Vocal Virtuosity: The Origins of the Coloratura Soprano in Nineteenth-century Opera 9780197542644, 0197542646

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Vocal Virtuosity

Vocal Virtuosity The Origins of the Coloratura Soprano in Nineteenth-​Century Opera SE A N M .   PA R R

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3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Parr, Sean M., author. Title: Vocal virtuosity : the origins of the coloratura soprano in nineteenth-​century opera /​Sean M. Parr. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020043528 (print) | LCCN 2020043529 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197542644 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197542668 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Singing—​History—​19th century.  | Embellishment (Vocal music)—​History—​19th century. | Sopranos (Singers) | Opera—​19th century. Classification: LCC ML1460 . P 39 2021 (print) | LCC ML1460 (ebook) | DDC 782.109/​034—​dc23 LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2020043528 LC ebook record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2020043529 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197542644.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America James R. Anthony Fund of the American Musicological Society, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

For all those wonderful, thrilling, and courageous coloratura sopranos.

Contents List of Tables, Figures, and Examples  Acknowledgments  About the Companion Website 

Introduction: Coloratura and Female Vocality 

ix xiii xvii

1

1. The New Franco-​Italian School of Singing 

28

2. Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura 

59

3. Melismatic Madness and Technology 

95

4. Caroline Carvalho and Her World 

141

5. Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz 

182

6. Vestiges of Virtuosity: The French Coloratura Soprano 

220

Epilogue: Unending Coloratura  Bibliography  Index 

261 271 287

Tables, Figures, and Examples Tables 1.1. Paris Conservatoire singer-​teacher lineages: Cinti-​Damoreau, Garcia II, Duprez, and later, Mathilde Marchesi, educated many of the important nineteenth-​century sopranos who created roles with significant amounts of coloratura 

33

1.2. Roles created by Laure Cinti-​Damoreau (1801–​1863) 

36

4.1. Roles created by Caroline Carvalho (1827–​1895) 

142

4.2. Roles created by Carvalho’s coloratura competitors: Marie Cabel (1827–​1885) and Delphine Ugalde (1829–​1910) 

170

5.1. Prominent mid-​nineteenth-​century coloratura waltz arias 

185

Figures All images are reproduced courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 1.1. Laure Cinti-​Damoreau, soprano-​teacher and creator of roles in operas by Rossini, Meyerbeer, and Auber 

34

3.1. Caroline Duprez-​Vandenheuval as Catherine in Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du nord (1854) 

108

3.2. Engraving of Dinorah’s Shadow Song in Meyerbeer’s Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859) 

110

3.3. Christine Nilsson as Ophélie in Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet (1868) 

124

3.4. Charcot’s passionate poses (attitudes passionnelles) struck after sound prompts; drawing from Jean-​Martin Charcot and Paul Richer, Les démoniaques dans l’art (Paris, 1887) 

127

3.5. “Aural Hallucination”; Paul Régnard, photograph of Augustine, in Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, service de M. Charcot, vol. II (Paris, 1878) 

130

3.6. “Ecstasy”; Paul Régnard, photograph of Augustine, Iconographie, vol. II 

131

3.7. “Onset of the Attack: The Cry”; Paul Régnard, photograph of Augustine, Iconographie, vol. II 

132

x  Tables, Figures, and Examples 4.1. Opéra-​Comique roster, 1850 

146

4.2. Carvalho’s “signature” variation; facsimile of autograph of Carvalho’s third variation in the “Carnaval de Venise” aria from La Reine Topaze (1856), Département de la musique, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris 

159

4.3. Carvalho in the title role of Clapisson’s Margot (1857) 

166

4.4. Marie Cabel as Philine in Thomas’ Mignon (1866) 

169

4.5. Delphine Ugalde in the title role of Semet’s Gil Blas (1860) 

173

4.6. Christine Nilsson as The Queen of the Night in the Théâtre-​Lyrique’s production of La Flûte enchantée (1865) 

176

5.1. Carvalho as Marguerite in the Jewel Scene of Faust (1859) 

187

5.2. Carvalho as Marguerite at the window in Faust 

190

6.1. Adèle Isaac, creator of Olympia in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881) 

234

6.2. Marie van Zandt in the title role of Delibes’ Lakmé (1883) 

236

6.3. Georgette Bréjean-​Silver in the title role of Massenet’s Manon (1884) 

245

6.4. Sibyl Sanderson in the title role of Massenet’s Thaïs (1894) 

248

Music Examples 1.1. Cocotte vocalises in Cinti-​Damoreau’s Méthode de chant (1849) 

38

1.2. Cinti-​Damoreau’s coloratura exercises for voices that are “too agile” 

39

1.3.

Canto di agilità; Garcia’s example is an excerpt drawn from Isabelle’s cabaletta “Idole de ma vie,” from Act II of Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1831) 

46

1.4.

Canto di maniera; excerpt from “Deh calma o ciel,” from Act III of Rossini’s Otello (1816) 

46

1.5.

Canto di bravura; excerpts from Garcia’s Traité complet de l ’art du chant 47 (1847), first a canto di forza flourish in a recitative from Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda (1833) and then a canto di slancio passage from Coppola’s Nina (1835) 

2.1. Gilda’s aria, “Caro nome,” from Verdi’s Rigoletto (1851), mm. 1–​81 

63

2.2. Violetta’s opening recitative “È strano . . .,” from her double aria in La traviata (1853), mm. 1–​22 

72

2.3. “Ah, fors’è lui . . .,” opening of Andantino section of Violetta’s double aria, mm. 27–​34 

73

2.4. Transition into “A quell’amor . . .,” second half of Andantino section, mm. 43–​54 

73

Tables, Figures, and Examples  xi 2.5. Tempo di mezzo of Violetta’s double aria, mm. 113–​136 

75

2.6. “Sempre libera,” first half of cabaletta of Violetta’s double aria, mm. 144–​193 77 2.7. End of Violetta’s cabaletta, mm. 222–​246 

79

2.8. Introduction to Hélène’s bolero, “Merci, jeunes amies,” from Verdi’s Les Vêpres siciliennes (1855) 

85

2.9. Opening vocal section of Hélène’s bolero, mm. 11–​50 

86

2.10. Coloratura coda of Hélène’s bolero, mm. 103–​124 

87

3.1a. Flute-​soprano duet in Catherine’s mad scene, Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du nord (1854), Act III excerpt, mm. 317–​333 

104

3.1b. Duetting flutes and soprano, concluding section of Catherine’s mad scene, mm. 350–​355 

106

3.2. Vocal echoes in Dinorah’s Shadow Song from Act II of Meyerbeer’s Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859), mm. 73–​103 

112

3.3. Coloratura waltz section of Ophélie’s mad scene, Act IV of Thomas’ Hamlet (1868), mm. 113–​129 

115

3.4. Ophélie’s mad-​scene ballad: laughed cadenza and beginning of second verse, mm. 203–​212 

118

3.5. Coda from Ophélie’s mad scene, mm. 229–​264 

119

4.1. Opening of Jeannette’s Rossignol aria, from Massé ’s one-​act Les Noces de Jeannette (1853) 

148

4.2. Flute-​soprano imitations in the Rossignol aria, mm. 22–​29 

149

4.3. Opening of B section in the Rossignol aria, canto di maniera, mm. 73–​79  150 4.4. Flute-​soprano contest in the Rossignol aria, mm. 95–​105 

152

4.5. Coloratura coda of the Rossignol aria, mm. 123–​137 

153

4.6. Fanchonnette’s bolero aria, coloratura excerpt from Act II of Clapisson’s La Fanchonnette (1856), mm. 109–​125 

156

4.7. Theme of “Carnaval de Venise” aria, from Act II of Massé ’s La Reine Topaze (1856), mm. 66–​81 

158

4.8. First variation of “Carnaval de Venise” aria, mm. 82–​90 

159

4.9. Second variation (Paganini’s) of “Carnaval de Venise” aria, mm. 91–​98 

160

4.10. Third variation (Carvalho’s “signature” variation) of “Carnaval de Venise” aria, mm. 99–​107 

161

4.11. Coda of “Carnaval de Venise” aria, mm. 117–​155 

163

5.1. Opening of the “Air des Bijoux,” Marguerite’s Jewel Song, from Gounod’s Faust (1859) 

188

5.2. Melismas from Gounod’s “Ah! Valse légère,” written for Carvalho, mm. 256–​276 

193

xii  Tables, Figures, and Examples 5.3a. Fanfare opening of “Ah! Valse légère,” mm. 1–​16 

198

5.3b. Fanfare opening of “O légère hirondelle,” from Gounod’s Mireille (1864), mm. 12–​35 

199

5.3c. Fanfare opening of “Je veux vivre,” from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette (1867), mm. 1–​20 

200

5.4.

202

Coda and coloratura cascades of “Je veux vivre,” mm. 151–​196 

5.5a. Coloratura cascades from “O légère hirondelle” (second iteration), mm. 150–​176 

206

5.5b. Coloratura cascades from “Ah! Valse légère” 

206

5.5c. Coloratura cascades from “Il a perdu ma trace,” from Gounod’s Philémon et Baucis (1860; dedicated to Carvalho) 

207

5.5d. Coloratura cascades from “Je veux interroger,” from Gounod’s La Colombe (1860) 

207

6.1. Coloratura passages in the cantabile of Marguerite’s double aria “O beau pays,” from Act II of Les Huguenots (1836), mm. 37–​43 

227

6.2. Coloratura passages in the cabaletta of Marguerite’s double aria “O beau pays,” mm. 164–​188 

228

6.3. Olympia’s Doll Song, mechanical melismatic opening, coloratura, winding down, and cadenza, from Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881), mm. 6–​64 

231

6.4. Olympia’s malfunctioning coloratura, mm. 200–​235 

233

6.5a. Bell Song from Delibes’ Lakmé (1883), opening a cappella invocation and cadenza 

239

6.5b. Lakmé’s mimetic bell coloratura and coda, mm. 138–​186 

241

6.6. Massenet’s Manon (1884), excerpt from Manon’s Act III Gavotte, written for Marie Roze, mm. 47–​52 

244

6.7a. Manon’s Fabliau, written for Georgette Bréjean-​Silver, mm. 12–​32 

246

6.7b. Manon’s Fabliau, coloratura ending, mm. 59–​72 

247

6.8a. Coloratura and staccato variants written for Sanderson in Manon’s Act I aria, “Je suis encor” 

249

6.8b. Sanderson’s variants in Manon’s Act III, “Je marche sur tous les chemins”  249 6.9a. Esclarmonde’s melismatic incantation rising to high F, Massenet’s Esclarmonde (1889), Act III 

250

6.9b. Esclarmonde’s Act III melismatic incantations continued, leading to Sanderson’s “Note Eiffel” (G above high C) 

251

6.10a. Thaïs’s outbursts of laughter, Massenet’s Thaïs (1894), Act II 

252

6.10b. Sanderson’s strident laughter as L’Apparition de Thaïs, Thaïs, Act III 

253

Acknowledgments I am so profoundly grateful that this project has come to fruition. And I know that this owes much to the great support I have received over the years of research, writing, and rewriting. Without such support I would not have been able to complete this book. Of course, all remaining oversights are mine alone. A first book goes through many transformations, and my book is no exception. Begun as a dissertation at Columbia University, the project was grounded in methodologies gleaned from my many scholarly mentors: foremost among them, Karen Henson, who has been and continues to be an inspiration; also, Lydia Goehr, Giuseppe Gerbino, Walter Frisch, Susan Boynton, Ellie Hisama, and Elaine Sisman. Music theorist Marion Guck guided and affirmed my thoughts on close readings of vocal music, and Suzanne Cusick’s empowering and exemplary scholarship on gender and music has motivated my commitment to reclaiming spaces for women in music scholarship. I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have worked with several wonderful musicologists as I developed this research in conference papers and articles, and in conversation as well: Hilary Poriss has been especially encouraging and insightful, providing support at crucial moments; Kym White has also been so kind and helpful—​her generosity and her knowledge of French singers and institutions know no bounds; and David Levin, whose energy, enthusiasm, and perceptive thoughts have significantly broadened my own thoughts on performance studies. Sally Sanford has known my work as a scholar and as a singer since 1999, and her example in both roles herself has been revelatory and incredibly important. Thanks also to Mary Dibbern, Juliet Forshaw, Steven Huebner, and Lesley Wright, who each gave generously of their time as I navigated French archives and sources. I am grateful to the many other scholarly colleagues who have provided insight and influential models along the way:  Carolyn Abbate, Sarah Fuchs, Dana Gooley, Sarah Hibberd, Larry Kramer, Kathryn Lowerre, Roberta Marvin, Peter Mondelli, Elizabeth Morgan, Roger Parker, Laura Pruett, Clair Rowden, Susan Rutherford, Mary Ann Smart, Bill Summers, Steve Swayne, Claudio Vellutini, Denise Von Glahn, and Emily Wilbourne. My colleagues at Dickinson College, where I held a visiting position as music history professor and choral conductor for two years, were unbelievably kind, supportive, and encouraging:  Amy Wlodarski, Robert Pound, Blake Wilson, Jonathan Hays, Lynn Helding, Jen Blyth, Michael Cameron, and Blanka Bednarz. My current institutional home continues to inspire and provide intellectual sustenance—​my

xiv Acknowledgments thanks to: Kate Bentz, Kathy Hoffman, Lisa Cleveland, Sharon Baker, Jennifer Thorn, Ann Holbrook, Keith Williams, Laura Shea, and Andrew Haringer. Many friends and colleagues have been essential interlocutors along the way:  Amber Youell saw the project at its beginning and near its completion and her support has been vital to me; Mark Seto has also been a rock of support, both while we researched the Paris archives together and over the years as a trusted soundboard; Kristy Barbacane, Corbett Bazler, Greg Bloch, Brooke Bryant, Patrick Calleo, Ryan Dohoney, Kevin Findlan, Karen Hiles, Ben Piekut, Edgardo Salinas, Heather Bruyère de Savage, Kate Soper, Victoria Tzotzkova, Brett Umlauf, and Meg Wilhoite. I have also benefited from the resources of several institutions and grants:  Columbia University Reid Hall and Dissertation fellowships and Gerstle Travel funds from the Music Department; a Foreign Languages and Area Studies fellowship; Faculty funding from the Dickinson College Research and Development Committee; a DAAD summer grant for a performance studies seminar at the University of Chicago; a publication subvention from the General Fund of the American Musicological Society, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W.  Mellon Foundation; and Faculty Development and summer grant support from my current home, Saint Anselm College. The staff at several libraries also provided many incredibly helpful suggestions: the Archives nationale, the Bibliothèque-​ Musée de l’Opéra, and the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris (Département de la musique and Département des Arts du spectacle); The British Library and The Victoria and Albert Theatre Museum Library and Archive Collection in London; the Conservatorio di Musica “G. Verdi” in Milan; The New York Public Library and The Morgan Library and Museum in New  York; Elizabeth Davis and Nick Patterson in Columbia’s Music Library; Kirk Doran in Dickinson’s Library; and the staff at St. Anselm’s Geisel Library. I am also indebted to the American Musicological Society, which serves as the disciplinary touchstone for my career in and love of music history. Thanks are also due to Cambridge University Press and the University of California Press who have granted me permission to reuse early versions of my research published as articles: “Caroline Carvalho and Nineteenth-​Century Coloratura,” Cambridge Opera Journal 23, 1–​2 (2011): 83–​117; “Dance and the Female Singer in Second Empire Opera,” 19th-​Century Music 36, 2 (2012): 101–​21; and “Coloratura and Technology in the Mid Nineteenth-​Century Mad Scene,” in Technology and the Diva:  Opera and the Media from Romanticism to the Twenty-​first Century, ed. Karen Henson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 37–​48. The book’s twenty images are reproduced courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Overwhelming thanks are due to Oxford University Press. Even now, it’s difficult to believe the book is happening—​my unending gratitude to Oxford for

Acknowledgments  xv this opportunity. Suzanne Ryan patiently shepherded me through the proposal process, and Norm Hirschy calmly and quickly answered my many questions along the way from contract to submission. The anonymous readers gave incisive suggestions and scholarly affirmation, which critically guided the final form of this book. I am deeply grateful for the editorial and technological help revising the writing and engraving the many music examples found throughout this book: Ulrike Guthrie’s keen and kind editing eye brought a new level of consistency and polish to my writing; Michael Shaw provided crucial technical skills with many of the initial transcriptions; Andrew Maillet did an expert, beautiful job finishing the examples; and Meridith Murray for her great work creating the index for the book. Early on, four sopranos—​Susanne Knittel, Brittany Palmer, Melissa Raz, and Martha Sullivan—​braved difficult melismatic terrain in helping me to revive fourteen mid-​century coloratura arias. Their vocal athleticism, musicality, and fearless attitude jumpstarted this project. The terrific pianist for that lecture-​ recital, Bill Lewis, also provided enthusiastic support and insight on style. Most recently, I have had the honor to talk about coloratura with two of the most musical, impressive, and kind sopranos of our current generation of opera stars: Erin Morley, superwoman, who found time for an interview while moving, parenting three young children, and singing, all during a pandemic; and Lisette Oropesa, the entrepreneurial performer who has inspired thousands of young singers, and whose thoughtfulness helped me see so many connections between the past and present. I am so glad to know these performers and honored to discuss singing with them. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family. Each of them has provided more support than I could possibly expect: fellow scholars, teachers, and fathers, Gilberto Ruiz and Ted Petro; friends and pianists extraordinaire, Jason Smith, Elizabeth Blood, and Molly Lozeau; and my musical family who instilled in me a love of music—​my mother, Heather; my father, Gary; my brother, Patrick; my grandmother, Norma Frank; my uncle, Mike Frank; and my wife, Karen—​each of whom has read and commented on various parts of the book. Their interest, musical expertise, and loving support have meant more to me than I can possibly express. I am forever grateful to them.

About the Companion Website www.oup.com/​us/​vocalvirtuosity Oxford has created a website to accompany Vocal Virtuosity. Material that cannot be made available in a book is provided there, including: playlists of audio and video examples of the opera arias discussed throughout the monograph; musical scores of the arias drawn from public domain piano-​vocal scores; and additional images courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The reader is encouraged to consult this resource in conjunction with the relevant chapters. Examples available online are indicated in the text with Oxford’s symbol  .

Introduction Coloratura and Female Vocality

I didn’t choose my voice, so I had to go to what you call pyrotechnic repertoire because it was my repertoire. I was forced to do it. And it’s not that it was easy for me from the beginning. For example, quick coloratura, when it’s long, like in Rossini, is really, really difficult for me. I had to work like a dog to get that. I had to learn how to get the virtuosity and how to make it interesting.1 —​Natalie Dessay, 2013

Why would French soprano Natalie Dessay—​perhaps the coloratura soprano of the recording era—​feel confined by her virtuosic voice in this Carnegie Hall interview? In most interviews, Dessay avoids talking even a little about singing in favor of discussing her foremost desire to be on stage and to be considered a singing actress, a rhetorical move that belies her extraordinary musicality and, indeed, her vocal virtuosity. For Natalie Dessay is a coloratura soprano par excellence. And when she describes her voice as something innate that compels her to sing “pyrotechnic repertoire,” she speaks about the coloratura soprano as a voice-​type, one of several operatic voice-​types codified in the nineteenth century. (Others include the mezzo-​soprano, the baryton Martin, and dramatic voices of all sorts.) By invoking pyrotechnics, Dessay also inextricably and matter-​of-​factly links the coloratura soprano to virtuosity, a musicality she views as both impressive and suspicious. This questioning of virtuosity’s value has of course been a common trope in the discourse surrounding both vocal and instrumentality virtuosity from its inception.2 Dessay also claims that coloratura itself is very difficult for her, that she “had to work like a dog” to sing long runs of melismas. This is a striking, almost paradoxical claim—​for if her vocal identity is a coloratura soprano, why shouldn’t the coloratura itself also be natural? In other interviews, Dessay explicitly laments being a light coloratura soprano, wishing she could sing more dramatic roles, such as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata, a role she says she “can’t sing” even though she did in fact do so. Perhaps Dessay was self-​ mythologizing, or simply expressing the very human desire for something she couldn’t have. Even so, her thoughts on being a Vocal Virtuosity. Sean M. Parr, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197542644.003.0001

2  Vocal Virtuosity coloratura soprano can give us pause to wonder when and how the coloratura soprano become an established voice-​type, one associated not only with lots of fast runs, but also with extremely high notes, above high C. One might also wonder who pushed the voice to these virtuosic ends and why we now consider coloratura to be the domain of female singers—​coloratura sopranos such as Dessay and Diana Damrau (and mezzos such as Cecilia Bartoli and Joyce DiDonato).3 In addition, Dessay’s thoughts indicate how coloratura singing could be understood as the result of a significant amount of labor and effort—​singing as “work.” How did composers participate in this process and why did some, such as Verdi, seem to reject the coloratura soprano as a viable voice-​type for their operas? And finally, if we understand Dessay to be part of a lineage of coloraturas—​along with exemplars such as Sabine Devieilhe, Patricia Petibon, Mady Mesplé, Lily Pons, Janine Micheau, Mado Robin, and Lucette Korsoff—​how does the French operatic tradition factor into this history? * * * Vocal Virtuosity grapples with these questions as it explores the origins of the modern coloratura soprano in the mid-​nineteenth century. As poet and critic Théophile Gautier intimated in 1847 when he complained about singers’ “dramatic shrieking” and the “long lost” tradition of melismatic singing, there was something of a drastic shift in singing style at mid-​century when singing became louder, more dramatic, and more demarcated by gender.4 Yet contrary to Gautier’s claims, coloratura did not vanish at mid-​century. Coloratura was originally essential for all singers, but its function changed greatly as it became the specialty of particular sopranos over the course of the nineteenth century. The central argument of Vocal Virtuosity runs counter to the historical commonplace that coloratura became an anachronism in nineteenth-​ century opera. Instead, the book demonstrates that melismas at mid-​century were made modern. Coloratura became an increasingly marked musical gesture during the century with a correspondingly more specific dramaturgical function. The book examines the instigators of this change in vocal practice and the perpetuators of the art of coloratura. In tracing the historical trajectory of coloratura during the mid-to-late nineteenth century, I argue that coloratura became a specialized, gendered singing style. This process is part of a broader gendering of singing styles, one that leads to a familiar, problematic dichotomy, in an era when we might say “women started singing like women” (and “men sang like men”). Vocal Virtuosity also explores what coloratura can signify in operatic performance, ranging from technical brilliance to dance, joy, madness, and beyond. Finally, the book aims to show that coloratura asserted its modern identity not as Italian, but French, as we can see from the historical vestiges of Parisian

Introduction  3 singers who were the period’s greatest exponents of vertiginous vocality and the archetypes of the modern coloratura soprano. Coloratura—​vocal agility, the rapid-​fire articulation of many notes on one syllable—​became a peculiarity in operatic vocal music over the course of the nineteenth century.5 The common perception is that this marked a shift in compositional practice that resulted from an increased desire for dramaturgical realism, a priority mostly associated with Wagner but also linked to Verdi. But such an explanation does not take into account other important elements and actors in this change. In what follows, I address those neglected elements and actors, focusing on mid-​to-​late nineteenth-​century Franco-​Italian vocal practice and repertoire (including some well-​known examples, such as “Sempre libera” from Verdi’s La traviata, “Je veux vivre” from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, and the Doll Song from Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann). These agents take an older singing style and make it new, transforming coloratura into an emblem of the modern in the nineteenth century. In establishing that coloratura became gendered as the provenance of the female singer, I  also contend that vocal virtuosity was a source of power for women, generating space for female authorship and creativity. In so doing, I strive to amplify the melismatic female voice, a voice sometimes missing from prevailing opera history narratives. The book therefore explores the paradox of a problematic femininity combined with empowered vocality, and what this paradox can tell us about opera and modernity in the nineteenth century. The ideology of modernization encouraged mechanization, capital investment, conspicuous consumption, and a confluence of burgeoning freedoms and continued constraints. In a way, such an ideology provided the perfect climate for nurturing a modern conception of a long-​standing style of singing: coloratura as both a traditional pillar of bel canto singing and a new and luxurious expression of the feminine. Additionally, coloratura could be read more broadly as akin to ornamentation and a profusion of detail, both of which have historically been gendered feminine.6 In the context of the history of opera, then, coloratura could be seen as a symbol of the opportunities and the dangers of modernity for women. Coloratura sopranos in the nineteenth century revisited old operatic territory in new ways, providing sonic symbols of the female body, thereby claiming a significant space for the individual soprano while also raising the level of scrutiny for all female singers.

Coloratura before the Nineteenth Century Coloratura is one of the most enduring of singing styles.7 Melismatic singing, ornamentation, and improvisation are hallmarks of vocal virtuosity

4  Vocal Virtuosity cross-​culturally.8 And one can easily trace melismatic singing back to the Middle Ages in the Western musical tradition. Sequentiae are one such example and are identifiable by their lengthy passages of notes on one syllable. Melismatic singing also has a long history of association with intense feelings of joy. St. Augustine characterized coloratura as jubilatio, a mental state in which words are both impossible and unnecessary, and in which meaning is expressed with utmost passion and yet is incomprehensible. Augustine’s “exultation without words” was a spiritual moving of the soul through vocality.9 It is easy to forget the long-​ standing association of coloratura with such a heightened expression of jubilation, an expression ritualized in the monophony of Gregorian chant, particularly in the gradual. Melismatic medieval polyphony is often most florid in the upper voice; the organal voice of organum purum in the Notre Dame repertory, with 30 to 40 notes per one in the tenor, is perhaps the most extreme juxtaposition of melismatic versus syllabic text setting. In this case, melismas are not a function of relation to words but a function of relation to a cantus firmus, a contrapuntal relationship. In addition to notated melismatic parts, entire upper parts of early medieval polyphony may have been improvised.10 Renaissance madrigals feature melismas of a different type. The meditative vocality of sacred chants and polyphonic forms continued, but the rise of word painting opened up the possibility of melismatic treatment that represents a word or phrase musically. A  descending scale on the word “descends” is a simple example of this type of text treatment. The florid texture of music written for the Ferrarese concerto delle donne in the late sixteenth century influenced much of the solo vocal music written thereafter, particularly in Italy. This group of female singers inspired many imitators in other Italian city centers.11 Their performances (most often from memory) signify a shift from participatory, amateur music-​making to virtuosic, professional music-​making, as well as a northern Italian partiality for the high soprano voice. With Baroque opera, composers and singers made use of coloratura as an ornamental, word-​painting device, and as a mode of intense emotional expression. Aria types such as the rage aria, tempest aria, and joyful love aria commonly feature extended melismatic passages.12 The tradition of ornamenting repeated sections of music also focused audience’s ears on florid vocalism. Improvised melismatic turns and elaborate cadenzas aligned these intense emotional outbursts with increasingly difficult vocal-​technical display. Coloratura was thus a core singing style in early opera. As such, seventeenth-​ and eighteenth-​century treatises on the voice feature prominent sections on vocal agility. One of scholar and performer Sally Sanford’s most striking discoveries about the history of vocal techniques is the idea that singers back then used less air pressure when singing than singers do now or did in the nineteenth century.13 The lower air pressure, in addition to resulting in a softer sound emission,

Introduction  5 also allowed for a particular type of melismatic singing:  “throat-​articulated” (dispositione di voce). This articulation method is centered on the trillo ornament, which is prominent in the works of early seventeenth-​century singers and composers such as Giulio Caccini (1551–​1618). Sanford traces the origins of throat articulation to the mid-​sixteenth century and the writings of Giovanni Camillo Maffei (fl. 1562–​1573).14 For Maffei, coloratura’s main purpose is to please the ear. The voce passeggiata (the “melismatic voice”) is by its nature a voice of ornament, pleasure, and display, but it is also fundamental for a singer to master. The articulation method for Maffei is similar to the striking of the air with repeated throat action exhibited when laughing and coughing—​Sanford’s throat articulation. Maffei’s ideal singer has a soft and pliant throat, adapted to making diminutions.15 Shortly after Maffei, Italian theorist Lodovico Zacconi (1555–​ 1627) commented on the rise of coloratura singing and its revolutionary effect on the ears of listeners: These persons, who have such quickness and ability to deliver a quantity of figures in tempo with such velocity, have so enhanced and made beautiful the songs that now whosoever does not sing like those singers gives little pleasure to his hearers, and few of such singers are held in esteem.16

Zacconi describes the rise of the virtuoso singer, whose dominance would continue through the mid-​nineteenth century. Zacconi calls coloratura “gorgia” (throat), and notes the importance of clarity, breath control, and velocity for singers training in the art of coloratura. Zacconi also advocates throat articulation, though he calls the gateway to such articulation tremolo, perhaps referring to the pulsations of the glottis in a trillo.17 Marin Mersenne (1588–​1648) likewise advises singers to use air to move the throat in articulating melismas. He regards roulades as essential in a singer’s education because they lend a sense of brilliance and lightness, but he also notes their difficulty.18 More legato coloratura articulation, along with the increasing unification of registers, developed in the eighteenth century with the rise of virtuosi castrati. The treatise of the Italian castrato Pier Francesco Tosi (1654–​1732), Opinioni de’ cantori antichi e moderni (1723), delineates the new vowel articulation, where a vowel sound is reimagined and restrengthened for each of the notes in a melisma.19 In other words, a singer would achieve vowel articulation by imagining a new, separate vowel on each note (e.g., “ah-​ah-​ah-​ah-​ah”), without actually interrupting the vocal line. By the eighteenth century, the trill had become an emblem of the flexible voice and throat; a good trill was considered crucial in a singer’s battery of ornaments. Although all opera singers (sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses) sang fioritura, in the eighteenth century coloratura is closely

6  Vocal Virtuosity connected to the figure of the castrato. The most influential teachers and singers were castrati, and the virtuosic feats they attained in performance are legendary. An important late eighteenth-​century treatise, Pensieri, e riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato (1774) by the castrato Giovanni Battista Mancini (1714–​ 1800), further codified singing styles related to coloratura; I elaborate on these styles in Chapter 1. Some eighteenth-​century writers also associated coloratura with the feminine. This was partly due to the fact that many of opera’s most acclaimed singers were castrati, but also due to coloratura’s association with ornament, extravagance, and even luxury.20 However, opera composers in this period gave all voices—​ male and female—​coloratura to sing. That is, by the late eighteenth century, coloratura had become a normative melodic style, one that became ubiquitous in the early nineteenth century with “bel canto.” And, the construction of gender until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was based on a one-​sex model. These conventions changed radically by the end of the nineteenth century, as we will see.

Approaches to Coloratura in Nineteenth-​Century Opera The tradition of coloratura as an essential part of solo singing was quite prominent during the bel canto period of the early nineteenth century and was used by Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti, who employed it as part of normal melodic text treatment, rather than necessarily linking it to a particular emotion or dramatic situation. In addition to notated fioritura, improvised (or planned) ornaments were also commonplace in singers’ performances in the early nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, coloratura had become a rare feature in Franco-​Italian operatic vocal writing. It is not found in the operas of late Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, Saint-​Saëns, and the verismo composers, and only on occasions (though often striking ones) in the operas of Massenet and Delibes. Vocal Virtuosity traces this mid-​to-​late nineteenth-​century historical trajectory. Certainly, singing became more declamatory over the course of the century, with fuller and heavier sounds overtaking the leggiero or graceful sounds of bel canto vocalists.21 This is perhaps best exemplified by the case of tenors, who, as castrati fell out of fashion, took over heroic, romantic roles and began to sing high notes (e.g., the do di petto) more loudly and heavily than before, as a result of changing vocal technique. In addition, ideas about gender and sexual identity were shifting, and the soprano joined the tenor in passionate, full-​voiced expression, ushering in to the operatic stage what to us are more familiar models of gender and sexuality. Tenors in the nineteenth century embodied the new ideal in a manner analogous to that of the castrato in the eighteenth century. Heather

Introduction  7 Hadlock suggests that a new demand for realism led to the castrato’s diminishing importance, particularly in heroic roles.22 In line with what I will describe as coloratura’s connection to youth, joy, and extravagant femininity, John Potter has suggested that the light lyric female soprano replaced the castrato as the “voice of youth.”23 Scholars similarly ascribe the decline in coloratura writing to the rise of realism and to composers’ disdain for the use of the technique seemingly without regard for dramatic context. The work of Hervé Lacombe exemplifies this view and differentiates between two types of coloratura: vocal virtuosity that is a continuation of a legitimate art connected to wonderment and the bel canto aesthetic; and “gratuitous virtuosity,” aimed at impressing audiences.24 Rather than exploring the forces that contributed to this change, Lacombe describes the growing syllabic treatment of text as a technique that “emerged.”25 General histories of opera and singing that attempt to explain coloratura’s decline, such as Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart and The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, attribute the decline to the increasing demand for stronger, more declamatory voices. This consensus on a change in vocal demands suggests that composers motivated this shift in vocal practice. However, in an art form as collaborative and multifaceted as opera, the composer is only one of many actors involved. Thus this book also investigates other agents of stylistic change, building on recent critical explorations by historical musicologists such as Maribeth Clark, James Q.  Davies, Roger Freitas, Philip Gossett, Karen Henson, Roger Parker, Hilary Poriss, Susan Rutherford, and Mary Ann Smart, who show that it is possible to reveal sophisticated realities about opera and performance that are often obscured by plot, audience reception, and the myth of the composer.26 Because my book is concerned with historical vocal practice, the approaches of scholars such as these influence it. The turn toward performance in the past two decades has relied on the foundations laid by Carolyn Abbate and Parker, who instigated a revaluing of opera studies in the late 1980s that stressed the integration of textual, musical, and dramaturgical analyses. Later, Parker and Abbate each produced seminal studies that emphasized the importance of considering music as performance and performers as crucial operatic creators.27 These studies eventually culminated in a 2012 co-​ authored volume that anchored their long-​term renovation of opera history with the singing voice as a primary historical agent, one that acts mysteriously, magically, and powerfully on opera’s reception.28 From this anchor, Nina Sun Eidsheim proposed a radical refiguring of our understanding of voice as relational action and vibrational practice, rather than voice as idealized sound.29 And Martha Feldman convened a 2015 colloquy on voice studies that further amplifies the pressing need for scholarship that engages with actual practice, as well as the theoretical concept of “voice.”30 For there is a

8  Vocal Virtuosity certain universality to singing, across time and place, and as Gary Tomlinson has argued, we have no choice but to sing, to make music, such that when we “lift a voice in song . . . all humans are struck—​enthralled, seduced, threatened, made, or unmade—​by these powers.”31 These critical theoretical studies have affirmed the vitality of singing, as well as the currency and breadth of scholarly work on the human voice, and they continue to inspire my own engagement with opera, singers, and singing. Employing primarily historical methodologies, Vocal Virtuosity presents case studies of real voices that add to the conversation aiming to recenter music-​historical studies around performers and performance. Informed by archival studies in Paris and Milan, the research for this book relies on a variety of sources, including music manuscripts, published scores, pedagogical treatises, memoirs, letters, and journal and newspaper articles. (Although the majority of these sources were only available for consultation in person when I began this project, many have now been digitized, especially those at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and are much more easily accessible today.) In synthesizing these sources, my book chronicles coloratura singing in nineteenth-​century opera while also integrating close readings of vocal writing that use both familiar musical and textual analysis, as well as my own singer-​centered approach that incorporates a thorough personal knowledge of historical and current vocal practices. In this book, therefore, close readings informed by pedagogical treatises of the time integrate the study of voices, technique, and expression. Most operatic musical analyses have focused on sectionalizing music based on the so-​ called customary forms. These solite forme established by bel canto composers were gradually modified and even abandoned over the course of the century, reflecting a growing compositional desire for dramaturgical unity.32 I look beyond solite forme and harmonic analysis to explore melodic styles as they relate to voice production. Many Franco-​Italian operatic vocal lines can be broken down into sections defined by a particular singing style. In pursuing this type of melodic investigation and synthesizing conclusions with information regarding the libretto, compositional style, staging, and the singers that sang the operas, the studies in this book add to the interpretive possibilities of opera analysis. Uncovering the influence of opera’s performers is also an important part of my project as I explore changes in the vocal and performance practice of particular singers and their relationships to composers. On the one hand, coloratura is a prime example of wordless singing, and a kind of abstraction of the voice in what one might call a “pure” form. But it also became the specialty of specific singers, and thus this most virtuosic human vocalism serves as an important case study in the history of singing and singers. Investigating contemporaneous

Introduction  9 performance practices can reveal conceptions not only about the voice, but also about aesthetics and even the body. For example, considering how dance and the female body were understood at mid-​century informs my discussion of dance arias explored in the following chapters and reveals how coloratura and female sexuality were inextricably linked at mid-​century. Such a focus on voices and singers does not, however, negate the importance of the composer. Indeed, many of the well-​worn historical narratives I  interrogate here have resulted from a narrow focus on only those nineteenth-​century composers still famous today. I broaden this view by considering a wide range of contemporary composers, all well known in their own time, but some less so today: Giuseppe Verdi (1813–​ 1901), of course, but also Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–​1864), Charles Gounod (1818–​1893), Ambroise Thomas (1811–​1896), and Victor Massé (1822–​1884).33 These composers worked within the same network of singers and theaters, and their works were popular and successful with audiences. Finally, the entire project—​an attempt to synthesize issues of performance, reception, voices, pedagogy, and musical analysis—​contributes to our understanding of opera and gender in the nineteenth century. Rooted in the spirit of groundbreaking 1990s feminist musicology that has proven the urgent necessity of amplifying female voices in music history, my study fills a lacuna in the standard narrative that (still) privileges the male compositional voice. Reclaiming a place for and tracing the trajectory of the historical voice of the coloratura soprano, Vocal Virtuosity simultaneously sets forth a twenty-​first-​century synthesized approach to female singers and gendered singing.34 Consequently, the book details the history of a voice from the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, when the trope of coloratura and female vocality is firmly established as a topos in roles such as Zerbinetta in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos (1912, rev. 1916) and, later, Cunegonde in Bernstein’s Candide (1956, rev. 1989). Anne Shreffler affirms Zerbinetta’s link to gender and melismas in the mid-​nineteenth century, noting that “the erotic power of coloratura, which for decades had been the exclusive property of female singers, gives Zerbinetta an individual and specifically feminine language shared by no one else on stage.”35 Taken a step further, Cunegonde’s fabulous aria, “Glitter and Be Gay,” explicitly satirizes the waltz ariette, coloratura as laughter, and the glamour of Paris.36 My study explores those decades of soprano-​dominated coloratura and charts the historical trajectory. But, rather than exploring only how women are “undone” in opera—​to use Catherine Clément’s term—​I focus more on how they are “envoiced”—​Carolyn Abbate’s.37 To be “envoiced” is to be empowered by singing—​a term coined by Abbate in response to Clément. In so doing, I identify intersections between female vocality, dance, a love-​joy-​madness musical vocabulary, and ideas of collaboration and creativity. For it is during the nineteenth century that our familiar constructions of femininity (and masculinity)

10  Vocal Virtuosity are established, as part of a two-​sex model of gender and anatomical difference codified in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.38

Women and Power in Nineteenth-​Century Opera In considering the tension between the female singer’s authority as a performer and the fraught position of her gender in the nineteenth century, I have taken Joan W. Scott’s formulation of gender as “knowledge about sexual difference,” a knowledge that is relative and that considers institutions and social organization.39 I also view women as a historical category, one that allows us to think about the representations of women in the past as potentially informing the present. This stance requires that I be aware of assumptions and disciplinary practices. Thus, fundamental to this book is an expansion of the notion of operatic authority and creation. To this end, I attempt to open up spaces for different conceptions of authorship, particularly for female creators. I therefore examine the prima donna, a star female opera singer, who has historically displayed a fractured identity, one often divided between two poles—​that of the dangerously seductive siren and that of the innocent songbird. Susan Rutherford has noted this polarity, but has also emphasized how real prime donne complicated the stereotype. She writes that “the prima donna provided a powerful—​and disturbing—​example of women’s capabilities beyond the domestic confines.”40 Such a disturbance was felt intensely in mid-​century Paris when coloratura sopranos triumphed over all other singers at the opera house. Taking this cue, Vocal Virtuosity endeavors to avoid problematic stereotypes, instead exploring how particular female singers extended and perpetuated the art of coloratura as musical creators. Of course, the idea that a performer, even a female performer, had significant influence over the final operatic product was not new. Coinciding with Europe’s first feminist strides, female singers of bel canto operas influenced many aspects of operatic production, as Hilary Poriss has amply documented in her study of insertion arias, which illustrates performers’ authority over the operatic work and how female singers in particular held sway as a kind of authorial creative voice.41 Rutherford characterizes the early nineteenth century as their golden age: Women’s greatest freedom on the operatic stage occurred between approximately 1800 and 1840. At this juncture, the prima donnas enjoyed their most powerful moment in operatic history: they influenced compositional practice; they determined musical and dramatic interpretation; and they affected management decisions about the running of the opera house, the content of the season, the employment and use of other artists, and so forth.42

Introduction  11 In mid-century France, sopranos who specialized in coloratura and extreme high notes garnered the largest salaries and greatest acclaim. A  typical first singer, a première chanteuse, could earn 6,000 to 40,000 francs per year at the Opéra-​ Comique.43 The Belgian soprano Marie Cabel (1827–​1885) was the highest-​paid première chanteuse at the Opéra-​Comique in the period, but leading singers at the best houses in Paris could expect 25,000 to 30,000 francs per year. One French soprano, Caroline Carvalho (1827–​1895), earned a whopping 20,000 francs in a single evening (compared to the wages of washerwomen, female retailers, and schoolteachers, whose annual salaries were less than 500 francs).44 Labor statistics such as these compel us to wonder how a female singer was able to rise to such heights. Successful female singers were already anomalous because of their financial ­independence. Opera was a site of female power, offering women possibilities for artistic gains and fame as well as financial autonomy and career security. Kimberly White has detailed these facts, noting that within patriarchal nineteenth-​century theater institutions, upward mobility for female singers was still possible and even those at the lower echelon of an opera company earned much more than women could in other careers.45 Like White, I view singing, and all of its attendant training and rehearsals, as “work.”46 Because singing professionally in France usually meant joining the roster of an opera theater, such as the Opéra, Opéra-​ Comique, or the Théâtre-​Lyrique, singers worked fully as company members, with contracts listing annual salaries and detailing positions and duties. Following in the footsteps of prime donne (and pedagogues) Laure Cinti-​ Damoreau and Pauline Viardot, Carvalho was the highest-​paid French singer of her generation. Although other female singers had reached the same monetary heights, we will see that her status as a French woman, a celebrity, and as a highly regarded creative artist—​indeed, she influenced composers, perpetuated the art of coloratura, and created more new roles than her contemporaries—​marks her as outstanding in the context of women’s rights and roles in mid-​century France. The first waves of feminism in France were during the 1830s and 1840s, peaking at the time of the Revolution of 1848. Socialist publications such as La Femme libre, La Femme de l’Avenir, and La Femme nouvelle advocated women’s rights—​arguing for marriage reform and proclaiming the dowry system to be little more than a national prostitution scheme. They also demanded women’s access to education, authorship, political rights, and divorce. However, the collapse of the Second Republic in 1852 saw a related decline in political activism, and a turn to cultural activism. Famous examples include George Sand, who retired to her country estate in Nohant to advocate for nonviolent revolution through several literary works, some autobiographical in nature, and Victor Hugo, whose self-​imposed exile allowed him to pursue his political agenda, which

12  Vocal Virtuosity included scathing attacks on the Second Empire such as his poetry collection Les Châtiments (1853). Another relevant example is that of women’s rights activist Jeanne Deroin (1805–​1894), who had run for election to the Second Republic’s legislature but was imprisoned after Napoléon III’s successful 1852 revolution. After her release from prison, she published a women’s cultural journal, L ’Almanach des femmes, which ran for two years. The journal contained articles that were written to appear nonpolitical. Its contents included reports and essays on several topics: the American antislavery movement and the US women’s rights convention of 1848; international dress reform; professional women (such as a Polish doctor, a French botanist, Italian musicians, and writer and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe); a consideration of love as separate from sex; women violinists, including one who had just won second prize at the Conservatoire; daycare; the advocacy of vegetarianism; animal rights; and an argument that the definition of “womanhood” need not include the obligation of motherhood.47 Overt political advocacy for “women’s rights” and related issues disappeared from the press under Napoléon III. As Robert Tombs has noted, Napoléon III’s authoritarian empire “silenced feminist voices” beginning in the 1850s, at a time when American and British women were crucial forces in the fight against slavery.48 Coloratura sopranos, whose powerful voices Napoléon III admired, might seem incongruous when considered in the context of an imperial regime that quieted female voices. The fact that women’s access to musical education—​ singing lessons in particular—​increased exponentially in the early nineteenth century (as Chapter 1 describes) partially explains women’s resilience under the Second Empire. The uniqueness of the operatic stage and the sopranos themselves tell the other side of the story. For sopranos were women who had to be loud on stage for practical reasons, and they were admired for their vocal athleticism and leaps into the sonic stratosphere. Thus, this study of coloratura and sopranos in the nineteenth century takes the mid-​century socio-​political context of women in Second Empire France as a pivotal backdrop to coloratura’s shifting significance.

The Modern Coloratura Soprano The context of the Second Empire also encourages us to contemplate how coloratura might be understood as a symbol of the modern, an old singing style made new again. To show how melismas were made modern, I take as a guiding idea David Harvey’s notion of modernity as “creative destruction,” a flexible concept that can prove helpful in explaining the seemingly paradoxical circumstances of many of the familiar indicators of emerging modernity.49 Importantly, Harvey’s

Introduction  13 work situates Paris as the “capital of modernity” in the nineteenth century, and in so doing explores the implications of the familiar trajectory of modernity emerging after a radical break in 1848, via the thoughts and work of Baudelaire, Marx, Flaubert, and Haussmann.50 Certainly Baudelaire’s well-​known claim that “[m]‌odernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent” is a critical starting point for understanding how coloratura’s function was recalibrated at mid-​ century.51 And though Harvey complicates some of modernity’s origins in the 1848 European revolutions, he also reinscribes Paris as the center of these origins and connects the forces involved in the city’s reconstruction, and the overall fête imperial of Napoléon III’s Second Empire, to the circulation of all things modern. In addition to observing how Flaubert’s writing insightfully represents the spirit of the times, Harvey demonstrates how Georges-​Eugène (Baron) Haussmann—​ prime mover of Paris’s enormous transformation—​ radically redefined the idea of scale at mid-​century, increasing its size to the point that he could reconceive “of the city (and its suburbs) as a totality rather than as a chaos of particular projects.”52 The context of Second Empire Paris and its excesses of ever-​increasing scale, speed, mechanization, consumption, decadence, and frivolity inform how we view coloratura in this era, as popular operatic examples spin ever more and higher notes, while the singing style also becomes associated with a sense of luxurious, feminine extravagance. The result of this era of extravagant examples of coloratura was the establishment of the coloratura soprano as a standardized, yet specialized, voice-​type. This “typing” of the coloratura soprano from a set of exemplary mid-​century sopranos reflects the modern standardization process recently postulated by Jonathan H. Grossman, who situates Joseph O’Connell’s definition of standardization as “the creation of universality by the circulation of particulars” in the context of the nineteenth century.53 Grossman develops this idea, connecting it to modern developments in Britain and France. I find especially important his articulation of standardization as the propagation of copies or imitations of a canonized exemplar. This description resonates with the process by which voices, including the coloratura soprano, increasingly become typed in the late nineteenth century. Vocal Virtuosity therefore attempts to set forth a historical trajectory by which the origins of the modern coloratura soprano may be traced. In order to explore the significant transformation in nineteenth-​century singing styles, I study composers, singers, operas, pedagogues, and critical reception, focusing primarily on operas performed or written in the 1850s and 1860s and important late-​century examples, toward the end of the transition in Franco-​Italian practice when coloratura becomes a marked singing style. My focus on France and Italy is not arbitrary; generally speaking, coloratura is a singing style rarely found in nineteenth-​century German opera, even though Italian opera in general was widely performed in Germany then.54 And while the

14  Vocal Virtuosity early careers of Rossini and Meyerbeer suggest a certain transalpine pollination of musical styles, France and Italy remained relatively insulated from German opera until the influence of Wagner later in the century. Within this dual context, arias with substantial fioritura are an important focus throughout the book. Some of today’s standard coloratura soprano repertoire—​Verdi’s “Caro nome” in Rigoletto (1851) and “Sempre libera” in La traviata (1853), as well as Gounod’s “Je veux vivre” in Roméo et Juliette (1867)—​ are in fact the only examples of prolonged coloratura singing in their respective operas. In other words, rather than being arias that follow the general singing styles exhibited by the character throughout the opera, the pieces stand out for their emphasis on melismatic text treatment. For example, “È strano . . . Sempre libera” is a lengthy, difficult double aria, and the brillante cabaletta could be interpreted as a case of forced joy—​coloratura used to emphasize the strain it takes for Violetta to convince herself that she is free. The other examples also are marked (for different reasons) and this markedness invites further investigation. In many of my explorations of these self-​standing, marked arias, my readings tend also to be self-​standing. That is, instead of focusing on the context of the arias with regard to composers, I mimic the arias’ self-​standing positions as isolated, solo numbers in operas with self-​standing, focused discussions of the arias. In the overall arc of the book, I likewise echo the accelerating thrust of the typical coloratura aria with cascades of coloratura climaxing at the end of the coda. Thus, chapter by chapter, my narrative of the markedness of coloratura, its eventual identity as a particular singing style associated with France, and the arrival of the modern coloratura soprano, gains in momentum. The nineteenth-​century web of teachers, singers, and teacher-​singers suggests that coloratura at this time can also be examined from the perspective of treatises produced by vocal pedagogues. The treatises do more than tell us about the vocal exercises used by students of singing. They provide clues as to interpretation, by recommending and describing vocal articulations and styles that correspond to melodic styles and role characterizations. And as Céline Frigau Manning has reaffirmed, there is a strong connection in the nineteenth century between the wordless vocal exercises (vocalises) employed by pedagogues in their treatises and the melismatic singing that was encored (and attacked) for its dazzling, mechanized (or “empty”) virtuosity.55 Chapter 1 examines pedagogical treatises in conjunction with music excerpts and the careers of individual singers, attempting to trace ideas of coloratura articulation and florid-​lyrical expression. One of my underlying premises here is that artistic lineages of historical figures crucially inform our understanding of performance practice, but I also demonstrate that in this case the lineages have a single institutional origin—​that of the Paris Conservatoire, established in 1795. I reveal how the Conservatoire endorsed certain teacher-​singer lineages and sought to merge French and Italian

Introduction  15 traditions into a new school of singing led by three pedagogues: Laure Cinti-​ Damoreau (1801–​1863), Gilbert-​Louis Duprez (1806–​1896), and Manuel Garcia II (1805–​1906). Singing styles associated with this school, particularly coloratura, indelibly affected the history of vocal practice, a history that also contributes to our understanding of nineteenth-​century perceptions of gender, expression, and character. The study reveals a bifurcation between singing styles that carries over from vocal pedagogy to the operatic stage. In the world of opera, singing styles became more gendered and the increasingly virtuosic vocalism of coloratura ever since has divided singers into those that do melismas and those that do not. This division between agile, florid singing and declamatory, sustained singing heralded our modern, more familiar vocal categories, such as the dramatic tenor and the coloratura soprano. Although Verdi might seem out of place here as an Italian, his compositional influence and emphatic involvement in promoting his operas in Paris make him an important force with an operatic oeuvre that includes works that can be labeled “French,” because of his use of French literary sources and musical forms. Verdi’s use of coloratura changed greatly over the course of his career, but key examples are still found in his middle-​period operas, in Rigoletto (1851), La traviata (1853), and Les Vêpres siciliennes (1855). In Chapter 2, I examine how these moments of coloratura signify much more than their apparently straightforward melismatic text treatment might indicate. Arias such as “Caro nome” may employ fioritura to allude to a dramatic subtext, perhaps uncovering the inner psychological voice of the character. Close readings of these arias suggest that Verdi’s use of coloratura serves as an omen, foreshadowing an impending tragedy for the character singing. With these mid-​century examples, we see that Verdi as a modern composer in a sense writes coloratura out of Italian opera. Chapter  3 investigates a particular music-​theatrical “theme,” one highly conventional at the time: madness. In mid-nineteenth-​century Paris, the madwomen of the operatic stage were surrounded by a myriad of novel technologies of both light and sound. By exploiting these technologies, opera was able to represent madness in increasingly visual ways. Even after Italian opera composers had abandoned the mad scene, it persisted in France, encouraged by the long-​ standing French interest in visuality and operatic spectacle. One of the most recognizable characteristics of the mad scene nonetheless remained coloratura, as the vocal technique had become more conspicuous and specialized and almost exclusively gendered as feminine in French opera of the middle of the century. This chapter explores mid-​century musical depictions of madness and their related technologies by focusing on two mad scenes from Giacomo Meyerbeer’s late and neglected opéras comiques, L’Étoile du nord (1854) and Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859), as well as Ophélie’s mad scene in Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet (1868). In addition to presenting characters with an empowered melismatic

16  Vocal Virtuosity vocality, these operas also feature sopranos who embody a particular, aestheticized view of femininity at mid-​century as stylized, objectified icons of hysteria. My exploration of the aural impact of these scenes, the sopranos who originally portrayed the mad heroines, and the original staging manuals (the livrets de mise en scène) highlight the importance of the visual in thinking about this phenomenon. In order to delve into the relationship between the singer and composer, Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the case of Caroline Carvalho (née Marie Félix-​Miolan) and the roles written for her. By practicing and extending the art of coloratura singing, Carvalho became a standard by which other coloratura sopranos were measured in the mid-​nineteenth century. Between 1850 and 1867 she created coloratura roles in sixteen operas, including five by Gounod: Marguerite in Faust (1859), Baucis in Philémon et Baucis (1860), Sylvie in La Colombe (1860), the title role in Mireille (1864), and Juliette in Roméo et Juliette (1867). The Parisian press compared her vocal prowess to the instrumental pyrotechnics of Paganini and Liszt. In Chapter 4, I illustrate how engaging with Carvalho and her contemporaries uncovers interesting intersections between mid-​nineteenth-​century vocal and instrumental idioms. I first explore Carvalho’s watershed moment in her creation of the title role of Victor Massé ’s La Reine Topaze (1856), which was a complex mixture of circumstance, shrewd role choices, and genre. I then investigate how that moment led to two different kinds of competition: between the soprano’s vocal agility and instrumental virtuosity, and between Carvalho’s coloratura and that of her close contemporary Marie Cabel. By claiming a vocalism at least equal to the virtuosity of instrumentalists, Carvalho carved out a place for coloratura as a modern singing style. In Chapter  5, I  focus on Carvalho’s Gounod creations, examining a little-​ known aria that Gounod wrote for Carvalho, “Ah! Valse légère,” based on the waltz chorus, “Ainsi que la brise légère,” from Act II of Faust. The aria’s popularity spurred a vogue for the vertiginous waltz ariette and established Carvalho as a truly modern soprano who wielded authority because of her prodigious vocal virtuosity. The case of Carvalho shows how a woman can both give voice to the erotic and be viewed as a créatrice: an author, not a commodity. She used her singing and her coloratura to transcend boundaries of genre and gender and to establish an identity that gives her an authorial position in operatic history. Carvalho’s Gounod creations serve as case studies in performer-​composer interaction and collaboration that connect to a dance genre—​the waltz. Gounod wrote valse-​ariettes for Carvalho, pieces that connect coloratura to dance and female sexuality. Carvalho explicitly associated herself with this aria-​type, catalyzed it as a new genre, and propagated its popularity and significance. In doing so, she further made coloratura modern in ways that resonate with modern ideas of technology and increasing opulence and ornament under the Second Empire.

Introduction  17 Finally, I explore how Carvalho’s contributions as a creator have repercussions when considering both operatic history and the role of women in Second Empire Paris. The specificity of late coloratura’s function in arias has its roots in operatic writing before mid-​century. Chapter  6 proposes that the role pairings in Meyerbeer’s nineteenth-​century repertory operas are precursors to the marking of the virtuosic soprano as a type in late nineteenth-​century French operas. As Mary Ann Smart has observed, role pairings and musical characterization are evident in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots (1836). This very popular nineteenth-​ century repertory opera serves as a starting point for understanding the transition from coloratura as a normative singing style to one that functions as an uncommon and conspicuous gesture in operas like Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881), Delibes’ Lakmé (1883), and Massenet’s Manon (1884). The soprano roles in these operas hark back to the zenith of coloratura singing at mid-​century, when high notes and melismas were an aural analogue to the ornamental decadence of Second Empire Paris. Coloratura arias in these operas are the late-​century exceptions that prove the rule; they are echoes of the virtuosic vocality of the mid-​century examples explored in my book. And they help codify the establishment of the modern French coloratura soprano. * * * Being termed a coloratura soprano throughout my career, I have had a great deal of time to reflect upon what this truly means. To me, it far exceeds an ability to sing stratospheric notes or rapid-​fire runs, as a dictionary definition would suggest, though I am the first to admit I take great pleasure in doing both. My feeling is that composers found in such voices a means to express emotions beyond the bounds of the text to heighten the drama. As such, I have sought in performances and recordings to colour every high note and roulade with an emotional motivation, as I believe the composer intended.56

—​Diana Damrau, 2009

Coloratura soprano Diana Damrau here connects melismas and high notes to the very modern idea of imbuing sound with intensely dramatic emotions. What’s more, she connects coloratura to a sense of joy and abandon, an idea that fits well with the notion of coloratura as the singer’s expression of boundless emotions. Her easy identification as a coloratura soprano contrasts with Dessay’s discomfort in doing so, demonstrating how entrenched the idea of voice-​type is today for providing a short cut to defining singers and prescribing their repertoire. Finally, her reliance on the authority of the composer’s intentions reveals that our current opera stars—​even ones as uniquely expressive, supremely musical,

18  Vocal Virtuosity and virtuosic as Damrau—​have forgotten or dismissed the fact that in the past singers held sway, not only as interpreters, but as creators too. In scholarly literature, scholars often either ignore or mention only in passing the popularity of vocal extravagance in mid-​century Franco-​Italian music as a transitional stage along the way to the late styles of Verdi and the music dramas of Wagner. I challenge this narrative and contribute a richer description of a period that heretofore has been only cloudily and teleologically defined in terms of the “winners.” This period is a part of history, and in actuality a cauldron of forces was brewing well before Wagner and the later Verdi entered the picture. We should not apologize for the excitement, the fun, or the aesthetic validity of coloratura.57 Gounod and his perky triple-​time arias, Verdi and his popular trilogy, sopranos and their encored cascades of melismas—​these examples of coloratura in the 1850s and 1860s were not merely a lingering style, an archaism in a broader context of compositional progress. On the contrary, the popularity, relevance, and specificity of coloratura at mid-​century make the singing style all the more vital to the history of nineteenth-​century opera—​and to the history of women. The mid-​century female singer, and the melismatic female singer in particular, figures prominently in operatic collaboration and creation, in roles that often feature the most demanding and thrilling moments of expression. I describe the complexity of changing vocal practices and the chameleon-​like function of coloratura. This is a singing style that can and did connote much more than technical prowess and birdlike flights of fancy. By exploring new ways of thinking about fioritura, I  suggest contextual, interpretive, and analytical pathways that will be relevant to music history, music theory, gender studies, and even modern performance. I also explore connections between vocal-​theatrical performance and other related fields, particularly to women and gender studies. Vocal Virtuosity delves into issues of female agency, authorship, the performer as composer, and the performer as final arbiter, particularly in the chapters on madness and on the soprano Carvalho. The study of nineteenth-​century mad scenes also connects the world of opera with that of emergent psychiatry. The exploration of pedagogy relates the project to the history of voice science, while research on the waltz and the bolero links the project to dance history. And the idea of coloratura as body-​bound relates the project to studies of embodiment more generally. These last two relations—​to dance and embodiment studies—​hinge on the idea that singing, and coloratura in particular, has a physical power, based on bodily expression and bodily effect. Finally, my study of coloratura, musical markedness, performance, and gender complicates the issue of vocal virtuosity in the nineteenth century. In doing so, it bridges the gap between “performance” and “interpretation.” Vocal virtuosity served as a locus of power for women by generating a space for female

Introduction  19 authorship and creativity. In addition to training their voices to sing virtuosically, these sopranos wielded their voices as sonic symbols of empowerment. Envoiced by coloratura, these women used their voices as creative possessions, much in the same way that composers used their works to gain power, authority, and influence. In this book, then, I endeavor to reclaim a place in history for the melismatic female voice, a voice sometimes silenced or dismissed by late nineteenth-​, twentieth-​, and even twenty-​first-​century composers and scholars. Ultimately, it may even help to redefine our understanding of the history of opera and the female singer.

Notes 1. Natalie Dessay, Carnegie Hall interview on “becoming a singer,” available on Carnegie Hall’s free iTunes podcasts:  https://​podcasts.apple.com/​us/​podcast/​natalie-​dessay-​ on-​becoming-​a-​singer/​id583471836?i=1000168477466 (Accessed 20 June 2020). 2. The literature is extensive; excellent starting points include Jim Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work:  The “Transcendental Studies” of Liszt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 3. Of course we also have male singers who sing virtuosically: famed countertenors—​ such as Philippe Jaroussky and Andreas Scholl—​who often anchor their careers in Baroque works originally written for castrati; and star tenors—​such as Juan Diego Flórez and Lawrence Brownlee—​who specialize in bel canto virtuosity, even if they do not call themselves “coloratura tenors.” 4. “La tradition de la musique de Rossini est depuis longtemps perdue. . . . Cette musique vive, hardie, brillante, exige une grande légèreté de vocalise, une souplesse de gosier, une habitude du trille et de la roulade. . . . L’habitude des cris et des violences prétendues dramatiques, prise par les chanteurs actuels, leur a rendu le larynx rebelle à ces délicatesses.” Théophile Gautier, 4 January 1847, quoted in Hervé Lacombe, Les Voies de l’Opéra Français au XIXe Siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 47–​48. 5. I  use “coloratura” and “fioritura” interchangeably in this book. The more familiar term, coloratura, has at least three connotations today: florid figuration or ornamentation; the type of singer who specializes in such vocal pyrotechnics; and the type of role that demands expertise in such singing. Coloratura, a term of German and Latin origin (from Koloratur and color), is bound up with the issue of Fach (vocal category), and while it describes an originally Italianate singing style, it is not used in prominent Italian vocal treatises. Fioritura, a less familiar term, encompasses improvised and written melodic embellishment and does not involve the additional semantic complexity. 6. On the musical side of this association between ornament, detail, and femininity, see Gurminder Kaul Bhogal, Details of Consequence:  Ornament, Music, and Art in Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). For the broader cultural

20  Vocal Virtuosity analysis, see Naomi Schor’s important Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine (New York: Methuen, 1987). 7. While melismas are a common feature of oral musical traditions, the word “coloratura” links the concept as we understand it now to the beginnings of Western musical notation. The Italian term coloratura was first used in reference to diminution relating to the mensural practice of coloration. From these earliest uses of the term, coloratura was also associated with ornamentation more generally. Thus the word connotes both improvised and notated floridity. 8. Melismatic singing is prominent in virtually all Judeo-​Christian liturgical chant traditions as well as in the Baluchi līkū; the taḥrīr within the Iraqi maqām; Indian rāgas; the Croatian lament of Gospin plač; Gamelan singing in southeast Asia; African oral traditions; Chinese gao qiang; Korean kagoksŏng-​ujo; Japanese kobusi; Swedish herding calls (lockrop); and many others. 9. For more, see John Stevens, Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance, and Drama, 1050–​1350 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 402. 10. With regard to ornamentation and improvisation in medieval polyphony, Timothy McGee notes that “there was no clear line drawn between practices of composition, ornamentation, and improvisation, and that in many respects the three were simply different ways at arriving at exactly the same result in performance.” See Timothy McGee, The Sound of Medieval Song: Ornamentation and Vocal Style According to the Treatises (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 111–​12. I am grateful to Susan Boynton for referring me to McGee’s work. 11. There were male virtuoso singers as well. One such singer, the bass Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, also sang at the Ferrarese court. See Richard Wistreich, Warrior, Courtier, Singer: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007). I am grateful to Giuseppe Gerbino for referring me to Wistreich’s work. 12. While Chapter 1 focuses on a split in nineteenth-​century vocal practice and in voice-​ types, a different split is evident in the eighteenth century. Arias varied by type—​those with coloratura were most often quick and characterized by intense rage or joy—​and performers were often known for being better at one of two types of singing: agile (loud or soft) or pathetic (only soft) style. The alto castrato Gaetano Guadagni (1729–​ 1792) was known for his interpretations in the pathetic style. However, Guadagni still sang many arias featuring agility. The rival Handel sopranos Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni are even more famous examples: Faustina was known for her dramatic fire in coloratura arias and Cuzzoni for her slow, soft, and sustained singing in the pathetic style. But both sopranos were capable of the two styles, and frequently sang operatic roles that required both. For more, see Suzanne E. Aspden, “‘The Rival Queans’ and the Play of Identity in Handel’s Admeto,” Cambridge Opera Journal 18 (2006): 301–​31. For more on Guadagni, see Amber Youell, “Opera at the Crossroads of Tradition and Reform in Gluck’s Vienna” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2012). 13. See Sally Sanford, “Solo Singing 1,” in A Performer’s Guide to Seventeenth-​Century Music, ed. Stewart Carter (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997), 3–​29; “A Comparison

Introduction  21 of French and Italian Singing in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Seventeenth-​ Century Music 1 (1995), http://​www.sscm-​jscm.org/​v1/​no1/​sanford.html; and “Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Vocal Style and Technique” (DMA diss., Stanford University, 1979). 14. See Giovanni Camillo Maffei, Delle lettere del Signor Gio. Camillo Maffei da Solofra, libri due, dove . . . v’è un discorso della voce e del modo d’apparare di cantar di garganta (Naples, 1562). The letter on singing is published in Nanie Bridgman, “Giovanni Camillo Maffei et sa lettre sur le chant,” Revue de Musicologie 38 (1956): 3–​34. See also Giuliana Montanari, “Scienza e voce: Giovanni Camillo Maffei,” Hortus Musicus 14 (2003): 93–​99. 15. Drawn from Maffei’s “Letter on Singing,” translated in MacClintock, Readings in the History of Music in Performance, 44. Interestingly, almost all of Maffei’s rules for good singing focus on the singer’s body looking pleasant while also emitting pleasing tones. Contortions, technical quirks, and mannerisms are to be avoided to obscure any obvious bodily adjustments employed in the effort to sing. The body’s energized involvement in singing is crucial for Maffei, but he recommends that such involvement be unnoticeable. 16. From Lodovico Zacconi, Prattica di musica utile et necessaria si al compositore per comporre i canti suoi regolatamente, si anco al cantore (Venice, 1592). Quoted and translated in MacClintock, Readings in the History of Music in Performance, 69. 17. MacClintock, Readings, 73. See also Giuliana Montanari, “La prassi della gorgia: Ludovico Zacconi (I),” Hortus Musicus 16 (2003): 8289, and “La prassi della gorgia: Ludovico Zacconi (II),” Hortus Musicus 17 (2004): 6670. 18. See Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636). Cf. MacClintock, Readings, 171. 19. Tosi’s words (and Agricola’s commentary) describe this articulation in Pier Francesco Tosi and Johann Friedrich Agricola, Introduction to the Art of Singing, trans. and ed. Julianne C. Baird (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 151–​53. 20. See Youell, “Opera at the Crossroads.” 21. One of the fullest accounts of this shift is Rodolfo Celletti, A History of Bel Canto, trans. Frederick Fuller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 22. Before the rise of the tenor-​hero, the contralto briefly took on operatic (male) heroic roles. See Heather Hadlock, “Women Playing Men in Italian Opera,” in Women’s Voices across Musical Worlds, ed. Jane A. Bernstein (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 285–​307; and Naomi André, Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early-​Nineteenth-​Century Italian Opera (Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 2006). 23. See John Potter and Neil Sorrell, A History of Singing (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 199. 24. Lacombe, The Keys to French Opera, 45. Hector Berlioz thought that the large theater size in France and Italy as well as the tradition of Italian audiences talking loudly during performances encouraged a shift in singing traditions, rewarding those who sing more loudly and impress by sheer sonority more than by sweet, soft tones or embellishments and agility. Lacombe agrees with this, claiming that “[d]‌uring the

22  Vocal Virtuosity first half of the century, coloratura had reigned at the Théâtre-​Italien” only to diminish thereafter as composers reacted against the use of the technique in embellishments without regard for dramatic context. Ibid., 42–​45. Lacombe connects coloratura with the Italian bel canto aesthetic and with ornament more generally. And Berlioz, as well as Wagner, held strong anti-​ornament sentiments. See Katharine Ellis, “Berlioz, the Sublime, and the Broderie problem,” Ad Parnassum: A Journal of 18th-​and 19th-​ Century Instrumental Music 1 (2005): 29–​60. Clearly, however, coloratura was not only an Italian singing style in the nineteenth century, but a Franco-​Italian style, and by the end of the century a French one. 25. Lacombe, The Keys to French Opera, 45. Julian Budden’s work reveals that, as in eighteenth-​century operas, early nineteenth-​century operas were often written according to the availability of singers. He attributes the decline of the use of coloratura to increasing composer authority, particularly Verdi’s, and to the growing influence of Parisian grand opera, particularly that of Meyerbeer. Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 3 vols., rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). 26. Maribeth Clark, “The Body and the Voice in La Muette de Portici,” 19th Century Music 27 (2003): 116–​31; James Q. Davies, Romantic Anatomies of Performance (Berkeley and Los Angeles:  University of California Press, 2014); Roger Freitas, “Towards a Verdian Ideal of Singing:  Emancipation from Modern Orthodoxy,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 127 (2002):  226–​57 and “Singing Herself:  Adelina Patti and the Performance of Femininity,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 71 (2018): 287–​369; Philip Gossett, Divas and Scholars:  Performing Italian Opera (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Karen Henson, “Victor Capoul, Marguerite Olagnier’s Le Saïs, and the Arousing of Female Desire,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 52 (1999): 419–​63, “Verdi, Victor Maurel, and Fin-​de-​Siècle Operatic Performance,” Cambridge Opera Journal 19 (2007):  59–​84, and Opera Acts: Singers and Performance in the Late Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Roger Parker, Remaking the Song: Operatic Visions and Revisions from Handel to Berio (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006); Hilary Poriss, Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Susan Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera 1815–​1930 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Verdi, Opera, Women (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and Mary Ann Smart, “The Lost Voice of Rosine Stoltz,” Cambridge Opera Journal 6 (1994): 31–​50, and “Verdi Sings Erminia Frezzolini,” Women and Music 1 (1997): 33–​45. 27. See Carolyn Abbate, “Music—​Drastic or Gnostic?,” Critical Inquiry 30 (2004): 505–​ 36; and Parker, Remaking the Song. In her article, Abbate explores what it means to engage with and write about performed music, concluding that we must contemplate the “drastic” event—​performance—​more fully. In his book, Roger Parker sets his sights on redefining the operatic work and on the importance of performance by arguing that it is futile to search for definitive “texts” of operas. Instead, he suggests that we pay attention to the swirling forces in the maelstrom of opera’s defining characteristics. Parker shows how sketch studies, investigations into compositional

Introduction  23 process, and examinations of opera’s performers can blur the defining edges of what opera is. While the first two aspects of opera studies—​sketch studies and compositional process—​have been relatively thoroughly explored, the third—​performance-​ focused—​has only recently become an accepted methodology. Parker writes that the “influence of a singular voice and individual is not a matter of reproach, but something positive for the formation of [the] work (music), a something perhaps more positive than we want to imagine.” See Parker, Remaking the Song, 66. For another sense of the direction I take from these works, see my “Vocal Vulnerability: Jean-​ Alexandre Talazac and Voix Mixte in Late Nineteenth-​Century French Opera,” Cambridge Opera Journal 30 (2018): 138–​64. 28. Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker, A History of Opera (New York and London: Allen Lane, 2012). 29. Nina Sun Eidsheim, Sensing Sound:  Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 2015). It is interesting to contemplate how voice, sound, and presence have inspired other important and broader explorations, such as Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); and Brian Kane, Sound Unseen:  Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2014). 30. Martha Feldman, Emily Wilbourne, Steven Rings, Brian Kane, and James Q. Davies, “Why Voice Now?,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 68 (2015): 653–​85. This colloquy adds to the scholarly discourse on voice, a discourse enriched in recent years by several important interdisciplinary studies, including Eidsheim’s Sensing Sound and others such as: Michelle Duncan, “The Operatic Scandal of the Singing Body:  Voice, Presence, Performativity,” Cambridge Opera Journal 16 (2004):  283–​ 306; Adriana Cavarero, For More Than One Voice:  Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, trans. Paul A. Kottman (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005); Mladen Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006); Gary Tomlinson, The Singing of the New World: Indigenous Voice in the Era of European Contact (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson, and Theo van Leeuwen, eds., Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010); and Martha Feldman, The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015). 31. Gary Tomlinson, A Million Years of Music:  The Emergence of Human Modernity (New York: Zone Books, 2015), 288. 32. Philip Gossett, Harold Powers, Julian Budden, Steven Huebner, and Scott Balthazar have all demonstrated this, tracing how traditionally discontinuous forms were reshaped or dissolved. This shift in compositional forms perhaps mirrors the gradual disappearance of coloratura from the Italian operatic soundscape; scholars have noted, for example, that Verdi frequently cut or truncated the cabaletta, which was often a prominent vocal display aria with coloratura. See Philip Gossett, “Verdi, Ghislanzoni and Aida: The Uses of Convention,” Critical Inquiry 1 (1974): 291–​334; Harold S. Powers, “‘La Solita Forma’ and ‘the Uses of Convention,’” Acta Musicologica 59 (1987):  65–​90; Budden, The Operas of Verdi; Steven Huebner, “Lyric Form in

24  Vocal Virtuosity Ottocento Opera,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 117 (1992): 123–​47; and Scott Balthazar, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Verdi (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 33. Meyerbeer was a crucial force in the development of French opera, especially grand opéra, as well in the careers of composers such as Wagner. His Robert le diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836) were two of the most popular operas of the nineteenth century. Meyerbeer’s emphasis on integrating visual spectacle on a huge scale is a hallmark of his contribution to nineteenth-​century opera. Gounod, a prolific composer of religious music and an important founder of the mélodie in France, also contributed his own hybrid forms of French operatic genres at mid-​century—​Faust (1859) was his first and most enduring success. Known for innovative orchestrations and musical characterizations, Ambroise Thomas was a composer primarily of opéras comiques; Mignon (1866) is the best known of these today, but his opera Hamlet (1868), premiered at the Paris Opéra with baritone Jean-​Baptiste Faure in the title role and soprano Christine Nilsson as Ophélie, was also quite successful. Victor Massé was a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, a composer of opéras comiques, and chorus master at the Opéra. Massé ’s most successful work, the one-​act Les Noces de Jeannette (1853), was also mounted at Covent Garden in the 1860s. This opéra comique, as well as another of Massé ’s successful works, La Reine Topaze (1856), features demanding arias for the lead soprano. 34. Amplifying female voices remains crucial in music studies, as perhaps exemplified by the recent sessions on opera and gender presented via the Yale Opera Studies Today “Developing New Opera in the Age of #MeToo,” Zoom livestream music conference (8 May 2020). 35. Anne Shreffler, “The Coloratura’s Voice:  Another Look at Zerbinetta’s Aria from Ariadne auf Naxos,” in Richard Strauss und die Moderne, ed. Bernd Edelmann, Birgit Lodes, and Reinhold Schlötterer (Berlin:  Henschel, 2001), 361–​90, at 387. At the other end of the historical narrative, Heather Hadlock has considered the subject of women playing men in Italian opera and changing attitudes toward gender earlier in the century as a whole. See Hadlock, “Women Playing Men in Italian Opera.” 36. Cunegonde’s aria refers both to the melismatic valse-​ariette genre made popular in mid-​nineteenth-​century Paris by Caroline Carvalho and the frivolity of the Second Empire, topics explored in Chapter  5. The aria also invokes operetta and musical comedy traditions more broadly, as well as camp aesthetics. See Matthew J. Jones, “‘Enough of Being Basely Tearful’:  ‘Glitter and Be Gay’ and the Camp Politics of Queer Resistance,” Journal of the Society for American Music 10 (2016): 422–​45. 37. Catherine Clément, Opera, or the Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988); Carolyn Abbate, “Opera; or, the Envoicing of Women,” in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 225–​58. 38. Before then, as Thomas Laqueur has demonstrated, a one-​sex model held sway, which imputes a hierarchy of gender, with the adult male at the top, followed by

Introduction  25 the pre-​pubescent boy (an emerging male), and then the adult woman (an imperfect male). The classic text is Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). For more on how the one-​sex model affects our understanding of opera, see Roger Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation: Confronting the Baroque Body of the Castrato,” Journal of Musicology 20 (2003): 196–​249. 39. See Joan W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 2. 40. Susan Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–​ 1930 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 33. 41. The practice of aria insertion encompasses arias substituted for a portion of an opera, as well as interpolated pieces added in performance. Insertion arias have also been termed “trunk arias” or arie di baule, because they were pieces of music that particular singers carried with them (as if in a trunk) from production to production. See Poriss, Changing the Score. 42. Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera, 162. Of course, female singers also held sway in eighteenth-​century opera and even earlier at times. Generally speaking, however, in the nineteenth century, this power diminished over time as familiar gender roles became more established on the operatic stage and beyond. 43. See Anselm Gerhard, The Urbanization of Opera:  Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1998), 38. 44. David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (New  York:  Routledge, 2006), 185. See also James F. McMillan, France and Women, 1789–​1914: Gender, Society and Politics (London: Routledge, 1999). 45. Kimberly White, Female Singers on the French Stage, 1830–​1848 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018). For the historical context in Britain see David Kennerley, Sounding Feminine: Women’s Voices in British Musical Culture, 1780–​1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). For a fascinating examination of the agency of more recent female singers, see Licia Fiol-​Matta, The Great Woman Singer: Gender and Voice in Puerto Rican Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017). 46. Joan Scott has addressed two kinds of women workers, those femmes or filles isolées who worked for a pittance in urban centers such as Paris (these workers were often implicitly associated with prostitutes) and those who were merchants, working long hours in manufacturing centers. See Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 142. Victoria Thompson has observed that traditional ideas of men working in public, political functions and women working in private, familial functions were both reinforced and called into question during the Second Empire. Opera in this case was a type of marketplace, in which a singing style like coloratura could be commodified. See Victoria Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace:  Women and Men, Money and Politics in Paris, 1830–​1870 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000),  9–​10.

