to escape by Don Jose, who
was in his turn arrested. Now released he approaches Carmen at Lillas Pastia's tavern,
where her criminal companions are meeting.
Bizet was much helped by the encouragement of Charles Gounod, a
composer whose operatic triumph was his version of Goethe's great play Faust, first staged
in Paris in 1859. The protagonist sells his soul to the Devil, in return for youth and
power. His Cavatine Salut I demeure chaste et pure (Hail! Dwelling chaste and
pure) marks his sight of the house of the beautiful Marguerite, the girl he is to seduce
and betray.
French opera in the later 19th century was dominated by Jules
Massenet, whose Werther again made use of
the work of the great German writer Goethe. The Sorrows of Young Werther, first published
in 1774, had set a fashion in male attire and in suicide for love. Werther loves
Charlotte, who is engaged to Werther's friend Albert. He leaves her, but when he returns
later and finds her married, he despairs. In the middle of a winter snow-storm he takes
his own life, dying eventually in the arms of his beloved. The opera was first performed
in Vienna in 1892. The aria Pourquoi me réveiller occurs at Wer1her's return in the third
of the four acts of the opera, when Charlotte urges him to leave her in peace and forget
their love.
Giacomo Puccini has continued one of the most popular composers
of Italian opera, his sentimental realism exercising a par1icular fascination. His first
opera, the scene set by the opening Prelude, was based on an improbable libretto, Le villi, which retells a German legend, familiar
from the ballet Giselle. Anna, a forester's
daughter, is deser1ed by her lover, and dies, returning with her fellow-ghosts, the Villi
of the title, to take her revenge.
Tosca, first staged in Rome, where the action is set, in 1900,
tells the story of the love of the famous singer of the title and the painter Cavaradossi,
victims of the wicked chief of police Baron Scarpia. The second of the two arias here
recorded, Recondita armonia (Strange contrast of harmony), is sung by Cavaradossi as he
paints the picture of a Madonna in the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle. His painting
combines the traits of his beloved dark-haired Tosca and the fairer features of an unknown
woman, often seen in the church. It is through this woman that hero and heroine are to be
involved in the fate of an escaped revolutionary prisoner. Cavaradossi is condemned to
death, while Tosca can only secure his release at the cost of her virtue. She is driven to
murder Scarpia, taking from him the supposed safe-conduct for herself and her lover.
Cavaradossi spends his last moments on the battlements of the prison-for1ress, recalling
his love in the aria E lucevan le stele. Tosca believes his execution to be
faked, as Scarpia had promised, but finding her beloved dead, she leaps from the
battlements to her own death.
Puccini's last opera, Turandot,
is set in China, and makes considerable use of strands of Chinese melody, here misapplied.
The story, derived from the 18th century Venetian writer Gozzi, the source of Schiller's
play on the same subject, concerns the cold-hear1ed Princess Turandot, unwilling to accept
any suitor who cannot answer the three riddles she propounds. Unsuccessful applicants for
her hand are put to death, but this does not deter Calaf, who answers her riddles
correctly and sets her his own. If she can discover his name before the next morning, he
is willing to die. That night none must sleep - Calat's aria Nessun dorma - in
the search for the stranger's name. The slave girl Liu gives her life to keep the secret,
which is only revealed by Calaf himself, his revelation melting the icy heart of Turandot,
who understands at last that his name is Love.
Manon Lescaut, based on the
18th century novel by the Abbe Prevost, tells the story of a girl, Manon, betrayed by her
brother into a loveless marriage. She tries to desert her rich, elderly husband, and he,
in revenge, has her condemned to transportation as a common prostitute. The Intermezzo
introduces the scene in which Des Grieux meets again the imprisoned Manon. She is followed
by her first true lover, to a tragic death in the parched wastes of America. The famous
aria Donna non vidi mai simile a questa (I never saw woman like to this) marks
the first meeting between the young Chevalier Des Grieux and Manon.
Madama Butterfly, staged
first in Milan in 1904, is another story of man's inhumanity to woman. The American naval
lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton marries the Japanese girl Butterfly, having no serious intention
of remaining true to her. His return to Nagasaki, accompanied by his new American wife,
leads her to kill herself, when she finally understands that she and her young son have
been betrayed. The poignant aria Addio, fiorito asil di letizia e d'amor
(Farewell, sweet home of joy and love) is sung by Pinkerton in remorse, as he leaves the
house where he had lived with Butterfly, now for the last time. His wife and the American
consul Sharpless are left to negotiate for the child. Butterfly promises to hand the boy
over to Pinkerton, if he comes back half an hour later. When he returns, she is dead.
Granada, by the Spanish army officer and collector Manriquede
Lara, Torna a Surriento and the well known O sole mio, popular elements in the Italian
tenor repertoire, conclude the present collection.
Peter Dvorský
The staggering career of Peter Dvorský (born in 1951 in
Partizánske) began fifteen years ago when, still a student of Ida Cernecká at the
Bratislava Conservatoire, he was engaged as soloist at the Slovak National Theatre Opera
House. After a few minor parts he made his debut in the role of Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, an event which also marked the end of
his studies at the conservatoire. In the following years he sang the title-role in
Gounod's Faust, the Duke in Verdi's Rigoletto, Vashek and later Yenik in Smetana's Bartered Bride, and participated successfully in
various competitions. He gained the highest award at the Mikulás-Schneider-
Trnavsky National Contest (1973), the title of Laureate at the Tchaikovsky Competition in
Moscow (1974), first place at the International Singing Contest in Geneva (1975) and the
title of Laureate at the International Tribune of Young Performers (UNESCO) in the course
of the Bratislava Music Festival (1976). These awards were convincing proof of the young
tenor's intense artistic progress. During the concert season 1975 and 1976 he took a
course of studies with Renata Carosio and Giuseppe Lugo at the opera studio of the Milan
La Scala and in the following year the ascent to the highest peaks a singer can achieve
seemed unstoppable. At the age of twenty-five he entered into close co-operation with the
Vienna Staatsoper, beginning with the part of the Italian singer in Strauss Rosenkavalier.
Shortly afterwards he made his début in Munich (the premičre of Verdi's Rigoletto), in Cologne and at the Metropolitan Opera
in New York (Alfredo in Verdi's La Traviata).
In 1978 he appeared at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, a year later in Zurich as Massenet's
Werther, at the Milan La Scala as Rodolfo in Puccini's La
Bohčme with Ileana Contrubas and under Carlos Kleiber, as well as at the
Festival in the ancient Arena of Verona in front of twenty thousand spectators as Alfredo
in Verdi's La Traviata with Katia
Ricciarelli as Violetta. In the role of Rodolfo he also made his first appearance in
London at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with Mirella Freni as Mimi (1980) who was
also his partner during the tour of La Scala to Japan in 1981.