The Crisis of the Opera? A Study of Musical Hermeneutics : A Study of Musical Hermeneutics [1 ed.] 9781443854337, 9781443851329

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The Crisis of the Opera? A Study of Musical Hermeneutics

The Crisis of the Opera? A Study of Musical Hermeneutics

By

Ion Piso Translated by Ligia Tomoiagӽ

The Crisis of the Opera? A Study of Musical Hermeneutics, by Ion Piso This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by Ion Piso All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5132-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5132-9

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ...................................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................. x PART ONE: HAS THE OPERA PERFORMANCE BECOME AN OBSOLETE GENRE? Chapter I ...................................................................................................... 2 The Opera Singer Chapter II ................................................................................................... 33 The Composer has a Representative on Earth – The Conductor Chapter III ................................................................................................. 46 The Director, or what is left from what the Great Opera Composers Imagined with their Compositions Chapter IV ................................................................................................. 68 The Spectator PART TWO: TAKING THE READER ON A PROMENADE IN THE OPERA HALLS Chapter V .................................................................................................. 83 The Character and the Specific Difference of the Language of the Opera Chapter VI ................................................................................................. 98 Speaking and Singing Chapter VII .............................................................................................. 107 The Atmosphere Chapter VIII ............................................................................................ 115 Experience and… Experiment

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Contents

Chapter IX ............................................................................................... 123 Interpretation: A Domain of the Subjective Chapter X ................................................................................................ 136 The Dilettante – Between Blind Routine and Deaf Avant-garde Chapter XI ............................................................................................... 148 Music, the Opposite of Chaos (While music is opposed to chaos, the avant-garde direction is the opus of chaos) Chapter XII .............................................................................................. 159 Tradition and its Role in the Opera Chapter XIII ............................................................................................ 171 Action and its Caricature – Chaotic Fuss on the Stage Chapter XIV ............................................................................................ 180 The Spectacle as an… Obstacle – Why the “Great Reform” in the Lyrical Theatre has not brought about its Re-birth Chapter XV.............................................................................................. 195 Profession and Career Chapter XVI ............................................................................................ 219 About the New Production of the Opera Il Trovatore, by G. Verdi, on the Stage of the Romanian National Opera (An imaginary talk between two musicians) Chapter XVII ........................................................................................... 227 Œdipe by G. Enescu, or The Composer and… the Others Chapter XVIII .......................................................................................... 239 Attention and Concentration Chapter XIX ............................................................................................ 249 The Opera – Is it a Popular, an Elitist, or a Minor Genre? Works Cited ............................................................................................. 266 Afterword ................................................................................................ 269 A Few Considerations from the Translator of this Study

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The translator of this study would like to thank Laura and David Caines for their help with proofreading this translation, your help was much appreciated. Our deepest gratitude goes to all people at CSP, for their support and understanding, as well as for their professional attitude.

INTRODUCTION

"Have you forgotten the song our whole being longs for? Have you been forsaken by the godliness within you?"1 (Lucian Blaga, The Song of Fire – The Prologue) "When actions are led by ignorance, these turn for the worse."2 (Plato: Euthydemos; 281, d)

The goal of this introduction is to justify to the reader the reasons why I finally considered to pick up the glove thrown by the avant-garde, with the new movement on which they engaged the opera. To be fashionable does not necessarily mean to be "out of sync" with immortal creations, with the masterpieces of the lyrical theatre. In order to determine with clarity and precision the circumstances that led to this so-called modernity – which means that music itself is placed between brackets and is excluded from the performative process – this study undertakes to analyse the normal path, starting from the musical part (as an encoded message of the intentions of the composer, that is the signifier), and getting to the opera performance (as a de-coded message, that is, the signified). In terms of methodology, I used the tools of maieutics, a methodology that I divided into three stages. The first stage attempts to partly identify the creation and the musical intentions of the composers, and when dealing with a masterpiece, to substantiate and determine the very strict and important elements of the composition. This strict classification can be examined to the finest ramifications where each branch is continuously linked with the others, thus forming a harmonically structured, organic whole, subject to the general plan of the work. Blaga calls this "consistency in the formal variation"3 and refers to the interdependence of the elements of a style. Consequently, there is nothing coincidental in a masterpiece, where everything has an intrinsic finality; Kant uses the term 1

Lucian Blaga, Poezii, Bucureúti: Cartea Rom۲nească, 1982, p. 267. Platon, Opere, vol. III, Bucureúti: Editura ùtiinĠifică úi pedagogică, 1978, p. 82. 3 Lucian Blaga, Trilogia Culturii, Bucureúti: Editura pentru Literatură Universală, 1969. 2

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‘Zweckmässigkeit’, and Baumgarten, in order to explain the aesthetic beauty, defines it as ‘a convergence of plurality in unity’, due to which perfection can be achieved, and perceived by the senses. The next stage highlights the principles which form the basis of musical analysis. I wish to supply each opera artist and interpreter – be they singers, directors, conductors, or art-directors with a list of specific values which they cannot, and ought not overlook when, for instance, an artist embodies a specific character, or, when a director is staging an opera. If these rules are respected then the relationship between the subject (the opera, per se), and the predicate (the scenic representation, the interpretation of the opera in its actual performance) makes sense. The composer transposes life onto the stage and makes use of the services provided by interpretation so that the world expressed in music should awaken the sensitivity of the audience, and thus, be understood. The third stage of this study is dedicated to the audience – the final stop of the entire interpretative endeavour. I see the audience as active when participating in a performance. They have a real chance to partake in the thoughts and feelings of the composer. Compared to the performer, the spectator makes the reverse journey, that is, while the performer starts from the musical part – to render the encoded thoughts and feelings of the composer – the spectator starts from the performance he/she is attending, in order to re-trace the path and re-live the thoughts and feelings of the composer. When the spectator, as part of the performance, is not given the chance to understand what the composer wanted to express in his music, the show deflects from its function, and has no sense whatsoever. My analysis does not contain anything extraordinary. On the contrary! It is a general, natural, and normal attempt meant to be understood by anybody, to clarify the role and value of interpretation and, at the same time, to provide the means to identify deviations from the mission of performing music.

* I appreciate the fact that each new generation is trying for new, different means of expression, however, there is a certain degree of "normality" that we still expect them to respect, and, therefore, I cannot understand why nobody has tried to clarify and highlight the propriety or impropriety of what happens on our stages today. We can not allow this modern culture to degrade masterpieces of lyrical music which are naturally destined for the cultural and spiritual heritage of the civilised

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Introduction

world, extending way beyond Europe, where this art form was born and has evolved. As Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel painting has been protected throughout time, so should Mozart's musical creation be protected from the perils provoked by the consequences of lack of knowledge in the domain. Unfortunately, the decoding and understanding of the musical script has become the responsibility of contemporaries who are not up to the task and this has led to the miracle that makes the impossible… possible. Modernity can take pride in an absolute radicalization and overthrow of the musical part, which is the ultimate consequence of the break with the past, professed by those who think that they are "superior to all those before them" (as H. R. Patapievici notices in Omul recent [The Recent Man]), and find their fulfilment in opera staging, where they are joined by absurdity, sordidness, and abjection (as will be demonstrated in the following chapter Performing, a domain of the subjective, with images from 2001 The Masked Ball, in Barcelona, and the 2005 performance of Rigoletto, in Munich). History will decide whether we should also blame the feeble reaction of the public, or even the public's indifference at these violations of the musical part, which promote the current state of cultural life, generally, and the opera, especially. These attacks have unfathomable consequences for our spiritual well-being, as well as that of future generations.

* We live in a world that cannot be conceived without music, or, better said, without that which replaced it. Our ears are under siege, furiously, and ceaselessly, 25 hours in 24! We have adapted to this and we no longer even hear the music, physically, let alone perceive its deeper meaning or understand it intellectually, especially when appreciating what we may call great music. Our minds are no longer able to participate in more than what commercial music has to offer. Consequently, the singer is at liberty not to know what he is singing and not to learn his trade. The artist does not sing as the musical script requires, he/she is unable to perform it, to transpose its abstraction into live music, to express the artistic truth, a truth which is parallel to real life truth, and much superior to it4.

4

H. Delacroix maintains that "music departs and frees itself from common affectivity" (Psychologie de l'art – Essaye sur l'activite artistique, Paris: Alcan, 1927, p. 203).

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The lyrical performance is the most suitable means to get closer to the confession of the composer, what he/she wanted to express. It touches the hearts and minds of the public, promoting openness, and spiritual awakening, thus bringing them face to face with their own selves, their consciences – a meeting that they rarely benefit from. Unfortunately, today, performing has become the expression of false emotions, far removed from the character and the meaning of the true feelings and thoughts that the music contains and suggests. As to the director, the main quality of the modern, avant-garde type of director is that he just does not want to concern himself with the music, and this agrees with his objective. Within this study, the reader will have the chance to convince himself/herself not only that fraud has replaced authenticity, but also that the directors are arrogant and overwhelmingly lack professional virtue. Almost all cases of opera productions range from patterns of mediocrity to the tyranny of the absurd and this horrifies us more than ever before. We live an age of violation that gives legitimacy to all kinds of deviations, institutionalizes lack of knowledge, and forges aberration as a principle to follow. All these are the result of lack of judgement. To be a performer means, firstly, to be able to understand, to penetrate. A commendable director has an insight into the symbolism5 of music, finds its analogous images, perceives its meanings through affinity, empathy, or even a sense of correspondence. The avant-garde director, lacking these qualities, only mimes originality, generates fundamental incompatibilities with the opera he wants to stage, and this de-contextualizes it and disconnects it (through inappropriateness) from the music. The music is mutilated by embarrassing grimaces; this is a sign that the directors, mystified by fashions of all kinds, have lost their judgement. I intend to clarify the character of the most well-known repertoire choices of the opera by indicating what makes them different from the previous styles, and highlighting their particularities (necessary in order to justly understand their artistic dimensions). I am not doing this in order to clarify the mysteries of the avant-garde or their modern ideas but in order to give some helpful resource for the honest singer, or director, who is on

5

Blaga maintains that, different form allegory, the symbol, through image, highlights itself and thus reveals its depths; for Mircea Eliade, symbolic thinking, prior to language and discursive reason, reveals certain profound aspects of reality, while for Jung, the symbol, by installing a link between the conscious and the subconscious, is in the centre of psychological analysis. Thus, we can understand why the interpreter of text should not be a stranger to the symbolism of music.

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Introduction

top of his/her trade, and responsible for his/her cultural destiny (especially when he/she does not lose sight of what is important – music). Perhaps I should have started with the examples even earlier, by showing the novelty of Palestrina in vocal music; his decisive steps towards overcoming the obfuscation brought about by the polyphonic style. This style made the understanding of the text very difficult, if not impossible, as it was drowned in the intricate cobweb of the musical script. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (Preneste) chose for his Missa for Pope Marcello the following solution – surprising, as it came in full-swing polyphonic era, but in conformity with the conclusions of the Trent Council that wanted to stop the abuse of compositions that made words impossible to understand6 – that each syllable should be paralleled with one note, that is just one sound, except certain situations when that was not possible… Had I chosen to write about those times, I would have taken the reader on too long a detour through the development of prior musical styles7, thus keeping him far from the subject of the present study, which is dedicated to the question of whether we live a crisis of the opera or not. 6

Cf. J. Samson, in Les musiciens célèbres, Edition d'Art Lucien Mazendo, Genève, 1948. 7 I will briefly mention something from the polyphonic era, with reference to H. Finck's studies (Practica Musica, published in 1556 in Wittemberg), when the socalled "ars suaviter et eleganter cantandi" appeared. We will note the fact that this kind of singing was not based on a genuine technique of sound emission, but more on innate qualities. In the treatises of those times these were called dispositione, that is, the quality of singing con dolcezza, as well as the possession of an agility in the medium ambitus of the voice. Between 1630 and 1650, the castrati, especially those in the Roman school, representatives of the avant-garde of those times, started to apply the sul fiato singing and the register of passage, but neither Bacilly, nor Mersenne, the theoreticians of the epoch mention anything about the mechanisms of registers. Until the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th, the elegiac-pathetic style dominated, which favoured (through the voice of the castrati) the sweet emission and the falsettone in passages of virtuosity, in which notes of a longer value were transformed in an increased number of notes, with a shorter duration, the so-called diminution; another term for this technique was that of blackening, or colouring in black, from where the term coloratura comes, i.e. instead of La, Si, Do (minims), they used to sing La, Sol, La, Si, Do, Si, Si, La, Si, Do (crotchets, and quavers), these being – in a simplified form – the first formula that Josquin de Prés taught his students (cf. A. P. Coclio, Compendium Musices Descriptum, Nuࡌ rnberg, 1552). Between 1715 and 1729, the chest, sonorous, and manly emission appeared (Bernacchi, Farinelli, Carestini), without losing anything of its velocity and coloratura, and through smorzature (that is, decrescendo), neither did it lose from its flexibility. At its turn, the Camerata Fiorentina, through its recitar cantando intended to strike a balance between the

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Any ongoing phenomenon in musical life could be described as a continuous crisis of fall and recovery, similar to walking, which could be considered as a permanent loss of equilibrium, which is re-installed by making the… next step. In order to find the (best) next step, we should set on our journey in the hope that we will find our way out from modernity as if emerging from a long and awkward convalescence, which, in my opinion, the future will not remember with great pleasure.

song with purely acoustic effects, and the rhythmical rigour imposed by the polyphonic music, using the rubato, which gives value to the note according to the meaning of the word; thus the musical phrase became expressive. This principle was introduced by Caccini, through his so-called spezzatura (Novo Musiche). In time, though, the recitative style of the Florentini became monotonous and arid (see also R. Celletti, Histoire du Belcanto, Fayard, 1987).

PART ONE: HAS THE OPERA PERFORMANCE BECOME AN OBSOLETE GENRE?

CHAPTER I THE OPERA SINGER

1 "So d'Ouden songen, so pepen de Jongen" [What the forefathers sang, the descendants whistle]. (Old Flemish proverb)

Today, the opera performance is less appreciated by the public than it used to be, and this is an un-explainable anomaly1, blamed on the following three factors: 1. The operas are less accomplished artistically. 2. The synthesis of arts within the opera performance is not harmonious, and thus the elements that should be finely tuned seem to just be thrown together, and no longer complete each other and collaborate to correspond to the exigencies of the musical part. 3. The cultural background of the audience is lacking in substance. Still, I tend to think that our contemporaries have not gone so far as to think that commercial music can replace the beauty of the arts in the age of Pericles.2 Only when one or all of these situations appear, can we understand why the opera has become less popular; only then can we ask ourselves the question if the opera faces a crisis.

*

1

As anomalies seem to be very trendy in our culture these days, living together with them, even finding support in them, it appears they do not need any explanation… 2 Various polls show that the greater public does not name any opera singer in the top five of their favourite singers, but I think that they just do not think of opera singers as top performers, they automatically think of tops only related to commercial music. If one takes the time to watch opera singers on YouTube, for instance, one will notice the millions of watchers and supporters of the genre…

The Opera Singer

3

The crisis, when it appears, is obvious, and very easy to identify, as it manifests itself in the indifference of the public to the opera performance. If we adopt a contemporary expression, we might say that the lack of popularity is nothing but a sign of the fact that the consumer3 demands less of that particular 'merchandise' – the lyrical art in our case. For the time being, I do not wish to explain this crisis only by referring to the tastes of the audience, or the superficial whims of fashion. On the contrary, I think that the public's reaction has more serious reasons, which go beneath the surface. Taking the three above-mentioned cases one by one, I wonder if it is possible that the artistic value of the music in some operas, which have been successfully staged for centuries, has become less interesting for the contemporary listener. This would be very difficult to believe, because some of these musical parts, when compared with other artistic 'peaks' in domains such as painting, sculpture, architecture or literature4 represent works of art belonging to musical geniuses, and have a comparable cultural appeal. Is it possible that the opera, as an audio-visual representation, has become less appealing? Not probable, as the genre satisfies the elite as well as the common viewer. The first will be attracted by the extraordinary idea, and the superior harmonization of the arts, a virtue that is defining for the opera performance. The average viewer, even if less knowledgeable, will always find great attraction in the audio-visual type of performance a performance which has become a way of life today. Consequently, the genre is not anachronic in any way. It should not be in crisis. Nevertheless, the opera does not attract people as it once did and what is more, it even alienates the public. What is the reason5 for this situation, then? I will not believe that the public demands to see on stage

3

In the philosopher C. Noica's vision, culture and art, implicitly, is not consumed but subsumed, and, therefore, the person who enjoys it does not exhaust it, but, on the contrary, enriches its life. 4 These art forms can survive in a state of hibernation, in museums, libraries, etc., and are always at the disposal of those who wish to have a 'taste'. The opera, though, as well as all music, if confined to remain on paper, will just die. The opera needs the stage in order to exist. 5 Although people from outside, called to save the opera have tried all kinds of weird and wonderful 'solutions' by adding new ideas, the opera has arrived on the threshold of collapse. As we shall see, many directors and singers are to blame for this situation.

4

Chapter I

what they see in horror movies6, that is blood scenes, violence, countless victims, etc. I will avoid the first and the third points (operas that are less than accomplished, whose frequency is insignificant when we are dealing with a prestigious repertoire, and a public too ignorant to want real aesthetic value in the performances they choose to 'consume') as they are extreme cases. I will concentrate on the second problem, thus, the focus of this analysis is on the interpretation itself, that is, on the level of the performance, seen as an audio-visual representation. In my view, this is where we can trace back the real causes that contribute to make this genre obsolete or unpalatable for many. It is important that we analyse some of those cases in which the contribution of the opera singer, of the conductor of the orchestra, of the director, of the choreographer, or of the art director, within the whole that is the opera show, has drifted away from the musical-dramatic part, or has betrayed it altogether. The intentions of the composer are misinterpreted and therefore misrepresented in the performance. In order to identify the cases of erroneous interpretations, and find the possible issues, their nature and their seriousness, I should start this search with the musical parts that constitute the main basis of the opera repertoire, especially those operas belonging to the musical style that came after the Baroque7. By determining their dominant characteristics, we will be able to conclude how much the interpretation succeeds in transposing them and making them speak of artistic value, or, on the contrary, whether the interpretation neglects the specificity of the text, which justifies the very existence of this style8.

* The style appeared around the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries and we could call it a style with expressive tendencies, that 6

We mistake the artistic truth for the truth of life, too often, or we use an overexaggerated 'veracity', as a cheap means of mediating reality, and this does not flatter the cultural level of either the producers or the consumers of such 'artistic' expressions. 7 The feeble re-enlivenment of the Baroque opera in the repertoire of some theatres and festivals (in England, in Germany and France), cannot be considered more than a… fashion wave, which has almost passed. P. Valery defines fashion as something that becomes very rapidly out of fashion. 8 Starting with the Florentine Camerata, the opera has gone through many stages until today, and interpretation, in its turn, has always accommodated such changes.

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is, it gives up most of its ornaments to the excessive embellishments of the Baroque music (see footnote 3 above). This was a reflection of a stylized kind of pathos, therefore an impersonal one, whose subject had abstract connotations; it was replaced by an attitude that placed great emphasis on the individual's9 subjective sensitivity. This is why this style wanted to be attractive and dynamic, full of energy, of tension and movement, that is, full of drama. As the engine of this musical drama has in its centre the human psyche, which is preoccupied with itself, we may even call it a psychological style. While Bach is (still) talking to God, the expressive style, with romantic connotations, is mainly addressing the fellow being, divinity being excluded from this equation. Thus, the new musical style will express thoughts, feelings and passions linked with the prior life and the psychology of the individual, being a language that is subjectively10 emphasized by man who, once with the Renaissance and the Reform, occupies the place from where he deposed the Supreme Being. In anticipation of my study, the following remark can be made about the consequences of this new attitude, which became more radical as it evolved. In the creation of the brilliant elite generation that followed J. S. Bach, the universe of spiritual height and nobility was still echoed – even if in a paler, softer manner – thus keeping that heritage of the objective and impersonal affect. In comparison, most composers and singers of today see only themselves in art, as an exercise of self-appraisal, which in time led to the crisis of the opera that we witness today. Our contemporary artist cannot set aside his own self, cannot diminish his ego. He cares for 9

We will see as we go on, how the increase of intensity of a sensation through interpretation, also can mean a qualitative change of that sensation – as Bergson pointed out. 10 It might be interesting for us to note that even starting with Monteverdi (in his letter dated December 9, 1616, sent from Venice to A. Striggio – cf. Celletti) there is a preoccupation for "making a difference between the spinato singing, which people like, that is for Orpheus and Ariadna, while gods express themselves emblematically, in tirate (passaggi), which are quavers, or gorgheggi, that is allegorically, non-realistically", by using symbolic embellishments, as poetics of the miracles, in which the colour of the voice is surreal, transparent. Mozart, in his turn, also obeys this formula, when in the Magic Flute he writes the part of the Queen of the Night, who is a less real character, and has a baroque kind of text, in which ornaments play a major role; meanwhile, 'real' characters, like Tamino or Pamina, have a part which is typical for the expressive style, in which the musical phrase is predominantly cantabile, that is, spinato. It is most interesting that the same 'rule' can be encountered in Shakespeare's theatre, where the prince speaks in verse, while the average street-man speaks in prose!

6

Chapter I

himself more than he should. This is where the greatest danger hides, as the singer can over-participate and overflow the artistic, passing into a kind of gross naturalism, which is alien to music or art, for that matter. This is why, the opera singer, by virtue of a badly understood tradition, sometimes will value the musical text he performs dependent on his own individuality, and thus, independent from that particular musical creation. Being held prisoner by his own egocentric view, he will look to his own life, where from he will draw more arguments, which are very often far from the musical part that he/she is about to perform. We are confronted with the autonomy of the performer, who, paradoxically, becomes independent from the music he interprets, to the point where he does not even care about the musical part anymore. His interpretation represents less and less the creative rendering of the musical-dramatic contents of the opera, the subjectivity of the singer becoming a substitute of the object that needs to be interpreted; this is a symptom of a sui generis phenomenon, frequently encountered, and this study will also deal with it in detail.

* The new style of opera composing and singing was prefigured in the preoccupations of the musicians11, by employing some elements of novelty, even towards the end of the previous style. Let us enumerate a few examples. In 1787, Karl Philip Emmanuel Bach (1714-1788), Bach's second son who was contemporary with the Sturm und Drang movement in literature, and who was an exponent of the Empfindsamkeit trend, composed a fantasia, which he entitled Empfindungen (feelings, sensations). The composition has an obvious subjective character, suggesting by its title a nuance that marks the inclination towards giving free way to the fantasies of the moment, to the intimate, personal feelings. A remarkable characteristic is also that within the text of this musical composition there are parts where the beat bar does not appear, to give even more freedom to the overwhelming impressions of the composer. What an immense

11

Let us underline the fact that great personalities always exceed their age, they have artistic premonitions, and therefore they are never enlisted mathematically in the style of their times; on the contrary, they have an anticipatory type of thinking, and examples are abundant. Michelangelo, for instance, who created during the full swing of the Renaissance, is, in fact, opening the gate for the Baroque.

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difference between father and son! The father is the author of a manual entitled Versuch uղ ber die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (1753)12. I would like to remind the reader's that Thalberg, a famous pianist and teacher (frequently compared to Liszt, himself) has a study entitled Arta cântului aplicată la pian [The Art of Singing Applied to the Piano], by which the arid technique of the ivories should be enriched with the suggestions coming from the overtones of the human voice. A very significant suggestion! At the same time, the composer and theatre director13 J. Mattheson, Haendel's friend and initiator in the secrets of singing when he was in Hamburg, was the author of the theory of the affects, Affektenlehre, applied to instrumental music. Mattheson speaks about the "sound of the seductive or pompous horns, the proud bassoon, the harsh trumpet, the modest flute, the heroic timbale, the caressing lute, the mumbling double-bass, etc., etc." Let us also mention that in Paris, at approximately the same time, François Tourté revolutionized the bow technique. Leopold Mozart, Mozart's father, also writes a violin manual Violinschule, and in the introduction he writes: "Conducting the bow is everything [...] the bow, if mastered with sensitivity, offers the violinist the chance to arouse feelings in the soul of the listener". This is how they explicitly declared the wish of the performer to impress14 his public directly. Violinists in Bach's epoch had a different bow technique: they would hold the bow at its middle (P. Casals), which contributed considerably to a diminished handiness in its use, especially 12

K. Ph. Em. Bach, Versuch über die ware ARt das Klavier zu spielen, Leipzig, 1753-1762, I-II vol. (cf. A. Schweizer, J. S. Bach, Wiesbaden: Breikopf & Härtel, the French edition I used was published in Lausanne: Chez Maurice et Pierre Fœtisch, 1953). 13 Mattheson, who composed an opera entitled Boris Goudunow, stated: "… a good opera theatre has to be an Academy of many arts: architecture, painting, dance, poetry… and, above all, music". About Haendel he affirmed that "although he was a great master in the art of organ playing, in the fugue and the counterpoint, he did not know much about melody, until he came to the Opera in Hamburg...." 14 This particular wish to impress becomes stronger as we approach the peak of the Romantic epoch. Hector Berlioz, who is probably most eloquent representative, announces his well-known Fantastic Symphony with the words: "je prépare [...] une immense composition au moyen de la quelle je tacherai di'impressionner fortement mon auditoire" [I am preparing an immense composition by which I am trying to impress my listeners] (cf. A. Bocholt, Hector Berlioz, vol. I – La jeunesse d'un romantique, Plon, 1946, p. 218). Later, in an article of the journal Correspondant, he starts explaining his "programme": "La musique est l'art d'émouvoir par les sons…" [Music is the art of moving by sounds…] (p. 265).

8

Chapter I

when it came to nuances of expression. Likewise, the mechanics of the harpsichord had much reduced dynamical possibilities, as compared to the piano; thus the technique limited the obtaining of certain effects, even if the performer would have liked to transmit them to the audience. It is really difficult to obtain with a harpsichord a musical phrase in a genuine legato, as the fine touch cannot be considered to be part of the technique of the harpsichord, but it is so much a mark of the pianist. When we speak about the vocal technique, we will have to keep in mind both the fine/light touch, and the syntagm "bow hold"15. Mozart, sharing with his sister his impressions on a few opera performances in Mantua (1770) expresses his wish that the singers should acquire a vocal technique that would help them gain pithiness and force by a more intense participation: "… the tenor Ottini does not sing badly, but he does not hold the sound, neither do other Italian tenors, in fact". About Cicognani (il musico primo uomo), whom he heard in the same year in Cremona, he affirmed: "… he has a pleasant voice, and a beautiful cantabile". Consequently, even in those times this need for a more tense and impressive musical phrase was felt, even by a child (Mozart had not turned 14, yet); this need encouraged singers to impress especially by a cantabile quality, by an expressive legato, that is by elements of the musical interpretation that I will elaborate on in future musical examples. I should mention one more aspect. In a letter to his father, dated December 28, 1782, Mozart wrote: … das Mittelding zwischen zu schwer und zu leicht [...] angenehmen in die Ohren – natürlich, ohne in das Leere zu fallen – hier und da können auch Kenner allein Satisfaction erhalten – doch so – dass die Nichtkenner damit zufrieden seyn müssen, ohne zu wissen warum [… the middle way, between too difficult and too easy, should always remain pleasant for the ear, without sliding down to gratuity, or superficiality, of course; it can give here and there satisfaction to the connoisseur, too, but in such a way as to keep the amateurs happy as well, even if they do not know why].

The new style was not created solely for those already initiated, the ones familiar with musical theory, but also, for the amateurs, the lay people, although Mozart was conscious that a few aspects would only be noticed by the professionals. Could there be another, shorter path than

15

The bow hold is a domain in which Enescu excelled, some comparing it, even equalling it, with the sonorous exhalation in the professional performative vocal technique.

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emotion to the heart of the amateur? (We must admit, though, that there are all kinds of emotions, if we think of what we hear on stage sometimes.) Mozart's music contains the entire range of states of mind, which it stirs in the audience. He was fully aware of this quality when, in 1782, he told his father about the "measure which is the truth", the artistic truth that lives in his spirit. He assumed this truth, and distilled it in the athanor16 of his intellect (his spirit), and transformed it, no matter its nature, in unmistakably genius music – sometimes "unleashed"17, explosive, but always refined, aerial, distinguished, and especially, profound, and thus, elative. Saint-Foix, speaking about the manner in which Mozart gave musical flesh to the characters populating his operas, noticed that: "Mozart's characters live all passions, but they do not have that high spirituality that makes us feel that they do not live at the same level as we do. An ethereal wind of purity, of spirituality has touched each of them to a certain degree; they all live under the miracle that his music has produced"18. Any singer that tries to approach Mozart's creation will have to take into consideration this remark made by Saint-Foix, as he was one of the most knowledgeable and authoritative critics and commentators of the great composer.

16 The athanor was an alchemist's furnace, in which the corruptible was transformed into the incorruptible, that is in pure gold – in this case feelings are transformed in art. 17 In a letter to his father, speaking about a scene in Idomeneo, Mozart wrote: "Man hört das mare und das mare funesto und die Passagen sind auf minacciar angebracht, welche dann das minacciar, das Drohen gänzlich ausdrücken" [One can hear the sea, the sinister sea, and the passages suggest the menace that it fully contains]. As to the romantic wilderness of his native character, we have an interesting observation of the naturalist Danies Barrington (in a letter published in 1770 in his Philosophical Transactions); in 1765, being in London, after he had made sure that Mozart was really a child (getting his information from Sazburg), he tests little Mozart, aged 9 (but already very much appreciated, as he had learned, by the soprano-singer Manzuoli), and analyses him (in the presence of Leopold) regarding his capabilities and his musical knowledge; on this occasion, Wolfgang played two improvised arias on the piano, one based on the word affeto, and the other on the word perfido. Barrington expressed his amazement at how, in the middle of this latter aria, the little player was so excited that he almost hit the ivories with fury, and at times he would jump on his feet (apud T. De Wyzewa & G. de Saint-Foix, W. A. Mozart, Paris, chez Desclée De Brouwer & cie. 1936, 3rd edition, vol I, p. 119). 18 G. de Saint-Foix, op. cit., vol. IV, pp. 162, 165 (starting with volume III, SaintFoix remained the only author, as T. de Wyzewa had died)

10

Chapter I

In 1790, another critic, Schinck, a contemporary of Mozart, had a very interesting opinion regarding opera music: "Music… is thought and felt profoundly, representing in all its details, the characters, the situations and the feeling of the heroes… each note being born out of feeling…"; at about the same time, B. A. Weber considered that Mozart had "besides an unencountered talent to invent melodies, a deep knowledge in the field of art, in general."19

* This style of music, which we called expressive, evolved in time, and in the 19th century it was an established Romantic style20, characterised by a more obvious confrontation of opposing forces that struggle for the human soul. Its musical representatives, like Weber, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Berlioz, Schumann, etc., are as famous as the composers before them. In terms of novelty, Romanticism brings about a specific nuance by introducing within the contents of music certain elements that could even be called extra-musical (alongside the characteristics that it inherited from previous times, which it deepens by a participation whose subjectivity is as intense and as intimate as possible21). These elements are an expression of the same essential and dominant factor – sensitivity. Furtwaࡌ ngler rightfully maintains that Beethoven expresses in art everything that in nature has a catastrophic form – which would be a manner in which nature expresses itself22. In time, these extra-musical elements (the "catastrophic" ones) will take over more and more, sometimes even to the detriment of music itself, hence making it its complete opposite, as happens with any exaggeration. It takes a genius, like Beethoven, to master the proportions in which such elements should make way in music. The exigencies of Romanticism, reflected fully in the intentions of the composers, become, implicitly, the main requirements for interpretation, especially regarding the relation between word and music. They will live 19

See Marcel Beaufils, Comment l'Allemagne est devenue musicienne, Robert Laffont, paris, 1983, p. 311 20 The term was used for the first time by E. T. A. Hoffmann, in a critical study of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. 21 Intimacy in music is more obvious in the Lied, in Schumann's and Wolf's creations, especially. For the latter, the melody does not need to take into consideration the laws of the vocal line, but it is just a coat for the direct expression of feelings. 22 W. Fürtwängler, Entretiens sur la Musique, p. 48

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within opera performances linked together, more and more organically, feeding from each other by an intense and refined osmotic exchange. This is why the new genre of the opera will gradually give up the autonomy of musical numbers. Towards the end of the epoch, the great technicians of interpreting and playing Baroque music transformed the opera performance in a certain type of concertanto23 – especially the spadones – in their quest to bring to full value all the possibilities and performances of their craft24. Therefore, the opera ceased to be a concert, with stagesupport of a pseudo-dramatic action, in which the text, with its meaning, was only a pretext; the new style had another approach to action and plot, and the art of the singer gained a new dramatic load. Hence, a new vocal technique was required, and that will be brought about by the belcanto25. 23

This is how Benedetto Marcello, il musico, presented the Baroque singer: “Il Divo moderno canterà in teatro, tenendo la bocca mezzo chiusa, i denti stretti, cioè farà il possibile perché non s'intenda una sola parola di quel che dice, procurando nei recitativi di non fissare né punti, né virgole; e se sta in scena con un altro personaggio, mentre questo parla con lui per esigenze del dramma, il Divo saluterà frattanto gli abituati dei palchi, sorriderà ai musici di orchestra, o ai coristi, o alle comparse, affinché il pubblico comprenda molto chiaramente ch'egli è il signor Alipio Forconi, non il principe Zoroastro che rappresenta…”(see J. Piso, Cibernetica...) [The modern male-diva will sing on the stage keeping his mouth half closed, his teeth clenched, that is, he will do his best so as not a word of what he is saying is understood, and so as not to obey the rigours imposed by the commas and full stops of recitatives; and, if he is on stage with another character, while the latter speaks to him, according to his role, the Diva, will greet his acquaintances in the hall, at that very moment, he would be smiling towards the members of the orchestra, the choir on stage, so that the public may get it clear that he is Mr. Alipio Forconi, and not Prince Zoroaster, whom he is supposed to incarnate] (cf. Alfred Hoffman, Drumul operei, de la începuturi pИnă la Beethoven [The journey of the opera, from the beginnings till Beethoven], Bucuresti: Editura Muzicală, 1960, pp. 85-86). Unfortunately, we often meet today with close relatives of this Alipio Forconi, although the vocal performance of our contemporary lacks too much in mastery. 24 The Baroque style, as well as its offshoot, the Rococo, is apparent in various domains. We should just take notice of the penmanship of the time which is a very good example – handwriting was so elaborate, so adorned, so suffocated with ornaments, showing the imagination of the writer, that it is very hard to actually understand the letter and decipher what it says. 25 The last great belcanto composer, G. Rossini, author of a study in the domain, also manifested great regret regarding the disappearance of the Baroque manner: "Oggi, che non v'è piu una scuola nè interpreti, nè modelli […], bisogna convincersi che il «belcanto» è partito senza speranza di ritorno" [Today, when the school has disappeared, there are neither singers, nor role-models, and we see how

12

Chapter I

Let us remark that even in the vocal technique of the spadones Bernacchi, Carestini and Farinelli (whose real name was C. Broschi, a name that was mentioned by Mozart, who knew him from his travels in Italy), this new technique started to make its way, by the singers giving more attention to the masculine vibrato of the emission of the voice, especially by a more intense participation, and the chest high notes which will replace the head high notes, or the falsetto, which are so impersonal, aerial, even sterile, in a sense. The tenor Raaf, one of Bernacchi's students, justly26 expressed his wish that the musical text should give him more possibilities for a voice legato, by remarking "Non c'è da spianar la voce!"27 [There is no room for me to unfold my voice] (this remark appears in one of Mozart's letters). The singer in those times felt the need to have more space, to have longer phrases that he could sustain by the vibrato, and resented the Baroque musical phrases that were drowned in ornaments to which the audience had become less receptive. Logically, Gluck's reaction was also understandable, his reforms stipulate the preeminence of the text over the music, which had to serve the poetry by rendering its expression and its dramatic situations (see Gluck's preface to his opera Alceste, a true revolutionary artistic manifesto).