26  Vocal Virtuosity 47. I am grateful to Suzanne Cusick for bringing this journal and Deroin to my attention. For more on L ’Almanach des femmes and Deroin, see Bonnie S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830–​1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 48. Robert Tombs, France 1814–​1914 (Harlow, UK: Longman, 1996), 171. The strongest French feminist voices published their works outside of France. One of these, Jenny P. d’Héricourt, wrote strongly in her La Femme affranchie (1860) against the view of traditional family roles codified at mid-​century by social historian Jules Michelet in his La Femme (1860). See Karen Offen, “A Nineteenth-​Century French Feminist Rediscovered: Jenny P. d’Héricourt, 1809–​1875,” Signs 13 (1987): 144–​58; and Joan W. Scott, “ ‘L’ouvriere! Mot impie, sordide . . .’: Women Workers in the Discourse of French Political Economy, 1840–​1860,” in Gender and the Politics of History, 139–​66. 49. The idea that modernity can evoke a sense of duality is taken from a long line of critical theorists including classic German theorists like Marx, Weber, Adorno, and Benjamin, whom more recent scholars such as Raymond Aron, Marshall Berman, Jürgen Habermas, Bruno Latour, and Detlev Peukert have reconsidered. 50. See Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity. Important touchstones in the extensive literature on Paris and modernity include:  Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” from The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Elland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2002), 3–​ 26; Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Paris as Revolution:  Writing the Nineteenth-​Century City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); David Frisby, Cityscapes of Modernity: Critical Explorations (Cambridge, UK:  Polity, 2002), Patrice Higgonet, Paris: Capital of the World (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2005); David Jordan, Transforming Paris:  The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); David H. Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958); Alain Plessis, The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 1852–​1871, trans. Jonathan Mandelbaum (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 1987); and Vanessa Schwartz, Spectacular Realities:  Early Mass Culture in Fin-​de-​siècle Paris (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998). A counterexample to the idea of Paris’s transformation as exemplifying modernity is Sharon Marcus, “Haussmannization as Anti-​Modernity: The Apartment House in Parisian Urban Discourse, 1850–​1880,” Journal of Urban History 27 (2001): 723–​45. 51. See Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life (1859),” in Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists, ed. P. E. Charvet (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 403. 52. Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity, 13. 53. See Jonathan H. Grossman, “Standardization (Standardisation),” Critical Inquiry 44 (2018): 447–​78; and Joseph O’Connell, “Metrology: The Creation of Universality by the Circulation of Particulars,” Social Studies of Science 23 (1993): 129–​73. 54. One rare moment of nineteenth-​century German coloratura is “Den Teuren zu versöhnen” from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha (1847).

Introduction  27 55. See Céline Frigau Manning, “Singer-​Machines:  Describing Italian Singers, 1800–​ 1850,” trans. Nicholas Manning, Opera Quarterly 28 (2012): 230–​58. 56. Diana Damrau, in the CD liner notes to COLORaturaS: Diana Damrau Opera Arias Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Dan Ettinger, conductor (Erato B002M8YLGC, 2009), 4. 57. In this effort, I am encouraged by Abbate’s recent serious inquiry into operetta and the idea of frivolity. See Carolyn Abbate, “Offenbach, Kracauer, and Ethical Frivolity,” Opera Quarterly 33 (2017): 62–​86.

1

The New Franco-​Italian School of Singing In general, singers who vocalize easily lack power and, reciprocally, those who have power sin by their lack of agility.1 —​Maria  Callas

In a single sentence the twentieth-​century prima donna and icon Maria Callas summarizes the divide between singers who specialize in coloratura and those who specialize in volume. This split did not occur in the twentieth century; its roots lie a century earlier, in seismic shifts in vocal practice and teaching in France and Italy. The divide between flexibility and power is perhaps the one that most informs a better understanding of the historical trajectory of opera and its singers in the nineteenth century. In the mid-​nineteenth century, coloratura becomes marked. Formerly a normative practice, coloratura moves from the domain of all opera singers to that of female singers, and particular female singers at that. Historically, this singing style has been considered the epitome of two extremes of vocality: 1) The highest vocal technical prowess, requiring athletic vocalizing, range extensions, pristine intonation, articulatory precision, and superb breath control. This is the body singing in nearly perfect physical coordination. 2) Pure, intense emotion. Wordless vocalises can imbue one syllable with a variety of affects: joyful abandon, intense rage, and perhaps most famously, madness. These two extremes are seemingly opposed. How can one singing style be both virtuosic and passionate? As Jim Samson has observed, virtuosity in the nineteenth century was most often considered as being in contest against expression.2 And ideas of instrumentality surely inform the reception of coloratura, in the century of Liszt and Paganini. However, we also need to consider the female singer when attempting to understand coloratura’s role onstage. As subsequent chapters will explore, ideas of vocal and instrumental virtuosity dovetail in the cases of mid-​century Parisian virtuose: individual sopranos engaging in displays of technical brilliance that not only compete with each other but also rival instrumental virtuosi. Vocal Virtuosity. Sean M. Parr, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197542644.003.0002

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  29 This chapter explores the split between melismatic and sustained singing styles and how it manifested itself pedagogically in France. A changing political context influenced this shift, shaping the trajectory of vocal practice. The world of mid-​ century opera, comprising trumpeting tenors, stratospheric sopranos, pedagogical institutionalization, and diminishing numbers of castrati, is best characterized by changing vocal practices—​this in spite of emergent ideas of composer authority and the work-​concept.3 What then was the impact of singers—​and teachers of singing—​on the nineteenth-​century operatic world? To answer this, I explore intersections of practice in French and Italian styles among pedagogical treatises.4 I begin by exploring the shifts in the practice and pedagogy of coloratura and its codification as a set of styles with particular expressive connotations. A consideration of treatises on the voice suggests a bifurcation between singing styles, one that transfers from vocal pedagogy to the operatic stage. This division, between agile, florid singing and declamatory, sustained singing, is a precursor to our modern, more familiar vocal categories. Although one of the underlying premises of this chapter is that the artistic lineages of historical figures crucially inform our understanding of these figures, I also show that the lineages have in this case a single institutional origin—​that of the Paris Conservatoire, established in 1795. This institution endorsed certain teacher-​singer lineages and sought to merge French and Italian traditions to yield a new Franco-​Italian school of singing led by three pedagogues: Laure Cinti-​Damoreau (1801–​1863), Gilbert-​Louis Duprez (1806–​1896), and Manuel Garcia II (1805–​1906). Singing styles associated with this school, particularly coloratura, indelibly impacted the history of vocal practice, a history that also contributes to our understanding of nineteenth-​century Europe’s perception of gender, expression, and character.

The Split Coloratura was an essential aspect of nearly all singers’ operatic careers before the nineteenth century; all types of singers—​sopranos, altos, tenors, basses, and especially castrati—​were expected to sing melismatically. The situation changed in post–​French Revolution Europe. The Emperor Napoléon forever altered the direction of opera and its singers. He ordered his brother, Joseph, then King of Naples, to issue a decree on 27 November 1806 that forbade castrated boys from entering the schools and conservatories. This decree effectively marked the beginning of the end of operatic castrati.5 The press wrote of Napoléon’s decision that “His Majesty has been unable to consider without indignation the barbarous practice of creating eunuchs in order to produce women’s voices in men.”6 A frequent operagoer, Napoléon greatly admired one castrato in particular, Girolamo

30  Vocal Virtuosity Crescentini (1762–​1846). Known especially for his pathetic style (characterized by soft, sustained, nuanced singing), Crescentini apparently moved Napoléon so profoundly that the Emperor employed the singer at his court as both performer and singing teacher, at an impressive annual salary of 30,000 francs.7 Napoléon’s apparent sympathy for living castrati, perhaps reflective of the Enlightenment morality that also disrupted the dominance of the castrato, led to his urge to banish a surgical practice he deemed “shameful and horrible.”8 Although this may seem paradoxical—​Napoléon admiring the sound of castrati and personally attaching himself to Crescentini while simultaneously outlawing this group of singers—​Napoléon’s actions could be viewed as congruous in the sense that Crescentini may have served as an exemplar of a practice that elevated an aestheticized, artificial sound at the expense of individuals’ physiology, fertility, and adult normativity.9 In taking the first steps to eliminate the practice of castrating boy singers, Napoléon was strengthening the rights of prepubescent males in Europe. In doing so, he also opened up a significant space for the female singer, a space that had already begun to emerge for women throughout Europe when in 1798 Pope Pius VI revoked the ban against women on the stage in the Papal States. And, in 1814, Francis I of Lombardy-​Venetia exiled castrati from the stage. However, this decree did not prevent castrati already active from continuing to sing elsewhere in Italy and Europe. Indeed, in addition to Crescentini, the last of the operatic castrati, Giovanni Battista Velluti (1780–​1861), performed throughout Europe, garnering particular notoriety and enthusiasm in London. Velluti created several roles, including Arsace in Rossini’s Aureliano in Palmira (1813), Tebaldo in Francesco Morlacchi’s Tebaldo e Isolina (1822), and, most strikingly, Armando in Meyerbeer’s Il crociato in Egitto (1824). As James Q. Davies has postulated, Velluti’s career dovetailed with developments in voice science, the emergence of more familiar gender roles onstage, and reception rhetoric, resulting in an environment in which the castrato was deemed not only unnatural, but even “unthinkable.”10 Without the castrato, early nineteenth-​century opera composers had to turn to the female singer for the treble sound. The gradual eviction of the castrato from the opera stage also had significant implications for singing itself. As several writers have explored, the brief period immediately following the “twilight of the castrato”—​to use Davies’s phrase—​ saw the rise of the contralto as hero on the operatic stage.11 John Rosselli has observed that, as castrati were falling out of fashion in the early nineteenth century, several developments took place in the Franco-​Italian operatic scene. The contralto took on greater prominence for a short time, taking up heroic parts en travestie. Tenors, beginning with Giovanni David (1790–​1864) and Domenico Donzelli (1790–​1873), and later Gilbert-​Louis Duprez (1806–​1896), began using

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  31 a fuller tone to sing high notes, from a′ to c″ (high C).12 At the same time, tenors such as the Frenchman Adolphe Nourrit (1802–​1839) and the Italian Giovanni Battista Rubini (1794–​1854) continued to use a sweeter, lighter, headier tenorial sound.13 Many singers’ careers suggest that vocal technique exhibited a more blended, transalpine quality, the integration of Franco-​Italian styles becoming apparent in the singer categories emerging at the time. Rosselli attributes this integration to Rossini’s influence on opera, in particular his writing of Guillaume Tell (1829) for Paris. In Rosselli’s view, the principal singers of Tell exemplified this stylistic integration: Nourrit and Laure Cinti[-​Damoreau] had sung in those earlier adaptations and, under Rossini’s guidance, had worked out a vocal technique that combined some features of the French and Italian schools; . . . when she taught at the Paris Conservatoire [Cinti-​Damoreau] inculcated her own largely Italianate practice while in theory upholding all the old French saws about the primacy of the word.14

Rosselli also notes that sopranos with coloratura facility likewise became more important in Paris during the early nineteenth century as Italian opera’s influence grew. He observes the emergence of “ ‘sopranos à roulades,’ able to cope with Italian-​style arias,” as well as the continuing importance of lighter sopranos who excelled at the expressive, nuanced interpretation of text.15 It would seem that, by mid-​century, the lighter tenorial sound and high coloratura soprano singing had migrated from Italy to France, where they would stay for the remainder of the nineteenth century, albeit in a diminishing capacity. During the transition period, when the contralto came to the fore, the next generation of female singers trained with teachers to whom they had previously had little access. Until the nineteenth century, the most direct path to learning to sing on a level that prepared the student for the international stage was the apprentice system in Italy. Most of the best and best-​known eighteenth-​century pedagogues were Italian singers, men, and often castrati. Rules of propriety discouraged women from apprenticing with male teachers (including castrati) because apprenticeships entailed spending a great amount of time alone with the instructor, usually in his home. By establishing a new system of music education in France and then Italy, Napoléon made it possible for women to access a wider range of voice teachers. Of course, women did sing on many stages throughout Europe before the nineteenth century, and many did so very virtuosically, in operas by Handel, Hasse, and Mozart in particular. However, the decline of the castrato and the increase in educational opportunities as well as access to stages in the Papal States greatly broadened the possibilities for female singers and greatly heightened the demand for them.

32  Vocal Virtuosity With greater educational access and freedom to perform on stages throughout Europe, female singers were finally able to make substantial inroads in the opera profession. By the end of the nineteenth century, women were, on the whole, better singers than they were in the eighteenth century, with wider ranges and broader expressive possibilities.16 Vocal pedagogy in the nineteenth century became increasingly centered on a Parisian institutional model. In Italy, music colleges were launched by the Napoléonic governments based on the model of the Paris Conservatoire, which was itself a product of the French Revolution.17 France’s long-​held anti-​castrati sentiments carried over into Italy in the century after the Napoléonic code took effect. Over the course of the century, the colleges founded in Italy became the main avenue for aspiring professional singers. Designed to replace disappearing training grounds such as orphanages and schools run by monastic orders, the new and reformed colleges effectively functioned as conservatories. Those in Milan, Bologna, and Naples opened between 1804 and 1808 and were followed by conservatories in Parma, Turin, and Venice, among others. This institutionalization of musical training weakened the system of apprenticeship and allowed female singers greater access to higher-​level training. The Milan conservatory was perhaps the most progressive, and it is from this school that mid-​century prima donnas such as Giuseppina Strepponi (1815–​1897) and the Brambilla sisters (Marietta, 1807–​1875; Teresa, 1813–​1895; and Giuseppina, 1819–​1903) began their careers.18 By mid-​century, then, with few exceptions, in order to become a professional singer one had to attend a conservatory. The Paris Conservatoire was by this time the most prestigious and important of such institutions. Indeed, such was its importance that it published a vocal treatise endorsed and authored by all its singing teachers. Its comprehensive method was a collective effort on the part of its faculty pedagogues, but also an institutionally recommended vocal technique. In other words, the faculty collaborated on an agreed-​upon set of vocal exercises that would form the basic curriculum for voice students studying at the Conservatoire. The legacy of the Conservatoire was the creation of a program and, eventually, a national standard to which music education needed to conform. The institutionalization of singer training resulted in a codification of vocal technique gathered from several of the most well-​known pedagogues of the early nineteenth century, as the evolution of the Conservatoire voice treatise indicates. Its original author, Bernardo Mengozzi (1758–​1800), first selected materials for a standardized vocal method at the Conservatoire. Following Mengozzi’s death, the work was completed and edited by Honoré Langlé (1741–​1807) and published as the Méthode de chant du Conservatoire de musique (1804). Based

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  33 on Italian teachings, particularly those of the castrato Antonio Bernacchi (1685–​ 1756), the treatise claimed to be adaptable to all musical repertories. Alexis de Garaudé (1779–​1852) enlarged the treatise and renamed it (Méthode complète de chant, 1830). Garaudé studied with Crescentini in Paris and then taught at the Conservatoire from 1816 to 1841. He included exercises by Nicola Porpora (1686–​1768), Niccolò Jommelli (1714–​1774), and others, further Italianizing this initially French treatise. All this was done at the Conservatoire under the direction of Luigi Cherubini (1760–​1842), whose twenty-​year tenure (1822–​1842) ensured the transalpine incorporation of Italian singing styles into Conservatoire students’ training.19 By mid-​century the Conservatoire was dominated by three pedagogues, instigators of the rapidly changing singing style that incorporated both French and Italian traditions. As Table 1.1 indicates, these three teachers trained many of the most important mid-​and late nineteenth-​century coloratura sopranos.20 The institutional as well as pedagogical force of Laure Cinti-​Damoreau, Gilbert-​ Louis Duprez, and Manuel Garcia II transformed operatic singing. All three wrote important treatises, and Garcia’s would dominate for the remainder of the century. Table 1.1  Paris Conservatoire singer-​teacher lineages: Cinti-​Damoreau, Garcia II, Duprez, and later, Mathilde Marchesi, educated many of the important nineteenth-​ century sopranos who created roles with significant amounts of coloratura Laure Cinti-​Damoreau ↓ Marie Cabel (1827–​1885)

Manuel Garcia II ↓ Maria Malibran (1808–​1836)

Delphine Ugalde (1829–​1910) Pauline Viardot (1821–​1910) Jenny Lind (1820–​1887) Mathilde Marchesi (1821–​1913) ↓ Emma Calvé (1858–​1942) Nellie Melba (1861–​1931) Emma Eames (1865–​1952) Sibyl Sanderson (1865–​1903) Selma Kurz (1874–​1933) Estelle Liebling (1880–​1970)

Gilbert-​Louis Duprez ↓ Caroline Duprez (1832–​1874) Caroline Carvalho (1827–​1895) Adèle Isaac (1854–​1915)

34  Vocal Virtuosity

Laure Cinti-​Damoreau Laure Cinti-​Damoreau (née Laure-​Cinthie Montalant, 1801–​1863, Figure 1.1) was the leading French soprano of her generation. Her career and even her stage name reveal the integration of French and Italian styles. Austin Caswell, a pioneering scholar of bel canto ornamentation, has gone so far as describing Cinti-​ Damoreau as “the French spearhead of Rossini’s Italian invasion” of Paris.21 After training at the Conservatoire (with Charles-​Henri Plantade, 1764–​1839), she came to the attention of the important Italian soprano Angelica Catalani

Fig. 1.1  Laure Cinti-​Damoreau, soprano-​teacher and creator of roles in operas by Rossini, Meyerbeer, and Auber

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  35 (1780–​1849), who inspired her vocally and convinced her to Italianize her middle name for professional gain. As director of the Théâtre-​Italien, Catalani also took the very young fourteen-​year-​old soprano on the roster, in 1815. While there, Cinti-​Damoreau sang several leading Rossini roles, such as Amenaide in Tancredi (1813), Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816), and the title role of La Cenerentola (1817), as well as Mozart roles such as Cherubino and Zerlina. In 1824, Rossini himself came to Paris and assumed directorship of the Théâtre-​ Italien. One of the few French sopranos retained on the roster, Cinti-​Damoreau became Rossini’s favorite, creating five leading soprano roles for him: Contessa di Foleville in Il viaggio a Reims (1825), Pamyre in Le Siège de Corinthe (1826), Anaï in Moïse (1827), Comtesse Adèle in Le Comte Ory (1828), and Mathilde in Guillaume Tell. Cinti-​ Damoreau began singing alternately at the Théâtre-​ Italien and the Opéra in 1825. At the Opéra she created the principal soprano roles of Elvire in Daniel-​François Esprit Auber’s La Muette de Portici (1828) and Isabelle in Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1831). All these roles contain a substantial number of coloratura passages, as do Cinti-​Damoreau’s other operatic creations (see Table 1.2) and the other roles in which the soprano was well known as an interpreter, such as Philis in Louis-​Sébastien Lebrun’s Le  Rossignol (1814). The latter includes a nightingale aria for soprano with extensive duetting with obbligato flute, “Toi qui nous plait.” The soprano ­established herself internationally by singing with other prima donnas, concertizing with Henriette Sontag and Maria Malibran first, then later and more extensively with Cornélie Falcon (1814–​1897). Her association with Falcon points to Cinti-​Damoreau’s eventual position as the prototypical French chanteuse légère (for the Opéra) and later as a soprano à roulades at the Opéra-​ Comique. Her ability to improvise ornaments and cadenzas fomented her star status, making her the most highly paid French soprano of her time. Such was Cinti-​Damoreau’s contribution as a créatrice that Caswell has attributed a gallicization of coloratura and extemporized ornaments to her influence. Yet though her vocal facility was prodigious, her range was not particularly exceptional, extending only up to D♭ above high C. Still, as an important perpetuator of the vocal agility, lightness, and inventive improvisations associated with bel canto and Rossini in particular, and as a pedagogue who passed on her vocal philosophy and approach to ornamentation, Cinti-​Damoreau serves as an important pivot point as a performer-​pedagogue connected to the venerable tradition of bel canto and coloratura singing. Her vocal legacy in Paris is evident in the careers of other star sopranos, including Julie Dorus-​Gras and, later, Caroline Carvalho (a figure explored in Chapters 4 and 5). The legacy of these sopranos and others is further evidenced by a kind of dramaturgical split at mid-​century manifested in a correspondence between dramaturgical

Elvire Comtesse Adèle

opéra in 4 acts

La Muette de Portici opéra in 5 acts opéra in 2 acts opéra in 4 acts opéra in 3 acts opéra in 5 acts

Moïse

Le Comte Ory

Guillaume Tell

Le Serment

Robert le diable

1827 Opéra

1828 Opéra

1828 Opéra

1829 Opéra

1830 Opéra

1831 Opéra Bathilde Inès

1836 Opéra-​Comique Le Luthier de Vienne opéra comique in 1 act opéra comique in 1 act opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts

1836 Opéra-​Comique Le Mauvais Œil

1836 Opéra-​Comique L’ Ambassadrice

1837 Opéra-​Comique Le Domino noir

1840 Opéra-​Comique La Rose de Péronne

Rosine

Angèle

Henriette

Lucrezia

Isabelle

Marie

Mathilde

opéra comique in 1 act

1836 Opéra-​Comique Actéon

Anaï

opéra in 3 acts

Le Siège de Corinthe

1826 Opéra

Pamyre

dramma giocoso in 1 act Contessa di Foleville

Il viaggio a Reims

1825 Théâtre-​Italien

Role

Genre

Opera

Year Theater

Table 1.2  Roles created by Laure Cinti-​Damoreau (1801–​1863)

Adam

Auber

Auber

Loïsa Puget

Monpou

Auber

Meyerbeer

Auber

Rossini

Rossini

Auber

Rossini

Rossini

Rossini

Composer

Leuven and d’Ennery

Scribe

Scribe

Scribe and Lemoine

Saint-​Georges and Leuven

Scribe

Scribe

Scribe and Mazères

Bis and Jouy

Scribe and Delestre-​Poirson

Scribe and Delavigne

Balocchi and Jouy

Soumet and Balocchi

Balocchi

Libretto

11

72

95

26

30

35

61

9

28

17

50

32

48

4

Initial run

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  37 type and singing styles in Meyerbeer’s operas, with some characters being specifically associated with coloratura, something I will explore in greater detail in Chapter 6. Endorsed in its own time by composers—​Meyerbeer, Fromental Halévy, Auber, Adolphe Adam, Ambroise Thomas, and others—​ for use at the Conservatoire, Cinti-​ Damoreau’s pedagogical treatise, Méthode de chant (1849), has also been singled out by Caswell for its incorporation of a variety of ornaments and cadenzas authored by the soprano herself.22 Other nineteenth-​ century voice treatises do not often include specific ornaments and cadenzas from opera arias, but they do commonly feature a short introductory section in which the author provides an overall vocal-​technical approach to learning how to sing, followed by many types of vocal exercises (vocalises), some of which are simply patterns repeated at ascending (and descending) pitch levels across the singer’s range, while others are etudes—​putting the focus of the vocal exercises into the context of a song-​like piece, though usually without any text setting. (In a way, then, these treatises are almost exclusively melismatic, though the tempo and pedagogical nature of the exercises reveal how Franco-​Italian vocal pedagogy focuses primarily on sustaining vowel sounds and pitches, rather than on the consonant articulation that was beginning to be the focus of German vocal pedagogy at mid-​century.) Like so many voice treatises of the time, Cinti-​ Damoreau’s Méthode consists of a preface followed by nearly a hundred pages of wordless vocal exercises each preceded by short descriptions of the exercise’s purpose or focus. The first of three sections of exercises focus on types of vocal facility—​ arpeggios, scales (diatonic and chromatic), trills, portamento, and staccati. Her vocalizations emphasize agility, though the soprano also encourages keen attention to expressive nuances, messa di voce, and points d’orgue (cadenzas). (Cinti-​Damoreau’s treatise as well as those of Duprez and Garcia II evince a mixture of Italian and French vocal terminology.) The second section contains the author’s own wordless compositions, exhibiting the expressive power of these vocal figures in practical execution. These etude arias thus put the vocalises of the first section into a song-​like context and the last six put several exercises together in a variety of tempos and in different musical styles. The final section of the treatise features Cinti-​Damoreau’s own ornaments and cadenzas from a variety of opera arias, including works by Meyerbeer, Auber, and Rossini in particular. Although coloratura facility takes pride of place over sostenuto or declamatory singing, Cinti-​Damoreau’s treatise offers two subtle clues that point to coloratura’s changing function at mid-​century. Her focus on staccato agility, passages of “cocottes” as she describes them, relates to the burgeoning use of detached coloratura as laughter, thus acquiring a specific dramaturgical

38  Vocal Virtuosity markedness. Cinti-​Damoreau emphasizes that it is important to prepare these so-​called cocottes by singing a preceding tone with breath support and vibrato to ground the pitch, and to avoid tones without color. She writes: As for the staccato notes amusingly called “clucks,” one must never abuse them and especially never sing them drily; to avoid this defect, one must support the sound and use a slight vibrato on the note that precedes the staccatos.23

The use of the word “cocotte” aligns staccato coloratura not only with the sound of chickens, but also with the idea of flirtatious laughter, as the word could be translated as “cluck” or “chuckle” and to describe a woman of loose morals, a demi-​mondaine, or even a prostitute. This is perhaps especially interesting in light of the associations between female singers, the characters they portray in opera, and their singing styles. Although this connotation is traceable to the mid-​nineteenth century, there is little room for such pejorative subtexts in a pedagogical treatise. It would seem that the term’s resonance with laughter most strongly aligns with the actual sound produced by the “cocotte” exercises.24 Cinti-​Damoreau advocates the use of the exercises reproduced in Example 1.1 for strengthening this technique. The last exercise particularly aligns the technique with a trailing giggle. In No. 33, all the notes are cocottes, in No. 33 bis, the trailing eighth notes are. In addition to locating quick staccato notes as an important pathway to accessing the upper register, Cinti-​Damoreau recognized coloratura more generally as a means of establishing stronger sustained tones: One often comes across flexible, agile voices which would seem to have no need for these exercises. Unfortunately, such easy agility can be dangerous; often greater study is required to sustain the voice than to make it flexible. One must

Ex. 1.1  Cocotte vocalises in Cinti-​Damoreau’s Méthode de chant (1849)

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  39 try to overcome this tendency to rush through the exercises, especially [in] the descending scales. By paying attention to certain notes (as I suggest in the following exercises), one can achieve this.25

In its connection between staccato coloratura and laughter, and its view of coloratura as a means to achieving a stronger sostenuto sound, Cinti-​Damoreau’s treatise looks forward to the bifurcation of singing styles from the agility side of the shift. Her identity as a soprano known for her agility, as well as a teacher of primarily female singers, informs this side of the story. In addition to assuming a well-​supplied pool of singers with a facility for coloratura, Cinti-​Damoreau also recognizes a growing need for voices that can hold tones firmly. The selection of exercises in Example 1.2 are intended for voices that are “too agile.” They work by employing accents in the middle range and then carrying that volume and vocal heft downward and by encouraging a mixing of the lower, darker chest register with the middle head voice range—​singers would essentially bring the speech sound up as they ascend into head voice register. The accents and mixed voice would encourage a kind of vocal anchoring, strengthening singers’ abilities to sustain tones. The “too agile” indication is interesting, and implies that at mid-​century a coloratura soprano as well-​regarded as Cinti-​Damoreau clearly thought that there was such a thing as a voice that was too focused on agility. Perhaps she sensed the larger vocal aesthetic shifts in the nineteenth century. Regardless, however, according to Cinti-​Damoreau—​and many mid-​century operatic roles containing substantial coloratura—​the singer excelling in coloratura must also be able to handle more sustained singing. Her method certainly yielded results; many of her students at the Conservatoire went on to important careers. Ex. 1.2  Cinti-​Damoreau’s coloratura exercises for voices that are “too agile”

40  Vocal Virtuosity Delphine Ugalde, a popular chanteuse légère in mid-​century Paris, studied with Cinti-​Damoreau and made her career specializing in performing and creating roles that featured coloratura singing. Marie Cabel also probably studied with Cinti-​Damoreau from 1848 to 1849, and she too excelled in coloratura. Perhaps most important about Cinti-​ Damoreau’s recommendations and exercises is her assumption that melismatic passagework is most easily and efficiently accomplished with a light, soft tone. Such an alignment of soft and light with coloratura hints at the split so clearly apparent by the end of the nineteenth century. With Duprez’s treatise, the split becomes even more manifest pedagogically. His treatise approaches singing from the sostenuto perspective, rather than the florid, revealing another side of the story: that those singers who excel in sustained, loud singing need not learn agility.

Gilbert-​Louis Duprez Gregory W.  Bloch has argued persuasively that although Gilbert-​ Louis Duprez, the tenor, composer, and pedagogue, may not have been the first to sing a loud, chested high C (the so-​called ut de poitrine or do di petto), he was clearly an innovative vocal technician.26 Employing what is commonly referred to today as “covering,” “hooking,” “turning,” or aggiustamento (vowel modification or darkening), Duprez’s singing often featured a veiled or darker tone than audiences were used to hearing from a tenor. Bloch has argued that this voix sombrée was a revolution in the fundamental mode of singing, leading to a new fundamental timbre, the timbre sombre of Manuel Garcia II.27 Duprez lowered his larynx to achieve this sound. In the early nineteenth century, such a move was thought artificial and forced. Today, it is a fundamental facet of everyday classical vocal training, so much so that it is more commonly described as “maintaining a low laryngeal position.”28 The resulting sound is perceived as darker, rounder, fuller, and sometimes more veiled, particularly in the middle high register, the notorious passaggio. When the technique is used to sing higher tones, the veiled aspect fades and the resultant sound is louder and more trumpet-​like than the sometimes-​nasal voix blanche or voix mixte head tones of tenors such as Adolphe Nourrit, who likely executed high notes via the older technique. Duprez, then, as Bloch has amply documented, was an emblem of the tenorial vocal revolution of the 1830s and 1840s. As such, his identity and his teachings in particular serve as a benchmark in situating the shifting vocal practices of the nineteenth century. Duprez taught at the Conservatoire and later founded his own school of dramatic arts. Despite his legacy as a performer and teacher, his treatise, L ’Art du chant (Paris, 1846), has been little explored.29

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  41 Considering that Duprez serves as a defining figure in a radical shift in singing style toward more dramatic, declamatory singing and away from the lighter coloratura, it makes sense that Duprez’s treatise reveals an approach diametrically opposed to Cinti-​Damoreau’s. The tenor’s distance from Cinti-​Damoreau is apparent in the very structure of his treatise. It is divided into three parts: Part 1: The Grand Style of Expression and Power (“Style Large d’Expression et de Force”) Part 2: The Style of Grace and Agility (“Style de Grace et d’Agilité”) Part 3: Lyric Diction (“Diction Lyrique”)

Clearly, Duprez felt that sustained dramatic singing held pride of place. Such is the force of his structural division that the parts were each sold separately, with Part 2 (the more traditional part, on vocal agility) listed as the least expensive of the three.30 Coloratura is thus less important in Duprez’s hierarchy of vocal technical skills. No longer is it the first and most important skill, as was apparent in Cinti-​Damoreau’s treatise and nearly all singing treatises of the previous two centuries. Additionally, Duprez offers several allowances for the singer with a “heavy and rebellious voice” (“lourde et rebelle”), who should attempt some agility exercises to make his voice more flexible, but skip over others that are too difficult. He writes: “Pieces consisting of light vocalises have been composed; they are too difficult for low, powerful voices, who should simply keep to the tables.”31 In this, Duprez establishes that difficult coloratura passages are simply not the domain of singers with stronger voices. His treatise codified the essential split between voice-​types, between heavy and light, between sostenuto and coloratura, between dramatic and lyric sounds, and perhaps also between men and women. Another striking aspect of Duprez’s treatise is his focus on the emotional, even “programmatic,” resonances of singing styles. In his first part, Duprez includes wordless song compositions that are examples of declamatory, sustained singing. He parses them into styles described as religious, elevated, solemn, martial, grandiose, pastoral, agitated, and impassioned. The songs in the agile style are for the most part uncharacterized, thereby suggesting that they are truly exercises in technique. Duprez even gives a mechanical sense to the coloratura by noting that the exercises should gradually increase in speed as the student becomes more comfortable with the passages. He adds that a metronome would aid this goal of melismatic swiftness.32 When the songs are characterized, they are labeled graceful, florid, and vivacious, but more often they are merely in the “genre d’agilité,” which is apparently exemplified by dance arias—​the bolero and

42  Vocal Virtuosity polonaise. Duprez aligns these quick dances with vocal virtuosity—​the exercise arias are the most difficult examples of coloratura in the treatise. The emotional and even programmatic resonances are important, because they fit extraordinarily closely with the mechanistic vocal displays, expressions of joy, and dance arias that would characterize coloratura arias for the remainder of the nineteenth century. The ideas of the mechanical or instrumental voice, as well as the relationship between coloratura and dance, will be prominent subjects in this book. In spite of the fact that Duprez paved the way for the singer specializing in declamatory sustained singing, his most well-​known and successful students were both singers of coloratura: his daughter Caroline Duprez-​Vandenheuval (1832–​ 1875) and Caroline Carvalho. These sopranos are the focus of the following chapters, but their tutelage under Duprez is an important reminder that the tenor-​teacher was much more than an exponent of loud high notes. Indeed, as the treatises of both Duprez and Cinti-​Damoreau imply, the teachers of singing at mid-​century were concerned not only with traditions of technique and style, but also with their own contributions to vocal pedagogy and extensions thereof. Rather than viewing treatises as either prescriptive or descriptive (or forward-​or backward-​looking), I would like to consider the documents as inextricably linked to practice, to styles of singing that were in a great state of flux at mid-​century. To further complicate matters, the last of my three pedagogues broadened the scope of voice teaching by incorporating (and pioneering) contemporary scientific studies. As we will see, his teachings integrated scientific foundations and vocabulary, as well as very specific expressive instructions, with music examples from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Manuel Garcia II Nowhere in the history of nineteenth-​century singing is the artistic lineage more apparent than in the case of the Garcia family. Commonly deemed the most important family of singers in the nineteenth century, the Garcias (Manuel I, Manuel II, Pauline [Viardot], and Maria [Malibran]) were famed for operatic singing, teaching, and composition. Because it is impossible to address this highly influential and multifaceted family fully in a mere section of a chapter, I focus on the vocal pedagogy of the Garcias, in particular, the teaching of vocal agility. Although artistic lineage informs this family’s successes, Garcia II, his publications, and his base at the Conservatoire were the key factors in the pedagogical longevity of the Garcia name and vocal technique.33 Manuel del Pópolo Vicente Rodríguez Garcia (1775–​1832), or Garcia I, reportedly did not allow his students to sing words at first while learning an aria.34 In a sense, the song-​learning process for him was an exercise in legato coloratura. We

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  43 can think of this as the bel canto core of singing: connected sung tones without words. In the treatises of both Cinti-​Damoreau and Duprez, wordless songs constitute a major portion of the vocal exercises. Garcia I also emphasized the importance of daily voice lessons and was a demanding disciplinarian. He was a highly regarded musician who wrote his own songs and chamber operas to aid his pedagogy. A tenor, Garcia I created Rossini’s Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia and the title role of Otello (1816), but was also famous for his interpretation of the (baritone) title role of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Garcia I taught Adolphe Nourrit and Henriette Méric-​Lalande (1799–​1867). A  supremely gifted improviser, he could create arias and recitatives on the spot, given a basic harmonic outline. As a teacher and performer who cut across voice-​types and composed and improvised music, Garcia I exemplifies the now-​forgotten singer with wide-​ranging musical abilities and consummate authority. He bequeathed his musical gifts to his children as well, each of whom also embodied a sense of singer authority. Maria Malibran (1808–​1836), often considered the prima donna of the nineteenth century, sang at the Théâtre-​Italien at the same time as Cinti-​Damoreau, as well as in Paris and London until 1832, when she left for Italy. As a leading mezzo-​soprano, she was widely known for her interpretations of roles such as Amina in Bellini’s La sonnambula, Desdemona in Rossini’s Otello, and the title roles of Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Semiramide. She also created the title role of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda (1835). Bellini adapted the role of Elvira in I Puritani for her, but she never sang it. Cecilia Bartoli, our current coloratura mezzo-​ soprano superstar, has recorded many of Malibran’s creations and even produced a documentary channeling the life, voice, and career of this bel canto muse.35 Pauline Viardot (1821–​1910), a mezzo-​soprano like her sister, was also a composer and pedagogue. An interpreter across many musical styles, Viardot created the role of Fidès in Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète and also the title role of the famous Berlioz adaptation and revival of Gluck’s Orfeo (1859). Viardot’s musical and dramatic talents inspired many other composers such as Chopin, Gounod, Saint-​ Saëns, Liszt, Wagner, and Schumann. Among her publications are a manual on singing, based on the Garcia method, Une heure d’étude: exercices pour voix de femmes (Paris, 1880), and a collection of selected songs and arias, Ecole classique de chant (Paris, 1861), with comments on phrasing and interpretation.36 Garcia I’s son, Manuel Patricio Rodriguez Garcia (1805–​1906), or Garcia II, became the most influential vocal pedagogue of the nineteenth century. Garcia II wanted to understand the voice more scientifically; he placed vocal technique first, then actual arias as musical case studies in singing styles and techniques. Garcia II became professor of singing at the Paris Conservatoire in 1835. It was to a Paris on the rise as the center of operatic training, performance, and composition in the 1830s and 1840s that he returned with his family from his travels to North America.37 Garcia II furthered this expansion of the written tenets of

44  Vocal Virtuosity vocal training with his own and much more intensive treatise of 1840, Traité complet de l ’art du chant, itself expanded when reprinted in 1847.38 He intended his treatise to be an extremely specific document, one that incorporated explicit bodily instructions for singers and teachers of singing. He also wanted to ground the approximate instructions and wording of past treatises (such as those of Tosi and Mancini) in voice science. Garcia’s treatise was published in several editions and widely disseminated throughout Europe.39 An extremely successful teacher, he instructed his sisters Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot, as well as Erminia Frezzolini (1818–​1884), Jenny Lind (1820–​1887), Mathilde Marchesi (1821–​1913), Charles Battaille (1822–​1872), Johanna Wagner (1826–​1894), Julius Stockhausen (1826–​1906), and Charles Santley (1834–​1922). This Garcia lineage of singers and singer-​ teachers (see Table 1.1) suggests how his ideas of voice, vocality, and technique influenced the course of singing as a practice in the mid-​nineteenth century. His treatise thus has the potential to serve as a central source of conceptions of style and technique in this era. Garcia’s many “firsts” reveal the innovativeness of his approach. Inventor of the laryngoscope, his exploration of the physiology of singing and voice science led to the first descriptions of different types of glottal closure (leading to his theory of the coup de la glotte) and the first differentiation of timbres based on laryngeal positions (the voix claire with high larynx and voix sombrée with low larynx).40 He also defined the trill as a loose and quick oscillation of the larynx. It was the flexible larynx that allowed for the articulation of florid passages and other ornaments, such as the mordent, the battuta, the ribattuta di gola, the acciaccatura, and the martellement. According to Garcia, these ornaments are innervated by the pulsating throat.41 Garcia’s comprehensive treatise is divided into two parts: the first, published in 1840, deals primarily with technique, and is akin to the vocalization sections of other treatises discussed in this chapter. Garcia is much more descriptive than other pedagogical writers, with more words than musical notation. He also elaborates on the various articulatory possibilities for coloratura: slurring, legato (vowel articulation), punctuating (diaphragmatic articulation), staccato, and aspiration. Garcia’s exploration of these articulations reveals his deep understanding of the multiplicity of possible modifications. His integration of specific physiological processes, such as varying air pressure and mouth space for vocalizing at different dynamics (high pressure, open mouth for loud passages; low pressure and half-​closed mouth for soft passages), reveals his emphasis on singers having a bodily consciousness of vocal technique. He concludes the first part of the treatise by noting the split between singers who can sing with force and those who can sing gracefully, observing that it is rare that one singer can do both. The second part of the treatise, first published in 1847, shows Garcia’s nomenclature and technique applied systematically to musical examples, most taken

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  45 from late eighteenth-​and early nineteenth-​century repertory.42 In this part, Garcia categorizes singing styles in terms of melodic types. As Garcia cites, these types expand upon those described in Mancini’s treatise, the first important treatise to break down singing styles into categories with detailed explanations.43 The following are the three broad categories Garcia lists, along with my own descriptions of their stylistic qualities, based on the cited music examples: (1) canto spianato:  slow, legato style—​characterized by suavity of line, intensely touching yet refined emotions (2) canto fiorito:  florid style—​characterized by an abundance of fioritura, echoes, trills, portamenti, and other ornaments; considered the source of all virtuosities and linked to the tradition of improvisation and cadenzas (3) canto declamato: declamatory style—​characterized by syllabic text setting; seemingly excludes all agility; appropriate for robust, dramatic voices with good enunciation, ardent accents, fiery soul, and histrionic acting These three categories recall the three divisions of Duprez’s treatise, though Duprez’s focus in the third part surveys melodic types from Lully to Boieldieu historically. Garcia’s divisions reflect well a growing sense of singing styles as types, as fitting for particular emotions, words, or dramatic situations. Coloratura clearly fits into the second category, canto fiorito, which Garcia further subdivides into: (1) canto di agilità (2) canto di maniera (a) canto di grazia (b) canto di portamento (3) canto di bravura (a) canto di forza (b) canto di slancio (c) canto di sbalzo These further subdivisions are important because they offer a view of how the performance and articulation styles of coloratura depend greatly on the emotions conveyed in the corresponding aria. Garcia uses the subdivisions as a means of categorizing various situations and characteristic articulations. The singing styles can be isolated or joined in the same composition. The musical passages Garcia cites offer clear examples of the styles’ manifestations in practice.44 Canto di agilità (Example 1.3) “sparkles especially because of the rapid movement of the notes.”45 Garcia observes that the performance of these passages, which are full of roulades, should be free, light, and effortless. The wide vocal

46  Vocal Virtuosity range covered by this example, as well as the mix of vocalisms—​legato, staccato, leaps, arpeggios, trills, triplets, chromaticism—​truly requires great agility. The style is found most often in fast movements of rondos and variations. Canto di maniera (Example 1.4) is synonymous with canto di grazia and when portamentos dominate is labeled canto di portamento. The example features a narrower, lower range than the previous one, as well as a slower tempo indication, generally descending phrase shapes, and moments of smoothness and slight staccato articulation. Allowing for both graceful vocalism and textual clarity, this singing style is above all a style of nuance and finesse. Garcia indicates that the voice should never be loud or too lively. Artifice and manner, extreme dynamic and timbral gradations, and phrasing that continues through breaths by Ex. 1.3  Canto di agilità; Garcia’s example is an excerpt drawn from Isabelle’s cabaletta “Idole de ma vie,” from Act II of Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1831)

Ex. 1.4  Canto di maniera; excerpt from “Deh calma o ciel,” from Act III of Rossini’s Otello (1816)

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  47 resuming the sound at the same dynamic and same color as at the end of the previous phrase are crucial to singing passages in this style. This style seems to be associated almost exclusively with treble voices: Garcia cites Giuditta Pasta (1797–​1865), Fanny Tacchinardi-​Persiani (1812–​1867), and the castrato Velluti as prime exponents. Canto di bravura is similar to canto di agilità, but requires greater vocal power and the heightened expression of emotions such as exaltation, delirium, anger, jealousy, and impetuosity. Garcia emphasizes that great energy, boldness, free and vigorous agility, and a brilliant and full sound are necessary for singing in this bravura style. For women, he notes, the style often demands fullness in the lower register, reinforced by the chest voice. Bravura passages can be forceful (canto di forza), outbursts of sound with occasionally sudden dynamic changes (canto di slancio), or characterized by large intervallic leaps (canto di sbalzo). Garcia observes that singers may end recitatives expressing strong emotions by adding a bravura passage. The first passage of Example 1.5 features such a recitative with a loud, likely forza melisma, while the second implies a quick shift from soft to loud and low to high and back again very suddenly via a more than two-​ octave leap, more in line with the greater dramatic effect and emotional abandon Ex. 1.5  Canto di bravura; excerpts from Garcia’s Traité complet de l ’art du chant (1847), first a canto di forza flourish in a recitative from Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda (1833) and then a canto di slancio passage from Coppola’s Nina (1835)

48  Vocal Virtuosity of canto di slancio. Both wide-​ranging melismas would be articulated more vigorously than in the previous examples—​likely with a diaphragmatic articulation. (Although Garcia does not list an example of canto di sbalzo, one well-​known exemplar with the characteristic wide leaps is Fioridiligi’s “Come scoglio” in Mozart’s Così fan tutte.) Garcia II not only gives a name to certain types of coloratura writing; he also associates certain melismatic turns with particular emotions or passions. These links between coloratura and feeling and those between coloratura and technique or vocalization are explored further in the chapters that follow.

Flageolet, Laughter, and Lapdogs As Cinti-​Damoreau imported and adapted Italian ornaments and florid styles to France, so Duprez and Garcia II imported and developed the sustained and declamatory style. Interestingly, Duprez’s pioneering approach to vocal technique and broadening the capabilities of the singing voice more generally may be one reason for the development of coloratura and high notes in the mid-​nineteenth century. Duprez insisted that one creates the voice, whereas Garcia thought that one finds the voice.46 There is a sense then that some singers sought to create their voices anew via innovative techniques, such as those advocated by Duprez. This is what happened in Paris (the famous “capital of the nineteenth century”), where coloratura not only held center stage, but also became a specialized vocal technique, extended by new heights in range as well as more elaborate and astoundingly difficult melismatic passages. What is perhaps most striking about coloratura specialists at mid-​century is not their facility for melismas, but what was made possible by this facility: a high range extension. Before the mid-​ nineteenth century, operatic treble voices performed only up to high C for the most part, and rarely to high D. There are of course exceptions: Mozart’s writing for the sisters Aloysia Weber Lange (c. 1760–​1839) and Josepha Weber Hofer (1758–​1819) extends up to high F (and once to high G). Hofer created the Queen of the Night, famous for her difficult and high arias. For Lange, Mozart wrote the role of Mme. Herz, the higher of the two coloratura soprano roles—​both roles are also actual singers in the opera’s plot—​ in Der Schauspieldirektor (1786) and the concert/​insertion arias “Popoli di Tessaglia. . . . Io non chiedo, eterni di,” K. 316 (1779), and “Vorrei spiegarvi, o Dio,” K. 418 (1783). (The current reigning French coloratura, Sabine Devieilhe, has recorded many of these arias and others written by Mozart for the Weber sisters.47) In the mid-​nineteenth century, sopranos regularly made excursions into this higher range, presumably employing what we now call flageolet, or whistle voice.

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  49 Neither this voice nor this range extension is mentioned in contemporary pedagogical treatises. Nor is it mentioned or explained in today’s didactic manuals, and it is rarely approached as a technique that is learnable. Teachers most often assume that it is an extension that is either innately present—​or not—​in the female voice. But one pedagogue allows that the extension can be developed, but only via what could be described as exercises in uninhibited emotional expression. American tenor and pedagogue Richard Miller, in observing the accompanying psychological and physical release, notes that emotional abandon is a key entryway to accessing the flageolet voice. He adds: Flageolet requires aesthetic risk-​taking and the letting go of all conscious control. Practicing the flageolet brings freedom to the entire upper range and eases the tasks a soprano later encounters in high-​lying pitches of the performance literature. Flageolet timbre is best accomplished in an almost child-​like manner, executing rapid patterns imitative of hilarious laughter.48

It is interesting that today’s scientific explanation for whistle voice and its technique involves a self-​conscious detachment from physiological control. Analogous to male falsetto (a high extension cultivated by countertenors and occasionally by tenors), the extreme upper register of female singers is often a defining feature of those who specialize in coloratura. In this upper range, the vocal folds elongate, their mass diminishes, and firm vocal-​fold closure occurs over the membranous segment, that is, the vibrating portion of the glottis. In the flageolet range, only the anterior (forward) portion of the vocal folds vibrates. Miller recommends laughter release exercises to enable sopranos to access the range more easily: light, high, imitated laughter (staccato is often helpful), and quick glissando sirens ascending and descending through the entire vocal range, but without specific pitches in mind. Emotional release is key and is achievable via laughter and other kinds of emotional abandon—​trying to recreate feelings of fear, rage, and sexual climax. What Miller describes is remarkably close to the cocottes of Cinti-​Damoreau’s exercises, and likely functioned as a primary gateway to this high range for many nineteenth-​century sopranos. Miller lists various terms for this high register: bell register, flageolet, whistle, flute, piccolo, echo voice, voce di campanello, petit registre, registre de flageolet, flûte registre, Pfeifestimme, hohe Quinta, and zweite Höhe. Extension of the head voice can reach an octave above high C and the whistle voice is clearly in use for high D and above. The physical events that produce the head voice are so acute in this upper register (with high notes sometimes called acuti) that a change of timbre is perceived and a change in sensation is experienced by the singer.49 Miller notes differences between twentieth-​century national singing schools. He observes that the register is acknowledged by all schools of singing, but

50  Vocal Virtuosity used primarily in French and Italian methods. According to Miller, the technique of the Franco-​Italian school of singing manifests physically—​the shape of the mouth is drastically altered, open wide almost to an exaggerated smile (incisor teeth showing prominently), with elevated cheeks. Sound perceived in this range has a heavy concentration of upper partials, and can sometimes sound brittle and dry. Indeed, timbral brilliance is the goal.50 Rapid vibrato is another hallmark of the Franco-​Italian technique in coloratura sopranos. In the German school, the timbre of whistle voice seems disembodied, unlike the Franco-​Italian.51 In more purely French coloratura technique, the whistle voice is brought down into the head register, adding further brightness to the tone. Brilliant, but sometimes small and thin, the sound can give the impression of a chime or sharply rung bell. Miller’s explanations fit neatly with the standard coloratura repertory, such as Lakmé’s Bell Song. Miller notes that only the French mezzo-​soprano uses the flageolet register extensively—​for example, coloratura pants roles such as Urbain in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots (1836) and Stéphano in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette (1867). I should at this point emphasize that coloratura is the technical entry to the flageolet register and that by the 1850s coloratura and high notes were inextricably associated with each other. In the nineteenth century, particularly in Paris, audiences flocked to hear sopranos with supersonic high notes. The craze might be likened to the amazement associated with hearing virtuoso pianists and violinists in the 1830s and 1840s performing the seemingly superhuman, a connection I will explore later in this book. Of course, such a popular act of display had its detractors. Hector Berlioz, long a critic of Parisian operatic tastes, thought that the sound of most sopranos’ acuti was “about as pleasant as the yelp of a dog whose paws are being stepped on.”52 So vehemently did he feel about this trend toward singing higher and higher that in 1862 he called it the “lapdog school”: The Lapdog School is a school of singers whose range extends upwards to extraordinary high notes, enabling them to let forth high Es and high Fs at any moment. As to the effect and the pleasure these afford the listener, they resemble the yelping of a King Charles spaniel when someone steps on its paw. It is only fair to add that when Mme Cabel practiced this vocal system, she always reached her destination. If she aimed at an E or an F or even at the dizzy height of G, it was indeed a G, F, or E that she reached. Yet nobody seemed much obliged; whereas her pupils or imitators, who generally reach only as far as D♯ when they aim at E, or E when their goal is F, always excite frenzied applause. This injustice, and this unjustness, have ended by turning Mme Cabel against her own school of singing. It was bound to happen. Now she is content to sing like the charming woman she is; she has given up trying to imitate the birds and the little dogs.53

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  51 Marie Cabel, a recurring figure in this book, made substantial use of melismas and extreme high notes. Rapid coloratura and extreme high notes are featured prominently in the roles she created, such as Dinorah in Meyerbeer’s Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859), as well as in the creations of other sopranos Berlioz cites as exemplars of the school (Caroline Carvalho and Anna-​Caroline de Lagrange, among others). Writing in 1862, Berlioz notes that Cabel had ceased to sing that high, but the new upper limits on the female singer were by then set, and sopranos to this day continue to use the whistle voice to access notes in the stratosphere.

The New Coloratura Soprano High notes and coloratura at mid-​century remain firmly entrenched in Paris, not only at the Théâtre-​Italien, but also at the Opéra-​Comique, the Théâtre-​ Lyrique, and the Opéra. The shifting and merging of French and Italian singing styles was a process driven not, as is often argued, by composers alone, but also by performers and teachers. Cinti-​Damoreau, Duprez, and Garcia II, along with their pupils, initiated a process by which coloratura became associated with particular emotions and particular types of singers. The split between florid and sostenuto singing styles explored in this chapter was further delineated pedagogically in 1884 in the writings of two important teachers. The Italian pedagogue of many French and Italian coloratura sopranos, Francesco Lamperti (1813–​1892), wrote that “it seems to me that the opponents of florid singing make a great mistake in the accusation they bring against it of being untrue, improbable, absurd, and worse, and as being contrary to all dramatic effect.” The German baritone, conductor, pedagogue, and pupil of Garcia, Julius Stockhausen (1826–​1906), wrote in the same year that “such coloratura has nothing to do with expression, though in some comic operas they are often most attractive. It is only by great beauty of voice and a brilliant execution that such fireworks can be carried off successfully.”54 With writers such as these pedagogues, as well as Berlioz, Lacombe, and Rosselli, among others, it is crucial that we begin to view coloratura at mid-​century not with disdain but with intrigue. For with recognition of the split between the melismatic and the sustained comes the danger of ascribing value to the new style (declamatory, sustained singing) at the expense of the old. However, coloratura’s possibilities in mid-​century performance were broadened, not truncated. * * * In Sonnambula I sang two verses of “Ah! non giunge,” for it is, frankly, a showpiece, an expression of happiness and joy; pure vocalizing is justified.55

—​Maria  Callas

52  Vocal Virtuosity Callas shows the extent to which ideas about coloratura have changed since the nineteenth century. Her candid statement also offers much to ponder about the meaning of coloratura in performance. Instead of taking the easy reading—​that Callas thought of coloratura as empty display—​I suggest instead that the soprano hints at the importance of coloratura’s connection with the expressive. Callas distinctively merged both coloratura and declamatory singing in her own operatic career, attempting to defy the voice category split that had become cemented by the twentieth century. In identifying vocalizing with the expression of joy, Callas recognizes the kernel of coloratura’s historical persistence. Coloratura links the thrill of technical mastery with the expressive or theatrical. It is this link that I continue to explore throughout this book. Coloratura began the nineteenth century as one of the fundamental styles of singing, fully integrated into teaching and practice. But mid-​century melismatic singing and the coloratura soprano in particular took on a more fully autonomous—​and even French—​identity, a modern identity that was at once expressive and virtuosic.

Notes 1. Quoted in James Radomski, Manuel Garcia (1775–​1832): Chronicle of the Life of a Bel Canto Tenor at the Dawn of Romanticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 273. 2. See Jim Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work: The “Transcendental Studies” of Liszt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 3. For more on the “regulative work-​concept” and the idea of being true to a work or composer (Werktreue), the standard text is Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 4. Although there are obviously many differences between pedagogical writings and actual singing practice, treatises are nonetheless useful for understanding certain ideas of voice production, especially when we consider the pedagogical writings of important performers. In detailing the construction of “singer-​machines,” Céline Frigau Manning has recently reiterated the strong nineteenth-​century connection between the wordless vocal exercises (vocalises) employed by pedagogues in their treatises and the melismatic singing that was lauded and criticized for its stunning, instrumental, mechanized, or vapid virtuosity. See Céline Frigau Manning, “Singer-​ Machines:  Describing Italian Singers, 1800–​1850,” trans. Nicholas Manning, Opera Quarterly 28 (2012): 230–​58. 5. Although castrati were not admitted to the music schools, the Papal States continued to receive castrati in their choir schools until the practice itself was formally banned in 1870. Castrati continued to sing in Catholic churches throughout the nineteenth century. For a CD recording of the so-​called last castrato Alessandro Moreschi (1858–​ 1922), who was director of the Sistine Chapel Choir, see Alessandro Moreschi: The Last Castrato (Pearl B000000WYS, 1993).

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  53 6. Quoted in Patrick Barbier, The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon, trans. Margaret Crosland (London: Souvenir, 1996), 227. For more on castrati, see John Rosselli, “The Castrati as a Professional Group and a Social Phenomenon, 1550–​1850,” Acta Musicologica 60 (1988):  143–​79; Roger Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation:  Confronting the Baroque Body of the Castrato,” Journal of Musicology 20 (2003): 196–​249; and Giuseppe Gerbino, “The Quest for the Soprano Voice: Castrati in Sixteenth-​Century Italy,” Studi Musicali 32 (2004): 303–​ 57. Rosselli further links the disappearance of castrati to the eighteenth-​century decline in Christian asceticism and economic improvement, as well as to a growing social disdain for the singer figure. 7. Barbier, The World of the Castrati, 230–​32. Crescentini retired from the stage to give singing lessons at the Conservatory of Naples, beginning in 1825. Before that, he had taught Spanish soprano and Rossini’s muse (and later, wife) Isabella Colbran (1785–​1845), who created many roles in the early nineteenth century, including lead roles in Rossini’s Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra (1815), Otello (1816), Armida (1817), Mosè in Egitto, Ricciardo e Zoraide (1818), Ermione, La donna del lago (1819), Maometto II (1820), and Zelmira (1822). For Crescentini’s compositional influence, see Sylvie Mamy, “The Import of Italian Musical Techniques to France at the End of the Eighteenth Century,” in L’Opera tra Venezia e Parigi, ed. Maria Teresa Murano (Florence:  Olschki, 1988), 67–​89. Cresentini also wrote his own vocal treatise, Raccolta di esercizi per il canto all’uso del vocalizzo (Paris, c. 1811). 8. Barbier, The World of the Castrati, 227. 9. For a more recent and theoretically grounded exploration of the castrato as a historical figure, see Martha Feldman, The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015). 10. J. Q. Davies, “‘Veluti in speculum’: The Twilight of the Castrato,” Cambridge Opera Journal 17 (2005): 271–​301. 11. For more on the contralto/​mezzo-​soprano in this era, see Heather Hadlock, “On the Cusp between the Past and the Future: The Mezzo-​Soprano Romeo of Bellini’s I Capuleti,” Opera Quarterly 17 (2001):  399–​422, and “Women Playing Men in Italian Opera,” in Women’s Voices Across Musical Worlds, ed. Jane A. Bernstein (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 285–​307; Rodolfo Celletti, A History of Bel Canto, trans. Frederick Fuller (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1991); John Rosselli, Singers of Italian Opera:  The History of a Profession (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 1992); Naomi André, Voicing Gender:  Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early-​ Nineteenth-​ Century Italian Opera (Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 2006); and Susan Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera 1815–​1930 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 12. To critical acclaim, Enrico Tamberlick (1820–​1889) pushed the upper limit for chested high notes to C♯. 13. During this period, the tenor often sang high tones with a reinforced falsetto (dubbed “falsettone” by Rodolfo Celletti) that extended above high C.  Rubini and John Braham were exemplars of this type of tenor singing. This tenorial high range extension could be viewed as a link between the eras of the castrato and the full-​throated

54  Vocal Virtuosity tenor. See John Potter, “The Tenor-​Castrato Connection, 1760–​1860,” Early Music 35 (2007):  97–​112. For an exploration of late nineteenth-​century examples of tenors singing softly, see my “Vocal Vulnerability: Jean-​Alexandre Talazac and Voix Mixte in Late Nineteenth-​Century French Opera,” Cambridge Opera Journal 30 (2018): 138–​64. 14. John Rosselli, “Grand Opera:  Nineteenth-​ Century Revolution and Twentieth-​ Century Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Singing, ed. John Potter (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 2000), 96. Rosselli deems 1850 a turning point in the singing profession, the beginning of the decline of Italian opera and the Italian profession of singing. He attributes this to the rise of the tenore di forza, a tenor able to sing high notes loudly. However, Rosselli minimizes the importance of vocal stylistic changes of the female singer, a position this book aims to revise. 15. Rosselli, “Song into Theatre: The Beginnings of Opera,” in The Cambridge Companion to Singing, 95. As this book traces the origins and trajectory of the coloratura soprano beginning in the mid-​nineteenth century, Rosselli also locates this voice-​type’s emergence at mid-​century, noting that sopranos were compared to birds such as the canary or nightingale and that these voices took Italian and French coloratura roles such as Lucia, Rosina, Philine in Mignon, and, later, Adèle in Die Fledermaus and Lakmé. See Rosselli, “Grand Opera,” 102. 16. Susan Rutherford sees the early nineteenth century as a high point in female operatic power and possibility. See Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera, 243. 17. For more on the Conservatoire and its institutional importance see: Laetitia Chassain-​ Dolliou, Le Conservatoire de Paris, ou, Les voies de la création (Paris: Gallimard, 1995); Emmanuel Hondré, ed., Le Conservatoire de musique de Paris: regards sur une institution et son histoire (Paris: Association du bureau des étudiants du Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris, 1995); Jean Mongrédien, French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism:  1789–​1830, trans. Sylvain Frémaux (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996); Anne Bongrain and Alain Poirier, eds., Le Conservatoire de Paris: deux cents ans de pédagogie, 1795–​1995 (Paris: Buchet-​Chastel, 1999); D. Kern Holoman, The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire: 1828–​1967 (Berkeley and Los Angeles:  University of California Press, 2004); and Michael Fend and Michel Noiray, eds., Musical Education in Europe (1770–​1914): Compositional, Institutional, and Political Challenges, 2 vols. (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-​Verlag, 2005). 18. Rosselli, Singers of Italian Opera, 110. 19. In addition to Langlé and Cherubini, other members of the Conservatoire committee that endorsed the treatise include: Pierre Garat (1762–​1823), François-​Joseph Gossec (1734–​1829), Etienne-​Nicolas Méhul (1763–​1817), Charles-​Henri Plantade (1764–​ 1839), Louis Augustin Richer (1740–​1819), and Bernard Sarrette (1765–​1858). See Bernardo Mengozzi et  al., Méthode de chant du Conservatoire de Musique (Paris, 1804). Reproduced in Jeanne Roudet, ed. Chant: Les Grandes Méthodes romantiques de chant—​Cinti-​Damoreau, Concone, Conservatoire, Crescentini (1–​2), Duprez, Fétis, Garaudé, Garcia (père-​fils), Lablache, Panofka (1–​2), Panseron (1–​2), Romagnesi, Rossini, vol. I (Courlay, France: Editions Fuzeau, 2005). Hereafter, Roudet.

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  55 20. There are of course some well-​known and important coloratura sopranos who do not appear in the table. These include Julie Dorus-​Gras (1805–​1896), who was the creator of Marguerite in Les Huguenots and a pupil of Felice Blangini (1781–​1841), an earlier singing teacher at the Conservatoire; Henriette Sontag (1806–​1854), who came from a family of singers and actors and studied with her mother; and the Patti sisters, Carlotta (1835–​1889) and Adelina (1842–​1919), who belonged to a very musical family and were instructed by their parents. Christine Nilsson (1843–​1921, see Chapters 3 and 5) studied with Pierre François Wartel (1806–​1882), N.-​J.-​J. Masset, and Enrico delle Sedie (1822–​1907) in Paris, but modeled her career on that of Carvalho (see Chapters 4 and 5). 21. Austin Caswell, “Mme Cinti-​Damoreau and the Embellishment of Italian Opera in Paris: 1820–​1845,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 28 (1975): 459–​92, at 462. 22. In addition to her treatise, several of Cinti-​Damoreau’s cadenzas may be found in Austin B. Caswell, Embellished Opera Arias, in Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, vols. 7–​8 (Madison, WI:  A-​R Editions, 1989). 23. “Pour les notes piquées appelées plaisamment COCOTTES, il n’en faut point faire abus et surtout ne jamais les faire sèchement, pour éviter ce défaut, il suffit d’appuyer et faire vibrer légèrement le son qui précède les notes piquées.” Cinti-​Damoreau, Méthode de chant (Paris, 1849), 33 (Roudet, IV, 241). 24. I am grateful to Karen Henson and Steven Huebner for helping me sort out this confusing term. See also “cocotte” in Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, vol. 4 (Paris, 1866), 516–​17. 25. “On trouve souvent des voix souples et agiles qui paraissent n’avoir aucun besoin de tous ces exercises. Malheureusement cette agilité habituelle est généralement nuisible et il faut souvent plus d’étude pour retenir la voix que pour l’assouplir. C’est surtout dans les gammes descendante qu’il faut tâcher de vaincre cette tendance à aller trop vite et c’est en appuyant sur quelques notes comme je l’indique dans l’exercice suivant, qu’on pourra sûrement y parvenir.” Cinti-​Damoreau, Méthode de chant, 10 (Roudet, IV, 218). 26. Rodolfo Celletti, Marco Beghelli, and Bloch have pointed out that several tenors were singing high notes in the new manner before Duprez. Beghelli and Bloch have complicated the story further by suggesting that Duprez’s moment may not even have happened as it has commonly been described. See Rodolfo Celletti, A History of Bel Canto; Marco Beghelli, “Il ‘Do di petto’: Dissacrazione di un mito,” Il saggiatore musicale 3 (1996): 105–​49; and Gregory W. Bloch, “The Pathological Voice of Gilbert-​ Louis Duprez,” Cambridge Opera Journal 19 (2007): 11–​31. 27. Bloch, “The Pathological Voice of Gilbert-​Louis Duprez,” 18. 28. The classic text is Richard Miller, The Structure of Singing: System and Art in Vocal Technique (New York: Schirmer, 1986). 29. His treatise is reproduced in facsimile in Roudet, III. 30. See, for example, the advertisement in Le Ménestrel of 28 June 1857, which includes the cost of each part.

56  Vocal Virtuosity 31. “[D]‌es morceaux de vocalisations légère ont été composés, ils sont d’une exécution trop difficile pour les voix graves et fortes qui devront s’en tenir simplement à l’étude des tableaux.” Duprez, L ’Art du chant, 60 (Roudet, III, 164). 32. Duprez, L ’Art du chant, 60bis (Roudet, III, 166). 33. The original family name of Garcia was always spelled in the manner of the country of residence. 34. See Radomski, Manuel Garcia, 270–​79. 35. See Cecilia Bartoli: Maria (Decca B000RPSVDQ, 2007). 36. For more on Viardot, see Hilary Poriss, “Pauline Viardot, Travelling Virtuosa,” Music and Letters 96 (2015):  185–​208; and Michael Steen, The Enchantress of Nations: Pauline Viardot: Soprano, Muse and Lover (London: Icon, 2007). 37. The Garcia family traveled to New York in 1824, and while there Garcia I directed the first performances of opera in Italian in the United States. Garcia II had returned to Paris by 1828, Garcia I by 1829. 38. As Bloch has noted, Garcia II first presented his work as “Mémoire sur la voix humaine” to the Académie des Sciences on 16 November 1840. An expanded version appears in the preface to the first edition of his Traité complet de l ’art du chant (Paris, 1840). See the facsimile of the 1847 edition of the Traité complet (Geneva: Minkoff, 1986); and Donald V. Paschke, ed. and trans., A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Complete and Unabridged by Manuel Garcia II, 2 vols. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1975 and 1984). See also Bloch, “The Pathological Voice of Gilbert-​Louis Duprez.” 39. Like many twentieth-​century pedagogues, Lucie Manén attributes the decline of bel canto to Garcia II’s teachings. She argues that Garcia’s “coup de glotte” began without air pressure from the lungs. According to her, this is a critical flaw in his vocal pedagogy. See Lucie Manén, Bel Canto: The Teaching of the Classical Italian Song-​Schools, Its Decline and Restoration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 63–​66. 40. See the “Introduction” in Paschke, A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing. 41. Although Garcia addresses a portion of the physiological aspects of coloratura articulation, a more complete understanding of the physical workings of this style of singing was not put forward until recently. The articulators of the body include the larynx, lips, tongue, velum (soft palate), and the jaw. These articulators also affect pitch and the series of acoustic partials that give a ring to the voice. Johan Sundberg has explored how modern voice science can aid in our understanding of the effects of some of the pedagogical principles codified in the nineteenth century. For example, he confirms that Garcia’s voix sombrée, a dark timbre, results from the lowering of the larynx. Shrillness or excessive brilliance in the tone is associated with a high larynx. Sundberg suggests that singers who excel at coloratura also have virtuoso control over their breathing apparatus and are able to control and alter subglottic pressure rapidly and precisely in order to clearly articulate each pitch. See Johan Sundberg, The Science of the Singing Voice (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1987), 36–​37. 42. It is important to note that though Garcia’s technique is focused on incorporating the latest scientific developments, his music examples show a rigid attachment to works of Mozart and Rossini, as well as their contemporaries.

The New Franco-Italian School of Singing  57 43. Mancini’s treatise, Pensieri, e riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato (Vienna, 1774), was cited by Garcia. See Manuel Garcia, Traité complet de l ’art du chant (Paris, 1847), 25 (Roudet, III, 35). 44. The following music examples are cited in Manuel Garcia, Traité complet de l ’art du chant (Paris, 1847), 68–​70, (Roudet, III, 162–​64). See also Paschke, A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing, 192–​99. 45. “Ce style brille surtout par le mouvement rapide des notes.” See Garcia, 68 (Roudet, III, 162; Paschke, 194). 46. The debate was explored in an article on Garcia and Duprez in Le Ménestrel of 8 May 1859. 47. See Sabine Devieilhe, Mozart: The Weber Sisters (Erato B014LRVITO, 2015). 48. Richard Miller, Training Soprano Voices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 137. 49. Richard Miller, National Schools of Singing:  English, French, German, and Italian Techniques of Singing Revisited (Lanham, MD:  Scarecrow Press, 1977, rpt. 1997), 118–​19. 50. Miller, National Schools of Singing, 143. 51. Miller, National Schools of Singing, 140. Miller notes that the German school deems flageolet a female falsetto. 52. From Hector Berlioz, À Travers Chants (Paris, 1862), quoted and translated in Hector Berlioz, The Art of Music and Other Essays, ed. and trans. Elizabeth Csicsery-​ Rónay (Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 1994), 69 (“aussi agréable que le cri d’un petit chien dont on écrase la patte, cela suffit pour que la salle retentisse d’acclamations”), http://​www.hberlioz.com/​Writings/​ATC09.htm (Accessed 10 June 2020). Berlioz often complained about the state of lyric theaters in France, lamenting particularly the fact that opera was oriented toward singers, that performance priorities dominated over composition, and that the singer’s concerns outweighed the inspiration and principles of the composer. He thought that the majority of singers were not capable of singing expressively with good style. Berlioz’s copious and entertaining writings reveal his attitude toward performers. For him the root causes of the deplorable state of French opera were the impresarios, the excessive size of the lyric theaters, the system of applause (paid and unpaid), and the dominance of performance over composition. Of course, his writings must be viewed in light of his own frustrations as a composer who felt underappreciated in his own time. Still, his focus on coloratura and acuti indicate their importance in the singing styles of sopranos at mid-​century. 53. Ibid., 231, “L’école du petit chien est celle des chanteuses dont la voix extraordinairement étendue dans le haut, leur permet de lancer à tout bout de chant des contre-​mi et des contre-​fa aigus, semblables, pour le caractère et le plaisir qu’ils font à l’auditeur, au cri d’un king-​charles dont on écrase la patte. Madame Cabel, il faut le reconnaître, à l’époque où elle pratiquait ce système de chant, atteignait toujours son but. Quand elle visait un mi ou un fa, et même un sol suraigu, c’était un sol, un fa ou un mi qu’elle touchait; mais on ne lui en savait aucun gré; tandis que ses élèves, ou imitatrices ne parvenant d’ordinaire qu’au ré dièse s’il s’agit du mi, ou au mi s’il s’agit du fa, excitent toujours ainsi des transports d’admiration frénétiques. Cette injustice

58  Vocal Virtuosity et cette injustesse ont fini par dégoûter madame Cabel de son école. C’était fait pour cela. Maintenant elle se borne à chanter comme une femme charmante qu’elle est, et ne songe plus à imiter ni les petits chiens ni les oiseaux,” http://​www.hberlioz.com/​ Writings/​ATC30.htm (Accessed 10 June 2020). 54. Both teachers are quoted in Stark, Bel Canto:  A History of Vocal Pedagogy, 167. Lamperti wrote and published several vocal studies and an important treatise, L ’arte del canto (Milan: Ricordi, 1884). His pupils include Désirée Artôt, Anna-​Caroline de Lagrange, Teresa Stolz, and Maria Waldmann. An important Lieder singer (particularly of works by Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms), Stockhausen gave the first public and complete performance of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin (Vienna, 1856). His pupils include Hermine Spiess, Antonia Kufferath, Anton van Rooy, and Max Friedlaender. Stockhausen also published many vocal studies and a treatise, Gesangsmethode (Leipzig, 1884). 55. From John Ardoin, Callas at Juilliard: The Masterclasses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 10. Quoted in Anya Peterson Royce, Anthropology of the Performing Arts: Artistry, Virtuosity, and Interpretation in a Cross-​Cultural Perspective (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2004), 232.

2

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura

In a famous example of vocal virtuosity, Violetta exclaims in her cabaletta, “Sempre libera,” that she will always be free and joyful. This coloratura aria is one of many purely ebullient and viscerally thrilling soprano moments on the operatic stage. Yet the moment is also quite odd—​the bravura aria presents emotions so incongruous to the character’s situation that one of the first interpreters of the role, Virginia Boccabadati, said that “one experiences a false cheerfulness” at the end of the act.1 The aria is also the only time that Violetta sings coloratura in the opera and, in fact, it is the only instance of coloratura in Verdi’s La traviata (1853), an opera already notable for its decadent Parisian setting. Violetta’s ecstatic melismatic outpourings are interrupted by doubts that are evident particularly when Alfredo’s offstage voice interjects, causing her to pause and break the momentum of her aria. Violetta responds by insisting to herself that she will be joyful. When she continues on to the final verse of the aria, there is a sense that she is compelling herself to be joyful, that she is desperate to banish Alfredo’s voice from her thoughts. Because of its deceptively frivolous nature and its stylistic peculiarity, this seemingly light, joyful moment is actually quite marked, and even troublesome. While becoming increasingly rare, Violetta’s melismas at mid-​century are by no means the only example of coloratura from the period. But Violetta’s melismas are some of Italian opera’s last. Verdi wrote coloratura out of Italian opera. Although a common enough singing style in his early operas, by his middle period coloratura had become scarce, used only once each in Rigoletto (1851), La traviata (1853), and Les Vêpres siciliennes (1855). After these operas, it vanishes from Verdi’s melodic style. There are some light moments for the page Oscar in Un ballo in maschera (1859), but these are mostly staccato articulations, not melismas, and the character is a stock French page role with the associated singing style for pants roles. Alice Ford in Falstaff (1893) has a short staccato scalar ascent in Part 2 of Act II, but it is nowhere close to the extent of the melismas that Violetta or Gilda sing. There are, in contrast, many examples of coloratura in Verdi’s earlier operas, such as the role of Odabella in Attila (1846). Leonora’s double arias in Acts I and III of Il trovatore (1853) feature much vocal agility, some melismas, and cadenzas, but this middle-​period work harks back to early Verdi compositional approaches to Vocal Virtuosity. Sean M. Parr, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197542644.003.0003

60  Vocal Virtuosity vocal writing. Also relevant to this chapter is the Allegro moderato “Lo vidi, e il primo palpito” that Luisa sings near the end of the second scene of Act I of Luisa Miller (1849). Emanuele Senici has observed that Luisa and other bel canto soprano heroines often sing in a “canto staccato” style when discovering that their heart palpitations are the physiological effect of being in love.2 Such a connection between the heart and staccato will also be evident in this chapter, particularly in the case of Gilda. In applying the concepts explored in the preceding chapter, here I  present three case studies of the coloratura arias in Verdi’s middle-​period operas, and establish a provocative link between these arias and the end of coloratura writing in Italian opera. Close readings of these arias suggest that Verdi’s use of coloratura serves as an omen, foreshadowing an impending tragedy for the character singing. Additionally—​and importantly for the arc of this book—​these three case studies benefit from being viewed as somehow “French.” Verdi lived in Paris from 1847 to 1849 and was heavily involved in promoting his operas there, beginning with his first Paris Opéra commission, Jérusalem (1847). Although set in Renaissance Mantua, Rigoletto is a melodramma in three acts to a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave after Victor Hugo’s play Le Roi s’amuse (1832, set at the court of sixteenth-​century King François I). La traviata is an opera in three acts to a libretto by Piave after Alexandre Dumas fils’ novel (1848) and play (1852) La Dame aux camélias. Set in Paris, La traviata deals with the lively and sometimes frivolous culture of a mid-​century Paris obsessed with the waltz. In 1852, Verdi was contracted to write another grand opéra for the Opéra. The result was Les Vêpres siciliennes, an opéra in five acts to a libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier after their libretto Le Duc d’Albe (1839). In each of these operas there is exactly one moment of coloratura: Gilda’s Act I aria, “Caro nome,” in Rigoletto; Violetta’s Act I double aria, “È strano! . . . Ah, fors’è lui . . . Follie! . . . Sempre libera,” in La traviata; and Hélène’s Act V bolero, “Merci, jeunes amies,” in Les Vêpres siciliennes.3 Verdi writes coloratura out of Italian opera by making it troublesome. Although each aria employs melismatic writing to heighten an expression of joy, the exuberance and abandon felt by each of the heroines is somehow forced, premature, or even verging on the mad. In a sense, these arias ring false and presage doom for the women singing them. Coloratura, the ultimate bel canto singing style, here becomes the symbol, even the harbinger, of death. If coloratura at mid-​century could often be a cue for audience excitement and even encores, in Verdi’s middle-​period operas the vocalizing is also a sign that a situation is too good to be true. Verdi subverted coloratura’s signification in these operas—​and then left it to be the domain of French opera. After these three operas, Verdi eschewed melismas, and other Italian opera composers followed suit. Coloratura is therefore absent from Verdi’s late operas, as well as those of Amilcare

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  61 Ponchielli (1834–​1886) and Alfredo Catalani (1854–​1893), nor is it found in works of the so-​called giovane scuola, the group of Italian opera composers with ties to the Naples and Milan Conservatories (and to Ponchielli, who taught composition at the Milan Conservatory) and who succeeded Verdi, flourishing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The giovane scuola included Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857–​ 1919), Giacomo Puccini (1858–​ 1924), Pietro Mascagni (1863–​1945), Francesco Cilea (1866–​1950), and Umberto Giordano (1867–​1948). The operas of these composers are often called “verismo” works because of their connection to the literary movement that shared characteristics with naturalism: narrative style, focus on lower social classes, and a more realistic approach to contemporary life. Reassessments of verismo as a term and operatic style have agreed that the musical characteristics common to all the verismo operas include a propensity for syllabic melodic style and a corresponding lack of virtuosic singing, coloratura in particular. Often this emphasis on syllabic text treatment in these operas is accompanied by a more parlando singing style, with moments of climax achieved by means of sustained high notes that sometimes approach shouts and screams that more closely approximate spoken theatrical outbursts of emotion. The more stylized and aestheticized melismatic singing found in bel canto opera as well as in some of the mid-​century works of Verdi, Saverio Mercadante (1795–​1870), Giovanni Pacini (1796–​1867), and Errico Petrella (1813–​1877) is entirely absent from the operas of the giovane scuola.4 Verdi and other Italian composers’ move away from bel canto traditions thus included divesting from coloratura singing.

Gilda “Gualtier Maldè . . . Caro nome,” Gilda’s aria from Act I of Rigoletto (1851), first performed by Teresa Brambilla (1813–​1895) Gualtier Maldè . . . nome di Lui sì amato scolpisci nel core innamorato!

Gualtier Maldè . . . name of my beloved, inscribe this loving heart!

Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar, le delizie dell’ amor mi dei sempre rammentar! Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà, e fin l’ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà.

Dear name that first made my heart throb, you will always remind me of the pleasures of love! In my thoughts, my desire will always fly to you, and until my last breath dear name, will be yours.

62  Vocal Virtuosity “Caro nome” is Gilda’s love-​struck musing on “Gualtier Maldè,” the pseudonym assumed by the Duke of Mantua in his wooing of Rigoletto’s naïve daughter (Example 2.1).5 Before this aria, the newly infatuated couple have just sung their rousing soprano-​tenor “Addio” cabaletta, after which the Duke departed. Gilda, alone onstage, sings her first and only aria. Flute arpeggios lifting upwards two octaves, perhaps simulating Gilda’s uplifted heart, introduce “Caro nome.” The piano dynamic and dolce expressive marking set the tone of this aria, which is thinly textured in its scoring for strings and winds. The flute’s staccato phrases could be described as “cocottes,” the light, sensuous vocalizations we saw in Cinti-​Damoreau’s treatise in Chapter 1. The flute is in a sense the interior voice of Gilda, sweeping upward in lyrical earnestness.6 Gilda’s recitative confirms the connection between music and the physiological and emotional sensations in Gilda’s heart. In addition to leaping melodically in the flute part, Gilda’s heart leaps harmonically from D♭-​minor at the start of the recitative to E in the measure of her vocal entrance. Singing the Duke’s sobriquet, “Gualtier Maldè,” in a monotone on E, Gilda sets herself in the exact middle of the flute’s arpeggios, aurally enmeshed in her heart’s feelings. Her next words, “nome di Lui,” are also a monotone. Gilda does not sing an interval in a phrase until the last syllable of “amato,” where she leaps a fourth, setting up a lugubrious descent in which she wishes that his name be carved into her heart. Musically, it would seem that “Gualtier Maldè” has indeed become entwined with Gilda’s feelings. In addition to halving the range of the flute’s ascents perfectly when she first utters his name, the E scalar descent on the final word of the recitative, “innamorato,” also binds her enamored heart to his name: the descent is identical to the beginning of the primary melody of the ensuing aria devoted to his “dear” name. The recitative closes with a dominant-​seventh of E, clinching the aria’s home key, leaving listeners in expectation of the tonic arrival that marks the beginning of the aria. The A♮ of the seventh chord is sounded only by the B♭ clarinet and Gilda, who eases chromatically downward from B after the orchestra has finished its B-​major chord. With this chromaticism, Gilda in a sense sexualizes the anticipation of the E tonic, calling upon her heart (the orchestra) to express her desire. The flutes take the “innamorato” descent, break it up with eighth rests, and complete it by continuing the descent to the supertonic. The a theme is extended by a sixth leap to D♯ followed by another descent to the tonic. The melody is accompanied by a simple accompanimental texture, which pulses on each beat. The orchestra clearly represents the heartbeat and the heart more generally. At the end of the opening ritornello is another iteration of the theme, this time varied, first with a turning staccato ornament, then with fluttering leaps of a sixth on the offbeat. Thus, even in the ritornello, the aria’s variation form is established.

Ex. 2.1  Gilda’s aria, “Caro nome,” from Verdi’s Rigoletto (1851), mm. 1–​81

Ex. 2.1 Continued

Ex. 2.1 Continued

66  Vocal Virtuosity Interestingly, the variations are not the typical theme-​and-​variations format, but successive elaborations after iterations of thematic material, as if emotional gushes of sensuality. In measure 18, Gilda begins singing the main theme, her voice breathless and halting with the interrupting rests. The aria proper is the quietest, most precious moment in the opera: the orchestral texture is sparse and thin, the dynamic markings are all hushed (no marking above piano) with the solo violins muted, and the expressive markings remain dolce or dolcissimo. Gilda begins privately, earnestly, and almost gasping in hushed excitement, her low sustained tones on “cor” and the last syllable of “palpitar” punctuated by two palpitating solo violins. These tones are her first sostenuto moments and both are elongated by intensifying leaps of delight, first a sixth, then a ninth. The next phrase (b, m. 26) changes character, with ascending instead of descending gestures that feature syncopated accents. Combined with the rests, which continue to separate words and syllables, these accents on unaccented syllables (mm. 27 and 29—​“il,” the first syllable of “desir,” and the second syllables of “sempre” and “volerà”) are interesting because they diminish one’s ability to listen for textual continuity and transparent meaning. The divergent music and text accents are as follows (italicized syllables are accented): Music: Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà Text: Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà

In a way, Verdi’s setting calls attention to the vocal play of singing:  the vocal decoration, not the apprehension of the words, is the point. The ascent on “volerà” (word painting “flying”) transitions back to the first theme a, which now incorporates the appoggiatura and trill ornaments from the second phrase b. The effect of the combination of ornaments and fractured descending scales heightens the musical evocation of the overall “sospir” (“sighing”) affect. The ornamental gestures continue with a second iteration of the b phrase, b2 (m. 35). Staccato rearticulations of the same note (ribatutte) move the heart palpitations momentarily from the orchestra to the soprano, and the octave leap from speech register up to the last syllable of “volerà” sets up the dominant seventh that prepares another cadenza moment. Gilda elaborates the accented syllable this time and when she lands again on “sospir” quickly leaps up a tenth to a″ on “caro.” “Caro” of course leads back to “nome,” on which the soprano briefly ascends to a high C (c‴) in another cadenza-​like moment (m. 41). A third iteration b3 follows, in which Gilda sings a gleeful exclamation up to high B on the first syllable of “desir” (m. 44). From the high note the soprano quickly stills her glee with an octave leap down, to be followed by a very

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  67 straightforward scalar cadenza. During b2 and b3 the winds play the original b material as the accompaniment to Gilda’s variations, providing an anchor for her decorative singing. However, this accompanimental anchor as well as Gilda’s moment of seeming calm give way after the cadenza in measure 46. Beginning in the next measure, the soprano sings a series of vocalises that use ornamental elements of the preceding phrases to vary and perpetuate her breathless sighing and feelings of ecstasy. Marked dolce, these vocalises are more erotic than sweet. Gilda begins with a sequence of leaps of a sixth. The high notes of these leaps are syncopated and accented. The sequence merges ascending and descending patterns—​leaps of a sixth up, then a seventh down, iterated four times followed by a rearticulation of the pattern, but up a step from the previous starting pitch level. The series of cascading sixths occurs three times, and the vocal effect grows increasingly ecstatic. These exclamations on the word “te” are followed by two instances of descending sigh gestures on “fin l’ultimo sospir” (mm. 50–​51). The gestures are each marked by a messa di voce, which on the second phrase quiets to a pp whisper and prepares for the next elaboration that uses the sigh gesture as the basis of the variation. The vocal sigh gestures are doubled by the flutes and accompanied by staccato palpitations in the oboe and clarinet. Gilda ends her vocalizing with a final ascending scale, sung staccato—​another series of cocottes. In the coda of the aria, beginning in measure 56, the winds assume the sixteenth-​note heartbeat pulse while Gilda reverts to syllabic text declamation (still repeating the same text). Measure 60 provides a final opportunity for a cadenza and the suggested passage begins on b″ and uses scales and arpeggios to undulate through the soprano range back up to high C and C♯ and finishing with a trill before cadencing. Without high-​note interpolation—​sopranos often interpolate a staccato high D♯ in the final cadenza, and occasionally sing a high E on exiting—​Gilda’s vocal line has a high C♯ ceiling as written by Verdi. This enharmonic D♭ works well as an aural ceiling of entrapment and as a sonic echo and marker of the D♭ tragic world of Rigoletto. Martin Chusid has proposed quite convincingly that D♭ is the principal tonality of the opera. The key of the Monterone’s curse, of the “Addio” cabaletta for Gilda and the Duke, and of the end of the opera, D♭ appears in minor at the start of Gilda’s recitative and her enharmonic C♯ occurs on the final couplet of her text, in which she prophetically suggests that she belongs to the Duke. Chusid observes that “Caro nome” returns in the quartet, not only in the halting, breathless vocal lines, but also in the tonal design (he charts the almost identical harmonic outlines of the aria and quartet), as well as in the repeated palpitating violin figures. “Caro nome” truly is a prophetic moment: an intense outburst of joyful exuberance based on deception and turned to tragedy.7

68  Vocal Virtuosity Conventionally, Gilda’s cadenza would be the end of the aria, and a moment for the audience to applaud the prima donna’s singular solo moment. However, Verdi gives the audience no such opportunity. Instead, the orchestra continues, in an even sparser texture (solo winds and pp dynamic), with the broken primary theme. As Gilda begins to leave, the two solo unison violins become divisi solos separated by an octave, but still repeating the thirty-​second-​note palpitations. The hollowness of the parallel octaves resonates with the hollowness of the aria’s ending. Gilda repeats her recitative exclamations of her love’s (false) name. Then as Marullo, Ceprano, Borsa and the other cortigiani enter unseen by her, Gilda resumes singing her main melody (m. 69), but this time without the demarcating rests. Sung legato, the breathlessness vanishes, and a stark tremolo string accompaniment and E pedal provide ample evidence of a change in tone from sweet, erotic joy to anxious, ominous stasis. The solo flute and bassoon play a chromatic scale up to D♯, clashing with the E pedal, and further confirming the sinister change in harmonic and melodic affect. The stage directions in the score indicate that Gilda slowly exits climbing a staircase, bathed in the light of the lantern she holds. Peculiarly, “Caro nome” begins very nearly as it ends, with one important dramaturgical difference: Gilda begins alone, but by the end she is being watched by a group of men. These voyeuristic courtiers first sing/​whisper ppp, observing Gilda’s beauty, then disturbingly shift at the end of the aria to take on her sound world, homorhythmically singing just a bit more audibly (pp), complete with (longer) rests separating their words, just as Gilda sang her main theme. As Gilda’s voice is gradually lost while she sings leaving the stage, it is this last sickening imitation that firmly indicates the crime about to happen. The aria’s odd ending is in a sense not an ending but a disconcerting moment of watching the courtiers watch the exiting Gilda. Such was the aria’s lack of finality that one of the early interpreters of the role, Teresa De Giuli Borsi, had her husband ask Verdi to write her a more traditional aria. Verdi laughed off the request. He clearly intended the aria to lack traditional closure, altering the stage directions to allow the courtiers to fill the stage while Gilda is still singing the final phrases, giving their whispered, broken lines a sense of naturalezza.8 As Gilda leaves the stage singing a long morendo trill, the men who follow her mark the trill as tragic. And indeed, Gilda’s fioritura—​her ornaments, variations, and cadenzas—​indicate not merely her ebullient mood, but also her femininity and vulnerability to abduction and rape. Commentators on “Caro nome” tend to emphasize Gilda’s immaturity and naïveté, reflected in the strict formal constraints of her aria as well as its limited range of expression. This is precisely the sonic self-​representation that marks Gilda’s aria as uncomfortably

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  69 sweet. Gilda’s abduction in Act I immediately following her aria is onstage and, as Elizabeth Hudson has observed, dramaturgically replaces any seduction or rape scene assumed to have occurred later in the opera.9 Gilda’s empty aria and her lack of vocal independence (echoing and ornamentally weaving the same melodic pattern over and over) are exactly the markers that heighten the “wrongness” of this moment of coloratura. There seems to be a disconcerting moral to expressing female sexuality onstage here. Coloratura may seem exciting and joyfully erotic, but it is so clearly different from any other music in Rigoletto that it also portends Gilda’s abduction and eventual death. Her “last sighs” are overdone in a way that seems like her final breaths of innocence and excited vitality. My interpretation of the aria as a saccharine expression of emotion, overwrought to the point of signaling Gilda’s eventual abduction and death, is also supported by an understanding of the history of the aria’s composition. As first uncovered by Philip Gossett, much of the halting melodic theme of Gilda’s aria was sketched for another heroine in Stiffelio (1850), an opera Verdi was completing at the same time as Rigoletto was in its early stages of conception.10 Although Lina’s aria as published bears little resemblance to the discarded sketch that serves as an early draft of the musical material in Gilda’s aria, “Perder dunque voi volete” does retain a hint of the halting melody in the second phrase of the cabaletta. Roger Parker has explored the “profound implications” of this sketch’s discovery, revealing an intertextual layer to the case of Gilda and aria convention.11 Lina’s aria became more conventional in its final version, taking on the quick tempo and melodic sweep characteristic of cabalettas, while Gilda’s aria is conventional only in its use of a characteristic singing style, coloratura; the halting melody and gesturally decorative variation form are, in contrast, rather different from any other aria in Verdi’s operas. While each aria is directed toward the respective heroine’s lover, Lina’s aria is her pleading outburst to be saved from the shame of adultery, and Gilda’s, as we have seen, her solitary moment of exuberant reflection on the Duke. While their situations are seemingly very different, Parker points out that very soon after “Caro nome,” Gilda experiences many of the same emotions that Lina expresses, including a poignant duet between father and daughter. In a way, then, “Caro nome” exceeds the bounds of the familiar theme in romantic melodrama of an innocent, virtuous young woman imprisoned by her protective father in an enclosed garden.12 It exceeds these bounds because of the deception on which Gilda’s love is predicated and because of her marked and excessive singing style.

70  Vocal Virtuosity

Violetta “È strano! . . . Ah fors’è lui . . . Follie! . . . Sempre libera,” Violetta’s double aria from Act I of La traviata (1853), first performed by Fanny Salvini-​Donatelli (1815–​1891) È strano! In core Scolpiti ho quegli accenti! Saria per me sventura un serio amore? Che risolvi, o turbata anima mia? Null’uomo ancora t’accendeva. O gioia, Ch’io non conobbi—​esser amata amando! E sdegnarla poss’io Per l’aride follie del viver mio?

It’s strange! On my heart his words are burned! Would a serious love be a tragedy for me? What do you decide, oh my anguished soul? No man has ever made me fall in love. O joy that I’ve never known—​to be loved, loving! And can I scorn it for the arid nonsense of my present life?

Ah fors’è lui che l’anima Solinga ne’ tumulti Godea sovente pingere De’ suoi colori occulti! Lui che modesto e vigile All’egre soglie ascese, E nuova febbre accese, Destandomi all’amor, A quell’amor ch’è palpito Dell’universo intero—​ Misterioso, altero, Croce e delizia al cor. A me, fanciulla, un candido E trepido desire Quest’effigiò dolcissimo Signor dell’avvenire. Quando ne’cieli il raggio Di sua beltà vedea E tutta me pascea Di quell divino error. Sentia che amore è il palpito Dell’universo intero, Misterioso, altero, Croce e delizia al cor. Ah!

Ah, perhaps he is the one whom my soul, lonely in the tumult, loved to imagine in secrecy! Watchful though I never knew, he came here while I lay sick, awakening a new fever, the fever of love, of love which is the very breath of the universe itself—​ mysterious and noble, both cross and delight of my heart. For me, when still a young girl, a timid desire marked this kind man as lord of my life. When in the heavens I saw his beauteous radiance my whole existence fed upon that divine illusion. Feeling that love is the heartbeat of the universe itself mysterious and noble, both cross and delight of my heart. Ah!

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  71 Follie! Delirio vano è questo! Povera donna, sola, Abbandonata in questo Popoloso deserto Che appellano Parigi, Che spero or più? Che far degg’io! Gioire Di voluttà ne’ vortici, Di voluttà perir! Gioir! Ah!

Follies! This is vain delirium! A poor woman, alone, abandoned in this crowded desert which is known as Paris, what can I hope for? What should I do? Revel in the whirl of pleasure, die of pleasure! Revel in joy! Ah!

Sempre libera degg’io Folleggiare di gioia in gioia, Vo’ che scorra il viver mio Pei sentieri del piacer. Nasca il giorno, o il giorno muoia, Sempre lieta ne ritrovi. Ah! A diletti sempre nuovi Dee volare il mio pensier.

Forever free, I must act like a madwoman from joy to joy. My life’s course shall be forever in the paths of pleasure. Whether it be dawn or dusk, always happy wherever I am. Ah! To new pleasures my thoughts always fly, ever seeking newer joys.

In La traviata, Violetta’s only instances of coloratura are found in her Act I double aria solo scene. This scene explores many of the important anxieties and thoughts Violetta will confront for the remainder of the opera. Having just fallen in love with Alfredo (as in Rigoletto, they sang a duet in the previous scene), Violetta sends the tenor away with a flower as a whirling onstage waltz concludes. After a brief chorus, Violetta is then alone onstage to ponder her situation (Example 2.2). Such a soliloquy is by no means unusual in early and mid-​nineteenth-​century Italian opera, but the conventional form and singing style(s) in this scene point to the ominous nature of Violetta’s situation. The introductory recitative begins a cappella and is strongly appoggiatura-​ driven. Violetta’s uncertainty and self-​questioning shade this opening. She has trouble believing that Alfredo loves her, doubting the feelings in her heart. Her first musings at the strangeness of these feelings lead to a mimetic treatment of the word “accenti.” In addition to being the goal of the notated crescendo, the accented (second) syllable of the word is heightened by its musical setting as an appoggiatura. The strength of this musical representation of an accent paints the depth of Alfredo’s imprint on her heart. The pp orchestral comment represents Violetta’s interior self, her heart skipping beats. Her second phrase

72  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 2.2  Violetta’s opening recitative “È strano . . .,” from her double aria in La traviata (1853), mm. 1–​22

(m. 6), in which she wonders whether an actual love would be a tragedy for her, is answered by palpitating strings. The remainder of the recitative is primarily unaccompanied, with only slight asides from the orchestra, first echoing the palpitations and then providing punctuation to Violetta’s further questions. Already in this recitative, three words stand out as key to understanding the subsequent sections of this double aria:  “core,” “gioia,” and “follie.” Violetta, I would argue, compels her heart to turn from sadness and confusion to a forced joy. Her constant questioning, her mood shifts, and in particular, her efforts to expel Alfredo’s voice from her mind also suggest that we are intended to view this as a mad scene. Violetta’s heart is musically represented by the orchestra in her andantino, which is appropriately in the French couplets form rather than the Italian cantabile. The short, stark introduction is redolent of Gilda’s aria with its series of pp staccato upward arpeggio sweeps played by the flutes, clarinets, and solo oboe. However, the primary material of the andantino is a typical lament. The strings provide a plodding, funereal, heavy-​hearted accompaniment to Violetta’s pathetic melody, which begins with a halting descent (with rests separating the first

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  73 four syllables). The melodic material of the A, F-​minor section of the andantino is in canto di maniera style (Example 2.3). Ex. 2.3  “Ah, fors’è lui . . .,” opening of Andantino section of Violetta’s double aria, mm.  27–​34

There is a halting, hesitant quality that suggests Violetta’s self-​doubt at the beginning of the section, but also a general musical sadness that pervades the section and colors the love as already somehow weighted by looming trouble. Her first verse details how Alfredo gave her a new fever (one that compounds the illness—​consumption—​that will be the eventual cause of her death). In Violetta’s mind, her new love is also a sickness, one from which she is not sure she can recover. Her andantino is sad in affect, but is also colored with sweetness (the legato portion of the opening melody is notated dolcissimo), indicative of her love for Alfredo. The second half of the andantino (m. 51) breaks with convention by reintroducing material from an earlier scene: Violetta sings the melody and text from her duet with Alfredo, the portion “A quell’amor ch’è palpito” (Example 2.4). This Ex. 2.4  Transition into “A quell’amor . . .,” second half of Andantino section, mm.  43–​54

74  Vocal Virtuosity love music shows very literally the conflict in Violetta’s heart between love as a cross and also as a delight. The earlier section ends on the dominant, allowing Violetta to pivot into F-​major with a swelled half-​step from e″ to f ″. A slow scalar ascent to the B section suggests Violetta’s deliberate and labored effort to rise to the happier side of love, as she reminisces about her time with Alfredo. The singing style is more legato and cantabile, in canto di spianato style. While in major mode, there is a sense of resoluteness that she must bear the “croce” of love. In singing these lines, alone, Violetta claims her own heart to be that which feels this conflict most profoundly. The second verse is an imagined memory that likens her love to a divine error rather than to a new fever. The same reminiscence from the duet completes this first movement, which closes with a cadenza elaborating on the delight felt in her heart. By ending in a major key and focusing primarily on the ecstasy she feels in her heart, knowing she is loved, Violetta sets herself up for the inevitable rearticulation of conflict in the tempo di mezzo (Example 2.5). Violetta at first utterly dismisses such a conflict as madness. In the pregnant pause of the fermata rest at the end of the andantino (mm. 116–​117, prolonged in live performance by inescapable audience applause), the soprano needs to transition to this new thought, that the happy future she envisioned with Alfredo is impossible. Unlike the confusion of the introductory recitative, in the tempo di mezzo Violetta becomes convinced that she will eventually be abandoned by Alfredo and marooned in the “popoloso deserto” of Paris. This allegro accompagnato recitative is again appoggiatura-​driven and centered on c″, until Violetta stops to ask herself what she should do. She decides on a life of pleasure, amplifying the thrust from a questioning, intense German sixth to E♭-​major on “gioire” (which will be the dominant of the cabaletta’s key). Rather than worry, Violetta suddenly decides that she will be happy, eventually dying in a whirl of pleasure, even dying of pleasure (“Di voluttà nei vortici, di voluttà perir!”). In this seemingly spontaneous and yet firm turn from confusion, sadness, and madness to joy, Violetta also shifts in singing style to coloratura. The cadenza on “wild” (m. 132, “vortici”) is awkward, whirling to paint the word, but also portraying Violetta’s mental acrobatics in attempting to rationalize her emotional state. Violetta loses herself in vocality just as she loses herself in the delusion that she can somehow disengage completely from her earlier concerns. Her desire to immerse herself in selfish joy is such that she wants to die in it. This is the cue that her joy truly is forced. After another fermata rest, Violetta changes character again, from vigorous declamation to dolce melismas on “gioir” (mm. 133–​136). Together, these melismas are in fact another cadenza that leads right into the cabaletta. These yelps of joy are almost impossible to sing sweetly. Perhaps Verdi set them to begin high on B♭ to show the strain of forcing joy and sweetness.

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  75 Ex. 2.5  Tempo di mezzo of Violetta’s double aria, mm. 113–​136

Indeed, it is commonly understood that the entire role of Violetta is very difficult, precisely because of the many singing styles required.13 Additionally, one may interpret several moments in this particular scene as ones of consciously composed vocal strain. For example, because of its difficulty, John Rosselli calls the coloratura in this scene “hazardous,” not for Violetta’s character but for the soprano singing the role.14 And Rodolfo Celletti considers Violetta’s later “waltz” coloratura and “neurotic rhythm” to require such difficult and rapid passagework that it obliges the soprano to execute the passages “often practically without time to catch her breath.”15 There is thus a fascinating overlap between the breathing

76  Vocal Virtuosity concerns of the soprano playing Violetta and the character’s concerns in her consumptive state. Verdi further makes the vocal line strenuous by placing the bulk of the high melismatic material (up to D♭) on an [i]‌vowel. Sopranos today simply switch to an “ah” to avoid the stridency of the [i] on high notes. Such a puntatura—​a vocalist’s adjustment to a melodic line to make it easier to sing—​may not have been part of the performance tradition in Verdi’s time, as the stridency of vowel choice and tessitura adds to the sense of tension in this extended joy cadenza. Whether together with Alfredo or not, Violetta tries to convince herself that she must be happy and focus on seeking new pleasures. Joy comes at a high cost—​emotionally for Violetta the character, and physically for the soprano performer. In the A♭-​major cabaletta “Sempre libera,” Violetta’s singing style is canto di bravura (Example 2.6). The brillante style is suggested by the Allegro brillante tempo marking as well as in the vocal line (“assai brillante”). The cabaletta is frenzied, and though in , seems to recall the whirling waltzes of earlier in the act. This makes sense when considering the source for Piave’s libretto, Alexandre Dumas fils’ La Dame aux camélias (1847).16 In the story, Marguerite (Violetta) has the thought that the love she feels is an ill-​omen, but dismisses it and determines that she can and will continue to feel joy. Afterward, at the urgings of her friends, she plays a waltz on the piano, a type of piece for which she was known. Her friends dance and her friend Prudence ends the act by fainting after all the intense whirling. A certain waltz character also seems buried in the compositional history of the cabaletta, which was originally sketched in .17 The real-​life inspiration for Marguerite, Marie Duplessis, was known as a seductive dancer of the waltz in particular, further inscribing the waltz as symbol of Paris, femininity, and even danger in La traviata.18 Violetta’s forced joy and whirling cabaletta make even more sense when considered in the context of the story’s original source. As she begins to sing, Violetta says that she feels she must act like a madwoman (“folleggiare”) to continue feeling joy and remain free. After a descent down to c′ on “muoia” (m. 154), Violetta then quickly rises up to a forte high C on “ritrovi,” reemphasizing that she must remain happy. The high note is again set on an [i]‌vowel, and again, this vowel is never performed as such, but is instead changed via aggiustamento (vowel modification) to “ah.” This unaccented syllable as well as the unimportant “dee” are accented musically with high notes. Violetta’s expression of joy turns the vowels to vocalises, screams of delight. The first verse of the cabaletta ends with a melismatic word painting on “volar” (“to fly”), with rising cascades of scales that at their height descend from high D♭ (mm. 168–​170). Rather than proceeding to a repeat of the orchestral interlude, Alfredo’s voice from under the balcony (m. 172, “sotto il balcone”) interrupts the frenzied momentum and repeats his cantabile from their earlier duet (the same that

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  77 Ex. 2.6  “Sempre libera,” first half of cabaletta of Violetta’s double aria, mm. 144–​193

Violetta sang in her andantino). He effectively halts her joyful abandon, textually reminding her of their love and the inherent concerns it creates and musically forcing her out of the brillante/​bravura mode. Alfredo’s vocal entrance interrupts her thoughts and diverts her back to the tempo di mezzo (“Follie”). Again, Violetta berates herself for her feelings and crazed thoughts and then forces herself back to joy with even more melismatic force.

78  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 2.6 Continued

The cabaletta repeats with the addition of a coda (Example 2.7). In this coda, Alfredo again sings the same music and text, and Violetta again tries to sing him out of her head. It is unclear from the stage directions whether it is actually Alfredo talking to her in the distance or his voice heard in her mind. Productions tend to position Alfredo backstage for his singing, making him heard but not seen; Violetta often covers her ears when Alfredo sings. The source of sound (Alfredo himself or his voice in Violetta’s head) remains ambiguous, though in a 2011 Aix-​en-​Provence production directed by Jean-​ François Sivadier, a supernumerary Alfredo double is onstage with Violetta (Natalie Dessay) while the cast Alfredo (Charles Castronovo) sings backstage for the first interruptions, and then Alfredo himself is onstage for the final interruptions, as his physical and vocal presence is a manifestation of Violetta’s tormented thoughts that then seemingly becomes real at the end of the aria when he kisses her.19

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  79 Ex. 2.7  End of Violetta’s cabaletta, mm. 222–​246

Regardless, in order to rid herself of these thoughts or aural hallucinations, Violetta sings a series of tiratas (ascending scales) on “dee volar” (beginning at m. 223).20 It is as if she uses fiery melismas and canto di slancio to force her rational thoughts out, to silence the voices.21 The scales lead up to two measures of syncopated, repeated, accented notes, first on a″ then on high C (c‴) (mm. 226–​ 227 and 234–​235). The descent from these high notes takes the form of fast sospira gestures. Too fast to be sighs, these gestures give the impression of desperate, crazed laughter and are even more crazed the second time, when contorted in the midst of their descent. This melismatic and syncopated coda is very difficult, and the laughing gestures very often sound strained in performance. Trills on

80  Vocal Virtuosity “il” lead Violetta back upwards to high C on “pensier” (m. 244), which is often followed by a leap up to an interpolated E♭ above high C (e♭‴), now traditional performance practice.22 Whether the E♭ is taken or not, Violetta ends the act successfully banishing Alfredo’s voice from her mind by means of coloratura. Verdi’s alignment of coloratura and irrational forced joy at this moment again suggests that the singing style is an omen of eventual tragedy for the prima donna. Verdi uses coloratura to show that something is not quite right, that we cannot take Violetta at her word. She is not actually joyful—​she knows she is doomed. In order to avoid and deny her feelings of love for Alfredo and her despair over her own phthisic fate (dying of consumption), Violetta forces herself to feel joyful. Indeed, as I mentioned at the start of this chapter, one of the sopranos Verdi deemed suitable for the role (and who eventually performed it many times), Virginia Boccabadati (1828–​1922), wrote that “in the first act one experiences a false cheerfulness.”23 The aria turns into a mad scene. Several aspects of the tempo di mezzo and cabaletta reinforce this interpretation. First, there are several literal references to madness in the text (“follie,” “delirio,” “folleggiare,” etc.). Although “follie” and “folleggiare” can certainly be translated as “madness” and “to act like a madperson,” the Italian words can also connote lighter meanings having more to do with wild, reckless behavior at parties, thoughtlessness, and silliness. It is certainly possible that, given the Parisian party setting of La traviata, Violetta may intend this lighter connotation, especially given that most Violettas insert a diegetic, gleeful laugh just before the cabaletta.24 It is also possible that the more archaic definitions of “falling prey to the violent passion of love” and “loving to the point of madness” may apply here as part of a love-​joy-​madness vocabulary.25 Second, Violetta’s almost maniacal struggle with her feelings for Alfredo also manifests in the offstage voice of Alfredo. Offstage voices, whether hallucinations or not, often trigger irrational, crazed responses, perhaps especially in opera, as in the case of Elvira in Bellini’s I Puritani (1835). Finally, and most strikingly, Violetta decides to will herself to be happy with coloratura. The launching tiratas and subsequent frenzied laughter at a high tessitura are perhaps the most indicative musical examples of Violetta’s madness in this scene. Manuel Garcia II has noted that sung laughter in serious operas is often used as an indicator of madness—​observing that laughter is a kind of convulsive spasm characterized by frequent, rapid, and loud breath renewal—​making Verdi’s use of staccato, delirious laughter in this cabaletta all the more convincingly a mad scene.26 In light of the presumed intervening months of happiness living with Alfredo between Acts I and II, Violetta’s mad scene is seemingly ignored until it returns in Act III, when she sings her farewell aria in a slow waltz, and later dies in one final burst of ecstasy and hallucination. Her death scene is noticeably reminiscent of the madness in her double aria: a solo violin plays the same melody that Alfredo

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  81 sang from offstage during “Sempre libera,” cuing another “è strano” utterance from Violetta as she experiences a feeling of reinvigoration that leads her to sing “gioia” one final time. Again, the feeling is false, the sensation of “rinasce,” an illusion. The reiteration of the melody along with these key words implies a kind of moralizing to Violetta’s tale, one that ends with her dying because of this false joy.

Hélène “Merci, jeunes amies,” Hélène’s Sicilienne from Act V of Les Vêpres siciliennes (1855), first performed by Sophie Cruvelli (1826–​1907) Merci, jeunes amies, De ces présents si doux! Dont les fleurs si jolies Sont moins fraîches que vous. Ô chaîne fortunée Et plus chère à mes yeux Alors que l’hyménée S’embellit de vos voeux.

Thank you, young friends, for these sweet gifts! To me, these pretty flowers are less fresh than you. Oh happy union and even dearer to me now that my wedding is graced with your good wishes.

Ah! Rêve divin! heureux délire! Mon coeur sourit à vos accents! Hymen céleste! qui respire Les fleurs, l’amour et le printemps!

Ah! Divine dream, happy delirium! My heart smiles to hear you! Heavenly marriage! You who breathe the flowers, love, and spring!

Rives siciliennes, Sur vos bords enchanteurs, Assez longtemps les haines Ont désunis les coeurs. D’espoir toute joyeuse, Puissé-​je, ô mes amies, Voir ma patrie heureuse Le jour, où je le suis . . . Ah! Rêve divin! heureux délire! etc.

Sicilian coast, on your enchanting shores, hate has long enough disunited hearts. Joyous hope, may I see, oh my friends, my homeland happy the same day I am happy, too . . . Ah! Divine dream, happy delirium! etc.

Hélène’s Sicilienne is the second of three atmospheric pieces that begin the fifth and final act of Verdi’s Les Vêpres siciliennes. Set in the luxurious gardens of Montfort’s palace in Palermo, the three pieces are all seemingly celebratory in

82  Vocal Virtuosity character, each rejoicing after Henri has submitted by calling Monfort his father at the end of Act IV, thereby guaranteeing clemency for the prisoners who had been sentenced to death. Hélène sings of her gratitude for the well-​wishes and is transported to joyous delirium because her chance for marriage has been saved. Of course, the joy is premature; the joining of the two in matrimony is the cue for the French to be massacred. In actuality, this “Sicilienne” is not a sicilienne (the French term for the Italian siciliana), but a bolero. Usually in minor mode, the sicilienne is a duple-​ time dance number in , , or sometimes . While in A-​minor, “Merci, jeunes amies” is definitely a bolero, complete with triple time () and a strong bolero accompanimental rhythmic pattern. Of course, such a forceful rhythmic pattern was common in bel canto cabalettas as well as in Verdi’s; “Di quella pira” in Il trovatore, for example, has been called a bolero.27 When considering intersections between social and theatrical dance, the presence of triple time and strong, persistent accompanimental rhythms can often lead one to call anything with such qualities a dance aria.28 Yet it is unclear why Verdi would have labeled the piece “Sicilienne” in the score (it is labeled “Bolero” in the libretto). Perhaps because he was composing the opera specifically for French audiences, the choice of a bolero (but without a title) was sufficiently exotic, even though the bolero itself is of Andalusian origin. Or perhaps Verdi thought of the bolero as a genre analogous to the siciliana in the sense that both were dance genres with southern Mediterranean roots but also genres that were greatly affected by more inland influence—​the siciliana in Italy and the bolero in France. Regardless, though the Sicilienne label remains confounding (is the label is simply a reference to the opera’s title?), all commentators on the piece agree that it is a bolero. Providing some gestural couleur locale, this bolero fits well with the vogue for sung dance arias in French operas of the 1850s.29 Just as individual sopranos were responsible for perpetuating and extending the art of coloratura, so too were individual female dancers the source of the craze for Spanish dances in early nineteenth-​century Paris. When Théophile Gautier exclaimed that “Spanish dances exist only in Paris,” he referred to a process by which Parisians donned the costume of Spanish style, exoticizing their subject.30 In mid-​century Paris, the one musical type that could reliably convey everything “Spanish” was the bolero. The dancer Fernanda Lefebre gallicized the bolero when she and her troupe visited Seville in the 1810s.31 Originally a popular genre in Spain, the bolero also became part of a tradition of social dances cultivated as stage dances in the theatrical escuela bolera (the “bolero school”). Fanny Elssler brought the cachucha and bolero from commercial French theaters to the stage of the Opéra for the first time in 1836 in the ballet-​pantomime Le Diable boiteux. In the 1830s, Dolores Serral further popularized the dance with sensational performances at the Opéra

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  83 carnival balls and at the Théâtre du Palais-​Royal and the Théâtre des Variétés. The passionate Serral was the leading exponent of the bolero and cachucha, according to Gautier, who described her in particularly suggestive language: She weaves her arms as though swooning from love, and bends back her head as if intoxicated by the scent and unwilling to bear the weight of the large rose that blooms in the mass of her black hair. Her body curves with a nervous shiver, as if she were turning on the arm of her lover, then she sinks down, brushing the floor with her arms while still playing the castanets, only to spring up, quick and alert as a bird, darting a sparkling laugh at her partner.32

By the time the bolero reached Parisian opera audiences, it already appeared to blend domestic and foreign cultures, and to some it even seemed more French than Spanish.33 Kerry Murphy has observed that the bolero was danced everywhere in popular music venues in Paris, such as salons, but that in Spain the bolero was not danced in the ballroom.34 James Parakilas even suggests that Chopin learned about writing polonaises from his Parisian exposure to the bolero, because of the rhythmic similarities between the two dance genres.35 (The earliest boleros took on characteristics very similar to the traditional polonaise rhythm, so much so that Verdi’s bolero was sometimes referred to as a polonaise in the contemporary French press.) In addition to connoting a sexually charged atmosphere, the bolero also had distinct associations with femininity.36 The term itself most likely derives from the verb volar, meaning “to fly,” and from the name boleras, given to the Gypsy women who first danced it. Originating in the courts and theaters of Spain in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the bolero rapidly became a popular dance and remained so, spreading throughout Europe during the nineteenth century. The dance probably derived from the seguidilla, which features similar accompanying rhythms and movements as well as the same sung verse form. After absorbing steps from the fandango, tirana, and cachucha, the bolero emerged featuring a very quick tempo along with the two-​verse form. Danced in many combinations of couples, the bolero often consisted of alternating solo and couple-​dancing. The solo, often performed by a woman, is characterized by complicated steps and fast movements including the cuarta—​executing a leap by kicking and crossing the feet—​and battement—​a bell kick in which the lifted leg is struck against the standing leg. In a solo version or section (the part most often aligned with the cachucha), the female performer can also accompany herself with castanets, and most important for our context, with singing, often a melismatic vocalise. In the French popular imagination, Spanish dance represented Spain. During the Second Empire, Spanish presence in Paris intensified because of Napoléon

84  Vocal Virtuosity III’s Spanish wife, Empress Eugénie. As a result, many arrangements of boleros, tiranas, and Andalusian songs were published and popularized by the many Spanish composers and performers who resided in Paris. Spanish songs were often performed in salons, most notably those written by Eugénie’s voice teacher, Sebastián Iradier. French composers naturally picked up on this vogue for all things Spanish, and proceeded to take advantage of the taste for boleros especially. Boleros became a crucial component of a stereotypical or even false couleur locale and—​along with waltzes and polkas—​were frequently present in opéras comiques of the Second Empire.37 Spanish dance was one of the most prevalent signifiers of the exotic at the Opéra-​Comique. Alluring whether choreographed or sung, the bolero was part of the visual spectacle, libretto, and music of exotic-​themed operas, but as Hervé Lacombe has claimed, before Carmen (1875) there was a clear distancing effect evident in these exotic scenes, a particularly problematic effect in the case of the exotic woman. The woman evincing Spanish color was reduced in mid-​century opéra comique to mere entertainment or divertissement for the audience, whether it was laughing at or criticizing the exotic spectacle.38 At the same time, when women began to sing boleros as solo arias in the 1850s, their performances often stopped the show because audiences demanded encores. Prominent examples confirming the vogue for the operatic bolero aria are found in operas such as Henri Reber’s Le Carillonneur de Bruges (1852) and Louis Clapisson’s La Fanchonnette (1856). As we will see in Chapter 4, the role of Fanchonnette in particular illustrates the connection between coloratura and the bolero. Therefore, Verdi must have realized the wisdom in acquiescing to Parisian taste, in writing the bolero for Les Vêpres siciliennes. Unlike a case that I will explore in the next chapter (Meyerbeer’s Dinorah), however, there is no staging or prescribed dancing for Hélène, so we do not know if the soprano danced as well as sang. The original livret de mise en scène indicates that Hélène should move to the front of the stage to sing her aria, but that is the extent of the stage directions for her.39 Like most boleros, Verdi’s “Merci, jeunes amies” is in AAB form (also a nod to French couplets), and like the sung sections of Spanish boleros, the vocal entry is preceded by the sharply marked bolero rhythm and the verses are introduced and separated by instrumental interludes. The instrumental ritornello consists of two iterations of the paseo phrase, with a processional or promenade character (Example 2.8), first played loudly and thickly with brass punctuations and then softly with only strings and winds. The strings then establish the basic underlying bolero accompaniment pattern at a pp dynamic, allowing the soprano to enter “avec grâce.” The first vocal phrase is repeated (with different text) and has

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  85 Ex. 2.8  Introduction to Hélène’s bolero, “Merci, jeunes amies,” from Verdi’s Les Vêpres siciliennes (1855)

an ornamental melodic character, with most syllables set to two or more pitches (Example 2.9). The phrase only allows emphasis on certain downbeats: the peak of the arch-​like melodic contour (on the downbeat of m. 13) and the cadential move at the end of the phrase (m. 15). The glided stepwise ascent from a′ to b′ from the middle of m. 13 to m. 14 sets up the offbeat decorative gestures in m. 14. All this highlights the floral imagery in the text (the “fleurs jolies”). The second melodic phrase, in the relative major, is also iterated twice and the vocal line has characteristic chanteuse légère grace note figures in a descending scalar cascade, intended to be sung “très doux.” After these phrases, Verdi moves back to A-​minor, reintroducing the opening melodic material in truncated form in the flutes and oboes and then by the soprano. Two of the halved phrases, lingering on the word “merci,” lead into a transition to A-​major and coloratura mode, heralded by an “ah” trill on e″ (m. 33). The second half of the A section uses the ornaments of the first half, such as the grace note figures and the turning figures of the ritornello, as well as staccato articulation and glides of a fourth to heighten the delirium of the “Rêve divin!” refrain. This switch to coloratura and “delirium” mode is striking, not only for the switch in singing style and tonality, but also textually. As Andreas Giger has observed, a change in poetic meter from six to eight syllables reflects the change in Hélène’s focus from her wedding day as a possible reality to expressing delirium and joy. Giger also points out that Verdi scanned the verse against some tonic accents in the bolero in order to better convey the dance feel and local color.40 Momentum and bravura singing build as the turning figures lead to ribatutte syncopation on g″ on the second syllable of “l’amour” (m. 46). This spins out into a melismatic cascade of five turns that culminates in a re-​ascent by tirata up to b″. The onstage chorus joins the orchestra on the ritornello, praising both Sicily and France. Hélène then sings her second verse, set to the same music and still focusing on happiness and her gratitude. After the second refrain, the choral-​orchestral ritornello is elided to the B section or coda, in which Hélène remains generally in A-​major and continues to sing

86  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 2.9  Opening vocal section of Hélène’s bolero, mm. 11–​50

the text of the refrain, but with more vocalizing than declaiming (Example 2.10). It is interesting that the text most ornamented by fioritura is that in which Hélène turns her attention inwards, toward herself. She is almost in disbelief at her fortune and the sounds of the onstage music and joyous delirium make her tremble. The delirium is heightened by the focus on s­ yncopated turning patterns in the

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  87 Ex. 2.10  Coloratura coda of Hélène’s bolero, mm. 103–​124

coda that not only mirror dance steps but also reflect Hélène’s dizzy state of elation. Three measures of syncopation (mm. 103–​105) lead back into another tirata, more syncopation, and then a cascata (descending scale) from high C♯ that travels, via additional turns, down more than two octaves to low A (a). It is this long descent (mm. 108–​110) that is a sure sign of Hélène’s almost irrational happiness. Crazed, ascending turns wend their way upwards to an F♯-​minor center that prepares another trill (this time on F♯). Hélène’s trill leaps unexpectedly back up to high C♯ with a staccato cascata, varied but still descending over two octaves. Finally, Hélène finishes on a prolonged e″ trill (similar to her transition into coloratura mode) followed by a leap up to a″. Various modifications of the last phrase in common performance tradition climax with a sustained high E (e‴) that further heightens the cadential, climaxing effect. Such a high note might have been interpolated more commonly when the aria was performed as a concert piece or as an insertion aria. It is conceivable that such a difference in affective tone as well as pitch tessitura was an intentional move on Verdi’s part to highlight the out-​of-​place nature of the aria. Indeed, Hélène’s hope for happiness is just that—​merely a misplaced hope. The reception of the bolero suggests that it was a welcome moment of lightness for the audience, who consistently demanded it be encored. Such was its difference in musical affect that the act was deemed to be lacking in stylistic unity and elevated character (“Le cinquième acte manque d’unité de style et d’élévation

88  Vocal Virtuosity de caractère”).41 The bolero itself was often singled out in the press as a musical jewel (“ce bijou musical”) for its freshness, charm, and show of vocalization.42 The original interpreter, Sophie Cruvelli, was lauded for her powerful voice and for her striking ornaments and final cadenza. Cruvelli’s high range was compared to that of Marie Cabel, and this implies that Cruvelli’s “audacieux point d’orgue” might have flown into the whistle-​voice stratosphere.43 Interestingly, the bolero was a late addition to the score of Les Vêpres. The confusing compositional history of the opera’s fifth act has been detailed by scholars such as Julian Budden, Andrew Porter, and Anselm Gerhard.44 Although we do not have a conclusive answer as to how the aria came to be added, we do know that Verdi was dissatisfied with Scribe’s first attempts writing the last act. In his first efforts, Scribe provided very conventional material, including a grand aria for Hélène as well as for Henri that further explored their mixed feelings of festivity and pensive foreboding. Procida had a brief exchange with Hélène that would have fueled her fears about marrying Henri, while Henri continued his revels. Verdi was unhappy with this straightforward regurgitating of past conflicts and clichéd use of the chorus as a mere backdrop. As Porter and Gerhard have concluded, the composer took the initiative to bury all allusions to Hélène and Henri’s mental distress. He had Scribe write the text of “Merci, jeunes amies” to the rhythms of Hélène’s Act IV romance “Ami, le coeur d’Hélène.” This may be another reason the music of the bolero seems set against some of the poetry’s tonic accents. Mary Ann Smart has taken a different interpretive approach, preferring to see Hélène as more directed and empowered in Act I of the opera than in her bolero, in which Smart sees Hélène’s agency dissolved. Smart sees the bolero moment as utterly conventional, superficial, and “French.” This works with my interpretation that the aria disguises the doom to come, but Smart understands Hélène to be undone and erased vocally: she “continues to be idealized as a faceless symbol, but in this last aria she becomes a symbol of a more familiar variety, participating unprotestingly in French opera’s voyeuristic mode of representing its heroines.”45 I take the familiarity of the symbol of Hélène’s bolero as providing a subtext, via a dance aria and melismatic vocalism, presaging catastrophe. The chorus preceding the bolero provides Mediterranean color with castanets and an almost waltz-​like tempo. By insisting that Scribe eliminate the lovers’ anxieties from the text and by using an ebullient dance aria to rouse the audience onstage and off, Verdi places the burden of the warning subtext on generic and vocal markedness: a seemingly out-​of-​place Spanish dance and its florid vocalizing. I contend that, as in Gilda and Violetta’s arias, coloratura in Hélène’s bolero serves as a warning sign that the elation performed is not to be trusted; the subdued and lengthy instrumental closing add to the sense of

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  89 foreboding. With these three cases, Verdi forced the coloratura to have a subtext beyond joy and madness, a subtext that renders the singing style as almost a topos of its own. * * * The process by which middle-​period Verdi marks coloratura as troublesome and French before the composer avoided the singing style in his later works aligns his view of melismatic singing with Richard Wagner, who also marked coloratura as a topos. That Wagner thought of coloratura as Italian and French, non-​German, and even a danger to German art has been suggested by Marc Weiner, who explores the composer’s treatment of the singing style in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868).46 The Jewish character, Beckmesser, sings brief melismas that praise coloratura in order to denigrate Walther’s song in Act I. Weiner argues that in this scene, Wagner marks coloratura as different and foreign, even intending that later brief melismatic passages signify Jewish synagogue chanting.47 Beyond the important point about Wagner’s anti-​Semitism that Weiner makes, Wagner distances himself and modern music from the old style of melismatic singing, so much so that Beckmesser’s coloratura is banished by the end of the opera. By engaging in this explicit distancing from coloratura, Wagner and the late Verdi claim that their music is modern because it eschews an obsolescent singing style. But by leaving the dangerous style in the hands and voices of French composers and singers, they also allow the space for coloratura’s path forward into modernity, in the singing of the modern French coloratura soprano.

Notes 1. Susan Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–​ 1930 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 198. 2. See Emanuele Senici, “Verdi’s Luisa, a Semiserious Alpine Virgin,” 19th-​Century Music 22 (1998): 144–​68, at 157. 3. One of Verdi’s other French operas, Don Carlos (1867, rev. 1884), also features a singular coloratura moment: Eboli’s Veil Song. “Au palais des fées” features couleur locale in the orchestral accompaniment and Eboli’s coloratura in the aria can be connected to the French tradition of coloratura mezzo-​soprano roles. 4. For recent explorations of verismo operas, see Andreas Giger, “Verismo:  Origin, Corruption, and Redemption of an Operatic Term,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 60 (2007): 271–​315; Matteo Sansone, “Verismo,” in Grove Music Online, 2001, http://​www.oxfordmusiconline.com (Accessed 10 June 2020); and Arman Schwartz, “Rough Music:  Tosca and Verismo Reconsidered,” 19th-​Century

90  Vocal Virtuosity Music 31 (2008): 228–​44. For one example of a lingering moment of coloratura see Leonora’s cavatina in an old-​fashioned “number” opera, La contessa d’Amalfi (1861) by Verdi’s contemporary Petrella. For more on Italian opera’s mid-​century trajectory see Julian Budden, “The Collapse of a Tradition (Italian Opera 1840–​1870),” in The Operas of Verdi:  From Il trovatore to La forza del destino, vol. II, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 1–​32. 5. The first performer of this aria, Teresa Brambilla, was part of a very musical family, and was one of the early products of the Milan Conservatory, linking her to the emerging network of conservatory-​trained singers in this period. 6. Viewing the orchestra as an inner voice or even an authorial commentary has become a familiar interpretation of Verdi’s middle-​period operas. See in particular Melina Esse’s reading of these moments as a merging of the body-​based outward aesthetic of melodrama with the psychological depth of music drama’s interiority. Melina Esse, “‘Chi piange, qual forza m’arretra?’: Verdi’s Interior Voices,” Cambridge Opera Journal 14 (2002): 59–​78, especially 62–​63. 7. See Martin Chusid, “The Tonality of Rigoletto,” in Analyzing Opera:  Verdi and Wagner, ed. Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), 241–​61. 8. See Martin Chusid, “Introduction,” in Giuseppe Verdi, Rigoletto: Melodrama in Three Acts by Francesco Maria Piave: The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, Series I, Operas, vol. 17 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983), xxv. 9. Hudson also provides an insightful exploration of Gilda’s character in relation to male authority as expressed in her duets. See Elizabeth Hudson, “Gilda Seduced: A Tale Untold,” Cambridge Opera Journal 4 (1992): 229–​51. 10. Philip Gossett, “New Sources for Stiffelio: A Preliminary Report,” Cambridge Opera Journal 5 (1993): 199–​222. 11. See Roger Parker, “Lina Kneels, Gilda Sings,” in Leonora’s Last Act: Essays in Verdian Discourse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 149–​67. That the sketch has “profound implications for our understanding of Verdi’s treatment of text and music and, more generally, his compositional process” is Gossett’s conclusion. See Gossett, “New Sources for Stiffelio,” 222. Parker explains that the libretto for Rigoletto was fairly complete before Verdi began to sketch Stiffelio; thus, the two operas were being considered simultaneously. Parker, 153. 12. The Italian music critic Abramo Basevi (1818–​1885) thought the aria might be a moment of onstage singing: that Gilda might sing when alone in one of her rooms. Basevi thus aligns coloratura and onstage singing, and he found Verdi’s exceptional use of floridity appropriate to its place in the plot, though not as pure as in earlier uses (he cites a Hasse aria sung by Farinelli as one such case). Basevi recognized that Gilda’s singing is a bit different, because “while Gilda leaves singing, the chorus of courtiers enters and is preparing to take her” (“Mentre Gilda si allontana cantando, odesi un coro di cortigiani, i quali si preparano a rapirla”). See Abramo Basevi, Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi (Florence: Tofani, 1859), 193–​94.

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  91 13. Because of the dramatic music later in the opera, the role of Violetta in our post-​ Callas era has often been performed by full lyric sopranos, rather than lighter coloratura sopranos, though this convention is perhaps changing, as coloratura sopranos Natalie Dessay and Lisette Oropesa have contributed important portrayals of the role more recently. 14. See John Rosselli, The Life of Verdi (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 110. 15. See Rodolfo Celletti, “On Verdi’s Vocal Writing,” in The Verdi Companion, ed. William Weaver and Martin Chusid (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1979), 236. 16. See Alexandre Dumas fils, La Dame aux camélias (Paris, 1847), reprinted as La Dame aux Camélias/​Alexandre Dumas fils, ed. Bernard Raffalli (Paris: Gallimard, 1975); in English as La Dame aux camélias/​Alexandre Dumas, trans. and ed. David Coward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 17. See Fabrizio Della Seta, ed., “Introduction,” in Giuseppe Verdi, La traviata, Melodramma in Three Acts, Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave: The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, Series I, Operas, vol. 19 (Chicago and London:  The University of Chicago Press, 1997), xvii. David Rosen writes that it is difficult to understand why the cabaletta was changed to , even with the alternating strong and weak groupings of three beats. See David Rosen, “Meter, Character, and Tinta in Verdi’s Operas,” in Verdi’s Middle Period, 1849–​1859:  Source Studies, Analysis, and Performance Practice, ed. Martin Chusid (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 339–​92, at 357. Rosen also notes that the opera’s waltz tinta is only apparent because of the coincidence of the Parisian setting complete with onstage music and dancing along with the prevalence of triple time pieces with waltz-​like motives. See Rosen, “Meter, Character, and Tinta,” 389. 18. For more on the waltz and its association with female sexuality, exhilaration, joy, and coloratura, see Chapter 5. For more on the connection between Paris and La traviata, see Emilio Sala, The Sounds of Paris in Verdi’s La Traviata (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 19. This production is the subject of a fascinating DVD documentary by Philippe Béziat, Becoming Traviata (Cinema Guild B00EPFMS88, 2013). 20. Art Groos has proposed that the vocal conflict between Violetta and Alfredo here is indicative of the battle between consumption (pleasure) and its cure (monogamy). See Art Groos, “‘TB Sheets’: Love and Disease in La traviata,” Cambridge Opera Journal 7 (1995): 233–​60. The ironic and ominous connection between the fever in Violetta’s mind and her consumption is also noted in Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon, Opera: Desire, Disease, Death (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 41. 21. Rutherford has argued that Verdi expanded the role of slancio vocal writing in his operas, emphasizing its fiery, brilliant, vigorous character. She also connects the importance of the feeling of slancio to the political context of mid-​century Italy. See

92  Vocal Virtuosity Susan Rutherford, Verdi, Opera, Women (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 2013), especially 41–​43. 22. Scholars have rarely explored the history of performing interpolated high notes at the ends of arias. It may not be possible to determine exactly how and when this now omnipresent practice began. Philip Gossett adamantly believes that it was not a performance practice during the first four decades of the nineteenth century, but became so by the end of the century. See Philip Gossett, “Ornamenting Rossini,” in Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 290–​331, particularly 327–​30. It is possible, then, that this practice began with the singers of the mid-​nineteenth century. As this book demonstrates, mid-​century singers such as Caroline Carvalho, Marie Cabel, and Christine Nilsson were known for their high-​ note extensions, finishing arias with stratospheric climaxes, and for their penchants for ornamentation and variations. 23. There were at least four early performers of Violetta, all originally considered for the creation. The premiere at La Fenice in Venice was a failure. The historical commonplace is that the reason for the failure—​in addition to the shocking morality of the plot as well as its setting in contemporary Paris—​was that the creator of the role of Violetta was too fat to play a consumptive woman realistically. According to at least three contemporary reviews, however, Fanny Salvini-​Donatelli (c. 1815–​1891) was actually the only lead singer who sang well at the failed premiere, and the only one to receive unanimous audience approval (curtain calls and applause). According to the reviews, the other role-​creators performed poorly, causing the disastrous reception. See Fabrizio Della Seta, ed., “Introduction,” in Giuseppe Verdi, La traviata. 24. For more on this sonic space between the tempo di mezzo and the cabaletta, and its dramatic potential in the hands of the performer, see Emma Dillon, “Violetta, Historian Verdi, ‘Sempre libera’ (Violetta), La traviata, Act I  (1853),” Cambridge Opera Journal 28 (2016): 191–​97. 25. See Salvatore Battaglia, Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, vol. 6 (Torino: Unione tipografico-​editrice torinese, 1961), 114–​15. 26. Manuel Garcia II, Traité complet de l ’art du chant (Paris, 1847), 52. Reproduced in Jeanne Roudet, III, 146. 27. See Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, “Meyerbeer and Ballet Music of the Nineteenth Century:  Some Issues of Influence with Reference to Robert le Diable,” Dance Chronicle 21 (1998): 389–​410, at 395. 28. For a brief discussion of this problem, see Marian Smith, “Drawing the Audience in: The Theatre and the Ballroom,” in Verdi in Performance, ed. Alison Latham and Roger Parker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 113–​19. 29. For more on this vogue for dance arias, see my “Dance and the Female Singer in Second Empire Opera,” 19th-​Century Music 36 (2012): 101–​21. Additionally, Verdi’s bolero became a common insertion aria. See Hilary Poriss, Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2009).

Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura  93 30. For more on this process, see James Parakilas, “How Spain Got a Soul,” in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston:  Northeastern University Press, 1998), 137–​93, at 148. 31. See Antonio Alvarez Cañibano, “The Company of the Lefebre Family in Seville,” trans. Lynn Garafola, in The Origins of the Bolero School, ed. Javier Suárez-​Pajares and Xoán M. Carreira, Studies in Dance History 4 (1993): 21–​37. 32. La Presse, 2 October 1837. Quoted and translated in Ivor Guest, “Théophile Gautier on Spanish Dancing,” Dance Chronicle 10 (1987): 1–​104, at 22. 33. See Javier Suárez-​Pajares, “Historical Overview of the Bolero from Its Beginnings to the Genesis of the Bolero School,” trans. Aurelio de la Vega, in The Origins of the Bolero School, 1–​21, at 17–​18. 34. See Kerry Murphy, “Carmen: Couleur Locale or the Real Thing?” in Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer:  Paris, 1830–​1914, ed. Annegret Fauser and Mark Everist (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2009), 293–​315. See also Celsa Alonso, “La réception de la chanson espagnole dans la musique française du XIXe siècle,” in Échanges musicaux franco-​espagnols, XVIIe–​XIXe siècles:  Actes des rencontres de Villecroze, ed. François Lesure (Paris:  Klincksieck, 2000), 123–​60; and Hervé Lacombe, “L’Espagne à Paris au milieu de XIXe siècle (1847–​1857):  L’influence d’artistes espagnols sur l’imaginaire parisien et la construction d’une ‘hispanicité,’” Revue de musicologie 88 (2002): 389–​431. 35. See Parakilas, “How Spain Got a Soul,” 150–​51. 36. For more on the dance’s origins, its manifestations, history, and associations with Spain, see Marina Grut, The Bolero School:  An Illustrated History of the Bolero, the Seguidillas, and the Escuela Bolera:  Syllabus and Dances (Alton, UK:  Dance Books, 2002). 37. Murphy observes a backlash against this casual orientalizing, as too common to give a sense of place. See Murphy, “Carmen: Couleur Locale or the Real Thing?,” 309. 38. Hervé Lacombe, “The Writing of Exoticism in the Libretti of the Opéra-​Comique, 1825–​1862,” Cambridge Opera Journal 11 (1999): 135–​58, at 158. 39. See the staging manual reprinted in H. Robert Cohen, The Original Staging Manuals for Twelve Parisian Operatic Premières (Stuyvesant, NY:  Pendragon Press, 1991), 263–​82. 40. See Andreas Giger, Verdi and the French Aesthetic:  Verse, Stanza, and Melody in Nineteenth-​Century Opera (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), at 27 and 122 respectively. 41. P.-​A. Fiorentino, Le Constitutionnel, 15 June 1855, reprinted in Giuseppe Verdi, Les Vêpres siciliennes:  Dossier de presse parisienne (1855), ed. Hervé Gartioux (Heilbronn: Musik-​Edition Lucie Galland, 1995), 43. 42. The jewel comment is in F. Baudillon, Le Messager des théâtres et des arts, 17 June 1855. 43. The note about Cruvelli’s cadenza is in E. Viel, Le Ménestrel, 17 June 1855, and the comparison with Cabel is in Maurice Bourges, La Revue et gazette musicale, 17 June 1855.

94  Vocal Virtuosity 44. See Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi; Andrew Porter, “Les Vêpres siciliennes: New Letters from Verdi to Scribe,” 19th-​Century Music 2 (1978):  95–​109; and Anselm Gerhard, “Verdi and an Institutional Crisis,” in The Urbanization of Opera:  Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 342–​87. 45. See Mary Ann Smart, “ ‘Proud, Indomitable, Irascible’: Allegories of Nation in Attila and Les Vêpres siciliennes,” in Verdi’s Middle Period, 227–​56, at 252. 46. See Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-​Semitic Imagination (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), especially 127. 47. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-​Semitic Imagination, 119–​22 and 135.

3

Melismatic Madness and Technology

But for me, as a performer, a mad scene is always a puzzle. What is madness, anyway? . . . madness is the result of suffering that can only completely find an outlet in a parallel world to that of reason. The real world having become intolerable, there is only one way out for them: escape into an imaginary, more kindly world, where everything is perhaps just as it was before, or even better still, as it was in the days when they were happy because they were loved and protected. For me, these descents into madness often seem like alternations between moments of intense suffering and the desire to be in another place, where everything might yet be possible.1

—​Natalie Dessay, 2009

For Natalie Dessay, a blurring between the real and the imagined is the kernel of a mad scene. As an acclaimed coloratura soprano who has brought down the house when she performed many such scenes, Dessay insightfully prompts us to consider the potentiality of staged madness from both musical and dramatic perspectives. For madness can certainly be observed via both sound and sight. And in mid-​nineteenth-​century Paris, an array of technologies of light and sound—​spotlighting, photography, panoramic scene illusions, electricity, ventriloquism, instrumentalized vocality—​surrounded operatic madwomen. In addition to being well-​known symbols of modernity, these technologies were central to stagings of madness in mid-​century Paris during an important visual phase in the operatic representation of madness. This very French—​and very Meyerbeerian—​emphasis on visuality and spectacle may even account for the persistence of the mad scene into the middle of the century, after Italian composers had begun to move away from the genre. One of the most important features of these otherwise rather visually technological operatic mad scenes in mid-​century Paris and earlier was the vocal technology or “practical art” of coloratura, and by mid-​century the singing style had become stylized to the point that it could represent hysterical cries. Indeed, coloratura can be thought of as one of the emerging modern “sciences” used to stage madness in the period. This idea depends on coloratura’s identity as a vocal exercise, a science of its own that reached an apogee in Second Empire Paris Vocal Virtuosity. Sean M. Parr, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197542644.003.0004

96  Vocal Virtuosity with certain sopranos who specialized in and extended the technique. If technology in its original sense is a “practical art” that extends the body’s abilities, then coloratura—​an art that features the extended agility and range of the voice as a prismatic array of tones—​is perhaps the most striking technology employed to mark and empower the operatic madwoman. This chapter explores mid-​ century musical depictions of madness and their related technologies by focusing on mad scenes from two of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s late and neglected opéras comiques, L’Étoile du nord (1854) and Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859), as well as Ophélie’s mad scene in Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet (1868). In addition to presenting characters with an empowered melismatic vocality, these operas also feature sopranos who embody a particular, aestheticized view of femininity at mid-​century as stylized, objectified icons of hysteria. An exploration of the aural impact of these scenes, the sopranos who originally portrayed the mad heroines, and the original staging manuals (the livrets de mise en scène) highlight the importance of the visual in thinking about this phenomenon. But the popularity of the operatic mad scene in mid-​century France is even more striking because of the well-​known simultaneous emergence of staged performances of madness at the Parisian hospital, the Salpêtrière. Situating operatic mad scenes in the contemporaneous context of the medical diagnosis of hysteria suggests that theatricality, technology, and the women performers themselves are connective threads linking mad scenes in opera to a kind of opera in madness. The close contemporaneity of these worlds allows us to think in new ways about the representation of women in Second Empire Paris, specifically about a recasting of the history of mad scenes in opera, one that incorporates the impact of new technologies, and one that historicizes the mad scene’s late French period in light of the coincident “hysteria shows” performed at the Salpêtrière. After a consideration of important scholarly literature, I bracket my exploration of operatic mad scenes with vivid images of the madwoman as spectacle at the Salpêtrière, a historical frame that begins just before the founding of the Second Empire and ends after its fall. For there is a certain blurring between real and represented madness at mid-​century. And it is this blurring that encourages us to consider the boundary between these two types of madness as not only porous but illusory.