* Going through Bellini and Donizetti, to Verdi, and then reaching Wagner's musical epoch28, the character of romantic music imposed its rules to musical interpretation. Thus, the singer had to adapt to the subjective sensitivity, to render the dramatic mood, the dynamics, and the tension of a more energetic and expressive melody. The great Verdi, speaking about voices and singers, once remarked: "It does not matter if the voice is big or small, suffice that it is audible. What it needs is a spirit the “belcanto” died, without any hope for us meeting with it again] (see Cibernetica fonaĠiei în canto, J. Piso, Editura Muzicală, 2000, p. 19, and the following, regarding the performances of the belcanto singers). 26 Nevertheless, inappropriately, as he was speaking about a vocal assembly, a quartet. 27 See our volume on the cybernetics of phonation in singing, p. 21. 28 Wagner will perfect the musical drama by using the durchkomponiert form, thus the composition should not be interrupted by musical “numbers”, a form that had already appeared in some of Mozart's Lieder, like Das Veilchen (See the Atlas Musik), as well as Beethoven's entire cycle of lieder An die ferne Geliebte, op. 90, which he composed later on, in 1816 (cf. dtv Atlas Musik, Munchen, 1977, vol. 2, p. 360).

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and a soul…" Not surprisingly, in a letter to Boito (his librettist for Othello and Falstaff), in which he wanted to convince him that the intensity of the dramatic mood should not be sacrificed to any other consideration, he wrote: I think that the talent of not making music, sometimes, of being able to efface itself is commendable [s'effacer, that is to disappear, to be in the shadow, thus the composer does not insist on beautiful singing at times]; likewise, it is commendable that the poet should use, from time to time, instead of the beautiful verse the right word, clear, and useful on stage […], a word that makes the audience prick up their ears.

To this, Boito answered: "… I totally agree with you, dear Maestro, about the theory of sacrificing the euphony of the verse and of the music in favour of the dramatic accents and the stage truth. You wish three or four lines, rambling and ugly, but clear."29 Due to this great Verdian innovation, singing will gain a special intensity of the musical participation30, with all its benefits, without suffocating the typically Italian melody. On the contrary! His genius allowed him to not alienate music from one of its most specific characteristics (so dear to the public), and not to harshen it beyond the aesthetics and the charm of the peninsula, while at the same time giving it new life. Thus, the opera reached its peak31. During this evolution, progressively targeted towards the implication of a sensitiveness that is filled with dramatic feeling, new technical means were developed, to provide the singer with the appropriate vocal strength. These resources enabled him to serve this kind of dramatic melody and, at the same time, express feelings in such a way as to give an impression of simplicity, following the principle which considers that the simplest way is also the best (mentioned by U. Michels). Such melodic music suits best the expressive and dramatic needs of the new style, especially when it is composed with the inspiration of a genius32. 29

Cf. Carteggio Verdi-Boito, Parma, 1978, pp. 31-32; see also J. Piso and D. Popovici, Antifonar Epistolar, Albatros, 2004, p.82. 30 Within Verdi's musical phrase, we will meet with a notation that suggests and even imposes to the singer a tension of the musical phrase, in legato, that is, each note is accentuated, and, at the same time, linked with the next; or, instead of such accents, there appear dots, over which there is also the connective arch. 31 Further on in this chapter, I will try to prove that the masterpiece of the genre is Don Giovanni. 32 Puccini is a brilliant representative of this principle, by his words "Contro tutto e contro tutti, fare opere din melodia", a retort that is characteristic for his creation

14

Chapter I

The new vocal style had to obey the rules imposed by music, which went through successive changes as it passed from the Baroque to Classicism, to Romanticism and Verism, that is, from Haydn and Mozart, to Verdi and Puccini. In its turn, music also had to bear the consequences of the new singing technique, which is so different from the baroque belcanto. Let us remember that many composers, of whom Haendel33 could be considered a good example, adapted their composition by taking into account the exceptional vocal capacities of some singers (although for today's tastes they may seem less than ideal, they were in vogue in those times). This is a true model of symbiosis between the creator and the interpreter. What is more, Gluck, in 1763, did not agree to compose the music for the opera Trionfo di Clelia until he had met the future interpreters and studied their manner of singing34. Mozart's understanding of the singers' possibilities35 and wishes was well known. Constance's aria "Martern aller Arten", from The Abduction from the Seraglio was conceived by Mozart in the style of the Naples opera, a form which was alien for the German Singspiel character of this opera. He sacrificed his musical intentions, as he confessed in a letter, to satisfy the usual vocal gargle (read: coloratura) of the diva Katharina Cavalieri, the interpreter on the opening night: "… der geläufigen Gurgel der Cavalieri aufgeopfert"36 (Mozart's own words). He did the same for the singer Ludwig Fischer, the interpreter of Osmin of the same opera, who had a real bass voice in Mozart’s view, and, therefore, he thought that: "… so muß man so einen

(see picture nr. 1, of the signed page, in Leopoldo Marchetti's, Puccini nelle immagini, Milano, 1968) 33 The close connection, even the interdependence, between the composer and the singer could be illustrated by the fact that almost all roles in operas belonging to Porpora (who was also a singer), Haendel, Hasse, and others, were dedicated to great singers, especially the women-singers of the epoch. For Faustina HasseBordoni, the illustrious Venice Mezzo, there are quite a few composers who write music: Gasparini, Lotti, Leo, Da Vinci, Haendel, as well as her own husband, Hasse. Haendel "dedicates" to her the roles Rossana, from Alessandro, Alceste, from Admeto, or Elsa, from Tolomei, Re di Egitto, etc, (see J. Piso, Cibernetica fonatiei in canto, Bucuresti, 2000, p. 18). 34 R. Rolland, p. 209. 35 Saint-Foix emphasizes, and for a good reason, the knowledge Mozart had regarding the resources and the limits of the human voice, which he had learned from the great singer Manzuoli, during his first visit in London. (cf. De Wyzewa & Saint-foix, idem, vol. I, pp. 96, 120). 36 The letter he sent to his father from Vienna, dated September 26, 1781.

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Mann nutzen, besonders, da er das hiesighe Publikum ganz für sich hat”37 [… this is why you need to make use of such a man, as he is so much appreciated by the public around here]. For Mozart this was an important reason why he composed another two arias for him, although the librettist only envisaged one small song for him, besides the terzetto in the first act. The aria "Dalla sua pace" was composed especially for the Viennese version of Don Giovanni, replacing38 the aria "Il mio tesoro", which was composed for the opening night in Prague, only because that first version did not agree with the tenor F. Morella, the interpreter who was employed for the opening night in Vienna, in the role of Don Ottavio.

* The first conclusion that we should draw is: the singer-interpreter had to become accustomed to the new style as a consequence of the mutations that appeared in music – a reflection of a new manner of understanding and participating to life, in general. This new style was characterised by an energetic participation on the part of the singer who needed to put forth his feelings with intensity, and, thus, the truthfulness of his emotions, without sliding into a vulgar39 type of sentimentality, which might degrade the value of the masterpieces presented here. This new music, an integral part of culture, should suggest if not downright influence to a certain degree, a general type of approach40 to life, as the style of the epoch marked the entire array of human activities. This is why today's interpreters of such operas (and in particular directors) could exclude themselves from culture, if they do not understand and observe this style, as, by disregarding such dominant characters of that opera, they mutilate and destroy it as a genre. 37

Same letter. Another replacing of an aria for a singer, but 200 years closer to our times, is referred to by Richard Strauss, in a letter from 1941, February 10th, to the conductor Clemens Krauss: "Capriccio ist durchkorrigiert, fehlt jetzt nur die Schlussszene noch; werde mich bemühen für Viorica eine bessere Arie zu schmieden" [I have corrected the entire part for Capriccio, only the last scene is missing; I will try to forge a better aria for Viorica (Ursuleac)] (Richard Strauss, Briefwechsel mit Clemens Krauss, München: C. H. Beck, 1963, p. 190). 39 This happens, especially, when a sustained legato is missing, in getting from one note to another and the use of a portato instead, which can be labelled as a lack in technique of the singer, and proof that he/she is not professional enough. 40 It is said that the artist – and not just any kind of artist – due to his special intuition, is also endowed with virtues that allow him to have premonitions: the substance that is the basis for his creation is the diffuse air and whispers in the atmosphere, which, sometimes make his creation function in a prophetic manner. 38

16

Chapter I

2 Motto: "La liberté ne se trouve qu'au delà de la science et non en deçà. (J.-L. Barrault)

I have reviewed, to a certain degree, the specificity and the characteristics of the Romantic style, which bring light to the manner in which the interpretation of the musical part is conceived, and to the way in which such a performance should be put together, in order to render the musical-dramatic contents that the composer encoded in it. All those involved in putting on such a performance – singers, conductor, director, art director, etc. – play their specific roles and the success of the performance depends on their skills. When we are dealing with the masterpiece of a composer, there is one other aspect worth mentioning and that is congeniality (defined as suited or adapted in spirit, feeling, temper). This might be the most important aspect even if it is the least taken into consideration these days. The lack of congeniality causes a disparity between such extraordinary composers as Mozart or Verdi, and use present day interpreters and performers. The only means to somehow make up for this astronomic gap between the genius of the creator and today's performers, talented as they may be (besides other gaps, like musical language, the style of the epoch, etc.), cannot be any other but… the means provided by culture. Only by having cultural knowledge can a performer appreciate the distance between himself and the composer and be prepared to 'jump' across the qualitative differences. The first step that one should take is to acknowledge the differences. So that the reader might understand what I mean, I will make use of a few remarks made by commentators who had an insight into the depths and the real dimensions of Mozart's genius. Beaufills41 considered Mozart's music: "Far from being 'graceful', as many obstinately insist to consider Mozart's music [a proof of superficiality, as I consider]; this music, so tensioned and targeted towards the dramatic, has an interior daimon [with its Greek meaning of an attendant spirit; a genius], which is happily balanced with a sonorous joy which is overwhelming, since it is dominated by something immaterial, spiritual, ordered within the total liberty, and within the manner in which the tools of the craft are handled. This superior equilibrium, between the

41 M. Beaufils, Comment l'Allemagne est devenue musicienne, Paris, Laffont 1983, p. 154.

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matter of the passions that invade from each direction, and the ineffable light of the spirit, is never to be met with in the future". This is the rarefied air to which this unique genius brings his music which, especially for our times, requires that the performers who deliver this unearthly music should make extraordinary effort. Both the singers and the audience need to make such effort so that they miss as little as possible of this music42. To the above-mentioned words, taken from G. de Saint-Foix's text, I would add another remark, belonging to Bruno Walter, one of the most dedicated musicians of the last century, who tried to make us understand how difficult and different Mozart was in reality; the false Mozart was invented by some superficial individuals, who could not have access to his spirituality. They tried to transform Mozart's virtues into their opposites, making the luminous power of his spirit nothing but a sparkling jewel, thus hiding the secret suffering inherent to his compositions. The question is whether we still possess the spiritual resources that might allow us to approach and understand a musical universe that is so profound. How many of the renowned singers of the Missa have stopped to think the way Pierre-Jean Jouve did, when he wrote: "When Mozart writes the solo Et incarnatus est, the song does no longer belong to our world, but it seems that the Saviour, Himself, talks to us, since Mozart is guided by religious ecstasy?"43 Mozart burned down worldliness, converting the profane into the sacred. This is the moment when we should remember his own words, the words of the creator of a music that seems so full of life: "Death is man's best friend". Maybe this thought, by itself, could give us an example of the tension that can be felt in Mozart's music, and can lead us away from the sterile44 view that we had on it (and some theatres still subscribe to this manner of interpretation); good quality performances will not encourage 42

Unfortunately, many of our contemporaries have chosen the exact opposite solution – instead of trying to get as close as possible to Mozart's art, it is easier to get the master down to us, and drag him into our muddy realms, to appropriate him by spiriting his genius away. By overbidding on his private life, which defiles his art, we forget that the essence of a candle is not its wax stains, but the light it sheds. Most of our recordings on CD, which can be bought in supermarkets today, are proof of the fact that we constantly miss the essence of his music. We will see further on how high profile directors get entangled in Mozart's music, and how they prefer not to go through the 'pains' of trying to decipher its depths. 43 Pierre Jean Jouve, Don Juan de Mozart, Editions D'Aujourd'hui, 1967, p. 20. 44 It is possible that this tendency was born from Richard Strauss' wish to prevent cheap sentimentality that could tempt many singers of Mozart's music; still, by overdoing it, it is possible that we throw out the baby with the bathwater (to paraphrase W. Scott's words).

18

Chapter I

affectation, and gross simplifications in their interpretation of Mozart. Least accomplished performances have combined the academic "objectivity", with the feeling, and with the strong smell of the slums; most of the times, these are also completed by a participation of the singer who has his own approach, thus giving way to "personal" feelings, and forgetting about the music, which is more often than not drowned lamentably in banal squalidity. These approaches are guilty of not taking into consideration the composer's wishes, of distorting the message, and of dissipating, even killing its charm. This is how most of the contemporary opera shows offer the audience the opportunity to meet with a Mini-Mozart, if we can say so, resembling some lacklustre trinkets, which reproduce in very small dimensions the image of the "wonder-child", and which the fans of the festivals – like that in Salzburg – buy from gift shops as convincing proof that they have participated in the escapade organized by the cultural… tourism company. Far too many of us barely understand the fun style of his music because we are too troubled by the other types of thoughts that come to us if we do so. Each of us finds in art what we are looking for, and usually, we are looking for what we have already found, and for what already possesses us. In fact, today's singer promotes only himself and this is why he finds it hard to understand somebody else even if that is the composer of the music. Therefore, we should not wonder if music (and I do not mean by that the invasion of "rhythmical trepidation"45 that has swamped us and that many of us consider to be music) can only take us as far as we can understand it. In a letter to his father, Mozart confessed that he composed music for all kinds of people, except for those with long ears. True art asks for tremendous participation, and that is exhaustive! It is wrong to approach this world as we would march on a field full of flowers and start grabbing them, whistling while doing so. Without climbing its slope, even with the risk of never reaching the top, the contact with music is only superficial especially when we are not equipped with the appropriate cultural "gear"; such a contact releases you from any other implications, it is not troublesome for the quiet innocence provided by mumbling little tunes 45 A. Honegger, in his book Je suis compositeur, Paris: Conquistador, affirms at one point, in relation to the future of music: "What predominates today is the rhythmical trepidation, and the voluptuousness of music… By the look of this trend, before the end of the century, we will have a restricted barbaric music, which will combine a rudimentary melody with brutally staccato rhythms. This will be very convenient for the atrophied ears of the music lovers of the year 2000" (cited by J. Ma. Corredor, De vorbă cu Pablo Casals, Bucuresti, 1964, p. 245).

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(threads spun from the distaff of such a seraphic genius.). No! Mozart is the ardour brought about by a passion to reach the sky, a height we can hardly imagine.

* Let us go back, then, to the singer’s concrete obligations, which impose, alongside many other aspects, a thorough psychological investigation into Mozart's music, which is constructed on a dramaticmusical support which is anything but simple and linear. In order to emphasize the immense responsibility of those who dare to interpret Mozart, I will use a few examples. Don Giovanni and Leporello are not embodiments of two fundamentally different types. On the contrary! They appear as a pair – twins, who are obviously different, but communicate through the same lymph, which is metabolized according to their respective stature; an inseparable couple harmoniously completed and based on a common ontological essence, which is responsible for their specific psychological profile. While the irresistible Don Giovanni forgets all his past when he meets with new "game", under the impulse of his frivolous nature which is always disguised under the mask of convincing innocence, Leporello draws an account of all his master's conquests, with satisfaction, with envy, even with jealousy. He savouringly and ironically unfolds in front of Dona Elvira the endless list containing the names of those victims, as if he, himself, had been the hunter. Drawn by his master's "glory", by the countless battles he won, Leporello reads the catalogue seized by such great satisfaction as if he were participating at Don Giovanni's table, and enjoying the crumbs… In the aria of the catalogue, Mozart has the quality of transposing us into the most gripping odyssey, into the fascinating "skirt-hunt", of a Don Juan who is in love with the cavalcade, which is greedy and insane, though compelling. Try to imagine Leporello's monologue without the music, in the interpretation of a great actor. Only then will you be able to understand the true measure of the miraculous dimensions that music brings when the singer is absorbed by the spirit of this music, but not overpowered by it; he does not remain under the music. Thus, at the end of the aria, instead of this mischievous gossiper, the audience will see the monument of an amazing mechanism of ingenuity; this is the result of creative imagination, the quintessence of the musical-dramatic genius. We will have to underline the idea that Leporello exhibits his comic character much above the universe of the Commedia dell'Arte; his comic is above the buffo

20

Chapter I

characteristic, he is placed on the edge of the tragic precipice that his master has dangerously come too close to, where he can already feel the heavy, torrid breath of the Gehenna.

* My understanding is, and I hope I am right, that Don Giovanni represents a stage when Mozart left belcanto; Don Ottavio is the typical belcanto tenor, and he is superbly mocked by the composer – as Richard Strauss will maliciously do a century later, in his Rosenkavalier. Before he hung up his powdered wig, Mozart gave his epoch one more tune in the tenor's aria, even if he, himself, was centuries ahead of those times. Through his unequalled dramatic temperament he saluted his epoch, with a feeling of sweet regret, and acknowledged the departure from that "gallant age". Let me return to the subject. Don Giovanni's shameless defiance and lack of limits, as he leads his life in permanent hunger of the everdeceiving mundane affairs, find perfect correspondent in the limitless expansion of an entire range of sentiments which are expressed in the music. Mozart showed here the true measure of his feelings and thoughts. Saint-Foix is right when he remarks: "Seul le poète-musicien est capable de fair ainsi surgir et croître des fleurs sur les bords du gouffre" [Only the poet-musician is capable of growing flowers on the edge of the frightening abyss]. These sentiments begin with the most subtle delicateness of erotic effusion – rendered in all hypostases – which reach our hearts and give the perfect impression of truthfulness (as in "La ci darem la mano"). Then, they continue with the seductive, though cynical46 serenade "Deh, vieni ala finestra", in which the attractive melodic substance is accompanied by fine irony; there is volcanic explosion of unbound demonism in "Fin c'han dal vino" that exposes the devouring frenzy of the libertine. We can also meet with horror in the insane idea of inviting to dinner the statue of the Commander that he himself killed, in which the effect47 of the note mi, used by the statue when accepting the invitation, is simple and frightful at the same time.

46

I call it cynical because Don Giovanni, wearing Leporello's clothes, dedicates this serenade, full of refinement and innuendoes, not to Donna Elvira, whose balcony he is under, but to her maid! 47 Note how Mozart orchestrates this part, with exemplary discretion; he does not use groups of powerful instruments, yet succeeds in creating an effect that no human force could produce.

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All the above are just a few glimpses into the vast cosmos of the feelings that Mozart, the magician-player unfolds; we shall not forget that he is a God Lover (Amadeus), who also had the walk of a wolf (Wolfgang). Beethoven was so impressed by the music of the duel in Act I, in which the Commander is killed, that he transcribed this tercet with his own hand. Here, the rapidity of the modulations creates the tragedy, which is produced only by an almost imperceptible modification of the atmosphere (Saint-Foix). Well, in such a moment, not even the most critical individual, inclined to criticize both the convention and the language of the opera, will consider it strange that characters sing instead of speak. Why is that? Because when feelings reach this incandescent heat, words without music would not be able to resist, they would burst into flames, and then become ashes! We can meet with the endless richness of musical resources on each page of Mozart's compositions; he was able to highlight all dramatic situations by using fathomless musical-rhythmical ingenuity, as well as perfect harmony, thus making such situations convincing. Consequently, Mozart’s characters have become symbols of mankind, alongside such characters as those created by the Great Will, or even greater than them.

* If we analyse Mozart's virtuosity in constructing the intimate psychological profile of his characters, providing them with consonant motivations (especially his women characters), we will easily come to the conclusion that such insight and construction of character through music surpasses by far the borders, the virtues and the suggestions contained by the dramatic text. Why is that? Because his intuition had access to the vast perspectives contained in the subtext, which became for him a source of inspiration that brought to life so many musical-dramatic scenes. As an example of exceeding the literal text, I refer to a case from my own experience as an opera director staging The Abduction from the Seraglio, at the State Theatre in Oldenburg. One music reporter highlighted the exact points I was trying to make: "Consistent with Mozart's intentions, Piso simultaneously captures the half-tragedy, the fairy-tale (if I think about Constance's strange visions in Act II) and the farce – going beyond the average cliché of a story book Seraglio. He provides the opera with colour and contour, exploiting the fact that the text and the music condition each other, like in the quartet at the end of Act II, the scene of jealousy, an occasion which opens unsuspected abysses of

22

Chapter I

sensitivity. He intercepts and identifies the ambivalence of the souls of the two female characters (the Blonde's even more than Constance's), who are full of doubts, as if unsure of their own feelings; these feelings do not appear in the text, but they do appear abundantly in the music. Piso tries and impressively succeeds in creating, behind an apparent happy-end, moments in which the atmosphere is heavy with tragic nuances; these are not sentimental at all, as the director stages behaviours that people display when they love, they suffer and they act upon these feelings. Piso's positive interventions are due to his brilliant ideas (among which, during the overture, the presentation of biographical aspects in which the audience can see Mozart and his own Constance) and they become events full of stage effects, which reveal and highlight facets that are resonant of the characters’ innermost souls."48 Let us make another short note on Mozart's refined expertise and knowledge of the eternal feminine soul: he investigates the hidden places of his female characters' souls, and constructs their inexhaustible substance made up of dualities, and hesitations, which are the source of the miraculous plasma of the feminine nature, that men find so maddening. There is Donna Anna, for example. She lives and acts under the sign of revenge, which is her instinctive dominant feeling in those tragic moments. At the same time, Mozart detects how in her soul, besides the grief and hopelessness in front of her father's death (the Commander), there is attraction, even passion (if we listen to the orchestra!49) for her 48 "Ganz im Sinne Mozarts spannt Piso den Bogen zwischen halbe Tragödie, Märchen (etwa in den makabren ‘Erscheinungen’ der Konstanze im zweiten Akt) und Posse sehr weit, gibt dem Werk, jenseits aller Konventionen des BilderbuchSerails, Kontur und Farbe, erkennt Libretto und Musik als einander bedingend – etwa in der Eifersuchtsszene im Quartett am Ende des zweiten Akts, die die so unversehens Abgrunde der Empfindung aufreißt. Er erkennt die ambivalenz der beiden Frauen (der Blonde freilich mehr als der Konstanze), die zwar nicht im Text, wohl aber in der Musik gelegentlich schwanken, ihrer Gefühle nicht immer ganz sicher zu sein scheinen; und er versucht, mit eindrucksvollem Erfolg, hinter aller Fassade von scheinbarem Happy-end, eine tragische, unsentimentale Begebenheit zu entwickeln, in der Menschen lieben, leiden und handeln. Überzeugender Einsatz und Konzep-zion von Pisos Regie, mit zahlreichen glänzenden Einfällen realisiert (darunter dem szenisch dargestellten biographischen Touch des Werkes – Mozart und „seine“ Konstanze während der Ouverture) sind zum bühnen-wirksamen, den seelischen Binnenbereich der Figuren facettenreich auslo-tenden Ereignis geworden." (W. Mathes – NWZ /Nord West Zeitung, May 29, 1987). 49 This is a very difficult task for the conductor, who has to highlight in several instances this conflict between the orchestra, whose music contains a murmur of

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rapist and for her father's murderer, Don Giovanni ("Nice work! To rape the daughter and kill her father" as Leporello puts it). E.T.A. Hoffman was the only writer capable of understanding this nebula of feelings of the two souls that are ardently looking for each other. The poet's conviction is that Don Giovanni and Donna Anna are two creatures who are predestined for each other, two creatures that destiny has thrown into the most grievous conflict50. If thus considered, the opera Don Giovanni, should be labelled more as a tragedy than a dramma giocoso, as Mozart ironically calls it, in order not to stir the ethereal self-disillusionment that had brought the "gallant epoch" to a lethargic sleep (let us not forget that Mozart composed this masterpiece of the genre in 1787, that is, closely before the French Revolution). I am afraid that if we concentrate on the thrills of the music, too little is left of the "funny" and "frilly" Mozart of our predecessors, or of our superficial contemporaries. One thing is certain: Mozart had to deal with the mannerisms of his epoch, as he could not change its musical substance, but he did not believe in them. On the contrary! Another example: Zerlina! Here is her continuous hesitation: "Vorrei! e non vorrei!" She affectionately coddles the temptations born in her mind and soul. She is an innocent, but she wants to free herself from Masetto – the fiancé – when she finds herself in the presence of Don Giovanni (who attacked her with the speed of a predator); she does this so that she can give in to him with a peaceful soul, thus shortening the distance between the wish and the act, not daring to set them apart – she needs to have both feelings in harmony, so that she can satisfy her thirst in an… innocent manner. Let us stop briefly to consider a delightful appearance, this time from The Marriage of Figaro, to observe an enchanting musical episode, which will prove how necessary it is for the singer to possess an appropriate vocal technique, in order to succeed in transmitting the musical load of the reality within the part; in this case, this reality is that of an elevated tenderness, a truth that reaches much beyond the meaning of the words, or the intricacies of the poetry. I am referring to Susanna, whom we follow in a scene of act IV, a moment that I analysed in my study Cibernetica fonatiei in canto [The Cybernetics of Phonation in Singing]. In the abovementioned study of vocal technique, I drew the reader's attention to how flaws, or defects that I encountered (unfortunately!, even in the case of great divas) characterized by a faulty mastering of the sonorous exhalation blind affection for Don Giovanni, and the words that Da Ponte puts on the heroine's lips, which express an endless need for revenge. 50 Pierre Jean Jouve, p. 53.

24

Chapter I

(i.e. breathing out during singing) also bring about certain musical accents, which I called parasite accents. Such accents seriously distort the musical phrase, as well as its expressions, that is, the psychological meaning of the music. The right technique is that of voice inhaling51, a technique that will succeed in preventing these parasite accents from appearing on the 3rd and 6th tempos, in the 6/8 bar, which are the weaker ones, and the less accentuated ones (as you will see in the example below).

51

The benefits of this mechanism of vocal technique – called sound inhalation – and its qualitative and quantitative merit for the voice sonority, obvious in the singing of the great opera singers, had been already confirmed by the results of the Swiss savant, of a Dutch origin, Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1792) in his studies dedicated to Hydrodinamica sive de viribus et motibus fluidorum comentarii (1738), in which, analysing Hydrodinamik und Stroղ mungslehre, he concluded that: Hydrodinamische Druckgleichung, Stromungfaden-gleichung die für stationäre, reibungsfreie Strömungen in einem incompresiblen Medium (konstante Dichte Q) grundlegende Gleichung nach der die Summe aus stat. Druck (p) potentieller Energi pro Volumeneinheit (qgh) und Standdruck (Dichte der Strömungsenergie) ½ Q V2 längs eines Stromfadens bei Potenzialströmungen uberall konstant ist (p + q g h + ½ Q V2 = C); g = Fallbeschleunigung, h = die von einem belibigen Niveau ausgerechnete Höhe. Je größer also die Strömungs-geschwindigkeit „V“ ist um so kleiner ist der statische Druck, d. h. an Querschnittveregerung, in denem das Medium schneller strömt tritt eine Druckminderung auf, die Saugkräfte entstehen lässt. Translated in singing technique, this means that the higher the speed of the air current passing from the trachea to the larynx during phonation – especially with sounds belonging to the acute fifth –, the more the static pressure of the air stream on the vocal cords diminishes, the more the force that tends to unite them increases (I will remind you that the sound is born in the larynx only when the vocal cords are united); this means that the vocal cords will be spared much effort, while their efficiency will be optimized, and the produced sound, not being constrained by the turbulence of exhalation, will be exploited to the maximum by the natural resonators. Further on, Bernoulli establishes that: Kinetische Gastheorie die für den Gasdruck "p" gültige Gleichung p = 1/3 N. m. V2 = 1/3 Q V2 wobei Q = M. m die Massendichte des Gases "N" die Anzahl der Gasmoleküle je Volumeneinheit, "M" ihre Masse, V2 = ihr mitteres Geschwindigkeitsquadrat ist. The Bernoulli effect, by which the force that tends to keep the vocal cords close to each other increases due to the high speed of the air that comes across the glottis, can be demonstrated by a banal experiment, that anyone can make. If we have in front of our lips two stripes of paper, 25 cm long and about 8 cm wide, kept at 2-3 cm distance from each other, and then blow air towards them, we will notice that the higher the speed of the air that touches them, the closer to each other they will come, even to the point where they are united. (q.e.d.)

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Fig. 1: Fragment from Susanna's aria, Act IV, The Marriage of Figaro, by W. A. Mozart.