The Operatic Mad Scene Historically, composers have portrayed mental instability in a variety of ways. They have often set the volatility of the condition of madness, particularly female, to music with angular coloratura, beginning with the mad scenes in early

Melismatic Madness and Technology  97 Italian opera and the English Baroque mad songs of Henry Purcell and his contemporaries. Beyond the persistence of the mad scene in music history, madness and mad scenes more generally have become sites of important scrutiny across scholarly disciplines. Many of the early feminist studies—​those of Elaine Showalter and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar—​present madness as a specific theme, a symbol of women’s resistance.2 So fundamental is madness to opera and feminist studies that it is important to situate the present study in light of this historiography. One of the earliest musicological studies offers insight into the earliest examples of mad scenes. Ellen Rosand notes that madness can be regarded as a “particularly operatic condition” and that its portrayal in music originates with operatic and Renaissance theatrical ideas of the abnormality of moments when characters sing.3 The case of Shakespeare’s Ophelia is Rosand’s starting point for discussing singing as an indicator of a loss of control, and therefore a symptom of madness. Rosand’s work focuses on early Italian opera and reveals the multiplicity of the manifestations of operatic madness, from those relying primarily on textual cues to those that use sudden shifts in affect and other formal breaks to portray manic mood swings and multiple selves. As Rosand concludes, this plethora of treatments makes the portrayal of madness “an exercise in operatic consciousness raising,” an exercise that calls the audience’s attention to diegetic singing, oppositions between music and text, and other musical symptoms of madness in opera.4 Rosand’s study resonates with Susan McClary’s trenchant discernment of frame and excess in mad scenes.5 The latter’s panhistorical perspective uses case studies to elucidate how musical structure in mad scenes is used to “frame” the excess of madwomen.6 Most relevant to this chapter is McClary’s exploration of the mad scene in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), often cited as the genre’s locus classicus. In this case, Lucia’s vocality resists the containment efforts of the chorus, as well as the frame of the plot and Edgardo’s suicide in the final scene of the opera. McClary plausibly situates Lucia’s excess in her coloratura. However, coloratura was a normative melodic style in bel canto operas of the early nineteenth century. As Mary Ann Smart notes, the vocal acrobatics in Lucia’s mad scene are observable in many other double arias.7 In highlighting coloratura as a feature of mad scenes and double arias more generally, Smart’s exploration of Lucia’s mad scene also builds on Sieghart Döhring’s extensive cataloguing of such scenes.8 Both conclude that mad scenes from early nineteenth-​century bel canto Italian operas are not marked in an obviously musical fashion; in fact, it is the very sanity of the music (and the singing) that makes the scenes so eerie. Musically conventional, they rely on the character’s actions and words, as well as commentary from other onstage voices, to confirm the madness.

98  Vocal Virtuosity After reaching its zenith in the bel canto era, the mad scene nearly vanishes. Although it is largely absent in the late nineteenth century, Smart observes that the tradition of mad scenes lasted longer in French opera than in Italian opera. In order to describe the aesthetic shift that took place, she recounts an anecdote about the composition of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca: although the librettist, Luigi Illica, wanted a mad scene to conclude the opera, Puccini understood that his audience was different from the preceding generation, and that Tosca’s suicide would be more theatrically successful.9 Stephen Willier observes that while mad scenes as such became obsolete in the late nineteenth century, several twentieth-​ century German operas such as Richard Strauss’s Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909) and Alban Berg’s Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (two-​act version 1937, three-​ act completed version 1979, by Friedrich Cerha) focus almost entirely on madness, obsession, and paranoia.10 Willier also notes that madness has continued its association with coloratura well into the twentieth century. An excellent example is Dominick Argento’s Miss Havisham’s Fire (1979). Both Smart and Willier perceive an intuitive and historical association between madness and coloratura. Smart elegantly describes this connection: “trills, melismas and high notes suggest hysteria, an unbearable pitch of emotion; they liberate music from text, allow it to escape from the rational, connect it with pre-​symbolic modes of communication.”11 In elaborating upon the French part of this history, this chapter explores how, by the mid-​nineteenth century, the mad scene had become a more specifically marked operatic moment. It is indeed characterized by lengthy coloratura passages, ones that are more extensive than anywhere else in the opera. Coloratura in these moments not only cues the character’s madness as a mental break from the “reality” of the opera’s plot, but is also often marked dramaturgically as diegetic, onstage music, that is, music occurring within the opera’s plot. Coloratura as onstage singing thus denotes pure song in these scenes, and therefore serves as the defining symptom of madness, in the same way that the singing of Shakespeare’s Ophelia marks her madness. Technology heightens the meaning of coloratura in these scenes, and in so doing highlights and even “frames” the sopranos singing them onstage, emphasizing the visual and aural aspects of madness.

1848 In addition to their engagement with technology and vocal virtuosity, sopranos performing madness seem to have delved into their role preparations quite seriously, sometimes even visiting the insane asylums themselves. An early example of a meeting between operatic and “real” madwomen in 1848 reveals the strikingly terrible conditions in Paris’s Salpêtrière as well as the equally striking performance style of the soprano that resulted from the meeting.

Melismatic Madness and Technology  99 Founded in the seventeenth century, the Salpêtrière served as both a hospital and asylum, one whose original purpose was to keep prostitutes and madwomen off the streets of Paris. By the late eighteenth century, the Salpêtrière had become the world’s largest hospital. Viewing the insane asylum patients there for entertainment was a practice that began in the seventeenth century and continued well into the nineteenth. The Salpêtrière became a regular haunt of bourgeois looking for entertainment on Sunday afternoons. As at London’s Bedlam (Bethlem Royal Hospital), patients were on display for visitors. This voyeuristic fascination with seeing the insane from a safe distance was an effect of what Michel Foucault has famously called the “Great Confinement”: the imprisoning of the mad in asylums throughout Europe in the seventeenth century.12 Philippe Pinel (1745–​1826) “freed” madwomen from their chains at the Salpêtrière early in the nineteenth century—​Pinel’s reform of the asylum abolished the use of chains to restrain patients, instead relying on seclusion and straitjackets for extreme cases. But they were still subject to the voyeuristic gaze of Parisians looking for diversions from everyday life at mid-​century. One physician, Victor Burq, known as a champion of metallotherapy, described the scene of madwomen while he was working in the Salpêtrière in 1851: “There, in a single vast hall, the sad refuge of the incurables, unfortunate women by the hundreds, some still young, are confined. . . . It’s pitiful to see sometimes 10 or 20 of these women, immobilized by very solid restraints . . . scream, roar, foam at the mouth, twist, and struggle.”13 Although Pinel had eliminated the chains, bloodletting, and purging as “treatments” at the Salpêtrière, Burq’s description confirms that conditions were still horrific at mid-​century. Not surprisingly, when soprano Elisa Masson journeyed to the Salpêtrière in 1848 to do a little research for the title role of Louis Clapisson’s Jeanne la folle, she did not receive a warm welcome. According to one source, she was “rewarded for her zealous curiosity by receiving a basin of scalding soup dashed in her face by one of the poor miserable objects of her examination.”14 The subject of Clapisson’s Jeanne la folle, Queen Jeanne of Castile (1479–​ 1555), is reported to have been insane most of her adult life, living most of the last forty years of her life locked in a tower. Although the opera was not a success, premiering 5 November 1848 at the Théâtre de la Nation, critics lauded Masson’s performance. Interestingly, they praised the soprano not for her vocalism, but for her “dignified,” “true,” and “unexaggerated” acting.15 Rather than “roar, scream,” or “foam at the mouth,” it would seem that Masson likely chose a more stylized mode of acting to perform madness on the operatic stage. That her performance was perceived as “true” in the opera house differentiates operatic madness from the more melodramatic histrionics of the theater, not to mention the reality of the asylum. Masson’s ability to remain “dignified” while performing madness speaks to a distinctively French preference for feminine grace in all operatic

100  Vocal Virtuosity emotions. Her preparation and performance also hint at the aestheticization of reality that can occur on the operatic stage. This approach typifies mid-​century French mad scenes.

1854 Accordingly, while one might expect mad scenes to invoke the histrionic and disturbed, the cases of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Catherine and Dinorah can puzzle in their stylized lightness. After a career defined by grand operas written for the Opéra that were characterized by tragic plots, massive scale, and emphasis on spectacle, Meyerbeer (1791–​1864) turned to the lighter theatrics of the Opéra-​Comique, with his L’Étoile du nord and Le Pardon de Ploërmel. In turning to lighter subject matter, Meyerbeer continued to prioritize visualization on the operatic stage, a principle in which the composer approached the plot as a director or painter might approach a tableau. Such a focus on visuality fits well with the historical commonplace of mid-​century Paris as the primary center for indulging in the pleasures of modern life, where representations could at times become interchangeable with reality. An exchange between representation and reality, a focus on spectacle—​this was Paris’s identity, to the extent that reality could be experienced as a show.16 Meyerbeer took advantage of and contributed to the spectacles of Paris; he was not only famous but notorious for employing a variety of instrumental techniques and timbres in combination with the latest technological innovations to achieve strikingly visual “effects” that are apparent in the overall construction of acts, as well as individual scenes.17 Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1831) contains several exemplars of the visualization approach that determined his aesthetics. In Robert, Meyerbeer presented the plot as a series of contrasting pictures, even invoking the contemporary panorama by incorporating a tableau vivant into Act IV. Perhaps most striking is the well-​known nuns’ scene and ballet in the third act. Presenting one of the earliest uses of gas lighting on the operatic stage, the nuns’ tableau was bathed in a pale, bluish light. Meyerbeer’s alignment of the visual and aural in an integrated and breathtaking spectacle became the hallmark of his compositional career. One of the other most conspicuous features in Meyerbeer’s two opéras comiques is the inclusion of mad scenes, both of which employed remarkably visual techniques. Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du nord premiered on 16 February 1854 at the Opéra-​Comique, its performance attended by Napoléon III and Empress Eugénie. It was very successful in its initial run of over one hundred performances from 1854 to 1855. As Robert Letellier and Mark Everist note, L’Étoile du nord fits

Melismatic Madness and Technology  101 well into the Parisian world of opéra comique.18 The spoken dialogue, use of melodrama, pastoral and military modes, and common forms such as couplets all place the work firmly within the genre. Only the mad scene marks the work as generically unusual—​mad scenes were a rarity at the Opéra-​Comique. The heroine of L’Étoile du nord undergoes what we might think of as musical psychotherapy in the final scene. Catherine is mad in this scene because of the apparent betrayal of her beloved, the tsar Peter the Great (Péters/​Pierre). Catherine’s acts of heroism early in the opera, enabled by her assumption of alter egos, suggest that a sense of multiple selves was present long before the final scene. Catherine first disguises herself as a gypsy in Act I to stop the Cossacks pillaging her brother’s home. In Act II she disguises herself as a soldier to take the place of her brother Georges, allowing him to spend time with his new wife, Prascovia. While disguised, Catherine learns of a conspiracy against Peter. She then sees Peter in a drunken stupor, making advances on two vivandières (daughters of the regiment). Horrified by this betrayal, Catherine pleads with Peter, but he does not recognize her. She flees, swimming across the river, but not before leaving a note for Peter, alerting him to the conspiracy against him. Catherine is not seen again onstage until the final scene in which she appears mad. Nearly twenty minutes long, this truly spectacular scene details an elaborate process of reminiscence that ends with a trio for Catherine and two flutes. Peter and Georges spearhead the efforts of the villagers to reenact entire scenes from earlier in the opera. According to the very detailed staging instructions, each tableau features a device intended to trigger Catherine’s memories and jar her from her madness.19 The first of the communal efforts to help Catherine is an offstage chorus of workmen singing the same music they sang at the beginning of the opera. Catherine recognizes the song but thinks she must be asleep and dreaming. Then window shutters open, revealing her village—​a view constructed by the villagers, all joined in the task of psychologically manipulating Catherine’s mind out of its confusion. As Georges and all the other characters act out their parts, consciously attempting to return Catherine to the staged reality, the soprano fixates on the idea of a shadow. She sees all of the familiar figures nearby as a shadow of images, representing the spirits of her loved ones and all the wonderful sights she sees but does not trust. The baker appears, dressed as he was in the first act, then Georges and Prascovia in wedding attire appear with all their guests. Soft, staccato, agitated orchestral music accompanies Catherine each time she doubts her sight as nothing but a shadow, thinking that the images will fade away as in a dream. Like a diorama unveiling its magical layers, this rapid reproduction of every scenic detail on stage was noted for its “scrupulous fidelity,” and perhaps also lured the audience into a state of reminiscence of earlier moments in the opera.20 Catherine continues to doubt her sight, but finally she hears a flute melody, the same tune Georges played in the first act:

102  Vocal Virtuosity

“C’est bien l’air,” excerpt from the final section of Catherine’s mad scene in Act III of Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du nord (1854), first performed by Caroline Duprez-​Vandenheuval (1832–​1875) C’est bien l’air que chaque matin il répétait avec mon frère! Je le reconnais, je le dirais, je crois! La, la, la, cet air le voilà! Oui, c’est bien cela! Va! La, la, la! . . . Plus lentement, plus tendrement Mon coeur bat, il palpate plus vite! La, la! Plaisir des cieux, ô rêve heureux! Cet air si doux, cet air si cher à mon coeur m’enivre, et porte dans mes sens les parfums des fleurs, des fleurs, du printemps céleste mélodie qui charme mon coeur! La, la, la air chéri! La, la, la c’est lui,

It really is the tune he used to practice each morning with my brother! I recognize it, I could sing it, I believe! La, la, la, that tune, there it is! Yes, that’s it! Let’s try! La, la, la! . . . More slowly, more tenderly My heart beats, throbs more quickly! La, la! Heavenly pleasure, oh happy dream! This tune so sweet and dear to my heart intoxicates me and brings the scent of flowers to my senses, celestial melody of spring that enchants my heart! La, la, la dear tune! La, la, la that’s it!

O fleurs fraîches écloses, qui charment mes sens! C’est le parfum des roses en un jour de printemps! Ah! . . .

Oh freshly opened flowers, that enchant my senses! It’s the scent of roses on a spring day! Ah! . . .

Her excitement overcomes her and she sings back to the flute, echoing and duetting in melismatic joy (Example 3.1a). The duet acts like a musical conversation, as imitation, call-​and-​response, harmony, and laughing cocottes supplant the need for words. She urges Georges to join the offstage flute (played by Peter) that had triggered her memory, but Georges pretends that he cannot remember the tune. After much vocalizing and instructing, Georges finally joins them and the trio’s rapid passagework becomes the key to Catherine’s regaining her reason (Example 3.1b). The effect of this is uncanny: Georges and Peter play onstage music with their flutes while Catherine sings onstage in reply, joining their fabricated moment of reminiscence back to the sound world of the first act—​and all this performed in a staged village. Through the process of this last reminiscence, Catherine regains her sanity, but the audience also perhaps understands

Melismatic Madness and Technology  103 the lengthy psychological manipulation she has undergone as a comic elaboration of the mad scene convention of conjuring musical and visual reminiscence. Coloratura in this scene thus can be viewed as both a symptom of and the cure for madness. Rather than dying at the end of the mad scene, Catherine is cured, fainting in Peter’s arms. Interestingly, Meyerbeer did not originally compose the flute-​soprano trio specifically for L’Étoile du nord; it was an adaptation from his earlier work, Ein Feldlager in Schlesien (1844), a Singspiel earmarked for the star coloratura soprano Jenny Lind (1820–​1887), who sang the opera in an 1847 production.21 Not satisfied with merely borrowing the virtuosic showstopper for L’Étoile du nord, Meyerbeer reworked the scene again, this time integrating it fully as part of the elaborate mad scene, complete with interwoven aural and visual reminiscences. In his diaries, Meyerbeer indicated that he also tailored the trio to the “individuality” of soprano Caroline Duprez-​Vandenheuval (1832–​1875; Figure 3.1), who created the role of Catherine.22 In its final version, the style of the flute obbligato and vocal echoing is very much in a French coloratura tradition, with characteristic staccato arpeggios, insistent trills, and emphasis on the dominant seventh throughout the cadenzas, particularly because it invokes nightingale warbling, with passagework similar to the nightingale aria in Victor Massé ’s Les Noces de Jeannette (1853; see Chapter 4). The flutes seem to urge Catherine to sing higher and higher, culminating with striking chromatic and then arpeggiating staccati that lead to a trill that anticipates the end of the lengthy final cadenza. In fact, this trio was perhaps also an inspiration for the well-​known soprano-​ flute cadenza in Lucia di Lammermoor. As argued by Romana Pugliese, the cadenza in Lucia may actually have been a product of the late nineteenth century. She cites Nellie Melba’s assumption of the role in Paris in 1889 as the first performance of the cadenza, which was possibly written by Melba’s teacher, Mathilde Marchesi.23 The postdating of this cadenza might imply that Lucia’s cadenza was influenced by—​rather than influencing—​mid-​century flute-​voice duets such as Meyerbeer’s and those in Massé ’s Les Noces de Jeannette. Audiences often heard such a duet as a competition between voice and instrument. In the case of L’Étoile du nord, the press observed the scene as a battle between flutes and voice, with the soprano emerging as victor. Only in elevating her vocality over instrumentality was she able to regain her senses. This scene is striking on several other levels too—​not least the idea of staging a false sense of security through elaborately reconstructed sights and sounds from the past, thereby creating a reassuring but illusory “reality.” The fake scenes are also “real” hallucinations, both visual and aural. Catherine is restored to fully functional status by an exercise in music therapy, via high-​flying vocal acrobatics. Her “recovery” seems almost more hysteric than her state of madness. The

Ex. 3.1a  Flute-​soprano duet in Catherine’s mad scene, Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du nord (1854), Act III excerpt, mm. 317–​333

Ex. 3.1a Continued

106  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 3.1b  Duetting flutes and soprano, concluding section of Catherine’s mad scene, mm. 350–​355

staging cues reveal her quickly shifting and intense emotions. As she sings “avec extase,” she expresses in gesture all that is going on in her mind: happiness at the realization that she is awake; then crying, affected by the memory of the past; looking tenderly at her brother in recognition; and finally, listening for the flute until she sees Peter and runs toward him, falling into his arms: From the  until end of the movement Catherine’s reason gradually returns to her: she must express in pantomime everything that is going on in her mind.

Melismatic Madness and Technology  107 Ex. 3.1b Continued

At first joyful, she smiles at her new sense of sanity . . . at the life that is returning to her; then she is moved by the memory of the past, she becomes emotional, she cries; she looks tenderly at Prascovia and Georges whom she recognizes; she reaches out her hand to several women in the chorus whom she also recognizes—​always, however, listening to the strains of the flutes. At the end of the movement she sees Peter in his general’s uniform on the threshold of the door to the right, coming out of the house. This sight restores Catherine’s reason completely. She throws herself into his arms and faints.24

108  Vocal Virtuosity

Fig. 3.1  Caroline Duprez-​Vandenheuval as Catherine in Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du nord (1854)

The staged construction of her sanity resembles many of the techniques used to illustrate hysteria that I will describe later in this chapter. L’Étoile du nord was only the first of Meyerbeer’s two forays into opéra-​comique mad scenes. In his second, the emergent technology of specific illumination brings the shadow to the fore in the depiction of madness.

Melismatic Madness and Technology  109

1859 In Le Pardon de Ploërmel, the heroine, Dinorah, is mad for almost the entire opera, having lost all reason when her bridegroom, Hoël, disappeared during a storm that interrupted their wedding ceremony. At the end of the opera, she is cured when Hoël convinces her that her mad roamings were all a dream from which she has awakened; like Catherine, this heroine is healed by a (well-​ meaning) deception. Until then, Dinorah wanders the stage singing ominously of the dangers of the treasure that Hoël is seeking so obsessively. Perhaps the most obvious sign of Dinorah’s mental impairment during these wanderings is her constant search for Bellah, her pet goat. The most spectacularly arresting moment of madness, however, is Dinorah’s Shadow Song, “Ombre légère,” a showpiece waltz aria that highlights her alternate reality using vocal athleticism, dance, staging, and lighting. The aria proper is part of an extended mad scene for the soprano near the beginning of Act II. Dinorah is alone onstage and sees her shadow in the moonlight. The “moonlight” would have been an early use of electric arclight.25 Arclight was first used at the Opéra to create an acclaimed and stunning sunrise in Act V of Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète, in 1849.26 Typically placed in balconies or side galleries, arclight units provide specific illumination via a tightly controlled shaft of light, used to highlight a small portion of the stage, an individual, or, as in these operas, to create the illusion of sunlight and moonlight. An engraving of the scene from Le Pardon de Ploërmel (Figure 3.2) calls attention to the extensive and specific use of the technology to spotlight Dinorah. Such is the centrality of light and shadow to this scene that it is worth exploring the status of artificial light in the mid-​nineteenth century. One of two main forms of electric light (along with incandescent light), arclight involved passing a battery-​generated electric current through two carbons that produced a brilliant spark. Although it was invented in the early nineteenth century, numerous experiments at mid-​century led Paget Higgs—​author of The Electric Light in Its Practical Applications (1879)—​reluctantly to disparage the technology: “Arclight experiments have only succeeded in blinding the bypassers, and projecting long shadows behind them.”27 A  perfect technology for Dinorah’s Shadow Song, arclight provided such raw effulgence that in the dimly lit Opéra-​Comique it would have been shockingly bright, illuminating the soprano in a manner impossible by the traditional candle footlighting. Not as smelly as gas lighting but quite noisy, arclight was nonetheless a powerful artificial light able to create its own reality in the theater. The emergence of electric light in these early uses on the stage led to a fin-​de-​siècle discourse on lighting and modernity. Wolfgang Schivelbusch has even called the impact of arclight at mid-​century a visual and “electrical apotheosis” so shocking and radical that Parisian ladies had to unfurl

110  Vocal Virtuosity

Fig. 3.2  Engraving of Dinorah’s Shadow Song in Meyerbeer’s Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859)

parasols to protect their eyes.28 (Indeed, the soprano must have had some difficulty dancing and singing while immersed in arclight, whose astringent, piercing beam could actually damage the eyes.) The novelty of a diegetic shadow in Le Pardon de Ploërmel made the scene instantly memorable and the aria the high point of the opera.29 The aria also became a common programming choice in concerts sung by coloratura sopranos in the later nineteenth century. At the start of the Shadow Song, Dinorah addresses her shadow directly, instructing it to dance and sing. During the ritornellos, and even during some of her diegetic singing, she waltzes. To teach her shadow to sing, Dinorah sings coloratura, which here becomes an indicator of onstage, “real” singing. The “exchanges” between Dinorah and her shadow are often a cappella, and always difficult. Dinorah instructs her shadow to sing by challenging her(self) with forte scalar passagework, full of trills, chromatic alteration, and acuti (extreme high notes), all of which are repeated piano (Example 3.2). The shadow responds by either repeating the passage exactly, a step higher, or occasionally, an octave lower.

Melismatic Madness and Technology  111

“Ombre légère,” Dinorah’s Shadow Song from Act II of Meyerbeer’s Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859), first performed by Marie Cabel (1827–​1885) Ombre légère qui suis mes pas Ne t’en va pas! Non, non, non! Fée ou chimère qui m’est si chère Ne t’en va pas! Non, non, non! Courons ensemble, j’ai peur, je tremble Quand tu t’en vas loin de moi, Ah! Ne t’en va pas!

Playful shadow that follows my steps, do not go away! No, no, no! Fairy or phantom so dear to me, do not go away! No, no, no! Let us run together; I’m afraid, I tremble if you go far away from me, Ah! Do not go away!

À chaque aurore je te revois! Ah! Reste encore, danse à ma voix! Pour te séduire, je vais sourire, Je vais chanter! Approche-​toi! Viens réponds-​moi, Chante avec moi! Ah! Réponds! Ah! C’est bien!

Every dawn I see you again! Ah! Stay awhile, dance to my voice! To seduce you, I am going to smile, I am going to sing! Approach! Come, answer me! Sing with me! Ah! Answer! Ah! That’s right!

Ombre légère qui suis mes pas, etc.

Playful shadow that follows my steps, etc.

Sais-​tu bien qu’il m’aime? Et qu’aujourd’hui même Dieu va pour toujours Bénir nos amours? Le sais-​tu? Mais tu prends la fuite? Pourquoi me quitter? Quand ma voix t’invite, Pourquoi me quitter? La nuit m’environne! Je suis seule, hélas! Ah! Reviens, sois bonne! Reviens!

Do you know well that he loves me? And that just today God will forever bless our love? Do you know? But you flee? Why do you leave me? When my voice invites you, Why do you leave me? Night surrounds me! I am alone, alas! Ah! Come back, be good! Come back!

Ah! c’est elle! Ah! Méchante, est-​ce moi que l’on fuit? Ombre légère qui suis mes pas, etc. Ah! Ne t’en va pas! La, la, la . . . Ah! Danse! La, la, la . . . Ah! Reste avec moi! Ah!

Ah! It is she! Ah! Naughty, would you flee from me? Playful shadow that follows my steps, etc. Ah! Do not go! La, la, la . . . Ah! Dance! La, la, la . . . Ah! Stay with me! Ah!

112  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 3.2  Vocal echoes in Dinorah’s Shadow Song from Act II of Meyerbeer’s Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859), mm. 73–​103

Melismatic Madness and Technology  113 Ex. 3.2 Continued

One singer performs as both Dinorah and her shadow. A performance of the aria reveals its virtuosic demands, but executed with the extreme dynamic shifts, it also provides an almost comic sense of two voices, even two personalities. Dinorah, in her altered state of mind, is convinced that the echoes she sings at a softer dynamic are the sounds of her friend, the shadow, responding as commanded. The instructions in the original livret de mise en scène and the expressive markings in the published score detail these actions very precisely. Indeed, the instructions even indicate that the soprano playing the role should “work out the pantomime in advance with a choreographer.”30 Such an indication marks the uniqueness of this mad scene and isolates the aria as a moment that requires individualized staging attention from a specialist rather than the primary stage director. The vocal echoing and solo dancing continue for most of the aria, suspended only briefly when the moonlight disappears. The soprano is effectively her own obbligato instrument, until the final melismatic thrust during the coda when the clarinet provides some of the shadow’s echoes. There is almost a mental progression too, from ventriloquism to aural hallucination. In other words, Dinorah at first provides the shadow’s voice herself, but hears the clarinet as the shadow in the coda. Another striking aspect of the staging in this scene is that it provides a direct connection between coloratura and the body, through onstage singing and dancing. I  have not found any other examples of mid-​century staging manuals that instruct a solo singer to waltz onstage during her aria. Ebullient waltz arias would soon enjoy a vogue in mid-​century French opera, but what makes Dinorah’s moment of ebullience different from other waltz arias is the

114  Vocal Virtuosity staging—​dancing with oneself, playing and singing with a shadow, as it were, exteriorizing a separated, interior self.31 In one sense, the shadow is obviously disembodied, but in another it is inseparable from the body, and the lighting and staging would reveal this connection, accentuating the focus on the soprano waltzing. The shadow is thus a vocalic body of its own, to use Steven Connor’s term for a projection of the body “sustained out of the autonomous operations of the voice.”32 Dinorah and her ventriloquizing in this mad scene could then be considered a dramaturgy, a manipulation of voice. In this dramatization that confuses the question of who is singing, ventriloquism is a mode for exploring relationships between selves, bodies, and voices, a particularly apt medium for a mad scene. Dinorah’s Shadow Song therefore reveals just how conspicuous the madwoman was on the operatic stage—​her madness marked by the waltz and an awesome display of sheer superhuman vocalizing, all spectacularly lit. Although Dinorah’s mad scene entertains with its aural and visual extravagance, we will see that vocal virtuosity and the waltz can also combine in a much more tragic mad scene, that of a very familiar madwoman—​Shakespeare’s Ophelia.

1868 After several successes at the Opéra-​Comique, Ambroise Thomas (1811–​1896) followed in Gounod’s footsteps, working with librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré and turning to literary “classics” for his two most enduring operas, Mignon (1866), written for the Opéra-​Comique, and Hamlet (1868), for the Opéra. In Ophélie’s mad scene in Hamlet, the composer imbues the music with weight and strangeness. However, this weight is counterbalanced by the unexpected inclusion of a waltz section. The scene itself is end-​loaded. The bulk of the opening musical material is solo recitative, as Ophélie summarizes her plight for the chorus. Song, as in Shakespeare’s original, is the signal of a break from reality. In the recitative, Ophélie says that she would go mad if she thought Hamlet disloyal, almost cuing her own mental break. The waltz section ensues. The dance is onstage music, danced by a crowd of peasants, not by the heroine. The waltz refocuses Ophélie on the people surrounding her. As the contemporaneous staging instructions indicate, the music prompts her to distribute flowers to the crowd while she urges them to listen to her song.33 Afterward, Ophélie excitedly tosses off a battery of melismatic laughter based on the waltz melody, culminating in a fast sospira cascade that emphasizes her giddiness, with short rests between repeated notes (Example 3.3). Ophélie then finishes this extended introduction, urging her audiences to listen:

Melismatic Madness and Technology  115 Ex. 3.3  Coloratura waltz section of Ophélie’s mad scene, Act IV of Thomas’ Hamlet (1868), mm. 113–​129

“A vos jeux,” Ophélie’s mad scene from Act IV of Thomas’ Hamlet (1868), first performed by Christine Nilsson (1843–​1921) A vos jeux, mes amis, permettez-​moi de grâce De prendre part! Nul n’a suivi ma trace. J’ai quitté le palais aux premiers feux du jour. Des larmes de la nuit, la terre était mouillée, Et l’alouette, avant l’aube éveillée, Planait dans l’air, ah! . . . Mais vous, pourquoi vous parler bas? Ne me reconnaissez-​vous pas? Hamlet est mon époux, et je suis Ophélie! Un doux serment nous lie; Il m’a donné son coeur en échange du mien, Et si quelqu’un vous dit Qu’il me fuit et m’oublie,

My friends, please allow me to join your revels! No one followed me. I left the castle at first light of day. The earth wet with tears of night, and the lark, waking before the sun, was soaring through the air! But why do you whisper? Do you not recognize me? Hamlet is my husband, and I am Ophelia! A tender promise binds us; he exchanged his heart for mine, and should you ever hear that he has left me and forgotten me,

116  Vocal Virtuosity N’en croyez rien; Si l’on vous dit qu’il m’oublie, N’en croyez rien; Non, Hamlet est mon époux, Et moi, je suis Ophélie. S’il trahissait sa foi, j’en perdrais la raison!

do not believe it! Should you hear he has forgotten me, do not believe it! No, Hamlet is my husband, And I, I am Ophelia. If he betrays me, I would go mad!

Partagez-​vous mes fleurs! A toi cette humble branche De romarin sauvage. Ah! A toi cette pervenche. Ah! Et maintenant écoutez ma chanson!

Let me share my flowers with you! For you a humble sprig of wild rosemary. Ah! Here is periwinkle for you. Ah! And now listen to my song!

Pâle et blond Dort sous l’eau profonde La Willis au regard de feu! Que Dieu garde Celui qui s’attarde Dans la nuit au bord du lac bleu! Heureuse l’épouse Aux bras de l’époux! Mon âme est jalouse D’un bonheur si doux! Nymphe au regard de feu, Hélas! Tu dors sous les eaux du lac bleu! Ah! La, la, la . . . Ah!

Pale and fair sleeping beneath the deep waters, the Wilis with eyes of flame! God keep the traveler who tarries late at night on the shores of the blue lake! Happy the wife in her husband’s arms! My heart is envious of such sweet joy! Nymph with eyes of flame, alas! You sleep beneath the lake’s waters! Ah! La, la, la . . . Ah!

La sirène Passe et vous entraîne Sous l’azur du lac endormi! L’air se voile, Adieu! Blanche étoile! Adieu ciel, adieu doux ami! Sous les flots endormi, ah! Pour toujours, adieu, mon doux ami! Ah! La, la, la . . . Ah! Ah, cher époux! Ah! cher amant! Ah! Doux aveu! Ah! Tendre serment! Bonheur suprême! Ah! Cruel! Je t’aime! Ah! Ah! Cruel, tu vois mes pleurs! Ah! Ah! Pour toi je meurs! Ah! Je meurs!

The siren passes by and drags you beneath the sleeping lake’s azure. The air is misty, farewell, pale star! Farewell sky, farewell sweet friend! Beneath the sleeping waves, ah! Farewell forever, my sweet friend! Ah! La, la, la . . . Ah! Ah, dear husband! Ah! Beloved! Ah! Sweet pledge! Ah! Tender promise! Joy supreme! Ah! Cruel one! I love you! Ah! Ah! Cruel one, you see my tears! Ah! Ah! For you, I die! Ah! I die!

Melismatic Madness and Technology  117 After the chorus exits dancing, Ophélie sings the first verse of her ballad, which warns of the dangers of the lake and the Wilis—​the ghosts of women who die before their intended marriages. At night they rise up and seek male prey, whom they force to dance until they die. This mention of the Wilis alludes to an earlier, very well-​known mad scene, not sung, but danced, by the title character of Adolphe Adam’s Giselle (1841). Ophélie’s ballad is a binary form consisting of a syllabically set first section with an arpeggiating arch-​shaped melody, and a second section with an eerie, syncopated, melismatic, wordless vocal line over a low open-​fifth pedal in the orchestral accompaniment. The orchestral frame is capped by the violins trilling on the fifth scale degree, three octaves higher, and punctuated throughout by the triangle and funereal drums. The contrast between the sections is striking, and the second part in particular highlights Ophélie’s mental instability as she vocalizes on “la,” filling the acoustic space between the frame established by the upper and lower registral extremes in the orchestra. The second verse is set similarly, but with slight coloratura variants.34 The two sections of each verse are separated by laughed cadenzas (Example 3.4). The staccato articulations of these cadenzas and their melismatic excursions into the vocal stratosphere function as sonic portals into the eerie, trance-​like world of Ophélie’s vocalizing. At the end of the second verse and without pause, Ophélie leaps into this stratosphere. In this coda, Example 3.5, Ophélie’s outbursts rise in pitch and intensity as she exclaims how she is weeping and dying for Hamlet. The expressive markings in the score also suggest that her crying is mixed with laughter. The riant lines recall the earlier waltz laughter and occur in the midst of breathless, almost hysterical reminiscences about Hamlet. These laughing gestures again link the cocottes staccato singing (explored in Chapter 1) to lightness, laughter, and coloratura, and they disarm the listener before the final emotional shift. Then, what could be described as a series of cries commence, as if motivated by the orchestra’s sudden harmonic shifts, digressing to modal degrees of B (VI and  ♭iii). Frantic, ascending diatonic scales (with chromatic bits) give way to a slow, painful chromatic ascent to high C, followed by a faster, almost two-​octave chromatic scale that finishes on a staccato high E, and prepares for the cadential fortissimo trill that will precede her last words, “Je meurs!” This scale is no normal cadenza. The passage does not undulate or have any rhythmic variety, consisting merely of a disturbingly long and fast scalar ascent. It is a kind of slowly emerging scream. Indeed, the mixture of coloratura laughter and wailing in this scene is what perhaps most clearly characterizes Ophélie’s madness. Coloratura

118  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 3.4  Ophélie’s mad-​scene ballad: laughed cadenza and beginning of second verse, mm. 203–​212

Melismatic Madness and Technology  119 Ex. 3.5  Coda from Ophélie’s mad scene, mm. 229–​264

120  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 3.5 Continued

Melismatic Madness and Technology  121 Ex. 3.5 Continued

122  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 3.5 Continued

Melismatic Madness and Technology  123 functions as a “break” both dramaturgically and in a literal musical sense, being used principally for such concluding gestures and in transitions. Christine Nilsson (1843–​1921), the Swedish creator of Ophélie, maintained an air of poetic distance in her characterization of the role, perhaps thus strengthening the haunting quality of the scene. Her crystalline tone and physical, even facial grace compelled the composer and critic Ernest Reyer to explain her performance as an impressively artistic reimagining of Ophélie: The dance numbers, though written at the last minute by the composer, do not have any less freshness or liveliness for it. Ophélie appears in the middle of the festival; she is wearing a white dress, and vines and flowers are entwined in her disheveled hair. Ophélie is insane. She sings a waltz and a ballad, then slips under the water of the lake where she can be seen floating for an instant, illuminated by a ray of electric light. This tableau is enchanting, and Ambroise Thomas, using a short Swedish motif for several measures, has composed an extremely poetic scene, which made a vivid impression on the public. . . . The great success of the evening was for the blonde Nilsson, who at the Théâtre-​ Lyrique, certainly did not expect the dazzling, incomparable ovation that awaited her on the stage of the Opéra. Nilsson has neither the marvelous throat of Patti, nor the purity of style of Carvalho; but she has in her talent a poetic charm, a naïve grace which penetrates you, and the true reason for her success in Hamlet is that she is, more than any other artist in Paris, the realization of the type created by the poet. It is not Nilsson in the guise of Ophélie, it is Ophélie in the guise of Nilsson.35

Nilsson’s creation of Ophélie, her fourth-​act mad scene in particular, was highlighted in the press, where theatrical commentaries focused on her believably naïve, innocent characterization of Ophélie’s hysteria. Thomas, inspired by Nilsson, composed the scene to include music based on Swedish folk song, a nod that reveals a layer of the performer’s influence on the composer and a reason for Nilsson’s complete absorption in the scene and character. Notice too the importance of spotlighting for the success of this scene, as well. The visual impact of the Scandinavian beauty—​her blonde disheveled hair, pale skin, and white dress—​was at the center of the intricate set design that focused on creating a suggestive tableau, as Figure 3.3 shows. Nilsson’s performance of Ophélie became iconic.

Fig. 3.3  Christine Nilsson as Ophélie in Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet (1868)

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Cries of Hysteria Nilsson’s stunning cry in her final cadenza is one clear example of the aestheticization of madness on the operatic stage. Such connections between real and stylized madness were not confined to the operatic stage. Indeed, the sad end to the life of the excellent Belgian coloratura soprano who created the role of Meyerbeer’s Dinorah, Marie Cabel (1827–​1885), provides a provocative link between the worlds of mid-​century opera and emergent psychology in contemporary Paris. The familiar trope of women turning hysteric in the nineteenth century was not lost on contemporary commentators of opera. According to several sources, Cabel went mad in 1877, and had to be institutionalized near Paris.36 Her mental breakdown was further manifest by gradual paralysis and the loss of her voice. The example of Cabel’s eventual madness reminds us that the extreme aestheticization of madness in the cases of Catherine, Dinorah, and Ophélie is not only musically thrilling, but also quite problematic. For the tradition of watching mad bodies perform on the operatic stage echoes the more troubling tradition of voyeuristic viewing of mad bodies locked away in asylums. Although Cabel, as a highly paid prima donna, had the standing and finances to afford private institutionalization, other women committed to Paris’s Salpêtrière were not so fortunate. The conditions at the Salpêtrière were indeed truly horrific in the early 1850s. It is a truism that, in the nineteenth century, women were thought to have a propensity for madness, particularly hysteria. More specifically, madness was connected to an excess of female sexuality. Men were not diagnosed as hysteric until the end of the century, and when they were, their diagnoses were often based on having “feminine” symptoms. The causes of this feminization have been linked to the coincidence of the burgeoning bourgeois value system of patriarchal authority and sexual asceticism.37 Certainly the Second Empire’s strict censorship and its silencing of emerging feminist movements facilitated hysteria’s rise to prominence. In fact, the number of madwomen incarcerated in asylums in France nearly doubled in the mid-​nineteenth century, increasing from just under 10,000 in the late 1840s to almost 20,000 in 1871.38 Coincident with this increase in population was an increase in Parisian physicians’ interest in the subject of hysteria.39 The most famous mid-​century physician specializing in the diagnosis of hysteria was Jean-​Martin Charcot (1825–​1893), who systematically categorized female hysterics. Charcot first arrived at the Salpêtrière as an intern in the early 1850s to study the “incurables.” He returned in 1862, this time in charge of the entire hospital, as chef de service. Charcot followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, Pierre Briquet (1796–​1881), who focused on observable, visible

126  Vocal Virtuosity symptoms of madness in the publication of his decade-​long work on hysteria, Traité de l’Hystérie (1859). In completely revamping and reorganizing the hospital to fit his own research agenda, Charcot also took psychology as entertainment to a new level. Founder of modern neurology and a teacher of Freud, Charcot constructed a particular brand of hysteria, one that was associated exclusively with women, characterized by archetypal passionate poses called attitudes passionnelles, and diagnosed through the observation of physiognomic signs. Charcot presented “hysteria shows,” theatrical performances of madness masquerading as clinical demonstrations. The iconological evidence of these shows, along with their technological aids, dovetails eerily with the staging of erotically charged madwomen and their vocal outbursts in mid-​century French opera. Charcot compelled madwomen to “perform” for audiences in his four hundred–​seat teaching amphitheater, and he exploited many technological advances for studying, archiving, teaching, and offering therapy. His technological apparatus at the Salpêtrière included:  an anatomo-​pathological museum with a casting annex, a photographic studio, a well-​equipped laboratory of anatomy and pathological physiology, and an ophthalmology service.40 All these tools were used to identify madness from a “clinicoanatomical” approach, in which diagnosis was made via direct visual observation. Such tools also theatricalized madness for the public, allowing for visiting hours, lecture-​ demonstrations, and published collections of photographs. Charcot’s exhaustive study of the patients at the Salpêtrière delayed his own publication of the photographs of female hysterics he observed until 1878, but another such collection of images, Hugh Diamond’s The Face of Madness, was published in London in 1856.41 The 1850s also marked an early high point in the circulation of celebrity photographs, with A. A. E. Disdéri’s carte de visite, a common calling card for opera singers, sopranos in particular.42 Thus, if the latest technologies of image reproduction created new possibilities for framing and eroticizing madwomen in various theatrical contexts, so too did they create new means for opera singers to frame and eroticize themselves in iconic poses for their audiences. The theatricalization of madness found its most literal form in the poses assumed by patients at the Salpêtrière, the so-​called attitudes passionnelles exhibited in what Charcot defined as the third stage of hysteria (Figure 3.4). The poses consisted of emotional gestures and vocalizations and were categorized according to affect, with labels such as “ecstasy,” “melancholy,” and “anger.” In his “hysteria shows,” Charcot would use sound prompts to provoke the poses. That the iconographic evidence of these poses connects directly with classical theatrical gesture is demonstrated by Georges Didi-​Huberman, who notes that “Charcot domesticated the most Baroque theatricality . . . making theatricality into not only a clinical but a classical tableau.”43

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Fig. 3.4  Charcot’s passionate poses (attitudes passionnelles) struck after sound prompts; drawing from Jean-​Martin Charcot and Paul Richer, Les démoniaques dans l’art (Paris, 1887)

Many commentators have observed the explicit theatrical imagery of the poses, linking Charcot’s shows to the broader history of theater and melodramatic acting. By the early nineteenth century, melodrama, and even classic theatrical roles with mad scenes, featured actresses specializing in histrionics. The actress most responsible for the shift to a more gestural and bodily expressed way of depicting madness was Harriet Smithson (Berlioz), an overnight sensation when she performed the role of Ophelia in a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Paris at the Odéon in 1827 using gesture and miming. In doing so, Smithson situated Ophelia’s madness in her actions and visage rather than in her voice and words.44 Consequently, expressions of madness in mid-​century theater generated a compelling visuality that depended on bodily gesture. Actresses such as Smithson (and many after her), as well as singers such as Elisa Masson, visited the asylums in order to prepare for their mad scenes and learn the bodily language of hysteria, for in the mid-​century asylum, madness was diagnosed through observation. Charcot, proud of his furthering of the French legacy of diagnosis based on visual symptoms, used his keen eye for detail to systematize diagnoses. Before his work, hysteria was a malady known, even defined, by its resistance to consistent symptomatic presentation. For Charcot there were four stages of hysteria, preceded by a barely visible “aura” that served as a warning of an incipient attack. The four stages were: (1) tonic rigidity; (2) clownisme, spasms or grands mouvements, characterized by circus-​like

128  Vocal Virtuosity acrobatics; (3)  the attitudes passionnelles, vivid representations of emotional states, displaying “the talents of a mime or dramatic actress”; and (4) delirium marked by manic shifts between sobs, laughter, and tears followed by a return to reality.45 While the third stage is also the stage on which Freud focused in his studies of hysteria later in the century, the fourth’s focus on emotional upheaval corresponds closely with some operatic mad scenes, such as Ophélie’s. The passionate poses, miming, acting, and shifts between sobs and laughter are the most obviously relevant to staging and to musical representations of madness. In 1878, Charcot published a description of a typical case: The patient is an intelligent little girl with brilliant eyes, very clever—​in one word, a little phenomenon; and her parents are quite proud of her. Things go along pretty smoothly till menstruation. Then the child begins to get peculiar—​ to have curious ideas. She is alternately sad or cheerful to excess. Then, one day she utters a cry, falls to the ground, and presents all the symptoms of an attack of hystero-​epilepsy. She begins to assume various postures, to speak of fantastic animals, to mention words which are neither suitable to her age nor to her position in society. . . . There are medical men who think that the phenomena of hysteria are mere malingering. It is not so. But you must not forget, however, that it is a characteristic of hysterical subjects to exaggerate their phenomena, and they are more prone to do so when they think they are observed and admired.46

Charcot’s approach clearly emphasizes the external and the visual rather than the inner psychological world and evokes theatricality, an evocation not merely suggested but actually present in his “hysteria shows.” Using hypnosis, magnetism, electric shocks, and prompters, Charcot engaged his patients in a complex performative event. The patients in turn attempted to please both Charcot and the audience of Parisian bourgeois onlookers, who waited breathlessly for the hysterics to display their poses. A team of scholar-​performers explored the theoretical and performative implications of Charcot’s presentations of hysteria by engaging in a theatrical experiment.47 In an attempt to recreate Charcot’s shows, they explored how performing hysteria for each other and for an audience informed the interpretation of the makings and actuality of events. They revealed several uncomfortable realities: the obvious male authority involved in presenting disempowered women’s bodies, the voyeuristic gaze of a fascinated public, the audience’s self-​aware and awkward complicity, and the triumph of the erotics of display over “the positivist principles of observation.”48 Such realities are further complicated by the fact that before Charcot’s tenure at the Salpêtrière, the parsing of patients resulted in housing the hysterics with the epileptics. Briquet, and at first, Charcot, were

Melismatic Madness and Technology  129 convinced that epilepsy and hysteria were related. Charcot later attempted to differentiate the two disorders, but housing them together had already encouraged hysterics to mimic many classic epileptic postures in their performances of hysteria. One of Charcot’s show-​stopping patients assumed the role of the hysteric par excellence. Augustine, a tall, intelligent girl, entered the Salpêtrière at fifteen presenting hysteric symptoms, attacks that were preceded by pains in her lower abdomen and right arm sensation paralysis. Her personality was characterized as coquettish, affectionate, impressionable, capricious, and attention-​ seeking. Grouped with the “incurables,” Augustine was in Charcot’s words, “a very regular, very classical example,” exhibiting all the typical stages of hysteria and providing in one year alone (1877) over a thousand instances of attacks (spasms, convulsions, losses of consciousness).49 Her poses matched (or perhaps helped codify) those passionate postures that Charcot systematized so meticulously. Augustine, as a locus classicus of Charcot’s hysteria, also manifested symptoms and acting styles that resonate with the operatic performance of madness. One of the stars of Charcot’s shows, Augustine would replay her symptoms for audiences, re-​provoked by Charcot himself who used magnetism, electric shock, and hypnotism to produce very real cries, sometimes silenced by contracture or frozen by aphonia, the inability to use one’s voice. Augustine’s sounds—​sometimes cries, sometimes guttural shouts, sometimes simulated animal utterances, more often wailings—​occurred as she was madly gesticulating, ripping at her straitjacket, finishing by curling up and falling suddenly silent. Like Dinorah, Augustine experienced aural hallucinations (Figure 3.5), always joining a gesture to a word or music from afar. Like Catherine, Augustine experienced visual hallucinations, ecstasy (Figure 3.6), imagined scenes, and terrors, sometimes prompted by a hatred of or disappointment in men. And like Ophélie, Augustine performed the hysteric’s cry (Figure 3.7), and preferred to distract with visual and aural accoutrements. Augustine’s madness was characterized by excess and ornament, a quality that calls to mind the scintillating coloratura of opera’s madwomen: Everything about her . . . announced the hysteric. The care she puts into her toilet, the arrangement of her hair, the ribbons which she is so happy to don. This need for ornaments is so keen that if in the course of an attack there is a remission, she takes advantage of it to attach a ribbon to her garment; this distracts her and gives her pleasure: “When I’m bored,” she says, “all I have to do is make a red knot and look at it.” It goes without saying that the sight of men is agreeable to her, that she likes to be seen and wants to be coddled.50

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Fig. 3.5  “Aural Hallucination”; Paul Régnard, photograph of Augustine, in Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, service de M. Charcot, vol. II (Paris, 1878)

Augustine’s need for ornaments for her hair can be thought of as a visual analogue to the sound of sopranos signaling their hysteria with vocal ornaments and cadenzas. But perhaps what is most operatic about Augustine is not how she behaved at the Salpêtrière but how she left the asylum. In her more manic states, Augustine had fantasies of running and escaping and, to that end, she jumped out of windows, scaled the Salpêtrière’s roof, and climbed trees. Her time at the asylum ended via a very theatrical mode of deception. Dressed en travestie, she posed as a man, fooled her guardians, and fled her hystericized stage, never to return.

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Fig. 3.6  “Ecstasy”; Paul Régnard, photograph of Augustine, Iconographie, vol. II

Idealized Madness Patients turned operatic; patients delivered melodramatic gestures. Sopranos went mad; sopranos and actresses prepared for mad scenes by observing female hysterics in the asylum. And technology made a spectacle of it all. Spotlighted by new technologies, mid-​century madwomen were staged by men, whether in the opera house or Charcot’s teaching amphitheater. The physical body, along with its expressions and gestures, provided the clearest path to diagnosis for Charcot. In opera, the diegetic vocalizing of the

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Fig. 3.7  “Onset of the Attack: The Cry”; Paul Régnard, photograph of Augustine, Iconographie, vol. II

coloratura soprano cued the nineteenth-​century audience to understand the performance of hysteria. The waltz features prominently in the cases of Ophélie and Dinorah, perhaps because of its vogue during the nineteenth century (as we will see in Chapter 5), and perhaps because of the rhythmic and dance-​like choreas of the female hysteric, consisting of involuntary, rapid movements that seem to move randomly from one part of the body to another. The electric spotlighting of Dinorah and her shadow reveals the opera world’s connection to technologies that found their way into the asylum as well. Instruments prompted these madwomen to perform their madness:  flutes prompt Catherine’s coloratura; arclight prompts Dinorah’s; and sounds and electric shocks prompt Charcot’s patients to hysterical outbursts and hallucinations. Theatricality, technology, and the women performers themselves brought about a rapprochement between mid-​century operatic madness and the contemporary diagnosis of hysteria. However, rather than conclude with these suggestive resonances between the very visual worlds of madness on stage in Second Empire Paris, I close this chapter instead by exploring an essential divergence between the two worlds. In spite of the mad gestures at the Salpêtrière, the theatrical actresses playing Ophelia in Paris, and the histrionics of Italian sopranos playing Lucia, it would seem that Parisian audiences preferred their operatic heroines to act their madness more modestly. Gustave Flaubert must have sensed this preference when

Melismatic Madness and Technology  133 writing Madame Bovary (1857), in which Emma regards the soprano’s acting of Lucia’s mad scene as overdone. Strikingly, in the cases of French operatic madness, the sopranos creating mad heroines were praised for their calm grace in performance, not for their hysterical poses. According to Hector Berlioz, Marie Cabel, in her creation of Dinorah, sang “like an intelligent woman, sensitive, full of grace and guided by good sense and good taste. . . . She plays the part of a young girl driven insane by love in a uniquely graceful manner, without exaggeration or extravagant gestures.”51 Even after the opera’s reprise later in 1859, the press reviewed Cabel favorably and noted her execution of the coloratura and also her characterization of the role, having appropriately played the part “with a distracted nonchalance and calm countenance.”52 And, as already described, another soprano originator of a mad heroine, Christine Nilsson, maintained an air of poetic distance in her characterization of Ophélie, yielding a sense of innocence and naïveté, perhaps thus strengthening the haunting quality of the scene. Her grace in performance led Ernest Reyer to declare her interpretation a refiguring of Ophélie.53 Like Dinorah, Ophélie also sings a waltz and is also illuminated by a ray of electric light, although, of course, Ophélie’s end was tragic. Both of the soprano creators of these mad heroines were lauded for their calm and grace in performance. In praising a demeanor seemingly at odds with their characters’ dispositions, these descriptions do more than reveal the era’s preference for feminine demureness; they also reveal the lengths to which madness as a feminine malady had become stylized and prettified on the operatic stage. In addition to the physical, visual aestheticization of madness on the operatic stage, sounds as visceral as the hysteric’s cry were stylized as well. Possibly the most striking symptom for this consideration of opera and madness, the cry is a vocal outburst, the wail lifting upward from the depths of sorrow to high pitches of agony and ecstasy. The cry finally reached its aestheticized form onstage at the Paris Opéra with Ophélie’s two-​octave chromatic and melismatic scream at the close of her mad scene in Thomas’ Hamlet (see Example 3.5). Such a translation from the asylum to the operatic stage reveals a sublimation from one discourse to the other. Madness on the operatic stage was idealized. The intense aestheticization of the onstage female hysteric, singing and dancing her madness, is extremely problematic to us today. The troubling, even sinister nature of nineteenth-​century Europe’s obsession with madwomen might lead us to think that these sopranos are all silenced, as Smart claims, or “undone,” to use Catherine Clément’s expression. However, as Carolyn Abbate has postulated in response to Clément, we might think of the female singer as “envoiced” or empowered by her singing.54 But is that all? I suggest that the soprano’s “grace” and “calm” in these mad scenes might signal a new type of feminine virtuosity. Female singers not only

134  Vocal Virtuosity sang more extravagantly than their male counterparts; the ones who sang these mad scenes did so virtuosically as vocalists and actresses as well, hiding the artifice of the physically arduous vocalizing. Consider the significant length of these scenes, and their significant technical requirements: extreme high notes, pages and pages of complex coloratura, rigorous expressive demands, committed physical characterization, and extensive vocal stamina. These scenes are unmatched by any in the domain of tenors, baritones, or even castrati. And to have sung them “gracefully” elevates the soprano creators of these roles from virtuose who go beyond the technique of what anyone has done before to virtuose who can do so nonchalantly. It is this nonchalance, sometimes theorized as the sine qua non of virtuosity,55 that distinguishes and empowers these sopranos in a manner that separates them from other women performing madness in theaters. Although coloratura is omnipresent in earlier Italian mad scenes, vocal virtuosity reached its apex in mid-​century Paris. To reiterate, what crucially differentiates mad scenes in mid-​century French opera from Italian mad scenes earlier in the century is the specificity of the use of coloratura. Rather than being a normative singing style as it is in bel canto operas, coloratura at mid-​century is dramaturgically marked and gendered feminine. Meyerbeer’s Dinorah and Catherine and Thomas’ Ophélie are all singing onstage. In mid-​century Paris, only women sing coloratura and only women could be committed to the insane asylum for adultery or other sexual “excesses,” but only women could also sing at the high level necessary to perform madness on the operatic stage, and to perform it nonchalantly, even under the scrutiny of a visually-​oriented audience. As much as I would like to end on this note of empowerment, the reality is that emergent technologies had both positive and negative consequences for women in Second Empire Paris. Madness as technologized entertainment was naturalized in opera, but overtly disturbing in the asylum. In the Salpêtrière, technology not only prompted acts of madness, but highlighted the embodied gestures of madwomen in performance, and finally froze them as photographic images mid-​gesticulation. In mid-​century French opera, technology also highlighted the staged madwoman, but the madness of her body was normalized, made natural by a sense of seeming calm and grace. It is coloratura refashioned as a modern technology that marks her symptomatically and it is also coloratura that empowers her. In spite, or perhaps because of the fact that neither patient nor soprano utters words when most hysterical, both performances of madness are tremendously powerful and problematic. We are left then with a paradox: madness in opera was idealized onstage, made beautiful by the numinous power of song, while opera in the asylum was histrionic and highly exaggerated. This paradox permits technologies of operatic madness to stage women as alarmingly

Melismatic Madness and Technology  135 natural yet sonically breathtaking, while they presented malingering patients as monsters. By eroding the boundaries between language, reality, and representation, the mid-​century madwoman thus challenges us to broaden and refine our thinking about the status, staging, and even the history of women. Both a victim and a wielder of artifice onstage, she calls our attention to the illusions that reign in real life.

Notes 1. Natalie Dessay, liner notes for Mad Scenes, trans. Hugh Graham, (EMI B002R2GIHI, 2009). 2. Madness as female resistance is an interpretation prominent in Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-​ Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979); and Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–​1980 (New York: Penguin Books, 1985). 3. Ellen Rosand, “Operatic Madness: A Challenge to Convention,” in Music and Text: Critical Inquiries, ed. Steven Paul Scher (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 241–​87. 4. Rosand, “Operatic Madness,” 287. 5. Susan McClary, “Excess and Frame: The Musical Representation of Madwomen,” in Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, with a new introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 80–​111. 6. McClary’s idea of frame encompasses those musical characteristics that signify as feminine and mad as well as the idea of male rationality guarding against the image of the madwoman. In her first example, Monteverdi’s Lamento della ninfa (1638), it is the obsessive ostinato bass and the condescendingly pitying male chorus that “frame” the nymph’s lamenting outbursts. 7. Mary Ann Smart, “The Silencing of Lucia,” Cambridge Opera Journal 4 (1992): 119–​ 41, at 128. Smart has further refined our thinking on gender and the mad scene by referencing Michel Foucault’s now-​canonic historicizing of madness, which allows her to examine a type of excess evident in bel canto mad scenes: an explosion of signs, which includes not only extensive coloratura but also departures from conventional forms and thematic reminiscence. It is through a discussion of such an explosion that Smart is able to see Lucia’s mad scene as an example of both resistance and confinement. Although several writers have interpreted Lucia’s madness as an act of resistance, Smart concludes that Lucia is silenced: the plot defeats her and the orchestra overpowers her. For more on Lucia’s madness as an act of resistance, see, for example, Catherine Clément, Opera, or the Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 89, as well as Showalter, The Female Malady, and McClary, Feminine Endings.

136  Vocal Virtuosity 8. See Smart’s larger study, “Dalla tomba uscita: Representations of Madness in Nineteenth-​Century Italian Opera” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1994), which explores Lucia’s scene, Elvira’s in I Puritani, scenes in comic opera, and some forgotten male mad scenes. See also Sieghart Döhring, “Die Wahnsinnsszene,” in Die “Couleur locale” in der Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Heinz Becker (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1976), 279–​314. 9. See Smart, “Dalla tomba uscita,” 325–​26. One of the last mad scenes in Italian opera is Margherita’s “L’altra notte in fondo al mare” in Act III of Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele (1868, rev. 1875 and 1876). 10. See Stephen A. Willier, “Mad Scene,” Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy (Accessed 10 June 2020), www.oxfordmusiconline.com. 11. Smart, “The Silencing of Lucia,” 128. 12. See Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Random House, 1965), 38–​64. 13. Christopher G. Goetz, Michel Bonduelle, and Toby Gelfand, eds., Charcot: Constructing Neurology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 177–​78. 14. See the International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art, and Science 1 (New York, 26 August 1850). 15. “[S]‌on jeu est digne, vrai, chaleureux, sans exagération; sa personne des plus distinguées, sa tenue irréprochable; bref, Masson mérite les plus grands éloges, bien que sa voix soit parfois incomplète et inégale.” Le Ménestrel, 5 and 12 November 1848. I am grateful to Karen Henson for bringing to my attention another French soprano who prepared for her mad scene by visiting an insane asylum. In 1899, Emma Calvé visited an asylum in Milan to prepare for the part of Ophélie. See Jules Huret, Le Figaro, 29 May 1899. 16. The literature on the visual in nineteenth-​century Paris is quite extensive and beyond the scope of this chapter. An excellent monograph that argues strongly for this exchange between representation and reality is Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-​de-​Siècle Paris (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998). Schwartz traces the craze for spectacle through public visits to morgues, wax museums, and other attractions on a trajectory to early cinema. Other important works that relate nineteenth-​century Paris and visual culture include T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Priscilla Ferguson, Paris as Revolution: Writing the Nineteenth-​Century City (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994); and Christopher Prendergast, Paris and the Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Blackwell, 1992). Seminal studies solely focusing on the visual include Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990); and Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). 17. Richard Wagner famously criticized Meyerbeer’s operas for their supposed “effects without causes.” See Tom Kaufman, “Wagner vs. Meyerbeer,” Opera Quarterly 19 (2003): 644–​69.

Melismatic Madness and Technology  137 18. Robert Ignatius Letellier, The Operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006); and Mark Everist, Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-​Century Paris (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005). 19. See the facsimile edition of the printed orchestral score (after the first performance), L’Étoile du nord, Libretto by Eugène Scribe, Music by Giacomo Meyerbeer, vol. II (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1980), 718–​75. 20. See the review by E. Viel in Le Ménestrel, 26 February 1854. 21. Lind also created Amalia in Verdi’s I masdanieri (1847). For more on the “Swedish Nightingale,” see Francesca Vella, “Jenny Lind, Voice, Celebrity,” Music and Letters 98 (2017): 232–​54. 22. In particular, he made several (unspecified) alterations to this final scene’s music with flutes for her. See Robert Ignatius Letellier, trans. and ed., The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, Volume 3: The Years of Celebrity, 1850–​1856 (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), 190 and 249. 23. See Romana Margherita Pugliese, “The Origins of Lucia di Lammermoor’s Cadenza,” Cambridge Opera Journal 16 (2004): 23–​42. 24. “A partir du  jusqu’à la fin du morceau la raison revient (peu à peu) à Catherine: elle doit exprimer par la pantomime tout ce qui se passe dans son âme. Tantôt joyeuse, elle sourit à la raison . . . à la vie qui lui revient: puis elle s’émeut au souvenir du passé: elle s’attendrit, elle pleure; elle regarde avec tendresse Prascovia et Georgess qu’elle reconnait: elle donne la main à plusieurs femmes des choeurs qu’elle reconnait également, toujours cependant en prêtant l’oreille aux accents des flûtes. A la fin du morceau elle aperçoit sur le seuil de la porte à droit Pierre en uniforme de général qui sort de la maison. Cette vue lui rend entièrement la raison. Elle s’élance dans ses bras et tomb évanouie.” See the staging instructions in L’Étoile du nord, 771. 25. That arclight was employed in this scene in the premiere is noted in John Earl, “Landscape in the Theatre: Historical Perspective,” Landscape Research 16 (1991): 21–​29. Limelight, a related technology for specific illumination, was also used in theaters beginning in the mid-​nineteenth century. General illumination, the first theatrical lighting technology, provides a diffuse, shadowless wash of light over the entire stage space. Succeeding the candle and oil lamp light of the eighteenth century, gas light was the primary lighting technology of the nineteenth century; as noted earlier in this chapter, Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable was one of the most striking early uses of gas light on the operatic stage. 26. See Anselm Gerhard, The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 298–​303. Giuseppe Verdi also composed his own spectacular sunrises, such as the famous sunrise in the prologue of Attila (1846). However, the visual effect in his operas was produced by gas lighting, not arclight. See Helen M. Greenwald, “Son et Lumière: Verdi, Attila, and the Sunrise over the Lagoon,” Cambridge Opera Journal 21 (2010): 267–​77. 27. Paget Higgs, The Electric Light in Its Practical Application (London: E. and F. Spon, 1879), 6. Quoted in Chris Otter, The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and

138  Vocal Virtuosity Vision in Britain, 1800–​1910 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 179. 28. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 50 and 55. 29. See the review of the reprise of the same year in Le Ménestrel, 23 October 1859. 30. “[L]‌’artiste jouant Dinorah, fera bien de régler la pantomime de cet air avec un artiste choréographie.” The manuscript livret de mise en scène of Le Pardon de Ploërmel is intertwined with a printed and annotated libretto held in the Département des Arts du spectacle, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Rondel MS 929, pages not numbered (Act II, Scene 3). 31. For more on the waltz aria genre, see Chapter 5. 32. Steven Connor, Dumbstruck—​A Cultural History of Ventriloquism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), at 35. 33. See the livret de mise en scène for Hamlet in the Bibliothèque-​Musée de l’Opéra, Paris, C.4910 (4). The scene is sometimes staged without chorus, leaving the soprano to play to an imagined crowd, thereby further pointing out her madness for the opera audience. 34. Caroline Carvalho (subject of Chapters 4 and 5) left her mark on this role as well. Her variants are noted in the printed piano-​vocal score. 35. “Les airs de danse, écrits au dernier moment par le compositeur, n’en ont pas moins beaucoup de fraicheur et de verve. Ophélie paraît au milieu de la fête; elle est vêtue d’une robe blanche, et dans sa chevelure dénoncée, s’entrelacent des lianes et des fleurs. Ophélie est folle. Elle chante une valse et une ballade, puis glisse dans les eaux du lac où on la voit surnager pendant quelques instans, éclairée par un rayon de lumière électrique. Ce tableau est ravissant, et M. Ambroise Thomas, avec un petit motif suédois de quelques mesures, a composé une scène extrêmement poétique, et qui vivement impressionné le public. . . . Le grand succès de la soirée a été pour la blonde Mlle Nilsson, qui naguère, au Théâtre-​Lyrique, ne se doutait certainement pas de l’ovation étourdissante, incomparable qui l’attendait sur la scène de l’Opéra. Mlle Nilsson n’a ni le merveilleux gosier de Mlle Patti, ni le style pur de Mme Carvalho; mais elle a dans son talent un charme poétique, une grâce naïve qui vous pénètrent, et le véritable motif de son succès dans Hamlet, c’est qu’elle est, plus qu’aucune autre artiste de Paris, la réalisation du type créé par le poete. Ce n’est pas Mlle Nilsson sous les traits d’Ophélie, c’est Ophélie sous les traits de Mlle Nilsson.” Ernest Reyer, Journal des Débats, 14 March 1868. 36. See K. J. Kutsch, and Leo Riemens, Grosses Sängerlexikon (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2004), 675. 37. Jan Goldstein, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 325. Psychiatry and hysteria itself have been critiqued by many feminist studies, which locate a certain type of power within expressions of madness: by becoming hysterical, women defeat their husbands by taking to the asylum and leaving behind their

Melismatic Madness and Technology  139 domestic duties, and they defeat their physicians by denying the efficaciousness of their treatment. 38. Yannick Ripa, Women and Madness: The Incarceration of Women in Nineteenth-​ Century France, trans. Catherine du Peloux Menagé (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990), 1. 39. The number of theses on the subject of hysteria had increased by about 30 percent by mid-​century. See Christopher G. Goetz, Michel Bonduelle, and Toby Gelfand, eds., Charcot: Constructing Neurology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 174. For a detailed exploration of the development of this academic interest in hysteria, see Jann Matlock, Scenes of Seduction: Prostitution, Hysteria, and Reading Difference in Nineteenth-​Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 40. Charcot mentioned these items in a lecture in which he described his aims at the Salpêtrière: “We have an anatomo-​pathological museum with a casting annex and a photographic studio; a well-​equipped laboratory of anatomy and of pathological physiology . . . an ophthalmology service, an essential complement to any Institute of neuropathology; the teaching amphitheater where I have the honor of receiving you and which is equipped, as you can see, with all the modern tools of demonstration.” Cited in Georges Didi-​Huberman, The Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière, trans. Alisa Hartz (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 30. Italics are Didi-​Huberman’s. 41. For Charcot’s photography, see Désiré-​Magloire Bourneville and Paul Régnard, Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, service de M. Charcot (Paris, 1878); and Jean-​Martin Charcot and Paul Richer, Les démoniaques dans l’art (Paris, 1887). For Diamond’s images, see Sander L. Gilman, The Face of Madness: Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography (New York: Brunner/​Mazel, 1976). 42. See Elizabeth Anne McCauley, “The Demi-​Monde Revealed: Cartes of Actors and Actresses, Dancers, and ‘Filles de Joie,’” in A. A. E. Disdéri and the Carte de Visite Portrait Photograph (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 85–​111. 43. Didi-​Huberman, The Invention of Hysteria, 115. Italics are Didi-​ Huberman’s. Charcot’s doctrine of hysterical affects is reminiscent of Jean-​Étienne Dominique Esquirol’s work in the early 1800s on the connection between insanity and the passions of the soul. The idea of extreme emotions frozen in poses also resonates strongly with Baroque musical affect, in which a single emotion is portrayed musically for an extended section. 44. For more on the connection between the role of Ophelia and changing conceptions of the visual, see Kimberly Rhodes, Ophelia and Victorian Visual Culture: Representing Body Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008). 45. These stages are described in many of Charcot’s publications. My description follows Goldstein, Console and Classify, 326–​27. 46. Quoted in Goetz et al., Charcot: Constructing Neurology, 173. 47. See Dianne Hunter, ed. The Makings of Dr. Charcot’s Hysteria Shows: Research through Performance, Studies in Theatre Arts 4 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998). 48. Hunter, The Making of Dr. Charcot’s Hysteria Shows, xiii.

140  Vocal Virtuosity 49. Quoted in Didi-​Huberman, The Invention of Hysteria, 117. 50. Désiré-​Magloire Bourneville and Paul Régnard, Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, vol. II (Paris, 1878), 168, quoted in Didi-​Huberman, The Invention of Hysteria, 165. Italics are mine. 51. “[C]‌omme une femme intelligente, sensible, pleine de grâce et guidée par le bon sens et le bon goût. . . . Elle a joué ce rôle de jeune fille folle par l’amour d’une façon originalement gracieuse, sans exagération ni gestes risqués.” Hector Berlioz, Journal des Débats, 10 April 1859, reprinted in Giacomo Meyerbeer, Le Pardon de Ploërmel: Dossier de presse parisienne (1859), ed. Marie-​Hélène Coudroy-​Saghai (Bietigheim: Musik-​Edition Lucie Galland, 1992), 37–​38. 52. “La pièce a été chantée par les artistes qui en ont créé les rôles. . . . Mme Cabel, dont la voix est toujours un peu faible dans le médium, réussit à merveille les traits hardis qu’on lui ménage, et joue le rôle de Dinorah avec cette nonchalance distraite et ce calme de la physionomie qui conviennent au personnage.” J. Lovy, Le Ménestrel, 23 October 1859. 53. See Ernest Reyer, Journal des Débats, 14 March 1868. 54. Carolyn Abbate, “Opera; or, the Envoicing of Women,” in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 225–​58. 55. Anya Peterson Royce, Anthropology of the Performing Arts: Artistry, Virtuosity, and Interpretation in a Cross-​Cultural Perspective (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2004), 23. This concept of virtuosity has also been explored as an “occlusion of meaning or reference.” See Jim Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work: The “Transcendental Studies” of Liszt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 69.

4

Caroline Carvalho and Her World

The greatest exponent of vocal pyrotechnics in the mid-​nineteenth century was a Parisian soprano, Caroline Carvalho (née Marie Félix-​Miolan, 1827–​1895). As a powerful and significant singer and créatrice, Carvalho created sixteen leading roles between 1850 and 1867 (Table 4.1).1 All of these roles included at least one substantial coloratura moment, and five were as the heroine in operas by Gounod: Marguerite in Faust (1859), Baucis in Philémon et Baucis (1860), Sylvie in La Colombe (1860), the title role of Mireille (1864), and Juliette in Roméo et Juliette (1867). Carvalho’s career spanned over three decades. Although based primarily in Paris, Carvalho also sang throughout France, as well as at Covent Garden and in Brussels. In Paris, she was one of few singers to perform extensively at the Opéra-​Comique, the Théâtre-​Lyrique, and the Opéra. Carvalho was also the first singer of the now-​famous “Ave Maria,” Gounod’s meditation on Bach’s first prelude in C, BWV 846. The Parisian press compared her vocal prowess to the instrumental pyrotechnics of Paganini and Liszt, and her nuanced artistry to the deft pianism of Chopin.2 While these facts alone are sufficient to label Carvalho both “superwoman” and “superdiva”—​to use Susan Rutherford’s terminology—​they only hint at the importance of this performer and the far-​reaching effects of her singing.3 For Carvalho was connected to newer singing styles:  she studied and sang at the Paris Conservatoire with Gilbert-​Louis Duprez, the tenor associated with a new style of declamatory, loud singing, who famously (though perhaps mythically) sang the first high C in full chest voice. At the same time, however, Carvalho was known for coloratura showpieces, ones specifically written and added for her, much to the approbation of audiences and occasionally to the chagrin of critics. Additionally, she was known for her interpretation of Mozart roles, Cherubino, Zerlina, and Pamina in particular. Carvalho’s career thus presents an interesting paradox, between coloratura as an old-​fashioned singing style and a tool of a forward-​looking créatrice. My goal here is not to recover Carvalho’s voice or to wax lyrical about a now-​ forgotten soprano, though the evidence is inviting. Rather, I want to show how

Vocal Virtuosity. Sean M. Parr, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197542644.003.0005

Theater

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Baden Baden

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Year

1850

1852

1852

1853

1853

1853

1855

1856

1856

1857

1859

1860

1860

1864

1865

1867

opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra in 5 acts opéra in 2 acts opéra comique in 2 acts opéra in 3 acts opéra in 4 acts opéra in 5 acts

La Reine Topaze

Margot

Faust

Philémon et Baucis

La Colombe

Mireille

La Fiancée d’Abydos

Roméo et Juliette

Thomas

Reber

Halévy

Massé

Clapisson

Grisar

Adam

Juliette

Zuleika

Mireille

Sylvie

Baucis

Marguerite

Margot

Topaze

Gounod

Barthe

Gounod

Gounod

Gounod

Gounod

Clapisson

Massé

Barbier and Carré

Adenis, after Byron

Carré

Barbier and Carré

Barbier and Carré

Barbier and Carré

Saint-​Georges and Leuven

Lockroy and Battu

Saint-​Georges and Leuven

Rosier

Barbier and Carré

Scribe and Saint-​Georges

Barbier and Carré

Scribe and Delavigne

Saint-​Georges

Scribe

Composer Libretto

Fanchonnette Clapisson

opéra comique in 3 acts

Dora

La Fanchonnette

opéra comique in 3 acts

Le Nabab

Jeannette

la Comtesse

opéra comique in 1 act

Les Noces de Jeannette

Christine

opéra comique in 2 acts

opéra comique in 3 acts

Les Mystères d’Udolphe

Mésangère

La Cour de Célimène

opéra comique in 3 acts

Le Carillonneur de Bruges

Giralda

Suzanne

opéra comique in 3 acts

Giralda

Role

Les Papillotes de M. Benoist opéra comique in 1 act

Genre

Opera

Table 4.1  Roles created by Caroline Carvalho (1827–​1895)

89

19

30

unknown

13

57

30

115

112

12

49

38

75

6

40

59

Initial run

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  143 engaging with this fascinating singer and her contemporaries reveals much about coloratura, composition, genre, and voice-​type in mid-​century Paris. In particular, it allows one to uncover vital intersections between mid-​nineteenth-​ century vocal and instrumental idioms. So here I delve into the singing world from which Carvalho emerged, exploring how her breakout moment in Victor Massé ’s La Reine Topaze (1856) was a byproduct of a complex mixture of circumstance, shrewd role choices, and genre, as well as her uncanny facility for coloratura. I also investigate how a case of competition reveals Carvalho’s relation to other singers in Paris. These sections of the chapter illustrate how the success of Parisian operatic premieres in the mid-​nineteenth century continued to rely on the singers of female lead roles and that Carvalho used her facility for coloratura as a springboard to “superdiva” status, a status achieved by cultivating her voice—​her “mécanisme prodigieux”—​to handle coloratura on a scale that explicitly invoked and rivaled instrumental virtuosity.4 Carvalho thereby established herself as an authoritative performer, marking a connection between the voice and the mechanical, a connection that inspired comparison not only with instruments, but also with other prominent sopranos. At mid-​century, this vocal virtuosity allowed Carvalho and her contemporaries to revive earlier operas—​ perhaps most notably those by Mozart—​and add their dazzling ornamentation to coloratura roles as well as others we seldom associate with coloratura. These examples affirm the authority of singers while also raising interesting questions about the idea of voice-​type, just as Carvalho establishes herself as the preeminent coloratura soprano of her era.