These dynamic accents, highlighted with red in our example above, are aggressive and vulgar, and as alien (and, therefore, undesirable) as impossible to avoid, if the singer does not master the appropriate vocal technique, that of the sound absorption. If this technique is not present, the musical phrase is a prompt to be out of control, and takes a turn which is in sheer contradiction with Mozart’s intentions of loading the dramatic moment with exclusively musical means. For us to appreciate the damages provoked by the appearance of these incongruous accents (40 in number

26

Chapter I

during this aria, which is no longer than 51 bars), we will perform a musical analysis, which will highlight how they can produce for the entire aria a continuous and disagreeable dynamic imbalance of the musical phrase. Such a lack of balance can be shocking, even absurd, giving the impression that the singer is somehow strange or even feeble minded (as a character) because the way she utters the words is in complete disaccord with what she means by them – she says it in one way, but means it in another.52 Such disaccord arrives at a very special moment. I will briefly analyse this moment so that the reader might understand correctly the entire scene, by looking at it with all its psycho-dramatic motivations. After all obstacles against her wedding with Figaro have been removed, with the help of the countess, Susanna is impatiently waiting for the moment when she will be able to have Figaro as her husband, in her arms, without having to submit to the rigors of the feudal right of her master. Neither the quid-pro quo53, nor the surface trickeries (inherited from Beumarchais, and Da Ponte, respectively), which seem to re-enliven the procedures of the Commedia dell'Arte, will be able to dissipate the charming lyricism of the moment, expressed in Susanna's aria. This lyricism is due not only to the text but also to the music that motivates her behaviour which is filled with affection and which is suitable for the dramatic plot54. Look at the circumstances: Susanna is warned by Marcelina that the jealous Figaro, who suspects her to be unfaithful (after she, herself, opens his eyes as to the intentions of the count in Act I), is hidden not far away from the place where, at nightfall, the count waits for her next to the bushes in the park. The farce of a series of false identities commences, which Mozart's musical-dramatic genius conducts majestically. Susanna, knowing that nobody could find her under her cover but sure that Figaro will recognize her even dressed in the countess's clothes, expresses her feelings candidly. The aria is a hymn dedicated to love which encompasses the entire nature and is impregnated with Susanna’s innocent affection for her Figaro, and not to the infidel count (who, at the other end of the scene courts Susanna's dress – worn by the countess). In this situation, far from making a parody of her own 52

The prototype of our contemporary politicians (please, forgive my comparison, but I made it just for the sake of argumentation, so that my contemporaries may understand me better). 53 The confusion brought about by the change in clothes, i.e. the exterior aspect of the characters (Susanna and the Countess have changed their dresses between them). 54 Mozart's intention in this aria is not to let the comic part prevail over the real conflict of the drama, as it is shown by Susanna's feelings.

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feelings towards the one who, unjustly, suspected her of infidelity, Susanna confesses her love with disarming sincerity, and charming delicacy. At the same time, we may infer that this honesty makes Figaro even more jealous, as he is sure that Susanna is not aware of his presence in the park, not far from her (although Susanna seems to want to tell him: "You stupid, can't you feel how arduously I dream for us to be together, against all obstacles?"). This is why, maybe even more than in other arias, the singer needs to keep pace with Mozart, with the wonderful hidden places of the complex and rich musical psychology55, which is responsible for the increase of dramatic tension. If not, the singer can be perceived as ridiculous! Consequently, she must avoid the trap contained in the musical part which is not easy to carry out in terms of technique – a trap that the singer can avoid with the help of her musical culture and mastery of her voice (she needs both of these, as Mozart's music always does) in order to convincingly express the richness of the feelings as well as the truth contained in the music. Surprisingly, the difficulties in the technical execution once overcome – which is not easy to do for the singer who cannot use the mechanism of voice absorption – prove to be really helpful for the performance. By suppressing, or withholding these spontaneous, but non-musical accents, the moment is filled with tension, which appears under the form of negative explosions, or, even better said, under the form of implosions. Consequently, instead of an aggressive and vulgar expression (as the examples on the CD show) which is alien for the moment and the atmosphere created by the orchestral introduction of the aria, an exhilarating outpour of delicate affection will be heard, as well as the hope and the impatience entailed by the music. This ambience is anticipated by the orchestra, even one bar before the soprano starts her aria, through the ascending run of the quavers: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, flat Si etc., in staccato, which imposes upon the interpreter nuances of candour and delicacy specific to Mozart's temperament. In order to obtain these effects, I will clarify the following technical details, as well as analyse and explain the mechanisms that come into action at the time of phonation. By doing so, I hope to show the reader that the elements discussed above are not only the product of my imagination,

55

This simple manoeuvre of Mozart's leads to an unexpected increase of the dramatic tension, giving Figaro, the possibility to get involved in this game, more and more. Therefore, it is very important that the performer of the role Susanna assumes responsibility for clearly expressing the above-mentioned innocence and sincerity that the plot requires.

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Chapter I

a kind of sentimental-impressionistic logomachy or literature, as Heinrich Woࡌ lflin might call it, but serious musical discussion. Even if the readers are not familiar with the matters of physical acoustics, or the physiology of the vocal apparatus, they will understand that these issues are not related to a more or less subjective opinion that I have, as these are nothing but results of objective mechanisms, determined by the most recent studies in the area of phonation and highlighted with digital precision. In the chapter Profession and Career, I will analyse such issues in detail, using a few images of oscillograms (sinusoid), which are specific in the production of various sounds, some being less professional.

* The first sentence in Susanna's aria, "Deh, vieni non tardar o gioia bella" (the one in the musical example above), starts with a repetition of a note, Do4 (523 Hz.), sung without any difficulty, as it is situated approximately in the middle of the register of a soprano voice – placed exactly at the pitch where she actually speaks. Therefore, the emission of Do4 becomes reflex as in speaking (for sopranos, this frequency is situated between 300 Hz and 550 Hz), when the supply of air during singing is not controlled, because sonorous exhaling does not require any conscious supervision; it is spontaneous, a reflex of the cybernetic circuits of speaking. These circuits lead through the temporal lobe which assesses sonority and then this feeds back to the command centre, which gives the "OK!" to the mechanisms to produce the sound without any modification. Since both are sung on the vowel "e", a semi-closed vowel, they contain alongside the frequency of 523 Hz of the note Do4, another frequency, that of vowel "e"56 which corresponds to La4, that is 880 Hz, a frequency that is localized in the oral cavity, further back, as compared to the location of the vowel "i". It will take a bigger effort to move from the syllable "vie" 56

The sounds of the human voice (as well as so many sounds in nature) are composites. They are formed by the base sound, to which harmonic sounds (or overtones) are added. Other part is comprised of the sounds specific to each vowel. Thus, besides the frequency of a vowel uttered at a certain pitch, in the composition of that particular sound there also enters the frequency of the overtones of that vowel: "a" has a harmonic of 220 Hz; "o" has one of 440 Hz; "e" one of 880 Hz; and "i" one of 2347 Hz; these overtones were identified and determined as frequencies almost two centuries ago by the German savant Halmholz, with the aid of a device that bears his name – the Helmholz resonator (see I. Piso, Cibernetica fonaаiei Рn canto [The Cybernetics of Phonation in Singing], Bucure‫܈‬ti, Editura Muzicalӽ. 2000, pp. 116-117).

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Do4 (523 Hz) to Fa4 (698 Hz) which corresponds to the syllable "ni" (the third note in the aria). When the soprano does not have the requisite technique accomplish this transition, she will, instinctively, command more force to articulate that note, which means more air, as the note is higher pitched and requires more effort. This supplementary air projects the sound towards the front, and, therefore, the sound that corresponds to the closed vowel "i", whose frequency is 2347 Hz57, which is almost three times higher than that of the vowel "e" (880 Hz), will be formed from the front, where the space of the resonating cavity is smaller, and high frequency noises are produced. Moreover, it is known that the higher the frequency of the sound, the more strident it becomes. Consequently, this third sound becomes accentuated, it will be powerful, strident, noisy (especially for the soprano voice) as compared to the preceding sounds, which causes a rupture in the vocal line and implicitly in the musical line. What's more, the word vieni, from both a poetic and a musical point of view is, within the bar, bearing an accent on the first syllable, on vie, which corresponds for the 6/8 beat with the first tempo, accentuated. But, because of the effort required by the musical fourth, the accent will glide on the second syllable, ni, which will put forth the word vieni, instead of vieni, as it should be. The abnormal accent, on the second syllable introduces both in the prosody and in the melody an obvious tone of rejection accompanied by stridence (because of the vowel "i"), a nuance that is contrary not only to the meaning of the word but also to the logical and musical context. In this way, Susanna manifests a behaviour that will strike us at least as unexplainable. While the meaning of the words sounds like a call, by accentuating the second syllable, the expression acquires the tone of categorical and sudden rejection. Although the dramatic-musical context is devoid of aggressive character or vulgar sensuality, the uncalled for emphasis of the second syllable will undoubtedly suggest a hostile attitude. (In art, generally, and in the case of Mozart, especially, sensitiveness, which is entailed by the feeling of affection, is accompanied by the spiritual not the vulgar, and geniuses always convert the sensuous in over-sensitiveness. Mozart is at the top of the list of those who utilize the sublimation of feelings that is the alchemy through music in order to transfigure a particular moment. Few composers are capable of this. Only a soprano who masters the technique of absorbing the sound (the technique of voice inhaling) will be able to reduce the quantity of air 57

Two millennia before our era, Plato, in his dialogue Craitylos (427 BC), says: "The vowel ‘I' renders what is easy, being able to get through…" (our transl. from Romanian in the original), that is, in our language, "i" is the most penetrating vowel, since it stands out due to its high frequency.

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Chapter I

during the sonorous exhaling, thus, putting a stop to it. If done in this manner, the undesirable accents disappear together with the vulgar tones so alien to the context; the impression that the character does not know what she is talking about also disappears!; and from the point of view of sonority, this will be temperate and the stridence of the third sound will be tamed. Consequently, the audience will not hear deh, vieni, but deh, vieni, the melody acquiring, suddenly, besides meaning, the vocal line that Mozart intended and noted in the musical part (a requirement he had not only from the singer, but from the orchestra, as well). Since the same melodic-rhythmic formula is repeated in the aria 40 times, with little variation, it will not be difficult for us to imagine what a musical cacophony may result and what a strange language may be heard in the Opera House if the soprano cannot use the technique that Mozart's music requires but instead will ruin his music. So that there should be no doubt as to the seriousness and the frequency of the phenomenon, I have collected on the CD more than ten sopranos, who are known world-wide, who, conducted by the most prestigious batons of the 20th century, starting with Toscanini, or Karajan, sin in the above mentioned manner. But, I will not reveal the identity of any of these divas, as this is not my goal here, and I am professionally bound to discretion. This example clearly shows how far from the musical reality of the piece of music, and, consequently, from the composer’s intentions the modern vocalist can find him/herself, when the technique has not been not mastered. Only through this technique of sound absorption, which, at the same time creates the tonus of the musical phrase, can the "transfer of values from the word to the musical expressivity" take place – to quote Professor Dr. Grigore Constantinescu. My reader's patience and focus would be too much under stress if I continued to describe the mechanism of this high professional technique in detail. Essentially, it can be reduced to the coordination of three pairs of antagonistic muscles. They represent, so to speak, three levels (storeys) of the phonate apparatus: (a) at the level of the air supply, where the simultaneous straining of the diaphragm the muscles of the abdominal girdle takes place so that the air is supplied correctly (supplementary air being prevented from exhalation – sound inhalation), which, in the specific terms of vocal technique is called breath support; (b) at the level of the larynx, that is of the vocal cords – the concomitant straining of the cricothyroid muscle and the internal thyroaritenoid muscle so that the quality, the consistency and the calibre of the sound should not be changed; (c) at the level of the oral cavity, where the resonators are

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adjusted with the help of the tongue’s mobility, at the same time maintaining the opening of the mouth almost unchanged so that the colour of the voice should not be altered. For those who are interested in these details which are the core of this technique, they can refer to three studies that I wrote: Cibernetica fonaаiei Рn canto [The Cybernetics of Phonation in Singing]; Grai Юi cИnt [Speech and Singing]; and Antifonar epistolar [Epistolary Antiphons]. We should, still, remember that this technique appeared since the middle of the 18th century but unfortunately was almost completely deserted after WW II: because it requires prolonged study, patience, strenuous work, and we, modern people have become lazy, and extremely rushed (to finish what we have not even started). If we start counting, only in Mozart's case, in his seven best-known operas (Idomeneo, The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, The Clemency of Titus, and The Magic Flute), each containing at least 10 arias and in each aria there are 35-50 such problems typical for Mozart's compositions, we may see that such vocal-expressive ‘pearls’ could easily go above 3000. I will continue by giving you a few more examples of Mozart's repertoire, which show the danger of the mutilation of words as well as the non-musical accentuation of the weak tempos that appear when the technique of the singer is less than what it should be.

Fig. 2

Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, instead of dice, when accentuating Mi flat, will say dice; Donna Anna, again in Don Giovanni, instead of mi dir, will sing mi dir, if she accentuates Sol; Zerlina, instead of povera, will sing povera, when jumping to Re, etc., etc. Consequently, the normal accent of the words is mixed up, and the vocal line is also destroyed.

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Chapter I

Page Cherubino, in Figaro's Wedding, will place the accent on the weakest tempo in the beat. Belmonte, in The Abduction from the Seraglio, instead of Freude, due to the accent on the note Fa, will sing Freude, contrary to the normal accent of the word. This kind of musical anomaly appears when the singer does not master the correct vocal technique, the one we call performance professional technique, and that I will try and expand upon towards the end of this study. Everybody can appreciate the dimensions of the massacres that Mozart is subject to when he is at the mercy of such untrained voices. When the deficient singing technique of the performers makes them accentuate certain syllables against their natural intonation, just because the note is higher the singer has emission difficulties and needs to force the passage – which leads to this kind of unnatural accentuation. Unfortunately, such examples which underline frequent deviations in contemporary performances, are just the tip of the iceberg of the musical dangers that threaten the sailing of many Opera theatres on the waters of the vast repertoire, as, from Mozart to Verdi, and beyond, there are many divergences from the course that lead to the sinking of such productions into the abyss of non-musicality. If this is the situation, can we assure each other that the opera is not facing a crisis? The hope for a future returning to normality can be found in passing through this crisis in a conscious manner, without delay or hesitation, without pretexts or ridiculous deceptions.

CHAPTER II THE COMPOSER HAS A REPRESENTATIVE ON EARTH – THE CONDUCTOR

So far, we have been on a succinct guided tour in the realm of the richness and the complexity, as well as the profoundness of the issues related to the understanding of the opera masterpieces; of the difficulties that the opera singer is faced with when he/she considers all aspects of interpretation of the characters, both technically and in terms of their artistic execution. Now it is time that we analyse the other compartments that are involved in the transposing, or better said, the transfer of the virtual world of the musical part (which is abstract thinking and not expressive) to its exact contrary, that is, its audio-visual stage corporality. The aim of this transposition is to facilitate an act by which the message of the composer gets to the audience, as faithfully, pregnant, and convincingly as possible; thus, the performance becomes captivating, reaching maximum expressivity, which produces a vivid artistic impression on the audience. The interpretation should not kill the spirit of the epoch that is at the basis of the shaping of that opera, so that the spectator should not be deceived as to the just reading of that masterpiece: this means that the artists perform what they promised, and what the audience have read on the poster. Even if the spirit of the epoch we are speaking about is surpassed1, the specific masterpiece prolongs its artistic and cultural value, continuing to represent the quintessence of those particular times. When we do not do that, we are far beyond culture. We should refuse the "tabula rasa" principle, especially as nowadays we are so much willing to reveal and recuperate the past, notably the very distant past. Therefore, the result of a just interpretation will firstly depend on both the cultural knowledge of the singers, and on the specific artistic qualities each of them possesses. Secondly, it depends on the quality of the work of all those who participate 1

In the arts the sovereign principle of "actuality" seems not to function as it does in the domain of scientific hypotheses, or that of… dress fashions.

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Chapter II

actively in the staging of the performance. Related to the artistic level, I will remind you of Goethe's words: "In the arts, only the best is good enough!" We must enumerate among these artistic qualities of the interpreters their capacity to construct the role, which, at its turn, depends on their musicality; in other words, it depends on the creative representations that the artist lives when studying a musical part, and, especially, when he/she gives life to that part, and interprets it. The singer's own musicality will keep him from representations that the music does not support, which the music does not suggest, and which have no connection with it. Consequently, interpreters should bear in mind this principle, and keep a "respectful" distance from the dusty routine of the old and tasteless templates, which have a slumberous effect on the audience; such routines have had little access to the meaning of the music. Furthermore, they will have to also keep their distance from the fashionable rigmaroles, which are most of the times totally off track, attacking our stages in chaotic forms that practically pulverize the music, leaving the performance in total disarray, as if after a tsunami. This is why general knowledge is so important for the performer in the production of a masterpiece, alongside the musical one; this means that not only the musical part needs to be deciphered, but also the entire musical creation, seen on the background of the style and the epoch it belongs to. If not, the audience will notice the gap between what they hear and what they see during the performance. I will obstinately repeat these banal things, since so many performers will, also obstinately, underestimate them.

* The opera performance is the result of a team work (or it should be), which brings together the work of artists that are responsible with the various artistic compartments, and have complimentary professions: singers, conductors, directors, choir singers, ballet dancers, art directors, etc. A faulty harmonisation between them, or a faulty reading of the musical part and the atmosphere of the style of the opera will quickly become lack of harmony, and will ensure… lack of success, as it constitutes an attempt against the unity of that masterpiece. Such lack of collaboration between artists has manifested itself, and still does, as a struggle between these parties, which I would call fratricide, especially when it is conducted by the first three categories: conductors, singers, and directors. Such struggles appear because one category looks contemptuously upon the importance and the activity of the others, and it

The Composer has a representative on Earth – The Conductor

35

becomes acute as each of the parties is more or less entangled in their own unsolved professional issues! Those who cannot see beyond the strict limit of their craft and specialisation, risk to become ridiculous and absurd, as they are not able to see their performance as part of a general frame, the only frame that justifies it. When fully dedicated to their profession, the artists have to judge their speciality within the frame of the whole, which is the source of their justification, and where their true roots can be found. If isolated from the entire artistic conception, the contribution of the artists diminishes its cultural value, to the point where it is annihilated altogether, sliding towards the domain of sports, or other kinds of performances (appreciated by Guinness Book). Besides manifest disputes – that have led to notorious scandals between the three types of artists, that the mass-media is so thirsty of showing to the fullest details – such hostilities will frequently be clad in occult approaches, in subterranean trajectories, and will dwell in tensions. What all of them are after is supremacy at the cost of everybody else, and, of course, at the cost of music itself, the stage becoming a fighting theatre. The combatants forget that the product of their efforts, that is the performance, will live only through a harmonious synthesis, which is the result of their conjoining efforts. Such synthesis presupposes an organic interweaving, in which each of the components acts according to and in perfect coordination with the others. This is how this kind of art appeared and was constituted, and it still requires a high degree of reciprocal acknowledgement, which entails a very strict and unconditional subsuming of one's effort to the music. If these requirements are not met, the opera is on the verge of extinction. One consequence of these disharmonic relations is the fact that many directors, who nowadays are not musicians anymore – feel the need to turn to shock therapy, tolerating and promoting the most farcical and unimaginable stage solutions, which are not only anti-musical, but downright anti-cultural from a visual point of view. We will analyse such solutions in the chapter dedicated to opera directors. Artists have changed places in dominating the opera performance during centuries: at first, the most important role was that of the singers, then the diva of the orchestra pit followed, the conductor (a diva that is only half-seen by the public); today, the preponderant figure is that of the director, the diva that cannot be seen at all, but who makes his presence felt sometimes so forcefully, that they seem to be a kind of ultra-viruses that have become the main plague of our contemporary lyrical theatre. Both the conductor and the director, imposing their prestige by extra-

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artistic means, have proclaimed themselves, by usurpation, the "intellectual" representatives of culture in the domain of music. In order that we may fathom the distance between their pretensions and their real contribution to the state in which we find the opera today (so much owing to these characters' terrorising sovereignty), we will appreciate this contribution in connection to the etymology of the word intellect, which comes from the Latin intus legere, which means to "read inside". What happens today with these false intellectuals, as we will see, is that they read the musical part in such a way that they discover "inside" it aspects that are not there at all, and, on the contrary, they do not see what is the very substance of that opera. In short, I could summarize the functions of the owners of today's lyrical theatre as follows: while the contribution of the director is far from the musical text, besides it, that of the conductor is much below that text, and I will document these comments in the following pages.

* Before addressing the issue of the "Prince of destruction"2, the director, I will stop for a while and refer to the Conducting Master, the one who considers himself as the earthly representative of the composer, invested with the mission to make sure that when the musical part becomes alive, as a performance, the music does not suffer. If conductors try to do that when it comes to the singers, they are suspiciously neutral when it comes to the decisions of the directors. Thus, it appears that the conductors are concentrated only on what is audible, while the directors concentrate solely on what is visible. Since I have often "benefitted" from the consequences of the conducting art, I will refer to other opinions on the blessings that the conductors sometimes bring to the performances, so that I should not be accused of too much subjectivity. I would like, first, to remind the reader a little bit of history regarding the virtues and the prestige that should be linked to the work of the conductor, provided that he masters his craft, understands the rigours of the musical text, knows his orchestra, and, not lastly, knows and loves the human voice, with its technical and expressive possibilities, as well as with its mechanisms and limits. Then, the conductor has to be a cultural personality, and not a frightening one. It is known that terroristic acts against others spring from

2 The director Jorge Lavelli entitles one of his books Opera et mise a mort, Paris: Fayard, 1979.

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the panic and the fear of the instigator, and not from his self-certainty and professionalism. Although the conductor today has this great responsibility, it has not always been the case. In the beginning it was not considered to be an independent function, and this is proof: Le pupitre du chef d'orchestre au bâton introduit à Vienne sans trop de difficulté en 1812, fait scandal à Londre en 1819, où Spohr doit consulter par referendum la salle ameutée [The desk of the chief of orchestra carrying a stick, which had been introduced with no difficulty in Vienna in 1812, produced a scandal in London in 1819, where Spohr had to consult, through a referendum, the arguing audience],

as a chronicle of the time reported.3 Stravinsky also had something to say about the role of the conductor: "As to interpretation, the last century has left us a difficult heritage, a particular species of soloist, with no precedent in history, which is called a conductor. Romantic music amplified enormously the personality of the Kapellmeister, to the point where it gave him, once with the prestige he enjoys today, on the podium that attracts all eyes, a discriminatory power, which he exercises upon the music he is entrusted with. Standing high on his sibylline tripod, he imposes onto the compositions he conducts his own movements, his special nuances, and he finds himself in a position that allows him to speak about his 'specialisations', with shameless naïveté. [...] This entire plethora of conductors aspire to dictate in music." An interesting opinion belongs to a brilliant man of culture, the great poet and philosopher Lucian Blaga, which he expresses in the novel Luntrea lui Caron [Caron's Raft], and which is not very different from the above: "… these masters of the stick should be rather called 'directed by the orchestra'. I found that there was too much said about these artists. The public would never make such fuss about Beethoven, as they do about certain orchestra conductors, but, what shall we do, the public cherishes the show". Although the implication of the conductor in the music is not direct, its effects were felt directly in the past, and are still felt today, even with more force. There is an endless list of witnesses that we may quote. We can start with Burney (1726-1814), the well-known author of musical journeys through the Europe of his time (see Ch. Burney, General History of Music,

3

According to Marcel Beaufils, p. 188.

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1776-1789, and The present state of Music in France and Italy, 17714), who complained that in Italy opera orchestras had become incredibly noisy5 forcing the singers to actual yelling. Thus, the entire clear-obscure of the music is lost; nuances and background disappear, and only the noisy parts can be heard. The same author affirms about a representation conducted by Hiller, the composer himself, showing that the instrument players engross this impression of atrocity, as if they were competing with each other in terms of loudness. He sees the conductor as the main guilty party for this situation. J. J. Rousseau (in La Nouvelle Heloise) also remarked that the orchestra is nothing but "a devilment of instruments, which cannot be born for half an hour without getting headaches". Even Emperor Friedrich II, a redoubtable musician, referring to an opera performance he had listened to, asked Reichardt (the conductor of the orchestra): "During the aria, Maestro, you kept the beat so strangely! Had a fire started?"6 Furtwängler, himself, speaks with great authority about the "false gestures of the conductors"7, while the composer of the Fantastic Symphony, a typical representative of Romanticism unbound, when listening to Figaro's Wedding in London noted that the orchestra appeared to him as "clad in brass winds, like a large ship". Another confirmation comes from Franz Liszt: "For Beethoven's or Berlioz's symphonies, even less than for those composed by others, I consider it an advantage if the conductor does not try to convince the audience of his enthusiasm by the sweat on his face, thus begetting the function of a windmill. I have said it before: the true Kapellmeister has to be as little conspicuous as possible (that is, more discreet). He is not an oarsman, he is a steersman".8 Liszt's remarks also bring to my mind another quotation, from a letter that Liszt wrote to Wagner, when he conducted Lohengrin, assuring the composer that his interpretation will follow the precise indications of the author: "… I promise that your wish will be punctually executed with the 4

Also see Romain Rolland, Voyage musical au pays du passé, Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1992, translated into Romanian as Călătorie în Ġara muzicii, Bucureúti: Editura Muzicala a Uniunii compozitorilor din RPR, 1964, p. 104. 5 Interestingly, in Italy there already existed a serious preoccupation dedicated to a dynamic equilibrium centuries ago; even since 1598, in Ferrara, A. Igegnieri recommended that music should be adapted to the hall, and should be neither too forte, nor too piano (cf. R. Roland, Călătorie în Ġara Muzicii [A Trip to the Country of Music], Editura Muzicală, 1964). 6 M. Beaufils, p. 343. 7 W. Furtwangler, Entertians sur la Musique, p. 87. 8 Cf. Fr. Springorum, Nachklang in Wort, München, 1957, p. 165.

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entire respect and conformity that your genius and your work is entitled to".9 I am sure no one can consider Liszt a man without personality, and lacking in artistic imagination. The conductor should pay attention to such advice as that given by Mozart in his opera Schauspieldirector, through the voice of the character Vogelsang, who recommends that those who make music should be moderate, frequently repeating: Piano! Pianissimo! But the tradition of exaggeration is longer than we might think; in a German almanac of 1782, the anonymous author exclaimed: "Once they come down on us, the instruments sound entirely different from what an ideal audition requires, since the Konzertmester, up on a stool that dominates the orchestra is extremely preoccupied to make himself visible and to make his presence felt". In this whole euphoria, provoked by the impulses of the Conducting Maestro, who indulges in forbidden initiatives, it is normal that the orchestra, off the rails, should destroy any trace of dynamic equilibrium. Who can still speak about music, when violence has seized everybody? Verdi, himself, in a letter to the editor Giulio Ricordi complains about the musical "initiatives" of the conductor: Voi mi citase altra volta con lode un effetto che Mariani traeva dalla sinfonia della Forza del destino facendo entrare gli ottoni in sol con un fortissimo. Ebbene: io disapprovo quest'effetto. Quelli ottoni in meza voce nel mio concetto dovevano, e non potevano esprimere altro che il canto religioso del Frate. Il fortissimo del Mariani altera completamente il carattere, e quello squarcio diventa una fanfara guerriera: cosa cosa che non a nulla a che fare col soggetto del dramma, in cui la parte guerresca è tutt'affatto episodica. Ed eccoci sulla strada del barocco e del falso. [You have before praised the effect that Mariani obtains in the Force of destiny symphony [the overture], through the intervention of the brass winds in fortissimo sol. Well, I disapprove of this effect. The brass winds in mezza voce, in my conception, had to express nothing but the religious chant of the monk, and could not express anything else. Mariani's fortissimo completely alters the character of the moment, and that abrupt intervention, that rupture, becomes a kind of bellicose brass band: this has nothing to do with the subject of the drama, in which the warfare part is only an episode. And here we are, on the road to the Baroque, to falsehood, to errancy].10

9

Emmanuel Bondeville, Une correspondance entre deux génies: II, Franz Liszt et Richard Wagner, Institute de France, Paris, 1983, p. 6. 10 Carlo Gatti, Verdi, Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1981, p. 527.

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In his spontaneous sincerity and objectivity, Verdi does not hesitate to criticize Angelo Mariani, one of the most faithful conductors of Verdean operas, starting with I due Foscari, and ending with Forza del Destino (Vicenza, 1869). In order for us to appreciate the conception and the preoccupations of the chief of orchestra regarding the sonorous equilibrium, it is interesting that we know the disposition of instruments, the place of the conductors in some of the most important orchestras in Germany towards mid 18th century, published in the Observations of an Anonymous Traveller, which was issued in Halle in 1788 (cf. Marcel Beaufils, Comment l´Allemagne est devenue musicienne, R. Laffont, 1983, Paris, p. 187). You can see below the image that needs no comment. BERLIN Counterbass

LEIPZIG English Horns, V-celli, C-bass, Violas, Bassons

Violas, Oboes, Horns (the only ones seated) Counterbass, Second Violin, Second Violine Bassoons The CONDUCTOR (facing the public) Flute First Violin First Violin SOLOISTS

Second Violin, Viola, First Violin First Violin, Oboes Cellos

The CONDUCTOR (facing the public) Second Violins, First Violins C-bass, Violas, Trombones C-bass, Violas, Violas, Clarinets Clarinets

The CONDUCTOR (facing the orchestra) SOLOISTS

THE PUBLIC Fig. 1

BERLIN ROYAL OPERA

Second Violin First Violin Harpe Bossoons, Oboes, Flutes, Cellos, Horns, Clarinets

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Do not keep your illusions and hopes too high…: musical life in more recent times, or nowadays does not benefit from the teachings of such… musical philosophy. In presenting his most complete anthological collections of famous voices, The Record of Singers, Michael Scott, its author, affirmed that Toscanini was guilty of the fact that his interpreters had replaced the fine nuances of the belcanto, with a violent rhetorical style, thus, he left the singer with the only role of spelling out the musical part. Toscanini's Traviata, with Licia Albanese as a protagonist was considered by Scott as a meaningless destruction of Italian singing, because the Master considered that tradition only consisted of the bad habits of yore. This is how this Toscanini, as Scott says, does nothing but throw away the child in the basin, together with the water. He also considers that the famous Böhm, Solti and Maazel proved to be musically insecure, as to the use of apoggiatura by singers (cf. Jürgen Kesting, Stuttgarter Zeitung, April 8, 1980). André Touboeuf, the editor of the booklet that accompanies a commemorative vinyl record dedicated to Tito Schipa, considers that the contemporary directors display a mania in treating voices: "The belcanto singer not being in fashion when the explosion of numerous orchestras was triumphant, the voices had to make themselves bigger than they actually were, in order to be heard". We will have no difficulty in imagining the visual-aesthetic consequence of such endeavours, since the musical one we have already understood: "… the singer's eyes pop out, and stare upwards, towards the sky. Not as a consequence of a moment filled with pathos, driven in his soul by ethereal feelings. No way! He simply bawls and squalls so that he might pierce the blatancy of the orchestra. In order to yell as loudly as possible, he is also forced to make the most terrible grimaces", the same anonymous author of the 1782 almanac affirms. Rousseau, in La nouvelle Eloise also satirises this state of the opera, which around the year 1760 resounded of uninterrupted yelling, accompanied by a deafening clutter coming from the orchestra: "You can see the actresses almost shaking with spasm, producing deafening cries from their lungs [...]; their faces are crimson, their veins are swollen, and they are gasping for air; you cannot tell whether it is your eyes or your ears that feels more displeasure; their heaves make those who see them suffer, and those who listen to their songs do, too; it is something beyond reason that only such yelling will make the audience applaud".11 11

R. Rolland, p. 189.

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Let us see how Alfredo Kraus, one of the most appreciated contemporary tenors expresses his "thrill": "This kind of conductor (who knew how a lyrical singer must sing) does not exist anymore. Those of today know neither the repertoire, nor the tradition or the voices. In fact, they do not love voices. They want to be the stars by themselves. Obviously the lyrical art has to suffer in consequence. [...] The command of orchestra over the voices makes things even worse. In order to make ourselves heard, we have to sing louder".12 One of the conductor's major responsibilities refers to his competence in dealing with the most important "instrument" in the opera – the voice. This is what the conductor Clemens Kraus says: Im übringen habe ich sehr traurige nachrichten aus Wien. Die Oper scheint dort buchstäblich "auf dem Hund" zu sein, aber das liegt nur an den schlechten Leitung. Wenn sie einen talentvoller Direktor findet, der etwas von Stimmen versteht, ist dises Institut sofort wieder oben [In fact I have very sad news from Wien. The Opera seems to be in a deplorable state, but this only depends on bad conductors. If we could find a talented conductor that knows voices, the institution [the opera] would be up there immediately] (R. Strauss, Brief-wechsel mit Clemens Krauss, Munchen: C. H. Beck, 1963, p. 51).

* Conductors have been able to impose this command easier – even a dictatorship of their desk – due to the fact that after they availed against the singers, who had lost their rank because their "musical" licences had gone far beyond the bearable (see Benedetto Marcello's words in the first chapter), some remarkable personalities, who were composer-directors, or only directors got to dictate and decide the fate of music in another capacity, that of directors of particular lyrical theatres. I will only remind you of the case of Gustav Mahler, and of his follower in Vienna, Richard Strauss. To his honour, the latter (regarding his own creation) at least tried to think of the battle that the vocal soloist had to enter in with the inappropriate stage set, and with an orchestra of… 120 instruments.13 12

"Le Monde de la musique", Decembre 1988, p. 30 (an interview with François Lafon). 13 "Schleier bitte dringend zu vermeiden! in Wien hat man deswegen von Friedrich nichts gehört!" [Take away the curtains for all means! Because of them, in the Vienna show Friederich could not be heard at all!], a fragment from Richard Strauss's letter to the conductor Clemens Krauss, 29.07.40. Or, "Knapp vor der Premiére [...] da die Sänger nur unnötig augepumpt verden und dann bei der

The Composer has a representative on Earth – The Conductor

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In the third decade of the 20th century, and the beginning of the fourth, the following situation appeared in the Berlin Opera theatres: at the State Opera, the conductor Erich Kleiber was in command; the director of the Opera Municipale was the conductor Bruno Walter-Schlesinger; and at the Kroll-Oper, another conductor, Otto Klemperer was in the directorial seat – he would also direct the performances that he conducted. This mania was continued by Herbert von Karajan, on the obvious purpose of realizing the "total performance", by imposing a unique vision, imitating Wagner; but the latter conducted and directed his own creations (even Verdi, would sometimes get involved in conducting matters). Why do all these happen? Why the "guardian of the musical text" becomes enslaved by an interior demon, and forgets or overlooks his obligation to bring the music to light? On the contrary, he is led by his own musical sensitivity, by his (lack of) vision, by the resources of his temperament, thus leading the orchestra somehow against the stage, in the most unexpected moments. When the Master Conductor is seized by expressive convulsions to a degree that urges the audience to call for the doctor (as the great Fritz said), can the singer still cultivate the musical phrase that should reveal the richness of nuances that the composer provided the part with, in such an inspired and precise manner? The suggestion coming from the Master propagates and ensures a kind of general impulse. Each member of the orchestra has now the opportunity – and does not miss it – to play as loudly as he can, so that he should not be disturbed by the instruments around him. We find ourselves in a fierce musical jungle, where only the most savage and strident sound is sovereign. Besides the sonorous unbalance that this orchestra cyclone provokes, which prevents the audience from hearing and understanding what is happening on stage, and transforming the opera performance in "the most expensive noise" (Gauthier), this manner of interpretation provokes other Premiére die Bühne ermüdet betretten. In unserem Falle wäre eine Ermüdung der Sänger besonders gefährlich…" [Just before the opening night [...] as we would exhaust the singers, and then on the opening night they would go on stage tired. In our case, to get the singers tired can prove to be very dangerous]. Or "Ich werde auch versuchen, hier in Münchener Aufführungen, II Akt wieder in eine Dekoration zu bringen und dafür die Darsteller möglichst in Vordergrund zu postieren, damit die Word-deutlichkeit gewinnt" [I will try to use for our shows in Munich, in Act II, a set that allows actors to come to the foreground as much as possible, so that the clarity of the text should be enhanced] – from the letter that Clemens Krauss wrote to Richard Strauss, in 12-.5.1943 (Richard Strauss – Clemens Kraus, Briefwechsel, Munich: H. Beck, 1963, pp. 152, 251, 264).

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damages to the musical creation. This is the moment when I would like to make another essential remark: no matter how paradoxical it may sound, loud singing cannot ensure the musical phrase with enough interior tension, which is inherent to good music, especially when we refer to the Romantic epoch. Loud singing leads to negligent and non-artistic interpretation, which can be anything but musical. Furtwängler in Ton und Wort considers: Es gibt z. B. Bei ihm Fortissimo-Wirkungen, die, obwohl getragen von lächerlich wenig Instrumenten, doch durch die Gewalt der inneren Intention die masslosesten Ausbrüche des modernen Orchesters in den Schatten stellen. [There exist with him [Beethoven] effects of ff which, although executed by ridiculously few instruments, by the force of the interior will overshadow the measureless bursts of modern orchestras.]14

Any contemporary director should meditate on these remarks. Similarly to the singer, who in the absence of the professional technique (see I. Piso and D. Popovici, Antifonar epistolar [Epistolary Antiphonary], Bucure‫܈‬ti 2004, pp. 218-223) has to accentuate the weak tempos of a bar when they contain high notes, the instrument players, be they playing brass or cord instruments, create numerous accents that lack musicality, out of commodity; these remain not noticed, or they are… tolerated by the conductor, even though they should be banned, from an artistic point of view. The result is prompt to appear: the phrase loses its dramatic meaning, becoming absurd, or, in many cases, outwardly vulgar. The master of the orchestra considers, though, that everything is in order! I have collected on CDs an incredibly large number of exemplifications, belonging to great conductors, a collection that supports my affirmations. In such a situation, I am tempted to imagine that the Master, who is at the origin of such music, should know a little more than he does, and that his profession, or rather, his cultural responsibility should entail a horizon which should be a little richer than he demonstrates. This kind of serious deficiencies are responsible for the manner in which talent is misused in a quest that is far from the meaning and the truth of the musical text. These Masters should convert their superiority (read: contempt for the stage and its artists) into getting more musical and cultural knowledge; those who do so are justified in asking to be revered and taken extremely seriously. They should look into the technical issues of their trade, so that music should

14 Wilhelm Furtwängler, Ton und Wort – Aufsätze und Vorträge, Brockhaus – Wiesbaden, 1954, p. 12.

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tell them more than their behaviour sometimes suggests, and when, as Liszt commented, they are nothing but windmills in front of the orchestra. Would these behaviours of the conductor be a reason serious enough for our considering that the opera undergoes a crisis, and why the opera spectator rightly complains? Well, it is obviously not the only reason, even though this unbalance between the stage and the conductor's pit contributes copiously to the "state of affairs". There are other factors, too, and I will dedicate Chapter III to one that appeared as a great surprise in the second half of the last century.

CHAPTER III THE DIRECTOR, OR WHAT IS LEFT FROM WHAT THE GREAT OPERA COMPOSERS1 IMAGINED WITH THEIR COMPOSITIONS

"Art is born under compulsions and dies from liberties" (A. Gide) "Avant-garde is everything that contradicts tradition and can do without talent" (Topârceanu)

My title refers to the "evolution" of today's opera theatre, not only in the eyes of the spectator, but also from the perspective of the musical theoretician, of the musical analyst.2 During the preceding chapters, I reviewed the role of the singer, as well as that of the conductor in the state of the opera performance of today, trying to discriminate between each of these contributing factors. We will consider next the question whether this kind of show has not also been suffering from the action of opera directors. At a very superficial glance, we may already notice that the most notorious directors, who are in the spotlight these days, have a different education, that is, they are art directors. In their turn, many directors consider they can easily be art directors too – one example is Zefirelli3. Both these categories try to unfold their original concept on the stage, as completely, genuinely, and purely as possible. If we ask ourselves where they are recruited from, we will find that not even that primary specialisation is their first choice formation, as most of the art directors, for instance, are in fact… architects (and that would be a 1

I will not dwell on the creations of less inspired composers. Not that of the musical journalist, though. 3 Or, recently, Petrică Ionescu in the Bucharest performance of Enescu's Œdip. 2

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fortunate instance). This explains why the setting – when it is not concentrated on the "essences", that is… a few curtains – is more a kind of metallic falsework construction, in which painting (and, therefore, colour) plays no part. Colour is only left to lights, those coming from the harlequin, the attic, the ramp, etc., and thus, if the setting is blue, the characters on the stage will also be blue. At the origin of this avalanche of changes, we will find the opera director's "liberating" idea, which tries to transform the performance into something else, no matter what, the important thing is that it stirs the sensational, thus attracting the public, and will end up with a good recipe, without striving too much to find the right artistic means. Nobody expects professionalism from the director who has arrived in music4 from a world which is alien to music5 (a former art director, at best, who is a former architect, etc., etc.; or a film director like Polanski, whose debut as the director of the Munich Opera House Rigoletto was commented in a musical journal under the title "Film-'Genie' ohne OpernFortune" [A "Genius" of film with no luck in the opera]). It is not professionalism that the management of theatres consider to be important, on the contrary, they consider it to be more important if the director has the capacity (read inurenment) to shock, to be eccentric, and thus to lure people to the box office. Under such circumstances, it is no wonder that the visual (even if it suggests a scenery from another planet) gains an uncontested, increased role as compared to the music, which is doomed to slide more and more into a less visible role, becoming nothing but an accessory, a negligible pretext; it is an artistic frame that the director does not hesitate to mutilate according to his own good will, as Mr. J. Cl. Auvray did, in a mise en scène of the opera Aida in Bremen. In the hall programme, the director tried to justify the modifications he brought to the text of the libretto, by considering it naive, unrealistic, and illogical. In order to eliminate its absurdity and make sense of it, Mr. Director, replaced the conflict of the opera, which takes place between the main characters (Radames, Aida and Amneris), with that which took place in the composer's private life, that is, Verdi, his wife (Giuseppina Strepponi), and Teresa Stolz (the first soprano to sing Aida). In order to stage his own conception and get it closer to the public, the director had Aida enter the stage holding the musical part in her hand, and keeping the measure bar… Amneris had an appointment at the photographer's, while the king sat on a steel construction. Radames, at his 4

Music, I remind you, is in the opera primus inter pares. The great ancient architect Vitruvius, author of a 12 volume work, asked from the architects that they have a solid musical instruction.

5

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Chapter III

turn, appeared wearing the uniform of a soldier in the Foreign Legion, while the great priest had the aspect of a Turkish delight salesman, dressed for a feast. The choir singers were wearing white bonnets, like chamber maids in the houses of European middle-class bourgeois families. The male choir members could be mistaken for race-horse amateurs in Ascot, which was an irony to the English colonists in Egypt ("ironisiert die englische Präsenz in Ägypen", as the text of the booklet read, word-forword). In the scene of the triumphal return, the moment when the conqueror entered the scene, the other characters, dressed in costumes à la Belle-Epoque, waved instead of palm-tree leafs, butterfly nets. Radames' trial scene was transformed in a franc-Masonic ritual ("die Rolle der Priester, grausam-unerbittliche Ankläger des Radames anschneinend unreflektiert /zumindest als wärs ihm blutiger Ernst/ auf die Freimaurer und ihr Ritual"). The result: at the end, when the director appeared in front of the curtain, his presence was saluted by the entire audience with hooting and hissing6. I must confess that I was there and actively participated in the hissing, as well. My presence there was a consequence of the fact that I had to assess the performance of the conductor of that show, in my capacity of Generalmuskdirektor of the Opera House in Oldenburg, as he manifested his wish to apply for the job at my opera house. Regarding this unjustifiable intervention of many interpreters in the musical substance of artistic masterpieces, I will quote a few fragments from Verdi's letters: - Io non ammetto né ai Cantanti né ai Direttori la facoltà di creare, che come dissi, è un principio che conduce all'abisso… [I will not allow singers, conductors and directors the faculty to create, as this is a principle that leads to… nothingness]; - l'ordine è invertito, la cornice è diventato quadro! [the order was reversed, the frame replaces the painting]; - … l'arte musicale al fine del secolo passato e i primi anni di questo, i Cantanti si permettevano creare le loro parti e farvi in conseguenza ogni sorta di pasticci e controsensi. No: io voglio un solo creatore, e m'accontento che si eseguisca semplicemente ed esatta-mente quello ch'è scritto; il male sta che non si eseguische mai quello ch'è scritto. Leggo sovente nei giornali d'effetti non immaginati dall'autore; ma io per parte mia non li ho trovati [… in the musical art at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, singers indulged in creating their parts, 6

Quotes taken from NWZ – Nord West Zeitung, nb. 99, from April 29, 1985, from an article written by the musical analyst Werner Mathes, under the title Ungereimtes, which means Inappropriateness, which you can also read as Absurdities.

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combining all kinds of mix-ups and nonsense. No: I want one creator, and I am satisfied if they execute what is written simply and exactly; the evil consists in the fact that they never execute what is written. I often read in papers about effects that the author has never imagined; as for me, I never encountered effects, ever.]7

Fig. 1

* Between the poster that brings the audience to the theatre and what they find when the curtain is up, there is hardly any connection. The new Rigoletto has nothing to do with – he is not even a distant relative of – the character in Victor Hugo's play or Francesco Maria Piave's libretto, losing his contingence with the atmosphere of the music. Rigoletto, when it is not transplanted in a Stalinist or Nazi ambiance (as the director Ljubimow did in his staging at the Magio Musicale Fiorentino8), is performed in a big garage, where, in the first tableau, the characters barely squeeze onto the "stage" emerging from among worn

7

Carlo Gatti, Verdi, Milan: Mondadori, 1981, pp. 526-527. See the article in Opernwelt, nb. 6, 1986, p. 10, entitled "Piero Cappuccilli verweigerte seine Mitwirkung in Ljubimows Inszenierung" [Cappucilli refuses to sing under the direction of Ljubimov].

8

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tyres, a garage where the Mafia recycles stolen cars (this was another 80's staging in Düsseldorf). Also attracted by cars, J. Lavelli, staged Norma (in Bonn9) transforming the Druid temple in an anti-Nazi fortress, where the protagonist had to sing the aria Casta Diva (one of the most famous soprano arias of the lyrical theatre, due to its elevated and pure melodiousness), high up on a truck hood. Thus, on the pure and flawless body of the music, his direction brought the most repugnant and deadly diseases: lack of musicality and the least artistic sensitivity possible. I will stop here, without other comments, as the above examples have become classic for this "new style". I have chosen them randomly, from the enormous dossier of modern directing ingenuity, and I cannot stop myself from asking the following questions: What is the reason for this estrangement not only from the theme of the operas but also from their music and atmosphere (not to mention their style)? How can such almost pathological aberrations make their way onto the stage? I do understand that the dust of routine needs to be cleared out but in order to do so, it is, perhaps, not the best idea to call people who are perfectly "innocent" in their understanding of what the opera is, or how it should be treated. It is very difficult to understand why we should depend on such people for this task. Is it possible that The Director does not deign the musical script with a glance? That he cannot read and understand it at a professional level? "I direct, I do not analyse music", he says (see below J. Lavelli's comment). Such an attitude seems very close to the one of the "workers" who, at the beginning of the 90s invaded the centre of Bucharest, yelling: "We work, we do not think!" Could this director see what he misses, not caring about the music, which is the most fecund source of inspiration, a source that is practically inexhaustible? This inexcusable omission does not exclude the hypothesis, on the contrary, it even justifies the assumption that his musical culture as well as his general knowledge are not what they should be! The situation is really embarrassing when you cannot even guess the intention and the logic of the author you are staging and presenting to the audience. This happens especially because the director cannot think in musical terms, and his ideas are not the "result of interior combustion" (as M. Eliade once said). I exemplified on another occasion the degree of "neutrality" in regard to the music, that such a director thinks he can use in his directing work, 9

Montserrat Caballé also refused a collaboration with Lavelli; see R. Bernstein's article in Madame, p. 44, entitled "Wird das Publikum für dumm verkauft?" [Are the audience considered stupid?]

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an example that I think deserves to be reminded here, as it can help us continue sketching the portrait of the "new" director. The theatre director of the Theatre in Düsseldorf was invited to The Gärtnerplatz Theater in München to stage the opera The Merry Wives of Windsor, by Otto Nicolai. He professed his artistic creed in an interview: "I step in an unknown country. [...] I am staging Nicolai's masterpiece, not only for the first time in my life, but I confess that I have never seen it on stage in my life, which I think is an advantage for me; I start working with no pre-conceived ideas"10. This is a certain manner to avoid influences, to remain original. What a splendid example of professional innocence, rooted in cultural void! I have a suspicion: Mister Director, in his most peaceful moments of daydreaming, would have liked to stage this opera before… the Creation of the world, so that he might have absolute paternity over his creation, without being influenced, not even by God himself. Unfortunately, too many such directors, in their quest for originality, have similar thoughts, even if they are less willing to openly admit they have them. Just think of how they treat the musical text, which, in their eyes, is not even remotely considered a working variant. They are "superstitious" and do not even open the musical script. (I know this from my own experience, after more than half a century on the stage of the lyrical theatre). W. Felsenstein, the uncontested master of the lyrical theatre in the defunct DDR (East Germany) confessed in a study realized together with S. Mechinger, and entitled "Musiktheater", with a sincerity that we need not question: "While the music is interpreted for me [...] the idea comes to me. Today I regret that in my youth I refused to study the music [...] this is why I ask them to play it over and over".11 This is the professionalism of a Europe-famous opera director and school creator! It is like a blind person tried to write a study on form and colour, and for this he would be satisfied with the information he had from the person who would describe painting for him, in museums and galleries. Or, as if one gave in to pure fantasy (as amateurs do), since being under the impression of an audition (be it repeated several times) is not only too little for a professional opera director, but also dangerous. Listening to the music over and over again can bring a plus to the understanding and internalizing of the music only when it is accompanied by another type of awareness that comes from an attentive analysis of the 10

"Schabernack [a farse] with Ritter Falstaff", an article signed by E. Tochtermann, in Süddeutsche Zeitung, in München. 11 From the journal L'arc, nb. 27: "L'Opéra comme théatre", Paris, 1990, Librairie Duponchelle, p. 63.

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musical script. Furtwängler rightly maintains when referring to those who repeat the auditions to the infinite: "The one who thinks that by repeating the audition he can understand and sing better is very wrong. It would be much too easy" (W. Furtwängler, Entretiens sur la Musique, Paris, 1953, p. 78).

* "Each phrase, no matter how short, has for me the importance of an entire act" (R. Wagner – Intimate Diary)

Unfortunately, it is enough for our best modern director to get a synopsis of the opera, or just the text of the libretto with its indications: from where the characters enter the stage and where they go, and whether they need to sit on a chair or not. Who wastes his time with the music and its implications? Who is still willing to be bothered by such futile things? Mr. Director minds his own business, peaceful, and without any interferences of this kind. Really? Has Mister Director ever stopped to ask himself what he would have to gain if he understood the tonality, the bar, the tempo, the harmony, the modulations, the rhythmic formulas and their variations, or the profile of the melodic line, in short, the complex syntax that defines the form and the atmosphere of that particular opera clearly and precisely? Could he understand that by decoding the constituent parts of the musical script, he might also discover the roots of the drama and would have access to the inexhaustible foundation of the music? That he, then, could establish a clear topographic map of the affective motivations? That he could obtain a pattern of interpretation? Well, apparently not very often. Most of the directors cannot be bothered with such "trifles" (especially as they do not have the knowledge to trace and understand them). They only think in broad terms. They are the prisoners of pure fantasy and are contemptuously detached from any link with the musical reality. When Jorge Lavelli spoke about the opera Faust, which he directed in Paris in 1975, he also confessed to the fact that the direction had been decided upon in the beginning, independently from the musical script, from the music itself; the great decisions had already been taken: "Le fait qu'il ait une partition ne change pas la base de mon travail. Les grandes options sont prises à l'avance", affirmed Jorge Lavelli, textually (cf. "Opéra", L'avant scène, March-April, 1976, p. 81).

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* So that we may understand what they could gain by such "waste of time", I will refer to a very simple aspect: the triolet. The modest triolet! Why and how does the composer use it? It is not because when he composes he notices that he has several syllables that are equal as value and that he has to distribute them within the same bar. No. In musical language, the triolet represents an over-burdening of the content, of its unfolding in too short a time, and with great ponderosity; he would prefer that time should be more "ample". By using the triolet, the composer introduces within the bar more than it would normally allow him to. And this means that the interior tension of the music is increased, as each of the tempos in the bar carries a kind of imbalance: the tension is created between the two notes of the accompaniment and the third of the voice, or vice versa, all having the same value. It generates an impressive interior force, and this is the very intention of the composer. Let us not forget that we are in full-swing Romanticism, a style which has as dominant characteristic this overload of intensity which normal expressive means can hardly comprise. Consequently, the singer-actor, and even more so the director, in order to obtain this enhanced artistic effect will have to be conscious of such… essential details, realising in accordance with them, by the dramatics of the movement (the director), and by intense participation (the singer) a convincing audio-visual correspondent on stage, which would measure up to the intentions of the music. To exemplify the way in which the composer expresses the interior state of mind of the protagonist and justifies his behaviour along the dramatic scenes by making use of the triolet, I will refer to a fragment taken from Act I of the opera "Werther", by J. Massenet. First, let me make a remark, though. Directing rehearsals should begin with one or more meetings between the director and the performers, so that they should clarify, based on the reading of the music, the psychological contour of the characters as well as the precise atmosphere of each scene, tableau, or act. I repeat precise, as the data contained in the musical script are unequivocal, even if they allow within their frame an expressive range, which can be diversified in infinite nuances. I will draw Werther's "melodic portrait", as they should do in such meetings. Werther's uncommon sensitivity, which he proves at his first appearance on stage, is expressed in his first aria, a hymn to Nature – "Invocation à la Nature". In this aria, in its middle part, the orchestra plays

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triolets more and more, as a suggestion of how this sensitivity will transform in consuming passion, during the duet with Charlotte.

Fig. 2: The beginning of the duet Charlotte-Werther, Act I

Obviously, the orchestra does not have a 12/8 bar by chance, while the vocal melody unfolds in a 4/4 bar (which means that while the singer has 8 quavers to sing, the orchestra has 12); meaning that, on each beat of the bar, to each quaver of the vocal line, three quavers correspond in the musical part of the orchestra, a triolet. This creates a very special tension. Werther does not express what his soul apprehends, this anticipation being present only with the melodic line of the orchestra, which means that it is present in his subconscious. The intensity created between two and three is not dominant from the beginning, as at the beginning of each four tempos of the bar there is a quaver pause – that means that from each triolet the first note is missing, being replaced by a pause. This ragtime shows that Werther's commitment is only starting to be felt, it is not plenary manifest – he does not have the power and the courage to assume it. Only the orchestra suggests the accumulation of this unborn, unclear feeling in his soul. The director, who supervises the action on the stage, will ensure that the expression of the behaviour of the protagonist should display a very

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well tempered crescendo, to match the rising tension between the two notes of the voice and the triolets of the orchestra. Once the voice also sings triolets, Werther's involvement will gain more and more contour. During the melody, these triolets become more and more present, more explicit in the hero's discourse. (Nevertheless, in those moments when Werther's affective tension diminishes – giving the impression that the storm that ruffles his soul comes to a stop – his song takes the form of a recitative and the orchestra only plays one chord on the first tempo of each bar.) Before the end of the duet, by the more and more frequent presence of the triolets in the vocal melody (there are six triolets in only two bars), the excitement reaches a peak, and at the end of this act the orchestra explodes in an avalanche of triolets, consisting of thirtysecond notes. Here, the option that the heart has chosen, and which it seized relentlessly, is definitive (see Fig. 2, the end of the duet). From this moment on, nothing will be able to change his fate. At the end of the opera, Werther's fragility, leads him to a total break down, as he is not able to bear this interior combustion any longer. His overly sharp sensitivity has prefigured his destiny. The force of the feelings being stronger than the person who generated it, will lead to the fatal dénouement. Consequently, with the aid of the triolets, the composer expresses one thing, while, at the same time, draws the attention of the reader of his text to the fact that this reading should lead to a suitable interpretation, which would observe the extraordinary interior tension of the musical script. The nuances, though, of this tension, and the expressing of such nuances is up to the temperament and vision of each singer. This would be one example of how an analysis of the musical elements can start, which would help artists motivate and support the emotional load of the music. On this basis, the behaviour of the character on stage can be negotiated by the director and the singer, and the beneficiary is the artistic outcome. If based on the musical details of the script, the entire atmosphere of the moment can be deduced easily, and, consequently, the art director will find the right answers related to the setting, lights, etc.

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Fig. 3: The finale of the duet Charlotte-Werther, Act I .

*

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In order to illustrate the manner in which the composer seems to set traps for the one who reads the musical text only superficially (as I did in the case of Susanna's aria in Figaro's Wedding above), I will stop for a moment at Violetta's last aria from the opera Traviata, by Verdi, "Adio del passato", in which the heroine, feeling her end near, is wracked with regrets. I will only insist on the group of four sixteenth notes, and their expressive value, as I noticed that this is the most neglected musicaldramatic "detail" by many of such famous… traviatas. The director must not be fooled by the silence and the exterior "immobility" imposed by the legato of the melody, which can so easily turn to monotony (especially the last four turns at the end of the aria), as it is played 17 times during the aria, with only slight variations of the intervals (tone, semi-tone, minor third, and back: la, si, do, la; semi-tone, tone, minor third, and back: solଈ, la, si, solଈ, or tone, tone: la, si, doଈ, etc.). These intervals consist of four semiquavers, both for the voice and for the orchestra. The danger that monotony might set in appears when the singer mechanically and involuntarily lays the accent on the third note of this rank – especially on the note do from the first formula, a semiquaver that should not be emphasized. On the contrary, it should be lower in intensity as compared to the preceding semiquavers, in order that it might suggest the nuances that both the text and the music require. The play of the intervals between the first two quavers of the ranks suggests at times hope (tone: la, si), which followed by the next semi-tone (si, do) expresses fatigue; other times, the same suggests painful resignation, even despair, followed by a feeling of futility, which leads to the resolution of letting go (semi-tone: solଈ, la); in the third variant (tone, tone: la, si, doଈ) it suggests an obvious interior despair, as Violetta cannot believe that life will ever smile at her again.

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Fig. 4: Traviatta, Act IV, Fragment from Violetta's aria "Adio del passato"

* Once the director is familiar with such characteristic Verdian12 means of expression, in his wish to render the interior struggle of the heroine as clearly as possible, he will have to ask the singer to put the right stress on this rank – to resemble a fading flower whose petals come off one by one, a rank formed by four semiquavers which have to bear a different expressive subtext each time. Such nuances will colour the expressivity of interpretation with kaleidoscopic richness. The obsessive repetition of the 12

See Antifonar epistolar [Epistolary Antiphonary], pp. 93-94.

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rank, as a redundancy of the irreparable (which might easily put the musical vigilance of the soprano off guard), will have to suggest during the aria more and more various nuances: the dim light of the memories, regret, inner struggle, tired hope, drowned in sorrow, and then the feeling of the implacable. The interpretation will avoid the mechanical, uniform monotony of the repetition of this group of notes (which might sound like a hurdy-gurdy13, as it happens too often), and will allow the dramatic feelings to build up and suggest the exaltation and the exuberance typical for such illness when the imminent end arrives.

* Such reading of the text might suggest to the director and the art director to use the lights when Violetta reads the letter sent by Giorgio Germont, in such a way as to bring the stage into a certain foggy atmosphere, little by little, as if announcing a strong wind. Thus, the real ambiance of the space of the room, with all the surrounding objects, disappears. Through this effect of the lights, the image of reality that the spectator perceives through the angles of tactility, the palpable, will be melted into a diffuse, ambiguous mass, on which he can see only Violetta's vague figure singing the aria "Adio del passato". Thus, the performance, supported by the right interpretation, will penetrate freely in the imaginary evoked by the music with all its intense nuances. It also means that the spectator is considered with great attention and honesty, and his own contribution and collaboration is valued. The musical-dramatic effect cannot be conceived without the sensations that will be transformed into representations, which are created both by the stage ambiance and by an appropriate interpretation of the contents of this aria; the spectator will be provided with the chance to follow the music unfold and complete it with his own imagination. This is why the public does not need to be patronized and kept on a short leash by the director through naive "teachings" (as with projections of images that transfer the text of the aria), which are beyond the border of their own intellectual faculties; that is, the public should not be considered less endowed with what it takes to perceive and understand the music. The interpretation of Romantic music – contrary to that of the counter-point one, in the times of 13

In the Antifonar epistolar [Epistolary Antiphonary], pp. 91-94, I treated the technical details of interpretation of this aria extensively, and on that occasion I also drew the attention of the reader upon some notable inadvertences in the musical execution, with examples on a CD.

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Palestrina whose virtues coagulate and concentrate the state of mind – offers the imagination an opportunity for escape and a chance not to go beyond the real limits of the musical text; in other words, it gives the artists all capabilities, but not beyond what is possible… from a musical point of view. The creative imagination of the director, when benefiting from the decoding of these sonorous guiding marks and using them as main resource, will not be tempted to go astray into sterile quests which lead him towards astronomical distances, and end up in absurd direction solutions and in gross disagreement with the music (another such example will be shown in Chapter XIII, with the 2005 Traviata in Salzburg). Accordingly, the spectator will not just observe, in full perplexity, the sorrowful phantasmagorias whose only "positive" characteristic is… the scandal they provoke.

* There is no doubt that the stage solutions belong solely to the director, and are conditioned by the associations that are born in his imagination, under the impulse given by analysing and internalising the music. His analysis will have to be understood and assumed by all the other parties14. The directive approach is granted full liberty on one condition: that the solution found should not throw the spectator thousands of yards distant from the musical atmosphere, by the intervention in the performance in a "suitable" moment of a Stalin or Mao, or, by the appearance of J. Lavelli's big truck on stage… As I have mentioned before, the creation of these "princes of destruction" lets us weigh the deeds of the ever-obsessed-by-the-differentsyndrome Mr. Director, in the light of what has just been said, as well as of Th. Ribot's remarks in his classical study "L'imagination creatrice". (This different-syndrome has struck everywhere, becoming an obsession of our epoch, a monomania. As a symbol of this syndrome, I will suggest that you think of the immense poster that appears on the side of the motorway at the outskirts of Vienna, the capital of the waltz, which is meant to lure many innocent tourists and which reads "Wien ist anders!" [Vienna is different!] I cannot stop wondering: different how?) Consequently, it is not important how; it is enough that it is different. Aesthetic principles, especially those referring to quality, have been 14 Theatre is team-work, harmonic par excellence; otherwise, the artistic synthesis might just not take place.

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thrown overboard and replaced with the delusion of change at any cost. Culture is, thus, replaced by fashion, the carrier of the flag of this difference, which reaches its climax every season. The unusual is known to attract and arouse the interest of the jaded, the anguished, and the bored. The mentality of this potential tourist, the target of the above-mentioned poster, will find in this announced difference enough reasons for his considering Vienna as an irresistible attraction. Vienna? Yes! On one condition: that it is totally different from… Vienna!

* But let us go back to the opera. The mechanism of ingenuity is very clearly highlighted by Th. Ribot's above-mentioned study: The creative imagination entails two fundamental operations: dissociation, followed by association. Association functions in two ways: I. by contiguity – a form that is limited to the skills acquired through our reflexes (that is the reproducing of the previous connexion), and II. by analogy, or resemblance, which, at its turn, has three moments: 1. the moment of presentation; the starting point, which consists of a state A, obtained by perception; 2. the moment of assimilation, in which this moment A is acknowledged as similar to another state – A1, existing in the warehouse of memory; this is a capital moment, considered as the moment of active assimilation; 3. the moment of reciprocal evocation, which takes place due to the fact that A and A1 co-exist in our consciousness. Analogy is a process that brings forth new groupings, thus producing original inventions. It is due to: a. the quantity of common attributes that are compared; for instance, between the series X, B, C, D and F, G, X, H, only X is common; b. the larger the number of common elements, the more extensive the analogy, for example, between a cetacean and a fish, the non-specialist will see a greater analogy than a specialist, or a scientist. All forms of creative imagination entail affective elements, as well, as affective dispositions are the ferments for ingenious creation.

* Let us see how Mr. Ljubimov's creative imagination disembroiled – or rather embroiled – the drama Rigoletto.

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In the first tableau which represents a feast in the Duke's palace in Mantova, besides the Duke and his court… Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others are present. What compelled the director to associate Rigoletto's story with the history of mankind's contemporary butchers, in order to justify their appearance in the court of a Renaissance prince? How many common characters did this director find between the atmosphere of the opera and the protagonists of the 20th century's horror, in order to bring them as brothers in the time of the Renaissance? In order to underline even more convincingly (as the Master thinks) the atmosphere brought about by Verdi's music, Ljubimov completed it with the parents of the Gulag and the KZ's! Operating with such "fine" allusions, the assimilation of Communism and Nazism with the Renaissance, which Europe's culture and civilization still prides itself in, becomes even more obvious, and leads not to Rigoletto's failure, but to the failure of the director's imagination. It is no secret – maybe only for the least informed person – that the libretto of the opera Rigoletto, is a loose representation of the drama Le roi s'amuse, by Victor Hugo. Let us remember that in the first Verdian version, the Duke of Mantua15 had been King Francis I (whom Verdi was forced by censorship to give up), surrounded, at the Court of France, by the entire elite of the Pleiades. It is known that Marullo, in the Verdian version, was nobody else but the French intimate and lyrical poet Clément Marot, from Hugo's version. This poet's lines were used by many musicians and composers to write music to, Enescu among them. Rigoletto was the Italian correspondent of Triboulet, the buffoon of Kings Louis XII and Francis I, whom Rabelais considered to be a morosoph – a wise fool. Even the French monarch was afraid of his quick tongue. By mixing things so dramatically, Ljubimow proved that in his mind the whale was a… fish. Or, maybe, he wanted to sweeten the image of those champions of disaster that marked the first part of the last century. If his professional training could not help him in deciphering the code of the musical text, he could at least let himself be inspired by the generous text of the drama, highlighting the tragedy of such a characteristically Romantic figure – the buffoon16. The essence of the conflict in this opera, which is the support for the entire dramatic plot, can be reduced to the following scheme: the two "students" Rigoletto has – the 15

In those days, Mantua was much ahead of Paris (see Ion Piso and Doru Popovici, Antifonar Epistolar [Epistolary Antiphonary], Bucuresti: Albatros, 2004, pp. 84-85). 16 The hunchback buffoon, alias Rigoletto, as well as Quasimodo, the bell-ringer in Notre-Dame de Paris hide under their apparent deformity an unfathomably gentile soul.