Beginnings Born in Marseilles in 1827, Marie Félix-​Miolan studied music with her father, François, an oboist. She was admitted to the Conservatoire in 1843 and studied there with Duprez until 1849.5 It is interesting that she studied with Duprez, a tenor known for his loud singing, instead of Laure Cinti-​Damoreau (also at the Conservatoire and both discussed in Chapter 1), a soprano well known for her vocal beauty and agility, and for whom Rossini wrote several roles. Gregory Bloch notes that Duprez’s singing involved louder high notes, a more declamatory approach to roles, and possibly more visceral emoting.6 However, Duprez was also capable of singing passages requiring vocal agility and pitches in the extreme upper range (above high C).7 By studying with Duprez, the soprano was perhaps preparing for opera roles that demanded both of these types of singing. The ability to handle a combination of dramatic and sustained, but also delicate, lyric, and florid passages would certainly become apparent in her Gounod roles.

144  Vocal Virtuosity In 1848, Duprez began introducing his pupil to the public with a tour through France. The following year she was presented in a benefit concert for her teacher at the Opéra, where she sang excerpts from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) and Fromental Halévy’s La Juive (1835). This proved to be a carefully planned introduction, as the press was notified about her Parisian début beforehand and described her performance as auspicious.8 Soon thereafter she was engaged by the Opéra-​Comique as a première chanteuse. Remarkably, in 1850, her first full year with the Opéra-​Comique, Félix-​ Miolan sang five leading roles:  Henriette in Daniel-​François Esprit Auber’s L ’Ambassadrice (1836), Virginie in Ambroise Thomas’ Le Caïd (1849), Palormita/​Lazarilla in Massé ’s La Chanteuse voilée (1850), Argentine in Albert Grisar’s L’Eau merveilleuse (1839), and the title role of Adolphe Adam’s Giralda (1850). Giralda was Félix-​Miolan’s first role creation. Although not written with her in mind (Adam had begun writing the opera at least two years before the soprano joined the Opéra-​Comique), her performance of the role garnered attention from the Parisian press. According to Henri Blanchard in La Revue et Gazette musicale, for example, “Félix-​Miolan has created . . . the role of Giralda in a way which requires more than simple encouragement.”9 According to Halévy: The third act opens with a brilliant aria, admirably performed by Félix-​Miolan. Have you not noticed that her name, Félix, suggests happiness? Félix’s voice is a high soprano: she likes to soar at the top of the musical scale, and, like an intrepid aeronaut, takes pleasure in being sky-​high. Rounds of applause follow such moments.10

Blanchard and a certain Hector Berlioz also had concerns about her. Blanchard thought her voice was best when required to be expressive and delicate rather than impassioned, writing that it lacked assured intonation when pushed (i.e., when she sang loudly). He hoped that she would choose roles carefully to highlight her strengths and avoid those that demanded lengthy sustained and intensely dramatic singing. Berlioz, while he thought her acting was charming and her physiognomy appropriate for the role, also thought her voice was a bit weak, at times unable to carry over the orchestra.11 Already in this first year at the Opéra-​Comique, Félix-​Miolan was associated with coloratura. Halévy saw her as sailing through the air like an “intrepid aeronaut,” a phrase used in the nineteenth century as a reference to balloonists and also as a metaphor for one who flies: floating on threads as a spider floats on wisps of its web, or in this case flying delicately at a high vocal tessitura. This was certainly due in part to the fact that in all the above-​mentioned operas,

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  145 Félix-​Miolan’s roles had significant fioritura passages. For example, her début role in L’ Ambassadrice, originally created by Cinti-​Damoreau, contains melismatic passagework in the ensembles, duets, and in her aria. Indeed, it is possible that Félix-​Miolan’s career began quite self-​consciously, in leading chanteuse légère roles and beginning with a role that would lead to direct comparisons with Cinti-​Damoreau. Because of her rare ability to combine agility with delicately spun musical phrasing, Carvalho was also compared to Erminia Frezzolini (1818–​1884), Henriette Sontag (1806–​1854), Angelica Catalani (1780–​1849), and Fanny Tacchinardi-​Persiani (1812–​1867).12 For example, Le Ménestrel, reviewing her Giralda as full of grace and sensibility, predicted that she would be the Persiani of the Opéra-​Comique.13 The Italian soprano Tacchinardi-​Persiani was known for her delicate, sweet voice, agility, and her interpretations of bel canto repertoire, including Adina in Donizetti’s L ’elisir d’amore, Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, and Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. Although Félix-​Miolan’s later role creations featured markedly high and difficult melismatic singing, far beyond the abilities of the typical leading soprano of the time, the vocal demands of her early roles were fairly standard. Indeed, Félix-​Miolan was only one of the premières chanteuses at the Opéra-​Comique in 1850, all of whom were more than capable of the type of vocal agility required by operas such as Giralda. None of the five roles Félix-​Miolan sang goes above high C (except for Virginie in Le Caïd, who touches a high D briefly), if they go that high. That is, the range and tessitura are well within the conventional vocal requirements for French and Italian soprano roles in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although not a complete roster, Figure 4.1 reminds us that in 1850, the Opéra-​Comique was actually made up of only a few singers. Louise Lavoye (1823–​1890) and Delphine Ugalde (née Beaucé, 1829–​1910), along with Félix-​Miolan, sang the majority of the leading soprano roles and, consequently, the majority of the coloratura passages.14 Lavoye premiered the leading roles in Auber’s La Sirène (1844) and Halévy’s Les Mousquetaires de la reine (1846), roles that Félix-​Miolan would sing at the Opéra-​Comique in 1852. Ugalde, to whom I will return later, premiered Coraline in Adam’s Le Toréador (1849), the title role in Massé ’s Galathée (1852), and roles in two of Ambroise Thomas’ works, Virginie in Le Caïd, as well as Elizabeth I in Le Songe d’une nuit d’été (1850).

Rising to New Heights The year 1853 was a pivotal one for Félix-​Miolan. Her first collaboration with Massé, Les Noces de Jeannette, premiered on 4 February 1853. It is the only

146  Vocal Virtuosity

Fig. 4.1  Opéra-​Comique roster, 1850

non-​Gounod opera premiered by Félix-​Miolan that has had a number of revivals. The opera was quite successful, particularly in France, where its initial run yielded seventy-​five performances, but also in Italy and Germany.15 Massé seems to have composed his operas unabashedly to highlight the abilities of the leading sopranos of the time. In 1852 he wrote the title role of Galathée (also successful) for Ugalde. In Les Noces de Jeannette, Félix-​Miolan’s showpiece is the Rossignol aria, also the dramatic linchpin of this one-​act opéra comique:

“Au bord du chemin,” the Rossignol aria from Massé ’s Les Noces de Jeannette (1853) Au bord du chemin, qui passe à ma porte, fleurit un bel aubépin, un bel aubépin,

On the side of the road that passes my door, a beautiful hawthorn bush is in bloom, a beautiful hawthorn bush,

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  147 dont le vent m’apporte les parfums chaque matin! Sur sa branche, qui se penche un gentil rossignol vient depuis quelques jours chanter ses amours, et sous la ramée parfois, j’écoute charmée sa voix. Ah!

from which the wind brings me the scent every morning! Upon its drooping boughs a dear little nightingale has been coming for the last few days to sing of its love, and now and then, beneath the branches I listen entranced to its voice. Ah!

Voix légère! Chanson passagère! babil gracieux, qui réjouis l’air et les cieux! Du zéphire le souffle t’inspire et l’amour s’éveille à tes accents mélodieux! Pour entendre mieux ta voix si pure, le flot clair apaise son murmure, et dans l’air et dans la ramure le vent soupire plus tendrement et plus gaîment.

Gentle voice! Fleeting song! graceful twitter, that delights the air and the heavens! The sighing of the breeze inspires you and love awakes at your melodious accents! To better hear your voice so pure, the clear stream calms its murmur and in the air and in the branches the wind sighs more tenderly and more gaily.

Cette nuit, sur ma croisée, l’aile humide de rosée, l’oiseau léger vint se loger! Triste et plaintive comme un soupir, sa voix moins vive semblait gémir! Mais le jour luit et sa chanson va revenir! Ah!

This evening, at my window, its wings damp with dew, the gentle bird came to rest! Sad and plaintive as a sigh its little voice seemed to moan! But dawn breaks and its song will return! Ah!

The opera’s plot centers on marriage: Jeannette’s desire to marry and Jean’s fear of commitment. When talk yields no effect, Jeannette decides to trick Jean. She offers him a document to sign as he is threatened by the imminent arrival of Jeannette’s father, a military officer. Jean’s anxiety and illiteracy spur him to sign; the document is of course a marriage contract. Jeannette also signs and the couple is married. Jean learns the truth, becomes angry, destroys some furniture, and storms away to take a nap. While he sleeps, Jeannette replaces the furniture (courtesy of her father) and sings the nightingale aria, which awakens Jean, who is charmed by her singing. This, coupled with the new furniture, convinces him that their marriage will work. The fact that the aria is onstage music is important. Jeannette does two kinds of singing in the aria: singing about the nightingale and singing with (or as) the

148  Vocal Virtuosity nightingale. The former is syllabically set and accompanied primarily by strings. Predictably, the latter is set melismatically, consisting of duetting roulades for the flute and the voice. The two worlds—​that of the pastoral song about the singing bird and that of the bird itself—​are first delineated in the instrumental introduction to the aria. The orchestra establishes a rustic, pastoral tone with swinging triplet patterns in A♭ major and then the unaccompanied flute plays a cadenza: a trill-​trillo-​trill pattern followed by wide-​ranging sweeping arpeggios (Example 4.1). The pastoral topic is further evident in this aria in the connections it draws between flute and birdsong, the orchestra and nature; the “rossignol aria” was a well-​known genre by mid-​century.16 The text is declaimed to the duple/​triple rhythmic flow heard in the introduction, which denies strong downbeat arrivals and gives the narrative/​descriptive world an almost speech-​like, unaccented quality. Sung primarily in the middle range of the soprano, this world is accompanied by drone-​like chords, further aligning it with the pastoral. When Jeannette sings of the nightingale’s voice—​ “sa voix”—​she reiterates the phrase, and a score indication, “Faites attendre cet accord,” further confirms that a new section is about to begin. The flute plays Ex. 4.1  Opening of Jeannette’s Rossignol aria, from Massé ’s one-​act Les Noces de Jeannette (1853)

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  149 trills and then a brief pattern, which Jeannette imitates. The next flute pattern is also brief, but higher, and is also imitated by the soprano. The third imitation harks back to the introductory cadenza. Jeannette executes the same pattern, but then upstages the nightingale with a chromatically inflected melisma that not only overshadows the trill of the bird, but also has an improvisatory quality, seeming to luxuriate in the sonic colors suggested by the nightingale (Example 4.2). Jeannette’s sinuous flourish also serves as a transition to the first theme of the aria. This A section returns three times in the aria and, while still largely Ex. 4.2  Flute-​soprano imitations in the Rossignol aria, mm. 22–​29

150  Vocal Virtuosity weighted toward the middle register, is also more wide-​ranging than the introductory arioso section. The switch from the quaint tunefulness of the pastoral theme to the almost chirpy melodic thirds corresponds to the textual shift from general musings on natural beauty to descriptions of the sweet melodies of the bird. After the initial iteration of the main theme, a contrasting B section in  and F minor follows. Although opening with a flute flourish, the section still belongs to the narrative world, with the shift to minor mode corresponding to the textual shift from daytime, happy melodies to an evening lament. The ornamented, spun-​out vocal lines, arpeggiated accompaniment, and overall ­affect are redolent of the canto di maniera bel canto style of some cantabile Bellini arias (Example 4.3). Ex. 4.3  Opening of B section in the Rossignol aria, canto di maniera, mm. 73–​79

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  151 The end of the B section is joined without transition to the world of nightingale song. After a brief imitation between flute and soprano, the two harmonize before continuing their contest. After two more imitations, Jeannette again gets the last melismatic word, this time ascending to a held high C, then descending chromatically to another iteration of the A section (Example 4.4). After this repetition, worlds collide as flute, coloratura, and the orchestra combine for a coda of fioritura that ranges over two octaves and twice ascends to high D♭ (Example  4.5). The mix of scales (diatonic and chromatic), large leaps, and arpeggiating coloratura is striking for its difficulty and it presages the vocal acrobatics of Félix-​Miolan’s later career. The flute-​coloratura connection also features prominently in Catherine’s mad scene, explored in the last chapter, but the connection can be traced back at least to Handel’s works—​ “Sweet bird” from his L ’Allegro (1740) exemplifies this, as the soprano and flute echo each other throughout. In the case of the Rossignol aria here, as the narrative and songbird worlds merge, the singer seems to emerge the victor: she is texturally the most prominent and impressive voice, in the opera the charmer and manipulator of Jean’s heart, winning him over with coloratura, and on the stage as Jeannette and as the rising star Félix-​Miolan, a soprano wooing both lover and audience. Blanchard noted some of the qualities I have observed, deeming the aria a “delicious” dialogue between flute and voice (a “dialogue délicieux”): Jeannette sings vocalises in a brilliant, charming manner. Why not? Doesn’t the nightingale sing vocalises too? Aren’t opulent melodies and bold vocal modulations natural, and thanks to being in the woods, also resounding? Here, then, Jeannette executes an attack of sighs, spun sounds [messa di voce] with brilliant features, with a nightingale in the orchestra who hides under the name of a flutist.17

Berlioz also reviewed Félix-​Miolan positively: Couderc and Miolan performed these two roles with remarkable talent. . . . Miolan imbues her role with much grace and a gentle dignity; moreover, with her small voice she sings it like a model warbler. Both singers were completely successful.18

Ex. 4.4  Flute-​soprano contest in the Rossignol aria, mm. 95–​105

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  153 Ex. 4.5  Coloratura coda of the Rossignol aria, mm. 123–​137

Les Noces de Jeannette was the midpoint of five successive operatic creations for Félix-​Miolan at the Opéra-​C omique. These were Mésangère in Grisar’s Le Carillonneur de Bruges (premiered 20 February 1852), Christine in Louis Clapisson’s Les Mystères d’Udolphe (3 November 1852), Dora in Halévy’s Le Nabab (1 September 1853), and Suzanne in Henri Reber’s Les Papillotes de M. Benoist (28 December 1853). Of these, the role of Dora in Le Nabab contains the most extensive and difficult fioritura. As we will see, Félix-​Miolan built on these successes, collaborating creatively and even more extensively.

154  Vocal Virtuosity

A New Stage In 1853, Félix-​Miolan embarked on one more highly collaborative relationship, becoming Caroline Carvalho on 6 August, when she married Léon Carvalho (1825–​1897). Having met at the Opéra-​Comique (Léon was a baritone who sang several minor parts; his voice was thought unremarkable), their marriage would prove hugely and mutually beneficial for both of their future careers. Carvalho would sing only two more roles after 1853 before moving to the Théâtre-​Lyrique in 1855, where she would remain until 1868. The move to the Théâtre-​Lyrique was fraught with difficulty. Carvalho was ill for a good portion of 1854, so much so that she was unable to fulfill her contractual obligations with the Opéra-​Comique. In 1855 she began hopeful negotiations with the Opéra, but was blocked by Émile Perrin, then director of the Opéra-​Comique, who held Carvalho to her contract.19 Her “illness” was likely her pregnancy with her son, Henri. After returning, the soprano apparently sang even better than before and at the end of her contract, she moved to the new theater. Although transferring to the Théâtre-​Lyrique may not have been Carvalho’s preference at the time, it gave her unprecedented freedom to choose and create roles, thereby enabling her to become the most prolific créatrice of the Second Empire. Once at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, Carvalho made a shrewd move that ensured this: as Pierre Pellegrin was stepping down as director, she and the composer Louis Clapisson suggested that her husband become his replacement. This was a true watershed for nineteenth-​century French opera. As director of the Théâtre-​Lyrique, Léon Carvalho revived Mozart, Weber, and Beethoven in Paris; produced many of Gounod’s operatic premieres; and also staged the first performances of Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles (1863) and Berlioz’s Les Troyens (1863). Later, as director of the Opéra-​Comique, he produced the premieres of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881), Delibes’ Lakmé (1883), and Massenet’s Manon (1884). His keen ear for operas with potential is indubitable. The Carvalhos together assumed control of the theater—​he as directeur and she as the première chanteuse and as an unofficial “directrice”—​and proceeded to make choices that would raise its status so that it rivaled productions at the Opéra and the Opéra-​Comique.20 It is of course difficult to establish the extent of Caroline Carvalho’s involvement in the management of the Théâtre-​Lyrique, particularly because of posthumous bitterness over the pair’s participation in matters now considered the domain of composers. We know that while Léon was the official director, Caroline was sometimes called the “directrice” of the theater,21 and that she initiated benefit concerts, role choices, and aria insertions and

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  155 modifications. T. J. Walsh attributes much of the Léon’s success as well as that of the Théâtre-​Lyrique to his wife.22 Impressively, their leadership raised the status of the theater before the Théâtre-​Lyrique began receiving state financial support in 1863.23 In her first year at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, Carvalho sang only two roles, but both were premieres and written with her voice in mind, and both were extremely successful. Louis Clapisson (1808–​1866), a professional violinist turned composer, achieved his greatest operatic success with La Fanchonnette (1856), composing the title role for Carvalho. Here she played the part of a singer in the story, so the fact that the score features more and higher melismatic passagework than any role Carvalho had sung before is not entirely surprising. A long and energetic bolero aria showcases Carvalho’s coloratura with extensive staccato and legato articulated fioritura as well as extreme high notes (acuti) above high C: Ds, Es, and even an F♯ (Example 4.6).24 The staccato articulation and high-​voice extension strongly imply that Carvalho had mastered the flageolet or whistle voice technique discussed in Chapter 1—​the means by which female singers, particularly sopranos, are able to sing in a lighter head voice register and access high notes above the staff. Carvalho almost certainly employed this singing technique in creating Fanchonnette and her many subsequent roles with arias that have demanding passagework ascending into the extreme upper range and lingering at a very high tessitura. Bel canto soprano roles rarely call for this upper extension and the impressive nature of the vocal acrobatics was noted in the opera’s initial critical reception: an aria for Fanchonnette in which an abundance of instrumental finesse is combined with the brilliant vocalises of the singer. . . . As for Miolan-​Carvalho, she is a singer of a very distinguished kind; her technique is exquisite; she is sovereign mistress of her voice, with which she does whatever she wants, and it is full of charm, sweetness, and flexibility. It was not mere bravos but veritable leaps of joy that she provoked in the auditorium.25

Fanchonnette’s other bravura aria, a florid recitative, and several arioso moments in ensemble numbers overwhelmingly established Carvalho’s command over vocal technique in general and coloratura in particular. From Fanchonnette onward, all of her creations would contain arias that demanded greater vocal resources than those required of the typical première chanteuse of the period. The operas featuring these highly difficult and melismatic roles succeeded largely because of Carvalho’s vocal abilities. Many of the operas were never revived, and those that were revived had Carvalho again as the leading

156  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 4.6  Fanchonnette’s bolero aria, coloratura excerpt from Act II of Clapisson’s La Fanchonnette (1856), mm. 109–​125

soprano or were modified for subsequent sopranos (see for example, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, discussed in the next chapter). In other words, Carvalho was taking her singing to new heights—​one might say that she sang at an Olympic level—​well beyond the capabilities of most of her contemporaries.

Variations Victor Massé was the first to take advantage of Carvalho’s rapidly ascending star status. Three years after Les Noces de Jeannette, he collaborated again with Carvalho in 1856, writing the title role of La Reine Topaze for her. This

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  157 provided Carvalho with an aria that would prove to be not only one of her favorites, but also one that would define her as the foremost French virtuosa of her era:

The “Carnaval de Venise” aria from Act II of Massé ’s La Reine Topaze (1856) Ninette est jeune et belle Pourquoi donc pleure-​t-​elle? Qui cause son chagrin? C’est qu’elle aime Pasquin. Pasquin est infidèle Que fait la jouvencelle Elle vent mettre fin À son cruel destin Ninette, ah! Mourir! Quelle folie! Oublions plutôt qui nous oublie Ninette, Ninette, pourquoi mourir D’un mal si facile à guérir?

Ninette is young and beautiful. Why then is she crying? Who is causing her sorrow? It is because she loves Pasquin. Pasquin is unfaithful, so what will the young girl do? She wants to put an end to her cruel fate. Ninette, ah! To die! What madness! Rather, we should forget he who forgets us. Ninette, why die of a pain that is so easily cured?

Tiens regarde. Venise est tout en fêtes, Car voici le carnaval C’est le temps des conquêtes; Plus de pleurs, et viens au bal. Pasquin est infidèle! Il faut te régler sur lui; Prends Pasquin pour modèle, Et sois infidèle aussi. Ah!

Wait, look. Venice is full of celebrations, because it is carnival. This is the time for conquests; enough crying and come to the ball. Pasquin is unfaithful! You should model yourself on him; take Pasquin for your example, and be unfaithful yourself. Ah!

The “Carnaval de Venise” aria, a melodic-​outline variations aria, is based on the Carnival of Venice folk song, also known in English as “My Hat It Has Three Corners.”26 The song’s theme (Example 4.7) begins after an introduction in which Topaze tells the story of the jilted Ninette. In the text, Topaze essentially urges women not to bemoan men’s infidelities, but to join them in this behavior instead. The theme consists of two periods each made up of two four-​bar phrases (antecedent-​consequent). In addition to the harmonic

158  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 4.7  Theme of “Carnaval de Venise” aria, from Act II of Massé ’s La Reine Topaze (1856), mm. 66–​81

simplicity and predictability, the similarity of cadential melodic contour in each of the four phrases allows it to be ornamented and elaborated upon freely and easily. The sheer difficulty of the variations is the most striking feature of the aria. Carvalho’s competitive nature may have spurred her to want to top the variations written for Ugalde in Adam’s Le Toréador in 1849—​an aria (another coloratura piece with voice-​flute duets) based on the French folk song, “Ah, vous dirai-​je, Maman,” better known today as “Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” which is also the basis for Mozart’s famous variations for piano. Interestingly, in order to do so, Carvalho not only collaborated with Massé on the variations, but may have composed some of them herself, and perhaps hoped particularly to show her skill in singing lines with huge registral leaps, as difficult as those that virtuoso instrumentalists played.27 Sometimes referred to as “Carvalho’s variations,” the aria became one of her signature pieces, in concert and quite literally: when a certain Alfred de Beauchesne (1804–​1876) asked for her autograph along with a representative musical sample, Carvalho sent him one of the variations—​the third variation, consisting of two-​octave leaps—​with her signature at the bottom and at the top, thereby seeming to credit herself (not Massé) as the composer (Figure 4.2).28 When singing in London at Covent Garden, Carvalho used the piece as an insertion aria in Rosina’s lesson scene in Il barbiere di Siviglia.29 The first variation highlights the trill as the primary ornament (Example  4.8). Beyond decorating the theme, the trills facilitate flourishes

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  159

Fig. 4.2  Carvalho’s “signature” variation; facsimile of autograph of Carvalho’s third variation in the “Carnaval de Venise” aria from La Reine Topaze (1856), Département de la musique, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris

that elevate phrase endings up an octave to high Bs and C♯s. The staccato articulations and frequent rests make for compact micro-​phrases that function as hiccupping or laughing gestures interrupting the legato flow of the original iteration of the theme. Ex. 4.8  First variation of “Carnaval de Venise” aria, mm. 82–​90

160  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 4.9  Second variation (Paganini’s) of “Carnaval de Venise” aria, mm. 91–​98

The second variation (Example 4.9) suggests that Carvalho’s sheer vocal facility was uncanny. A note in the score indicates that the eight measures of this variation are those of the virtuoso Paganini, and indeed the variation matches an 1846 edition of Paganini’s variations on the same theme.30 The variation Carvalho sang corresponds to the second half of the violinist’s second variation, a flurry of thirty-​second notes arpeggiating over an octave and a half, repeatedly rising to high Bs and C♯s.31 Carvalho’s variation is in the same key, but does not have the staccato articulation. Melismatic clarity was one of Carvalho’s strengths and her method of articulation—​most likely vowel articulation in light of the speed of the variation—​probably yielded crystalline strands of notes. The idiomatically instrumental, violinistic character of this variation gives it, when sung, a sense of the mechanical. The constant, motoric barrage of notes aligns Carvalho’s voice not with human vocality, but with the technical accomplishments of an almost superhuman instrumental virtuoso. The third variation, Carvalho’s “signature” variation, ranges over two octaves, but is most striking for its leaps from pure chest register (down to middle C)

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  161 to above-​the-​staff head tones (reaching high D). The fortissimo indication and accents marking each of the notes in the low register suggest a diaphragmatic articulation. This would provide direct contrast with the high notes, which are first articulated staccato and then legato. The shift from the speech-​like, dark, chest register to the sung, highest, brightest, head register made for an arresting effect (Example 4.10). Ex. 4.10  Third variation (Carvalho’s “signature” variation) of “Carnaval de Venise” aria, mm. 99–​107

A turn followed by a ribattuta di gola (staccato rearticulations of the same note, also called a trillo) on high A—​possibly indicating laughter—​serves as a transition to the fourth variation which shifts to the parallel minor. The canto di bravura of the previous variations yields to what Garcia would describe as canto di maniera here. The faux sobbing of the reiterated notes identifies this variation as a moment of mockery of poor Ninette’s sorrow. Topaze colors the swooping, wide-​ranging line with an F♮ over a V7/​A. The non-​chord tone is further accentuated by its position on a strong beat and gives the effect of a “sobbing” appoggiatura. The ensuing Allegro non troppo suggests that this section in minor might also have been performed more slowly, heightening its lachrymose affect. Each of the first four variations treats only half of the original theme, that is, only eight measures. The fifth variation recalls the second, but covers the entire sixteen measures. Racing notes fly over the orchestral accompaniment, which now plays the theme in a detached, punctuated manner, instead of merely outlining tonic-​dominant chords. After eight measures of ascending and descending arpeggio figures, the vocal line shifts to turning and scalar figures lying mainly at a very high tessitura, ascending to high Ds.

162  Vocal Virtuosity The motoricity continues in what seems to be a sixth variation but turns out to be a continuation that then morphs into a coda (Example 4.11). Arching arpeggios are scaled back into ascending flourish gestures followed by ever-​higher trills (mm. 22–​25). The passages of ascent gestures and increasing tessitura finally reach a peak of intensity as the soprano reaches high E, a difficult feat after the previous pages. By the end of the aria the triumph of the singer-​as-​instrument is complete.32 Berlioz praised Carvalho at length in this aria and made particular note of the variations: As for the Carnival of Venice variations, the composer’s main achievement was to skillfully efface himself before the singer and produce technical feats that expertly show off her talent. One of these variations is by Paganini; Massé had the good spirit to preserve it intact. When writing these difficult violin passages, the celebrated virtuoso surely didn’t imagine that a soprano would one day sing them and inspire the acclamations and frantic applause of the audience. . . . I believe I have already emphasized that the musical execution of La Reine Topaze is the best that one has ever heard at the Théâtre-​Lyrique. . . . As for Mme Miolan-​Carvalho, her triumph lasted for four hours; the gloved and ungloved applauded, shouted brava! Flowers, recalls, encores to the point of delirium tremens. This is Ariel singing, especially in the imposing Carnival of Venice variations, the last of which she makes sparkle in ascending and descending arpeggios, with an extraordinary sureness of pitch and range of nuances. Not only that, but she performed this long role perfectly as an actress, sometimes tender and impassioned, sometimes ironic and bold.33

In affirming Carvalho’s many and overwhelming talents, Berlioz seems to hint at the idea of the performer as a kind of composer and recognizes the singer as the linchpin to the opera’s success. In addition to her execution of the aria “sans fatigue et sans effort,” sureness of intonation, prodigious and precise vocalizations, and marvelous expression are recurring themes in reviews of Carvalho’s triumph as Topaze.34 The 115 performances she sang during the initial run of the opera offer additional testimony to her success in the role. These performances followed shortly after the soprano’s 112 performances as Fanchonnette in the initial run of Clapisson’s opera. Carvalho must have had significant vocal endurance to have been able to sing 227 performances of two long, extremely taxing, and virtuosic roles in only a year and a half. The variations aria and its reception have important implications for attitudes toward the voice and virtuosity in the mid-​nineteenth century. Increasingly seen as a questionable, if not outright shallow and morally reprehensible artistic act, virtuosity in the second half of the century was even talked about or framed as

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  163 Ex. 4.11  Coda of “Carnaval de Venise” aria, mm. 117–​155

164  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 4.11 Continued

a guilty pleasure. As Elaine Sisman has observed, variations were “implicated in the backlash against virtuosity.”35 The connections between variations, virtuosity, and the instrumental resonate strongly with my suggestion that Carvalho’s variations evoke not only virtuosity but also the mechanicity of the idiomatically instrumental. Typical of late eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century melodic-​outline variations, Carvalho’s variations employ a mix of pleonastic (the addition of “superfluous” notes to the melody) and periphrastic (the original notes replaced by a more ornate line, though with sufficient resemblance to the original, especially at cadences) types of figuration. Virtuosity of course calls attention to itself and the performer, rather than the composer, hence its increasingly fraught status as composers gained authority over the course of the nineteenth century. Carvalho’s variations also call attention to gender. The switches from laughter to delirious deluges of notes to sob figures, while certainly a typical move in a set of instrumental variations, can also be read as musical gestures that suggest a staged subtext in an opera. Topaze’s singing not only puts the soprano’s voice on display in a virtuosic and instrumentalized fashion; it also seems to communicate the message that women can and should do all the things men do. As Katharine Ellis and Maiko Kawabata have demonstrated, instrumental virtuosity

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  165 in mid-​century Paris was a decidedly “masculine” and even “virile” enterprise.36 Therefore, when the “Carnaval de Venise” aria invoked a specific violin virtuoso, it also invoked a virtuosity that was gendered masculine. In this case, the voice of a woman summoned the violin performance of a man and demonstrated equal mastery over technique. Perhaps, then, we might consider a parallel between the narrative of the aria and the cultural work of Carvalho’s performance; in the same way that Topaze urges Ninette to join Pasquin by also being unfaithful, Carvalho subversively joined Paganini in her virtuosic—​and idiomatically instrumental—​ singing. By situating the singer in the same realm as the male virtuoso and composer, the aria blurs the issue of authorship between Massé, Paganini, and Carvalho. The case of Carvalho’s variations therefore encourages us to consider the provenance and musical legitimacy of the female singer as the final arbiter in performance. From a purely theatrical perspective, the variations are a striking moment of admiration, exemplifying the celebration of the female singing voice by both the audience and those onstage. It was after La Reine Topaze and another similarly virtuosic title role in Clapisson’s Margot (1857; Figure 4.3) that one reviewer explicitly described Carvalho’s voice as a mechanical instrument, a “prodigious mechanism” that allowed her to “play” it as Paganini played the violin and as Liszt played the piano.37 (Another reviewer observed that Carvalho’s voice was a “docile instrument,” able to perform “impossible roulades and cadenzas” and to imitate the violin and flute.38) It is particularly striking that Carvalho’s performance as Topaze resulted in a shift in her artistic peer group—​from past female singers (such as Persiani) to male virtuosi instrumentalists. Of course, there is a long history of comparison between singers and instrumentalists, but the singing voice reigned supreme on its own terms and was often imitated by instruments until instrumental music supplanted vocal music as the dominant medium in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with the growth of symphonic culture and the arrival of instrumentalists such as Paganini and Liszt. Coloratura singers such as Carvalho tell the next part of the story: at mid-​ century, the voice as an instrument reasserted a technical dominance rivaling that of virtuosi such as Paganini. Although Berlioz lamented this fact, observing that the melismatic female singer who displayed “instrumental agility” garnered fanatical acclaim from Parisian audiences who went wild for the aural delight of high notes and coloratura, he singled out Carvalho as exemplary in this regard. Clearly in favor of shifting greater authority to composers and away from singers, Berlioz condemned the claque system that perpetuated performer authority and derided the popularity of emerging gendered vocal styles: the loud, shout-​like singing of tenors, and the melismas and acuti of sopranos—​the so-​called Lapdog School. Berlioz considered Carvalho part of this school, but he acknowledged that she was one of the few sopranos actually to reach her targeted high notes

166  Vocal Virtuosity

Fig. 4.3  Carvalho in the title role of Clapisson’s Margot (1857)

with consistent accuracy and security.39 His review of her performance of the “Carnaval de Venise” aria amplifies Carvalho’s exceptional status as a singer who could inspire and thrill with her expressive and virtuosic abilities. Aural scintillation allowed female singers to dominate vocally and technically, making vocal virtuosity a highly prized commodity in mid-​century Paris.

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  167 It is worth re-​emphasizing the uniqueness, the markedness of coloratura in mid-​century opera. Although one might argue that virtuosity in the operas of Rossini was also a prized commodity, there was nothing particularly extraordinary or marked about the coloratura in these operas. Bel canto singing by definition considers coloratura to be a normative singing style, one that pervades bel canto operas. Melismatic singing was thus a skill all bel canto singers were expected to possess. In these French examples (and in those singular melismatic moments in Verdi’s middle-​period operas), coloratura is marked feminine, the exceptional singing style rather than the normative, and the vocal tessitura and range extend significantly higher in Carvalho’s creations than in the melismatic examples from earlier in the century. That is, the singing is much more difficult and more virtuosic in Carvalho’s variations, her subsequent Gounod coloratura arias, and in many of the later examples in the Franco-​Italian operatic literature inspired by her. Carvalho, then, claimed for the female virtuosa singer what had been claimed earlier by the male virtuoso instrumentalist.

Carvalho vs. Cabel The height of Carvalho’s fame and vocal fireworks was in 1856, her watershed year, and it inspired imitation—​imitation first of all in the sense that many of the most difficult coloratura passages in the roles she sang were direct echoes, harkenings, or invocations of solo orchestral instruments. Prior to her variations, Carvalho had tended to sing in tandem with instruments in familiar works such as Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, and especially in other operas written for her. In Adam’s Giralda, she sang with an oboe; in Massé ’s Les Noces de Jeannette she duetted with a flute in the nightingale aria; in Henri Reber’s Les Papillotes de M. Benoist (1853) she sang with a solo violin. By invoking the virtuoso instrumentalist and perhaps even the idea of the performer as composer, the “Carnaval de Venise” aria claimed for Carvalho a new pinnacle of vocal technical skill. It also spurred competition with a contemporary, the young Belgian soprano Marie Cabel (1827–​1885), then the dominant première chanteuse at the Opéra-​Comique.40 Cabel débuted at the Opéra-​Comique in 1849 in Halévy’s Le Val d’Andorre (1848), then sang for three years in Brussels before returning to Paris in 1853. She created Toinon in Adam’s Le Bijou perdu (1853) at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, where she sang until 1856, then she moved back to the Opéra-​Comique. It would seem that the departure of Pellegrin and the move of the Carvalhos to the Théâtre-​ Lyrique allowed Perrin to lure Cabel back. Her first creation back at the Opéra-​ Comique was the title role in Auber’s Manon Lescaut, which features a coloratura Laughing Song for the soprano.

168  Vocal Virtuosity The premiere of Ambroise Thomas’ Le Carnaval de Venise (1857) put Cabel and Thomas in direct competition with Carvalho and Massé and their popular hit of the previous year. In Thomas’ opera, Cabel created the role of Sylvia, who at the end of the opera sings a series of onstage vocalises which the chorus praises as her “concerto” (“son concerto”). The opera’s title and this explicit moment of voice as virtuoso instrument suggest that Thomas and Cabel piggybacked on Carvalho’s success in La Reine Topaze. The vocalises are not nearly as demanding as those in the Massé; they are neither at so high a tessitura, nor are they as wide-​ ranging. Although the prolonged instrumental interludes dividing the vocalises are part of the ritornello form, perhaps they also suggest that Cabel needed some breaks in the aria. Regardless, the juxtaposition of coloratura and instrumental virtuosity produced a rivalry between Carvalho and Cabel. While Carvalho would go on to champion Gounod’s operas, Cabel would create the roles of Dinorah in Meyerbeer’s Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859) and Philine in Thomas’ Mignon (1866; Figure 4.4), both of which contain extensive coloratura moments: Dinorah sings a mad scene, “Ombre légère” (see Chapter 3) and Philine sings a showpiece bravura aria, “Je suis Titania.” The overlapping circumstances of Cabel and Carvalho extend to other sopranos as well, and are indicative of both the competitive nature of the Parisian singing world and the very few degrees of separation within it (Table 4.2). There was of course also a rivalry between the Théâtre-​Lyrique and Opéra-​ Comique. In fact, the Carvalhos’ move to the Théâtre-​Lyrique may have resulted in a shift in the hierarchy of Parisian opera houses. Léon Carvalho’s lavish productions, increasingly high performance standards, and innovative programming led many critics to applaud the Théâtre-​Lyrique for producing some of the most exciting performances in Paris. The competition between theaters and singers was obviously a salient factor in journalistic treatment, and the implications of a privately run company outdoing a company of the state are significant. The idea of genre being linked primarily to theater was overtly in question and Léon Carvalho would further muddy the generic waters with his programming decisions over the next twelve years.

Mozart, Coloratura, and Voice-​Type Unlike other opera companies in Paris, the Théâtre-​Lyrique was free to choose any mixture of operatic repertoire to present to the public, either newly or previously composed. As T. J. Walsh has noted, the Opéra and the Opéra-​Comique were allowed to perform works only by French composers, or “by non-​ French composers if they were composed to French texts.”41 The Opéra rarely

Fig. 4.4  Marie Cabel as Philine in Thomas’ Mignon (1866)

Theater

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

1853

1854

1854

1855

1856

1857

1858

1859

1862

1866

1868

Marie Cabel (1827–​1885)

Year

opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 2 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts

La Promise

Le Muletier de Tolède

La Jaguarita d’indienne

Manon Lescaut

Le Carnaval de Venise

La Bacchante

Le Pardon de Ploërmel

La Chatte merveilleuse

Mignon

Le Premier Jour de bonheur

Genre

Le Bijou perdu

Opera

Table 4.2  Roles created by Carvalho’s coloratura competitors

Hélène

Philine

Féline

Dinorah

la Bacchante

Sylvia

Manon

Jaguarita

Elvire

Marie

Toinon

Role

Auber

Thomas

Grisar

Meyerbeer

E. Gautier

Thomas

Auber

Halévy

Adam

Clapisson

Adam

Composer

d’Ennery and Cormon

Barbier and Carré

Dumanoir and d’Ennery

Barbier and Carré

Leuven and Beauplan

Sauvage

Scribe

Saint-​Georges and Leuven

d’Ennery and Clairville

Leuven and Brunswick

Leuven and Forges

Libretto

107

148

62

55

3

33

58

84

54

57

40

Initial run

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Opéra-​Comique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

Théâtre-​Lyrique

1849

1849

1849

1849

1850

1851

1852

1853

1857

1858

1860

1860

Beatrix Coraline

Les Monténégrins opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 2 acts opéra comique in 3 acts

Le Toréador

Le Fée aux Roses Fidelia

opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 2 acts opéra comique in 2 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 3 acts opéra comique in 1 act opéra comique in 5 acts

Le Château de Barbe-​Bleue

Galathée

La Tonelli

Psyché

La Fée Carabosse

Ma Tante dort

Gil Blas Gil Blas

Martine

Carabosse

Éros

Tonelli

Galathée

la Princesse

La Dame de Pique opéra comique in 3 acts

Nérilha

Virginie

opéra comique in 2 acts

Le Caïd

Delphine Ugalde (1829–​1910)

Semet

Caspers

Massé

Thomas

Thomas

Massé

Limnander

Halévy

Halévy

Adam

Limnander

Thomas

Barbier and Carré

Crémieux

Lockroy and Cogniard

Barbier and Carré

Sauvage

Barbier and Carré

Saint-​Georges

Scribe

Scribe and Saint-​Georges

Sauvage

Alboize and Nerval

Sauvage

37

22

25

41

34

51

25

47

81

30

34

61

172  Vocal Virtuosity produced premieres of new works by inexperienced French composers and the Opéra-​Comique preferred to limit such premieres to one-​acts composed by prizewinners of the Conservatoire. Italian opera, the domain of the Théâtre-​ Italien, could not be produced in translation at the two state-​funded theaters.42 The Théâtre-​Lyrique was exempt from these requirements and thus was able to champion both new works by young composers and old works in translation. As a result, Léon Carvalho was able to develop one of the most interesting and diverse operatic repertories of the century. As we have seen, works such as Clapisson’s La Fanchonnette and Massé ’s La Reine Topaze became huge successes, due in no small part to Carvalho’s virtuosic coloratura. But her husband also revived many older works, by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Verdi, and Gluck, using editions specifically tailored and translated for him. These revivals included: the very successful Berlioz adaptation of Gluck’s Orfée (1859), with Pauline Viardot in the title role; Beethoven’s Fidelio (1860), again with Viardot as Fidelio/​Leonora; Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (Les Noces de Figaro, 1858), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (L’Enlèvement au Sérail, 1859), Die Zauberflöte (La Flûte enchantée, 1865), and Don Giovanni (Don Juan, 1866); Verdi’s La traviata (Violetta, 1864), with Christine Nilsson as Violetta; and Weber’s Der Freischütz (Le Freischütz, 1866), with Carvalho as Agathe, one of only two roles she sang that lacked an aria with a substantial amount of coloratura (the other was Cherubino). It was with his new productions and revivals, particularly of Mozart’s Les Noces de Figaro, that Léon Carvalho solidified the establishment of the theater’s reputation for adventurous and successful programming. In 1858, Léon Carvalho enhanced his roster by adding another soprano with excellent coloratura facility, Delphine Ugalde (Figure 4.5; Table 4.2). This move perhaps betrays the director’s fondness for the vocal style. Bringing Ugalde to the Théâtre-​Lyrique allowed him to have two operas with showstopping bravura sopranos alternately running during the same week. It also allowed him to produce Les Noces de Figaro (text adapted by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, Gounod’s librettists) with an impressive trio of female leads—​“trois ravissantes femmes,”43 as one reviewer described them—​who interestingly, had all premiered roles with significant coloratura demands. Caroline Duprez-​ Vandenheuval (1832–​1874) sang the role of the Comtesse. Daughter of the famous tenor, Duprez had previously made her mark as the creator of the role of Catherine in Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du Nord (1854) at the Opéra-​Comique, a role with several coloratura moments, including a mad scene, as explored in the previous chapter. Carvalho, perhaps least predictably, sang Chérubin, a role that today is most often performed by mezzo-​sopranos.44 Interestingly, it was probably not much of a surprise to Parisians that Carvalho played the page: the most illustrious French coloratura of the preceding generation, Cinti-​Damoreau, also sang the role. (There are some current coloratura sopranos such as Christine

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  173

Fig. 4.5  Delphine Ugalde in the title role of Semet’s Gil Blas (1860)

Schäfer who sing the role as well.) Although she had ample experience with travesty roles, Ugalde was hired by Léon Carvalho to sing Susanne. In addition to creating Coraline in Adam’s Le Toréador (1849) and the title role of Massé ’s Galathée (1852) to great critical acclaim, Ugalde had sung several of the same roles as Carvalho and Duprez, including those in L’Étoile du Nord, Le Caïd, and L’ Ambassadrice. Her position at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, however, if parallel to Carvalho’s, was not equal. Kimberly White’s examination of Ugalde’s unpublished memoirs reveals that the soprano’s principles prevented

174  Vocal Virtuosity her from marrying someone for wealth or power (unlike Carvalho), despite her mother’s protestations that “an understudy with an understudy won’t get you very far.”45 Ugalde’s mother may have been right. White’s research reveals that Ugalde was fiercely competitive and wanted not only to be admired for her performances, but also to hold power over and even control her audience’s reactions.46 However, the coloratura rival only made it so far while she was at the same theater as Carvalho. Indeed, Ugalde was originally contracted to sing Susanna in 1858 and also to create Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust. The Carvalhos changed both of these plans. Caroline reigned at the Théâtre-​Lyrique and she of course was the eventual creator of Marguerite (see Chapter 5); Camille Saint-​ Saëns observed that Ugalde was “inconsolable” when she lost the chance to premiere this role (though she did name her daughter Marguerite, 1861–​1940).47 And Léon Carvalho “customized” Les Noces de Figaro so that the Countess sang the letter duet (“Sull’aria”) with Cherubino instead of with Susanna, displacing Ugalde from one of the most beautiful moments in the opera.48 (Carvalho also ornamented Cherubino’s arias and one of these—​“Voi che sapete” as “Mon coeur soupire”—​was published and marketed as Carvalho’s version. It contains a florid cadenza up to B♭.49) Perhaps understandably, Ugalde eventually became so frustrated with being second that in 1863 she left the Théâtre-​Lyrique and moved to the Bouffes-​Parisiens, where she composed, directed, and sang in her own operetta, Halte au moulin (1867). Les Noces de Figaro was performed in this Théâtre-​Lyrique version 89 times in 1858 and two hundred times in total over the next seven years.50 Its success indicates the Parisians’ affection for the vernacularization of Mozart’s opera and for the performers gathered together by Léon Carvalho. Perhaps as a result of the success of Figaro, negotiations between Carvalho and the Opéra were renewed. This makes sense, considering how Carvalho had been catapulted to star status by her virtuosic performances and had further cemented this status by demonstrating her talent for Mozartian phrasing, characterization, and grace. However, nothing materialized, perhaps because Perrin had become the director of the Opéra by then and still held a grudge from their falling-​out during his Opéra-​Comique  days. More Mozart was in store for the Théâtre-​Lyrique. In 1859, Léon Carvalho produced L’Enlèvement au Sérail (text adapted by Prosper Pascal), with Ugalde as Blondine and Marie-​Stéphanie Meillet as Constance. Of course, Die Entführung aus dem Serail as we know it makes significant technical demands on the singers, particularly the two soprano roles, Blonde and Konstanze, who have extensive, extremely high coloratura moments. In the Théâtre-​Lyrique version, Blonde’s “Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln” was cut and “Martern aller Arten” was sung by Blonde, not Konstanze. The former aria must have been too difficult for Ugalde (it ascends to three consecutive staccato high Es), and the latter must

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  175 have suited her (it ascends to high D in the melismas) but not Meillet. One would assume that Carvalho could have sung Blonde’s aria (she had after all sung many Es in performance), but, as we will see, she was busy singing Marguerite in Faust at this time. L’Enlèvement au Sérail was performed 55 times in 1859, almost as many times as Faust’s 57.51 The theater’s success with Mozart operas would continue in 1865 with La Flûte enchantée (text adapted by Charles Nuitter and Alexandre Beaumont), which was performed 117 times that year (172 times total).52 Carvalho did sing in this production but, again defying expectations, sang Pamina, not Queen of the Night with her high Fs. The cadenza Carvalho sang at the end of Pamina’s aria reflects her continuing practice of adding ornament, nuance, and individuality to her roles. La Reine de la Nuit was sung by the new rising soprano, Christine Nilsson (Figure 4.6). Nilsson came to Paris in the 1850s and studied voice privately with Pierre Wartel. After auditioning for Léon Carvalho, she was immediately engaged at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, first singing Violetta in La traviata (retitled Violetta in Paris) in 1864. She went on to international fame, even though very few roles were written explicitly for her—​only three: Myrrha in Victorin Joncières’s Sardanapale (1867), Estelle in Jules Cohen’s Les Bleuets (1867), and most notably as we have seen, Ophélie in Thomas’ Hamlet (1868). In a manner similar to Carvalho, part of Nilsson’s fame rested on singing famously difficult coloratura passages with clarion high notes. Although she was nervous, Nilsson triumphed as Queen of the Night and her singing was well received by audiences and critics.53 Her purity of tone and vocal facility encouraged extensive critical comparisons between her and Carvalho, particularly, as we will see, when both sang Marguerite at the Opéra in 1869. (Debates over the better Marguerite tended to give the edge to Carvalho, for the depth of her expression; the fact that she was French certainly did not hurt.) Let us not forget about Ugalde; she sang in this Mozart production too, as Papagena. As with Les Noces de Figaro, the presence of multiple leading sopranos in La Flûte enchantée ensured its success. The sopranos’ role assignments raise the issue of vocal categorization. Today, it might be common for a soprano who sings the Queen of the Night to sing Pamina also later in her career. For example, Diana Damrau performed both roles in separate performances of the opera in November 2007 at the Metropolitan Opera. However, Susannas in Le nozze are these days rarely coloratura experts. Nor are Countesses or Paminas if they have not also sung the Queen. Later in her career, Carvalho received acclaim for her assumption of the role of the Countess in performances of Le nozze at Covent Garden—​very unusual for a singer first known for her Cherubino. Add to this the casting of sopranos in Don Juan at the Théâtre-​Lyrique in 1866, with Carvalho as Zerlina and Nilsson as Donna Elvira,

Fig. 4.6  Christine Nilsson as The Queen of the Night in the Théâtre-​Lyrique’s production of La Flûte enchantée (1865)

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  177 and the issue is further complicated. How are we to make sense of these high agile voices? These role appointments reflect a minuscule portion of the variety of roles sung by nineteenth-​century sopranos completely outside of what today would be considered their Fach or vocal category, to use the German and American terminology. What this suggests is that nineteenth-​century voices were much more flexibly and relatively understood than they are now. Rather than following vocal typecasting practices as we currently do, nineteenth-​century singers, and particularly leading sopranos, were accorded generous freedom in choosing roles. We might be encouraged by these observations to think about voice-​types in a more open manner, both in scholarship and by allowing for more diversity of sounds when casting present-​day singers. Still, as we will see in the next two chapters, Carvalho, her contemporaries, and her successors helped to consolidate the coloratura soprano as a modern voice-​type by the end of the nineteenth century.

Notes 1. I have gathered biographical information about Carvalho from contemporary reviews as well as the following sources:  Edouard-​Accoyer Spoll, Mme. Carvalho:  notes et souvenirs (Paris:  Librairie des bibliophiles, 1885); Albert Soubies and Charles Malherbe, Histoire de l’Opéra comique: la seconde salle Favart, 1840–​1887 (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1892–​1893); Henri de Curzon, Croquis d’artistes (Paris: Fischbacher, 1898); Albert Soubies, Histoire du Théâtre-​lyrique, 1851–​1870 (Paris:  Fischbacher, 1899); and T. J. Walsh, Second Empire Opera: The Théâtre Lyrique, Paris 1851–​1870 (London: J. Calder, 1981). 2. See M. B. Jouvin, Le Figaro, 12 November 1857 and Spoll, Mme. Carvalho,  39–​43. 3. See particularly the second chapter of her book, “Superdivas and Superwomen,” in Susan Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–​ 1930 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 58–​89. 4. See M. B. Jouvin, Le Figaro, 12 November 1857. 5. The soprano’s studies with Duprez overlapped almost exactly with his full tenure at the Conservatoire: Duprez taught there from 1842 to 1850. 6. Gregory W. Bloch, “The Pathological Voice of Gilbert-​Louis Duprez,” Cambridge Opera Journal 19 (2007): 11–​31. For more on Duprez, see Chapter 1. 7. Bloch observed this in his paper “Manrico’s Manhood,” presented at the joint meeting of the American Musicological Society and the Society of Music Theory on 3 November 2006. 8. The concert was reviewed in Le Ménestrel of 16 December 1849. 9. “Mlle Félix Miolan a créé . . . le rôle de Giralda d’une façon qui demande plus que des encouragements.” Henri Blanchard, La Revue et Gazette musicale, 28 July 1850. 10. “Le troisième acte s’ouvre par un air brillant, admirablement exécuté par Mlle Félix Miolan. Ne remarquez-​vous pas que ce nom de Félix porte bonheur? La voix de Mlle

178  Vocal Virtuosity Félix est un soprano élevé: elle aime à planer au sommet de l’échelle musicale, et, comme un aéronaute intrépide, elle se plait au plus haut du ciel. Les applaudissements l’y suivent.” Fromental Halévy, La Revue et Gazette musicale, 28 July 1850. 11. See Spoll, Mme. Carvalho, 17. 12. See Spoll, 40. For more on Frezzolini, another prolific créatrice, see Mary Ann Smart, “Verdi Sings Erminia Frezzolini,” Women and Music 1 (1997):  33–​45; for Sontag, see James Q. Davies, Romantic Anatomies of Performance (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2014); for Catalani, see Hilary Poriss, Changing the Score:  Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2009); for Tacchinardi-​Persiani, see Claudio Vellutini, “Fanny Tacchinardi-​ Persiani, Carlo Balocchino and Italian Opera Business in Vienna, Paris and London (1837–​1845),” Cambridge Opera Journal 30 (2018): 259–​304. 13. Le Ménestrel, 28 July 1850. See also Spoll, Mme. Carvalho, 16. 14. Interestingly, while the overwhelming majority of coloratura material in mid-​century Paris was written for the female voice, most often for the leading soprano, certain basse chantante roles contained a notable amount of fioritura. Perhaps the best example of a singer of these roles is Herrmann-​Léon (1814–​1859), who premiered many opéra comique roles that feature melismatic singing, including Michel in Thomas’ Le Caïd (which includes a coloratura aria), Roland in Les Mousquetaires de la reine, and Don José in Clapisson’s La Fanchonnette (1856). Incidentally, Herrmann-​ Léon also premiered Méphistophélès in Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust (1846) at the Opéra-​Comique. 15. See the chart of performances in Albert Soubies, Soixante-​neuf ans à l’Opéra-​comique en deux pages: 1825–​1894 (Paris: Fischbacher, 1894), 1. 16. For more on the connection between soprano and nightingale see Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera, and Anne Marie Weaver, “The Soprano and the Nightingale:  Aleksandr Alyabyev’s ‘Solovey,’ ” Journal of Musicological Research 35 (2016): 23–​44. 17. “Jeannette vocalise d’une façon brillante, ravissante. Pourquoi pas? Le rossignol ne vocalise-​t-​il pas aussi? Les mélodies et riches et audacieuses et modulées ne sont-​elles pas dans la nature, et ne retentissent-​elles pas dans les bois grâce à lui? Voilà donc Jeannette faisant assaut de soupirs, de sons filés, de traits brillants, avec un rossignol de l’orchestre qui se cache sous le nom d’un flûtiste.” Blanchard, La Revue et Gazette musicale, 6 February 1853. 18. “Couderc [Jean] et Mlle Miolan ont rendu ces deux rôles avec un talent remarquable. . . . Mlle Miolan met dans le sien beaucoup de grâce et une dignité douce; elle la chante d’ailleurs avec sa petite voix en fauvette di cartello. Leur succès, à l’un et à l’autre, a été complet.” Berlioz, Journal des Débats, 9 February 1853. 19. After her run of performances as Suzanne in Reber’s Les Papillotes de M. Benoist, Carvalho did not perform again at the Opéra-​Comique until her return on 24 September 1854, when she sang Isabelle in Hérold’s Le Pré-​aux-​Clercs. A flurry of letters was exchanged between various composers, Perrin, and both Carvalhos during this period; see Archives nationales, Paris, AJ13 1137.

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  179 20. Support for the Théâtre-​Lyrique and the production of new French and older canonical operas was most evident in Le Ménestrel, a journal somewhat biased in its advocacy for the Carvalhos. 21. See, for example, J. D’Ortigue, Le Ménestrel, 27 March 1859. 22. See Walsh, Second Empire Opera,  69–​82. 23. Walsh, Second Empire Opera, 162. 24. In the printed orchestral score, Fanchonnette ascends to the F♯ above high C in the bolero. This is one of a few differences between the full and piano-​vocal scores. See the orchestral score, La Fanchonnette (Paris: Lemoine, 1856) and the piano-​vocal reduction, La Fanchonnette (Paris: Lemoine, 1856), copies at the Département de la Musique, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Vm51049 and Vm51051 respectively. For more on the bolero at mid-​century, see Chapter 2. 25. “[D]‌’un air de Fanchonnette où abondent des finesses d’instrumentation auxquelles se mélent les brillantes vocalises de la cantatrice.  .  .  .  Quant à Mme Miolan-​ Carvalho, c’est une cantatrice d’un ordre très distingué; sa méthode est exquise; elle est maîtresse souveraine de son organe, dont elle fait ce qu’elle veut, et cet organe est plein de charme, da douceur et de flexibilité. Ce ne sont pas des bravos, ce sont des trépignements qu’elle a excités dans la salle.” J. D’Ortigue, Journal des Débats, 12 March 1856. 26. There are of course many works that feature variations on the Carnival of Venice theme. These include several by Paganini, as well as Jean-​Baptiste Arban’s cornet piece Variations sur “Le Carnaval de Venise” (1864) and Chopin’s Souvenir de Paganini (kK IVa/​10, 1829, of disputed authenticity). Théophile Gautier even wrote a series of poems, Variations sur “Le Carnaval de Venise,” which highlights the utility of the theme, its prominent association with the violin in particular, and its pervasive popularity. The poems were published in Gautier, Emaux et Camées (Paris, 1852). Gautier imitates the tune rhythmically in the first line of his second variation. 27. Carvalho may have learned other similar pieces in her training with Duprez. The tenor’s treatise contains a theme and variations aria, aimed at more expert singers of coloratura. See Gilbert-​Louis Duprez, L ’Art du chant (Paris: Bureau Central de Musique, 1846), 100–​5. Reproduced in Roudet, III, 212–​17. 28. On other souvenir pages in Beauchesne’s collection, performers credit the composer of the handwritten excerpt. See Alfred de Beauchesne’s Album musical, held at the Département de la musique, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, W.24, 138. This album, along with a substantial collection of correspondence relating to nineteenth-​century musicians, was given to the Bibliothèque nationale by Jean-​Baptiste Weckerlin (1821–​1910), a folklorist, bibliographer, and composer who was also Laure Cinti-​ Damoreau’s son-​in-​law. 29. For more on interpolated arias in this period, see Philip Gossett, Divas and Scholars:  Performing Italian Opera (Chicago and London:  University of Chicago Press, 2006); and Hilary Poriss, Changing the Score. 30. I consulted the Paris (Schlesinger and Brandus, 1846) edition. Paganini’s piece, “O mamma, mamma cara” from Il carnevale di Venezia, 1829, op. 10 (Paris and Mainz, 1851), consists of twenty variations. This edition does not contain the same variations

180  Vocal Virtuosity as in the 1846 edition. As Paganini’s catalogers have noted, it was not unusual for the violinist to compose and perform more and different variations than those published in one edition—​the earlier Paris edition may be an edition made from hearing Paganini in performance. The violinist performed and occasionally resided in Paris during the 1830s. For more on the manuscript of Paganini’s variations, see Maria Rosa Moretti and Anna Sorrento, eds., Catalogo tematico delle musiche di Niccolò Paganini (Genova: Comune di Genova, 1982), xxii and 186–​91. 31. There is a footnote in the score that acknowledges that the variation is Paganini’s. See the piano-​vocal score, La Reine Topaze (Paris: Cendrier, 1857), 195. 32. On the only complete recording of the aria that I have been able to locate, Sumi Jo performs the piece down a semitone. See Sumi Jo, Carnaval! French Coloratura Arias, English Chamber Orchestra/​Richard Bonynge, (Polygram Records B00000422V, 1994). Even with the aid of modern recording production and editing, the aria’s original key made the tessitura and range too difficult for Sumi Jo, a consummate lyric coloratura soprano and a renowned Queen of the Night. 33. “Quant aux variations sur l’air du Carnaval de Venise, le compositeur n’a d’autre mérite que de s’être habilement effacé devant la cantatrice et d’avoir su avec adresse présenter les difficultés qui pouvaient le mieux faire triompher son talent. L’une de ces variations est de Paganini; M. Masset [sic] a eu le bon esprit de la conserver intacte. L’illustre virtuose, en écrivant pour le violon ces hardis passages, n’imaginait pas sans doute qu’une cantatrice aurait un jour à les chanter et qu’elle y parviendrait aux acclamations et aux applaudissemens frénétiques du public. . . . Je crois avoir déjà donné à entendre que l’exécution musicale de la Reine Topaze est la meillieure qu’on ait jamais entendue au Théâtre-​Lyrique. . . . Quant à Mme Miolan-​Carvalho, son triomphe a duré quatre heures; c’étaient des applaudissemens gantés et non gantés, des bravas! Des fleurs, des rappels, des bis à donner le delirium tremens. C’est Ariel chantant, surtout dans ces redoutables variations sur le thème du Carnaval de Venise, dont elle fait scintiller la dernière en arpèges montans et descendans avec une sûreté d’intonations et un choix de nuances vraiment extraordinaires. Elle a d’ailleurs parfaitement rendu, comme actrice, tout ce long rôle, tantôt tendre et passionné, tantôt ironique et hardi.” Berlioz, Journal des Débats, 31 December 1856. 34. D. A. D. Saint-​Yves, La Revue et Gazette musicale, 4 January 1857. See also J. Lovy, Le Ménestrel, 4 January 1857. 35. See Elaine Sisman, “Variations,” in Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy (Accessed 22 June 2020), http://​www.oxfordmusiconline.com. 36. See Katharine Ellis, “Female Pianists and Their Male Critics in Nineteenth-​Century Paris,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 50 (1997): 353–​85; and Maiko Kawabata, “Virtuoso Codes of Violin Performance: Power, Military Heroism, and Gender (1789–​1830),” 19th-​Century Music 28 (2004): 89–​107, and “Virtuosity, the Violin, the Devil . . . What Really Made Paganini ‘Demonic’?” Current Musicology 83 (2007): 85–​108. 37. M. B. Jouvin, Le Figaro, 12 November 1857. 38. See Spoll, Mme. Carvalho,  45–​46.

Caroline Carvalho and Her World  181 39. See Berlioz, À Travers Chants. http://​www.hberlioz.com/​Writings/​ATC08.htm (Accessed 20 June 2020). 40. Perrin perhaps needed Cabel in order to have a soprano to match Carvalho: he wooed her to the Opéra-​Comique with a five-​year contract guaranteeing 40,000 francs annually along with three months’ leave per year. Her departure from the Théâtre-​ Lyrique at the end of 1855 coincided exactly with Carvalho’s arrival at the theater. See Walsh, Second Empire Opera, 52 and 67. 41. Walsh, Second Empire Opera, 14. 42. As Walsh notes, “there were occasional exceptions, notably Lucie de Lammermoor in 1846 and Le Trouvère in 1857, both at the Opéra.” See Walsh, Second Empire Opera,  14–​15. 43. J. Lovy, Le Ménestrel, 16 May 1858. 44. She was received as “un spécimen de grâce et de charme.” See J. Lovy, Le Ménestrel, 16 May 1858. 45. See Kimberly White, Female Singers on the French Stage, 1830–​1848 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 107. 46. See White, Female Singers on the French Stage,  107–​8. 47. See Camille Saint-​Saëns, On Music and Musicians, ed. and trans. Roger Nichols (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2008), 129. Mezzo-​soprano Marguerite Ugalde originated the role of the Muse/​Nicklausse in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881). 48. See J. Lovy, Le Ménestrel (16 May 1858). The libretto of Les Noces de Figaro used by the Théâtre-​Lyrique, signed by Léon Carvalho and dated 16 April 1858, is at the Archives nationales, Paris, AJ13 1158. 49. “Mon coeur soupire,” [Les] Noces de Figaro, Avec les Points d’Orgue de Mme Carvalho, Paroles Françaises & Italiennes, Musique de W. A. Mozart (Paris: Colombier, n.d.), copy at the Département de la musique, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Vmg 7655 (2). When Carvalho sang the aria in 1858 it was titled “Ce doux martyre.” 50. See Walsh, Second Empire Opera, 310, and the piano-​vocal score Les Noces de Figaro, edition conforme a la representation du Théâtre-​Lyrique (Paris:  Colombier, 1858), copy at the Département de la musique, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, D. 8542. 51. Walsh, Second Empire Opera, 311. 52. Walsh, Second Empire Opera, 318. 53. See, for example, the review in La Revue et Gazette musicale, 26 February 1865. Interestingly, in the Théâtre-​Lyrique score of La Flûte enchantée, octave-​lower variants are present for each high F in the Queen’s second aria, perhaps options for an indisposed soprano. See the piano-​vocal score, La Flûte enchantée, Representé au Théâtre-​Lyrique le 23 Fevrier 1865 (Paris: Heugel, 1865), copy at the Département de la musique, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Vm3 29. Nilsson clearly had a high voice extension; she ascended to a high E in Hamlet, in the mad scene I explored in Chapter 3.

5

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz

Carvalho, who sang as she always sings, cleverly composed the role of Marguerite; her attitudes, her gestures, are of a tempting sweetness.1

—​Hector Berlioz

In the summer of 1859, Carvalho organized a benefit concert for herself. Building on her recent triumph creating the role of Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust, the benefit raised over 20,000 francs. She and her singer colleagues performed a variety of arias and operatic scenes. Carvalho sang mostly coloratura arias, her specialty, and the commodification of her fame and vocal agility ensured the concert’s success. While publicly a benefit concert for the soprano, privately it may have been a concert to save her husband Léon from bankruptcy after he had overspent on lavish productions as director of the Théâtre-​Lyrique. In both the public and the private spheres, Carvalho, as a woman and as a soprano, held sway. Carvalho’s benefit and the Berlioz epigraph raise several interesting questions: What kinds of agency did leading sopranos have in mid-nineteenth-​ century Paris? Specifically, how did the reigning French prima donna of Second Empire Paris use her vocalism to create a niche of creative and collaborative power? And what might her example reveal about women’s roles and status in the period? This chapter develops the idea that Carvalho’s role as a créatrice was vital to the popularity and posterity of Gounod’s operas. She and her husband, Léon, championed Gounod’s operas and collaborated with the composer throughout the production process. Steven Huebner has noted ominously that the “shadow of the Carvalhos extends over all of Gounod’s works for the Théâtre-​Lyrique.”2 Evidence suggests that the pair indeed exerted considerable influence over Gounod’s operas. However, such influence was by no means obviously negative. The absence of mid-​century coloratura singers such as Carvalho from opera history narratives betrays an all too common tendency to forget and even to dismiss the creative and historical importance of performers. Three composers’ reactions to Carvalho’s singing confirm this unfortunate trend. As already mentioned in Chapter  1, Berlioz deemed Carvalho and other contemporary

Vocal Virtuosity. Sean M. Parr, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197542644.003.0006

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  183 coloratura sopranos part of a “lapdog school,” whose high notes were “about as pleasant as the yelp of a dog whose paws are being stepped on.”3 Reynaldo Hahn remembered Carvalho as a demanding tyrant and a powerful, but despotic woman who had “ineffable bad taste, an immense arrogance concealed under bourgeois charm and an implacable will.”4 Finally—​and most strikingly—​ at parties the bearded Camille Saint-​Saëns enjoyed mocking the soprano by dressing in drag (complete with false braided hair) and employing his high voice in an impersonation of Carvalho’s rendition of Marguerite’s Jewel Song from Faust.5 As these dismissive and irreverent diatribes suggest, Caroline Carvalho was a powerful and significant singer. Indeed, some of Gounod’s operas were likely produced only because of the Carvalhos. And much of the operas’ success was due to the soprano. In other words, the operas succeeded because of her, not despite her. In this chapter, I  focus on Carvalho’s Gounod creations, first examining a little-​known aria that Gounod wrote for Carvalho, “Ah! Valse légère,” based on the waltz chorus, “Ainsi que la brise légère,” from Act II of Faust. I then trace how the aria’s popularity spurred a vogue for the vertiginous waltz ariette and established Carvalho as a truly modern soprano who wielded authority because of her prodigious vocal virtuosity. The case of Carvalho shows how a woman can both give voice to the erotic and be viewed as a créatrice: an author, not a commodity.6 Carvalho had a personal asset that she used as a means to achieve that status and she used this asset liberally to maintain and further her career. The asset was of course her voice, particularly her coloratura. Carvalho used her singing and her coloratura to transcend boundaries of genre and gender and to establish an identity that gives her an authorial position in operatic history. Three of Carvalho’s Gounod creations connect to a dance genre—​the waltz. Carvalho explicitly associated herself with the valse-​ariette, catalyzed it as a new genre, and propagated its popularity and significance. Her creative agency in this process also indicates a shift in coloratura’s signification from instrumentality to dance and the expressive body. In doing so, she further made coloratura modern in ways that resonate with modern ideas of technology and increasing opulence and ornament under the Second Empire. Finally, I explore how Carvalho’s contributions as a creator have repercussions when considering both operatic history and the role of women in Second Empire Paris. Perhaps the example of Carvalho belongs in the category of cultural advocacy, given her public prominence and creator status, and her significance as a symbolic voice of artistic action. Carvalho’s role in cultural production includes possible, if steadfastly private, participation in the management and artistic direction of the Théâtre-​Lyrique; the parlaying of her vocality’s distinctive qualities

184  Vocal Virtuosity into artistic, cultural, and financial power for her husband at the theater (a situation that raises interesting questions about the nature of their marriage, particularly considering that Léon was not only general director there, but also often the stage director of the productions in which she performed);7 a deliberate instrumentalizing of her voice in one of her signature numbers, the “Carnaval de Venise” aria; and her trafficking in another type of signature number, the valse-​ ariette, that coupled the instrumentalized voice with the most sexually suggestive of the non-​exotic dances popular in Paris in the period.8 Opera has often been a site of musical power for women. What is different in the case of Carvalho is the magnitude of her powers. She created more roles than any of her contemporaries and she became known for many of these premieres, such as Fanchonnette and Topaze, in addition to the repertory roles and revivals she sang, including Mozart’s Pamina, Zerlina, and Cherubino. With her Gounod creations, Carvalho took on an even more explicitly collaborative, creative position in establishing the new genre of the valse-​ariette and in integrating her prodigious vocal skill with a growing sense of expressivity in her acted portrayal of the characters. It was this integration of vocal and expressive virtuosity that led to her identity as a créatrice. At first, Carvalho’s instrumentalized coloratura allied her voice with those of men like Liszt and Paganini, who had achieved deific renown and artistic authority. As such, her singing voice amplified her personal voice and gained her social and artistic power. It was after the craze for instrumentalized coloratura that Carvalho organized the 1859 benefit concert to which I referred at the beginning of this chapter. At that concert, Carvalho debuted two more works intimately linked to violin melodies, continuing the instrument-​voice connection. One of these is still extremely well known: Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” a meditation on Bach’s first prelude in C, BWV 846. The “Bach-​Gounod Ave Maria” was originally published as a violin chamber piece, Méditation sur le 1er Prélude de piano de J. S. Bach (Paris, 1853), and scored for violin, cello, piano, and organ, ad libitum. In late May 1859, only a couple of months after the premiere of Faust, Carvalho sang the familiar vocal arrangement at her benefit concert. The performance at this concert ignited the work’s enduring popularity and led to its immediate republication as Ave Maria, mélodie religieuse adaptée au 1er prélude de J. S. Bach (Paris: Heugel, Au Ménestrel, 1859). The other work premiered was a little-​known aria that Gounod wrote for Carvalho, “Ah! Valse légère,” based on the violin melody of the waltz chorus “Ainsi que la brise légère” from Act II of Faust. Although there is no evidence that the ariette was performed as part of the opera proper—​it is not found in editions of the complete opera, nor was it mentioned in reviews of the opera’s early performances—​the aria was published as a “waltz sung by Mme Carvalho”

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  185 Table 5.1  Prominent mid-​nineteenth-​century coloratura waltz arias Year

Title

Opera

Composer

First Performer

1855

“Ah! che assorta in dolce incanto”

insertion aria

Venzano

Josefa Gassier-​ Fernandez

1859

“Ombre légère”

Le Pardon de Ploërmel

Meyerbeer

Cabel

1859

“Ah! Valse légère”

Faust (arrangement)

Gounod

Carvalho

1859

“J’entends ma belle”

Un Mari à la porte

Offenbach

Lise Tautin

1860

“Il Bacio”

insertion aria

Arditi

Marietta Piccolomini

1864

“O légère hirondelle” Mireille

Gounod

Carvalho

1867

“Je veux vivre”

Roméo et Juliette Gounod

Carvalho

1867

“Ah! Quel espoir!”

Les Bleuets

Christine Nilsson

1867

“Conduisez-​moi vers Robinson Crusoé Offenbach celui que j’adore”

Marie Cico

1882

“Frühlingsstimmen” insertion aria

Bianca Bianchi

Cohen

J. Strauss

along with other separable numbers from the opera. Its popularity spurred a vogue for the vertiginous waltz ariette (Table 5.1) The genre is characterized by a strong triple meter with centrifugal metrical accent and an anticipated anacrusis, fanfare openings, codas with cascades of coloratura, and rondo form. The emergence of this new vocal genre not only reflects Carvalho’s influence on operatic composers, it also represents an expansion of the musical performance possibilities of dance forms from the domain of instrumental music and choruses to that of the solo female singer. Just as dancing women held on more and more tightly as the spinning increased in velocity, so too might listeners be prone to move to the edges of their seats, ignited by the soprano’s vocal pyrotechnics. By inserting the valse-​ariette into operatic practice and developing it as a genre, Carvalho took the lead in another sense, as her agency as artistic collaborator and créatrice grew during her time working with Gounod. The circumstances surrounding three exemplars of the genre will illustrate this progression—​“Ah! Valse légère,” “O légère hirondelle” in Mireille, and “Je veux vivre” in Roméo et Juliette.