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Duke, his sovereign, in vice; and Gilda, his daughter, in virtue – will meet in spite of all the precautions he took to prevent this from happening. And it was bound to happen. Gilda, lured by the mechanism her father instilled in the Duke's soul, will become the victim of the farce that the buffoon himself set up at the palace, with so much cynicism. In the end, wanting to punish the vice, that is, his master, Rigoletto will kill virtue, that is, his own daughter.17 What an extraordinary material for a true director! I wonder why Mr. Ljubimov should need Hitler, Stalin and Mao? Were they of any help in enforcing the conflict, or in making the end more implacable? They could not add anything to the contrasts that the genius of Verdi, and that of the Romantic Victor Hugo distilled in the drama. Moreover, the director drowns, consistently, in more futile absurdity, fatal to the artistic management of the opera. Wagner, in a letter to Liszt, affirmed: "In dramatic music, each bar has to be justified, expressing an idea that refers to an action or a character".18 Consequent to this obvious aim, expressed so clearly by the father of the musical drama, I ask Mr. Ljubimow: What is in the music of Rigoletto that he found to refer to Mao, or Stalin, and that characterises them? Uselessness in art is like poison for an organism. It kills! And this is how it does this. At the beginning of Tableau II, in the above-mentioned direction, during the duet Sparafucile-the bass, and Rigoletto, the latter, dressed in a Napoleonic cape, with a Ch. Chaplin hat on his head, and imitating his walk, prances ridiculously around his interlocutor19. What the director did not understand was that Rigoletto led a double life. He led two kinds of lives, which, if mixed, annihilate the drama. At the palace, Rigoletto, the buffoon, is the engine of the parties, and his extraordinary zing entertains these high society parties. After "work", leaving the world he despises, he re-gains his true identity. Far from the palace, he is no longer forced to be another person, who comes up against his own consciousness. Coming close to home, where he keeps the treasure of his life – his daughter – he can be anything but a buffoon. In his meeting with the swordsman Sparafucile, a professional killer, the terror he feels after Monterone curses him in the first act, intensifies terribly. The gravity of 17

See also the Antifonar… [Antiphonary…], as mentioned before. Emmanuel Bondeville, Une correspodance entre deux génies: Richard Wagner et Franz Liszt, communication à l'occasion de la séance publique annuelle 17.11.1982, Académie de Beaux-Arts, Institut de France, Paris, MCMLXXXII, p. 10. 19 I have paraphrased the expressions used by the musical analyst in the Opernwelt (see above). 18

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the situation is in contradiction with the comic-ridiculous bounce à la Chaplin, unless the director wanted to annihilate the tension expressed by the music, by all means, thus turning everything upside down. Why go against the music? What a goldmine this opera is for the theatre man! And what an occasion this particular director missed! Such shocking ineptitudes disfigure the drama and defile the music! Regretfully, we must say that Ljubimow, the star, embraced by the naive West, impressed by his having been expulsed from the USSR, read this musical text like… a complete novice.

* I will repeat that if the musical script is internalized, as a consequence of musical analysis, it can become an enormous help for the drafting of a directorial conception, especially if the composer had a dramatic input himself, as Verdi or Mozart did, their feeling of the stage proving to be infallible. Mozart, for instance, expressed clearly the motif of death or disappearance, by using a descending melody, while the base in the accompaniment ascends (Gunthard Born), as he did in the finale of Don Giovanni or that of the killing of the Emperor in Titus, if I were to give just two convincing examples. Such obvious instances cannot be overlooked by the musically well-equipped director. Nevertheless, when he cannot find the visual correspondent of the suggestions in the music, he will sabotage his own work, lamentably missing the opportunity; not being able to understand the musical script, he does not think musically at all. I have often asked myself why some of contemporary directors resort so frequently to the anecdotic, the caricature, to anachronisms, or persiflage20; or, why they find it aesthetically (?) advisable to colour the argument with contemporary political allusion, in a word, not to consider the musical text and its artistic value seriously. Why do such directors prefer to enter the obscure dead-end of the absurd, wherefrom they will never be able to come out, instead of choosing to look to the endless space provided by the musical overflow of the script? Well, the explanation is 20 In an article in the journal Opernwelt, nb. 1, 1988, which analyses a staging of Les pêcheurs des perles, on the National Opera stage in London, the journalist noticed that the director and the art director of that production did not bother to treat the subject of the opera seriously. The setting was reduced to a simple marching of several paintings that were hung above the musical scenes, like a kind of labels. In short, that was considered to be an excess of kitsch, by which the director wanted to exaggerate the very idea of kitsch "style".

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rather simple. The musical script does not speak to them at all, as their professional training does not help them penetrate this language, which, for them, remains an unexplored and unexplorable territory – a white spot! Then, they take refuge in what they think might create surprises, even if embarrassing ones, thus drawing the attention of the public away from their professional misgivings and their dubious artistic taste. I am convinced that only by falling back on the implications and the suggestions of the musical script can interpreters avoid the artificial, and reach the artistic aim. This holds true for all parties, be they singers, directors, art directors, or conductors (who, conveniently, do not get involved in what happens on the stage, except when they find themselves facing the choir's… back, and when they tell the directors with desperation that "This cannot work!"). If they are not able to decode the musical script, they get disoriented, they take the wrong path, and they create confusion on the stage, and the entire performance goes astray. We have seen in this chapter how wrong it is to start staging an opera from an outside position instead of looking for solutions from the inside, from the music itself. The starting point remains the richness and the complexity of the music, and I will never get tired of repeating this, because the music is endless in suggestions and leaves enough room for various interpretative options, adjusted to the force, the temperament and the artistic vision of both the directors and the singers.

* As a provisional conclusion, I also want to enforce the idea that there is great difference between the rusty, "classical" direction, redundantly drowsing at the periphery of music as it is not capable of rendering any of the musical values of a script, and the schizophrenic and ridiculous roaming, practiced by a so-called avant-garde, from which the spectator cannot escape long time after the curtain has been drawn. The difference lies in the great space offered by the music. My intention in writing the pages above was born from my wish to suggest that there are great advantages in recuperating this extraordinary space, of the musical imaginary world, to the benefit of the interpreters (singers and directors alike), but which, unfortunately, remains inaccessible for those who do not master their trade. Is the opera in a crisis or not, since it has been brought to such a grievous situation? Well, a recent event has blown any doubt in this respect. The press service of the Deutschen Oper am Rhein, gives the following press release: Starting May 9th 2013, Tanhäuser by Wagner will

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only be performed under a concerto form at the Opera in Düsseldorf. The management of the German Opera Am Rhein Düsseldorf-Duisburg, published in May 8th, 2013, under the signature of Detlef Obens, the following press release: "It is with great consternation that we feel obligated to react as to the situation that some scenes [in this opera] created, especially the scene of the shooting, which is performed in an extremely life-like manner; these scenes provoked such a trauma to several spectators, both physically and psychologically, that they had to seek medical care. Having pondered all possible arguments, we have reached the conclusion that we cannot accept the responsibility of such serious consequences of our activity. The un-modified form of this production cannot be performed any longer. We have talked with the director about the altering of some scenes. He refuses on artistic grounds. As we have to respect his artistic freedom, we have decided that starting May 9, 2013, Tanhäuser will be represented under a concert form" (see next page). Sooner or later we had to get here. The most tolerant public, the German public, could not take it anymore! This is exactly what this study anticipated.

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CHAPTER IV THE SPECTATOR

"We are all excitable; only some are expressive". (I. L. Caragiale) "If we want to set man free from material concerns, this is in order that he may use his freedom studying and contemplating the truth". (H. Poincaré) "Let the spectator raise his thoughts higher than material satisfaction". (I. Ghica)

For this endeavour to be well-anchored in reality and gain a plus of objectivity, at the end of this preliminary section dedicated to the reasons that influenced the path of the opera theatre in our times, I would like us to take a peek at the theatre hall beside the stage (which I referred to in the previous chapters), where we can find those that the whole performance is meant for. A performance without an audience is pointless, it is nonsense. Consequently, I propose that together with the reader, we should consider, at the other pole, the behaviour of the public for which the curtain is opened every night, and the whole machinery of the reality of the scene is set in motion. Sometimes this machinery is the result of the effort of more than 1000 people! I use this quantitative argument as my intention is to be as convincing as possible for my fellow-contemporary man who seems to find interest mostly in quantity, which he considers to be a carrier of value. Value, these days, seems to be exclusively attached to size. The value criterion and the hierarchies established by value do not rely on quality any longer but on the inarguable quantity. The internet (sometimes the only source of knowledge and conscience of the contemporary man) can tell one, with mathematical precision, the number of tourists that visited the Louvre last week, or the sum of money the most recent New-York buyer spent on a Picasso. It cannot provide us, though, with the name of a painter that should be held in the top list of the most

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valuable ones, according to aesthetic principles. If the fresco in the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is situated only a little higher than Giacomo Balla's "Mercure passant devant le soleil", that is due only to the fact that the ceiling of the chapel is far larger than Balla's painting. Moreover, as today's market is not able to offer any Michelangelo, no "palpable" value can be attributed to him.

* "In our days, the exigency of the public is more necessary than ever". (Pablo Casals)

Any artist who has stood on the stage, in front of the public, will be able to testify that between him and the spectator, his fellow-man, a certain type of communication is established. In an inexplicable and miraculous manner, a fluid is born, and the way the public appreciates the performance depends on this type of fluid communication: the hall can receive the show well, or, on the contrary, sometimes it is opaque, even… absent. In fact, the performance is a dialogue between both parts – the stage and the hall – and both have to be active, even if not under the same form or at the same level. Herder mentioned once that music arises the most powerful feelings, and the person who has these feelings, feels that he/she is taken out from a state of quiescence. Passiveness is totally alien from the contents of the notion of spectator. Those who are present at the performance only in the idea of getting something like a perfusion, without having to make any effort or participating actively in any way, just sitting back and relaxing, are very wrong. Although they sit comfortably, for a few hours, in the stalls or less comfortably, in the balcony, they will not enjoy their quiet if they have the proper "mental and spiritual stimuli", so to speak. The interest of the spectator, his concentration, crucial for a successful performance, firstly depends on the stage, on the persuasive means that the actor brings to his role and on the degree in which this actor forgets his own identity and lets himself be absorbed in the personality of the character he embodies (he forgets about himself, but not to the point where he cannot control his act any longer). Thus, the just participation on the part of the actor conditions the one of the spectator.

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Secondly, the availability of the public should not be underappreciated, their readiness1 for an active involvement helps them receive and assimilate the message coming from the stage2 to a higher degree. If the spectator is also an informed one (the French call this, so beautifully and suggestively, to be avertí, which means prepared, on the right track) he will live a conscious artistic satisfaction, since he will not miss, but on the contrary, will enjoy the surprises that the music has in store for him; at the same time, he will better understand everything he sees on the stage – the entire richness and value of the artistic means that the show uses. Only in this way can the spectator forget about himself, identifying with the stage, thus having access to and entering in a deep resonance with the meaning of the opera. This resonance will help enrich his own substance, showing him depths he, himself, was not aware of, because everyday life experiences always keep him far from this inner treasure, which is but rarely explored, if ever. If he leaves the short-sighted utilitarian perception of life, which reduces everything to matter and its ownership, the spectator will benefit from another perspective. Getting a distance from contingency, which absorbs him and owns him to sub-human dimensions all day long, he will have access to a world which his subconscious longs for, particularly since

1

I have to underline the fact that the way in which we ask the public to accept this trip, in the company of music and with the complicity of the stage, cannot be that of giving them shocks, "strong" emotions, especially at the beginning. Some directors do just that, throwing the public in a whirlwind in which they are attacked by all kinds of aggressive images. This is the only means such directors know, that can impress the public. On the contrary, I am convinced that the overture was created on the very purpose of "predisposing" the listener, of preparing the spectator for what is to follow. 2 Some modern directors, though, have introduced the most inappropriate means of approaching the interpretative art, as well as the real "secrets" of the musical masterpieces, by encouraging an avalanche of publications that dwell into the private lives of the artists, be they composers or singers. This is a sure path to keep our public at a distance, far from the contents of art, severing their possibility to get closer to its intimacy which is totally different from the intimacy of the private life of any particular artist. Such indiscretions, by which the personal life of the artist is brought to light, will only satisfy a curiosity, which, more often than not, is only a dubious modality of pleasing the sick curiosity of the street, which is banal and deceiving by definition. An even more "naive" idea is to think that there exists a direct or mechanical link between the life and the work of an artist, in order that we may have a "glimpse" into what his creation might be, and try to explain its merits.

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it represents the true part of his nature, the very quintessence of his humanity. This is how, as I imagine, any creator wishes his dialogue with his spectators to be, a dialogue in which he confesses his creed, expecting the public to believe him so that they might engage in this resonantly harmonic musical journey. The genius of a great composer, the depth and the height of his creations, make us have an insight into the fact that this kind of communication often has the importance of a testament on the creator's part, and not only an artistic one, its gravity being close to tragic. This is why nobody is entitled to take it lightly, laugh about it, as many contemporary interpreters have done and still do, under various pretexts which are mainly facilitated by their own cultural "innocence" (see the above-mentioned persiflage or caricature of the masterpieces). The following image undeniably illustrates how a soft beverages company considers they should use the most famous portrait of the world painting heritage in an advert, a portrait that Leonardo's genius painted in order to praise women and their inner beauty, the mystery of their soul. I also included a picture of the famous original so that we might understand a few remarks made by illustrious commentators, of which I can mention Vasari, Leonardo's contemporary, but also Kenneth Clark, our contemporary; the value of this masterpiece is explained in entire libraries. I would like to draw the reader's attention to the position of the hands, which in the ad for mineral water is changed so that the Gioconda might become even more "eloquent" as ad for that particular product. "… The axes of the head, the bust and the hands were carefully studied, on the intention of directing our look on the model, following an equal and continuous movement…" "… Gioconda's smile is the supreme example of this inner richness [...], a smile we only encounter in the portraits of the queens and the saints of the cathedrals in Reims or Naumburg…"3 All these disappear in the eyes of the defiling man, that is, the business man whose only thought was to use this unique smile in order to make as much money as possible, by using a very efficient promotion. This is how, coûte que coûte, Gioconda, due to her world-wide fame, has become in our times a sales-woman of mineral waters. The same happens in music because the principle of commercial efficiency is identical. 3

Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, Livre de Poche illustré, 1967 (a translation after the English edition, Leonardo da Vinci, An account of his development as an artist, Cambridge University Press), pp. 214-218.

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Fig. 1: The ad for the mineral water "Ferinelli".

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Fig. 2: Gioconda, Paris, Louvre, famous picture taken by Giraudon, in Kenneth Clarke, Leonardo Da Vinci, Livre du Poche, 1967, p. 215.

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If we do not intend to compromise ourselves in front of our descendants, we must keep ourselves from being ridiculous and overlook or even annul the anagogical character of so many masterpieces, by means of our superficial interpretation or by our dull understanding. To transform something valuable into its opposite, compromises and disqualifies us. It shows that we lost our inner judgement. Unfortunately, the fear of being ridiculous has long deflected from our contemporary world, our behaviour being free from the "bad habit" of ethics given by laws that society has set for man in so many thousands of years. We are the witnesses of the usurpation of many such values which we have gained during the multimillenary track of civilization; such values were built in an ever ascending path on the mountain of culture, even if sometimes they met with embarrassing and regrettable syncope (like the epoch we are living in). This is why, in spite of our times, I consider that it is absolutely unfortunate for such criminal acts to happen in our world, the world of art; many peaks that humanity has reached in its cultural strivings are now degraded by just applying this principle of getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. Today's stages abuse these chaotic forms so that they might confuse, pervert, and destabilize the public taste, which is the opposite of what Leibniz considered that music should reveal, that is, "order is the great aid of our spirit". I am especially referring to the order and hierarchy of artistic values.

* Man has a natural inclination towards rejecting anything that might throw him off balance, that might provoke in him an inner imbalance, he refuses chaos in all instances; this holds true in the manner he appreciates music, as well. Nevertheless, in the most unexpected manner, contemporary directors, disfiguring lyrical operas, also enthrone disorder and incoherence, coming against their composers who tried their best to organize everything, especially relying on musical means.4 Disregarding its meaning, the contemporary interpreter, especially the director, introduces the arbitrary, which is nothing but the first symptom of professional impotence raised to the rank of dominant characteristic; I have referred to this type of artistic impuissance in the previous chapter and I will continue

4

The theatre and opera artist, as well as the spectators who have not understood that the "musical effusion" relies on a construction which is rigorously precise and organized, can easily be lost in music altogether.

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referring to such examples, as I have had the opportunity to work with many, and see how much they need critical reviewing of their work. The installation of chaos in the musical theatre has appeared gradually, under the pretext of renewing our means, of breaking free from habits of the past. As an illustration of this slow process of decay, though very dangerous and apparently irreversible, let us remember a saying belonging to the revolutionary composer Hector Berlioz, who, when characterizing the audience of his time, noticed a serious loss of the sentiment of beauty; such loss appears when vulgarity is not considered as shocking any longer, and thus, they look down upon the qualities of the interpretation. Therefore, the audience tends to notice unprofessional interpretation less and less, if they hide under forms that are non-artistic, but shocking enough to put the audience off track. The audience, therefore, have put up with such absurdities for a long time, and little by little, their "fighting back nerve" has been severed, and their artistic discernment diminished, even annihilated. This is why I consider that it is very important that the spectator be warned about the danger he is in. It is in his best interest to defend himself, to actively protest, under all forms possible, against the continuous encroach on his culture and taste, as well as on his other intellectual characteristics; they consider that the spectator has to swallow everything that is thrown on the stage, just because he bought a ticket! Consequently, the passivity of the spectators becomes the most important ally of those who treat them as a trash can; this is the main reason why we may say that their fighting back nerve was cut. This is how the two partners of this "dialogue", the aggressive stage and the tolerant hall, whose goodwill silence encourages the foolishness and the aberrations on stage, successfully collaborate for the "flourishing" of the lyrical art. If I voiced the echo in the soul and the mind of most of those who do not just uncaringly witness the contemporary opera performance, especially the contempt with which the music and the spectator are treated, I only did this so that I should not be part of the triumph and the installation of the inferior – which is a generalized passion these days. I tried to react against the impetus and the success of this "delinquency" which is practiced on a large scale by far too many ill-doers of our times. The first on my list, as I have already made it clear, are those directors that can be called (and I did that on another occasion) the taenias of the lyrical theatre, because they live from and against the substance of the "host" organism.

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* Both the scene (the interpreters), and the hall (the public) are tributary to the historical circumstances we live in. When we refer to another epoch than the contemporary one, interpretation represents, in fact, our active relation with what has been. We are referring to a resuscitation of the musical script, a live interpretation of it, which implies that, to a certain extent, there will appear a slight deformation of it, due to the individuality of the interpreter. In our capacity of cultured people, when we take advantage of a creation of the past, in order that we may spiritually feed off its values, we are also obligated to give it back its epoch (mentally), and the atmosphere that it entails. We have to do that because the epoch and the atmosphere marked the creation of the composer, they exist in an almost material manner in the canvas of the creation!5 This is why a masterpiece cannot be considered a simple assignment that anyone can just improvise with, under the commendable pretext of tearing down all taboos – such improvisation is a free promotion of non-artistic garbage. We should restrain from interdicted liberties, thus giving our conscience that particular epoch back, so that the spectator can share its climate and values, thus living the unrepeated character of masterpieces and their uniqueness that lead to cultural ecstasy and spiritual elevation. In fact, the spectator should feel belittled if, as some directors think, the past can be understood by the present only after it was totally annulled by being misunderstood and reduced to their dimensions.6

* It is, of course, true that we will never be able to revive the past in the eyes and the conscience of our public. We are trying, with the means provided by our craft, to highlight its most important characteristics, and not to provide it with a halo. At the same time, we have no right, as people living in the third millennium of European civilization, to clad past epochs in our misunderstanding and contempt, thus producing gross fabrications; we only reduce everything to our fragile and ephemeral point of view (only a person who is very limited is convinced that the world starts and ends with him), which becomes absolute, even though we all know how 5

See below Blaga's words on style. If this is how we conceive the freedom of expression, then we should see how terribly wrong this concept is justified in this situation, as it suppresses its own support; in the name of the relative you cannot turn everything to relativity, because the relative cannot be considered absolute… 6

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relative such a point of view is.7 Let us ask ourselves, together with Nietzsche in one of his famous and true retorts: can we adapt our past to the contemporary triviality, as the canon of popular opinions seems to propose?

* "I have a rule for you: go wild! Are you ready? Let the madness begin!" (words used by a show-master at the beginning of a concert in Bucharest, in 2010)

Art in general, and interpretation of art in our case, face a new issue these days. We need to address popular taste, to submit unquestioningly to the trend, which should not be pondered, should not be compared to the past, should not be filtered through our conscience, as any such action could help us resist this invasion of novelty8 at all costs. Addressing and answering these issues depends on each of us, on our personality and inner structure, on the perspective we have on things, given by the extensiveness of our culture. When faced with novelty, you can jump at the occasion. On the other hand, you can resist the fascination and wait till waters are clear. A remarkable man of theatre once affirmed: If you run after the audience, you only see it with your eyes…! How should we react to the needs of the public? Can we discern between what they want from what they need, so that they should not go back to the epoch when they were barely trying to walk in a vertical position? The more freedom we have to swallow novelties without chewing them first, the more the individual finds it hard to stop abusing this freedom, even when it comes against his own interests.

* I would like to warn the spectator regarding another danger: the overuse of "fantasy" on stage, provoked by the avalanche of soft technical

7

Michelson and Morley have proven that an observer caught within the system – in our case, the contemporary times – cannot make objective observations, because he cannot leave the system. 8 A "novelty" is very often not so new, but an actualization of old tricks or habits which have more or less cultural value.

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inventions of our times.9 Our admiration for such developments will have to be tempered, so that it is not transformed in ridiculous fetishism, which would mistake the means for the aim. No matter how extraordinary the technical means might be, they cannot, and should not become the aim, which happens only if we lose our minds. I make this remark as the public of many modern productions is overwhelmed with effects which are truly amazing, mind-blowing, but which are used only for their sake, not for the profound meaning of the artistic event. We, thus, become the slaves of technological gadgets, of the vulgar miracle that this seductive technology produces, which lures us and monopolizes our admiration. The degree of the public’s naivety in this exercise of interest and admiration is a consequence of the idleness of our reason. Some of today's directors, we can imagine, look enviously at the mega-catastrophes that modern cinema can show, which he cannot touch, due to the specifics of the theatre stage. Poor them! Related to the intention they have to impress the spectator at any cost, they also overuse paroxysmal states on the stage, without taking into consideration the danger that Fechner and Weber warn us about, regarding the ratio between excitation and sensation. In order for the sensations to build up in arithmetic progression, the excitation should increase exponentially, in geometrical progression. (Not long ago, on TV, a journalist presented a "cultural" piece of news related to the sensational, fastest pianist! Great!) Thus, the so-called artistic delight is pushed outside culture, where the criterion of quality is sovereign, to the sphere where the most important factor is the multiple of quantity, of an exponential increase which reaches neurasthenic peaks! This is how our epoch can measure itself against its idol. These are the lures that the spectator should avoid by all means.

* "Today, unfortunately, the more artists there are, the less art" (I. L. Caragiale)

Paradoxically (or not), the degrading of music takes place in times of "musical" inflation; this is another aspect that should strike the music amateur as odd, warning him and making him be more doubtful. Today, 9

With all the miracles that technological progress has provided, we cannot leave our human condition, because after each adventure we will come back again and again, to our old selves, to our human trail.

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we witness an immense arsenal of recording possibilities – with or without video support – that display an extraordinary high technological level (CD's, DVD's, Walkman's, operas on TV, etc.). This technological luxury, unfortunately, does not also mean artistic value. Operas on TV display lavish luxury, which can also detour the public's taste. All this technological arsenal is at our disposal day in, day out, it never lets us down. Still, sometimes you need to keep your distance, you need to understand that you cannot get involved, cannot have the necessary concentration10 in each instance; because if you are always on the alert, any audio or audio-visual sensation becomes banal. Consequently, great music becomes cheap, especially when it is "served" by poor interpretation. Traditional wisdom says that you get used to such a situation like "the frog gets used to the hail" – in time you just do not bother anymore. Whatever we hear or see, we cannot be moved. Music passes "over" us, it does not touch us, as water does not get the duck’s feathers wet. Nevertheless, those who manage the well-being of the software industry, so that they should not account for any losses, initiated the last phase under the influence of their cultural void: the novelty hysteria. Goethe seems to have had the intuition of such a cultural decline when he remarked: "the artist has too little gratitude from the world when he tries to raise their inner aspirations, and to give them a high conception about themselves, making them feel the sublime of their true noble existence. But when you know how to lie to them [...] helping them decay by the day, then you are their man!" Under such circumstances, it is obvious that the stage, in order not to be outpaced, lets itself be devoured by this syndrome of change at all cost (pretexts can always be found, when we lose control). They hoped that, irrespective of quality, which has become collateral damage, the mirage of novelty will attract people to the halls. In conformity with this strategy, the director thinks that the most adequate means to present an opera in modern times is that of neglecting the path that the music supports and proposes. In his mad quest to re-create, he has given up any acceptable solution that would take music into consideration, without realizing that music, especially great music, possesses an infinite reservoir of variants, comparable to isotopic states. In chemistry, there exist elements that do not lose their chemical identity in isotopic state, they remain the same, only their weight is higher, due to the variable number of neutrons in their nuclei. Similarly, there are countless plausible solutions in interpreting the musical script, without running from it, betraying it, or altering its identity. 10

This is one reason why Celibidache was so much against recordings, I think.

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What we need is just a little bit of genuine talent, a little more education, so that we might listen to music, the same way we listen to a professor or a wise adviser; in this case, the re-creation does not come as contrary to music, and does not offend it. Then we will see how – I know I am redundant, but I really need to get through to this generation – unexpected interpretative possibilities lie in front of us, which spring from the very substance of the music. The recreating-director overlooks, even contemptuously, the propositions of the musical script, defying music entirely.11 The result is that by fault of the re-creator, the public cannot understand what the creator wanted to say. Far from stirring an artistic interest, such direction solutions stir a state of bafflement which the spectator can hardly expect when buying his ticket. On another occasion, I remarked that if we break a statue, we could obtain a lot of particles that can be, then, repositioned in an infinite number of combinations, each more surprising in its novelty than the other. Still, they will be nothing but monstrous remains that have no coherence or link with their initial form, let alone the artistic loss! Just remember that it took dozens of specialists and a lot of time (several months) to just repair and give back the artistic splendour to the nose of Michelangelo's statue representing Virgin Mary, destroyed by the hammer of a barbaric monster.

* Within the pages I have written so far, willy-nilly, the ideal of our epoch has become clear, that is change for change's sake, the most infantile and ridiculous indulgence that has invaded the domain of the lyrical opera and its interpretation; considering such ideals, they have neglected the music, they even annihilated it, or used it in non-musical, interdicted, or illegal manners, only to bring their praise to generalized superficiality. I wanted to warn the spectator as to the danger of this spiritual impoverishment.

11

See above Verdi's attitude regarding some re-creations, as well.

PART TWO: TAKING THE READER ON A PROMENADE IN THE OPERA HALLS

"You cannot judge equitably but what you, yourself, can do". (Goethe)

In the following chapters, I will take the reader1 on a journey dedicated to a more detailed analysis of certain aspects regarding interpretation and problems related to it, which appear in the current state of the lyrical theatre. There are a few frame-ideas that I have in mind, that come from the internalization of my own experiences, some of which I have had during my professional career as a singer, teacher, and director; others are the result of my observation-sheets as an observer of the artistic scenery that is present in almost all opera halls, under our eyes, and in our ears. I named these frame-ideas, as they are meant to highlight a series of problems related to and even imposed by the interpretation of the masterpieces of lyrical art, even if they are far from exhausting this analysis of the crisis that the opera finds itself in. I will try to appeal to the reader's patience with the following chapters: x opera x x x x x

The character and the specific difference of the language of the Speaking and singing The atmosphere Experience and experiment Interpretation, a domain of the subjective Dilettantism: between "blind" routine, and "deaf" avant-garde

1 This syntagm – together with the reader – is far from being a rhetorical formula, it is my way of conceiving my relation with the other, with my fellow-being. It comes from a skill that I have acquired in my half-century career, a kind of professional specialism, which makes me always consider the presence of an interlocutor, the only one that can justify my actions.

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x x x x x x x x

Music – the opposite of chaos Tradition and its role in the opera Action and its caricature: chaotic fuss on the stage The spectacle as an… obstacle Profession and career "Il Trovatore" The composer and the… others Attention and concentration x The opera: is it a popular, an elitist, or a minor genre?

CHAPTER V THE CHARACTER AND THE SPECIFIC DIFFERENCE OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE OPERA

"In art everything is important: the small issues lead to the great ones". (Winkelmann)

Before getting to the above-mentioned chapters, I consider it advisable that I start by eliminating any confusion as to what the specific of the language of the opera (the lyrical theatre) is. In order that we may clarify this specific language – as it has developed during a few centuries, until it got to the form it has taken, that is from Mozart to Enescu, or Britten – the simplest path is to start by comparing two types of performances, which, at first glance seem to be fairly alike; from such a parallel, we can also deduce the principles that are at the basis of these two forms of theatre – the spoken one, and the sung one. One conception that can be considered to draw the difference between them can be reduced to the following formula: the opera is nothing but a theatre to which music was added, that is, instead of speaking, the actors sing. The other conception is represented by those who consider the spoken theatre an opera which has been deprived of its essential element, which is music. The first formula is embraced by those who see the opera as the syncretic2 result of the two elements: the text, to which music was attached. The assembling of the music with the text, or the other way round, only takes place horizontally, at the surface, as between two entities that have previously been constituted separately, in an autonomous manner, even an independent one. Therefore, it is no wonder that this 2

Syncretism = the more or less fortuitous, or accomplished combination of heterogeneous elements, which belong to various domains.

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manner of seeing things leads to the consideration of only the exterior aspects of the opera performance; it is mainly represented by the so-called French school. The second conception, the "German" one, considers the "assembling" of text and music – characteristic for the one who is intent on crossing beyond a horizontal approach, in view of getting to the intimate structure of the phenomenon called "lyrical theatre" – the main way in which great musicians have got involved in the creation of lyrical masterpieces that have had a long run: they see the relation between the literal text and the musical one as a synthesis.3 It entails a close, organic dependence, as well as a reciprocal conditioning of the two, that is, one which goes deep, into its structure, on a vertical scale, taking into consideration relations of intimate managing, which are subdued to the empire of the necessary, and which display an internal logical coherence, as Caragiale might say. Thus, the music and the text become an inseparable link between what can be heard and what can be seen during the performance. The really good interpreter is characterised by sharing in this idea of considering the structure of the opera, that is, of the lyrical spectacle, as a result of the melting of the parts that compose it, when these parts share close relations that lead to the forming of a unitary entity, in which the elements condition each other. I have often asked myself what the reason is why so many stereotyped interpretations we see in recent performances, have met with so much success and have become so fashionable (by contamination). The secret lies in the vision of the interpreter, be it the director, the singer, etc., that is, in their inclination towards considering the opera as a result of a combination in which the assembling of the component parts (the musical and the literal text) is more or less random, as if generated by a chance match. This is why they consider that these constitutive elements can bear all kinds of modifications. Unfortunately, this is the case with the vast majority of modern staging, characterised by the most arbitrary and 3 A synthesis represents the harmonization of elements that build up an organic whole, even if they come from various domains. Verdi's permanent struggle with his libretto writers is well known (there are two volumes of letters only with Boito, the librettist for Othello and Falstaff, published in Parma, at the Instituto di Studi Verdiani, in 1978); also famous is the battle that Puccini had with V. Sardou for the finale of the opera Tosca (see Piso, and Popovici, Antifonar epistolar [Epistolary Antiphonary], pp. 162-167). We can also recall Wagner's concept of Gesammtkunstwerk, that is, a unitary whole, which, the composer, himself, used as the author of both the literal text and the musical one; Wagner also got involved in the direction of his operas and he conducted the orchestra, at times, as well.

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artificial interventions which are also corrosive for the unity of the opera: they do not take into consideration the organic interdependence that lies at the basis of the synthesis of the music with the text, which started even in the period when that particular work was only in its embryonic state, in the mind of the composer.4

* If we draw a parallel between the opera and the great Greek tragedy which cannot be conceived without its axis - the choir - that is, without music (according to Nietzsche, the origins of the Greek tragedy is in Music, this is why his historic study is entitled Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik), we may say that the opera, even if it does not originate in the ancient spectacle, at least re-enacts in a modern form its model, that of the absolute artistic performance.5 From this point of view, the theatre in prose, that is modern drama, can appear as an obsolete artistic form, as it lacks the great element that creates atmosphere – music; it is music that triggers the imagination of the listener most effectively. This lack of music has been replaced, in the prose theatre, with a more and 4

I will prove the idea according to which the opera of a genius has at its basis a fusion of the text with the music, by means of enormous and painstaking work, by quoting from two letters belonging to Wolfgang, recently discovered (cf. SaintFoix), in which he confesses to his father, with reference to his future opera Figaro's Wedding: "… I like to master the subject [...]; an Italian poet has brought me a libretto that I think I will accept, if he agrees to tailor it as I think fit" (July 5, 1783, quoted in Saint-Foix, W. A. Mozart, vol. IV, p. 154). It is known that the discussion he had with Da Ponte, his librettist, lasted until towards the end of 1785. The second letter (November 11, 1785), shows how Leopold Mozart sees the titanic work that Wolfgang is engaged in, with the creation of Figaro's Wedding: "… I know the play; it is an exasperating work, and the French translation as well; it had to be transformed in the most freely manner, so that it could become an opera, and produce the effect of an opera [...] All these changes entail discussions and interventions until he gets a libretto that is suitable with his wishes and his intentions, eventually"; to continue, Saint-Foix makes the following remarks: between October 1785 and May 1786, besides the creation of 15 musical pieces, among which two piano concerts and a sonata for piano and violin, Mozart continued his work for the "dominant" Figaro's Wedding, the whole time (op. cit., p. 15) 5 The great apologist of the opera, Ch. G. Krause, in his defence of the genre, affirms that of all kinds of spectacles that the human genius has invented, the opera is not only the most extraordinary, the most magnificent, but it is the one that is capable of moving us most.

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more present sound illustration, that is, background music. The movie has done the same6, not to mention the TV, with its mostly irritating ads which alongside the visual also make use of the suggestiveness of the "sound images". The obvious aim is that the first, the visual, when associated with the music, should penetrate the subconscious of the consumer. Music, through its charm, conceals the too obvious commercialism, blurs it, especially when the melody is well-known and pleasant. Then, the association of the two, of the promoted product with its "attached" music, will not only markedly remain in our memory, but will evoke each other. Especially the music will automatically send the mind of the listener to that particular product, which is a classical form of conditioned reflex. There are cases in which the music of an ad persists in our memory, surviving for generations, even after the product has long disappeared from the market.

* We started off from the manner in which "popular" perception of exemplifying the difference between the two genres; the average spectator finds it a little hard, at least in the beginning, to understand why people communicate to each other, or confess their thoughts in a song, instead of speaking like normal people do. Exactly this "strange" aspect is the essential mark from which the great departure of the opera from the theatre begins, developing into two genres of performances. The average amateur, the non-professional, when he goes to the theatre – and if he still does! – is intent on seeing something interesting and different from what he lives every day; his impulse is a curiosity, be it a frivolous one, in which his cultural implication has, obviously, a minor character. The spectator wants to see a lot of happenings, unexpected episodes, sensational instances (the TV has taught us to look for the sensational), rich in breathtaking suspense, the only ones that can still catch his attention and stir his interest. His attention will function as long as he understands what he sees easily, and his curiosity is fed without any need for his intellectual involvement. This is the path to this kind of satisfaction. The usual and the unusual enter in a sort of conflict: our man would like to obtain with a usual effort, a minimum one, only extraordinary things, unusual ones! The opera show, in order that it might be understood and liked, asks for an activation of intellectual faculties and 6

Even at the beginning of the cinema, there was a pianist accompanying the silent film.

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for sensitivity, which transcend the level at which curiosity is fed, and novelties are consumed. Our great Caragiale commented, very inspired, regarding the exclusive interest of the public for the "interesting", for the unusual; it can make us meditate and get an insight into the secrets of art: "Macbeth is the masterpiece of dramatic art. Its architectonic construction is given from the very beginning; it is clear that his fate is sealed from the first scene, and, knowing what will happen, you are only interested in the purely artistic part [...] In the theatre, the question that is, or should be more important, is not what they play, but how they play it"7 (I.L.Caragiale, Opere, vol. II, Teatru. Scrieri despre teatru, Bucharest: Editura Academiei Romane, 2000, p. 779). If, at one point, man will decide to go to the opera, his interest has to go beyond the anecdote, beyond the drama of the little story unfolding on the stage, and give up the statute of a simple consumer of strong sensations. Otherwise, everything will seem to him ridiculously strange, even boring – and it is very possible that he will not come a second time. Only if he will brace himself and accept the provocation of participating actively, from his spectator's seat, to the "complications" that miraculously happen on the stage, which masterfully combine all the artistic means, where music is the omnipotent sovereign, will he really be admitted into the extraordinary world of this artistic genre. The opera will not fail in providing him with unexpected and elevated joy, on an entirely different level. In this new hypostasis, his common sense will not be contradicted by the fact that the actors on the stage sing instead of talk. Consequently, by trying to get his own forces involved, beyond the limit where they usually stop, the spectator will realise that the stage-reality that palpitates vividly in front of his eyes, reveals for him aspects that have been alien, if not kept secret till that moment; thus, being able to participate, his life will appear richer to him, more truthful, more fascinating, and more attractive than he has expected it to be. He will feel the endless possibilities of his spirit, which can hardly wait to be awakened, and which, in this way, will enrich his inner life. In short, he will, at first, conclude that there exists an enormous difference in nature between singing and speaking; then, he will 7

Eminescu goes even further with this analysis, telling apart the drama of character from that of intrigue: "In Sophocles' tragedies, we know beforehand what is going to happen, but the characters are crystallized and amazing by their frightening consistency, till they are defeated by their own selves [...] The drama of intrigue only consists of the conflict between two characters, who are placed in opposing sides" (Eminescu, Opere, Bucharest: Editura Academiei Romane, 1999, vol. III, pp. 183-184).

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see that through music his fantasy is attracted towards unexplored territories of his own profound self. Incited by this new perspective and benefitting from the extraordinary support from the "symphony" of elements synthesised in music (and I will permanently refer to masterpieces), he will feel the tensions of certain emotions much above the everyday ones, his cultural appetite will leave the convenience of the previous state, leaping to another orbit of his conscience. He will find here a new universe which will attract him due to its artistic dominant fascination and the depth of its fiction. Unfortunately, a part of the artistic characteristics that give this fiction its sparkle have been confiscated, degraded, and trashed around all dark sides of the quotidian, and, today, we live our lives under a continuous assault coming from the strangest rogueries and the most shocking superfictions, endlessly multiplying the foolishness8 of modern man, in his thirst of extravagancies that are… banal; or, in his quest for ready-made goods. Jumping in all directions in their understanding of the artistic phenomenon and the true nature of art, by mixing reality and fiction in the most pathetic manner (specific for some psychiatric maladies), we are in danger of making the most serious and unprofitable confusion. The guilt might be attributed, partially, to the extremes of possibilities within the cinema (not the art movies); then, there is the Verity trend whose creations are often below the barrier of what we call art, although this kind of opera has produced a genius – Puccini. The following confession, made while he was working at the opera Turandot, shows the evolution of his artistic conscience, which honours him: "Everything I have composed so far seems like a joke, as compared to the music I am writing now [...]; … to try out untrodden paths…" ("… tentare vie inconsuete"9). These words make us think that when the great musician met with the world of the myth, specific to the fairy-tale, started to understand how he let himself be captivated by either Social Realism, in Boema, or Historic Realism, in Tosca (C. Bouniquel).

* 8

As an example, let me tell you about the most recent, most ridiculous, though expediting (for us, the ‘always on the run’), and most scandalous fiction – that is, the fiction of the bank card; by suppressing in our subconscious the reality of the value of money (which is, in its turn a surrogate of value), this fiction has thrown the world economy in the deep crisis we are witnessing these days. It is so easy to spend, all the time, more than you have… The only merit of this crisis is that it might bring us with our feet, or our minds, to the ground. 9 In Leopoldo Marchetti, the text at picture 280.

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Far too many modern interpretations, belonging to various directors, singers, etc., start from a fundamentally erroneous aspect, which consists in the fact that they give in to the present-day trend, marked by superficiality in treating cultural matters; such superficiality leads to the pit of gross naturalism, which is embarrassing in the arts. Some just let their fantasy go wild. The next case I want to present is a sad illustration of such a manner of straying far from the understanding of the specific of art. In an interview on TV, the singer José Cura, top of the VIP list and adored by opera fans, expressed the following bright thinking, regarding the manner in which he found the real new path in the arts: "Let us go back to a world of the senses!"10 Appreciating his discovery, could we not be convinced that Mr. Tenor will be able to appease his thirst by drinking water from a spring painted on the canvas? I would never have stopped at such a level of misunderstanding the artistic if we were not assaulted today from all sides by the most unfortunate "naiveties" – I call them that just to avoid calling out their real names – which are offered abundantly on the stages of so many lyrical theatres around the world. It has become clearer and clearer, how easily we can step off the right track: by ridiculous fantasies, by mistaking the real for the artistic, etc. This extremely narrow path becomes large enough for us to tread freely, only if our God-given talent is placed in the care of culture.

* There is a substantial difference between the sung word and the spoken one – the spoken word, the notion, appeared at its origins as the abstract expression of human means to communicate, thus helping man get oriented in the surrounding world; there is also a difference between two fundamental possibilities of manifestation on stage: the dramatic performance and the lyrical one, that is, the literal text and the musical text with their respective specific mechanisms of constructing their own fiction. These differences lead us to grand art: the degree of transfiguration. Considering this artistic virtue, nothing can match music. 10

It is true that Rousseau also called us "To go back to nature!", but this was proclaimed two centuries ago, as a reaction against the artificial atmosphere that was dominating the lyrical theatre before Gluck's reform, and not after we went through the thick and thin of Verism. Rousseau's idea was not to imitate nature, but to embrace a natural behaviour on the stage (a behaviour that conquered Paris immediately, by the Intermezzi performances, belonging to the Naples school, like Serva Padrona, by Pergolesi). His position was also supported by the encyclopaedic representatives D'Alambert and Diderot.

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It makes us naturally desert the sublunary reality, in order that we might get taken and supported by the music in a world of artistic figments. We only need to not abandon it! We should hold on to this support – the music. We should keep away from absurdity, avoid it at all cost, especially since singing entails a special state of mind – a state of elation. Or, if we do not lead the spectator to that climax in a "natural" manner, this elation is quickly transformed into… ridicule. The opera could easily become a situation ("eine Angelegenheit", as the German would say), a business, and a perplexing circumstance! Geniuses, we may notice, posses the secret faculty of maintaining an inherent relation with reality. This is a thin, though resilient, thread that tells us of this transfiguration. I am referring to a strong relation that, by avoiding the absurd – which is the great enemy of artistic fiction – does not destroy the value of fiction in the life of any style, that is, it does not destroy the art component. Let us think that the Romanic style, or the Gothic one do not reflect the originary function of architecture, that of creating a shelter-construction. Especially in the case of the Gothic style, the great artistic convention replaces the need to maintain the relation with the originary purpose of architecture, that of building a shelter. As to the opera directly, the importance of this relation will draw our attention when we refer to the style of interpretation and how it may disregard it when staging a certain musical script; at the same time, it is responsible for the difference on stage between the natural gesture and the right one. To maintain this relation depends on the wisdom and talent of each performer, when they do not want to let fiction throw the perplexed audience in the arms of the absurd (which is a frequent case in today's art). The artist adjusts and fills the fictional world with his own ingenuity, without forgetting the meaning of the primordial convention, that is, the act of communication that art is; consequently, he will make sure that the message is received most efficiently. The impact of the fiction relies on the calibration of proportions, according to the privileged spiritual arsenal of the artist; thus, a more feeble, sapless, and lacklustre performance will vanish quickly, like sea foam left by waves on the sand. In order to appreciate the natural virtues of the opera, as compared to those of the theatre, I will start by exemplifying with the sung syllable, or word, or phrase, which have been transformed from a literal text… into music (a musical script). When placed under the magnifying glass of close analysis, we will find out that, starting with this musical-syllable, a whole complex and precisely structured world comes into being. By its nature, the spoken word or phrase cannot do that, even if we refer to the most inspired poem. The talent of the composer can break a word into its

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syllables without weakening its meaning, on the contrary, the meaning is enhanced. Let me explain my vision. In fact, anyone could ascertain the same: besides the height and the intensity of the sound that corresponds to a syllable in a word, or in a musical phrase, as well as of the horizontal relation with the preceding and succeeding sounds within the musical context, the functions of that syllable are not exhausted. There are other important aspects that come into play: the place this musical syllable occupies on the scale, its rhythmical value (that is, its duration and the accent it receives within the bar) are also part of the horizontal unfolding. The implications of that musical syllable on a vertical axis are also very important, that is on what is above and below the scale. All these factors are crucial for each and every single syllable! This is what happens when the syllable is put to service by the composer and becomes music. It has lost the liberties that the "dry" text gave it, which were more or less spontaneous within a spoken word or a phrase. It belongs now to a world in which the constraints it has been subjected to will enrich it with unexpected expressive values, coming from the world of musical forms encompassed by it. In order to exemplify the manner in which the suggestiveness of music supports, if not enhances the literal text, I will refer to Schubert, who is far from the opera genre, from whose creation I will take two examples. The first is the beginning of the lied Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel, op. 2, on Goethe's lines from Faust, whose piano accompaniment expresses Margareta's deep angst and distress after the first meeting with Faust. Let me give you the first lines of the song [in Lynn Thompson's translation]11: My peace is gone My heart is heavy, I will find it never and never more. Where I do not have him, That is the grave, The whole world Is bitter to me.

11 Translation from German to English copyright © 1997 by Lynn Thompson, Text added to the website: 2003-10-13, available at: http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=17757. The translator of this text is very grateful to Lynn Thompson for his gracious approval of our making use of his translation in this study.

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No matter how inspired Goethe might have been (see the lines in German, too12), as well as in translation, they are both far from the outbursts of the storm that seized Margareta's soul, which Schubert's music expresses so suggestively; the obsession of her thoughts is mixed with the movement of the spinning wheel.

Fig. 1: Franz Schubert, Gretchen am Spinnrade, op. 2.

Fig. 2: Franz Schubert, Auf der Wasser zu singen, op. 72

The second example comes from another Schubert lied, which he composed later, no. 72, Auf dem Wasser zu singen. The music expresses the voluptuous feeling of the man who drifts in a little boat, bobbing on 12 "Meine Ruh ist hin, mein Herz ist schwer, ich finde, ich finde sie immer und immer mehr" etc.

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the waves that sparkle in the dusk. I would like the reader to understand why I will not dare to translate one word of the original verse, and why I will not comment on them at all. Yet, I feel enormous regret that I cannot offer the reader the possibility of listening to this inspired and suggestive musical moment. As we can see, Schubert "paints" with his music, the movement of the surrounding nature, the swing of the waves in the sunset, as he feels it; at the same time, he expresses the enchantment he feels while looking at this scenery.

Fig. 3: J.S. Bach, Cantata no. 159, Sehet Wir gehen hinauf nach Jerusalim.

Bach, as we shall see, renders in musical language even the steps – that is, the word "to walk", or "to run", as A. Schweizer13 maintains – thus exemplifying the walk of the Saviour, who goes in front of his disciples and stops from time to time, looking back and saying: Here, we are going up to Jerusalem.

Fig. 4: J. S. Bach, Cantata no. 108, Es ist euch gut, dass Ich hingehe.

Another musical motif can be found in Cantata no. 108, which describes the steps of the Saviour when he says: It is better for you that I leave.

Fig. 5

Or, even the departure of the Saviour, in Cantata no. 64. 13

A. Schweizer, J. S. Bach, pp. 234-240.

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A. Schweizer textually affirms: "Many times, Bach represents laughter by the musical theme", and exemplifies this affirmation with the Cantata no. 166, whose text is: Be careful when fate smiles at you!

Fig. 6

* After such meaningful exemplifications of the virtues of music in describing an action, or replacing a word, let us go back to the syllable. The musical unity the syllable is part of – from which we extracted it in order to see it better – is determined by a centre of gravity, which is called tonality, which provides a framework for the harmony (the vertical aspect, which many frequently call, though improperly, accompaniment). In exchange for such "servitude", the syllable's life reaches unsuspected richness and complexity due to all the combinations it enters in, which very often even change its fate; I am thinking of situations when the refinement of the composer makes it possible for the commentary of the orchestra to intentionally contradict the meaning of the word or phrase (see Chapter I, in which Donna Anna's state of mind, which is suggested by the words that express her unbound wish for revenge, is contradicted by the orchestra, which alludes to her attraction, her passion for Don Giovanni, her father's murderer). It is certain that a drama actor also makes use of intonation and tempo, and thus has many interpretative possibilities. Still, the actor is alone, or almost alone, with his talent, while the singer can make use of an entire arsenal, which, in as much as it is complex and unlimited, is also precise and organized – it supports, enriches, and "colours" his interpretation (as well as the charm and the virtues of his voice). My intention is not to involve the reader in a course on harmony; I will just refer to a few hidden virtues of music, which represent by their psychological foundation a very rich and diversified source that the singers can use, in order to obtain the most ample and assorted expressivity. First, there is the interplay of modulations, by which one tonality follows another, that is, one state follows the other; then, there are the stops provoked by the delayed notes, that lead to a figurative resolution of the theme; last, but not least, there are the appoggiatura and the musical

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embroidery14. The latter initially had the role to enrich and adorn the melody, but the great creators of lyrical masterpieces have converted them, according to the meaning of the literal text, in ever flowing expressivedramatic values, as we have already seen, and we will continue to acknowledge in our exemplifications. All these connections between the word text and the musical text, encrypted in the musical script, are available for the singer, the director, etc., and all these connections can be put to use in order to bring richness and refinement to the expressivity of interpretation. These facets bring unfathomable freedom, in virtue of their combinatory potentials; they become, in music, inextricably connate crystallisations which could only be compared to the infinite combinations in the game of chess. Remember the perplexity of the Paducah who, wanting to reward the inventor of the game, realized that he does not have, in his entire kingdom, enough grains to satisfy the apparent modest request of his subject: one grain for the first check, then the double for the second, and so on… To highlight the values that we might obtain from, for instance, the simultaneity that music offers, A. Schönberg considers in his treatise on harmony that the scale / the melody represents the analysis of sounds, and the accord / harmony represents their synthesis; sounds interact horizontally in the melody, and vertically in the harmony. Let me remind you, alongside the extraordinary sestet in Lucia di Lammermoor, the famous quartet in Rigoletto, which Victor Hugo himself praised so much, when he attended the performance. He wondered how four characters can "talk" simultaneously, without disturbing each other and without confusing the audience15, who could very clearly understand them; thus, he converted his initial intention of bringing Verdi to court for copyright issues, into full admiration, even though Francesco Maria Piave, the librettist, had forgotten to ask the illustrious poet for permission of adapting his play Le roi s'amuse. The conclusion that we may draw from the above is that the advantages of the language of the opera lie within such musical details. It is this language in which music – the art that goes beyond nature – by moving the soul, feeds and lifts the human spirit. In the details we can find the most secret values that many artists, unfortunately, overlook, (see above the examples from Figaro's Wedding, Traviata, and Werther). The 14

It would be quite embarrassing if the public finds in music many such particularities and nuances, while the artist in his singing overlooks them, or balks at them. 15 On condition that the conductor keeps an active and discreet watch over the maintaining of the dynamic balance.

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reality of the fiction is rendered in this language unmediated, vivid, and captivating, thus making us go through extraordinary experiences. I will try to convince you of this reality by giving you another example which I also used in a long and fragmented dialogue with my dear friend, the prolific composer Doru Popovici; I would underline there how Mihail Jora, using extremely reduced musical means, quantitatively speaking, but extremely effectively and subtly employed, manages to enrich and amplify lines belonging to a great poet, such as Arghezi. The expressivity of the music causes an increase of tension in the atmosphere that the verse creates, and focuses it, like under a great magnifying glass, till it reaches the incandescence of an unbearable nightmare. The manner in which the song unfolds in a succession of bars that seem totally out of order (2/4, 10/8, 11/8, 9/8, 6/8, 12/8) embrace the Arghezian verse, accumulating them in an exemplary manner, even a genial one. Everything that the poet says, you can see multiplied in the transparency of the nuances of the music. The decaying landscape of a wasteland, in which the dust and desolation do nothing but enlarge its exasperating endlessness that propagates in a continuous crescendo, unfolds as a lament which is marked by surprise-harmonies here and there, sometimes by syncope, like a heart beating off-beat. The sensation one gets is that of walking up a slope, but, instead of advancing one keeps sliding backwards, and falling in a kind of a collapse. The uselessness of the effort takes you beyond dizziness, and it seems that a strong headache seized you. In this void, the heat has only left behind the edges of… nothingness. Confirming the principle: there is a lot in a few, the genius musician Jora succeeded in comprising on a piece of paper everything that the Romanian man has been living for millennia, in this hymn to the "fulfilment" of the futility of existence.

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Fig. 7: Fragment of the lied Cântec din fluier, handwritten facsimile belonging to Mihail Jora

N.B. The more advanced reader is asked to disregard my elementary excursion in the world of the theory of music, because the one who knows these things will not be harmed by reading them again, whereas the one who is less informed, might find them helpful.

CHAPTER VI SPEAKING AND SINGING

"Speech is a noise in which the song is locked". (Gretry)

Absorbed by the complex subject of the specificity of the opera and especially by the implications that this subject entails, I have gone too fast over the important differences between speaking and singing. The very process of formation of the notion (the word) will help us understand the great difference that exists between the spoken and the sung word, as well as between the literal phrase and the musical one, especially from the point of view of their degrees of expressivity, suggestiveness, and their power to create an atmosphere. The word, or the notion, is the mental result of the rationalization of various representations that refer to the same class or group of objects. To disregard what is not common, and retain only those frequently encountered characteristics, is, in fact, an epitome of the world of sensations and representations from which the notion was formed. Consequently, we have to conclude that the notion (the concept), has undergone a significant process of depletion, an exhaustion of the reservoir and richness1 that rooted it, that gave birth to it (in the past). Paul Zarifopol recalled Caragiale's obsession that he did not know how to get rid of the word, of its abstract dryness, and its inertness. A great deal of the live substance is lost by burning through generalization everything that is non-essential for a concept, on the purpose of being as comprehensive as possible; having a bigger sphere, the content gets implicitly reduced (the concept remaining identical to itself the whole time). That living substance is of utmost importance for musical expressivity. The content that we assumed was there at the beginning, 1

Blaga, unsatisfied with the limits of the articulated word, affirmed: "If we always thought in a loud voice, we would miss all nuances" (L. Blaga, Elanul insulei, p. 100).

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represents the very source from which the entire lace of the richness of musical language is born by re-melting and displacing it in a fluid of sonorous magma. The difference between speaking and singing – both relying (by association) on the representations that trigger the creative imagination of each of us – can be appropriated in the following verbalization: while literal expression (articulation) is a mainly discursive path – let us not forget that an idea, or a notion, the more abstract it is, the more its expressive-evocative force diminishes – the musical expression is an intuitive-suggestive revelation which is rooted in a very deep stratum of the human brain. This proves that music is a much older form of communication than language. Jespersen rightly affirms that human language got separated from a musical nebula little by little; similarly, E. Grosse considers that primitive verse has a mainly musical signification, whereas the "poetic" meaning comes second.2 It is very difficult to exhaust the meaning of a musical phrase in a syntagm or an idea, because the idea will mainly formulate situations that are linked with precise, though generalizing, representations; meanwhile, music expresses the ambiance of a state of mind – it wraps and controls everything by its complex and all-conquering "aggression". Therefore, when we want to express in words the unspoken notions of music, we need to find long and uncommon phrases, which will cool off and dilute the meaning, and will result in the suppression of the richness and the intensity of reverberations that music induces like a strong magnetic field.3 Music has another great quality: it annuls a paradox, by leaping over the obstacle represented by the difficult understanding of the specificity of art (which is a milestone for all attackers) – in music, the feeling is freed from the weight of its reality, without leaving the sphere of the affects. Then, we should not forget an even more important fact, that sensations also have an analytic function. Thus, a musical sensation is capable of producing a multitude of details that will enhance artistic emotion. Moreover, we might say that the supreme role of music, which anyone can put to the test, consists of the fact that it dissolves egotistic views, by luring the human being away from the material empire of the everyday life, which rules us all the time. Through music you give up your ego, you forget about yourself with pleasure and without regret. When the last note 2

Cf. H. Delacroix, Psychologie de l'art – Essay sur l'activité artistique. In his study "Du Chant", published in 1920 in Paris, Reynoldo Hahn maintains that melody represents in song the supernatural elements that give the word a plus in intensity, force, delicacy, poetry, charm and mystery, due to certain means that cannot be all analysed. 3

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fades out, music "leaves" you, but you have a feeling of plenitude. After any other "passion" – and we cannot say that modern man is not prone to temptations of all kinds – when its effect is over, you find yourself drained and empty, an easy prey for existential crises. The great anagogic role of art in general and of music in particular, derives from these characteristics, that is, to carry our spirit upwards4, and not let reality close our horizons in the immediate actuality. While the "normal", everyday life can be compared with a narrow, monotonous, and long corridor which leads us, in our endless rush, to the platform of a subway, music directs us under the arched ceiling of the highest cathedral. The disregard of the essential specificity that gives music its miraculous quality is mainly felt in the avant-garde staging of various operas; they are marked by reductionist concepts that bring about grievous and fatal errors in interpretation, which amputate the artistic quality. Such concepts represent obvious departures from the data of the musical text, that is the music itself. A reductionist view leads in most cases to a downfall, a dwelling in the "low" life, with direct references to specific determiners that come from the world of primary instincts, in the best scenario. Such slips betray and injure the very nature of music.5 By their extremely limited and short-sighted sensualist character (alien to art), they defile and degrade the musical atmosphere until they almost annihilate it. This malign tendency that reaches alarming rates, exercised in the void produced by disorder and confusion, is generated by personal obsessions (kneaded in the sensuous complexes of the individual who thinks and feels in this manner). They only tell us of the invasion of instincts that have gotten out of hand from under the control of a natural rhythm, and not in the least of a creation of the spirit. Pierre Janet gives a possible explanation for this sad state that has flooded our contemporary times: he maintains that when the vital tonus is missing, a tendency towards a mental break-down frequently appears. I also have to differ with the erroneous and ill-doing conception of psychoanalysts, like Freud (who is considered an evangelical figure by present-day directors), by quoting a sentence written by Lucian Blaga; In his Trilogia Culturii [The Trilogy of Culture], in the chapter "Orizont úi stil" [Horizon and style], he says that the equation by which the above4

Baudelaire considers that beauty has an aristocratic character. Even in mad centuries, for those who displayed the greatest monstrosities, the longing for what is beautiful was present and produced satisfaction (See Ch. Baudelaire, op. cit., vol. II, p. 137). 5 I insist that this study uses as examples and refers only to masterpieces, to those works that are part of the golden heritage of culture.

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mentioned scientists equal spiritual creation with an unsatisfied and deviant libido, is illegitimate. This is the fragment: We know that [electric] light is an effect, conditioned by the existence of an energy, as well as of a complicated system by which this energy is transformed [...]; since energies are transformable [...]. It is of very little interest if this system is charged, in its dynamic that produces light, by the filth maxima of a metropolis, or by the lightning coming from the sky. As long as the filth is not trapped to feed a transforming system, which has a great and precise interior end, it will only exhale miasma, but will not produce light. The sole presence of certain energies does not explain such production but to a very little extent. The phenomenon only appears in the presence of the transforming system. About the filth maxima, or the river of the god Libido, the almighty, many tales are circulating…6

The sincerity present in the back of the minds of some contemporary directors7 who display an inclination to reduce, and therefore, lower the spiritual to a simple physiological process, has at its foundation a strange principle, refused by the sane mind, which maintains the motivation of the superior through the inferior (that is, to put the little to account for the grand). In other words, by such standards, the splendour of Mozart's music, or of any other composer, has nothing to do with their being geniuses, but is the simple effect of their physiological outbursts. This is the fate of a masterpiece, when it falls into the hands of a contemporary mind. Such a masterpiece is, nevertheless, the result of the meeting between the highest artistic endowment and the great existential issues and questions of mankind. Once everything is conceived and reduced to this modality, it only takes them one small step to declare that the source of music consists only in stirring our primary instincts, which numerous directors are convinced that they have an obligation to show on stage, in their productions. The deontology of the profession, as they see it, binds them to show the naked 6

L. Blaga, Trilogia culturii, (Orizont ‫܈‬i Stil), Editura pentru Literatura Universală, 1969, p. 22. 7 In his "Solilocvii" [Soliloquies], Mircea Eliade affirms that sincerity is often off the truth, even against it, leading to obvious errors in appreciation; to be honest and loyal to yourself and the world, does not give you substance, and does not validate the conclusions of your position. This is why many subjective interpretations can be mistaken, despite their degree of sincerity, of openness that they invoke and use as support. Eliade's remark is even more valid when we refer to the artistic truth, which for the unprofessional is difficult to verify in real terms, because each individual chooses his own pattern, according to his degree of cultural awareness.

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"reality" of what an entire world has admired, and still admires, in Mozart: a banal common instinct of the animal life. Therefore, His Lordship, Mister Director, has finally decided to reveal everything! This facet deserves the light of the stage, momentarily. Consequently, the director, serving the "great truth" is sure that he has accomplished his mission… Let the creator of such "visionary" interpretations admire his creation and let us go ahead with our analysis, after observing that when emptiness ferments, it will distil absurdity.

* All the connotations that the word lost during the process of generalization will be recovered by a musical approach that evokes and suggests the atmosphere of the experiences that were at the origin of so many words that have become obsolete in time. Their extinct meanings will be reborn and will bear fruit through the virtues of music. Who did not have the experience of hearing a forgotten song, and, all of a sudden, have the whole world of his youth come back, with its atmosphere, its representations, even its sensations? This is the light in which we can understand Friederich Schiller's confession, in which he explained the process of artistic gestation: "Das Musikalische eines Gedichtes schwebt mir weit öfter vor der Seele, wenn ich mich hinsetze es zu machen, als der klare Begriff vom Inhalt, über den ich oft kaum mit mir selber einig bin" [When I start writing poetry, a long time before the content is clear to my mind, my soul is gliding along in its music].8 And, if for the sensitivity of the poet Dan Botta, word can be composed of "reflects, latent intentions, and forgotten meaning", the more so, music, by its very nature, should not be emasculated by a reductionist process of "scouring", of over-abstractisation. This process has beneficial effects in discursive thinking, as I have mentioned, for the purpose of making the notion more comprising as a sphere, but in the detriment of the meaning, and, obviously, of the individual; artistic concreteness can hardly be found in a formula in which the substance is so thin. The evocative force of music, when accompanied by a text, draws its sap from weakened sensations and representations, some even wiped from the memory of that word, which lead a quiet life somewhere in the word's basis, and wait for music to bring them out to life. Subsequently, music enlivens the text, makes it overflow with meaning, and gives it new life. The distinguished professor Ana Voileanu-Nicoară, from the Music 8

A. Schweizer, J.S. Bach, p. 209.

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Academy in Cluj, "stepped into such a trap" when translating the lines belonging to the less acclaimed poet Wilhem Müller, used by Franz Schubert in his most beautiful two lied cycles The Fair Maid of the Mill, and Winter Journey, the famous masterpieces of vocal chamber music. What this gifted professor succeeded in doing, was to give a Romanian version of the German text that is superior to the original. This happened due to the fact that the musician Voileanu was inspired by the mirage of Schubert's music, and, thus, she translated the music more than Müller's verse; consequently, the Romanian version has a remarkable gain in its poetic virtues, as compared to the original poems. Although music can easily depict the meaning of the word (as we have already demonstrated with Bach's cantatas), it also builds up its own forms of states of mind, which it deepens, giving them a richer profile and making them more subtle, at the same time. As Goethe affirms, the composer opposes the bar and rhythmical movement to poetic rhythm, and this proves music's superiority. The composer breaks up the poet's most rigorous construction at wish. Still, one should not draw the conclusion that the inspiration of the composer is limited – when he composes using a particular text – only to the suggestions offered by the "vocabulary", that is by the world of the words. Music has its own world which cannot be reduced to the propositions made by the wording, even when, from a literary point of view, the text reaches an important artistic value. Music does not annul such values, but it can surpass them. The composer has the liberty, and, obviously, the faculty of finding new suggestions which his musical genius can change into music, without stretching or disregarding the text with its specific meanings and connotations.9 Consequently, a good libretto does not depend on the literary quality of the text, but on the opportunities it creates for synthesis, by its metric diversity, by theatrical efficiency, by the suggestions that can give the composer good starting points for the musical creation. Unlike the abstract character of notions – which only the inspired verse of a great poet can annihilate by finding part of its density and richness of meaning of the original words, by using metaphorical contexts and a plus 9

Both Donizetti and Verdi, while composing, started from a reading aloud of the text, as Gatti mentioned. From Verdi's letters it seemed that he had the following method in his creative process: (1) meditation on the theme; (2) trying to see in his mind the characters with their physical and spiritual background; (3) learning the text by heart and reciting it with natural accents, and when its passion got to concrete forms in his heart, he melted it in the musical wave (cf. Gatti, Verdi, Milan: A. Mondadori, 1981, p. 273).