186  Vocal Virtuosity

Marguerite After two failures at the Opéra (Sapho, 1851, and La Nonne sanglante, 1854), Gounod turned to Léon Carvalho to produce Faust. Carvalho was eager to have Gounod’s works premiere at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, but the Porte-​St-​Martin, a rival company, had plans to produce an opera based on the Faust story, delaying Carvalho’s production of Gounod’s opera until March 1859. The role of Marguerite was originally to be sung by Delphine Ugalde. However, when Carvalho heard Gounod’s music, she initiated an exchange with Ugalde, who would take Carvalho’s role in Massé ’s La Fée Carabosse.9 It was a very unusual move—​prima donnas do not usually switch roles after they have been announced—​and it reveals how much power Carvalho held at the Théâtre-​ Lyrique. It was also an important move, as Carvalho’s interpretation of Marguerite became the standard by which subsequent sopranos were measured for the remainder of the nineteenth century. In addition, it initiated a series of collaborations with Gounod. Of Carvalho’s sixteen operatic creations, five were as the heroine in operas by Gounod: Faust (1859), Philémon et Baucis (1860), La Colombe (1860), Mireille (1864), and Roméo et Juliette (1867). Beginning with the waltz aria adapted from the Faust chorus and written for Carvalho but not performed as part of opera, one senses a tension between the composer and the soprano. However, this tension is more complicated than the stereotype of the embattled composer and the demanding diva. Certainly the Carvalhos wanted Gounod to write coloratura material for the soprano, but their reasons were complex. Yes, coloratura sold tickets, and Carvalho was known for her uncanny ability to vocalize. But, especially after her performances of Cherubino, Carvalho was highly regarded not only for her vocal agility, but also for her vocal and dramatic characterization. Her interpretations of roles had perhaps more to do with sustaining Gounod’s long association with her than her virtuosity and star status. As we will see, with her strongly characterized interpretations, Carvalho both created and recreated roles in her performances. In a sense, Carvalho “composed” roles with her interpretations. Perhaps, then, the coloratura moments in Faust and Carvalho’s other Gounod creations should be viewed as part of the heroine’s character development, rather than as separate, unrelated moments of vocal display. The only example of coloratura singing in Faust (as the opera has been performed from its premiere) is in the “Air des Bijoux,” Marguerite’s Jewel Song. Dramaturgically considered, the melismatic singing makes perfect sense in this scene. Marguerite has come upon a box of jewels that was placed there for her by Méphistophélès as well as a bouquet left for her by Siébel (Figure 5.1). In her excitement, Marguerite tries on the jewelry and expresses her wonder through coloratura. Coloratura’s resonance with dazzling jewels combines

Fig. 5.1  Carvalho as Marguerite in the Jewel Scene of Faust (1859)

188  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 5.1  Opening of the “Air des Bijoux,” Marguerite’s Jewel Song, from Gounod’s Faust (1859)

with the supernatural, seductive lure of the jewels (a gift from the devil meant to render Marguerite more receptive to Faust’s advances) to make the melismatic setting of the text an obvious choice.10 However, the melismas are few, not all that high, and quite routine (Example 5.1). The lack of fioritura confused the press, because though Carvalho had sung her first non-​coloratura role (Cherubino) the previous year with great success, vocal virtuosity was still considered one of her great strengths. Léon Durocher’s reviews of the premiere and the remounting of Faust six months later reveal much about the reception of Carvalho’s Marguerite: The role of Marguerite seems less favorable to Carvalho’s talent, than those of Fanchonnette and Queen Topaz. The role is melancholy, it is always of the same color, and it sometimes requires dramatic efforts that seem to tire this charming singer. She nonetheless produces very beautiful effects and draws every possible advantage from them. She is dreamy, tender, pathetic; she at times produces tones of voice which tear the heart, and her talent shows itself in this role in a very new way.11

—​Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 27 March 1859

Carvalho, laden with the bouquets and wreaths that British enthusiasm has rained on her for two months—​as is well-​known, she sang Le Pardon de Ploërmel marvelously there—​has reprised the role of Marguerite in Faust, and performs it with her usual superiority and perfect taste; as simple, as sparing with ornaments as she is prodigal with them in other works, seeking the effect—​and always finding it—​in truth of feeling and refinement or naïve grace, or, when the situation requires it, in profound energy of expression.12

—​Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 18 September 1859

In his review of the premiere, Durocher notes that the role seemed less favorable to Carvalho’s talents, adding that her voice showed signs of fatigue.

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  189 However, he also highlights a new aspect of her talent—​her ability to deliver a heart-​wrenching performance. Durocher elaborates upon this ability in the much more positive review of September 1859, when he again observes a dearth of ornaments, but this time praises Carvalho’s simplicity, truth, and expressive depth. Other reviews noted the dramatic aspect of her role-​creation. Such unanimity compels us to think about Carvalho as more than a coloratura expert. Indeed, by the time Carvalho sang the role of Marguerite at the Opéra in 1869 she had developed her interpretation to such an extent that it sparked a debate among the press. The Swede Christine Nilsson, a more internationally known soprano, had also been singing Marguerite at the Opéra to great acclaim. After Carvalho’s highly anticipated performances, several articles compared the interpretations and merits of the two prime donne. The debate might seem to imply that the sopranos were competitors. However, they seem to have been strong supporters of each other. Nilsson auditioned for the Carvalhos in 1864 and they immediately hired her for her Parisian debut as Violetta. While at the theater, Carvalho and Nilsson sang together in two Mozart productions, La Flûte enchantée (1865) and Don Juan (1866), singing Pamina and the Queen, and Zerlina and Elvira, respectively. Nilsson must have been grateful to Carvalho because she wrote a letter (published in Le Figaro) offering to step aside to allow Carvalho to be the first to sing Marguerite at the Opéra. The press and Perrin, then director of the Opéra, used Nilsson’s letter to inspire comparison between the two coloraturas, even though the sopranos themselves avoided competitive rhetoric.13 The press preferred Carvalho’s agility, nuance, and charm in the Jewel Song and the Garden scene (Figure 5.2) and Nilsson’s dramatic vocalism in the Church scene and final trio. Overall, whether in truth or for nationalistic reasons, the critical majority favored Carvalho. The passionate insistence with which reviewers wrote of Carvalho’s transporting performance as Marguerite is striking. Henry Morley went so far as to deem Carvalho as spiritually channeling Marguerite, who “represents not so much the girl as the girl’s soul.”14 Deeming Marguerite the most perfect of Carvalho’s creations, even “progress in perfection,” one reviewer’s ardor moved him to write: Miolan-​Carvalho has returned in the role of Marguerite, which to us is the most complete and most perfect of her creations. She makes the jewel scene a wonder: never has the subtlety of the actress or the art of singing gone further. What chastity and what passion in the last scene of the second act, where under the diabolic influence, Marguerite throws herself into the arms of Faust! There does not exist on any French stage an artist capable of rendering a situation of this kind with so much naïveté, sincere passion, and purity.

Fig. 5.2  Carvalho as Marguerite at the window in Faust

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  191 Il ne vient pas! The melancholy refrain of the spinning-​wheel song, in which Gounod, we would argue, has surpassed Schubert, is repeated by Miolan-​ Carvalho in a broken voice, with sobs so deep and true that the entire auditorium wept with her. What else is there to mention? The church scene, in which the eminent singer paints with such truth and profound variety of means the unspeakable horror that seeps through the veins of poor Marguerite. . . . In the prison scene, Carvalho rises to the highest degree of pathos, and launches her prayer heavenward with extraordinary ardor, energy and fullness. Greeted afterwards by a double salvo of cheers, recalled on several occasions, rewarded with bouquets and flowers, Carvalho appeared happy with her triumph; a triumph well deserved, because it seems to us that Carvalho has acquired new qualities and accomplished a tour de force: progress in perfection.15

Carvalho’s Marguerite was so iconic that she was considered the embodiment of Ary Scheffer’s Marguerite in the artist’s popular paintings. This image, combined with Gounod’s focus on Marguerite in the opera (rather than Faust himself)—​to the extent that Huebner has considered her the heroic figure who overcomes death—​led German theaters to rename the opera as Margarethe, an alternate title still in use today. Carvalho may even have identified herself with the character; she signed one of her letters “la pauvre Marguerite.”16 The profundity and influence of Carvalho’s interpretation in her creation of Marguerite seems clear. What about coloratura, though? The answer to this question lies in the arrangement of the waltz chorus that Gounod adapted for Carvalho. Fairly lengthy for an ariette, “Ah! Valse légère” is laden with roulades. Carvalho sang it at concerts, and the published versions (in multiple keys) circulated widely in France and throughout Europe.17 And yet, if it was never performed as part of the opera, why was it labeled No. 3 and inserted with Act I material when published with the morceaux détachés that were performed? It could have been inserted as No. 1, or somewhere in Act II near the actual chorus upon which it is based. Although possibly nothing more than a marketing strategy (the catchy tune, Carvalho’s name, and the coloratura may have heightened buyers’ interest), it is perhaps fruitful to think of the aria as a kind of imagined entrance aria for Marguerite, occurring as Méphistophélès presents Faust with the image of Marguerite to entice him to make the pact. Such an imagined spot for the valse-​ariette works well with what we know about Gounod’s later coloratura waltz additions for Carvalho in Mireille and Roméo et Juliette, both of which are near-​entrance arias.

192  Vocal Virtuosity

“Ah! Valse légère,” valse-​ariette arranged from Faust for Carvalho (1859) Ah! Valse légère, Ivresse folle et passagère, Valse légère, ardent plaisir, Doux passe-​temps des amants.

Ah, gliding waltz, mad and passing intoxication. Gliding waltz, burning pleasure, sweet pastime for lovers.

Par les bois, par la plaine, A travers les prés verts, Le plaisir nous entraine. Aux doux sons des chansons, Sans repos et sans trêve, nous valsons, Emportés jusqu’au jour dans un rêve De bonheur et d’amour.

By the woods, by the plain, through the green meadows, pleasure transports us. With the sweet sounds of songs, without rest or respite, we waltz, overcome in a dream of happiness and love until daybreak.

Ah! Valse légère . . .

Ah, gliding waltz . . .

Que la ronde folle Nous entraine jour et nuit. L’heure qui s’envole Pour toujours, hélas s’enfuit. Ah!

Oh that the mad dance would transport us day and night. The hours which always fly away, alas, they are fleeting. Ah!

Ah! Valse légère . . .

Ah, gliding waltz . . .18

“Ah! Valse légère” is manically cheerful and breathlessly seductive as its scalar lines ascend to the leading tone and playfully divert before winding back to the tonic. This melismatic teasing continues with undulating patterns (Example 5.2) that were perhaps originally intended to mirror the chorus’s gliding dance steps as they waltzed to those murmuring violin lines. Carvalho sings these violin lines, while Gounod transferred the chorus part to the piano accompaniment. We might think of this ariette as a prototype for Carvalho’s later waltz ariettes. “Ah! Valse légère” is in a rondo form with breathless refrain. The aria begins with a maestoso fanfare and concludes with a climaxing melismatic coda. As we will see, these features are all present in the other ariettes. Although it lacks the expressive marking of a “valse,” Marguerite’s Jewel Song in Faust might also be considered part of the valse-​ariette generic history because of its rondo form and the fact that it features trills, a short fanfare opening, the triangle, and triple meter. However, it should be emphasized that few melismas and no coloratura cascades are present in the vocal line, which, though certainly full of exuberance, is altogether more syllabic and even patter-​like at times. Coloratura arias written

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  193 Ex. 5.2  Melismas from Gounod’s “Ah! Valse légère,” written for Carvalho, mm. 256–​276

for Carvalho by Gounod in Philémon et Baucis (“Il a perdu ma trace”) and La Colombe (“Je veux interroger”) lack the “valse” marking as well, but do contain the climaxing coloratura cascades. Perhaps by popularizing “Ah! Valse légère” in concert, beginning at her benefit concert, Carvalho took the first steps in identifying herself with coloratura waltz pieces, initiating a vogue for the genre, and thereby also making it more likely that a waltz ariette and coloratura cascades would be included in future role creations.

Mireille “O légère hirondelle,” valse-​ariette from Act I of Mireille (1864), written for Carvalho Le ciel rayonne, l’oiseau chante! Aujourd’hui, rien ne peu m’attrister!

The heavens radiate, the bird sings! Today, nothing can make me sad!

O légère hirondelle, messagère fidèle, Vers mon ami vole gaîment Et conte-​lui mon doux tourment. Parle-​lui pour moi-​même Et dis-​lui que je l’aime! Vincent peut croire à mon serment! Vole, vole gaîment! Ah!

Oh nimble swallow, trusty messenger, fly gaily towards my sweetheart and tell him of my sweet torment. Speak to him for me and tell him that I love him! Vincent can trust my promise! Fly, fly merrily! Ah!

O légère hirondelle . . .

Oh nimble swallow . . .

194  Vocal Virtuosity While Marguerite’s valse-​ariette was never sung as part of Faust, the issue of adding a valse-​ariette to the opera proper comes to the fore in the case of Mireille. Between Faust and Mireille, Carvalho created two other Gounod roles with extensive coloratura writing:  Sylvie in La Colombe and Baucis in Philémon et Baucis, both premiered in 1860. Gounod even dedicated Philémon et Baucis to Carvalho, indicating his indebtedness to the soprano. So, when Gounod revised Mireille after its 1864 premiere, one of the first changes he made was at Carvalho’s request—​the addition of a first-​act display piece.19 Her suggestion to add a coloratura aria may also have seemed more persuasive to Gounod in light of the rhetoric surrounding Carvalho’s performance in the title role. The reviews also imply an added estimation of authority and authorship for the soprano. Although Mireille garnered many accolades from the press, it was not an overall success when it premiered 19 March 1864, and Gounod drastically revised the opera for its representation in December of the same year, possibly at the behest of Léon Carvalho who was notorious for his (over)involvement with productions of operas at the Théâtre-​Lyrique.20 Among some of the more prominent revisions, he altered the structure from five to three acts, changed the ending from tragic to happy, and added the valse-​ariette “O légère hirondelle” for Carvalho. This ariette was not based on music from Mireille, unlike the connection between “Ah! Valse légère” and the Act II chorus of Faust. Positioned early in the first act, the ariette is striking for its stylistic difference from the rest of the opera, its loose relevance to the plot, and its difficult, high-​flying coloratura. Pressure from the Carvalhos and Gounod’s sensitivity to popular opinion partially explain the addition, but the question remains why Gounod inserted the piece for actual inclusion in performances of Mireille instead of merely appending it to the separable numbers as he did with the valse-​ariette for Faust. The answer is perhaps located in the rising esteem in which the press held Carvalho. While always a darling for her technical prowess, Carvalho had gained even more accolades for her comedic flair, dramatic characterization, and ability to handle sustained, pathetic vocal passages, particularly as Marguerite. The critics’ regard for the soprano was such that in the case of Mireille, when the “Air de la Crau” was thought to be too fatiguing and “too dramatic” for her voice, the press found a way to spin the flaw into an asset. Carvalho had urged Gounod to cut parts of the aria and the press determined that “[t]‌his kind of good sense and modesty is too rare among our singers to go unnoticed.”21 Carvalho’s status grew to the extent that she was considered a highly creative force. The emergence of the ennobling of Carvalho, almost to the level of author, is borne out in the reviews of the premiere of Mireille: “Carvalho made the role of Mireille the most ravishing creation in the world. She imbues the role with an adorable poetry, an exquisite poetic grace. And her singing! What purity! What style! What perfection!”22

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  195 In addition to the exclamatory tone, this review is striking in its invocation of poetry and for the explicit agency it claims for Carvalho in defining a role, making her first performance of Mireille a “ravishing creation.”23 Carvalho’s performance of Mireille was artistic, creative, poetic, and captivating. As evidenced in a review by journalist Charles Desolme, this claim about Carvalho was made not only in relation to the audience but also to the composer and librettist: With Mireille, Carvalho has succeeded in pushing her remarkable talent into a new phase, she has transformed herself into a strong dramatic singer in the most positive sense of the word, and she is a kind of revelation for which librettists and composers will applaud each other equally.24

For this reviewer, Carvalho’s performance signifies a new stage in her career, in which her dramatic skills become revelatory. Such is the impact of her characterization in fusing the musical and the dramatic that the reviewer claims that the librettist and composer have inspired Carvalho to become a new kind of singer, with the slight implication that this reflects back and gives new meaning to their work. Music journalist, boulevardier, sometime theater director, and notoriously trend-​ conscious Nestor Roqueplan further accents Carvalho’s newly deepened acting skill: Carvalho, whose repertory is already so rich, has just increased it by a creation which will not displease. I am not referring to her talent as a singer, which has already been demonstrated. In this respect, every kind of praise has been exhausted. I am referring to her talent as an actress. She has managed to give the figure and passion of Mireille an altogether different appearance from that of Marguerite. Marguerite is a passive and tender being. Mireille is energetic. Marguerite dies after having yielded, and because she was alone in the midst of danger. Mireille dies unstained, but perhaps also without having faced danger. Carvalho has conveyed all these differences with a rare talent of composition. Mistral must recognize in her his own Mireille.25

Roqueplan emphasizes the detail in Carvalho’s acting, the gradations of character. For him, Carvalho does not merely represent Mireille as conceived of by Gounod and Michel Carré (Carré’s frequent collaborator, Jules Barbier, was not involved); she embodies the Mireille from Frédéric Mistral’s epic poem, Mirèio (1859), the source of the original story. She has expertly put together, or “composed,” the character of Mistral’s Mireille in her performance. The French verb “composer”—​literally, “to put together”—​was commonly used in the nineteenth-​ century musical press to refer to precisely this type of “strong” interpretation.

196  Vocal Virtuosity It was used most often when a sung performance of a role seemed exceptional, particularly well-​characterized, even defining. The word had many connotations relevant to artistic creation.26 A final review focuses on Carvalho’s ability to take a piece of music and make it better, even a piece already well written for the voice. Her performance turns good music into a masterpiece: “Mireille’s aria consists of a larghetto of tenderness and passion, extremely well written for the voice and marvelously sung by Carvalho who has made a masterpiece out of it, and a lively cabaletta in the Italian style.”27 Taken together, these reviews do more than extol Carvalho’s vocalism and performance. They exalt the singer—​bestowing on her the power to make a masterwork of Gounod’s music, to make Mireille the most “ravishing creation in the world,” by means of her “rare talent of composition.” By “creation” and “composition” the reviewers are not speaking of music, but of Carvalho’s keen ability to create a layered, unique characterization. Of course, all performers create something of their own when executing music, but few nineteenth-​century singers premiered as many roles as Carvalho did (sixteen), many of which were written specifically for her voice.28 On top of this, the closeness of “composition” to its other usage, that of composing music, combined with the evocative “creation” rhetoric and Carvalho’s evident musical abilities, suggests that reviewers might have been conferring on the soprano the status of a kind of “author” in the broad sense. Carvalho went beyond text and music in her performance to create something of her own that surpassed in song what had been written by Gounod and Carré. Her performance could even cause composers and librettists to think about their work in a new way. Berlioz may have anticipated the broad authorship status I would like to claim for Carvalho when in an otherwise lukewarm review of her Marguerite he wrote: “Carvalho, who sang as she always sings, cleverly composed the role of Marguerite; her attitudes, her gestures, are of a tempting sweetness.”29 In light of these adulations, it is no small wonder that Gounod was encouraged to add the ariette for Carvalho. Once he did, the piece was judged to have enhanced the first act. As one reviewer noted: “Gounod enriched his first act, already so complete, with a coloratura waltz, whose execution was full of the intrepidity which made Carvalho’s fortune:  it is dazzling, it is vertiginous!”30 Carvalho’s insistence on performing the ariette as part of Mireille when it was remounted encouraged its positive reception, and it was this insertion into operatic practice that prompted a vogue for the vertiginous coloratura valse-​ariette.31 Carvalho’s influence in adding coloratura to Mireille also adumbrates the addition of a similar ariette in the last work Gounod wrote for the soprano, Roméo et Juliette.

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  197

Juliette The coloratura valse-​ariette, “Je veux vivre,” from the 1867 Roméo et Juliette is by far the best-​known example of the genre, and it is the only one of the three explored in this chapter that Gounod planned to include at the opera’s premiere. Indeed, one could argue that, with this piece, and because of Carvalho’s previous success in the genre, the valse-​ariette finally moved from being a mere lyrical addition to being an integral part of the operatic “work.” Like the other examples, “Je veux vivre” is marked by its fioritura. The ariette is the only example of coloratura vocality in Roméo et Juliette and lies at a much higher tessitura than the rest of Juliette’s singing. The ariette was originally performed and published in G major. It was transposed down a whole step to F major in later editions and is commonly performed in this lower key today precisely because of the gap between its tessitura and the rest of Juliette’s music.32 It seems as if Gounod had by this point realized that a virtuosic aria placed near the beginning of an opera could aid the work’s reception and eventual success. The athleticism of the aria shows off the lyricism and ebullience of Juliet, and a close reading of the ariette suggests that the melismatic musical gestures strongly connect the valse-​ariette genre to the body.

“Je veux vivre,” valse-​ariette from Act I of Roméo et Juliette (1867), composed and made integral for Carvalho Je veux vivre Dans ce rêve qui m’enivre; Ce jour encor, Douce flamme, Je te garde dans mon âme Comme un trésor! Je veux vivre, etc.

I want to live in this dream which intoxicates me; this day still. sweet flame I keep you in my soul like a treasure! I want to live, etc.

Cette ivresse de jeunesse Ne dure, hêlas! qu’un jour! Puis vient l’heure Où l’on pleure. Le coeur cède à l’amour, Et le bonheur fuit sans retour!

This rapture of youth lasts, alas, only for one day! Then comes the hour when one weeps. The heart surrenders to love and the happiness flies without returning!

Loin de l’hiver morose Laisse moi, laisse moi sommeiller

Far from the morose winter let me, let me slumber

198  Vocal Virtuosity Et respirer la rose, Avant de l’effeuiller. Ah!

and inhale the rose, before plucking its petals. Ah!

Douce flamme! Reste dans mon âme Comme un doux trésor Longtemps encor. Ah!

Sweet flame! Stay in my soul like a sweet treasure for a long time still. Ah!

Juliette’s ariette begins with an instrumental fanfare very similar to that of Mireille’s (as well as to the piano fanfare introduction of “Ah! Valse légère”—​see Examples 5.3a, b, and c). Both instrumental fanfares hark back to the “Carnaval de Venise” aria, which also features an instrumental introduction to the first iteration of the theme. The two Gounod orchestral fanfares, as well as the Massé example, are all rhythmically punctuated by the triangle, a common instrumental adornment in French coloratura arias. The triangle’s soprano, bell-​like sound approximates the sound of a soprano’s staccato high note articulations and the triangle’s indeterminate pitch allows it to meld with any melisma. Ex. 5.3a  Fanfare opening of “Ah! Valse légère,” mm. 1–​16

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  199 Ex. 5.3b  Fanfare opening of “O légère hirondelle,” from Gounod’s Mireille (1864), mm.  12–​35

Immediately following the introduction, Juliette launches into a chromatically descending a cappella cadenza. This joyful exclamation leads to the beginning of the aria proper. The A section of the rondo form is characterized by breathless pairs of one-​syllable words accenting the downbeat yet also teasing, and by the coyness of the grace note leading up to the primary pitch. The grace notes are usually lower neighbor tones and function along with the intervening rests to

Ex. 5.3c  Fanfare opening of “Je veux vivre,” from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette (1867), mm.  1–​20

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  201 create an aurally seductive affect. The repetition of the A section is capped by a short melismatic sweep ending on the tonic. The parallel-​minor B section is less ebullient and more syllabic. A full chromatic vocalise ranging one octave serves as the transition back to the A section after which a brief C section in minor languorously presents Juliette’s wish to indulge in smelling the rose. The relaxation in this C section prepares for the subsequent accumulation effect: melismatic momentum builds to a climaxing cascade of roulades in the coda. A series of wordless scales slowly but consistently increasing in pitch introduces the coda (Example 5.4). Each measure-​long ascent builds energy but then falls away slightly in the next measure, though not all the way back to the starting pitch. The ebb and flow seem very demure, slowing the climbing pitch level in an almost teasing way until the tumbling scales begin. These cascades heighten the joyful anticipation with downbeat-​accented high Bs that function as increasingly amorous leading-​tone sighs to the eventual high C. The four cascades increase the ardor of the moment and the quivering trill on a high B–​C that ensues is reminiscent of the beginning cadenza, but this time more explicitly ecstatic. Tension builds because of Gounod’s emphasis on the sixth scale degree, eventually yielding a kind of appoggiatura pedal. The emphasis begins with the teasing sequence of ebbs and flows, and then continues through the four cascades. Rhythmic drive then further builds energy toward the climax. The first texted phrase of the coda, “Douce flamme,” accentuates the downbeat of its second measure, but in the second phrase, “Reste dans mon âme,” the accent falls on the initial downbeat, thereby jump-​starting the rhythmic drive. The orchestral punctuations then move from on the beat to syncopated, providing further rhythmic thrust as Juliette drives the G tonic toward the final cadenza. Tremolo and triangle return to announce the a cappella cadenza in which swirling coloratura rises almost orgasmically, culminating on a high E. An ascending series of trills reminiscent of Mireille’s ariette serves as the satisfying afterglow of the rhythmic and vocal rapture. The orchestral play-​out takes over the sigh gestures of the A section rounding off the ariette. In this coda, several vocal gestures connect coloratura to the body by setting up parallels between operatic and sexual sounds.33 The series of trills are like a ululation of joy, with the tongue in rapid movement. The swirling coloratura up to high E, with the lengthy alignment between rising pitch and sympathetic vibrations and the moves from open to gaping mouth and from chest to extreme head tones, is like a sung exclamation of ecstasy. Finally, the melismatic cascades are repeated breathlessly, with excited exhalation-​sigh gestures that fall quickly from gleeful high notes. One might hear the coda then as the progression and resolution of a sexual climax. Although such a hearing may seem discursively essentialist, it is historical commonplace that during this period in France’s history,

202  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 5.4  Coda and coloratura cascades of “Je veux vivre,” mm. 151–​196

sexuality and gender ceased to appear fluid and instead were increasingly organized into rigidly defined categories.34 Locating the female body and femininity in the coloratura of the valse-​ariette thus situates a familiar gender role in the very era when the virtuosity of the female singer was progressively more valued in Second Empire Paris. Heard as a representation of female sexuality, coloratura therefore serves to elaborate and define divisions between male and female singing at mid-​century. Reception of the ariette confirms its effectiveness. Critics agreed that the opera was a success not only because of Gounod, but also because of Carvalho.35 By influencing the compositional process, Carvalho increased her popularity while at the same time furthering her image as a singer who could master both agile

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  203 and sustained singing. However, by setting the bar so high, she perhaps made it more difficult for subsequent sopranos to sing the role, because of the paucity of sopranos that can handle the high coloratura passagework as well as the more sustained, pathetic vocal lines in a lower tessitura.

The Waltz I turn next to an exploration of why the waltz ariette was such a persistent and popular accoutrement of Carvalho’s Gounod creations. The presence of extensive coloratura provides ample cause, but the ariettes’ generic resonance is also a reason. The waltz was the most popular social dance in Europe at mid-​century. It was the first ballroom dance that positioned dancers face to face, with bodies aligned and eyes in fixed contact with each other. Because of the new intimacy of this closed position, and especially because of its dizzying and sensual effect on women—​supposedly affecting women more than men because men led the dance and often lifted the women off the floor as they spun around the hall—​the dance became notorious. Its notoriety was already established early in the nineteenth century, as indicated by Lord Byron’s famous criticism (or subversive celebration) of the waltz, “The Waltz: An Apostrophic Hymn” (written under the pseudonym Horace Hornem, Esq.), which centers on the blatantly public exhibition of sex occasioned by the dance. Several scholars have observed this connection between the waltz, the sexual, and women during the nineteenth century, all of them confirming the dance’s pan-​European notoriety as a dangerous combination of exhilaration and vertigo for women.36 Perhaps most relevant to the case of Carvalho are the physical traits of the dance: the double circular, whirling movement (represented by the coloratura in her arias); the pulsating drive of triple meter (represented by musical downbeat accents and appoggiaturas); and the resulting centrifugal pull that forced dancers to lock eyes in order to avoid dizziness. It is easy to imagine how this proximity of bodies, the often-​wandering arms, sustained eye contact, the whirling music, and the breathless speed of the turns encouraged couples to embrace each other more and more tightly as the waltz continued. The potentially sexual nature of the waltz led to it being banned in some parts of Europe, including in France until mid-​century. In fact, it may have been via the operatic stage that the waltz regained entry to accepted practice. But the ramifications were felt not only in opera. Gustave Flaubert was prosecuted in 1857 for his provocative prose in Madame Bovary, such as the description of women waltzing onstage in Adolphe Adam’s Le Postillon de Longjumeau (1836). Although writing so descriptively about the waltz and its erotic effects had legal repercussions for Flaubert, the onstage waltz seems to have been exempt from

204  Vocal Virtuosity such institutional limitations.37 Sevin Yaraman notes that rules were established that restricted when, where, and with whom women were allowed to engage in dancing the waltz.38 Couples dancing waltzes onstage had always been permitted, and it would seem that when Carvalho began singing solo waltzes onstage, that too was acceptable. Such a confluence of burgeoning freedoms and continued constraints seems to resonate with Carvalho and the vogue for waltz ariettes. Before the collapse of social regulation, the theater world would perhaps have seemed removed from “real-​life” standards, allowing for fanciful displacement on the part of the audience.39 Even after the ban was removed, the politics of dancing onstage seem wholly different and entirely relaxed by comparison. The waltz held the potential for moments of arousal and physical abandon because of the tight embrace and sweating bodies, bodies moving in rhythm with other bodies in repetitive rotations leading to different areas on the dance floor. The dance’s double circular movement stages couples dancing clockwise in smaller circles that spiral around the dance floor in a larger, counterclockwise circle. In addition to requiring couples to lock eyes as they dance in order to minimize dizziness, the constant spinning, as Eric McKee has remarked, almost forces the dancers “to construct an intensely intimate and private world within a crowded public space.”40 The dance thus disciplines a temporary relaxation of the boundaries between self and other.41 For Molly Engelhardt: The constant circling of the waltz provided a means for summoning libido, taking pleasure in each (re)turn, while the rhythm and tempo of the music simultaneously worked to “manage” or regulate the movement. This might also explain part of the mystery of the transformative power of dancing: waltzing allows the dancer to reexperience something identical over and over, which provides a means of escaping into the realm of fantasy . . . [and] indulge in looking, being looked at, getting dizzy, and abandoning themselves to the realm of fantasy because the libidinous atmosphere occasioning it was, at least at that moment, contained by the rhythmic and spatial boundaries of the dance.42

As the nineteenth century progressed, waltzes increased in tempo, requiring ever more stamina, and a fluidity of motion. Such was the difficulty of these speedier waltzes that the velocity could split the dance floor socially, dividing the space between those that could keep up and those that could not. That dance genres had strongly feminine associations in the nineteenth century is a historical commonplace, but Maribeth Clark also notes that in France, women were blamed for the emerging glut of published concert and salon music inspired by dance music first heard in the ballroom. She suggests that there was thus an alignment between female taste and choreography at mid-​century and that the waltz and the quadrille were seen as injurious to more established

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  205 genres.43 Of course, these compositions were mostly simple works, intended for the private sphere, and for the domestic music-​making woman, in particular. The transition from these types of pieces to dance arias, integrated into the operatic work, relied on a vital connection between dance genres and melismas and, as I have explained, on the efforts of Caroline Carvalho. We might therefore set up a parallel, as Engelhardt has suggested, between the emergence of modernity with its ever-​accelerating pace of change and the dancing body with its increasing velocity, quickening pulse, and the corresponding dizziness and buildup of internal heat.44 The symbiotic relationship between social and stage dancing that Engelhardt emphasizes might also be extended to the composition of dance music and French opera.45 Certainly dance as a central social practice had been evoked historically in exuberant triple-​ time orchestral or choral waltzes. And of course, the waltz also has a long history of association with opera, particularly in moments when crowds dance the waltz onstage, or of offstage, diegetic music.46 The connection between the waltz and coloratura, however, seems to have begun with the Carvalho-​Gounod collaborations. Such a connection makes sense in light of fundamental points of correspondence between dance and coloratura.47 Coloratura is the aural analogue to the visible movement of dance, complete with constant circling and a corresponding dizzying effect. There is even a parallel between teaching the waltz and teaching coloratura, with physical exercises that prepare for constant rotation in a manner comparable to vocalises that prepare sopranos for lightning-​ quick melismas and excursions into the sonic stratosphere. For a woman to sing the waltz, alone, onstage, and in a moment of explicit vocal display reveals just how much freedom was afforded a female singer of Carvalho’s status. In a sense, Carvalho’s waltz ariettes were a kind of vocal expression of the intoxication supposedly felt by women dancing. The mapping between dance and aria was not isomorphic, however. Two people dance, but only one woman sings, and that is Carvalho. Her eyes and, more important, her voice, connected most readily with the audience, revealing the subtext of the waltz ariettes. Carvalho vocally, and bodily, performed the breathlessness and musical whirling that accumulate momentum and reach an almost sexual climax for the audience. The waltz as a dance of seduction perhaps lent its erotic generic identity to Carvalho who, empowered by coloratura, could then seduce the audience. In the case of Juliette’s waltz, for example, the frequent rests give a sense of breathlessness, heightened by the downbeat focus. “Je,” “veux,” and many other words function as both centrifugal metrical accent and as anticipated anacruses, because of the sliding grace note neighbor tones figuration.48 The melismas, all on “ah,” evoke ecstasy wordlessly. The most obvious examples of this intersection are the climaxing codas of cascades of roulades at the close of all of her Gounod arias (see Examples 5.4 and 5.5a, b, c, and d).

206  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 5.5a  Coloratura cascades from “O légère hirondelle” (second iteration), mm. 150–​176

Ex. 5.5b  Coloratura cascades from “Ah! Valse légère”

After the cascade repetitions, Juliette’s cadenza wends its way up to high E, the highest note of the aria. There is no doubt that Carvalho’s mouth would be open to its fullest extent for this note; sopranos (and all singers) tend to open wider the higher they sing. The gaping mouth, vocal ascent, and effusive joy apparent strongly support the idea of sexual climax at this point, not only in this but in all of Carvalho’s valse-​ariettes. This triple connection between the female body, the voice, and the erotic crucially informs our understanding of a genre far too

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  207 Ex. 5.5c  Coloratura cascades from “Il a perdu ma trace,” from Gounod’s Philémon et Baucis (1860; dedicated to Carvalho)

Ex. 5.5d  Coloratura cascades from “Je veux interroger,” from Gounod’s La Colombe (1860)

often dismissed as merely fanciful. The ariettes thus forge an association between coloratura and the sexual rather than, as we saw with Carvalho’s coloratura in Chapter 4, the mechanical and even disembodied.49 Coloratura has often been associated with intense emotion, but this explicit connection to the body, and the female body, is perhaps an important part of a broader shift toward coloratura as an increasingly feminized singing style.

Carvalho and History [T]‌he composer of Faust and of Roméo et Juliette recognis[ed] in her, according to his own expression, not merely an interpreter, but a collaborator.50 —​Obituary: Madame Miolan-​Carvalho,  1895 Carvalho’s reputation as a creator and collaborator continued until her death.51 However, she is absent from opera history texts. Perhaps even more disturbing,

208  Vocal Virtuosity before this forgetting happened, commentators such as Hector Berlioz and Reynaldo Hahn actively sought to write her out of history. While the tale of the woman whose power and influence is curtailed by men has often been told, posterity’s treatment of this soprano begs revision. As I have tried to suggest, there is another story to be told, one with clear implications for our understanding of women, singers, and coloratura in mid-​century Paris. Carvalho was an author, a creator, a collaborator, and a superb vocalist and interpreter. She was an actor who brought about a shift in the way audiences viewed coloratura and the ways composers wrote it. In this chapter, for example, I have endeavored to chart a trajectory of Carvalho’s increasing agency in bringing the valse-​ariette to the concert and opera stage. Carvalho proved that a woman could be an imposing creative force, an influence, on her husband, on operatic repertory, and indeed, on Paris and Europe at large, in her own operatic tours and in the tours of the music she helped author and inspire. If Gounod resented Carvalho’s demands and involvement, he did not put that in writing. His retrospective view of Carvalho’s assumption as Marguerite is predictably self-​aggrandizing, but also glowing in his attitude toward the soprano: She was so struck with the rôle of Marguerite, that Monsieur Carvalho begged me to let her sing it. I was naturally only too delighted, and the result proved my decision to have been something like an inspiration. . . . Of course the part of Marguerite was not the first in which Madame Carvalho had found scope for that marvellous style and power of execution which have set her in the highest place among contemporary singers; but no previous rôle had given her so fine an opportunity of displaying the lyric and pathetic side of her gifts. Her Marguerite made her reputation in this respect, and will always be one of the glories of her brilliant career.52

Gounod’s comments only substantiate the positive nature of Carvalho’s creative influence. Indeed, the extent of Carvalho’s power in this period is remarkable. She influenced compositional practice, with her variations in the “Carnaval de Venise” aria and by urging Gounod to write coloratura waltz ariettes for her. Her interpretations and creations of roles also became benchmarks for later sopranos. And, as wife of Léon Carvalho, she exerted a profound influence on management decisions and chose her own roles. More generally, Carvalho reinforced and reinvented the importance and relevance of coloratura in a manner specifically instrumental at first and then later explicitly feminine and sexual. Her ability to imbue roles with a sincere and affecting expressive interpretation, whether in comic, tragic, joyous, or pathos-​ridden scenes, positioned her as a truly unique voice, one that transcends generic and historical boundaries. Carvalho’s power surpassed the realm of normative femininity and of other leading female singers, and yet this power also allowed her to communicate an

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  209 overt sense of female sexuality onstage, in the association of coloratura with the waltz and the body. Such an association hints at the broader historical context of Carvalho’s world, in particular the overriding anthem of her era: the “joy and glamour” of France’s Second Empire.53

Technology, Ornament, and Empire Early in her career, Carvalho’s instrument-​like coloratura allied her voice with the musical inventiveness and artistic authority of a Liszt or a Paganini, thereby augmenting her personal voice and artistic power. By partnering with her husband and maneuvering him into his position as director of the Théâtre-​Lyrique, she forged an operatic empire based on aural and visual scintillation (her voice and his productions). Echoes of her creations are apparent in the works of Jules Massenet, who played timpani during the Carvalhos’ tenure; Léo Delibes, who served as rehearsal pianist and arranged several piano-​vocal editions while working at the Théâtre-​Lyrique—​Lakmé’s “Bell song” is an obvious reference to Carvalho’s virtuosity; and Jacques Offenbach, whose only full opera, Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881), famously features an act devoted to a coloratura automaton, Olympia, whose waltz music and varied strophes might seem reminiscent of Carvalho’s creations. These echoes (to which I will return in Chapter 6) of Carvalho’s voice place the soprano in the position of a kind of vocal herald and remind us of the web of performers and composers that existed in the nineteenth century. The waltz ariette in particular would become a topos—​Giacomo Puccini used it as such in La bohème (1896), as Musetta peripherally seduces Marcello with her waltz, “Quando m’en vo.”54 And Cunegonde’s showy “Glitter and Be Gay” from Bernstein’s Candide (1956, rev. 1989) explicitly satirizes operetta and the coloratura waltz ariette, complete with jewels for props and a Parisian setting. In the context of Second Empire Paris, one could also suggest a connection between the sonic and the visual, between coloratura and other expressions of extravagance. Extreme high notes and coloratura, cadenzas, and ornamentation resonate with images of decadently gilded halls, such as the Palais Garnier. Instigated by Napoléon III and Baron Haussmann and constructed from 1861 to 1875, the theater seats over two thousand spectators and is perhaps the most lavishly decorated opera house in the world. Indeed, if Liszt was deemed the “Napoléon of the piano,” we might dub Carvalho the “Napoléon III of the voice.”55 Both Carvalho and Napoléon III, an admirer of the soprano, brought together supreme command, political virtuosity, and popular, almost cult-​like status. The Emperor and Eugénie, and even the infant Prince Impérial made a point of attending Carvalho’s performances in particular, and bestowed upon her a diamond pin after her triumph in Massé ’s La Reine Topaze.56

210  Vocal Virtuosity Additionally, Carvalho had capital: her name and voice brought in a guaranteed audience to her husband’s productions. Whenever he encountered financial difficulty, his wife could recoup his losses with a summer concert tour through Europe. Her coloratura was a bankable commodity, one that served as the financial cushion they needed in order to further their musical agenda. The success of coloratura sopranos such as Carvalho, Cabel, Nilsson, and others might therefore belong to an art that serves consumers as well as artists.57 Certainly the opera house was a meaningful space of social display, where singers attracted the attention of the higher classes. If we then consider the world of opera in Second Empire Paris to be its own kind of marketplace, coloratura arias were bankable commodities, drawing excited crowds to repeat performances. It was in this Second Empire, therefore, that coloratura as a singing style was commodified, and even feminized and eroticized, as consumption itself became feminized. While Napoléon III dazzled the French populace with his “spectacular politics,” evidenced not only by the Second Empire’s technological advancements but also by lavish celebrations and pageantry, Carvalho promoted sonic spectacle with her waltz arias.58 According to Victoria Thompson, mid-​ century Parisians were preoccupied with establishing and maintaining a “virtuous marketplace.”59 Whereas women were accepted as merchants and even as prostitutes (the lorette was the specifically mid-​century term, replacing the grisette of the early part of the century), female singers flouted capital in a different way.60 For Thompson, “the way in which gender was used to redefine the marketplace in the mid nineteenth century . . . calls into question the neat divisions between public and private.”61 Carvalho would seem to be one such exemplar: she was a woman who wielded power in both public and private. The image of coloratura as luxurious, commodified, and even technological brings us back to the idea of Carvalho’s voice as instrument and encourages us to think about the soprano in terms of other mid-​century technological developments. By 1858, rail transportation had increased to the point that trains were carrying eight to ten thousand travelers to Paris daily; opera was one of these travelers’ entertainment attractions. In 1862, with its move to a new home at the Place du Châtelet, the Théâtre-​Lyrique installed a new system of gas lighting, which worked by illuminating the ceiling. The system could be dimmed in a way that prefigured innovations at Bayreuth twenty years later. Most salient, perhaps, was the establishment of a standard diapason across Europe, nominally conforming to our current notion of A = 440Hz. Prior to this, the mid-​century Parisian diapason was almost a semitone higher—​making Carvalho’s singing all the more impressive.62 At this new height, Carvalho invites us to think about coloratura at mid-​century not as a relic of the past, but as one of Second Empire Paris’s many emerging expressions of modernity. Carvalho’s coloratura resonates with the Second Empire ideology that encouraged mechanization, capital investment, and conspicuous consumption, while

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  211 it simultaneously set limits and fostered new levels of autonomy. Coloratura still epitomized traditional (virtuosic) operatic singing, but it had also become modern as a new and luxuriously powerful expression of the feminine. In the context of opera history, then, coloratura could be seen as a symbol of the opportunities and the dangers of modernity for women. Just as Haussmann’s program of modernization was an amalgam of the old and the new, the constructive and destructive, so too did these coloratura sopranos retread old operatic territory in new ways, providing sonic symbols of the female body, thereby claiming a significant space for the individual soprano while also raising the level of scrutiny for all female singers.63 Sopranos performing coloratura arias thus signaled an emergent femininity, and, at the same time, suggested the collateral power of the female voice. In providing virtuosic, powerful expressions of femininity, these arias established a new sense of female vocality in the aural imagination of the Second Empire. Codified by Carvalho, melismas at mid-​century acted both creatively as the virtuosic voice of the female singer and socially as the musical manifestation of the dancing female body. Carvalho’s vocal prowess, expressive characterizations, and personal audacity gave her agency to do more creating and collaborating than any other female singer of her era. From this vantage point, Carvalho’s legacy and her personal and vocal effect on nineteenth-​century French opera are great. As a vocal herald of the modern and as a true operatic author, we will see that Carvalho’s voice reverberates in the echoes of her creations. In countering the blinkered mindset of those who have dismissed Carvalho and other coloraturas, I  have here suggested that Carvalho was a seminal coloratura soprano, and that her example shows how a woman can give voice to the body and at the same time can be viewed as a créatrice. Emboldened by her command of melismas at mid-​century, Caroline Carvalho carved out an important position for herself in operatic history, a position that revalues music as performance over music as text. In so doing, she compels us to think about coloratura at mid-​century not as something to frown on, but as one case of a singer’s ability to adapt an obsolescent operatic vocality in thrillingly new ways.

Notes 1. Translated from Edouard-​ Accoyer Spoll, Mme. Carvalho:  notes et souvenirs (Paris: Librairie des bibliophiles, 1885), 57. 2. Steven Huebner, “Mireille Revisited,” The Musical Times 124 (1983):  737–​44, at 744. Although Huebner acknowledges that the Carvalhos were critical advocates in producing Gounod’s operas, he notes their involvement with a sense of regret, as if the operas might somehow have been better off without them. Comments like Huebner’s stem from Léon’s tendency as impresario to intervene quite forcefully in

212  Vocal Virtuosity his productions of operas, altering libretti, making musical cuts, and advocating for additions. Details of some of these interventions are discussed in Steven Huebner, The Operas of Charles Gounod (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 3. From Hector Berlioz, À Travers Chants (Paris, 1862), quoted and translated in Hector Berlioz, The Art of Music and Other Essays, ed. and trans. Elizabeth Csicsery-​Rónay (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 69 (“aussi agréable que le cri d’un petit chien dont on écrase la patte, cela suffit pour que la salle retentisse d’acclamations”), http://​www.hberlioz.com/​Writings/​ATC08.htm (Accessed 20 June 2020). 4. Quoted in Walsh, Second Empire Opera, 70. Hahn deemed Carvalho’s singing as masterful, but overly ornamented and too focused on coloratura. He lamented the power Carvalho “abused” and held over composers as a great singer and as a director-​singer in particular. See also Reynaldo Hahn, Thèmes variés (Paris: Janin, 1946), 105–​7. 5. See Stephen Studd, Saint-​Saëns: A Critical Biography (London: Cygnus Arts, 1999), 37. Of course, Saint-​Saëns’s imitation of Carvalho could also have been a form of flattery. 6. In so arguing, I  hope to answer affirmatively Susan McClary’s question:  “Can a woman give voice to the erotic in a mixed public performance and escape being consumed as a commodity or reduced to the traditional stereotype of the woman who is trapped in her sexuality?” See Susan McClary in her foreword to Catherine Clément, Opera, or the Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press, 1988), xviii. In this chapter I am more generally seeking to question Clément’s now well-​known feminist critique of opera as the undoing of women, her pioneering exploration of operatic text and its negative portrayal of women. Carvalho’s example is one of many that refute Clément’s claim that the prima donna “is the prisoner of machinery . . . a living doll to be carried off and taken around for one’s personal pleasure . . . a phantom presence, whose body is expressed only by voice” (Clément, 26–​27). Carolyn Abbate has done much to extend our theoretical understanding of women singing opera, insightfully drawing attention to the authority of performance, the fallacy of male compositional authority and its negations of the female voice, and the fact that the high range of the soprano aurally “drowns out everything in range, and we sit as passive objects, battered by that voice.” Her concluding suggestion that “opera, with music that subverts the borders we fix between the sexes, speaks for the envoicing of women” crucially informs my approach here. Instead of being a commodity, I will argue, Carvalho used her voice as a commodity, much in the same way that composers used their music as a commodity to gain power, authority, and influence. See Carolyn Abbate, “Opera; or, the Envoicing of Women,” in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 225–​58, at 254 and 258. 7. I have not found another example of such a mutually beneficial marriage between opera singer and theater director in the period. Mezzo-​soprano Pauline Garcia married Louis Viardot, a writer and director of the Théâtre-​Italien, but he left his position to be her manager. Most marriages featured one partner more prominently than the other. In the case of the Carvalhos, both were esteemed and they helped each other in numerous ways.

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  213 8. There are many exemplars of the valse-​ariette genre. Apart from Gounod’s, perhaps the most familiar are Luigi Arditi’s “Il bacio” (1860) and Johann Strauss’s “Frühlingsstimmen Walzer” (1884), both published as individual songs, not as part of an opera. 9. The announcement that Ugalde was to create Marguerite appeared in Le Ménestrel, 11 April 1858. On 18 July, Gounod wrote of the possibility of Carvalho’s assumption of the role. See Huebner, The Operas of Charles Gounod, 51. The role exchange was official by late August. See Le Ménestrel, 29 August 1858. The story of the exchange, detailed in an article commemorating Faust, explains that Carvalho was so struck by Gounod’s music when she heard it at a rehearsal that she immediately insisted on singing Marguerite. See Le Ménestrel, 16 December 1894. 10. Gabriela Cruz has also noted a connection between Marguerite’s jewels and the voice more generally in “On the Properties of Gems and Voice,” a paper delivered as part of Technologies of the Diva, an international, interdisciplinary conference on opera, co-​ organized by Cruz and Karen Henson at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University (23–​24 March 2007). 11. “Le rôle de Marguerite nous semble moins favorable au talent de Mme Carvalho, que ceux de la Fanchonnette et de la Reine Topaze. Il est triste, il a toujours la même couleur, et demande quelquefois des efforts dramatiques qui semblent fatiguer un peu cette charmante cantatrice. Elle y produit de très-​beaux effets pourtant, et en tire tout le parti qu’on en pouvait tirer. Elle y est rêveuse, tendre, pathétique; elle y trouve parfois des accents qui déchirent l’âme, et son talent s’y manifeste sous un aspect tout nouveau.” Léon Durocher, Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 27 March 1859. 12. “Mme Carvalho, toute chargée des bouquets et des couronnes que l’enthousiame britannique a fait pleuvoir sur elle pendant deux mois,—​on sait qu’elle y a chanté le Pardon de Ploërmel d’une façon merveilleuse,—​a repris dans Faust son rôle de Marguerite, et l’exécute avec sa supériorité accoutumée et son gôut parfait; aussi simple, aussi avare d’ornements qu’elle en est prodigue dans d’autre ouvrages, cherchant l’effet,—​et le trouvant toujours,—​dans la vérité du sentiment et la finesse ou la grâce naïve, ou, lorsque la situation l’exige, la profonde énergie de l’expression.” Léon Durocher, Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 18 September 1859. 13. See Le Ménestrel, 29 November 1868. For an in-​depth exploration of the two Marguerites moment at the Opéra, see Clair Rowden, “Deferent Daisies: Caroline Miolan Carvalho, Christine Nilsson and Marguerite, 1869,” Cambridge Opera Journal 30 (2018): 237–​58. 14. Henry Morley, Journal of a London Playgoer, 1851–​1866 (London: Routledge, 1891), 256. 15. “Mme Miolan-​Carvalho rentrait dans le rôle de Marguerite, la plus complète, selon nous, et la plus parfaite de ses créations. Elle fait de la scène des bijoux une merveille:  jamais la finesse de la comédienne, jamais l ’art du chant ne sont allés plus loin. Quelle chasteté et quelle passion dans la dernière scène du second acte, où sous l’influence diabolique, Marguerite se jette dans les bras de Faust! Il n’existe sur aucune scène française une artiste capable de rendre avec tant de naïveté, de passion sincère et de pureté une situation de ce genre. Il ne vient pas! Ce élancolique

214  Vocal Virtuosity refrain de la chanson du rouet, où Gounod, selon nous, a surpassé Schubert, Mme Miolan-​Carvalho le répète d’une voix brisée, avec un sanglot si profond et si vrai que toute la salle a pleuré avec elle. Que citer encore? La scène de l’église, où l’éminente cantatrice peint avec tant de vérité et une si profond variété de moyens l’indicible horreur qui s’infiltre dans les veines de la pauvre Marguerite. . . . Dans la scène de la prison, Mme Carvalho s’élève au plus haut degré du pathétique, et jette sa prière vers le ciel avec une fougue, une énergie, une ampleur extraordinaires. Saluée à son entrée par une double salve de bravos, rappelée à plusieurs reprises, couverte de bouquets et de fleurs, Mme Carvalho paraissait heureuse de son triomphe; triomphe bien mérité, car il nous semble que Mme Carvalho a acquis encore des qualités nouvelles, et réalisé ce tour de force: le progrès dans la perfection.” M.A.V., La France musicale, 18 September 1859. 16. See the autograph note on her visiting card of 30 December 1874(?) to an unidentified recipient, Mary Flagler Cary Music Collection, The Morgan Library, New York City, MFC C331.X (1874.12.30). 17. The aria was first published as No. 3 in Charles Gounod, Faust, Morceaux détachés (Paris: Choudens, 1859). We know that the waltz ariette was popular not only because it was published in several editions, simplified arrangements, and transpositions (including a duet version first performed by Carvalho and Ugalde), but also because it was performed by students, for example Mlle Singelée, a student of Duprez, who sang it in early 1861 in concert. See L ’Art musical, 7 March 1861. Another indicator of popularity was the publication of an entire collection of waltz arias, most of which feature coloratura: J. B. Wekerlin, Valses chantées (Paris: Heugel, n.d.). No. 12, “L ’Ondine du Rhin,” labeled “Grande Valse de Concert,” was sung by Adelina Patti. French folklorist, bibliographer, and composer Jean-​Baptiste Weckerlin loved collecting souvenirs of famous musicians. He also transcribed Nilsson’s Swedish and Norwegian songs for piano and voice (with French text by Pierre Barbier). See J. B. Weckerlin, Airs suéduois and norvegiens (Paris: Heugel, n.d.). 18. “Valse légère” translates literally as “light waltz” or “free waltz.” I  have chosen to translate it as “gliding waltz” in order to convey a more idiomatic sense of the dance’s motion. 19. The manuscript of Mireille indicates that the valse-​ariette “O légère hirondelle,” numbered 1bis, was written for Carvalho. See Charles Gounod, Mireille [MS], in the Mary Flagler Cary Music Collection, The Morgan Library, New  York City, G711 . M674, Cary 278. See also the description of the aria in J. Rigbie Turner, Four Centuries of Opera: Manuscripts and Printed Editions in the Pierpont Morgan Library (New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1983), 70. 20. Two recent essays on Léon Carvalho and the Théâtre-​Lyrique regard the director’s involvement in his productions from very different perspectives. Katharine Ellis sees the Théâtre-​Lyrique as a “site of creative instability” where Léon Carvalho’s tendency to overspend and his penchant for large-​scale, lavish productions paved the road to the theater’s failure, a failure Ellis calls “almost foreordained.” On the other hand, Lesley Wright views Léon Carvalho as a hugely influential and positive force, “who presided over the development of French opera for most of the second half of the

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  215 nineteenth century.” Wright’s essay reveals Carvalho to be a shrewd businessman and a force of nature with extraordinary interpersonal skills and a complete devotion to operatic art that allowed him to find a balance between programming new operas and repertory works. See Katharine Ellis, “Systems Failure in Operatic Paris:  The Acid Test of the Théâtre-​Lyrique,” in Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer:  Paris, 1830–​1914, eds. Annegret Fauser and Mark Everist (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 49–​71, at 50 and 56; and Lesley Wright, “Carvalho and the Opéra-​Comique: L’art de se hâter lentement,” in Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer, 99–​126, at 99. 21. Quoted and translated in Huebner, The Operas of Charles Gounod, 147. 22. “Mme Carvalho a fait du rôle de Mireille la plus ravissante création du monde. Elle empreint ce rôle d’une poésie adorable, d’une grâce poétique des plus exquises. Et comme elle chante! Quelle pureté! quel style! quelle perfection!” Etienne Desgranges, L’Entr’acte, 20 March 1864, reprinted in Charles Gounod, Mireille: Dossier de presse parisienne (1864), ed. Marthe Galland (Bietigheim:  Musik-​Edition Lucie Galland, 1995), 6. 23. Many singers were certainly accorded this creator status in premiering roles, but the trope of Carvalho as créatrice recurs throughout her career. 24. “Mme Carvalho réussit dans Mireille à faire entrer son remarquable talent dans une phase nouvelle, elle se transforme en forte chanteuse dramatique dans le sens le plus sympathique du mot, et c’est, en quelque sorte, une révélation dont les librettistes et les compositeurs s’applaudiront également.” Charles Desolme, L’Europe artiste, 20 March 1864, reprinted in Charles Gounod, Mireille: Dossier de presse parisienne,  6–​7. 25. “Mme Carvalho, dont le répertoire est déjà si riche, vient de l’accroître d’une création qui ne sera pas la moins belle. Je ne parle pas du talent de cantatrice dont elle y a fait preuve. On a usé pour elle, à ce point de vue, toutes les formes de l’éloge. Je parle de son talent de comédienne. Elle a su donner à la figure et à la passion de Mireille un aspect tout autre que celui de Marguerite. Marguerite est un être passif et tendre. Mireille est énergique. Marguerite meurt après avoir cédé, et pour s’être trouvée seule devant le danger. Mireille meurt sans tache, mais peut-​être aussi sans avoir couru de péril. Mme Carvalho a rendu toutes ces différences avec un rare talent de composition. Mistral doit reconnaître sa Mireille.” Nestor Roqueplan, Le Constitutionnel, 21 March 1864, reprinted in Charles Gounod, Mireille: Dossier de presse parisienne, 43–​ 44. Roqueplan was director of the Théâtre des Variétés from 1841 to 1847, co-​director (with Charles Duponchel) of the Opéra from 1847 to 1849, sole director at the Opéra from 1849 to 1854, and director of the Opéra-​Comique from 1857 to 1860. He was also known for his wit, his eccentricities, and for cultivating fads. He had a penchant for wearing bright reds and greens as well as for collecting bed warmers. See Mina Curtiss, “Gounod before Faust,” The Musical Quarterly 38 (1952): 48–​67. 26. See “composer,” in Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, vol. 4 (Paris, 1866), 789–​90. 27. “L’air de Mireille se compose d’un larghetto rempli de tendresse et de passion, fort bien écrit pour la voix, merveilleusement chanté par Mme Carvalho qui en a fait un chef-​d’oeuvre, et d’une cabalette entraînante à la manière italienne.” A. de Rovray, Le

216  Vocal Virtuosity Moniteur universel, 27 March 1864, reprinted in Charles Gounod, Mireille: Dossier de presse parisienne, 87. 28. Compare the list of Carvalho’s sixteen role creations (Table 4.1) to the careers of other near contemporary coloratura singers who are all more well-​known to us today: Laure Cinti-​Damoreau is perhaps closest, having created fourteen roles (Table 1.2); Adelina Patti created title roles in four little-​known works—​Gelmina (1872) by Józef Michał Poniatowski, Velléda (1882) by Charles-​Ferdinand Lenepveu, Gabriella (1893) by Emilio Pizzi, and Dolores (1897) by André Pollonnais; Christine Nilsson created only three roles—​Myrrha in Victorin Joncières’ Sardanapale (1867), Estelle in Jules Cohen’s Les Bleuets (1867), and Ophélie in Thomas’ Hamlet (1868); Maria Malibran created the title roles in four works (though she probably would have done more had she lived longer)—​Halévy’s Clari (1828), Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda (1835), Vaccai’s Giovanna Grey (1836), and Balfe’s The Maid of Artois (1836); Pauline Viardot created only two roles—​Fidès in Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète (1849) and the title role in Gounod’s Sapho (1851), though one might also add the title role in Berlioz’s adaptation of Gluck’s Orphée, the title role of Massenet’s oratorio, Marie-​Magdaleine (1873), and the first performances of portions of Berlioz’s Les Troyens (as Dido, 1859) and Saint-​Saëns’s Samson et Dalila (1874); Henriette Sontag created only two roles—​ the title role in Carl Maria von Weber’s Euryanthe (1823) and Miranda in Halévy’s La Tempesta (1850), though she also sang in the premieres of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Missa solemnis (1824); and Jenny Lind created only one role—​Amalia in Verdi’s I masnadieri (1847), though Meyerbeer wrote Vielka in Ein Feldlager in Schlesien (1844) for her (she did not sing the premiere) and Mendelssohn wrote his unfinished opera Die Lorelei (1847) with her in mind. 29. “Mme Carvalho, qui a chanté comme elle chante toujours, a savamment composé le rôle de Marguerite; ses attitudes, ses gestes, sont d’une séduisante suavité.” Quoted in Spoll, Mme. Carvalho, 57. 30. “M. Gounod a enrichi son premier acte, déjá si complet, d’une valse vocalisé, dont l’exécution pleine d’intrépidité de Mme Carvalho a fait la fortune: c’est éblouissant, c’est vertigineux!” Quoted in Spoll, Mme. Carvalho,  73–​74. 31. That Carvalho insisted on the aria’s inclusion in the remounting is noted in Turner, Four Centuries of Opera, 70, and in Julien Tiersot and Theodore Baker, “Charles Gounod: A Centennial Tribute,” The Musical Quarterly 4 (1918): 409–​39, at 430. 32. Incidentally, Roméo’s aria “Ah! Lève-​toi soleil” was also originally performed and published in a higher key (in this case a semitone higher). 33. By allying musical sound with worldly sound, I am self-​consciously invoking the approach of musical semiotics. Several scholars have codified topics and gestures as musical signs with clear meanings in cultural contexts. Some of the most rigorous and interesting examples of this approach are Naomi Cumming, The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Robert S. Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes:  Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); and Raymond Monelle, The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military, and Pastoral (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  217 2006). I am grateful to Marion Guck for helping me to integrate this analytical approach with my interpretation of the aria. 34. As Robert Tombs has noted, Napoléon III’s authoritarian Empire “silenced feminist voices” beginning in the 1850s. See Robert Tombs, France 1814–​1914 (Harlow, UK: Longman, 1996), at 171, as well as David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 2006). The social historian Jules Michelet virtually codified the traditional roles of men and women in public and private in his La Femme (Paris, 1859). Such is the force of the gendering of mid-​century singing styles that it is almost ludicrous to imagine a tenor breathlessly singing a valse-​ariette. His earnest mode of lyricism and romantic desire in mid-​century Paris was a more sostenuto aria, such as Faust’s “Salut! Demeure chaste et pure.” 35. Armand Gouzien in the Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris of 5 May 1867 wrote that “La valse chantée par Mme Miolan avec une rare perfection a eu le succès de virtuosité qu’elle devait avoir.” Gouzien attributed the vogue for waltz ariettes to Arditi’s song, which is actually predated by the Faust ariette written for Carvalho (“elle est tailée sur le modèle des valses dont Il Baccio [sic] a donné le goût”). However, the vogue for “Je veux vivre” seems to have diminished in subsequent decades. When the first Manon, Marie Heilbron (1851–​1886), sang Juliette, one critic wished that she had cut the ariette. He thought it had little to do with the plot and that Heilbron’s voice was better suited to the more sustained, lyrical passages rather than the ariette’s fioritura. For example, H. Moreno in Le Ménestrel of 7 December 1884 wrote that “La principale attraction de la soirée consistait dans la prise de possession du role de Juliette par Mlle Heilbron. Mlle Isaac y avait laissé de grand souvenirs. La nouvelle Juliette n’est pas une virtuose achevée comme sa devanciève, mais sa voix chaude, sinon très étendue, et son intelligence artistique ont suppléé à tout. Il avait été question, un instant, de supprimer à son intention la valse du premier acte et on eût bien fait, non seulement parce que ce genre de pyrotechnie vocale n’est pas trop dans les moyens de la cantatrice, mais encore parce qu’à notre sens le morceau fait tache dans l’ouvrage. Il n’est plus du tout dans le sentiment si élevé du reste de l’ouvrage.” 36. See Maribeth Clark, “The Quadrille as Embodied Musical Experience in 19th-​ Century Paris,” Journal of Musicology 19 (2002):  503–​ 26; Molly Engelhardt, Dancing Out of Line:  Ballrooms, Ballets, and Mobility in Victorian Fiction and Culture (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009); Eric McKee, “Dance and the Music of Chopin: The Waltz,” in The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, ed. Halina Goldberg (Bloomington:  University of Indiana Press, 2004), 106–​61; and Sevin H. Yaraman, Revolving Embrace:  The Waltz as Sex, Steps, and Sound (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2002). 37. To be precise, Flaubert was persecuted not for authoring the book, but for publishing it. In so doing, he and the other defendants, his publisher Léon Laurent-​Pichat, and his printer Auguste-​Alexis Pillet, apparently threatened public safety by offending public morality and religion. The trial that resulted has recently been reexamined in Christine Haynes, “The Politics of Publishing during the Second Empire: The Trial of Madame Bovary Revisited,” French Politics, Culture, & Society 23 (2005): 1–​27. 38. Yaraman, Revolving Embrace,  8–​9.

218  Vocal Virtuosity 39. Indeed, an imagined nightingale’s song was associated with the waltz earlier in the century, as described in 1833 by the German journalist, dramatist, and theater-​ director Heinrich Laube: “only in the steadily whirling girls’ heads can one distinguish the stream of dancers. The couples waltz intoxicated through all the accidental or intentional obstructions, wild delight is let loose. . . . The start of each dance is characteristic. Strauss begins his quivering preludes . . .; the Viennese takes his girl low on his arm, they ease themselves in the most wonderful way into the beat. One hears a whole while longer the long-​held chest notes of the nightingale with which her song begins and ensnares the senses, until suddenly the warbling trill splutters out, the real dance begins with all its raging velocity, and the couple plunge into the whirlpool.” Quoted in Andrew Lamb, “Waltz (i),” Grove Music Online http://​www. oxfordmusiconline.com (Accessed 20 June 2020). 40. McKee, “Dance and the Music of Chopin,” 115. 41. Engelhardt, Dancing Out of Line, 13. 42. Engelhardt, Dancing Out of Line, 55. 43. Clark, “The Quadrille as Embodied Musical Experience,” 514–​15. 44. Engelhardt, Dancing Out of Line, 8. 45. Engelhardt, Dancing Out of Line, 32. 46. Elvidio Surian locates the beginnings of the association in late eighteenth-​century Paris with André-​Ernest-​Modeste Grétry’s Richard-​Coeur-​de-​Lion (1784), as well as Martín y Soler’s Una cosa rara (1786) and the conclusion of Act I in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787). See Elvidio Surian, “Turn and Turn About: Waltz-​walzer-​valse—​le tre carte dicredito erotico dell’opera lirica,” EIDOS Rivista di Arti Letteratura e Musica (1991): 30–​45, at  35–​36. 47. See note 33. 48. As Yaraman points out, these accents, neighboring motion, and anticipations are idiomatic to the waltz and are often followed by a “fling, skip-​wise or step-​wise, to the strong beat, creating registral and durational accents.” See Yaraman, Revolving Embrace, 25. All of Carvalho’s waltz ariettes feature these idiomatic elements. 49. Yaraman and Surian both explore the connection between opera, the waltz, and the erotic, but neither address coloratura’s connection to the waltz. 50. “Obituary: Madame Miolan-​Carvalho,” The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular (1 August 1895): 550. 51. Carvalho’s role as a creator was noted from the start of her career, when a critic observed, “Mlle Félix Miolan a créé—​puisque ce mot est consacré au détriment de l’auteur pour l’interprète—​le rôle de Giralda d’une façon qui demande plus que des encouragements.” Henri Blanchard, La Revue et Gazzette musicale, 28 July 1850. 52. Charles Gounod, Autobiographical Reminiscences with Family Letters and Notes on Music, trans. W. Hely Hutchinson (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 158 and 160. First edition published in London, 1896. 53. Siegfried Kracauer has identified this as the institutional motto of the Second Empire: joy to intoxicate and glamour to dazzle. Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time, trans. Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (New York: Zone

Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz  219 Books, 2002), 151–​62, originally published as Jacques Offenbach und das Paris seiner Zeit (Amsterdam: Verlag Allert de Lange, 1937). 54. The source of the opera’s libretto, Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de Bohème (Paris, 1851), is set earlier in the century and does not allude to a waltz ariette. 55. Of course, Carvalho may not have appreciated such a comparison—​as a ruler, Napoléon III was often derided during and after his reign. For a discussion of Liszt and Napoléon, see Dana Gooley, “Warhorses: Liszt, Weber’s Konzertstück, and the Cult of Napoléon,” 19th-​Century Music 24 (2000): 62–​88. 56. See Walsh, Second Empire Opera, 78. Haussmann also lauded Carvalho’s singing. See Le Ménestrel, 20 March 1859. One might say that Carvalho was a parvenu woman during the regime of a parvenu Empire. 57. The idea that art served the consumer in Second Empire Paris is discussed in Alain Plessis, The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 125–​31. 58. The Emperor was known for holding dazzling receptions and balls with decadent food at celebrations opened to the wealthier bourgeois at the Tuileries and at Compiègne. For an exploration of Napoléon III’s imperial celebrations, see Matthew Truesdell, Spectacular Politics:  Louis-​Napoleon Bonaparte and the Fête Impériale, 1849–​1870 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1997). The Second Empire has also been derided for its more operatic and scandalous escapades. See, for example, John Bierman, Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988). 59. Thompson describes the virtuous marketplace as “one in which making money would be seen as an honorable pursuit, one in which self-​interest accorded with the public good, one in which freedom did not degenerate into license.” See Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace, 9 and 11. 60. Interestingly, the term “lorette” was coined (in 1841) by Roqueplan, whose review of Carvalho I discussed earlier. See Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace, 133. 61. Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace, 11. 62. In France, the official standardization occurred July 1, 1859, but probably took effect a bit later according to Bruce Haynes. See Bruce Haynes, A History of Performing Pitch:  The Story of “A” (Lanham, MD, and Oxford:  The Scarecrow Press, 2002), 346–​49. 63. For more on this sense of “haussmannization,” see Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, “Haussmann’s Paris and the Revolution of Representation,” in Paris as Revolution, 115–​51.

6

Vestiges of Virtuosity The French Coloratura Soprano

The scores of many of our contemporary composers resemble elegant women on the boulevard: they wear too much crinoline. In the daylight, they constitute quite a substantial outfit, and beautifully colored. Close up, en déshabillé, at the piano, they are phantoms inflated by wind and sound.1

—​Jacques Offenbach, 1855

In this polemic against the extravagant music performed in the most prestigious and established mid-​century Parisian opera houses—​the Opéra, the Opéra-​ Comique, and the Théâtre-​Lyrique—​Offenbach describes a puffed-​up style that he would appropriate and satirize in his later opéras bouffes. The criticism reveals not only Offenbach’s evident envy and resentment of the success of other composers, and his view that opéra comique was overreaching its bounds as a genre,2 but also a shrewd awareness of the spectacular and the frivolous spirit of Second Empire Paris. This was the decadent era when avoiding boredom was the prime directive. It was an era of urban modernity: of new parks and boulevards, cafés-​concerts and balls, world exhibitions and horse racing, and technologies such as dioramas, panoramas, and the general and specific illumination (gas lighting and spot lighting) that allowed a new spectacular Paris to come to life at night, with lit streets, shop windows, arcades, and theaters—​the City of Light indeed. Such was the force of the image of a Paris dedicated to pleasure that Offenbach would later ridicule it in La Vie parisienne (1866; libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy): “pleasure until you’re out of breath—​yes, that’s life in Paris!”3 It might be tempting to leave Second Empire opera at that, but Offenbach’s disparagement also suggests that the seemingly frivolous and spectacular often mask serious issues.4 To be on the boulevard during the modernizing renovations of Emperor Napoléon III and the Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann, was to be at the heart of Paris, on a structural thoroughfare and observable to all passersby. Thus, to be on the boulevard was to be watched, especially when elegantly dressed. Crinoline, a stiffened petticoat or rigid steel framework supporting the Vocal Virtuosity. Sean M. Parr, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197542644.003.0007

Vestiges of Virtuosity  221 shape of a woman’s dress, reached its maximum dimensions in Second Empire Paris, making fashion an unmistakable spectacle of its own, for example. And finally, the reference to women both impugns the music as feminine and, importantly, reminds us that it was the female singer who, “inflated by wind and sound,” gave voice and body to those phantoms. The image of music in the Second Empire was primarily vocal, not instrumental. And Second Empire Paris was the crucible that forged the coloratura soprano as a voice-​type. Although critics often discussed the vogue for high coloratura sopranos at mid-​century, after 1870, critics distanced French musical culture from the perceived decadence and frivolity of coloratura and operetta, in favor of instrumental music that seemed to have assimilated some German musical seriousness. But Delphine Mordey refutes the teleology that the infamous frivolity of the Second Empire led inexorably to mortifying defeat in the Franco-​Prussian War, observing how music critics constructed the idea of such inevitability in order to break with the culture of vocal music.5 In this culture, the female singer dominated the French operatic stage at mid-​ century, but not by means of her costume. Her “crinoline” was more musical than visual, but still as attention-​grabbing as boulevard garb, even permeating the prose of Gustave Flaubert’s first and last novels. In Madame Bovary (1856) the sounds of a barrel organ reveal the omnipresence of a feminine music that awakens swirling thoughts of dancing: tunes played in the theatres, sung in drawing-​rooms, danced in the evening under the starlight, echoes of the world . . . without end went round in her head and, like a dancing-​girl over the flowers in a carpet, her thoughts, leaping with the notes, swayed in dream after dream.6

In L’Éducation sentimentale (1869), such music when sung evokes a sense of a young woman possessed: Above their heads a roulade burst forth: Mme. Arnoux, thinking herself alone, amused herself by singing. She produced scales, shakes, arpeggios. There were long notes that seemed to hold themselves suspended: others tumbled down rapidly like the drops of a cascade: and her voice, coming through the shutters, cut into the great silence and rose to the blue sky.7

These examples from Flaubert reveal how such musical enticements can be alluring and perhaps even dangerous, as his character Emma discovers when the increasing velocity of her waltz with the Vicomte whisks her dress upward, incites dizziness, makes her gasp for air, and finally leads her to drop her head on his chest. Employing some provocative prose as an astute observer of society,

222  Vocal Virtuosity Flaubert highlights the popularized sensual effects of the dance and singing on women. Flaubert’s writing is part of the “aesthetics of astonishment” and extreme pathos associated with mid-​century literature.8 It also evinces a certain preoccupation with speed. This preoccupation is found in the writing of many other contemporary French novelists, and, as David F. Bell has suggested, resonates with proliferating technological advances in transportation and communication. It even influences the structure of the actual prose, in serialized novels and as an “accelerating narrative.”9 A mid-​nineteenth-​century preoccupation with speed also resonates with Paul Virilio’s work on speed as a seminal signpost of modernity in relation to politics, urbanization, mobilization, and emerging technologies. Virilio emphasizes as exemplary the speed of circulation on the boulevards of mid-​century Paris, in which revolutionary contingents can become producers of speed. He even deems music “the very first politics of speed.”10 Finally, in connecting speed, astonishment, and modernity, Enda Duffy calls attention to an “adrenaline aesthetics,” the commodification of speed, and its relevance to all aspects of modern culture as one of the most immediate ways individuals experience modernity.11 In a sense, vocal virtuosity became one such experience, something still felt today—​I think of Cecilia Bartoli’s unreal vocal velocity in her performances as the epitome. In mid-​century Paris, then, the demand for speed could also be inferred from a musical analogue to the literary trend:  coloratura arias. By rethinking how Siegfried Kracauer long ago explored the era’s “trivial” music—​Jacques Offenbach and operetta—​I tell another part of the story in this chapter by exploring how late nineteenth-​century moments of coloratura display—​including one famous Offenbach example—​hark back to the operatic portrayal of youthful, feminine sensuality in the emergent modernity of mid-​century Paris.12 As both Walter Benjamin and Kracauer have documented, Second Empire Paris etched its signature into all the phenomena it later inspired.13 I suggest that late-​century coloratura arias served both as a vehicle for sopranos that echoed the virtuosic peak achieved by Caroline Carvalho and as a genre nearly synonymous with extravagance and the notorious “joy and glamour” of the Second Empire, particularly with regard to women, singing, and dance. Although from the origins of opera its singers were expected to have the vocal facility to sing melismas, a tradition especially prominent during the so-​called bel canto period of the early nineteenth century, by the end of the century coloratura had become a rare feature in Franco-​Italian operatic vocal writing. I focus on the end of this transition, when the coloratura soprano had become an established dramaturgical “type” in French opera, and I propose that the role pairings in Meyerbeer’s nineteenth-​century repertory operas were precursors to the marking of the virtuosic soprano as a type in late nineteenth-​century operas by Offenbach, Delibes, and Massenet. Mary Ann Smart has observed Meyerbeerian

Vestiges of Virtuosity  223 role pairings in the musical characterization manifest in Les Huguenots (1836). This very popular nineteenth-​century repertory opera serves as a starting point for understanding the transition from coloratura as a normative singing style to one that functions as an uncommon and conspicuous gesture in late nineteenth-​century operas: Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881), Delibes’ Lakmé (1883), and Massenet’s Manon (1884). As I have previously described, each of these cases echoes Caroline Carvalho’s creations: Manon was dedicated to Carvalho; Delibes’ Lakmé was first produced and directed by Léon Carvalho and Lakmé’s “Bell Song” is an obvious harkening to Carvalho’s virtuosity; and Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann was also initially produced by her husband and features an act devoted to a coloratura automaton, Olympia, who sings a “Doll Song” with varied strophes that might seem reminiscent of Carvalho’s variations and waltz ariettes. I support this proposed historical trajectory with an exploration of the original soprano creators of the roles and their reception history, as well as the musical evidence. Coloratura arias in these operas are the late-​ century exceptions that prove the rule; they are echoes of the virtuosic vocalism so prominent earlier in the century.

Typing the Coloratura Soprano In 1879, when the director of the Opéra-​Comique, Léon Carvalho, decided to produce Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881), he insisted that Offenbach revise the work for his leading tenor, Jean-​Alexandre Talazac, and his leading soprano, Adèle Isaac. For Talazac, Offenbach had to re-​score the title role from the original baritone. For Isaac, Offenbach had to write a coloratura aria. The soprano had even visited Offenbach to persuade him to write this new “Doll Song” for her to sing in the Olympia act.14 Isaac’s insistence that Offenbach write such an aria for her had much to do with her recent success as Juliette in Gounod’s opera. She wanted another vertiginous waltz aria to sing in Les Contes. The decision to accede to Isaac’s wishes aligned Offenbach’s work with the past on several levels. The waltz, the whirling and dizzyingly frenetic dance that seems always to underscore Second Empire Paris, also serves as the underscoring for much of the Olympia act. The coloratura in the Doll Song and in the subsequent finale invokes the same period, when sopranos sang ever higher and ever faster. And finally, the vocal typecasting of the part of Olympia as a soprano à roulades—​a coloratura soprano, in other words—​also helped codify a process begun by Laure Cinti-​Damoreau and Caroline Carvalho earlier in the century in which specific female singers become associated with and inspire composers to write operatic roles that feature extremely virtuosic vocalism. This is the process by which coloratura became

224  Vocal Virtuosity gendered almost exclusively female and by which the French coloratura soprano in particular became an established voice-​type. We saw in Chapter  1 that over the course of the century the training of singers changed drastically, partially in response to emergent vocal techniques such as Gilbert-​Louis Duprez’s pioneering loud high notes, but also in dialogue with shifting dramaturgical principles. The increasing split in vocal technique between dramatic, heavy singing and light, agile singing was made evident in pedagogical treatises in the 1840s, but Meyerbeer’s operas of the 1830s already feature it. Although it would seem that this would be one of the cases in which theory follows practice, in fact the dramaturgical split resulted not merely from an importation of Italian vocalism into French opera, but also from the contribution and popularity of the sopranos originating these roles. Two sopranos in particular—​Laure Cinti-​Damoreau and Julie Dorus-​Gras—​began to establish the French coloratura type at the Opéra in the 1830s. As we saw earlier in this book, Berlioz’s denigration of coloratura sopranos as lapdogs suggests a discomfort with high sopranos, a discomfort that Smart has argued more broadly as a “peculiarly French unease with opera’s reliance on singers to bring its scores to life.”15 However, four of the most popular and groundbreaking operas of the early nineteenth century—​Auber’s La Muette de Portici (1828), Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829), and Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836)—​were written with one soprano in mind: Cinti-​Damoreau. Cinti-​Damoreau exemplified the integration of French and Italian vocal styles and in so doing she was an originary singer “type,” an idiomatically Franco-​Italian coloratura soprano. The practice of creating a voice-​type based on a single, important singer was not new to the French stage. It contrasts with more character-​related typologies, in which voice-​types are associated with certain character types, such as the tenor with the romantic hero.16 The French manner of typing voices resonates with the nineteenth-​century, modern process of standardization that Jonathan Grossman connects to the concept of an étalon, the French word for “standard,” which “originally applied to the stallion used to propagate a genealogical series through copying.”17 By participating in this particularly French mode of propagating types, French operatic casting engaged in a practice that Grossman describes in a different context as “sustaining the individuality of each individual in order to extinguish it through standardizing.”18 In mid-​nineteenth-​century French opera, such typing resulted, for example, after Cornélie Falcon’s defining interpretation of Valentine as well as her creation of Rachel in La Juive (1835) established her voice for the remainder of the century (and to this day) as a new type of soprano.19 The falcon soprano excels in dramatic roles that emphasize sustained singing and focus on vocal power in the upper middle register. Thus, in grand opera the

Vestiges of Virtuosity  225 soprano pairs would consist of: a lighter, agile, Italianate soprano who sings coloratura, known as the chanteuse légère, and the more declamatory, sostenuto role, the falcon soprano. In other French genres, such as those specialized in by the Opéra-​Comique and the Théâtre-​Lyrique, the soprano pairings are similar, with coloratura sung by the soprano à roulades (or soprano élevé) and a secondary Dugazon role who could sometimes, but less often, sing coloratura. Dugazon as a term derives from a late eighteenth-​century opéra-​comique soprano, Louise-​ Rosalie Dugazon (1755–​1821), who was a light, expressive soubrette soprano known for both travesty roles and comic romantic leading roles. Familiar Dugazon roles—​now more often performed by mezzo-​sopranos—​include Siebel in Gounod’s Faust (1859) and Stéphano in Roméo et Juliette (1864). The end of the castrato and the emergence of the tenore di forza signaled a proliferation of new and ever more specific operatic voice-​types. Although we talk today of Wagnerian tenors and Verdian sopranos, in the nineteenth century individual operatic voices were often more versatile than we currently allow, with careers that defied easy categorization, while general voice-​types were more sharply defined with more specific categories. The title material in published opera scores often explicitly delineates these designations: roles were typed sometimes by their relative prominence (first sopranos, second tenors, etc.) or by one of their unique qualities (the soprano à roulades or basse chantante), or in France, by their similarity to the voices of important singers of the past (Falcon, Dugazon, and even Caroline Carvalho). Vincent Giroud observes that within this frame, the company of the Opéra-​Comique functioned as a troupe “comprising certain types of singer and a particular type of vocal casting, reflected in the vocal writing of the work.”20 Such a structure was also apparent at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, and Carvalho was the chanteuse légère or soprano à roulades at both theaters.

Meyerbeer’s Soprano Role Pairings Meyerbeer differentiated his vocal writing in contrasting the two soprano leads in Les Huguenots—​Marguerite de Valois (intended for Cinti-​Damoreau) and Valentine (created by Falcon). Marguerite sings coloratura, but Valentine does not. Early in the nineteenth century, French audiences and critics recognized ornament and coloratura as the domain of Italian singers, while singing that focused on clear text declamation and more nuanced feeling was the domain of French singers.21 But when Julie Dorus-​Gras ended up creating the roles of Eudoxie in La Juive (1835) and Marguerite in Les Huguenots, this “truly French”22 soprano further marked the beginning of associating coloratura with French sopranos. Cinti-​Damoreau was also French, but chose consciously to be Franco-​ Italian in name and style. Interestingly, Dorus-​Gras created Alice in Robert le

226  Vocal Virtuosity diable, opposite Cinti-​Damoreau’s Isabelle. In Robert, the pair of sopranos still functioned as vocal foils (Isabelle, a princess who sings coloratura, and Alice, an ingénue who does not), but to a lesser extent than in Huguenots. That Meyerbeer systematized the pairing of soprano roles, one “light” and one “strong,” in his grand operas was recognized in the nineteenth century.23 Indeed, as Smart and Steven Huebner have observed, Meyerbeer’s role pairings in his grand operas established a new set of dramaturgical constructs for the remainder of the century.24 In La Muette de Portici, Guillaume Tell, Robert le diable, La Juive, and Les Huguenots, the soprano role that sings coloratura is always of noble birth, a princess or queen. The only other instances of coloratura in Guillaume Tell and Les Huguenots belong to the travesty roles of Jemmy and Urbain respectively, page characters sung by a soprano (another role type now usually sung by a mezzo-​soprano). These roles follow a tradition of page pants parts; Cherubino is the most familiar of these roles for us today. The type of coloratura pants role exemplified by Urbain is echoed in later nineteenth-​century operatic roles: Stéphano in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette (1867) and Oscar in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera (1859) both feature this light type of agile singing. Role pairings which feature a mix of high and low singing, agile and sostenuto, as well as different classes (aristocracy and bourgeois) allowed operas to feature plots that integrate musical and dramatic representations more thoroughly. Coloratura thus became associated with more specific dramaturgical functions. In Les Huguenots, Marguerite’s most extensive coloratura passages occur in her amorous pastoral double aria, “O beau pays” (particularly in the cabaletta) at the beginning of Act II. In the aria, the queen waits for Raoul and sings of the beautiful countryside while looking at herself in a mirror amid a background of bathing beauties. The extensive orchestral introduction to the cantabile sets an aural scene of aristocratic luxury, including an elaborate flute obbligato that stops time with a cadenza that sounds almost indulgent, full of vocalise-​like effects—​trills, a long ascending chromatic scale, a pattern of quick laughing descending triplets that ascend to a high note, and a wide-​ ranging arpeggio. The freedom of the flute’s music sounds almost impulsive, and more vocal than instrumental, setting up the expectation that the soprano will imitate these luxurious flourishes. And indeed, the queen, accompanied by the harp, indulges in many of the same roulades during the cantabile (Example  6.1). The second strophe maintains this structure, with slight variations. Throughout the cantabile, Meyerbeer’s expressive markings encourage the performer to indulge in a kind of fulsome lyricism, with soft vocal echoes and frequent tempo and dynamic gradations, as well as the intended ornaments and cadenzas. The ensuing tempo di mezzo begins briskly with Marguerite at the top of a trio of females singing in parallel thirds. The queen’s vocalism then unfurls into

Vestiges of Virtuosity  227 Ex. 6.1  Coloratura passages in the cantabile of Marguerite’s double aria “O beau pays,” from Act II of Les Huguenots (1836), mm. 37–​43

a series of short melismatic excursions, echoed by the flute and supported by a female chorus. Marguerite sings and develops more portions of the flute’s introductory obbligato, to the point that her coloratura seems too quick or elaborate to be echoed anymore by the flute, and culminates in another cadenza. The sprightly, staccato cabaletta emphasizes a cheerful lightness at first, but finishes with exciting scalar and arpeggiating flourishes that accumulate momentum—​a musical quickening leading to a rousing final cadenza. The text and music of the aria paint a pastoral scene, echoing birds, smiling gardens, whispering streams, but also a sense of feminine eros—​loving waters, echoing love refrains, and coquetry—​with bathing beauties who are the focal point of a certain sensuality, highlighted by the voyeuristic page Urbain. Meyerbeer developed his ideas of flutes, coloratura, and echoing sounds in later works, but the coloratura in this aria from Les Huguenots already paints the erotic pleasure of love, while also invoking onstage music and the idea of song itself, most evident in the cascades of coloratura in the coda of the cabaletta on “nos chants” (Example 6.2). The accents and rhythmic emphasis on the high notes on these scalar descents sound like a kind of sensual vocal stretching that then turns into a series of cocottes and trills that adds to the musical voluptuousness. Given

228  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 6.2  Coloratura passages in the cabaletta of Marguerite’s double aria “O beau pays,” mm. 164–​188

that Caroline Carvalho performed this aria extensively in concert early in her career, the cascades perhaps were the exemplar and inspiration for those written by Gounod for Carvalho at mid-​century. What Smart dubs a “heady combination of seduction and risk” develops into one of the primary dramaturgical situations in which coloratura becomes the appropriate sung musical representation.25 Female sexual love and an undertone of voyeurism connect coloratura to the singing onstage body. It is not only the class

Vestiges of Virtuosity  229 of the character (royalty), but the emotional affect—​the amorous passion, in this case—​that persists in its attachment to coloratura singing. Again we see that in addition to technical virtuosity, coloratura becomes a singing style associated almost exclusively with women and with certain passions—​sensual, fiery love and exuberance. In what I  have already described as the emerging Franco-​Italian school of singing, coloratura thus became a compartmentalized singing style, marked as more dramaturgically specific and even feminine. At mid-​century it remained firmly entrenched in Paris, not only at the Théâtre-​Italien, but also at the Opéra-​ Comique, Théâtre-​Lyrique, and Opéra. Coloratura was thus not only an Italian singing style in the nineteenth century, but a Franco-​Italian style, and by the end of the century a French one, as the following case studies will substantiate.

Olympia and Adèle Isaac Premiered posthumously, Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann has a notoriously complicated source and performance history, even beyond the tenor re-​scoring and soprano aria addition I mentioned earlier. Acts were reordered, roles divided and recombined, and numbers and recitatives added by other composers (Ernest Guiraud and André Bloch) over the course of many years and new productions. Even though there have been several efforts at updating authoritative editions of the score, the opera’s format and casting continue to present companies with many choices.26 Offenbach finished much of the music before he died, but in his deliberate efforts to depart thoroughly from his lighter operetta style some of the opera was left unfinished. The composer did complete the Olympia act, however—​perhaps because of its lighter elements. And he incorporated the Doll Song well before rehearsals began. As mentioned earlier, Offenbach decided to substitute a coloratura waltz couplets for the creator of the role, Adèle Isaac, replacing a more soubrette aria with moderate tessitura and limited coloratura. This act harks back to Second Empire Paris in several ways. Although the setting is a physicist’s laboratory, the act is essentially a party scene with guests observing the performance of the automaton Olympia as the featured event. Actual waltzes and waltz-​like music, along with a nearly omnipresent triangle in the orchestra, further confirms the party atmosphere. The general musical tone of the act—​aside from Hoffmann’s lyrical swooning—​seems to echo and even parody the spectacle, gaiety, and decadence of Offenbach’s light mid-​century musical style and of the Second Empire more generally.27 Coloratura is perhaps the most conspicuous element of this musical echoing.

230  Vocal Virtuosity

“Les oiseaux dans la charmille,” Olympia’s Doll Song from Act II of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881), first performed by Adèle Isaac (1854–​1915) Les oiseaux dans la charmille Dans les cieux l’astre du jour, Tout parle à la jeune fille d’amour! Ah! Voilà la chanson gentille La chanson d’Olympia! Ah!

The birds in the arbor, in the heavens, the sun, all speaks to a young girl of love! Ah! This is the sweet song, the song of Olympia! Ah!

Tout ce qui chante et résonne Et soupire, tour à tour, Emeut son coeur qui frissonne d’amour! Ah! Voilà la chanson mignonne La chanson d’Olympia! Ah!

All that sings and resounds and sighs, in turn, moves her heart, trembling with love! Ah! This is the darling song, the song of Olympia! Ah!

Indeed, the only two moments of coloratura in the opera are those sung by Olympia in this act. Each of the two strophes of her Doll Song features extensive melismas and ends with cadenzas climbing up to high E♭. The ritornello introduces the doll’s melody, played by the flute—​an echo of the flute-​soprano connection established earlier in the century—​and the harp accompaniment is also reminiscent of Meyerbeer’s “O beau pays” (though the harp is diegetic in Olympia’s aria, played onstage by Spalanzani).28 The tessitura of the aria is quite high and much higher than the writing for the other soprano roles in the opera (all often sung by the same singer). In the opening melodic passage, the text is broken by eighth rests and then a turning melismatic pattern imitates mechanical whirring (Example 6.3). The coloratura Offenbach wrote sounds remarkably mechanized, almost like a music box turning its gears, one that of course needs to be rewound once per strophe, an activity explicitly written into the staging instructions in the score, and in the music as well—​Olympia ascends a cappella via staccato leaps to a high B♭ that is repeated to the point that the automaton sounds like she is running out of power. The tempo slows, pitch descends chromatically, and the singer decrescendos to a pianissimo before stopping completely, as the audiences wait for Cochenille to reanimate her (m. 49). In each strophe there is a mix of staccato bell-​like coloratura and rapid melismatic passages, several of which are sung forte first and then repeated piano (mm. 42–​43). These difficult echoing passages (redolent of Dinorah’s Shadow Song) eventually lead to a suggested cadenza featuring a melismatic chain of triplets wending downward nearly two octaves from high C before ascending back up to a high E♭ via staccato arpeggiation (mm. 59–​61). The cadenza is punctuated twice by forte orchestral chords—​first at the beginning of the

Vestiges of Virtuosity  231 Ex. 6.3  Olympia’s Doll Song, mechanical melismatic opening, coloratura, winding down, and cadenza, from Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881), mm. 6–​64

232  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 6.3 Continued

cadenza on the tonic, and then just before the arpeggiated ascent to the high note, on the dominant. Coloratura in the Doll Song represents pure singing, as a moment of diegetic singing, and it represents an instrumentalization of the voice, as the singing is mechanized as a technology operated by others onstage. The mechanical vocalizing in the aria also serves the purpose of impressing both the onstage audience by presenting a virtuosic automaton and the offstage audience with a coloratura soprano who can act the role of automaton while also singing virtuosically. It is common practice for sopranos to take the second verse even higher, with interpolated high notes and ornamentation. (See recordings by twentieth-​century French coloraturas such as Mady Mesplé and Natalie Dessay.) Some critics might argue that a performer should avoid ornamenting the second strophe, because an automaton should not be able to change the music, but it remains an expected performance practice. Current coloratura star, Erin Morley, regularly ascends to a staccato high A♭ (above high C) at the end of her performances of the Doll Song, for example. And one might argue that if the scene is a fantasy anyway, then why couldn’t an automaton sing both different text and ornamented music? The final moment of coloratura in the opera occurs after the actual onstage waltzing begins. Olympia’s theme is again first played by the flute, and the waltz and triangle serve as the frenzied party track that underscores the finale. Olympia’s coloratura seems to presage her destruction in this finale, as it seems to go ever higher, beyond the confines of the musical frame that contained her in the Doll Song (Example 6.4). Olympia’s text in this scene also devolves, from a single word (“oui”) on relatively simple and short melismas to an “ah” that spins out of control, rising ever higher via arpeggios ascending to trills, eventually

Vestiges of Virtuosity  233 Ex. 6.4  Olympia’s malfunctioning coloratura, mm. 200–​235

reaching a trill on a high D. The coloratura in the finale exceeds the stiff, mechanized quality of the aria, making Olympia sound more human, hysterical, or dysfunctional, depending on one’s perspective. Interestingly, the soprano creator of Hoffmann’s loves (all four of them) also provides connective threads to mid-​century. Adèle Isaac (1854–​1915; Figure 6.1) modeled her career after Caroline Carvalho. Isaac studied with Carvalho’s teacher, Gilbert-​Louis Duprez, was often hired by Carvalho’s husband, and began her professional life by singing roles created or sung by Carvalho, such as Massé ’s Les Noces de Jeannette, Gounod’s Juliette and Marguerite, Massé ’s Topaze, and Ophélie in Thomas’ Hamlet, as well as Cinti-​Damoreau roles, such as the Meyerbeer heroines, Marguerite de Valois in Les Huguenots and Isabelle in Robert le diable. These are many of the iconic French coloratura soprano roles of the nineteenth century. With models and experiences such as these, it is no wonder Isaac felt emboldened to demand a coloratura waltz aria from Offenbach. Isaac’s performance of Olympia (and Antonia) was lauded by the press, with one reviewer citing her “wonderful precision” and “beautiful French singing,”

Fig. 6.1  Adèle Isaac, creator of Olympia in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881)

Vestiges of Virtuosity  235 loyal to the clear diction and style of the singing school begun by Duprez, and harking back twenty years to Carvalho.29 The soprano’s physicality and acting was highlighted as well—​particularly for her ability to walk and dance while singing, all as a “perfect automaton.”30 This observation hints at the idea of the soprano as a body that imitates a technology in physiognomy, gesture, gait, and sound.31 It is also another reminder of the connection between coloratura and dance—​the markedness of a soprano waltzing while singing (like Meyerbeer’s Dinorah)—​a connection extended to the realm of ballet by one reviewer, who likened Isaac’s vocal virtuosity in portraying the automaton to the virtuosic dancing of Léontine Beaugrand in Delibes’ ballet Coppélia (1870, also based on Hoffmann’s tales).32 These invocations, comparisons, and accolades for Isaac’s performance certainly attest to the high quality of her singing and acting, but they also seem almost formulaic, reinscribing stereotypical attributions of the coloratura soprano as an established character and voice-​type, a type defined in part by vocal precision, mechanization, and perfection. In Offenbach’s Olympia, then, we see a case of the coloratura soprano as robot, played to virtuosic perfection by Isaac. In the next example, by Léo Delibes, the typing of the coloratura soprano again features instrumentalized singing, but connotes a different kind of vocal otherness.

An American in Paris I: Lakmé and Marie van Zandt Delibes knew the Carvalhos well. He had served as rehearsal pianist and arranged several piano-​vocal scores while working for Léon at the Théâtre-​Lyrique during the Second Empire.33 And his Jean de Nivelle (1880) features a coloratura soprano role, Arlette, that Delibes specifies as a “Miolan-​Carvalho” role in the title pages of the score. Delibes wrote the role for Juliette Bilbaut-​Vauchelet (1855–​1925), whom critics excitedly dubbed the successor of Carvalho, even a “French [Adelina] Patti.”34 In other words, Delibes “typed” Carvalho’s voice as important enough to bear such a vocal category, and imagined her as the ideal singer for the role.35 Soon after Delibes’ success with Jean de Nivelle, librettist Edmond Gondinet approached the composer to write an opera with him for a rising young American soprano, Marie van Zandt (1858–​1919; Figure 6.2), who had recently impressed Parisian audiences as Thomas’ Mignon, Mozart’s Cherubino, and Meyerbeer’s Dinorah. Delibes was convinced after witnessing van Zandt’s performance of Dinorah’s waltz aria, the Shadow Song. Collaborating with Gondinet and van Zandt, Delibes created an exotic coloratura role for the soprano, the eponymous Lakmé. An opera full of highly nuanced musicality and exoticism, Lakmé features the famous Bell Song, a lengthy moment of virtuosic

Fig. 6.2  Marie van Zandt in the title role of Delibes’ Lakmé (1883)

Vestiges of Virtuosity  237 display that also serves as a coloratura meditation inspired by North Indian ragas. Gurminder Bhogal explores this connection to Indian musical traditions in arguing that Lakmé’s Bell Song is a sensitively portrayed moment of devotional fervor.36 The “Légende sacrée de la fille du paria” scene is interesting on many levels. First, it is yet another moment of diegetic virtuosic singing—​Lakmé’s father, Nilakantha, compels her to sing, so as to lure the intruder (her love, Gérald) to them. Second, it serves as both a sincere expression of a sacred legend to the onstage audience and a moment of aural seduction for Gérald and the offstage audience. Third, it recalls earlier melismatic devotional prayers, such as those in Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles (1863) and Verdi’s Aida (1871; the priestesses). And finally, it is the virtuosic, showstopping highlight of the opera, even beginning with a lengthy a cappella vocalise cadenza. Lakmé’s reluctance to entrap Gérald is expressed in this impressive opening that also serves as an unmetered numinous chant of sorts. The scene is often called the Bell Song because of the mimetic coloratura that imitates magical bells of religious significance to the scene. This imitation, which might appear superficial to us, could also be interpreted as a culturally sophisticated representation of an Eastern approach to the idea of ornament.37 Bhogal observes that the bell-​like coloratura might be “an expressive gesture that intensifies the encounter between a devotee and her Guru.”38 Delibes’ use of couleur locale is indeed convincing, except perhaps for the use of high notes (up to high E) in cadenzas, the sung echoes, and subito fortissimo chords that punctuate the cadenza’s closing with an exclamation point, a rather showy gesture reminiscent of other coloratura showpieces such as the Doll Song and the Shadow Song. There is a stark contrast between two types of coloratura: the smooth meditative opening and the fast staccato bell imitation. The first sets up the aria as numinous song—​mysterious, unmetered chant, reaching to the divine—​while the second generates great rhythmic momentum and excitement.

“Ou va la jeune Indoue,” Lakmé’s Bell Song from Act II of Delibes’ Lakmé (1883), first performed by Marie van Zandt (1858–​1919) Où va la jeune Indoue, Filles des Parias,

Where goes the young Indian girl, daughter of the pariahs,

Quand la lune se joue, Dans le grand mimosas?

when the moon dances, on the tall mimosa trees?

238  Vocal Virtuosity Elle court sur la mousse Et ne se souvient pas

She runs over the moss and doesn’t remember

Que partout on repousse L’enfant des parias; Le long des lauriers roses, Rêvant de douce choses, Ah!

that she is shunned everywhere, the child of the pariahs; past the pink laurels, dreaming of sweet things, Ah!

Elle passe sans bruit Et riant à la nuit. Làbas dans la forêt plus sombre, Quel est ce voyageur perdu? Autour de lui Des yeux brillent dans l’ombre,

She passes without noise and laughs at the night. Over there in the dark forest, who is the lost traveler? All around him eyes shining in the shadows,

Il marche encore au hasard, éperdu! Les fauves rugissent de joie, Ils vont se jeter sur leur proie,

he wanders on bewildered and lost! The wild beasts roar with joy, they go to pounce on their prey,

Le jeune fille accourt Et brave leur fureurs:

the young girl runs up and braves their fury:

Elle a dans sa main la baguette Où tinte la clochette des charmeurs! L’étranger la regarde, Elle reste éblouie. Il est plus beau que les Rajahs! Il rougira, s’il sait qu’il doit La vie à la fille des Parias. Mais lui, l’endormant dans un rêve, Jusque dans le ciel il l’enlève, En lui disant: “ta place et là!” C’était Vishnu, fils de Brahma! Depuis ce jour au fond de bois, Le voyageur entend parfois Le bruit léger de la baguette Où tinte la clochette des charmeurs!

She has in her hand the wand where ring the bells of the enchanter! The stranger looks at her, she stands dazzled. He is more beautiful than the Rajahs! He will blush, if he realizes he owes his life to the daughter of pariahs. But he, lulling her to sleep in a dream, transports her to heaven. He tells her: “your place is there!” It was Vishnu, son of Brahma! Since that day in the forest depths, the traveler may sometimes hear the faint sound of the wand where ring the bells of the enchanter!

In the opening, a cappella cadenza (Example 6.5a), there is a sense of intimacy to the invocation of the sacred legend. The vocalizing is chant-​like with its lack of meter, but lies at a high tessitura and ranges higher than any priest or priestess would commonly sing. The vocalise is an invitation to the onstage Hindu

Vestiges of Virtuosity  239 Ex. 6.5a  Bell Song from Delibes’ Lakmé (1883), opening a cappella invocation and cadenza

audience to draw near (and to lure Gérald as well), and Delibes’ very specific expressive markings heighten the sense of sacred mystery, with dynamics indicating that repetitions are to be sung at different volumes and with gradations following the arc of the phrasing. The only sense of rhythmic momentum occurs in the high variant of the last phrase of the vocalise, when Lakmé sings several iterations of a descending cascade that begins on high B, then suddenly rockets to a high E, a thrilling leap of religious fervor that then descends chromatically an octave to a cadential trill that signals the end of the vocalise. After the opening, Nilakantha announces to the onstage audience that Lakmé will sing the legend, and the soprano then alternates between recitative-​like phrases and slow staccati arpeggios that serve to introduce the gesture that will be associated with bells in the subsequent faster section of the aria. The aria is essentially two extensive verses with contrasting sections within each strophe. Both strophes feature a section of quick coloratura accompanied by the jeu de timbres (Glockenspiel) that culminates in a punctuated cadenza. The faster section consists exclusively of wordless coloratura that Delibes indicates should imitate a bell (“imitant la clochette”). This section functions as both an excited incantation (with a tremolo pedal) and a melismatic moment of display. The staccati arpeggios invoke the cocotte vocalism described in Laure Cinti-​Damoreau’s pedagogical treatise, in which the soprano strikes the glottis using slight puffs of air (see

240  Vocal Virtuosity Chapter 1). Thus the vocal function engaged by a soprano singing the passages would imitate the already mimetic musical treatment of the sound of a bell. In other words, a soprano would approximate the sound of a bell with glottal stroke phonations that are analogous to the striking of a bell, giving rise to the phrase “Bell register” or voce di campanello, which Richard Miller has argued was used more extensively by singers of the French school of singing, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. In French coloratura technique, the flageolet voice or bell register is brought down into the head register (instead of being reserved for extreme high notes above high C in Italian and German schools of singing), adding further brightness to the tone. Miller states that the French approach yields a brilliant sound that is sometimes small and thin, giving the impression of a chime or sharply rung bell.39 Soprano Erin Morley confirms that the French coloratura technique for this bell-​like sound works remarkably well, stating that she uses “a lot of French vowel space to access high notes and find the best placement for resonance, balancing bright and dark in the sound.”40 Morley increases space in the back of her mouth and sings the French nasal [æ] vowel to access the extreme high notes. The second time that Lakmé sings the more animated melismatic bell section, the quick coloratura continues in a melismatic coda of scales and flourishes reminiscent of the coloratura codas of Carvalho’s Gounod creations. Where the aria began with an atmosphere of the sacred and serious with only a hint of thrill, it finishes with abandon and ecstasy, as melismatic momentum in the final section builds with tongue-​in-​cheek switches between minor and major modes and a soft trill on an upper G transitions to scalar cascades in the coda that ends with a cadenza of bell arpeggios in a louder, more declamatory fashion, that leap to a high D in the vocal stratosphere (Example 6.5b). This cadenza is again punctuated with a fortissimo orchestral chord that prepares the final cadence, one in which sopranos often interpolate a high E as a final climax to the aria. The opening and closing descending cascades of coloratura that build momentum to a leap into the vocal stratosphere recall earlier coloratura arias, such as in Carvalho’s waltz ariettes. The Bell Song is mesmerizing in its exotic colors, the stasis in the music leading up to the mimetic bell coloratura, and in the aural seduction of the extreme vocal demands. With this scene, Delibes shows the ever-​increasing specificity of coloratura’s dramaturgical function. And his muse, Marie van Zandt, provided what many critics perceived as a crystalline, pure voice that, despite her accent, led to a seductive performance that was so well received that she was even dubbed a true Parisian artist.41 This adopting of the exotic, American soprano as a Parisian is important, for it not only parallels the assumption of exotic locales as the domain of French opera, it also reinforces the growing sense that the great coloratura sopranos are French or defined by their Frenchness in performance. Van Zandt’s performance was observed by many

Ex. 6.5b  Lakmé’s mimetic bell coloratura and coda, mm. 138–​186

Ex. 6.5b Continued

Vestiges of Virtuosity  243 critics as the latest in a line of great soprano creators of French operatic heroines, including the Ophélie of Nilsson, the Mignon of Galli-​Marié, and the Marguerite of Carvalho.42 In fact, her impact was great enough that one reviewer predicted that there would soon be a new type called “Van Zandt” in the same way that some soprano roles are typed as “Falcon” roles.43 Such a lineage established both van Zandt as a créatrice and Lakmé as a poetic creation and a quintessentially French coloratura soprano role. In this chapter’s final case study, I hope to show how Jules Massenet’s idealization of certain sopranos further developed the coloratura soprano as a voice-​type that soared to the vocal stratosphere.

An American in Paris II: Massenet and Sibyl Sanderson Massenet had his own set of coloratura muses, all of whom left their mark on his scores. And with his Manon (1884; rev. 1895), Esclarmonde (1889), and Thaïs (1894), he left a trove of supersonic arias. All three operas center on an eponymous seductive heroine whose extravagance, divine invocations, and laughter provide the dramatic thrust for melismatic mania. While Massenet wrote and re-​wrote the role of Manon for different sopranos (1884–​1895), there is a sense that the role was on an upward trajectory in terms of tessitura, with a corresponding increase in coloratura. Massenet had several sopranos in mind for his opera, including Caroline Carvalho, the opera’s dedicatee.44 For the premiere, however, he had to settle for Marie Heilbron (1851–​ 1886), known best for her lyric roles rather than her coloratura. But soon after the success of Manon in its original form, Massenet had occasion to write additional aria options for other more high-​flying coloraturas. To portray Manon’s youthful, consummate confidence, he wrote the Act III Gavotte in 1884 for the French soprano Marie Roze (1846–​1926) for her London premiere of the role. Roze created roles in Auber’s Le Premier Jour de bonheur (1868), Flotow’s L’Ombre (1870), and Balfe’s The Talisman (1874). Many of her important performances were in Britain, where in 1885 she sang the first British and London performances of Manon. Massenet adapted the Gavotte from an earlier song he had composed, “Sérénade de Molière” (1880). Preceded by a section of stop-​time recitative with frequent seductive cadenzas (“Je marche sur tous les chemins”), the Gavotte (“Obéissons quand leur voix appelle”) was originally an addition to the scene, expanding the musical impact as Manon holds court, but it is now part of the standard performance tradition of Manon. The Gavotte hints at a connection between coloratura and laughter focusing on the joys of love and youth with some staccato asides and a cadenza flourish up to high D (Example 6.6). It also relates to earlier coloratura dance arias with its frequent choral (audience) interjections and punctuating triangle.

244  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 6.6 Massenet’s Manon (1884), excerpt from Manon’s Act III Gavotte, written for Marie Roze, mm. 47–​52

Massenet also wrote a Fabliau as a substitute for the Gavotte for French coloratura soprano Georgette Bréjean-​Silver (1870–​1951; Figure 6.3) in 1894.45 Bréjean-​Silver sang to acclaim at the Opéra-​Comique and in Monte Carlo, where she performed leading roles in Manon, Lakmé, Les Pêcheurs de perles, and Guillaume Tell. She also created the role of the Fairy Godmother in Massenet’s Cendrillon (1899).46 While the Gavotte hints at laughter, the Fabliau is expressly about laughter, perhaps a nod to the Laughing Song in Auber’s version of the Abbé Prévost 1731 novel, Manon Lescaut (1856; title role created by Marie Cabel). In Massenet’s Fabliau, as in the Gavotte, Manon is accompanied by chorus, pizzicato string accompaniment, and triangle punctuations, but in this version she sings about her own laughter, with vocalizations labeled “en riant” in the score—​a mix of coquettish scales and staccato, with the usual vocal echoes (some with flute) heightening the effects, particularly in the first and last sections of the piece. (The dynamic indication of ppp when she sings her own name is perhaps the most extremely soft echo in the repertoire.) In the first, the mix of cocottes and scalar ascents mimic well the idea of lightness, laughter, and bravura, while the short cascade of descending scalar patterns before an ascent to high D at the end of the aria is possibly another nod to Carvalho (Examples 6.7a and b).

Vestiges of Virtuosity  245

Fig. 6.3  Georgette Bréjean-​Silver in the title role of Massenet’s Manon (1884)

But perhaps no other soprano has had a more indelible impact on Manon than the Californian Sibyl Sanderson (1865–​1903; Figure 6.4). In another example of an American gallicized, Sanderson intrigued the Parisian public as much with her looks as with her voice. Karen Henson has explored this facet of Sanderson’s career, observing how the soprano left all sorts of marginalia, including little notes, feelings, the weather, and “seductive ‘S’s” (her initials) on Massenet’s

246  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 6.7a  Manon’s Fabliau, written for Georgette Bréjean-​Silver, mm. 12–​32

score.47 Most relevant in the context of this chapter is the vocalism Massenet modified to suit Sanderson’s particular vocal talents—​coloratura, staccati, and high notes. For Sanderson, Massenet generally transformed the mid-​to upper-​ range writing to something higher and more florid.48 Léon Carvalho introduced Massenet to Sanderson in 1887, and the composer coached her as Manon, while the soprano studied voice with Mathilde Marchesi. (Marchesi was a coloratura

Vestiges of Virtuosity  247 Ex. 6.7b  Manon’s Fabliau, coloratura ending, mm. 59–​72

soprano protégée of Manuel Garcia and teacher of many coloraturas, including Nellie Melba and Estelle Liebling, who codified many traditional coloratura cadenzas and taught Beverly Sills.49) It was during this process that Massenet inserted melismas and raised the tessitura of the role, changes that are evident in the 1895, revised and “definitive” edition of the opera.50 Sanderson was certainly Massenet’s primary muse in this intervening period—​ he wrote the title roles of Esclarmonde and Thaïs for her as well. But rather than

Fig. 6.4  Sibyl Sanderson in the title role of Massenet’s Thaïs (1894)

Vestiges of Virtuosity  249 reiterate how Sanderson’s sensual appeal and exotic origins (to Parisians) were part of her success, as Henson has provocatively suggested, I would like to conclude by showing a few of these examples of vocal acrobatics, which, taken together, are perhaps the most extreme echo of mid-​century French vocal virtuosity. And indeed, the examples are, as Henson notes, late-​century instances of a soprano’s vocality influencing the creation of an operatic role. (Interestingly, Sanderson would also create the title role in Saint-​Saëns’s Phyrné (1893) during this period, again inspiring the composer to incorporate staccato and laughing coloratura—​in the Act I finale.) First, in the Sanderson-​influenced Manon, we see some higher variants and staccato laughter in Acts I and III (Examples 6.8a and b), which performers can change into less pitched but actual laughter. These are textbook flourishes into the stratosphere, requiring a high-​note whistle voice extension accessed via emotional abandon and laughter. Ex. 6.8a  Coloratura and staccato variants written for Sanderson in Manon’s Act I aria, “Je suis encor”

Ex. 6.8b  Sanderson’s variants in Manon’s Act III, “Je marche sur tous les chemins”

250  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 6.9a  Esclarmonde’s melismatic incantation rising to high F, Massenet’s Esclarmonde (1889), Act III

Then, in Esclarmonde, we see an a cappella appeal to divine powers, similar to Lakmé, and incantations that rise uncannily, first to an F above high C (Example 6.9a), and later in the scene to an arresting high G (Example 6.9b).51 Here, coloratura, staccato, and high notes represent sorcery, and a divination somewhat akin to Lakmé’s opening invocation. The passage leading up to the high F is mostly a cappella and sounds more like a vocal exercise than an incantation. The high G was highlighted by critics as the “Note Eiffel,” and it is certainly one of the highest notes ever written for the operatic voice, and its

Vestiges of Virtuosity  251 Ex. 6.9b  Esclarmonde’s Act III melismatic incantations continued, leading to Sanderson’s “Note Eiffel” (G above high C)

execution would mark itself as a removed, almost superhuman moment.52 The Eiffel Tower was one of the most visible and important displays at the 1889 Paris Exhibition, and Esclarmonde was written specifically to be performed during the Exhibition—​the monument was inaugurated the morning of Esclarmonde’s premiere. Elizabeth Lorenzo thinks of this high-​note moment as an exorcism of the voice from the body, in which coloratura is heard as detached from the body. The increasingly agitated vocalizations are, in Lorenzo’s view, a sign of the male effort to contain, control, and dampen her excessive sound. In her singing, then, Esclarmonde resists these attempts with her extreme vocal virtuosity and “assures that she will never be completely captured, no matter what her future holds.”53 Such an interpretation relies on the marked sound of the coloratura in this scene, and Esclarmonde’s singing certainly mesmerizes as it conjures a sense of otherworldliness and even eroticism.54 The Eiffel Tower association also resonates as another example of coloratura and high notes serving as a kind of modern technology. Finally, in Thaïs, Massenet again writes coloratura laughter for Sanderson. The first moment (Example 6.10a) occurs near the end of the scene immediately preceding the famous instrumental Méditation as Thaïs throws herself down in hysteria. In the second, the hysterical passages are exaggerated and fly up to E♭ above high C, this time a “strident” mixture of both laughter and the mystical in the Vision of Thaïs (Example 6.10b).55 There is almost a vocal ceiling effect in

252  Vocal Virtuosity Ex. 6.10a  Thaïs’s outbursts of laughter, Massenet’s Thaïs (1894), Act II

the uncomfortable rise in pitch of these rearticulated staccato-​laughed pitches, a distorting of laughter into hysteria, an interpretation supported by Clair Rowden’s exploration of the role.56 The fortissimo indications on the high staccato phrases are quite unusual, and very difficult to execute without the vocalism turning harsh, piercing, or grating. (High staccati are more often sung with a lighter vocalism and pristine, pinpoint articulation.) These are not the seductive or giggling cocottes we have encountered in other coloratura staccati moments. For in defying this lightness, Massenet (or Sanderson) forces the range into the realm of the scream rather than the sung. Henson even calls the moment “a kind of coloratura ‘not singing.’ ”57 I would add that it takes an aesthetic leap for a soprano to allow her voice to turn away from the beautiful toward the unattractive. And the way Massenet composes an anti-​singing moment for Thaïs can also remind us, in a sense, of the malfunctioning coloratura of Olympia before she needs to be wound up again. This is the warping of coloratura into crisis mode, exceeding the bounds of our by now familiar love-​joy-​madness vocabulary. Regardless of the aggressive, possibly repulsive sound of Thaïs’s strident laughter, the broad connection between coloratura, staccati, high notes, and laughter holds and bears emphasis. For as I have suggested, sopranos employed a high range vocal extension—​called whistle voice or flageolet register—​that was

Ex. 6.10b  Sanderson’s strident laughter as L’Apparition de Thaïs, Thaïs, Act III

254  Vocal Virtuosity achieved by actually giving over one’s vocalism to laughing with abandon. The alignment between Sanderson and these laughing high notes is one that extends from her particular style of coloratura vocalism to her character onstage, whose laughter is diegetic. These Massenet examples thus demonstrate a codification of certain types of coloratura signification—​mimetic coloratura as laughter and also a certain association with joy and eroticism that can verge on the hysteric. These laughing, hysterical moments in Massenet’s operas, taken together with the mechanical melismas of Olympia, and the iridescent instrumentality and exoticism of Lakmé, are striking in late nineteenth-​century French opera. The specialized aesthetic effects they create become a kind of raison d’être for coloratura in an era when dramaturgical specificity became increasingly important.

The Modern Coloratura Soprano One of the goals of this book has been to demonstrate a historical trajectory for the emergence of the French coloratura soprano as a voice-​type, one built on the important, lively, ambitious, and creative careers of individual singers who broke molds, established new genres, and performed at vocal heights not heard before. These women—​Laure Cinti-​Damoreau, Delphine Ugalde, Christine Nilsson, Marie Cabel, Caroline Duprez, Adele Isaac, Marie Van Zandt, Sibyl Sanderson, Georgette Brejean-​ Silver, and, especially, Caroline Carvalho—​ pushed the boundaries of vocal virtuosity, many of them also doing so with a seeming nonchalance and expert acting skill. Whether actually French or just assumed into the Parisian fold, these sopranos held sway over high notes and melismas, and their successes in Paris defined the French coloratura soprano as an enduring vocal phenomenon. As operatic roles became associated with certain celebrity voices and voice-​ types, there might be a temptation to attach a certain superficiality to coloratura sopranos who sing as automatons, exotic princesses, or extravagant seductresses, condemning women who sing in the stratosphere as lacking depth of character in the same way they disavow any pitch anchoring. This is an undoing of women along the lines of Catherine Clément and Susan McClary, and there is some truth to the idea that late nineteenth-​century coloratura could be reduced to automaton display, hysteria/​maniacal laughter, or exaggerated sexuality. But there is more to consider. These late-​century examples demonstrate an extension of the French system of typing voices based on important, groundbreaking, iconic—​ and French—​performers, rather than on some imagined idealized system of categorization. In a manner of speaking, such typing acknowledges what Heather Hadlock argues, that “the performer always ‘breaks character’ in a coloratura showpiece: her singing is so breathtaking and strenuous that we cannot avoid acknowledging the particular woman doing it. In such moments the prima

Vestiges of Virtuosity  255 donna plays only herself.”58 Vocal typecasting in late-​century French opera reveals that any early-​century discomfort with the reliance on individual singers had transformed into a national pride in uniquely French modes of singing—​the soubrette travesty role, the light lyric tenor, and the light lyric baritone, as well as the coloratura soprano. This typing of the French coloratura soprano also helps us understand a trajectory for the history of coloratura in the nineteenth century. First, the normativity of coloratura in Italian bel canto migrates to France, evidenced by the Rossini roles created and assumed by Laure Cinti-​Damoreau and then later with Meyerbeer’s coloratura heroines. This is the new Franco-​Italian school of singing, one exemplified by the training of pioneers such as Cinti-​Damoreau and Duprez, both of whom taught a new generation of French singers at the Paris Conservatoire. We saw that from this school emerged one of the most important French coloraturas of the century—​Caroline Carvalho, who along with her husband Léon, made decisions over repertory and genre that in a way led to some of the most important and popular French operas of the century, as well as some of the best-​known coloratura arias, written for Caroline Carvalho. And finally, we see the coloratura soprano roles of Offenbach, Delibes, and Massenet, in which there is a departure from and an identification with the frivolous glamour of the Second Empire. In taking an almost obsolescent singing style and making it new again, the coloratura creators of Offenbach, Delibes, and Massenet’s works call attention to coloratura as a specialty, but they also reshape it according to dramatic concerns, marking its signification, and expressive possibilities. The arias also mark coloratura as dangerous—​an emblem of mechanization that seems human, but is an aural trap exposing forbidden love, and an indication of hubristic female sensuality. In examining the origins of the French coloratura, we would do well to remember both aspects of the soprano’s sonic spectacle.

Notes 1. L’artiste, 14 January 1855. Quoted and translated in Mark Everist, “Offenbach: The Music of the Past and the Image of the Present,” in Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer:  Paris, 1830–​ 1914, ed. Annegret Fauser and Mark Everist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 72–​98, at 80. 2. Offenbach wrote a series of articles in order to pry open a space for his own theatrical efforts. He was frustrated by his failure to get his stage works accepted. It was later that year—​during the Exhibition season of 1855—​that he finally achieved success, founding the Théâtre des Bouffes-​Parisiens and producing his entertainments there. For more on Offenbach’s agenda and his series of articles on music of his time, see Everist, “Offenbach: The Music of the Past and the Image of the Present.” A collection of Everist’s essays provides an important re-​contextualization of nineteenth-​century

256  Vocal Virtuosity French opera:  Mark Everist, Opera in Paris from the Empire to the Commune (London: Routledge, 2018). 3. “Du plaisir à perdre haleine /​Oui, voilà la vie parisienne” (Act V, Scene 8). Offenbach also satirized the frivolous culture of his contemporaries in Orphée aux enfers (1858) and even mocked Emperor Napoléon III and absolute power in his La Grande-​ Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867). 4. Carolyn Abbate has recently suggested that we approach the Second Empire, Offenbach, operetta, and frivolity generally in a much more nuanced manner, considering the wonderment it has inspired as well as the genre’s ephemerality. See Carolyn Abbate, “Offenbach, Kracauer, and Ethical Frivolity,” Opera Quarterly 33 (2017): 62–​86. 5. For more on composerly and critical reactions to the opulence of Second Empire musical culture, see Delphine Mordey, “Auber’s Horses: L’Année terrible and Apocalyptic Narratives,” 19th-​Century Music 30 (2007): 213–​29; and “‘Dans le palais du son, on fait de la farine’: Performing at the Opéra during the 1870 Siege of Paris,” Music & Letters 93 (2012): 1–​28. 6. Quoted in G. Jean-​ Aubry, “Gustave Flaubert and Music,” Music & Letters 31 (1950): 13–​29, at 18. 7. Jean-​Aubry, “Gustave Flaubert and Music,” 26. 8. The classic text is Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976). There are many other waltz scenes with suggestive bodily language in nineteenth-​century French literature including women being whirled away by a tempestuous waltz in Honoré de Balzac’s Le Cousin Pons (1847) and a party waltz that sounds “like some breath of the flesh” carrying women away in a wave of pleasure in its voluptuous whirl in Émile Zola’s Nana (1880), set in the Second Empire. 9. David F. Bell, Real Time:  Accelerating Narrative from Balzac to Zola (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004). 10. See Paul Virilio, Art as Far as the Eye Can See, trans. Julie Rose (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2007), at 125; and Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology, trans. Mark Polizzotti (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2006). 11. Enda Duffy, The Speed Handbook: Velocity, Pleasure, Modernism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 12. See Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time, trans. Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (New York: Zone Books, 2002), originally published as Jacques Offenbach und das Paris seiner Zeit (Amsterdam: Verlag Allert de Lange, 1937). Two recent studies have explored how the Second Empire also looked to the past for musical inspiration: Ruth E. Rosenberg, “Among Compatriots and Savages: The Music of France’s Lost Empire,” Musical Quarterly 95 (2012): 36–​70, in which Rosenberg explores how a quest to publish a collection of French folk music reflects a sense of institutionalized nostalgia; and Flora Willson, “Classic Staging: Pauline Viardot and the 1859 Orphée Revival,” Cambridge Opera Journal 22 (2010): 301–​26, in which Willson observes how revivals and ideas of the classique inform our understanding of an operatic culture in which Parisian critics seem invested in preserving a perceived chasm of taste separating Offenbach’s operettas from true opéra.

Vestiges of Virtuosity  257 13. In his fragmentary Passagen-​Werk, Benjamin does this by presenting all of the source material without a text of his own, while Kracauer turns his material into a near-​novel, in Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time. Gertrud Koch juxtaposes the two in her foreword to Kracauer’s book, 11–​21, at 18. For more on the Second Empire and modernization see Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Plessis, The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 1852–​1871; and Ferguson, Paris as Revolution: Writing the Nineteenth-​Century City. 14. See Alexander Faris, Jacques Offenbach (London: Faber, 1980), 6–​10; and Heather Hadlock, Mad Loves:  Women and Music in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 79. 15. Mary Ann Smart, “Roles, Reputations, Shadows: Singers at the Opéra, 1828–​1849,” in The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, ed. David Charlton (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 108–​28, at 108. 16. For a fascinating exploration of this character-​related typing, see Juliet Forshaw, “Osip Petrov, Anna Petrova-​Vorobyova and the Development of Low-​Voiced Character Types in Nineteenth-​Century Russian Opera,” Cambridge Opera Journal 28, no. 1 (2016): 37–​ 77. The coloratura soprano has, of course, also been associated with less human types—​ the songbird and the siren. See Susan Rutherford, The Prima Donna,  27–​57. 17. See Jonathan H. Grossman, “Standardization (Standardisation),” Critical Inquiry 44 (2018): 447–​78, at 473. 18. Grossman explores the standardization of deaths via the guillotine, and as represented in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, but his description of the process, as he demonstrates throughout the article, also applies to other cases of modernization in the nineteenth century. See Grossman, “Standardization (Standardisation),” 472. 19. For a thought-​provoking exploration of Falcon’s complicated career, see Kimberly White, “Cornélie Falcon’s Ghosts,” Revue de Musicologie 99 (2013): 119–​49. 20. See Vincent Giroud, “Gounod and opéra-​comique,” in The Opéra-​Comique in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Lorenzo Frassà (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 153–​74, at 169. 21. Smart, “Roles, Reputations, Shadows,” 110–​13. 22. Smart, “Roles, Reputations, Shadows,” 112. 23. See, for example, H. Sutherland Edwards, The Prima Donna:  Her History and Surroundings from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century, Volume II (London: Remington, 1888; rpt., New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), 191–​92. 24. Smart, “Roles, Reputations, Shadows,” and Steven Huebner, “Robert le diable,” Grove Music Online, 2002, http://​www.oxfordmusiconline.com (Accessed 20 June 2020). Huebner has noted that Robert appealed to both the noble and upper middle classes by not only extravagant visual spectacle, but also aural, by portraying high and low pairs of lovers. It is the “high” pair that takes on the Italianate ornamented style, as well as the léger singing of the Opéra-​Comique. 25. Smart, “Roles, Reputations, Shadows,” 112. 26. For more on the genesis and versions of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, see Faris, Jacques Offenbach; Hadlock, Mad Loves:  Women and Music in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann; and Andrew Lamb (rev. Robert J. Dennis), “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” Grove Music Online, 2002, http://​www.oxfordmusiconline.com (Accessed 20 June 2020).

258  Vocal Virtuosity 27. One critic considered Olympia to be a parody of a coloratura soprano. See the review by Paul de Saint-​Victor, in Le Moniteur universel (14 February 1881), rpt. in Arnold Jacobshagen, ed., Jacques Offenbach, Les contes d’Hoffmann: dossier de presse parisienne (1881) (Bietigheim: Musik-​Edition Lucie Galland, 1995), 103. 28. For more on flute-​soprano echoes, see Chapter 3; for more on the connection between voice and instrument, see Chapter 4. 29. See the review by Philbert Joslé in L’Événement (13 February 1881), rpt. In Jacobshagen, ed. Jacques Offenbach, 62. 30. See the review by Auguste Vitu in Le Figaro (11 February 1881), rpt. in Jacobshagen, ed. Jacques Offenbach, 19. 31. And indeed one reviewer compared her precision and control in execution to that of an imagined machine, capable of such vocal and physical feats. See the review by J. Weber in Le Temps (15 February 1881), in Jacobshagen, ed. Jacques Offenbach, 143. 32. See the review by Henry Fouquier in Le Dix-​Neuvième Siècle (15 February 1881), in Jacobshagen, ed. Jacques Offenbach, 128. 33. He had also had experience scoring waltzes for Hoffmann’s automaton—​in the ballet Coppélia. 34. See, for example, the review by D. Magnus in Gil Blas (11 March 1880), rpt. in Leo Delibes, Jean de Nivelle: Dossier de presse parisienne (1880), ed. Pauline Girard and Bérengère de l’Epine (Weinsberg: Musik-​Edition Lucie Galland, 2006), 73. 35. Several roles in this work (labeled an opéra, not an opéra-​comique) were named after important French singers: the title role is listed as a Gustave Roger type of tenor; Le Comte is listed as a baryton or basse chantante role in the vein of Jean-​Baptiste Faure; Simone as a contralto or mezzo-​soprano like Pauline Viardot; Diane as a dugazon like Célestine-​Hyacinthe Darcier; Le Sire a comic tenor like Charles-​Louis Sainte-​Foy; and Le Baron as a high tenor laruette role like Achille Ricquier. See the title material in the piano-​vocal score, Léo Delibes, Jean de Nivelle (Paris: Au Ménestrel, 1880). We could interpret this rare listing of types in many ways: as being helpful to directors, as a courtesy to Leon Carvalho’s tradition and company of singers, as an attempt to acknowledge the singer models upon which Delibes based his composition, or as a specific case of imagining the ideal singers for the roles. 36. Both Bhogal and the contemporary critical press make an analogy between Lakmé’s coloratura and jewels, in particular pearls. See Gurminder Kaur Bhogal, “Lakmé’s Echoing Jewels,” in The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 186–​205. 37. The literature on exoticism and opera is extensive. An excellent starting point is Ralph Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 38. Bhogal, “Lakmé’s Echoing Jewels,” 191. Bhogal also interprets the staccato arpeggiations as a kind of apotheosis: “Lakmé’s voice transforming into a magical bell, which later accompanies the girl’s transformation into a goddess,” at 194. 39. See Richard Miller, National Schools of Singing: English, French, German, and Italian Techniques of Singing Revisited (Lanham, MD:  Scarecrow Press, 1977, rpt. 1997), 118–​19 and 140–​43.

Vestiges of Virtuosity  259 40. Erin Morley, telephone conversation with author, 23 June 2020. 41. “A partir de ce soir, Marie Van Zandt est sacrée artiste parisienne.” See Arnold Mortier, Le Figaro (15 Avril 1883), rpt. in Leo Delibes: Lakmé, Dossier de presse parisienne (1883), ed. Pauline Girard (Weinsberg: Musik-​Edition Lucie Galland, 2008), 19. Mortier also observes an entertaining parallel between van Zandt’s foreign, American identity, who once encountered Native Americans, and her assumption of an exotic role, encountered by the British as an indigenous person. In both cases, there is an assimilation of the dominant culture. Most relevant here is the idea that van Zandt, as an American in Paris, was assumed into the echelon of French sopranos, the dominant coloratura singing culture of the second half of the nineteenth century. 42. This typing of Lakmé as a poetic creation and a seminal coloratura role, as well as van Zandt’s vocal lineage and her status as a créatrice, is noted by H. Moreno in Le Ménestrel (22 April 1883), rpt. in Girard, ed., Leo Delibes, 193: “Le type de Lakmé, composé par Mlle Van Zandt, la place sans conteste au premier rang. C’est une création qui la grandit comme celle de Faust fit pour Mme Carvalho, celle de Mignon pour Galli-​Marié, celle d’Ophélie pour Nilsson.” 43. See Charles Martel, Le XIXe siècle (16 Avril 1883), rpt. in Girard, ed., Leo Delibes, 46. The same review also noted van Zandt’s facility with various types of coloratura, including roulades and cocottes. 44. See Karen Henson’s chapter, “Photographic Diva:  Massenet, Sibyl Sanderson, and the Soprano as Spectacle,” in her Opera Acts: Singers and Performance in the Late Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 88–​121. 45. There is some disagreement among Massenet scholars about this attribution: while Henson and Demar Irvine agree that Bréjean-​Silver was the inspiration for the Fabliau, and that she performed it in 1894, Jack Winsor Hansen claims that the Fabliau was written for and premiered by Sibyl Sanderson, for the two hundredth performance of Manon at the Opéra-​Comique in 1893. See Hansen, The Sibyl Sanderson Story: Requiem for a Diva (Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press, 2005), 462. 46. Bréjean-​Silver recorded the Fabliau in 1905 on Massenet: Manon—​The First Complete Recording (1923), Marston 52003, 1997. Massenet’s Fabliau was not the first operatic coloratura fabliau. Interestingly, Delibes also wrote one for his coloratura lead in Jean de Nivelle (1880), the role of Arlette, written as a “Miolan-​Carvalho” role for Juliette Bilbaut-​Vauchelet. 47. Henson, Opera Acts,  88–​95. 48. Henson documents this process based on extensive archival research of the extant scores and correspondence. See Henson, Opera Acts, 95. 49. See Estelle Liebling, ed., The Estelle Liebling Book of Coloratura Cadenzas, Containing Traditional and New Cadenzas, Cuts, Technical Exercises, and Suggested Concert Programs (New York: G. Schirmer, 1943), still in use today. 50. Henson, Opera Acts, 92–​96. For more information on the evolution of Massenet’s Manon, see Jean-​Christophe Branger, “Manon” de Jules Massenet, ou Le Crépuscule de l’opéra-​comique (Metz: Serpenoise, 1999). 51. Esclarmonde’s music evinces both Wagnerian and more traditionally French operatic style—​the coloratura effects, as well as harmonies evoking Gounod. See

260  Vocal Virtuosity Jean-​Christophe Branger, “A Reading of Massenet’s Esclarmonde by Chabrier: How Should French Composers Respond to Wagnerian Music Drama?” 19th Century Music 42 (2018): 96–​122, at 117. 52. That many critics highlighted this moment in the press is observed by Annegret Fauser in Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005), 63. 53. See Elizabeth Ann Lorenzo, “Opera and the Ordered Nation: Massenet’s Esclarmonde in Performance at the 1889 Paris Exhibition” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2005), 316. Additionally, Lorenzo notes an interpretation of Sanderson’s biography as an exoticized Other akin to one I already mentioned with regard to Marie van Zandt. She also sees Esclarmonde as an exotic character, an Oriental sorceress, with magic, paganism, and excessive, uncontrollable sexuality. But she notes that Esclarmonde also guards the sacred sword of St. George, just as Sanderson represents for French audiences the exotic as a Californian “a true native of the savage American Wild West, while her blond hair and blue eyes suggested a ‘pure’ lineage straight from Northern Europe.” Lorenzo, “Opera and the Ordered Nation,” 298–​99. 54. Although she did not sing the high G, lyric coloratura star Joan Sutherland was “very partial” to her recording of Esclarmonde, particularly because it was “so erotic,” more than anything else she had ever sung. See her interview with Martin Kettle, The Guardian (8 May 2002)  https://​www.theguardian.com/​culture/​2002/​may/​08/​ artsfeatures (Accessed 20 June 2020). 55. Thaïs also features another, smaller coloratura role: Le Charmeuse, who, strikingly, sings—​and dances—​after a waltz divertissement in Act II. This role was created by the French soprano and dancer Berthe Mendès de Léon (1878–​1961), who also sang several other coloratura roles, such as Lakmé, Mireille, Marguerite in Faust, Ophélie, and Philine in Mignon. 56. Rowden connects Thaïs to the culture of emerging psychoanalysis, arguing that the operatic Thaïs has a mental breakdown after some of the hallucinatory visions: “a much more dramatic crisis of conscience than her literary counterpart, emotionally dismissing Athanaël and Nicias and crying: ‘No! I will remain Thaïs! Thaïs the courtesan! I no longer believe in anything—​I want nothing more: not home [Nicias], not you [Athanaël] nor your God!’ The authors followed this outcry with a peal of hysterical laughter for Thaïs.” Rowden also observes that this laughter is indicated in the stage notes and could be connected to Charcot’s construction of the attack of hysteria, a further connection to the coloratura mad scenes in French operas at mid-​century. See Clair Rowden, Republican Morality and Catholic Tradition in the Opera: Massenet’s “Hérodiade” and “Thaïs” (Weinsberg: Lucie Galland, 2004), at 215–​ 16 and 217. 57. Henson, Opera Acts, 116. 58. Heather Hadlock, “Return of the Repressed:  The Prima Donna from Hoffmann’s ‘Tales’ to Offenbach’s ‘Contes,’” Cambridge Opera Journal 6 (November 1994): 221–​ 43, at 240.

Epilogue Unending Coloratura

Coloratura is a form of expression, of emotion. . . . I feel as though I’m painting with the voice, which is the most flexible instrument that exists: it can be a violin, oboe, trumpet, horn. . . . But we must remember that to become a good player you need to study.1

—​Cecilia Bartoli, 2012

Cecilia Bartoli—​the revolutionary singer who defies voice-​type—​has assiduously explored coloratura repertoire with what may be the most distinctive and awe-​inspiring of coloratura techniques. In portraying what is often thought of as a highly technical mode of vocalizing as a painterly, artistic expression of emotion instead, Bartoli reminds us that even the most jaw-​dropping vocal virtuosity can also move us to feel goose bumps and hear an artistic tableau in sound. Her description of coloratura as emotion and a kind of sonic color fits well with the sense of coloratura’s potential outlined by the sopranos in this book. And her statement that the melismatic voice can be an instrument resonates with the coloratura-​instrument connection traced here as well. Finally, her caveat that virtuosic singing takes work and study leads me to consider the persistence of coloratura today, and how the rising generation of singers affirms the relevance, importance, and power of the melismatic female singer.

Captivating Coloratura On 25 April 2020, during the COVID-​19 pandemic, the Metropolitan Opera broadcast an “At-​Home Gala,” featuring over forty solo artists livestreaming performances from their homes around the globe, as well as pre-​recorded performances of the Met Chorus and Orchestra members spliced together. Many of the performances were quite poignant testaments to the importance

Vocal Virtuosity. Sean M. Parr, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197542644.003.0008

262 Epilogue of music and the loss shared by the opera community during the pandemic. Other performances were more light-​hearted and diverting. One singer stole the show—​Erin Morley. The coloratura soprano performed “Chacun le sait” from Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment (1840) with great alacrity, tossing off the bravura aria with lots of fun melismatic singing, musical phrasing, and wonderfully spontaneous ornaments. She capped the performance with a surprising and thrilling high F. Morley sings with pinpoint accuracy and has an exciting, vibrant, and vivacious sound. But what made the performance stand out, among a host of excellent singers, was the fact that Morley accompanied herself at the piano! The aria is difficult enough, but to be able to sing with such supreme authority while seated at the piano playing a rousing accompaniment offered online audiences a new level of vocal virtuosity. A highly trained pianist with experience accompanying, Morley exuded a sense of joyful ease and flair while performing her feat of playing piano and singing at the same time. She captivated audiences and her performance deservedly went viral. Morley graciously agreed to an interview with me and revealed that for her, singing is a form of self-​care.2 Influenced by Natalie Dessay and Diana Damrau, she loves how these coloraturas placed drama at the same level as music in performance. She thinks that current singers should find a way to perform intensely in both their acting and singing, so that the audience can feel, hear, and see emotion in both voice and body. For her, the trick is to train the melismas to the point that they become second nature. Although high notes and coloratura came easily to her when she was young—​she attributes her liquid phrasing, melismatic precision, and musicianship to her background on piano and violin—​Morley had to retrain her voice very deliberately after the birth of her first child. She learned to appreciate the tightrope that coloratura sopranos walk in performing such high-​flying repertoire, after taking several months to carefully rebuild her technique. Now one of the reigning coloratura sopranos herself, Morley is a mother of three with a thriving career at the Met and internationally as she strives to “create magic” in her performances and always keep “the sparkle in the voice.” This commitment was certainly clear in Met Gala performance, as well as in the online charity recital performances she gave during the pandemic (again singing while simultaneously accompanying herself at the piano). With a lightness, delicacy, and musical nuance reminiscent of Caroline Carvalho, Morley has garnered acclaim for her finely spun performances of Pamina and dazzled audiences with her pyrotechnics too, taking her Olympia up to an A♭ above high C, for example. She has also recorded one of Carvalho’s lesser-​known creations, Sylvie in Gounod’s La Colombe, singing the role with great sensitivity and verve.3 Proof of the excitement and relevance of vocal virtuosity today, Morley will no doubt continue to enchant audiences when live opera resumes.

Epilogue  263

Coloraturas in Conversation Another outstanding performance during the Met’s At-​Home Gala was a beautifully vital rendition of “En vain j’espère” from Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1831), sung by Lisette Oropesa. The lyric coloratura possesses a rich and complex sound with a wide range of vocal colors—​sometimes sounding a bit like a more vibrant Callas in her middle register—​as well as exquisite pianissimi, vivid melismas, and effervescent phrasing. A  keen sense of bel canto style (legato, trills, agility, and musicality) in particular has propelled her career. Ranging from Manon, Ophélie, Handel heroines, and Mozart to Isabelle in Robert le diable and Lucia, Oropesa performs roles that align her voice with the likes of historic lyric coloraturas such as Laure Cinti-​Damoreau and Christine Nilsson, who also possessed lightness, agility, and occasional dramatic thrust. When I  had the opportunity to discuss coloratura with Oropesa, she, like Morley, said that her ease with coloratura owes to her experience playing an instrument.4 Indeed, she feels that her flute training influences many aspects of her singing: her focus on pitch accuracy, overall musicianship, and even the way she conceives of melismas—​developing musical phrasing based on note patterns and specific arrival points within a lengthy run. When Oropesa sings melismas, she thinks about technique, intonation, phrasing, and dynamic effects, while also imbuing each run with emotional impetus and character. She agrees that there are higher expectations for coloratura singers and that one needs a steely will with great grit and talent to succeed as a coloratura, to handle the pressure and endure the scrutiny. Oropesa adamantly believes “you can’t be a coloratura and be lazy” and if her activity level during the pandemic is any indication, she practices what she preaches. Oropesa sang several benefit concerts, and her singing was singled out as a highpoint in each one. But what is perhaps most remarkable about her activities in May–​July 2020 is the series of Zoom livestream master classes she organized and produced for singers of all levels. Oropesa poured her heart into this series—​ hundreds of singers from all over the world tuned in—​and she gave countless hours of her time in preparing and presenting material on vocal technique, musical style across various repertoire, the business of opera singing, exercise for singers, and more. Her individual coaching sessions with singers were often quite moving, as she gave herself completely to helping the singers find ways to build their voices and improve their singing. Her positivity, constructive feedback, great energy, and generosity of spirit set a tone that is superlative among singers today.5 While allowing that coloraturas are subject to intense scrutiny, Oropesa also believes that there is a sense of female empowerment in opera, that an individual soprano can change how a particular role is understood vocally and dramatically.

264 Epilogue But she sees the current world of opera casting as somewhat limited in the way it categorizes singers. Rigid expectations can constrain careers, with light lyric and coloratura sopranos sometimes dismissed today in preference for heavier, more dramatic voices. Oropesa attributes this to a sense that, after Callas’s impact on opera, casting preferences favor the heaviest voice that can sing the role, while even superstar coloratura sopranos and lighter voices are sometimes referred to in a derogatory manner today. This presents a kind of inconsistency in the operatic world when lighter voices, which very likely are more similar to the originators of these nineteenth-​century roles, are overlooked in favor of dramatic voices. Interestingly, Oropesa also idolized Dessay. When I interviewed her, Oropesa stated that “more than anything, I wanted to be a real coloratura.”6 She sang Lakmé in the shower, vocalized high, but never felt that her extreme high extension was reliable enough. She feels that the weight and color of her voice, especially as she has matured, led her to the lyric coloratura roles of bel canto, Meyerbeer, Mozart, and more, rather than the super-​high coloratura roles. Ironically, while Oropesa always wanted to be a high coloratura like Dessay, she perhaps possesses the voice Dessay always wanted. Some of the roles she performs regularly—​such as Violetta, Gilda, Marguerite in Les Huguenots—​are precisely the roles Dessay felt were beyond her voice. Perhaps the irony of these two sopranos’ wishes for a different voice can be explained by the common feeling of wanting what feels out of reach. But I think it also speaks to the very real limitations of a system of standardized vocal categories. Oropesa’s attraction to coloratura led her to organize a panel of three coloratura sopranos to discuss melismas, voice-​type, and technique with her livestream audience.7 The panel—​ Oropesa, Morley, and Australian coloratura Jessica Pratt—​began by discussing the consummate control, aesthetic risk-​taking, virtuosic technique, and complete self-​confidence required by the coloratura roles. From there, the sopranos quickly segued into a conversation about voice-​types. There seemed to be a general consensus about the problems of vocal categorization, and the sopranos agreed that coloratura is something all singers should be able to do. But Pratt added that she thought there are some innate predispositions to one voice-​type or another and that the extreme high notes are easier for some sopranos—​though these high notes are easily lost, whether by age, disuse, or misuse. Pratt also initiated a discussion about what authority singers have today over the operatic score. While she has had success performing non-​standard cadenzas and working with composers to write for her voice, Pratt felt strongly that it is quite difficult to diverge from traditional vocal performance practice and certain canonic recordings, and that it is now up to performers to educate audiences and prepare them to hear opera in a way that integrates the vocal improvisatory freedom of the nineteenth century (and earlier).

Epilogue  265 After delving into these headier topics, the sopranos covered trill technique, singing in a corset, expressing emotions while singing, the importance of staccato technique in accessing high notes and in articulating melismas, and the effects of pregnancy and giving birth on singing. The panel was fascinating and well attended—​the livestream audience held at its 1,000 maximum (with many waiting for a spot to open up); it was Oropesa’s most popular master class. What was especially inspiring, in my opinion, was the way the sopranos affirmed each other, while also learning new things themselves. When they jointly coached four singers, it was very touching to see the care and enthusiasm with which they imparted their knowledge and support to these young artists.