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of suggestiveness10 – the musical construction, be it anchored in the "ideal", never remains suspended in abstraction. It stretches out its sphere of concreteness, by its force to irradiate states of minds, rooted in the analytical function of its suggestions. This is why its content will never be reduced, but, on the contrary, will be augmented; its interior density will be intensified, it will receive concreteness, due to its specific link with the world of affects, converted into the sonorous imaginary. Thus, sounds, which are the "material" elements of music, lead to the discovery of a new world which comes as a serious competitor against the "real" one. This is an experience that any average man has access to, if he is not affected by a serious mental illness or some physiological challenges that prevent them from perceiving it.

* Let us remark the fact that in the opera, as in music in general, the melody does not follow the suggestions of the text mechanically, that is, music does not directly serve the text.11 There is no strict parallelism between the two. In other words, music does not have to be a simple intonation of the meaning of the words that it is based on. On the contrary, it can express, by the complexity of its construction, in the same natural manner as the word, many more nuances at the same time. From here, we can deduce its dramatic quality, which enables it to bring the shadows of the past over the melody, thus bringing the sense of the word in actuality, in the present; or, it may predict, due to a musical leitmotiv, happenings and feelings yet to come. These are the virtues of the "symphonic" unfolding of the music, which comprises and expresses several feelings and thoughts, at the same time; such various suggestions are imagined and predicted by the composer. In fact, music does nothing else but mirrors the inextricability of the human psychic. There are moments when the actions of a particular character are not justified by the words he utters, his behaviour being reflective of a state of mind which is more complex. In such cases, the music, by offering an orchestral comment can reveal the 10

Lucian Blaga, in Aspecte fundamentale ale creatiei culturale [Fundamental Aspects of Cultural Creation], gives as an example a verse belonging to Hölderlin, which "by its rhythm, and by the position of the word in its phrase, as well as by the unusual syntactic construction and sonority suggests [...] spiritual melancholy". 11 Rossini maintained that when the composer followed the meaning of the words, step by step, he would compose an inexpressive kind of music, poor and vulgar, incoherent and ridiculous (quoted in Rodolfo Celleti, Histoire du Bel-Canto, Fayard, 1987).

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hidden impulse of the character (see the demonstration we have done in the case of Donna Anna, the character in Don Giovanni). Here we have another great quality of music. This is the reason why an adequate interpretation should not limit itself to the literal text (as so many contemporary directors require), but should prospect and investigate the musical text first. This is why, without being able to read the musical script and analyse its components, the interpreters just ramble on. I consider it very appropriate to stop for a while at the various differences in nature, degree, and value between speaking and singing, so that we may highlight the dangers that threaten the interpretative act, as today's practice shows it. There are two main maladies that I have encountered in my decades-long career, and on several meridians. They have become counterproductive customs, unfortunately, and cannot be blamed solely on pure circumstance; and they should not be treated lightly, either. Let us see which these two 'problems' are. Firstly, there is an error, if not sheer offense to the sensitivity and musical talent of the singers, that even from the very beginning of the study of the musical text, the accompanying pianist, or the maestro, draws his attention only to the text; his aim is to stir the process of interpretation. I have not met many maestros who relied on musical analysis in justifying the contour and clarification necessary to explain and find the just interpretation. I do not intend to find the cause for such a non-musical attitude that is sometimes seen in the manner in which singers and their professors start studying a role, even if an explanation is not very difficult to find. Still, it is regrettable that such behaviour prevents the singer's access to the immense source of suggestions that only musical analysis can provide, not only for finding the key to the "secret" of the motivations that are at the core of the dramatic unfolding, but, especially, for the identification and justification of all concrete elements of interpretation – the richness of music is the "ailment" of interpretation. Limiting itself to the analysis of the text and the dramatic conflict, and omitting the musical one, the study of a role benefits from a feeble support, and the artistic result is predictable. Secondly, I have met only a very limited number of famous directors who would not conduct repetitions with the text of the libretto in hand, or who would not refer the singers exclusively to the text; they do not involve music at all in the justification of the stage circumstances or the behaviour of the characters. I will name, though, two of the great exceptions to this rule, the actor J.-L Barault, who used very inspired gestures to exemplify his direction (I worked under his direction at the Metropolitan in 1965), as

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well as the choreographer J. Crenko (whom I also worked with in Stuttgart in 1970). Still, most directors disregard the musical analysis altogether.

* In its endeavour to create an ATMOSPHERE12, music opens an unsuspected path, which, starting from perception becomes representation; such expressivity, enriched by artistic interpretation will rise during the performance to a degree where the spirit of the spectator, joining in this world of fantasy13, will start resonating with the music (according to his or her own capacity).

12 This quality of music to create atmosphere has been scandalously misused and exploited many times. The most famous melodies have been associated with certain images in order to promote various market goods in TV commercials. This is one of the most grievous degradations of culture, and, I think that some censorship should intervene to stop this from happening. I will exemplify this with the use of the music of Traviata in the promotion of a Japanese car which, accompanied by the soprano's coloratura, is able to avoid accidents! 13 Imagination transforms sensuous impressions in sensorial images (Aristotle), because if it did not, our thought would be void of sensitive intuitions (Kant) that also involve our intellect.

CHAPTER VII THE ATMOSPHERE

"It is better that you don't touch an object at all, than use it as you shouldn't". (Plato: Euthydemos Dialogue)

Genuine personality imposes itself naturally, and not by an intentionally directed force coming from the individual's will. True personality is similar to a natural phenomenon: like spring that moves the entire nature, especially in the vegetal world, which is brought to life from a state of hibernation and lethargy; or, it is like sunlight which makes flowers turn towards it. The same spontaneous action, involuntary and non-domineering, is provoked by music, by its atmosphere. To understand the character of this atmosphere is not easy, especially as it is so nonostentatious; in the case of masterpieces1 it takes a specialist's eye to bring the necessary clarifications. Unfortunately, even the professionals of today tend to have a mentality that urges them to pay more attention to quantitative determinants, which they consider "precise", rather than qualitative appreciations which seem to provide less certainty – they are not measurable, and therefore they cannot be expressed in numbers. This is why many such interpreters miss out on the quality of this atmosphere. Let us be clear here. There are different types of atmosphere. Some moments are pleasant, enveloping, attractive. Others are difficult to bear, like the stereotypical ones, which I will have to speak about again, as they are all around us in modern productions. In Monteverdi's Orpheus, we will find the same characters dressed in black leather costumes, "stylised" Gestapo cut, like in Puccini's Tosca, in which Scarpia looks and behaves like a Nazi investigator. In Iphigenia in the Taurides, by Ch. W. Gluck, the singers are "dressed" in a manner that I will not comment on, but give you a little glimpse of:

1

The genius of such composers does not generate ostentatious effects, as they do not feel the need to bring such useless, even malign additions to their creation.

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Fig. 1: Iphigenia in the Taurides, by Ch. W. Gluck

They do not care about the characteristics of the epoch, they neglect the subject of the opera in their quest to shock and be remembered as directors by such means. There is no concern about the music or the style, when the idea has to triumph, as the Director will confess in an interview, telling the audience that such a vision has been haunting him ever since he was a toddler. Maybe such ideas do, really, rule over our epoch, since other colleagues of the trade have a surprisingly similar vision.

* Still! For the lyrical artist (as well as for the music commentator2) it is very important to have the intuition of the atmosphere that is created by

2

We will see during our musical analyses how damaging it is that many such commentators and critics keep silent about the disagreement between the musical atmosphere and that created by a malign staging of it, in many of the contemporary productions. I will not try to justify their silence.

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the music he is about to perform (and the critic to comment on, which is another kind of interpretation). In fact, this is where artistic interpretation starts and ends – atmosphere. At first contact with the musical text, its atmosphere will not be very clear. Its perception will be limited to vague suggestions, like a tangled ball of thread, from which several ends appear, but none leads to an unwinding that can give a consistent material; the director and the art director will have to struggle to find stage and behaviour correspondences, whereas the singer will have to find an accordance between his attitude and behaviour with the atmosphere. Atmosphere, or ambiance – although suggesting the idea of "everywhere and nowhere" – consists of the myriad of musical details and potentialities that are spread in the musical text, born from the relations and assembling of harmonies, counterpoint, etc. These elements of atmosphere can be regarded like the DNA string of that particular musical piece. To make the atmosphere of music convincing in interpretation, it has to appear well-structured, under the form of clear, congruent, and suggestive representations; thus, music is brought to life by interpretation, it is given artistic concreteness, and is fixed under the form of that particular performance. The DNA of the music will be able to exist only when the contents of the opera, as decoded by the interpreters in the process of musical analysis, will be re-encoded in their understanding, and will appear like a star on the sky when seen through a professional telescope, and not with our bare eyes. Consequently, what the music proposes, once it is melted in the inner laboratory of the interpreter, will be assimilated by him not under an intuitive manner, but at the level of his analytic consciousness; then, by converting the abstract into its opposing form artistic concreteness - it will be taken to the stage in clear and precise forms. This is the only path that can be taken if we want that the immaterial substance of the atmosphere of the music be present in the materiality of the staged fiction (I repeat, this reality will not be mistaken for real-life reality); from here, from the stage, it will reach the public by using its specific language that synthesises various arts. To prove that only the interpreter and the stage have this miraculous quality, I will invoke the words of one of the German musical geniuses, Robert Schumann, who "guarantees" the artistic addition that the performance brings to the revealing of musical tones and atmosphere. In a letter to Debrois van Bujck, referring to Wagner's creation, he said: "You should not appreciate him judging by the piano reduction. If you listened to his operas on stage, you would be impressed by many passages [...] Apart from its stage performance, the music is insufficient". Moreover, in

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a letter to F. Mendelssohn, commenting on the musical script of Tannhäuser, the same composer affirmed: "The music is not better than the one for Rienzi. We might say that it is rather less colourful, and it is somewhat forced…" Then, after three weeks, he withdrew his statement: "I retract everything I said when I was just reading the musical text. On stage things look different. I was extremely impressed."3 If a composer of such magnitude and artistic sensitivity considers that the performance and its atmosphere have such a contribution to the completing and perfecting of the effect of music, I rest my case.

* If an amateur could declare himself satisfied with the atmosphere, even if it is the too vague one that we have mentioned, the professional cannot afford to stop at this vagueness, for the simple reason that it will not provide him with sufficient material from which he might give conclusive contour to his artistic creation; his interpretation has to suggest a convincing atmosphere, a congruent unfolding of action and behaviour, so as not to provoke the spectator's consciousness with representations that the music might contradict (as it very often happens, unfortunately). Referring directly to the singer, I have to make the remark that his attitude, his gestures, and his behaviour must rely on the music, so that they should not contradict the dramatic situation and the atmosphere. In order to accomplish this, it is not enough that his gestures and attitudes be only natural. An atmosphere that is created by a behaviour that reflects the music appropriately, will be different from a natural behaviour4 which is false from an artistic point of view; such naturalness will not be sufficient to confess anything, or almost anything, of the meaning of the music. The appropriate behaviour is consequent to the music, it follows from its atmosphere (it depends on how the singer brings the atmosphere of the music to the stage, by using precise and clear means that each professional lyrical artist should master). The natural kind of behaviour is part of the usual inventory of gestures displayed by the average man on his way to the drugstore, at the corner of his street. The behaviour of the artist on the stage, being governed by the music's force-lines, by its atmosphere, which 3

Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, Leipzig: Reclam, 1956. 4 Chaliapin remembers in his memoires how a great actor was extraordinary in acting the role of a drunk. One night he did not obtain the usual acclaim from the public, thus failing in producing the effect of that savoury scene. What had happened? Well, he was really drunk.

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motivates and sets it in motion, will shape it according to that specific state. The "street" behaviour is justified by entirely different reasons, those of routine, of everyday "prose", lacking the tension of the thoughts and feelings of a character that has to be considered against the background of his entire behaviour and dramatic situation. On stage, only the atmosphere of the music will motivate the details of the actions, generating their character. Consequently, it is not appropriate to have a simply "natural" behaviour on stage, but a just and appropriate one, in accordance with the music. The atmosphere will become convincing by its spontaneity, which the talent of the interpreter will accentuate, under the "pressure" of the thoughts of the character. Let us notice, then, that the space between the artistic and the natural is very narrow. It is not impossible that one might fall on the wrong side of this narrow path of appropriateness; he can fall on the side of the everyday banality, or on the side of counterfeiting, by having an attitude that lacks interior motivation, laying emphasis on details that do not exist in the music. Both paths are false and unconvincing from an artistic point of view. This is why an applied analysis is so necessary, not only of the whole opera, but of each of its components, so that at any given moment of the musical and dramatic unfolding, the behaviour of the artist may be related to the character and atmosphere of the whole, to the style of the musical script; it should fulfil the function of a holomer (so eloquently explained by the philosopher Noica; in Greek, "holon" means the whole, and "meros" the part). Thus, the part has to mirror the whole, and the whole has to be clear and complete in each of the parts and in each detail. With no losses! Regarding the temptation of certain interpreters (especially directors) to "put to value" only part of the details, which are artificially taken out of their context and then used to be part of a dramatic edifice that is completely autonomous, I state, with no restrain, that such temptation leads to defective performances. When taken in isolation, details could be interpreted in a free manner, as Furtwängler considers, but regarded in a more general context, the context that they are part of, they condition each other; this is why interpreters should not deteriorate the global perception of the creation. (When this major principle is not observed, the artistic result is catastrophic, as I will demonstrate with the performance of Il Trovatore, staged recently on the stage of the National Opera in Bucharest.) As I stated when discussing the second tableau of the first act in Rigoletto, it is for this reason that the staging of this opera fails, since Rigoletto does not behave as the gloomy atmosphere requires, suggested

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by the musical accents, but starts jumping around like Charlie Chaplin (as the musical commentator textually considers). I am certain that when Rigoletto leaves the palace, he can hardly wait that, together with his coat, he could abandon his trade as a buffoon at the duke's court; he hates this trade; he even curses it, in his monologue, when he expresses his anger against his status, his fate, by saying: "Oh, rabbia! … esser difforme! Oh rabbia! … esser buffone!". He, then, goes towards his house, seized by bitter thoughts that seem to predict nothing good, especially after his meeting with Sparafucile. Such thoughts will be either annihilated or downsized to ridiculousness by the director who is at least careless, and does not use his judgement. The exaggerated conduct of a ChaplinRigoletto (in fact, the buffoon raises, by the power of music to the force and height of a true justiciary, not a mere vigilante), will make the naive spectator laugh for a minute, as the director hopes and intends, but then, it will stray so far from the main conflict that it will transform the tragic figure of Rigoletto in a face-making merry-andrew, even when his conscience is under the pressure of such terrible thoughts. All this happens just to humour a director and his artistic taste (?), as prefers to sacrifice everything for the sake of obtaining a momentary effect. I would like to add to this observation the fact that V. Hugo in Le roi s'amuse (the source of inspiration for the librettist of Rigoletto, Francesco Maria Piave) frequently uses contrast as a technical procedure belonging to Romanticism, which Verdi worked on and exploited in a magisterial manner in his dramatic-musical creation. This effect of contrast, characteristic for this trend for which both Verdi and Hugo were representative figures, if disregarded by the director, will fade away, and thus, the entire dramatic construction falls apart. This is why the details that the director imposes, or the singer invents on the spot, by which they build their own interpretation, should not contradict the atmosphere that both the music and the dramatic unfolding require; on the contrary, the interpretation should adjust to these, it should suggest, and intensify them, by finding the adequate behaviour which would be just, and, therefore, convincing. If it fails to do so, these artistically essential details will end up confusing the audience to the point of total bewilderment, because the atmosphere will be degraded step-by-step, and will be ruined, eventually. A clear proof of their incapacity to understand music and observe the main commandment of a masterpiece – its unity – consists in the habit that some directors have to fragment and over-clad their interpretation with factual interventions, with reflections and cogitations, with raising socalled question marks which should have been answered in the preparation stage of the performance, not during the performance (and to which the

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composer, himself, gave all the necessary answers). Once the unity of the masterpiece is destroyed, it will lose its meaning and value, and will become a simple happening, full of absurdities due to the incoherent thinking and action of the protagonists. Think of the case of Rigoletto, who was created by V. Hugo taking Triboulet as a model, the buffoon of kings Ludovic XII and Francisc I, the brightest mind at their courts, capable of matching the geniuses of the Pleiades.5 When the interpreters do not have the faculty (read the talent and the musical sensitivity) and the capacity (read the professional education) to find their way in the world of music, nuances appear that disregard the atmosphere. The interpreters feel the temptation of emphasizing only certain details (which are formulas without roots, which do not grow naturally from the dramatic conflict or from the musical atmosphere): they use these exaggerations in order to colour their interpretation. Such exaggerated details might look like very ingenious innovations. Novelty at all costs is something all of us seem to seek these days, it has become a kind of novelty for novelty's sake, even when its forced appearance within an artistic organism poisons it, by neglecting the very laws that this organism lives by. We will witness the immolation of the masterpiece. Artistic freedom is, incontestably, desirable, and it is facilitated by the richness of the poly-semantic character of music, provided that this freedom does not get outside this music, that is, outside the musical script, which is the only factor capable of warranting its intrinsic consistency. Only the consciousness of the inner consistency of the contents can inspire an artistic construction; the same consciousness will keep it within its limits, avoiding any embarrassing slips. I have referred to the rules of the game of chess. He who does not know them, but keeps on trying to play, will be turned off by the constant critical retorts of his knowledgeable opponent. To the latter's objections, he will maintain, firmly, that if he is not allowed to move the pieces on the board as he pleases, he feels that his freedom is limited, and his originality in playing chess is under attack! This is why, besides courage to express his originality, the director has to awaken his reason6 first, and, instead of 5

Marullo, as I have already mentioned, is the poet Clement Marot, in Victor Hugo's version. 6 The psychologist Pierre Jeanet considers that reason is inserted in life because it represents a minimal part of it, but it is indispensible to life. Without logic, the human being will succumb, eventually, because without reasoning, the perception of reality becomes toxic – as toxic as the ingestion of ailments without having the necessary enzymes to digest them. (Cf. E. D'Ors, Du Barocque, Gallimard, 1968, p. 150.)

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easiness and superficiality, he should favour a fine tuning of his own sensitivity to the fine wave length of the masterpiece that he is trying to stage. Such tuning is very difficult to accomplish when the director does not understand music. It is a demanding undertaking to go from a passing impression, without clarity and, therefore, unconvincing (even alien, counterfeited, opposing the very artistic object to be interpreted) to an insightful understanding of that object. Only when the masterpiece is assimilated, only then can the interpreter give in to his own freedom, which, due to his culturally gained artistic conscience will give the impression to the public that that aria, for instance, was created ad hoc on the stage; this is when the singer has reached genuine freedom, and, implicitly, a truly convincing power. Then, and only then, the interpretation will not damage the opera and its atmosphere; on the contrary, it will serve it. Unless he can do that, the interpreter, inebriated by the obsession of the multitude of possibilities that he sees (some of which are possible only because he is lacking in deontological responsibility and displays precarious culture), will fly from one EXPERIMENT to another, at the cost of the real beneficiary of the opera, the audience, who is the addressee of the author's message on the stage.

CHAPTER VIII EXPERIENCE AND… EXPERIMENT

"If you are not a blacksmith don't smear your nose with coal". (Caragiale)

Our present day civilization and the many scientific discoveries that allowed man to dominate1 the environment also caused an exalting impulse in the artistic domain. The contemporary artist, seeing himself higher and higher on the scale of social importance, has decided to break up with the past once and for all, because the past suffocates him terribly. Thus, he decided to leave… future behind! In fact this is the main characteristic of the pretence-avant-garde artist. He basis his existence on the unknown, and is convinced that the unpredictable he threw his anchor in can get him beyond the scarcity of his real limitations; he will not agree with anything if it is not new… and newer! From such a perspective, we can understand why he feels that the entire experience that culture accumulated puts him under great pressure, as if he was captive in a neck collar. Once he has done away with everything that common sense suggested (Descartes maintained – probably in the wrong! – about common sense: "qui est la chose mieux partagée du monde"), the avant-garde artist is attracted by the lure of possibilities. His fantasy would not give way, and like the dust on the road when stirred by the wind he will abandon himself to the carousel of all possibilities, he will go everywhere and nowhere and will not consider himself earthly, anymore! This phenomenon is called by Jakob Taubes, "Befreiung in das Nichts" [Liberation towards… nothing]. Sheltering in this great confusion, and comfortably sitting in the midst of chaos, after having thrown overboard any kind of means of reference 1 We have gone astray from Francis Bacon's conception about man and nature in his extraordinary study Novum Organum; the founder of modern science and of the inductive method was saying: "Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature [...] [which] to be commanded must be obeyed" (Aphorism 1, and Aphorism 3, Novum Organum, Book I, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon).

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that could trouble his plans and put a stop to his impulses, the new artist (who could be considered to be agglutinating the void) sees himself in the middle of existence, which will only reach to apices through him. Being part of this "world", and in accordance with it, the modern opera interpreter, especially the newly-ad-hoc-invented2 director who has nothing to do with music is an upside-down archaeologist. If the archaeologist fights to bring back bygone civilizations, re-creating them from the fragments he can find, the modern opera interpreter makes any musical masterpiece disappear; he fragments it into thousands of pieces, by taking no notice to the inherent laws that the composer observed in his non-hazardous composing of his creation3. The following verse, belonging to Gottfried Benn, could be an appropriate characterisation for those who "break the pearl, so that they may find the grain of sand inside it": "Wenn du die Mythen und Worte entleert hasst, sollst du gehen/ eine neuer Götterkohorte wirst du nicht mehr sehen" [If you have emptied of meaning all myths and words, you must leave, because you will not be getting a new round of gods].

*

2

This is the last discovery of the Opera Manager, the new Columbus, who navigates on the waves of lack of knowledge in music, and has as major goal to bring back the public to the box office through the means of scandalous publicity. 3 One of the most eloquent examples in this respect can be brought from the world of music, when Erich Bergel, an elite musician, was able to complete in a magisterial manner J. S. Bach's last fugue, the XVIIIth of his Art of Fugue, which had remained unfinished. After an exhaustive analysis, based on the logic of the whole work, Bergel found the formula that succeeded in convincing even the most knowledgeable specialists in the domain of the rightfulness of his solution. Bergel used the principle of the holomer. By this principle, in a perfect artistic organism, the whole must be found in each part. What can be more perfect than the Art of Fugue? To prove this accomplishment, I will quote two pertinent remarks on Bergel's epoch-making study, which are made by two world-wide acknowledged professors: Professor Friederich Smed, Ph.D, from Berlin: "A study of musical analysis was conducted, on the basis of minute research [...] and had surprising results in deciphering some aspects of Bach's latest creation"; and Rainer Bischof, Ph. D, from Viena: "Bergel's fundamental thesis is a commonplace for Western philosophy [...] but, it is demonstrated by a musicologist, based on texts belonging to Bach's creation; the demonstration is conclusive to the smallest musical details, which is new and sensational…"(Erich Bergel, Die letzte Fuge, Musikverlag Max Brockhaus: Bonn, overcoat 2 and 3).

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These circumstances that facilitate the feeling of the director that he is entitled to conduct any experiment, are accompanied by his lack of experience in the musical domain, and this is the major drawback of his art. An old German proverb goes like this: "Wer nicht in Metier aufgewachsen ist, nichts anzufangen weiß" [Who did not grow up into the trade, doesn't know where to start it]. In their quest for originality, directors start the job at the wrong end, by getting rid of the entire experience that generations of artists have striven to gain, and without putting any effort into getting to know this experience; by doing so, even the most gifted artist has already programmed his failure. The proverbial Edison, who is a symbol of ingenuity, was once asked which is the secret for his countless inventions; he answered: 99% transpiration + 1% inspiration. This is the recipe!

* Let us set things in their right order. In order to learn, one has to experiment, and this is a truth nobody will deny. Nevertheless, to change something only for the sake of changing it, without the aim of getting experience and learning how to do your "job", is ridiculous and regrettable. To come back to the world of the opera, such experiments are conducted by abusing the audience's nerves. I will remind you of one of Mozart's sentences (from his letter dated April 18, 1784), which will show you that even this amazing genius in the domain of musical ingenuity first worked hard: "Ich mußte mich auch bemühen, um mich jetzt nicht mehr bemühen zu dürfen" /I had to tire myself a lot [to experiment] so that I did not need to work this hard anymore [I do not need to experiment any longer]/. This means that behind his apparent lack of effort, behind his inspired spontaneity, there lies an enormous amount of hard work; due to this rich experience, his incredible "naturalness"4 emerged to the surface.

4

It is well known that even since he was 5, Mozart started composing under his father's supervision. Peter Gay, from the Yale University, showed that Mozart started by studying very much when he was young, especially works belonging to other composers, which he copied by hand very industriously. Recently, researchers in the domain of education at the Max-Plank Institute, in Germany, as well as from the British University Herefordshire, experimenting with students who were very intend on their piano practice, noticed that those were considered by their professors as extremely gifted (the magazine Focus, April 2009)

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Keep it between us, but I think that such directors lack any kind of elementary musical education, which they should have acquired… in school! Considering that this theme of accumulation and use of experience is very important, I will also bring to the reader's attention, besides the old saying "Ars celare artem" [Art hides the artefact], another comment, belonging to A. Chastel, on the creation of the last great Florence genius: "In reality, Michelangelo's work is a result of fastidious calculations, efforts, repetitions, and an exhaustive control of his means, because the supreme effort of art asks that even the memory of these immense difficulties should be erased". Walter Pater had the same in view when he was saying that "Only Work can efface the footsteps of Work". How far from these are we! Civilised life, with its numerous facilities offered to our contemporaries, has atrophied both our wish and our possibility to engage in assiduous effort; and then, the normal endeavour towards perfecting our artistic (and intellectual) inborn faculties has been replaced by the "right" to be extremely indulgent with ourselves. In connection with this state of affairs, I remember my Professor D. D. Roúca, professor of the History of Philosophy, when he was encouraging us during his courses by saying (I quote from my memory): Exercise with obstinacy the concentration of your attention, and keep that concentration as long as you can; the absence of this faculty is the clear proof of a state of mental debility! It is clear that in order to conduct a pertinent musical analysis of a musical script, you first need to invest a lot in your education (at least the Musical Academy5), so that you can decipher the text, to read in it all the rich meanings it might lead you to. Only then can you deepen the truth of its contents, which you can materialize in your interpretation and artistic illusion, that is, you can adequately transpose into vocal-scenic language. Where can we meet with such patience and willingness to "waste our time" these days? Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, the great Mozartian soprano, gave an interview to the magazine Opernwelt (I/1986, pp. 8-9), on the occasion of her 70th birthday, where she said: "No matter how talented you might be, it is not enough. You have to apply yourself to a long process of learning. You should not succeed by pushing others to the side, or by getting protection, but you must prove that you have something to say [...]. Voices are quickly destroyed because we do not know how to wait…" In a letter he wrote to his fellow-villager, friend, and admirer Irmy Jurcovics in August 1905, Bela Bartok, one of the most famous modern 5

The former Conservatoire is today Musical Academy, or Musical University.

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composers considered: "In short: we are not prepared to start, yet. To work and learn, to work and learn, and to work and learn some more, this is how we can get to a result"6.

* An interpreter does not have only rights, he also has obligations and commandments. It is true that his rights are justified by his talent (or, as we can sometimes see, by cockiness), but culture – which Noica considered to be nature's elder sister – both general and professional culture impose certain rigours as to what he is about to interpret. When the interpreter does not acknowledge these obligations, he will behave like the elephant in the glass-shop. What can we say about the culture of a director like Mr. J. Lavelli, who considers himself free from any obligations (as we shall see later on in this study when we will talk about Faust)? Under the cover of "innocence", barricaded, even encapsulated in total lack of musicality, invested with the "sacerdotal" seriousness of primates, he fulfils his freedom at the expense of the masterpieces and the public, going by the saying: "J'ai un espéce de gout pour le mauvais gout" [I have a certain taste for bad taste] (see Opéra – L'Avant Scène, March-April, 1976, p. 76). Beyond the pun and the bravado, which try to justify (?) the morbidity of his direction, clear proof of his barren creativity, we will have to sadly realize once again how right the Nobel prize biologist Konrad Lorenz was when, in his study "Der Abbau des Menschlichen", he considered that "the impossibility to perceive beauty is a disease of the mind" (Geisterkrankheit). There is another aspect, which is more than strange and hilarious, or both at the same time: the manner in which such directors (and, unfortunately this list is very, very long) are intent on fighting to be subjective beyond any limit. "The concern to be original to the sky and back brings about the most serious mistake. It is so easy to rely on acrobatics just to seem original" says P. Casals7; "the difficulty is to give a personal impression still using a normal language, which is easy to understand". These loiterers cannot imagine that anyone is subjective whether he wants that or not, and this should not be something to work for. What is necessary in interpretation, is that you should tame your subjectivity, by cultivating it, so that it could be tuned to the particular 6

Philippe A. Autexier, Bela Bartok – Musique de la vie, Editions Stock, 1981, p. 28. 7 J. Ma. Corredor, De vorbă cu Pablo Casals.

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musical text; to interpret does not mean to interpolate or modify in an arbitrary and random manner. True freedom is a carrier of responsibility, it has a conscience; the reality of the musical text cannot be avoided, or replaced by any pretext, or dialectic artifice. Our experimenting director, who imagines that directing the opera is a kind of hocus-pocus, exercising his hallucinations on the nerves of the public, cannot understand that before getting involved in the complex and delicate adventure of music interpretation, it is absolutely necessary that he should have some kind of musical experience; the domain of music should not be a white spot on the map of his general knowledge. Like the surgeon-barber, who would dare to use the scalpel with no knowledge of anatomy, the avant-garde director goes from one experiment to the next, careless and remorseless, after having sealed and secured his contract with the opera manager. If it were not so, Mr. Ulrich Brecht, a theatre director (we also have our sad cases among our theatre directors, or actor-directors in Bucharest – nomina odiosa) would not have been capable to launch that retort we have already discussed in our previous chapters, with reference to his staging of the Merry Widows of Windsor. His considering the fact that he had never seen Nicolai's opera as an advantage, and that he could start work without any "preconceived" ideas, was a splendid example of mindlessness; such thinking will open wide the gates to any kind of absurdity. Terrorized by the thought that his inspiration could be detoured if he had known more than nothing, he publicly admitted that it was his ignorance that allowed him to have this kind of courage. Such superficiality and lack of responsibility is evocative of a saying in Latin, used to describe the self-righteousness of certain "savants": "Greca sunt, non leguntur!" [It is in Greek, so it needn't be read]. Let me propose an exercise of imagination: would such a director consider it an "advantage" if having a driving license to drive a car, he were invited to fly a plane? Both the automobile and the plane have the same principle of functioning – the combustion engine… How many of the spectators who buy tickets to enjoy the passion for experimentation that such a director has, would still buy a ticket in a plane that he would be invited to fly? Such "courage" has important consequences, and if we are not aware of these, they will follow us in the medium and long term, and will be transformed into traumas at the level of the public psychic, which are irreversible. That would be pathetic. Some critics and commentators might consider that to experiment in such a way is not a catastrophe; they are not crucial! Nevertheless, it is very possible that such pubertal extravagancies, which are the sprouts of a freedom that is acclaimed in the name of "innocence", will not take too long before giving birth to monsters and to

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an institutionalization of non-culture. To support this idea, I will bring Berlioz's comment, which is two centuries old, but which is emblematic for our times: "[the contemporaries] lost the feeling of beauty, and thus, vulgarity does not shock them any more, which also brings about a lack of interest as to the quality of interpretation […] which the public does not notice anymore"8. This ceaseless experimentation in detriment of the public and the great musical creations has led us to the result that masterpieces are at the mercy of a swarm of impotent directors. Mr. Director introduces unbelievably inadequate details in the most arbitrary manner, and invents all kinds of "novelties". He is only after creating a scandal, and thus, he will turn everything upside-down, according to his wildest fantasies. When intelligence loses sight of its main goal, it is transformed in its opposite. Then details shock, and become more important than the whole, thus deteriorating the global perception. The atmosphere of that particular opera is sacrificed in the benefit of the detail, which means that the periphery attacks the centre, like the outskirts invade the heart of the city9… By this kind of interpretation the director wants to make his presence felt. It is the only means that he has to do that. But the price is too high! Who affords to intervene in such a manner also proves that, by stepping on the path of arbitrariness, he neglects the sovereign law of any masterpiece, that of necessity; thus, they get lost on the endless field of uselessness. The genius of the author who composed that masterpiece, by passing from the possible to the necessary, from the virtual to the artistic reality, has exhausted any other alternative, thus implicitly affirming: in this world I created, this is the only alternative, this is how it is meant to be, and, therefore, this is how it is. A masterpiece has organic unity, making up a structure based on necessary relations, which are not governed by chance. For the one who disregards the musical text (which in this way keeps its secrets), it remains alien, and the music will tell him nothing. For those who treat music like they do science, the musical text will reveal its messages, its reading will never remain stereotypical, because the sprit of the interpreter will be in continuous movement, and the moments when he approaches it will never be identical. This is why there are countless forms of good interpretations. The musical script knocks at the door of each sensitivity that might bring it to life, inspiring those who try to mirror themselves in its music. Therefore, the interpreter learns to let it invade 8

Ion Piso and Doru Popovici, Antifonar epistolar, Editura Albatros, Bucure‫܈‬ti, 2004, p. 173. 9 We, Romanians, have not been spared such social and political experiments, have we?