Competitive Coloraturas In April 2020, Andrew Lloyd Webber held a virtual vocal virtuosity competition. Thousands of sopranos submitted video recordings of themselves singing their own versions of a cadenza ending Christine’s aria “Think of Me” from Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera (1986). The winning submission would be performed on one night on both Broadway and the West End (once live performances resume after the pandemic). With a self-​aggrandizing billing—​ “Andrew’s ‘Think of Me’ Cadenza Challenge”—​the competition held the final deliberations via a conference video call between the three judges: the composer, soprano Sierra Boggess (a past Christine), and Irish television personality and comedian Graham Norton.8 The sixteen-​minute final round presents a sort of microcosm of the issues covered by this book. Contestants of course performed cadenzas full of melismas, staccato articulations, and high notes; some even submitted coloratura runs that quote well-​known cadenzas in other operas, such as Philine’s “Je suis Titania” from Mignon. (The winning entry features an ascending series of staccato pitches that hark back to Olympia’s Doll Song.) But to me, the most striking (and problematic) aspect of the deliberations was the familiar, intense scrutiny brought by the judges, who expressed their love-​hate relationship with vocal display and made comments not only about the quality of the cadenzas, vocal ability, color, and beauty, but also about the singers’ ages and wardrobe choices. Norton led the cattiness, laughing at the singers often, snickering that one soprano’s hat looked like a bath mat, and noting after one particularly extensive cadenza that his dog came in and he didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. It would seem that female singers must still overcome much in order to succeed today. In this case, the thousands of coloratura sopranos—​many of whom were highly trained, capable singers—​were all vying for one spot, subjecting themselves to serious and sarcastic scrutiny. Some presented their vocal virtuosity in

266 Epilogue a seemingly nonchalant manner, but almost all provoked a strong reaction from the judges, led by the composer himself serving as both admirer and final arbiter. In addition to reproducing the authority of composers over performers today, aspects of the event also remind us of the importance of historical reference. First, the origins of Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera are a kind of backdrop for the historical trajectory of the book: the Paris Opéra and the real sopranos who served as the basis for the story’s two main (competing) singing characters. Coloratura superdiva, créatrice, and Gounod’s muse, Caroline Carvalho, was the basis for Carlotta, while the original Ophélie in Thomas’ Hamlet, Christine Nilsson, was the likely source for Christine. And second, Norton’s cheeky comment that a dog has something to do with coloratura and high notes relates back to both my book’s opening epigraph, in which Dessay claims she had to work “like a dog” to sing melismas, and to Hector Berlioz’s disdainful remarks that a coloratura’s high notes sound like the screech of a lapdog being stepped on. * * * Because virtuosity for virtuosity has never been a goal for me. But making it alive and . . . having an emotional sense, that’s really the challenge.9

—​Natalie Dessay, 2013

That this next generation of coloratura sopranos continues to overcome dismissive attempts to belittle and mock the very real individuals who reach the upper limits of the human vocal range and speed tells us much about the tenacity of these female singers and the phenomenon of vocal virtuosity more generally. They are answering the challenge issued by Dessay in going beyond virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake. It is not merely coincidence that many of our current coloratura stars also have significant experience playing instruments—​Morley on piano and violin, Oropesa on flute, and Pratt on trumpet. These coloraturas are not only able to sound like other instruments (as Bartoli alludes); their own instrumental playing informs their singing. And taking their cue from Callas and, more recently, Dessay and Damrau, these coloraturas also commit themselves to heightened expressions of emotion, acting with complete conviction. In the twenty-​first century, coloratura is special and a specialty, for melismatic madness requires not only Olympic-​level vocal athleticism but also virtuosic artistry that can move as profoundly as it stuns. Indeed, coloratura goes beyond text, stuns audiences, and becomes a symbol of both instrumentality and extreme emotions. Virtuosic, numinous singing continues to captivate, prompting lively conversation and wonder. But this project is tied together by unifying threads that also tell another story. The importance of the individual—​the performer, the teacher, and the composer—​seems

Epilogue  267 one such thread. Collectively the individuals explored in the book—​Carvalho, Marie Cabel, Christine Nilsson, Delphine Ugalde, Caroline Duprez, Laure Cinti-​ Damoreau, Adèle Isaac, among others—​have helped me refute the idea that vocal virtuosity is mere technical skill and old-​fashioned singing. Instead, coloratura, always connected both to technical prowess and to intense emotional expression, becomes even more explicitly connected to the body and to certain emotional states in this period, particularly to madness and extreme joy. In arguing for a recasting of coloratura as a modern singing style in the nineteenth century, this book has examined how certain signposts of modernity catalyzed coloratura’s shift: the institutionalization of pedagogy; social dance; technology; increasingly authoritative composers; new conceptions of operatic voice-​types; and, especially, individual, creative female singers. The nexus of relationships between coloratura, creation, and individual performers suggests that the real voices and the real singers of coloratura very much influenced its use in mid-​century opera and after. The elevated vocalism of coloratura was a means to star status, envoicing those women who possessed prodigious melismatic facility and ambitious attitudes toward operatic creation. My approach has, I hope, opened up an avenue that links an all too easily dismissed repertoire with real, empowered individuals perpetuating and propagating an art. These individuals contributed significantly to keeping coloratura current with opera audiences. By incorporating dance and supersonic high notes into coloratura arias, they and their inspired composers made the singing style relevant, show-​stopping, and popular. The use of social dances such as the waltz and the bolero connected fioritura to the sexualized female body in mid-​century Europe. The interpolated and written high notes and high tessituras further amplified the thrill of listening to these singers rapidly articulate melisma after melisma. So, does coloratura then end after the French echoes in the late nineteenth century? Of course not. From the nineteenth century to the present, coloratura arias have remained in the concert repertory, thereby surpassing the longevity of the operas in which they were originally heard. Singers such as Adelina Patti, Nellie Melba, Luisa Tetrazzini, Lily Pons, Mado Robin, and many, many others continued singing these pieces, modifying cadenzas and ornaments along the way, and transforming a varied improvisatory practice into an almost standardized performance tradition with a set of formulas from which the easiest or showiest may be chosen.10 Additionally, while many of the operas mentioned in these pages have disappeared, many others have remained and a few have recently had significant revivals. Coloratura has a central place in the opera house today for other reasons too. The best exponents of the singing style—​Dessay and Damrau, but also Morley, Oropesa, Pratt, Devieilhe, and others—​have revolutionized coloratura’s dramatic

268 Epilogue potential. In their performances of standard as well as more obscure coloratura roles, these sopranos have made coloratura not only vocally thrilling but also expressive. Instead of merely vocalizing as if on a technical quest for the perfectly even scale, these artists infuse each melisma with a committed expressive effect. One need only watch a video of Damrau’s live performance as Queen of the Night or of Dessay’s as Ophélie to understand the visceral impact of such an integration of extreme vocalism and histrionics.11 Twenty-​first-​century coloratura thus is unquestionably relevant as a singing style, still representing a pinnacle of vocal-​technical proficiency and emotional expression. Coloratura did not go the way of the dinosaur or the ophicleide; it adapted. To be more precise and to continue the evolution metaphor, coloratura is an exaptation; it is a singing style that has functions and meanings for which it was not originally selected.12 Rather than serving as a general sign of technical skill, decoration, or word painting, coloratura now also signals particular intensities, emotions, inflections, madness, and even death, depending on the performer and composer involved. We cannot then consider mid-​century coloratura as merely an indicator of the feminine and a crowd-​pleasing device. Coloratura represents a style that can connote much more, forcing us to reckon with the cumulative effect of hundreds of women over the last two hundred years who have fearlessly executed melismas and high notes, while evoking grace, authority, and utter control in their bodily created art. They ensured that coloratura remained always current, always modern. They continually revolutionized opera with their voices, making audiences go mad for melismas, as Charles Dickens observed when he heard Marie Cabel singing.13 In so doing, these women revivified the power of the voice, provoking listeners’ chills, laughter, horror, and even tears. It is this revivifying power that has bolstered coloratura’s continuing resonance in performance over the years, and it is the fierce, emboldened intensity of these coloratura sopranos that argues most strongly for the reclamation of a place for the melismatic female voice in history.

Epilogue  269

Notes 1. Cecilia Bartoli, interview with Graham Spicer, 28 October 2012:  https://​www. gramilano.com/​2012/​10/​cecilia-​bartoli-​on-​her-​voice-​her-​repertoire-​on-​turning-​ down-​carmen-​and-​facing-​up-​to-​norma/​ (Accessed 29 June 2020). 2. Erin Morley, telephone conversation with author, 23 June 2020. 3. See Gounod:  La Colombe, Erin Morley/​ Hallé/​ Sir Mark Elder (Opera Rara B011VX0OLE, 2015). 4. Lisette Oropesa, telephone conversation with author, 17 June 2020. 5. The soprano’s generosity, charisma, and entrepreneurial disposition are buoyed by her husband, Steven Harris, who provides crucial technical support for the master classes. 6. Lisette Oropesa, telephone conversation with author, 17 June 2020, emphasis is Oropesa’s. 7. Lisette Oropesa, Erin Morley, and Jessica Pratt, Zoom livestream video panel discussion “Vocal Technique: Coloratura Bootcamp” (27 June 2020). 8. See Andrew Lloyd Webber, #ComposerInIsolation | Cadenza Challenge Decision Time, https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=7ygOLf5taGY (Accessed 29 June 2020). 9. Natalie Dessay, Carnegie Hall interview on “becoming a singer,” available on Carnegie Hall’s iTunes:  https://​podcasts.apple.com/​us/​podcast/​natalie-​dessay-​on-​ becoming-​a-​singer/​id583471836?i=1000168477466 (Accessed 20 June 2020). 10. The culmination of this transformation are cadenza manuals such as Estelle Liebling, ed., The Estelle Liebling Book of Coloratura Cadenzas, Containing Traditional and New Cadenzas, Cuts, Technical Exercises, and Suggested Concert Programs (New York: G. Schirmer, 1943), still in use today. 11. See Mozart—​Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) /​Keenlyside, Röschmann, Hartmann, Damrau, Selig, Allen, Sir Colin Davis, Covent Garden (Opus Arte B0000C5RQF, 2003) and Ambroise Thomas—​Hamlet—​Barcelona Opera (EMI B0002TTTK6, 2003). 12. Concurrent with Carvalho’s break-​out moment of instrumentalized coloratura in 1850s Paris, the development of a theory of evolution reached its own watershed moment with the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The term “exaptation” is used in the history of science to describe a character or feature that evolved by a process other than selective adaptation for the function it subsequently acquired. See “exaptation, n.,” OED Online June 2003 (Oxford University Press, March 2007). 13. Dickens saw Cabel in Auber’s Manon Lescaut (1856) and observed that her Laughing Song was “received with madness.” Quoted in John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (London: Cecil Palmer, 1872–​1874, rpt. Limbricht: Uitgeverij Diderot, 2005), 442.

Bibliography Periodicals and Newspapers L ’Art musical Le Constitutionnel L’Entr’acte L’Europe artiste Le Figaro La France musicale Gazzetta musicale di Firenze Gazzetta musicale di Milano Gazzetta musicale di Napoli L’Italia musicale Journal des Débats Le Ménestrel Le Messager des théâtres et des arts Le Moniteur universel La Musica The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Tables and figures are indicated by t and f following the page number  “A vos jeux” (Hamlet),  114–​23 coda, 119f coloratura waltz, 115f laughed cadenza and beginning of second verse, 118f mad-​scene ballad, 118f text and translation, 115–​16 Abbate, Carolyn, 7, 9–​10, 133 Abduction from the Seraglio, The (Mozart). See Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Mozart) acuti (high notes), 49–​50, 57n.52, 79–​80, 110, 155,  165–​66 Adam, Adolphe, 37 Giralda, 144, 145, 167 Giselle, 117 Le Bijou perdu, 167 Le Postillon de Longjumeau,  203–​4 Le Toréador, 145, 158, 173–​74 “Addio” (Rigoletto), 62, 67 Adina (L ’elisir d’amore),  144–​45 Agathe (Der Freischütz), 172 aggiustamento, 40, 76 “Ah! non giunge” (La sonnambula), 51 “Ah! Valse légère” (Gounod), 16–​17, 183, 184–​85, 191–​93, 214n.17 coloratura cascades, 206f fanfare opening, 198, 198f melismas, 193f text and translation, 192 Aïda (Verdi), 237 “Air des Bijoux” (Faust). See Jewel Song (Faust) Alfredo (La traviata),  76–​77 Alice (Robert le diable),  225–​26 Almaviva (Il barbiere di Siviglia),  42–​43 Amenaide (Tancredi),  34–​35 “Ami, le coeur d’Hélène” (Les Vêpres siciliennes), 88 Amina (La sonnambula), 43 Anaï (Moïse),  34–​35 “Andrew’s ‘Think of Me’ Cadenza Challenge,”  265–​66

Argentine (L ’Eau merveilleuse), 144 Argento, Dominick, 98 Ariadne auf Naxos (Strauss), 9 aria insertions, 25n.41, 48, 87, 92n.29, 154–​55, 158, 185t arie de baule. See aria insertions Arlette (Jean de Nivelle), 235 Armando (Il crociato in Egitto), 30 arpeggios, 37, 45–​46, 62, 67, 72–​73, 103, 147–​48, 161–​62, 221, 226, 239–​40 Arsace (Aureliano in Palmira), 30 Artôt, Désirée, 58n.54 Attila (Verdi), 59–​60 Auber, Daniel-​François Esprit, 37 L ’Ambassadrice, 144–​45,  173–​74 La Muette de Portici, 35–​37, 224, 226 La Sirène, 145 Le Premier Jour de bonheur, 243 Manon Lescaut, 167, 244 ornamentation in opera arias, 37 “Au bord du chemin” (Rossignol aria). See Rossignol aria (Les Noces de Jeannette) Augustine (patient at Salpétrière), 129–​30, 130f, 131f, 132f Augustine of Hippo (saint), 3–​4 Aureliano in Palmira (Rossini), 30 authority of composers, 7, 17–​18, 29, 162–​66, 212n.6,  265–​66 of performers, 7, 10–​11, 17–​18, 42–​43, 141–​43, 162–​66, 183, 194, 197–​203, 209, 261–​62, 264, 268 “Ave Maria” (Bach-​Gounod), 141, 184   Bach, Johann Sebastian, “Ave Maria” (arr. Gounod), 141, 184 Balfe, Michael William The Maid of Artois, 216n.28 The Talisman, 243 Barbier, Jules, 172–​73, 195–​96 baritone, 42–​43, 51, 133–​34, 154, 223, 254–​55

288 Index Bartoli, Cecilia, 1–​2, 43, 221–​22, 261, 266 baryton, 258n.35 baryton Martin, 1 bass, 5–​6, 20n.11, 29–​30 basse chantante, 178n.14, 225, 258n.35 Battaille, Charles, 44 Baucis (Philémon et Baucis), 16, 141, 194 Baudelaire, Charles, 12–​13 Beatrice di Tenda (Bellini), 47f Beauchesne, Alfred de, 158 Beaugrand, Léontine, 233–​35 Beaumont, Alexandre, 175 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 154–​55, 172 Fidelio, 172 Missa Solemnis, 216n.28 Ninth Symphony, 216n.28 bel canto style cabalettas, 82 canto declamato, 45 canto di agilità, 45–​46, 46f canto di bravura, 45, 47f, 47–​48, 76, 161 canto di forza, 45, 47f,  47–​48 canto di grazia, 45, 46–​47 canto di maniera, 45, 46f, 46–​47, 72–​73, 149–​50, 150f, 161 canto di portamento, 45, 46–​47 canto di sbalzo, 47f,  47–​48 canto di slancio, 45, 47f, 47–​48,  79–​80 canto fiorito, 45 canto spianato, 45, 73–​74 change in singing style away from, 6–​7 coloratura in, 3, 6, 7, 35–​37, 60–​61, 255, 264 decline of, 56n.39, 61 improvisation in, 35–​37 influence of female singers, 10 mad scenes, 97–​98, 135n.7 Malibran as exemplar, 43 melismatic singing in, 42–​43, 61, 97, 134, 166–​67,  222–​23 ornamentation in, 21–​22n.24, 34–​35 solite forme in, 8 soprano roles, 59–​60, 155 sung by Oropesa, 263 Tacchinardi-​Persiani’s interpretation of,  144–​45 virtuosity in, 19n.3 Bell, David F., 221–​22 bell register (voce di campanello),  239–​40 Bell Song (Lakmé), 49–​50, 209, 222–​23,  235–​37 mimetic bell coloratura and coda, 241f opening a cappella invocation and cadenza, 238–​39,  239f text and translation, 237–​38

Bellini, Vincenzo, 6 Beatrice di Tenda, 47f I Puritani, 43, 80 La sonnambula, 43, 51 Benjamin, Walter, 222 Berg, Alban Lulu, 98 Wozzeck, 98 Berlioz, Hector, 21–​22n.24, 51, 57n.52, 224 adaptation of Gluck’s Orfeo, 43, 172 on Caroline Carvalho, 144, 151, 162, 165–​66, 182–​83, 196,  207–​8 on coloraturas, 265–​66 on high notes and the Lapdog School, 50 Les Troyens, 154–​55, 216n.28 on Marie Cabel, 51, 133 Bernacchi, Antonio, 32–​33 Bernstein, Leonard, 9 Bhogal, Gurminder, 235–​37 Bilbaut-​Vauchelet, Juliette, 235 Bizet, Georges, 6 Carmen, 84 Les Pêcheurs de perles, 154–​55, 237, 244 Blanchard, Henri, 144, 151 Blangini, Felice, 55n.20 Bloch, André, 229 Bloch, Gregory W., 40, 143 Blonde/​Blondine (Die Entführung aus dem Serail),  174–​75 Boccabadati, Virginia, 59, 80 Boggess, Sierra, 265 bolero, 41–​42, 82–​45, 156f, 179n.24, 267 Bologna conservatory, 32 Bordoni, Faustina, 20n.12 Bouffes-​Parisiens,  173–​74 Brambilla, Giuseppina, 32 Brambilla, Marietta, 32 Brambilla, Teresa, 32, 90n.5 Brancaccio, Giulio Cesare, 20n.11 Bréjean-​Silver, Georgette, 244, 246f, 254, 259n.45 as Manon, 245f Briquet, Pierre, 125–​26 Brownlee, Lawrence, 19n.3 Budden, Julian, 88 Burq, Victor, 99 Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 203   cabaletta, 23–​24n.32, 46f, 69, 76, 77f, 79f, 80, 227–​28,  228f Cabel, Marie, 11, 16, 39–​40, 50–​51, 79–​80, 87–​88, 125, 244, 254, 266–​67, 268 competition with Caroline Carvalho, 167–​68 as Dinorah, 133

Index  289 institutionalization of, 125 at the Opéra-​Comique, 181n.40 as Philine (Mignon), 169f roles created by, 170t Caccini, Giulio, 4–​5 cachucha,  82–​83 cadenzas, 4, 35–​37, 74–​76, 103, 147–​48, 175, 199–​201, 226–​27, 230–​32, 231f, 237, 240, 243 Callas, Maria, 51–​52, 263, 266 Candide (Bernstein), 9, 209 canto declamato, 45 canto di agilità, 45–​46, 46f canto di bravura, 45, 47f, 47–​48, 76, 161 canto di forza, 45, 47f,  47–​48 canto di grazia, 45, 46–​47 canto di maniera, 45, 46f, 46–​47, 72–​73, 149–​50, 150f, 161 canto di portamento, 45, 46–​47 canto di sbalzo, 47f,  47–​48 canto di slancio, 45, 47f, 47–​48,  79–​80 canto fiorito, 45 canto spianato, 45, 73–​74 Carmen (Bizet), 84 “Carnaval de Venise” aria (from La Reine Topaze), 157–​67, 198 theme, 157–​58, 158f first variation, 158–​59, 159f second variation, 160f, 160 third variation, 156f, 159f, 160–​61, 161f fourth variation, 161 fifth variation, 161 coda, 162, 163f text and translation, 157 “Caro nome” (Rigoletto), 14, 60, 62–​69, 63f text and translation, 61 Carré, Michel, 172–​73, 195–​96 Carvalho, Caroline (Marie Félix-​Miolan) “Au bord du chemin” (Rossignol aria),  147–​53 beginnings,  143–​45 benefit concert, 182, 184 “Carnaval de Venise” aria, 157–​64 as Cherubino, 173–​74, 186 collaboration with Gounod, 182, 194, 265–​66 as a coloratura soprano, 51, 223–​24 competition with Cabel, 167–​68 creative influence of, 16–​17, 207–​9 as créatrice, 16–​17, 141, 154, 182–​85, 211, 215n.23, 218n.51, 266 early training, 143 as Juliette, 197–​203 in La Fanchonnette,  155–​56 and Manon, 243

as Margot, 166f as Marguerite (Faust), 174–​75, 186–​91, 187f, 190f, 208, 213n.9, 240–​43 marriage to Léon Carvalho, 154 as Mireille, 194–​96 at the Opéra-​Comique, 144–​45, 153–​55 power as performer, 210 rising to new heights, 145–​53 roles created by, 141–​43, 142t, 186 salary/​pay,  11 as student of Duprez, 42, 143–​44 at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, 154–​56 as voice-​type, 223–​24, 225, 233–​35, 254–​55 as Zerlina, 175–​77 Carvalho, Léon, 168, 186, 214–​15n.20, 255 collaboration with Gounod, 182 as director, 222–​23, 233 as impresario, 211–​12n.2 marriage to Caroline Carvalho, 154 and Massenet, 245–​47 at the Opéra-​Comique, 223 at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, 154–​55, 174, 175, 182, 183–​84, 194, 210 cascata,  85–​87 castrato/​castrati, 5–​7, 19n.3, 29–​31, 52n.5, 53n.6 singing coloratura, 29–​30 Caswell, Austin, 34–​35, 37 Catalani, Alfredo, 60–​61 Catalani, Angelica, 34–​35, 144–​45 Catherine (L ’Étoile du nord), 101–​8, 108f, 134,  172–​73 Celletti, Rodolfo, 74–​76 Cendrillon (Massenet), 244 Cerha, Friedrich, 98 “C’est bien l’air” (L ’Étoile du nord),  102–​8 flute-​soprano duets, 104f, 106f text and translation, 102 chanteuse légère, 35–​37, 39–​40, 85, 144–​45,  224–​25 Charcot, Jean-​Martin, 125–​29, 131–​32, 260n.56 Cherubini, Luigi, 32–​33 Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro), 34–​35, 141, 173–​74, 226,  235–​37 Chopin, Frédéric, 43, 141 Christine (Les Mystères d’Udolphe), 153 Christine (The Phantom of the Opera),  265–​66 Chusid, Martin, 67 Cilea, Francesco, 60–​61 Cinti-​Damoreau, Laure, 11, 14–​15, 29, 31, 33t, 33, 34f, 34–​40, 172–​73, 239–​40, 254, 255,  266–​67 associating coloratura with emotion, 51 and the coloratura “type,” 223–​24 as créatrice,  35–​37

290 Index Cinti-​Damoreau, Laure (cont.) exercises from Méthode de chant, 37–​39, 38f, 39f in L ’Ambassadrice,  144–​45 as Marguerite de Valois (Les Huguenots),  225–​26 ornamentation in opera arias, 37 pedagogical treatise, 37, 42–​43 roles created by, 33t, 216n.28 in Rossini roles, 255 students of, 33t Clapisson, Louis, 154–​55 Jeanne la folle,  99–​100 La Fanchonnette, 84, 155–​56, 156f, 172, 179n.24 Les Mystères d’Udolphe, 153 Margot, 165, 166f claque system, 165–​66 Clari (Halévy), 216n.28 Clark, Maribeth, 7, 204 Clément, Catherine, 9–​10, 133, 254–​55 cocottes, 29, 37–​38, 38f, 49, 62, 102–​3, 117–​23, 227–​28, 239–​40,  244 Cohen, Jules Les Bleuets, 175, 216n.28 Colbran, Isabella, 53n.7 coloratura in all voices, 6 articulatory possibilities for, 44 associated with madness, 2–​3, 9–​10, 15–​16, 18, 28, 74, 80–​81, 88–​89, 95–​98, 101, 103, 108, 109, 114, 117–​23, 125, 126–​28, 132–​35, 251–​52, 266–​67,  268 as athletic exercise, 28 and the bolero, 84 changing ideas about, 2–​3, 6–​7, 8–​9, 15, 18, 29, 33, 37–​38, 51, 52, 54n.14, 91n.13, 224 decline in writing for, 7 defined, 3, 95–​96 expressing laughter, 9, 37–​38, 39–​40, 41, 49, 102–​3, 114, 117–​23, 118f, 156–​57, 158–​59, 161, 164–​65, 226, 243–​44, 247–​49, 251–​55, 252f, 253f, 260n.56 as expression of emotion, 4, 17–​18, 28, 41–​42, 45, 47–​49, 51, 61, 62–​66, 69, 98, 103–​6, 117–​23, 126, 127–​28, 135n.3, 206–​7, 228–​29, 249, 261, 262, 263, 265, 266–​67 and the female body, 3, 18, 28, 56n.41, 95–​96, 113–​14, 182, 197, 201–​2, 205–​7, 208–​9, 210–​11, 250–​51, 262,  266–​67 and the female singer, 1–​2, 3, 8–​11, 15, 18–​19, 28, 30, 31–​32, 51, 54n.14, 68–​69, 83, 99–​100, 133–​34, 141–​43, 155, 164–​67, 172–​73, 202–​3, 205, 206–​7, 208–​9, 210–​11, 212n.6, 220–​21, 223–​24, 233–​35, 261, 263–​64,  265–​67

as feminine style, 6–​7, 9, 12–​13, 15–​16, 166–​67, 201–​2, 208–​9, 210–​11, 229, 268 flageolet register, 48–​50 French, 31, 220–60 German, 26n.54 instrumentalized, 160–​67, 183–​84, 209, 269n.12 in Italian opera, 59–​60 as laughter, 37–​38, 39–​40, 49, 79–​80, 114, 117–​23, 243–​44, 249,  251–​54 as modern, 12–​15, 254–​55, 267 before the nineteenth century, 3–​6 in nineteenth-​century opera, 6–​10 physiological aspects of, 56n.41 revolutionization of, 267–​68 techniques, 4–​5, 6–​7, 15–​16, 30–​31, 32–​33, 38, 40, 41–​42, 43–​45, 48–​50, 95–​96, 133–​34, 155, 162–​56, 164–​65, 224, 239–​40, 261, 263, 264–​65 voice-​type, 1–​2, 13, 17–​18, 41, 54n.15, 141–​43, 177, 221, 224, 225, 233–​35, 240–​43, 254, 264 and the waltz, 16–​17, 109–​14, 183–​84, 185t, 186, 191–​93, 205, 209, 223–​24. See also valse-​ariettes See also fioritura Comtesse Adèle (Le Comte Ory),  34–​35 concerto delle donne, 4 Connor, Steven, 114 Conservatoire. See Paris Conservatoire Contessa di Foleville (Il viaggio a Reims),  34–​35 contralto, 21n.22, 30–​31 Coppélia (Delibes), 233–​35 Coppola, Pietro Antonio, Nina, 47f Coraline (Le Toréador), 145, 173–​74 countertenor, 19n.3, 49 coup de la glotte, 44 covering (vocal technique), 40 créatrice Carvalho as, 16–​17, 141, 154, 182–​85, 211, 215n.23, 218n.51, 266 Cinti-​Damoreau as,  35–​37 Crescentini, Girolamo, 29–​30, 32–​33, 53n.7 Cruvelli, Sophie, 81–​89 Cunegonde (Candide), 9, 24n.36, 209 Cuzzoni, Francesca, 20n.12   Damrau, Diana, 1–​2, 17–​18, 175–​77, 262, 266,  267–​68 as Queen of the Night, 267–​68 dance, 18. See also bolero; waltz genre dance arias, 8–​9, 41–​42, 185t David, Giovanni, 30–​31 Davies, James Q., 7, 30 DiDonato, Joyce, 1–​2

Index  291 De Giuli Borsi, Teresa, 68 “Deh calma o ciel” (Otello), 46f Delibes, Léo, 6 coloratura soprano roles, 255 Coppélia,  233–​35 Jean de Nivelle, 235, 258n.35 Lakmé, 17, 49–​50, 154–​55, 209, 221–​43, 236f, 244, 264 at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, 235 delle Sedie, Enrico, 55n.20 “Den Teuren zu versöhnen” (Martha), 26n.54 Der Freischütz (Weber), 172 Der Schauspieldirektor (Mozart), Mme. Herz, 48 Deroin, Jeanne, 12 Desdemona (Otello), 43 Desolme, Charles, 195 Dessay, Natalie, 1–​2, 78, 91n.13, 95, 230–​32, 262, 264, 266, 267–​68 as Ophélie, 267–​68 Devieilhe, Sabine, 1–​2, 48, 267–​68 Diamond, Hugh, 126 diapason, 210 Dickens, Charles, 268 Didi-​Huberman, Georges, 126 Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Mozart), 172,  174–​75 Die Lorelei (Mendelssohn), 216n.28 Die Zauberflöte (Mozart), 48, 172, 175, 189 Nilsson as Queen of the Night, 176f Pamina, 141, 175–​77, 189, 262 Papagena, 175 Queen of the Night, 48, 175–​77, 189 Dinorah (Le Pardon de Ploërmel), 51, 84, 100, 109–​14, 133, 134, 168, 230–​32, 235–​37 Doll Song (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), 3, 222–​24, 229–​35, 251–​52,  265 malfunctioning coloratura, 233f melismatic opening, coloratura, winding down, and cadenza, 231f text and translation, 230 Dolores (Pollonnais), 216n.28 Don Carlos (Verdi), 89n.3 Don Giovanni (Mozart), 34–​35, 42–​43, 172, 175–​77,  189 Donna Elvira, 175–​77, 189 Zerlina, 141, 175–​77, 189 Don Juan (Mozart). See Don Giovanni (Mozart) Donizetti, Gaetano, 6 La Fille du régiment,  261–​62 L ’elisir d’amore,  144–​45 Lucia di Lammermoor, 97, 103, 144–​45, 167 Maria Stuarda, 43, 216n.28 Donzelli, Domenico, 30–​31 Dora (Le Nabab), 153

Dorus-​Gras, Julie, 35–​37, 55n.20, 224, 225–​26 as Alice (Robert le diable),  225–​26 Duffy, Enda, 221–​22 Dugazon, Louise-​Rosalie,  224–​25 dugazon (soprano), 224–​25 Dumas, Alexandre fils, 60, 76 Duplessis, Marie, 76 Duprez, Caroline. See Duprez-​Vandenheuval, Caroline Duprez, Gilbert-​Louis, 14–​15, 29, 30–​31, 33, 40–​42, 51, 141, 143, 224, 233–​35 approach to vocal technique, 48 pedagogical treatise, 40–​43 students of, 33t Duprez-​Vandenheuval, Caroline, 42, 102–​8, 172–​73, 254, 255, 266–​67 as Catherine (L ’Étoile du nord), 108f “Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln” (Die Entführung aus dem Serail),  174–​75 Durocher, Léon, 186–​89 Duveyrier, Charles, 60   “É strano! . . . Ah, fors’è lui . . . Follie! . . . Sempre libera” (La traviata). See Violetta’s double aria Eidsheim, Nina Sun, 7–​8 Ein Feldlager in Schlesien (Meyerbeer), 103, 216n.28 Elektra (Strauss), 98 Elizabeth I (Le Songe d’une nuit d’eté), 145 Ellis, Katharine, 164–​65, 214–​15n.20 Elssler, Fanny, 82–​83 Elvira (Don Giovanni), 189 Elvira (I Puritani), 43, 80 Elvire (La Muette de Portici),  35–​37 embodiment, 18, 114 Engelhardt, Molly, 204, 205 Esclarmonde (Massenet), 243, 247–​49, 260n.53 melismatic incantation, 250f–​51f Note Eiffel, 250–​51, 251f Estelle (Les Bluets), 175 etudes, 37 Eudoxie (La Juive),  225–​26 Euryanthe (Weber), 216n.28 Everist, Mark, 100–​1 exoticism, 82–​83, 84, 235–​37, 240–​43, 260n.53   Falcon, Cornélie, 35–​37, 224, 225 falcon (soprano), 224–​25, 240–​43 falsetto female, 57n.51 male, 49 reinforced, 53–​54n.13 Falstaff (Verdi), 59–​60

292 Index Fanchonnette (La Fanchonnette), 84, 155–​56, 162, 184, 188 bolero aria, 156f Faure, Jean-​Baptiste, 24n.33, 258n.35 Faust (Gounod), 16, 24n.33, 186 “Ainsi que la brise légère,” 183, 184–​85 Jewel Song, 182–​83, 186–​88, 188f, 189, 192–​93 Marguerite, 141, 173–​75, 182, 187f, 190f, 208, 233,  240–​43 Siebel,  224–​25 See also “Ah! Valse légère” (Gounod) Feldman, Martha, 7–​8 Félix-​Miolan, Marie. See Carvalho, Caroline feminism, 26n.48 in France, 11–​12 and madness, 96–​97 See also women Fidelio (Beethoven), 172 Fidés (Le Prophète), 43 fioritura, 5–​6, 18, 19n.5, 68–​69, 144–​45, 153 for bass voice, 178n.14 See also coloratura flageolet (whistle voice), 48–​50, 239–​40, 252–​54 Flaubert, Gustave, 203–​4 L ’Education sentimentale,  221–​22 Madame Bovary, 132–​33, 203–​4, 221 Flórez, Juan Diego, 19n.3 Flotow, Friedrich von, 243 flute-​soprano echoes and duets, 102–​3, 149f, 151, 152f, 167, 226–​27, 230 flutes in the Doll Song, 230, 232–​33 in Gilda’s aria, 62–​66, 67, 68 in L ’Étoile du nord, 101–​7, 104f, 106f,  131–​32 in Le Toréador, 158 in Les Huguenots,  226–​28 in Les Noces de Jeannette, 103, 167 in Lucia di Lammermoor, 103 in Manon Lescaut, 244 obbligato,  35–​37 played by Oropesa, 263, 266 in Rossignol aria, 35–​37, 147–​51, 149f, 152f use by Verdi, 85 in Violetta’s aria, 72–​73 vocal imitations of, 102–​3, 148–​49, 149f, 151, 165, 226 Foucault, Michel, 99 France and exoticism, 82–​83 madness on stage in, 132–​33 Second Empire, 11–​13, 16–​17, 83–​84, 95–​96, 125–​28, 134–​35, 209–​11, 220–​23, 229, 255 Spanish influence in, 83–​84

and Verdi, 60 See also women Freitas, Roger, 7 Frezzolini, Erminia, 44, 144–​45 Friedlaender, Max, 58n.54   Gabriella (Pizzi), 216n.28 Galathée (Massé), 145–​46, 173–​74 Garaudé, Alexis de, 32–​33 Garcia I, Manuel (Manuel del Pópolo Vicente Rodríguez),  42–​43 Garcia II, Manuel (Manuel Patricio Rodriguez Garcia), 14–​15, 29, 33, 42–​48, 51, 245–​47 pedagogical treatise, 43–​48 students of, 33t Garcia, Maria (Malibran). See Malibran, Maria (Garcia) Garcia, Pauline (Viardot). See Viardot, Pauline (Garcia) Gautier, Théophile, 2–​3, 82–​83 Gelmina (Poniatowski), 216n.28 gender, 2–​3, 6, 9–​12, 14–​15, 164–​66, 201–​2, 203–​7, 210,  223–​24 See also feminism; women Gerhard, Anselm, 88 German school of singing, 49–​50 Giger, Andreas, 85 Gil Blas (Semet), 173f Gilbert, Sandra, 96–​97 Gilda (Rigoletto), 59–​60, 61–​69, 63f, 90n.12, 264 Giordano, Umberto, 60–​61 giovane scuola, 60–​61 Giovanna Grey (Vaccai), 216n.28 Giralda (Adam), 144, 145, 167 Giroud, Vincent, 225 Giselle (Adam), 117 “Glitter and Be Gay” (Candide), 9, 209 Gluck, Christoph Willibald Orfée, 43, 172, 216n.28 Gondinet, Edmond, 235–​37 Gossett, Philip, 7, 69 Gounod, Charles, 8–​9, 43, 168, 182, 183 “Ah! Valse légère,” 16–​17, 183, 184–​85, 193f, 198f, 198, 206f, 214n.17 “Ave Maria” (Bach-​Gounod), 141, 184 on Caroline Carvalho, 208 collaboration with Carvalho, 182, 194,  265–​66 La Colombe, 16, 141, 186, 192–​93, 194, 207f, 262 La Nonne sanglante, 186 operatic premieres, 154–​55 Philémon et Baucis, 16, 141, 186, 192–​93, 194, 207f

Index  293 Sapho, 186, 216n.28 triple-​time arias, 18 See also Faust (Gounod); Mireille (Gounod); Roméo et Juliette (Gounod) Gregorian chant, 3–​4 Grisar, Albert L ’Eau merveilleuse, 144 Le Carillonneur de Bruges, 84, 153 Grossman, Jonathan H., 13, 224 Guadagni, Gaetano, 20n.12 “Gualtier Maldé . . . Caro nome” (Rigoletto). See “Caro nome” Gubar, Susan, 96–​97 Guillaume Tell (Rossini), 30–​31, 34–​35, 224, 226, 244 Jemmy, 226 Mathilde,  34–​35 Guiraud, Ernest, 229   Hadlock, Heather, 6–​7, 254–​55 Hahn, Reynaldo, 182–​83, 207–​8 Halévy, Fromental, 37 on Caroline Carvalho, 144 Clari, 216n.28 La Juive, 144, 224, 225–​26 La Tempesta, 216n.28 Le Nabab, 153 Les Mousquetaires de la reine, 145 Halévy, Ludovic, 220 Halte au moulin (Ugalde), 173–​74 Hamlet (Thomas), 15–​16, 24n.33, 114, 133, 216n.28 “A vos jeux,” 114–​23 coloratura waltz (mad scene), 115f Hamlet (role), 24n.33 mad-​scene ballad, 118f Ophélie, 114–​23, 134, 175, 233, 240–​43, 263, 265–​66,  267–​68 Handel, George Frideric, 31, 263 “Sweet bird” (from L ’Allegro), 151 Harvey, David, 12–​13 Hasse, Johann Adolph, 31 Heilbron, Marie, 217n.35, 243 Hélène (Les Vêpres siciliennes), 60, 81–​89 Hélène’s bolero. See “Merci, jeunes amies” (Les Vêpres siciliennes) Henriette (L ’Ambassadrice),  144–​45 Henson, Karen, 7, 245–​49, 251–​52 Herrmann-​Léon, 178n.14 Higgs, Paget, 109–​10 high notes (acuti) and high extensions. See acuti (high notes); flageolet (whistle voice) Hofer, Josepha Weber, 48 hooking (vocal technique), 40

Hudson, Elizabeth, 68–​69 Huebner, Steven, 182, 226 Hugo, Victor, 11–​12 Le Roi s’amuse, 60 hysteria, 125–​30, 131–​33, 260n.56   I masnadieri (Verdi), 216n.28 I Puritani (Bellini), 43 Elvira, 80 “Il a perdu ma trace” (Philémon et Baucis), 192–​93,  207f coloratura cascades, 207f Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini), 34–​35 Almaviva,  42–​43 Rosina, 144–​45, 158 Il crociato in Egitto (Meyerbeer), 30 Il trovatore (Verdi), 59–​60 Il viaggio a Reims (Rossini), 34–​35 Illica, Luigi, 98 improvisation, 6, 20n.10, 264, 267 in medieval polyphony, 3–​4 See also ornamentation insertion arias. See aria insertions  Iradier, Sebastián, 83–​84 Isaac, Adèle, 223, 229, 234f, 254, 266–​67 as Olympia, 233–​35 Isabelle (Robert le diable), 35–​37, 225–​26, 233, 263 “En vain j’espère,” 263 “Idole de ma vie,” 46f   Jaroussky, Philippe, 19n.3 “Je veux interroger” (La Colombe),  192–​93 coloratura cascades, 207f “Je veux vivre” (Roméo et Juliette), 3, 14, 184–​85, 197–​203 coda,  201–​2 coda and coloratura cascades, 202f fanfare opening, 198f, 198 text and translation, 197–98 Jean de Nivelle (Delibes), 235, 258n.35 Jeanne la folle (Clapisson), 99–​100 Jemmy (Guillaume Tell), 226 Jérusalem (Verdi), 60 Jewel Song (Faust), 182–​83, 186–​88, 189, 192–​93 opening of, 188f Jommelli, Niccoló, 32–​33 Joncière, Victorin, 216n.28 Sardanapale, 175 Juliette (Roméo et Juilette), 16, 141, 233 Carvalho as, 197–​203   Kawabata, Maiko, 164–​65 Konstanze (Die Entführung aus dem Serail),  174–​75

294 Index Korsoff, Lucette, 1–​2 Kracauer, Siegfried, 222 Kufferath, Antonia, 58n.54   L ’Allegro (Handel), 151 L ’Ambassadrice (Auber), 173–​74 Henriette,  144–​45 L ’Art du chant (Duprez), 40–​42 L ’Eau merveilleuse (Grisar), 144 L ’Éducation sentimentale (Flaubert), 221–​22 L ’elisir d’amore (Donizetti), 144–​45 L ’Enlèvement au Sérail (Mozart). See Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Mozart) L ’Étoile du nord (Meyerbeer), 15, 100–​1, 173–​74 Catherine, 101–​8, 134, 172–​73 “C’est bien l’air,” 102–​3 duetting flutes and soprano, 106f flute-​soprano duet, 104f L ’Ombre (Flotow), 243 La bohème (Puccini), 209 La Cenerentola (Rossini), 34–​35, 43 La Chanteuse voilée (Massé), Palormita/​ Lazarilla, 144 La Colombe (Gounod), 16, 186 “Je veux interroger,” 192–​93, 207f Sylvie, 141, 194, 262 La Dame aux camélias (Dumas), 59, 76 La Fanchonnette (Clapisson), 84, 155–​56, 172, 179n.24 bolero aria, 156f La Fée Carabosse (Massé), 186 La Fille du régiment (Donizetti), 261–​62 La Flûte enchantée (Mozart). See Die Zauberflöte (Mozart) La Juive (Halévy), 144, 224, 225–​26 La Muette de Portici (Auber), 224, 226 Elvire,  35–​37 La Nonne sanglante (Gounod), 186 La Reine Topaze (Massé), 16, 24n.33, 141–​43, 156–​57, 168, 172, 209, 233 See also “Carnaval de Venise” aria (from La Reine Topaze) La Sirène (Auber), 145 La sonnambula (Bellini) “Ah! non giunge,” 51 Amina, 43 La Tempesta (Halévy), 216n.28 La traviata (Verdi), 15, 59–​60, 172 Alfredo,  76–​77 Violetta, 1, 59, 60, 71–​81, 91n.13, 92n.23, 175, 189, 264 See also Violetta’s double aria La Vie parisienne (Offenbach), 220 Lacombe, Hervé, 7, 51, 84

Lagrange, Anna-​Caroline de, 51, 58n.54 Lakmé (Delibes), 17, 49–​50, 154–​55, 209, 222–​23, 233–​37, 236f, 238–​43, 244, 264 See also Bell Song (Lakmé) Lamperti, Francesco, 51, 58n.54 Lange, Aloysia Weber, 48 Langlé, Honoré, 32–​33 Lapdog School, 50, 182–​83, 224, 265–​66 laryngoscope, 44 Laughing Song (Manon Lescaut), 167, 244 Lavoye, Louise, 145 Le Bijou perdu (Adam), 167 Le Caïd (Thomas), 173–​74 Virginie, 144, 145 Le Carillonneur de Bruges (Reber), 84, 153 Le Carnaval de Venise (Thomas), 168 Le Comte Ory (Rossini), 34–​35 Le Diable boiteux (ballet-​pantomime),  82–​83 Le Nabab (Halévy), 153 Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart), 172, 173–​74,  175–​77 Cherubino, 34–​35, 141, 173–​74, 226, 235–​37 Le Pardon de Ploërmel (Meyerbeer), 15, 100,  109–​14 Dinorah, 51, 84, 100, 109–​14, 133, 134, 168 “Ombre légère,” 109–​14 See also Shadow Song (“Ombre légère”) Le Postillon de Longjumeau (Adam), 203–​4 Le Premier Jour de bonheur (Auber), 243 Le Prophète (Meyerbeer), 43, 109, 216n.28 Le Rossignol (Lebrun) Philis,  35–​37 “Toi qui nous plait,” 35–​37 Le Siège de Corinthe (Rossini), Pamyre, 34–​35 Le Songe d’une nuit d’eté (Thomas), Elizabeth I, 145 Le Toréador (Adam), 158 Coraline, 145, 173–​74 Lebrun, Louis-​Sébastien,  35–​37 Lefebre, Frenanda, 82–​83 Lenepveu, Charles-​Ferdinand, 216n.28 Leoncavallo, Ruggero, 60–​61 Leonora, Il trovatore (Verdi), 59–​60 Les Bleuets (Cohen), 175, 216n.28 Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Offenbach), 17, 154–​55, 222–​23, 229–​35,  251–​52 Olympia, 209, 229–​35, 234f, 262 See also Doll Song (Les Contes d’Hoffmann) Les Huguenots (Meyerbeer), 17, 24n.33, 167, 222–​23, 224, 226 Marguerite de Valois, 225–​27, 233, 264 Urbain, 49–​50,  227–​28 Valentine,  225–​26 See also “O beau pays” (Les Huguenots)

Index  295 Les Mousquetaires de la reine (Halévy), 145 Les Mystères d’Udolphe (Clapisson), 153 Les Noces de Figaro (Mozart). See Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart) Les Noces de Jeannette (Massé), 24n.33, 103, 145–​46, 153, 233 See also Rossignol aria (Les Noces de Jeannette) Les Papillotes de M. Benoist (Reber), 167 Suzanne, 153 Les Pêcheurs de perles (Bizet), 154–​55, 237, 244 Les Troyens (Berlioz), 154–​55, 216n.28 Les Vêpres siciliennes (Verdi), 15, 59–​60, 81–​89 “Ami, le coeur d’Hélène,” 88 Hélène, 60, 81–​89 “Merci, jeunes amies,” 60, 81–​89 Letellier, Robert, 100–​1 Liebling, Estelle, 33t, 245–​47, 269n.10 Lina (Stiffelio), 69 Lind, Jenny, 44, 216n.28 Liszt, Franz, 16, 28, 43, 141, 165, 184, 209 livret de mise en scène (staging manual), 84, 113, 138n.33 Lloyd Webber, Andrew, 265 Phantom of the Opera,  265–​66 “Lo vidi, e il primo palpito” (Luisa Miller),  59–​60 Lorenzo, Elizabeth, 250–​51 Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti), 97, 103, 144–​45,  167 Luisa Miller (Verdi), 59–​60 Lulu (Berg), 98   mad scenes and bel canto style, 97–​98, 135n.7 and coloratura, 95–​96, 97 and feminine virtuosity, 133–​34 in French opera, 15–​16, 18, 95, 96, 98, 99–​100,  134 in Hamlet (Ophélie), 15–​16, 96, 114–​23, 125, 127–​28,  133 history of, 95, 96–​98 in L ’Étoile du nord (Catherine), 15–​16, 96, 100–​8, 131–​32, 151,  172–​73 in La traviata (Violetta), 71–​72, 74–​81, 88–​89 in Le Pardon de Ploërmel (Dinorah), 15–​16, 96, 100, 109–​14, 125, 128–​29, 131–​32, 168 in Lucia di Lammermoor (Lucia), 97, 132–​33,  135n.7 preparation for, 131, 136n.15 See also madness Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 127–​28, 203–​4, 221 madness association with love and joy, 9–​10, 80, 252–​54 Augustine (patient at Salpêtrière), 129–​30

diagnosis of, 127–​28 idealized,  131–​35 of Marie Cabel, 125 melismatic, 266 in opera, 96–​98 stylized, 15–​16, 28, 95–​96, 125, 126, 127, 129, 268 theatrical performances of, 126 in women, 125 See also hysteria; mad scenes; Salpêtrière madrigals, 4 Maffei, Giovanni Camillo, 4–​5, 21n.15 Magic Flute, The (Mozart). See Die Zauberflöte (Mozart) Maid of Artois, The (Balfe), 216n.28 Malibran, Maria (Garcia), 35–​37, 43, 44 roles created by, 216n.28 Mancini, Giovanni Battista, 5–​6 Manning, Céline Frigau, 14–​15, 52n.4 Manon (Massenet), 17, 154–​55, 222–​23, 243, 244–​49,  263 Bréjean-​Silver as Manon, 245f Carvalho as dedicatee, 243 Fabliau, 244, 246f, 247f, 259n.45 Gavotte (“Obéissons quand leur voix appellee”), 243–​44, 244f Heilbron as Manon, 243 “Je marche sur tous les chemins,” 249f “Je suis encor,” 249f Sanderson as Manon, 245–​49 Manon Lescaut (Auber), 167, 244 Marchesi, Mathilde, 44, 103, 245–​47 students of, 33t Margarethe (Gounod). See Faust (Gounod) Margot (Clapisson), 165, 166f Marguerite (Faust), 16, 141, 173–​75, 182, 186–​91, 208, 233 Carvalho as Marguerite, 174–​75, 186–​91, 187f, 190f, 208, 240–​43 See also “Ah! Valse légère” (Gounod) Marguerite de Valois (Les Huguenots), 225–​27, 233, 264 See also “O beau pays” (Les Huguenots) Maria Stuarda (Donizetti), 43, 216n.28 Marie-​Magdaleine (Massenet), 216n.28 Marriage of Figaro, The (Mozart). See Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart) “Martern aller Arten” (Die Entführung aus dem Serail),  174–​75 Martha (von Flotow), 26n.54 Mascagni, Pietro, 60–​61 Massé, Victor, 8–​9, 24n.33 collaboration with Carvalho, 156–​57 Galathée, 145–​46,  173–​74

296 Index Massé, Victor (cont.) La Chanteuse voilée, 144 La Fée Carabosse, 186 La Reine Topaze, 16, 24n.33, 141–​43, 156–​57, 168, 172, 209, 233 Les Noces de Jeannette, 24n.33, 103, 145–​46, 147–​53, 167, 233 Massenet, Jules, 6, 209, 247–​49 Cendrillon, 244 coloratura soprano roles, 255 Esclarmonde, 243, 250–​51, 250f, 251f, 260n.53 Manon, 17, 154–​55, 222–​23, 243, 244–​49, 244f–​49f, 263 Marie-​Magdaleine, 216n.28 Thaïs, 243, 247–​49, 248f, 251–​54, 253f Masset, N.-​J.-​J.,  55n.20 Masson, Elisa, 99–​100, 127–​28 Mathilde (Guillaume Tell),  34–​35 McClary, Susan, 97, 254–​55 McKee, Eric, 204 Meilhac, Henri, 220 Melba, Nellie, 103, 245–​47, 267 melismatic singing, 18, 20n.7, 20n.8, 40, 47–​48, 51, 204–​5, 222–​23, 230–​32, 261–​62, 263, 264 in all vocal ranges, 29–​30 in Baroque opera, 4 in Italian opera, 59 in the Middle Ages, 3–​4 in Renaissance madrigals, 4 text treatment, 3–​4, 6, 14 “throat-​articulated,”  4–​5 Wagner’s objection to, 89 See also coloratura Mendelssohn, Felix, Die Lorelei, 216n.28 Mendés de Léon, Berthe, 260n.55 Mengozzi, Bernardo, 32–​33 Mercadante, Saverio, 61 “Merci, jeunes amies” (Les Vêpres siciliennes), 60,  81–​89 coloratura coda, 87f Introduction, 85f opening vocal section, 86f text and translation, 81 Méric-​Lalande, Henriette,  42–​43 Mersenne, Marin, 5 Mésangère (Le Carillonneur de Bruges), 153 Mesplé, Mady, 1–​2, 230–​32 Méthode de chant (Cinti-​Damoreau), 37 exercises, 37–​39, 38f, 39f Metropolitan Opera, 175–​77 “At-​Home Gala,” 261–​62, 263

Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 8–​9, 13–​14, 15, 17, 24n.33, 37, 224 coloratura heroines, 255 Dinorah, 84, 100 Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, 103, 216n.28 Il crociato in Egitto, 30 Le Pardon de Ploërmel, 15–​16, 51, 96, 100, 109–​14, 168, 230–​32,  235–​37 Le Prophète, 43, 109, 216n.28 Les Huguenots, 17, 24n.33, 49–​50, 167, 222–​23, 224, 225–​27, 230, 233, 264 L ’Étoile du nord, 15–​16, 96, 100–​1, 172–​74 Robert le diable, 24n.33, 35–​37, 46f, 100, 224, 225–​26, 233, 257n.24, 263 soprano role pairings, 225–​29 mezzo-​soprano, 1–​2, 43, 172–​73, 224–​25, 226, 258n.35 Micheau, Janine, 1–​2 Mignon (Thomas), 24n.33, 114, 169f, 235–​37,  240–​43 “Je suis Titania,” 265 Philine, 168, 265 Milan conservatory, 32, 60–​61 Miller, Richard, 48–​50, 239–​40 Miolan-​Carvalho, Marie-​Caroline. See Carvalho, Caroline Mireille (Gounod), 141, 186, 191 Carvalho as Mireille, 194–​96 Mireille (role), 16, 194–​96 See also “O légère hirondelle” (Mireille) Mirèio (Mistral), 195–​96 Missa Solemnis (Beethoven), 216n.28 Miss Havisham’s Fire (Argento), 98 Mistral, Frédéric, 195–​96 Mme Herz (Der Schauspieldirektor), 48 modernity, 3, 12–​13, 26n.49, 95, 109–​10,  210–​11 and coloratura, 266–​67 and dance, 205 in Second Empire Paris, 220–​22 and speed, 221–​22 Moïse (Rossini), 34–​35 Montalant, Laure-​Cinthie. See Cinti-​Damoreau,  Laure Mordey, Delphine, 221 Morlacchi, Francesco, 30 Morley, Erin, 230–​32, 239–​40, 261–​62, 264, 266,  267–​68 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 31, 154–​55, 172, 263 Die Entführung aus dem Serail, 172, 174–​75 Die Zauberflöte, 48, 172, 175–​77, 189, 262 “Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln” (Die Entführung aus dem Serail),  174–​75

Index  297 Don Giovanni, 34–​35, 42–​43, 172, 175–​77, 189 Le nozze di Figaro, 34–​35, 172, 173–​74, 226,  235–​37 “Martern aller Arten” (Die Entführung aus dem Serail),  174–​75 “Popoli di Tessaglia . . . Io non chiedo, eterni di,” 48 “Voi che sapete” (Le nozze di Figaro),  173–​74 “Vorrei spiegarvi, o Dio,” 48 Murphy, Kerry, 83 Myrrha (Sardanapale), 175   Naples conservatory, 32, 60–​61 Napoléon, 29–​30,  31–​32 Napoléon III, 12, 83–​84, 100–​1, 209, 210, 220–​21 Nilsson, Christine, 24n.33, 55n.20, 79–​80, 115–​23, 172, 254, 265–​67 as Donna Elvira, 175–​77 as Ophélie, 123, 133, 240–​43 as Queen of the Night, 175, 176f roles created by, 216n.28 as Violetta, 189 Nina (Coppola), 47f Ninth Symphony (Beethoven), 216n.28 Norton, Graham, 265–​66 Note Eiffel, 250–​51 Nourrit, Adolphe, 30–​31, 40, 42–​43 Nuitter, Charles, 175   “O beau pays” (Les Huguenots), 226–​28, 230 coloratura passages, 227f, 228f O’Connell, Joseph, 13 “O légère hirondelle” (Mireille), 16, 184–​85, 194–​96, 214n.19 coloratura cascades, 206f fanfare opening, 198, 199f text and translation, 193 Offenbach, Jacques, 220–​21, 222–​23 coloratura soprano roles, 255 La Vie parisienne, 220 Les Contes d’Hoffmann, 3, 17, 154–​55, 209, 222–​24, 229–​35, 234f, 251–​52, 262, 265 theatrical and musical agenda, 255–​56n.2 Olympia (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), 209, 229–​35, 234f, 251–​52, 262, 265 malfunctioning coloratura, 233f See also Doll Song (Les Contes d’Hoffmann) “Ombre légère” (Le Pardon de Ploërmel). See Shadow Song (“Ombre légère”) Opéra (Paris), 35–​37, 51, 141, 144, 220, 229,  265–​66 operatic repertoire, 168–​72 Verdi’s commissions for, 60

Opéra-​Comique, 11, 51, 84, 100–​1, 109–​10, 141, 144, 145, 153, 154–​55, 167, 220, 224–​25, 229, 244 L. Carvalho as director, 223 operatic repertoire, 168–​72 rivalry with Théâtre-​Lyrique, 168 roster, 146f Ophelia (Shakespeare), 97, 98, 114, 127 Ophélie (Hamlet), 24n.33, 114–​23, 134, 175, 233, 240–​43, 263, 265–​66, 267–​68 coda from mad scene, 119f Nilsson’s performance of, 123, 124f See also “A vos jeux” (Hamlet) Orfée (Gluck/​Berlioz), 43, 172, 216n.28 organum purum,  3–​4 ornamentation, 3, 6, 20n.10, 35–​37, 44, 48, 62–​66, 79–​80, 230–​32, 261–​62. See also improvisation; trills Oropesa, Lisette, 91n.13, 263–​65, 266, 267–​68 Oscar (Un ballo in maschera), 226 Otello (Rossini), 42–​43 “Deh calma o ciel,” 46f Desdemona, 43 “Ou va la jeune Indoue.” See Bell Song (Lakmé)   Pacini, Giovanni, 61 Paganini, Niccoló, 16, 28, 141, 160f, 160, 162, 164–​66, 179–​80n.30, 184, 209 page pants parts, 50, 59–​60, 226 Palormita/​Lazarilla (La Chanteuse voilée), 144 Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), 141, 175–​77, 189, 262 Pamyre (Le Siège de Corinthe),  34–​35 Papagena (Die Zauberflöte), 175 Parakilas, James, 83 Paris Conservatoire, 14–​15, 29, 32, 141, 143 Parker, Roger, 7, 69 Parma conservatory, 32 Pascal, Prosper, 174–​75 Pasta, Giuditta, 46–​47 pathetic style, 29–​30 Patti, Adelina, 55n.20, 235, 267 roles created by, 216n.28 Patti, Carlotta, 55n.20 pedagogical treatises, 4–​6, 29, 48–​49, 51 by Cinti-​Damoreau, 37, 42–​43 by G.-​L. Duprez, 40–​43 by Franceso Lamperti, 51 by Julius Stockhausen, 51 by Manuel Garcia II, 42–​48 Pellegrin, Pierre, 154–​55, 167 Perrin, Émile, 154, 167, 181n.40, 189 Petibon, Patricia, 1–​2 Petrella, Errico, 61

298 Index Phantom of the Opera, The (Lloyd Webber) Christine,  265–​66 “Think of Me,” 265–​66 Philémon et Baucis (Gounod), 16, 186 Baucis, 16, 141, 194 “Il a perdu ma trace,” 192–​93, 207f Philine (Mignon), 168, 169f, 265 Philis (Le Rossignol),  35–​37 Phyrnë (Saint-​Saëns),  247–​49 Piave, Francesco Maria, 60 Pinel, Philippe, 99 Pius VI (pope), 30 Pizzi, Emilio, 216n.28 Pollonnais, André, 216n.28 polonaise, 41–​42, 83 Ponchielli, Amilcare, 60–​61 Poniatowski, Józef Michal, 216n.28 Pons, Lily, 1–​2, 267 “Popoli di Tessaglia . . . Io non chiedo, eterni di” (Mozart), 48 Poriss, Hilary, 7, 10 Porpora, Nicola, 32–​33 Porter, Andrew, 88 Potter, John, 6–​7 Pratt, Jessica, 264, 266, 267–​68 première chanteuse, 11, 144, 145, 154–​56, 167 prima donnas, 10 Puccini, Giacomo, 6, 60–​61 La bohème, 209 Tosca, 98 Pugliese, Romana, 103 Purcell, Henry, 96–​97 pyrotechnics, 1   “Quando m’en vo” ‘(La bohème), 209 Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte), 48, 175–​77, 189,  267–​68 Damrau as, 267–​68 Nilsson as, 176f   Rachel (La Juive), 224 Reber, Henri Le Carillonneur de Bruges, 84 Les Papillotes de M. Benoist, 153, 167 Régnard, Paul, 130f, 131f, 132f Reyer, Ernest, 123, 133 Richer, Paul, 127f Rigoletto (Verdi), 15, 59–​60 “Addio,” 32, 62 Gilda, 59–​60, 61–​69, 63f, 90n.12, 264 See also “Caro nome” (Rigoletto) Robert le diable (Meyerbeer), 24n.33, 100, 224, 225–​26, 257n.24 Alice,  225–​26

“En vain j’espère,” 263 “Idole de ma vie,” 46f Isabelle, 35–​37, 46f, 225–​26, 233, 263 Robin, Mado, 1–​2, 267 Roméo et Juliette (Gounod), 16, 186, 191, 226 Juliette, 16, 141, 197–​203, 233 Stéphano, 49–​50,  224–​25 See also “Je veux vivre” (Roméo et Juliette) Roqueplan, Nestor, 195–​96 Rosand, Ellen, 97 Rosina (Il barbiere de Siviglia), 34–​35, 144–​45,  158 Rosselli, John, 30–​31, 51, 74–​76 Rossignol aria (Les Noces de Jeannette), 147–​53,  167 A section, 149–​50 coloratura coda, 151, 153f flute-​soprano contest, 152f flute-​soprano imitations, 149f opening, 147–​49, 148f opening of B section, 149–​50, 150f text and translation, 146–​47 Rossini, Gioachino, 6, 13–​14, 37 Aureliano in Palmira, 30 Guillaume Tell, 30–​31, 34–​35, 224, 226, 244 Il barbiere di Siviglia, 34–​35, 42–​43, 144–​45,  158 Il viaggio a Reims,  34–​35 influence on opera, 30–​31 La Cenerentola, 34–​35, 43 Le Comte Ory,  34–​35 Le Siège de Corinthe,  34–​35 Moïse,  34–​35 Otello, 42–​43, 46f Semiramide, 43 Tancredi,  34–​35 roulades, 5, 45–​46, 147–​48, 165, 191, 201, 205, 226, 259n.43 See also melismatic singing; coloratura; fioritura Rowden, Clair, 251–​52 Roze, Marie, 243 Rubini, Giovanni Battista, 30–​31 Rutherford, Susan, 7, 10, 141   Saint-​Saëns, Camille, 6, 43, 173–​74, 182–​83 Phyrnë,  247–​49 Samson et Dalila, 216n.28 Salome (Strauss), 98 Salpétrière, 99, 125–​30 Salvini-​Donatelli, Fanny, 70–​81, 92n.23 Samson, Jim, 28 Samson et Dalila (Saint-​Saëns), 216n.28 Sand, George, 11–​12

Index  299 Sanderson, Sibyl, 245–​54, 260n.53 as Esclarmonde, 250–​51 as L ’Apparition de Thaïs, 253f as Manon, 245–​49 as Phyrnë, 247–​49 as Thaïs, 248f Sanford, Sally, 4–​5 Santley, Charles, 44 Sapho (Gounod), 186, 216n.28 Sardanapale (Joncière), 175, 216n.28 Schäfer, Christine, 172–​73 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 109–​10 Scholl, Andreas, 19n.3 Schumann, Robert, 43 Scott, Joan W., 10 Scribe, Eugène, 60, 88 Semet, Théophile, 173f semiotics, 216–​17n.33 Semiramide (Rossini), 43 “Sempre libera” (La traviata). See Violetta’s double aria Senici, Emanuele, 59–​60 sequentiae,  3–​4 Serral, Dolores, 82–​83 sexuality, 6–​7, 8–​9, 16–​17, 68–​69, 91n.18, 125, 201–​2, 208–​9, 212n.6, 254–​55, 260n.53 Shadow Song (“Ombre légère”), 109–​14, 110f, 230–​32,  235–​37 text and translation, 111 vocal echoes, 112f Showalter, Elaine, 96–​97 Shreffler, Anne, 9 sicilienne/​siciliana, 82 Siebel (Faust),  224–​25 Sills, Beverly, 245–​47 singing styles as melodic types, 44–​48. See also bel canto Singspiel, 103 Sisman, Elaine, 162–​64 Smart, Mary Ann, 7, 17, 88, 97, 98, 133, 222–​23, 224, 226, 228–​29 Smithson, Harriet, 127 solite forme, 8 Sontag, Henriette, 35–​37, 55n.20, 144–​45 roles created by, 216n.28 soprano bell register, 239–​40 chanteuse légère, 35–​37, 39–​40, 48–​50, 85, 144–​45,  224–​25 falcon,  224–​25 flageolet (whistle) voice, 239–​40, 252–​54 pants roles, 24n.35, 49–​50, 226 première chanteuse, 11, 144, 145, 154–​56,  167

role pairings, 225–​29, 257n.24 soprano à roulades, 31, 35–​37, 223–​25 soubrette, 224–​25, 229, 254–​55 See also coloratura Spiess, Hermine, 58n.54 staging manual. See livret de mise en scène Stéphano (Roméo et Juliette), 49–​50, 224–​25,  226 Stiffelio (Verdi), Lina, 69 Stockhausen, Julius, 44, 51, 58n.54 Stolz, Teresa, 58n.54 Strauss, Richard Ariadne auf Naxos, 9 Elektra, 98 Salome, 98 Strepponi, Giuseppina, 32 Susanna (Le nozze de Figaro),  175–​77 Sutherland, Joan, 260n.54 Suzanne (Les Papillotes de M Benoist), 153 “Sweet bird” (from L ’Allegro), 151 Sylvia (Le Carnaval de Venise), 168 Sylvie (La Colombe), 16, 141, 194, 262   Tacchinardi-​Persiani, Fanny, 46–​47,  144–​45 Talazac, Jean-​Alexandre, 223 Talisman, The (Balfe), 243 Tancredi (Rossini), 34–​35 Tebaldo e Isolina (Morlacchi), 30 technology arclight, 109–​10,  131–​32 coloratura as, 16–​17, 230–​32, 233–​35, 250–​51,  266–​67 diorama, 101, 220 gas light, 100, 109–​10, 137n.25, 137n.26, 210, 220 illumination/​lighting,  108–​9 limelight, 137n.25 in mad scenes, 95–​96, 98, 131–​32,  134–​35 spotlight, 95, 109, 123, 131, 220 tenor and coloratura, 19n.3 comic, 258n.35 dramatic,  14–​15 Gustave Roger type, 258n.35 laruette, 258n.35 lyric,  254–​55 in the nineteenth century, 6–​7, 29–​30, 54n.14, 225 as romantic hero, 224 tenore di forza, 54n.14, 225 tone quality of, 30–​31, 40, 141, 165–​66 use of falsetto by, 49, 53–​54n.13 Tetrazzini, Luisa, 267

300 Index Thaïs (Massenet), 243, 247–​49, 248f, 251–​54, 260n.56 Le Charmeuse, 260n.55 Méditation,  251–​52 outbursts of laughter, 252f strident laughter (Sanderson), 253f Théâtre des Bouffes-​Parisiens, 173–​74, 255–​56n.2 Théâtre des Variétés, 82–​83 Théâtre du Palais-​Royal, 82–​83 Théâtre-​Italien, 34–​35, 51, 229 Théâtre-​Lyrique, 51, 141, 154, 155, 167, 182, 183–​84, 186, 220, 224–​25, 229 C. Carvalho as “directrice,” 154–​55 L. Carvalho as director, 154–​55, 174, 175, 182, 183–​84, 194, 210 Delibes at, 235 gas lighting system, 210 operatic repertoire, 168–​72 rivalry with Opéra-​Comique, 168 Thomas, Ambroise, 8–​9, 37, 114 Hamlet, 15–​16, 24n.33, 96, 114, 133, 175, 216n.28, 233, 240–​43, 263, 265–​66 Le Caïd, 144, 145, 173–​74 Le Carnaval de Venise, 168 Le Songe d’une nuit d’eté, 145 Mignon, 24n.33, 114, 168, 169f, 235–​37, 240–​43,  265 Thompson, Victoria, 210 timbre sombre, 40 tirata, 79–​80, 85 Toinon (Le Bijou perdu), 167 “Toi qui nous plait” (Le Rossignol),  35–​37 Tombs, Robert, 12 Tomlinson, Gary, 7–​8 Tosca (Puccini), 98 Tosi, Pier Francesco, 5–​6 Traité complet de l ’art du chant (Garcia II),  43–​48 trills, 5–​6, 158–​59, 227–​28, 265 trunk arias. See aria insertions Turin conservatory, 32 turning (vocal technique), 40   Ugalde, Delphine (née Beaucé), 39–​40, 145–​46, 158, 172–​75, 254, 266–​67 as Blonde (Die Entführung aus dem Serail),  174–​75 at the Bouffes-​Parisiens, 173–​74 as composer, 173–​74 as Gil Blas, 173f Halte au moulin,  173–​74 as Marguerite (Faust), 186, 213n.9 as Papagena, 175

roles created by, 170t at the Théâtre-​Lyrique, 172–​74 Un ballo in maschera (Verdi), 59–​60, 226 Urbain (Les Huguenots), 49–​50, 226   Vaccai, Nicola, 216n.28 Valentine (Les Huguenots),  225–​26 valse-​ariettes, 16–​17, 183–​84, 185t, 186, 191–​93, 205, 209, 223–​24 related to sexuality and femininity, 201–​2 See also “Ah! Valse légère” (Gounod); “Je veux vivre” (Roméo et Juliette); “O légère hirondelle” (Mireille) van Rooy, Anton, 58n.54 van Zandt, Marie, 235–​37, 254, 259n.41 as créatrice,  240–​43 as Lakmé, 236f,  240–​43 Velléda (Lenepveu), 216n.28 Velluti, Giovanni Battista, 30 Venice conservatory, 32 Verdi, Giuseppe, 1–​2, 3, 8–​9, 15, 18, 23–​24n.32, 59, 61, 172 Aïda, 237 Attila,  59–​60 Don Carlos, 89n.3 Falstaff,  59–​60 Il trovatore,  59–​60 I masnadieri, 216n.28 Jérusalem, 60 late operas, 6 Les Vêpres siciliennes, 15, 59–​60, 81–​89 Luisa Miller,  59–​60 Rigoletto, 14, 15, 59–​60, 62–​69, 264 Stiffelio, 69 Un ballo in maschera, 59–​60, 226 See also La traviata (Verdi) verismo, 61 Viardot, Louis, 212n.7 Viardot, Pauline (Garcia), 11, 43, 44, 172, 212n.7 roles created by, 216n.28 vibrato, 37–​38,  49–​50 Violetta (La traviata), 1, 14, 59, 60, 71–​81, 91n.13, 92n.23, 172, 175, 189, 264. See also Violetta’s double aria Violetta (Verdi). See La traviata (Verdi) Violetta’s double aria (“É strano! . . . Ah, fors’è lui . . . Follie! . . . Sempre libera”), 60, 71–​81, 72f, 73f cabaletta (“Sempre libera),” 3, 14, 59, 76–​81, 77f, 79f cantabile/​andantino (“Ah, fors’è lui”), 72–​74,  73f recitative (“É strano!”), 71–​72, 72f

Index  301 tempo di mezzo (“Follie!”), 73–​74, 75f, 76–​77,  80 text and translation, 70–​71 transition to “A quell’amor,” 73f Virginie (Le Caïd), 144, 145 Virilio, Paul, 221–​22 virtuosity, 3, 18–​19, 50, 52, 162–​64, 223–​24, 237, 254–​55, 266 vocal pedagogy, 14–​15, 29 in the 19th century, 31–​33 See also pedagogical treatises vocal styles, gendered, 165–​66 vocalises, 37, 52n.4, 201, 226, 237 vocalizations, 62, 250–​51 voce di campanello. See bell register “Voi che sapete” (Le nozze di Figaro),  173–​74 voice-​type coloratura as, 1–​2, 168–​72, 221, 223–​24, 233–​35, 240–​43,  254 current discussion about, 264 used to define singers, 17–​18 heavy vs. light, 41 in mid-​century Paris, 141–​43, 225 modern,  168–​72 new conceptions of, 266–​67 associated with singers, 224 voix blanche, 40 voix mixte, 40 voix sombrée, 40 von Flotow, Friedrich, 26n.54 “Vorrei spiegarvi, o Dio” (Mozart), 48 vowel articulation, 5–​6, 44, 160   Wagner, Johanna, 44 Wagner, Richard, 3, 18, 43, 89 Waldmann, Maria, 58n.54 Walsh, T.J., 154–​55, 168–​72 waltz ariettes. See valse-​ariettes waltz genre, 183, 203–​7, 218n.39, 218n.48, 267 Wartel, Pierre François, 55n.20 Weber, Carl Maria von, 154–​55 Der Freischütz, 172 Euryanthe, 216n.28

Weiner, Marc, 89 whistle voice (flageolet), 48–​50, 239–​40,  252–​54 White, Kimberly, 11, 173–​74 Willier, Stephen, 98 women agency of, 18–​19 authorship of, 18–​19 bodies of, 3, 8–​9, 18, 21n.15, 28, 56n.41, 83, 95–​96, 113–​14, 131–​32, 182, 197, 201–​2, 206–​7, 208–​9, 210–​11, 228–​29, 233–​35, 250–​51, 262,  266–​67 empowerment of, 3, 9–​10, 15–​16, 18–​19, 88, 95–​96, 128–​29, 133–​35, 205, 263–​64, 267 femininity of, 133–​34, 135n.6, 166–​67, 201–​2, 204–​5, 208–​9, 210–​11, 220–​21, 222, 223–​24, 229, 268 and feminism, 11–​12 increased demand for as singers, 31–​32 and madness, 9–​10, 15–​16, 80, 95, 96–​97, 98, 129, 131–​35, 251–​52,  266–​67 in nineteenth-​century opera, 10–​12 and opera, 212n.6 playing men, 24n.35 in Second Empire Paris, 183 sexuality of, 6–​7, 8–​9, 16–​17, 68–​69, 91n.18, 125, 201–​2, 208–​9, 212n.6, 254–​55, 260n.53 singing coloratura, 1–​2, 3, 8–​11, 15, 18–​19, 28, 30, 31–​32, 51, 54n.14, 68–​69, 83, 99–​100, 133–​34, 141–​43, 155, 164–​67, 172–​73, 202–​3, 205, 206–​7, 208–​9, 210–​11, 212n.6, 220–​21, 223–​24, 233–​35, 261, 263–​64,  265–​67 as workers, 11–​12, 25n.46 See also gender; hysteria Wozzeck (Berg), 98 Wright, Lesley, 214–​15n.20   Yaraman, Sevin, 203–​4   Zacconi, Lodovico, 5 Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos), 9 Zerlina (Don Giovanni), 34–​35, 141, 175–​77, 189