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him, and the music comes to life through and in the intellect of the artist. When this happens, we will witness an interpretative creation. Such an approach will resemble the miracle of regal art (ars regia), which in Arabic is called al chemie. I would like my reader to understand why I am constantly referring to masterpieces. I do so because they represent, from a cultural-artistic point of view, the result of a meeting between high artistic endowment with an essential and very problematic human value; but, a certain plethora of contemporary directors cannot stop themselves from showing their muscles and innovative qualities, by just dealing with less accomplished works. Oh, no! They want to only deal with masterpieces. Only then do they fulfil their dream, that is, to make waves! A minor opera, directed in a stupid manner, would not bring any spectators to the show.

* We should be too alienated, too mentally tired, and having our senses too blunt to give up Mozart, let us say, in order to accept an invitation to the most childish and awkward endeavours10, which do not keep in mind the artistic law that refuses uselessness; they do this just because INTERPRETATION IS THE DOMAIN OF SUBJECTIVITY! With each such staging, anyone can sense how much experimentation goes on, abusing the living body of music. Under the eyes of the bewildered audience, they try the most foolish things. They vivisect the operas under the pretext of the liberty of interpretation. Those who do not feel this as a dangerous and low aggression against the principles of art that generated such masterpieces, have become immune to culture itself.

10 Those who go to the opera for a new staging of the Magic Flute, only attracted by the scandal and novelty, have given up Mozart for a long time.

CHAPTER IX INTERPRETATION: A DOMAIN OF THE SUBJECTIVE

"You cannot grow, you cannot progress until you have gone over your thirst to prove you are talented". (Philokalia)

In this chapter we shall see that the title could be considered with or without a question mark at its end. I will start with the first alternative. The interpreter is the living "support" by which the creation of the composer, which is closed within the code of the musical script, is materialized under the form of a performance; hence, it cannot be conceived but in direct relation with the lyrical subjectivity of that particular artist. Consequently, the musical script does not have a say in judging whether it wants to just "stay" non-interpreted, on the shelves of a library or not. It will have to risk and compromise, and, eventually, collaborate with the interpreter(s); such collaboration will be to its benefit and that of the public, unless it is situated outside the deontology of the interpreter's trade and the sphere of culture. This is the recipe for success. In such a case, the composer's intentions will come to life, unveiling their entire richness, both in content and in form (see in Chapter VII the composer Robert Schumann's considerations related to the importance of the performance in the process of understanding the opera music).

* A just appreciation of the value of subjectivity, as well as how it is situated in relation with the interpreted opera cannot be done without considering the opera in its "performed" state – the opera was called at its very beginnings a "stilo rappresentativo"1; thus, the ideas of the composer, which are "hidden" within the code of the musical script, will receive a 1

A century (and more) older than the Camerata Fiorentina (see Chapter I).

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sensitive analogous. In other words, to a world of abstraction, of the extrasensorial, a good interpretation will give a matching sensorial structure. Interpretation, which entails a high degree of "intimacy" with the musical script, is a legitimate leap from a world of ideas to the world of sensorial concreteness, in the world of the senses; at its turn, it will operate and produce with much intensified chances precise and suggestive references to the world of the composer's ideas in the understanding and the sensitivity of the spectator. This is why we have to admit that the great pianist Edwin Fischer is right to affirm that: "Es kommt daran an, sich in den Zustand zu versetzen der den Komponisten beseelt hat als er das Werk Konzepierte"2 [The interpreter must re-live the state the composer was in when he conceived his work]. This is the only way for the interpreter to reach that point where he gives the illusion (while performing) that he is the creator of the music, and not only the one who reproduces it – I referred to this aim on other occasions, as well. This is what the Chinese have in mind, I suppose, when they say that the true creator is the interpretative artist; this is where we can understand the input, the importance and the value of the interpreter. Such input, though, will not be valuable unless the interpreter has understood, assimilated, and respected the music – unless the music has practically infused his very being.

* After these considerations, we will go back to the theme of subjectivity, which I will analyse below, and I will demonstrate that it takes two major forms3:

2

Cf. Firederich Springorum, Geschenk der Musik, München: Prestel-Verlag, p. 202. 3 In order to show in clearer light the difference as well as the relationship between the two kinds of subjectivity (passive and active), by transposing the discussion in a more general-philosophical frame and resorting to Lucian Blaga's theory of the "doubles" (see his work Trilogia Culturii), I will dare to draw a parallel between the passive subjectivity, with the unconscious horizons, "[which are] constitutive for the human substance, that is, the so-called unavoidable frame of the objects of the conscience"; the active subjectivity could be resembled with the sensitive horizons of the conscience, which, as Blaga maintains, are only integrant factors of the object of conscience, but not of its substance. "The modification of the sensitive horizon does not touch the human conscience but under the aspect of its content"; in our case, by mobilizing the active subjectivity, by a rationalization of the music (musical analysis), the interpretation will be adequate.

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(a) Spontaneous subjectivity, which can be considered to be passive, since it belongs to the realm of the involuntary individuality of the artist, of his natural artistic "virtues". This is why it can also be called personality, the unmistakable charm of that particular interpreter (which is pregnant even when not taking in consideration the qualities of his voice, in the case of a singer). It is unconceivable for it to be suppressed or neutralized; and, if this happens, then the artistic act will be seriously distorted, mutilated, and fundamentally falsified – even annulled. Such attempts to pulverize the spontaneous personality of the interpreter are obvious in the case of the "dressage" he is subject to in the so-called modern staging (see the case of Traviata, in Chapter XIII); the same can happen when a lyrical artist has been mis-distributed and the director (or the conductor) tries to correct such error by imposing on the singer his own variant, to the smallest details. The only means the interpreter has to limber his spontaneous subjectivity, and, thus, to enrich his repertoire, even above his natural endowments, consists in appealing to the other kind of subjectivity; this is a process that takes place in his inner laboratory, and not on the stage, or a short time before the opening night. Such process requires a lot of time, much critical observation, and especially enormous patience – all translating as very, very punctilious and hard work. In order to appreciate the relation between talent and work that Edison was talking about (see above), I will refer to the result of recent research at the International Centre for the Study of Natural Skills (Begabungsforschung) in Münster, which concluded that intelligence is dependant on exercise. Experience shows that exceptional endowment depends more on the intention and disposition of a person to perform, rather than on inborn intelligence (also see footnote 3, Chapter VIII). Another study, conducted by the researcher at the Swedish Institute Karolinska on the brains of adult subjects, also demonstrated that man can learn and progress his entire life. They demonstrated the possibility of an increase of the number of receptors that use dopamine, the substance that enhances the transmitting of signals between two brain cells. Furthermore, there exists the possibility that new synapses4 are formed; this means that conscious activity implied in the adult individual's intellectual work is not limited in time. Such conclusions highlight the importance and efficiency of exercise and work; in our case, we may speak about an intense and conscious implication in the preparation of the interpreting act. (b) Intentional subjectivity is part of the artistic conscience of the interpreter; according to it, the interpreter realizes what he needs to do, but 4

See the journal Focus, April 2009.

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also he is able to acknowledge if he is able to accomplish that specific task5. When an interpreter's conscience is low, his interpretations will enter the zone of the un- or non-artistic. This is why the quality of that particular act, besides talent, is in full accordance with the capability of the interpreter to mobilize the disposition of this kind of subjectivity and to make sure that he does not leave the sphere of culture by contradicting what the musical script really consists of, and to cloud-built concoctions. If not, this lack of skill will lead to an interpretation that will transmit a state of confusion, it will drift away from the music, which it will obstinately omit. Goethe had a remark that we should always have in mind when we favour imagination; he considered it a vague and capricious faculty, and, therefore, it had to be backed by an intense implication of the artistic conscience. All problems raised by active subjectivity can be answered by working hard, by making conscious intellectual effort; that will provide the interpreter with a vast field of activity and development. This kind of subjectivity needs to be permanently worked on, so that the interpreter may enlarge and deepen the frontiers of his horizons, diversify and refine his talent; these will lead him to real excellence. A lot of study will enhance the active subjectivity of the interpreter, until he comprehends fully and internalizes the object to be interpreted; this also entails a sieving of the material through his conscience, thus facilitating an adaptation of his own subjectivity to this object. The active subjectivity will be converted from its divergent and rebellious state – as favoured by many directors today, in performances that are only awkward drifts from the subject, in fact having nothing to do with it, as you can see in the following pictures – into a convergent type of subjectivity, which will be focalized on the object to be interpreted, that particular opera in our case. Such filtering and adaptation will help the interpreter contribute to the revelation of the meaning of the music, by understanding the music from the "inside". Such a contribution becomes an artistic act – an act of culture.

5

A considerable part of his life, Goethe was obsessed with the thought that his true vocation was painting, and insisted on studying drawing for a long time. When he realized that he could not show in shapes what he saw in his mind, he gave up! I would invite many interpreters to consider making the same decision as Goethe did!

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The following images illustrate the extent to which the directors have adapted their staging to Verdi's atmosphere and music6. The only comment that such images can suggest is "Rendez-moi aux enfers!", an exclamation of the poor bastard that the witch of Thessaly brought back to life (to paraphrase Ch. Baudelaire7).

Fig. 1: G. Verdi, Rigoletto, National Theater Opera House, München, 2005. Photo: Das Opernglas, nb. 4, 2005, p. 58.

6

These belong to renowned directors, la créme de la créme, as they say. A friend who saw these, frightened, had a very suggestive reaction that I will dare to reproduce here: "[they] must have eaten the brains of an ass [donkey]!" 7 Charles Baudelarie, Ecrits sur l'Art, Le Livre de Poche, Gallimard, 1971, vol. II, p. 51.

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Fig. 2: Verdi „UN BALLO IN MASCHERA”, Liceo di Barcelona. Photo: L'Opera, no 147, Jn. 2001, p. 66.

* Subjectivism means freedom; individual existence requires the right and the manifestation for this right to the liberty that makes individual existence be itself, different from anything that it is not. Individuality, in order not to negate itself, also implies the freedom to externalize and affirm its identity. Let us not forget, though, that liberty also means commitment, as it is linked with responsible conscience – and lack of responsibility is very different from freedom. An exacerbated manifestation of subjectivity, to the point that it is almost brainless, can lead to a conflicting state with other individualities, thus becoming anarchic, especially when the right to freedom is not considered to be the same for the other, and the rebellious exercising of one's own freedom can affect the freedom of the other. Therefore, to be free means to be entitled to be in charge only of yourself, not others. A wish (or a demand) to impose on others what I consider that my inner freedom represents becomes unconvincing, even suspect. This happens especially in art when it is claimed by a personality that is not distinguished by value, or at least, by obvious individuality (both are convincing by nature, especially the first). On the contrary, such a situation is nothing but a particular, strange case (if not a morbid one), which can only be added to the long list of the grey multitude, or, as

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Caragiale puts it "a run-of-the-mill example of the vast make-believe". To be "yourself" with obstinacy, to try and impose yourself to others has always been one of the most pathetic illusions, and it is still an illusion today; unfortunately, this is the case with so many interpreters in their quest to become personalities able to mould other people's consciences. The ridiculousness of this situation is mainly obvious when we look at the phenomenon we call fashion. I will exemplify with a less scandalous case than that in the pictures above, but which also reveals this mechanism of bending according to the trend. Gustave le Bon offers an interesting sample of the contagious force that fashion exercises within the realm of music, when showing how the opera Tannhäuser, first despised, is praised later on by its former detractors8. As a conclusion, he states that it is not reason, or discernment (as coming from conscious deliberation) that imposes opinions, but contagion, especially when such opinions are absurd; the action of less conscious members of the community on the others is transformed in popular truth, which becomes prestigious and fascinating, and prevents us from seeing reality as it is. We can prove this affirmation of the French savant, by showing how the most "refined" Western European world sees art (please look again at the pictures above). As a suggestive strengthening of this truth regarding pseudo-artistic values of imitation (which invade the so-called artistic life), I will take a short trip in the not so distant past, that is, approximately a millennium and a half ago, and quote one of the greatest fathers of the Western Church, St. Augustine. In an imaginary dialogue between Master and Disciple, he asks the following question: What do you think of those who play the flute, the Cythera, or other such instruments? Can they be compared with a nightingale? – With people I can see a certain art, while with the nightingale I only see nature [...] – What you are saying seems to be true. But can we call art what some only do by imitation? If imitation is art and art is conscious rationality, then imitation is conscious rationality. But the nightingale that sings acts with no conscious rationality. So it does not do art. Still, it imitates: So imitation is not art!9

8

Or, as Caragiale puts it: "Now we all like Wagner; before we didn't like him, but now we have all decided to love him" (I.L. Caragiale, p. 875). 9 St. Augustine, De Musica, Book I, Ch. IV. St. Augustine calls music scientia bene modulandi, that is, well-balanced, as modulare comes from modus, which means measure; without science, music becomes only vulgar pleasure, as the Saint maintained (cf. Louis Bertrand, Les plus belles pages de Saint Augustin, Paris: Fayard, 1916, pp. 109-111).

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Besides the exactness of the conclusion regarding imitation, it seems that the ancients also made a clear distinction between art and nature, the artistic and the natural, a nuance that our contemporary artist often overlooks in his aesthetic considerations. This is why the two images illustrate the conscious (?) rationality of our times, in a 21st century cultivated and civilized Europe. Many have the false illusion that by running for what is in fashion10 they become personalities, since this is an act of freedom; still, embracing what is fashionable is nothing but conforming under a flag. The masses – which are made up of a countless list of particular cases – by accepting the new fashion, also hope to get personality, and stand out in the crowd11. The individual gives up, though, to his freedom when he can obtain the insurance of unwished-for advantages; in the case of directors, fashion is an insurance against their fear of failure, and makes them use fashion as haven. This is how freedom forgets about itself and becomes its opposite, when artistic conscience disappears, making way to gross imitation, to persiflage, or even to mockery. To be fashionable does not necessarily mean that you have the capability to be really modern or display novelty. In many of the abovementioned cases of present-day opera direction, they just take on formulas that circulate frequently and are fashionable, and they appeal to patterns for the most varied and rich situations! I have sung in many performances in which all characters were dressed in black leather, or plastic – according to fashion – which, allegedly, recalled the lugubrious atmosphere of the Nazi uniforms. This is how I appeared on stage in the costume created (?) according to the conception of the director both as Manrico, and, in almost identical clothes as Cavaradossi, in the staging of another director. Any director is free to be himself, until he gets to the moment when he wants to "free" the others by force: the composer, the singer, the spectator… Just skimming through albums and photo articles of various performances during the past decades, one will be able to notice the proliferation and the affluence of such patterns. Verdi, himself, was 10

The depredation fashion causes is felt in all domains. It was enough that doctors made a list of ailments that fatten or cause ageing due to their high nutritional level, that business people who own markets started producing "alternative" foods, which are four times less nutritious, but four times more expensive, too. People rushed to the department stores! Innocence is easy to be fooled, especially when it is combined with the cleverness of the profiteer. 11 A. Gide considers that man has only one wish: to become as humanly as possible – in other words, as banal as possible (cf. L. Blaga, "Apologia influenĠei" [The Apology of Influence] in Adevărul literar úi artistic, VI, October 18, 1925, p. 7).

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"freed" from himself by such pattern-interpretations imposed by fashion; Puccini did, too, etc. Verdi is not Verdi, anymore, neither is Puccini Puccini, because they have become, as an irony of fate, the trailers of the directors, and their "vision", which is imposed by fashions; that means that the same pattern is repeated, ad infinitum, both by the manner in which they manage the performance on stage, and by the introduction in the dramatic conflict, among other stupidities, the obsessive hate between classes, which the composer never had in mind, and which appears to be totally misplaced. Those aspects that mean freedom for the director, mean abuse for Verdi and Puccini, by the annulment of their right to be themselves, as well as the annulment of the public's right to meet with the genuine creations of these geniuses of the opera (I speak only from my own experience as singer on stage for more than 50 years). This is what happens when the director-interpreter has "freed" himself totally from everything that particular opera really means, music and all, in a word, has freed himself from culture. True personality means that the interpreter is the master of his trade, and exercises it within the frame of culture. He will always say: I have the choice of being free not for the sake of freedom and against art; I will exercise my freedom only after having observed the freedom of the composer, of the author whose name I use and the entire performance uses. I am only the director, whose notoriety is not comparable to that of Verdi, who has been a box office success for more than two centuries, while I am only ephemeral, in the best of cases. It is Goethe, again, who made a splendid remark related to the freedom of the artist, affirming that it is exactly the genius or the inborn talent that immediately understands and obeys laws, with extreme docility…12 Today, these relations have been totally deteriorated. Normally, all participants are important in a performance staging one of Verdi's operas: director, singers, conductor, etc. (see above Blaga's remark about conductors). In our times, though, besides Mister Director, who is the totum factum of the performance, there is little chance that at one point we will also discuss about Verdi, or that – as the posters announce – we will have any connection with Verdi's thoughts as he put them in his music. Intentionally rebellious subjectivity leads to a serious conflict in the domain of culture, which has generalized consequences. Blaga says (in the same article on horizon and style) that stylistic unity has given way to a mixture of promiscuity; although the producing of style is the result of an 12

Baudelaire also considers that the more an artist obeys the rules of art, the more original his art is – constraints help the hatching of originality, if that particular individual has a genuine artistic temperament.

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implication of the unconscious, spotting it, highlighting it is the result of an act of conscience. Consequently, the interpreter bears the burden of internalizing the work of art rationally, even by finding such stylistic instances that its author did not fully internalize when the opera was created. This is how we will understand why the cultural level of the interpreter, his capacity of orientation in the domain should not be less than that of the author; even higher, if possible. This is our logical conclusion, and in view of what Blaga is saying, I think it is also true.

* The interpretative act cannot do without the input of both passive and active subjectivity; they both mark such acts. Furtwängler maintains that the interpreter must have a unique capacity of adaptation13, in order to establish a "brotherly" link with the music. A convincing performance is facilitated by an interpretation that is marked by both kinds of subjectivity, and by being radically different from a mechanical, dry, or even neutral execution, belonging to somebody who has but feeble personality, an old conception, and appeals to a fair-like mix of banality; such sad cases are full of damp, music has no echo in what is being shown, as the artist proves at each step he takes that the mainspring of his creative imagination is used up, or even non-existent. Similarly, a good theatre will also avoid a staging that relies on aberrant interpretations that try to hide, even unsuccessfully, the same lack of personality, but fully reveal serious gaps in culture and mastery of the trade. Interpreters should be convinced that there is no shame if culture provides you with real suggestions, and if the style of that particular composer is not indifferent to you. We should remember how great fine arts representatives started by studying the work of their predecessors – Michelangelo was called Michelagnolo by G. Vasari14. The same happened with all genius composers: they did not hesitate to give up their personality, as they did not think that introducing themselves to the secrets 13

W. Furtwängler, Entretiens sur la musique, p. 26. Giorgio Vasari tells the story of young Michelangelo, who sculpted a sleeping Cupid that made Pier Francesco Medici say that if he buried it under ground, it would pass as antiquity. Michelangelo made it in such a way that it looked ancient. It was buried in a vineyard in Rome and then sold to a cardinal who thought it was an antique. (G. Vasari, Vieаile pictorilor, sculptorilor Юi arhitecаilor [The Lives of Painters, Sculptors and Architects], Bucuresti: Meridiane, 1962, vol. II. pp. 340341). 14

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of composition by copying their masters' works would lead to any loss of freedom. Rossini confessed to Beethoven that his studies had not passed more over copying various works of the masters, and that was the source of everything he knew. Even the divine Bach copied from the works of the Italians and the French, behaving as a patient student of the great musicians (P. Casals); Mozart also studied, by copying works of his predecessors even since childhood. All great masters have tried not to be free until they became free, by working at this freedom to impose their own style. I will not start making a list of all, as this would mean that I under-appreciate the culture and the information of my reader.

* Interpretation represents a translation of the intentions of the composer in the living language of the performance, and the creation of each composer is waiting within the covers of a musical script for a good translator to come along, one who would not show himself lacking in the gifts we have already enumerated. Let us not forget B. Croce's equation "traduttore = traditore". Translation implies the risk of treason, when the translator strays away from the original meaning, translating from a language that he can only speak approximately (music, in our case), or even at all (see the case of the directors coming from an entirely different domain, which does not entail getting familiar with a musical script). I will not speak about the case when the translator does not master the language of the target language, either. Then treason is… sans reproach, so to speak. In such a case, which is not exceptional nowadays, we have already seen what the subjectivity of the Director's abandonment in the arms of freedom can do, when he hopes that it is that freedom that will save him from his own confusion, which he cannot but induce to the minds of the spectators. I have given examples elsewhere. In Rigoletto, at the Magio Musicale Fiorentino, Hitler, Stalin and Mao appear in full swing of the Renaissance, at Prince Gonzaga's court, alongside the Duke of Mantua. In Norma, the soprano M. Caballe is asked to sing the aria "Casta diva" up on a truck hood. This is how, under the mask of novelty, we can only find a smear of whitewash, at best, if not a sad and sinister drift displayed by those who live under the obsession of change. If Mister Director, propelled by his own effusion, had not fallen in the bottomless abyss of this mania of the different, such detour from music and dramatic context would not have happened. The greatest chess player can be "defeated" by a clumsy adversary, who, by one blow, turns the chess board upside down. The TV

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channels, as institutions of the mass media, in their rush for novelties, will ratify the result, decreeing the victory of the new winner. The Commedia dell'arte magnificently illustrates the solving of the contradiction between the accuracy of interpretation (see Chapter VII), which leads to artistic actuality, and the subjectivity of the interpretative act. The gifted actor, after a long experience that has gotten him acquainted with the secrets of his art, will be able to improvise brilliantly in any given role. In this kind of performance, each member of the cast can be convincing in his/her interpretation, and give life to any character: Arlechino, Pantalone, Brighella, Truffaldino, etc. There are many lyrical artists these days who consider the mastering of their trade as an absence of spontaneity, as routine. True mastery, though, is the most efficient medicine against routine. Just think of Mozart's case, whose extraordinary prodigy was due to his education in his "trade"; it is this craftsmanship that made him exclaim in a talk about the French or the Italian style: "I can adapt or imitate any manner and style of composition" (cf. M. Beaufils). It is discouraging, even scandalous, when they practice the arbitrary in the name of subjectivity. The arbitrary is born from lack of knowledge. In such situations, they rely on pattern solutions, chosen for the sake of… freedom of interpretation. It is ridiculous to obey a pattern in the name of freedom (maybe it would not be according to the logics of the absurd). To fight and proclaim freedom when, in fact, you give up freedom – this is absurd! Claiming freedom is used by the "innovative" director only to shake off the odious tradition – read work and study. Then, in a moment, as a consequence of the same laziness, he will desert his so-called freedom, and will enlist in the army of the fashionable. It is also regrettable when the interpretation of a masterpiece is used by the lyrical artist as a mirror in which he only sees and admires himself, transforming the show in an exercise of narcissism15. Such evolution is no surprise in this age of psychologism, which follows the epoch that the great Bach ended; this is the attitude I referred to even at the beginning of this study: exacerbated egocentricity, which lives its last stage today16. 15

As a case of disregard of the public and of any deontological principles, I would remind you of the agent Barbaja, who, wanting to protect the soprano Colbrand's voice (she was Rossini's wife), would only give representations of the first Act of Medeea, at the San Carlo Theatre in Napoli, for two months, and then the second act for the next two months, according to how the primadona felt (cf. Marie-Henry Beyle [Stendhal], Rossini, Munchen: Piper Schott Mainz, 1992, p. 365). 16 Wherever you turn, especially on TV, when somebody approves or contradicts a certain affirmation, he does so in the name of "By my opinion!" Why is that? Well, they are not able to invoke any other instance of principle, or valuable law, but

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There is no guarantee, though, that the spectators will be able to live the fascination of the director, or the singer, when they only dream of their own self, their own pleasure, and do not outgrow the behaviour of a dilettante (in the least flattering meaning of the word). I repeat! Experience has often proven that at the basis of a much too personal interpretation, you can find the misunderstanding of the work, in a perfect combination with a lack of mastery of the trade, which makes it impossible for the artists to give an adequate musical-staging expression. This is why subjective interpretation cannot be shielded from amendments. Somebody who has just become literate will not be able to understand the metaphors belonging to Rimbaud or Rossetti, and will question them, exactly like so many creators of recent performances do with "old" masterpieces, which they… make problematic! As they cannot identify with them in any way, they mutilate them, by reducing and adjusting them to their own parameters, and to those of fashion. Awaiting for veritable personalities, I consider that the public is disposed to accept a little more culture from the interpreters, as I am also convinced that they would also appreciate a little more professional preparation, instead of DILETTANTISM.

their own opinion. The most scientific era – in the most serious meaning of the word – has become, at the same time, the most illusionary, as reality risks to disappear altogether from the face of the earth, due to so many personal opinions.

CHAPTER X THE DILETTANTE – BETWEEN BLIND ROUTINE AND DEAF AVANT-GARDE

"Nothing is more worthy of contempt than an ignorant who thinks that only what he does is well done". (Terentius)

We will use some suggestions that come from the difference between music with a manifesto and music without a manifesto, in order that we may understand the malign role of the dilettante who is actively involved in the translation of masterpieces of the lyrical art. His musical education is at least questionable, and this is one of the major causes of the crisis the opera is undergoing today, as I see it. I will use as a starting point the thoughts of a great composer - Ygor Stravinsky. His position will help us realise the importance of the musical in the work of the interpreters, be they directors, singers or conductors; lately, this aspect has been often neglected with superior – and not entirely innocent – superficiality. This factor is not taken into consideration to its real value, and, thus, interpretation is not only arguable, but also deprived of its most convincing suggestions. Stravinsky maintains that any sliding outside the musical text is illegitimate, as it leads to serious degradations of the virtues of music. Music, in order to exists, does not need anything else but… music, says Stravinsky. Its life unfolds in an autarchic manner, and consequently, music enjoys real autonomy, a quality Furtwängler also speaks about (Ton and Wort, p. 132), with the following words: "Musik, auch imstande ist aus sich selbst heraus eine geschlossene organische Welt zu bilden" [Music is capable of creating its own world, out of its own substance]. In the same collection of articles, Furtwängler goes on and considers that "Geist ohne Sinnlichkeit für den Künstler ebensowenig erstrebenswert ist wie Sinnlichkeit ohne Geist" [For an artist, the spirit without sensitivity is as barren of value, or uninteresting; the same holds true for sensitivity without the spirit].

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Let us go back to Stravinsky. With just one word he institutes the immanence of music, at the same time maintaining that when music is taken out of its world, it becomes something else: music cannot be music anymore. By this obviously tautological formulation that states that music must remain music in order to remain music, Stravinsky's position is circumscribed to the art for art's sake trend; this trend has not exhausted its capacity to influence the artistic conception of our times. It considers that each art is limited to its intrinsic values, gravitating in its closed world, excluding any other implications that might come from another realm. We must admit that this manner of thinking, although having uncontested merit – which Stravinsky himself clarifies – also overlooks reality. Obvious factuality will be noticed in Robert Schumann's testimony, a comparably valuable musician, when he discusses the performances of Wagner's operas (see Chapter VII). We will discuss this reality in the following. The opera performance has become no man's land in the present day situation, which is characterised by the interpreters' lack of professionalism. They do not study the music enough (especially directors, as we have already shown). This is why, Stravinsky's position could become worthy of serious consideration, if we want to change this downward course of the opera. We will have to approach it partially, though, using it as aid to get us out of the labyrinth we are wandering in, under this inflation of dilettantism. In his book Chronique de ma vie1 Stravinsky puts his conception into words: Expressivity has never been an immanent quality of music [...]. The fact that music seems to express something is just an illusion, not a reality2. This is only an additional element [...] which, of late, some have mistaken for the essence of music. I consider that by its very essence, music only consists in itself, any other signification that is attributed to it is alien [...] Those who pretend that they cannot enjoy music unless they keep their eyes closed, and cannot perceive and understand it if they keep them open, because any visual distraction will not offer them the opportunity to let themselves embraced by incoherent day-dreaming, swayed by the sounds, love such dreams more than music itself. Most people love music, in their 1

Also see Igor Stravinsky, Erinnerungen, Zürich, 1937. One of Stravinsky's predecessors, Gluck, also had this conception, which we can read in a number of the Journal de Paris, 1788, which reproduced a conversation between he and Corancez: "In vain will you look in the combination of notes which make up a song a character that is inherent to certain passions; there is no such thing" (cf. R. Rolland, Voyage musical au apys du passé, Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1923, p. 207). 2

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Chapter X hope to find in it joy, pain, sadness, and they hope to forget their daily lives… Music is given on the purpose of constituting order among things, an order that is realized by a construction, which, once it is realized, has already said everything. This is why Goethe affirmed that "architecture is petrified music"… Whether Symphony III was inspired by the figure of Bonaparte the Republican, or Napoleon the Emperor is non-important; only music matters (also see Paul Landormy, La musique française après Debussy, Gallimard, 1943).

From the fragment above, we will retain the aspect related to the immanence of the musical; such immanence has the mission to foreground the importance of the study of music. To deepen this study we will absolutely have to make use of a more applied perspective, even a "scientific" one, than that which is practiced today on a large scale, by most interpreters; we will need to look at music from a prism in which our intellect should be much more involved. This attitude that Stravinsky pretends from those who approach music is no novelty. It was a frequent practice, even in ancient times; and then in the Middle Ages. These were epochs in which music was considered to be science, and was not a member of the trivium, together with liberal arts – which constituted an inferior stage of study; on the contrary, it was placed alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. This was the quatrivium, the superior level (a classification that we encounter with the school in Chartres3). Both the trivium and the quatrivium represented the seven parts of the liberal education founded by the Sophists. Archytas, Aristocles (Platon), Aristoxenes, or Pythagoras developed arithmetic-geometric studies of music, which find among its harmonic aspects (even the symphonic ones, I would add) analogies with architecture, especially (L. Rougier). Pythagoras, for example, considered music as a manifestation of the Number, thus it can be associated with a cosmic order. He affirmed: "When we make music, the heart calculates without our being aware of that". Pliny, in his Natural History, wrote that Pythagoras had named the distance from the Earth to the Moon tone; then, a semitone was the distance from the Moon to Mercury, or from Mercury to Venus; the distance from Venus to the Sun was a tone and a half; from the Sun to Mars – a tone; from Mars to Jupiter, a semitone; from Jupiter to Saturn a semitone; by adding a minor third (a tone and a half), the Zodiac 3

"Music" appears as an image in the Western portal of the cathedral in Chartres, beside the other liberal arts, and on two column heads who originate from Cluny, various musical sounds appear (Cf. M.-M. Davy, Initiation à la symbolique romance, Flamarion, 1977).

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is complete, that is, the sky of fixed stars; thus, the "Universal Harmony" is also completed. The same succession is also found, and rigorously observed by Dante in his journey, when, beside Beatrice, he goes through celestial orbits (Patapievici), in a… musical order. Only those who do not want to see it, will not notice the pattern of the diatonic scale, formed by the seven sounds. Even the great architect Alberty counted on the musical harmony of numbers in building the basilica Santa Maria Novella. Let us also remember that the rainbow contains seven colours, as well. If we drew a comparison between this ancient manner of seeing music, and how it is mirrored in our contemporary's spirit, we would notice how great a difference there is. Music for the ancient represented a celestial projection of the mystery of cosmos (a symbol of the Number); this vision is far from the cosy-sentimental approach of the contemporary fellowmen, when they just use music to let themselves be carried away by the waves of fading-rosy tunes; it is also far from the vision of our youth (the mirror of the future, who, in Dostoyevsky's vision, also show what is new in this world). By pursuing ravishing ecstasy, they unleash their hormonal overflow and use deafening music to do so.

* Let us also take the other face of the coin. It is clear that music "mingles" in the more or less artistic life, with which it is in close connection. We will not only think about the phenomenon called synaesthesia, in which sensations of various natures are associated. J.-A. Rimbaud has a well-known poem, Voyelles, written in his first period of creation, in which he finds correspondent colours to the sonority of all vowels: "A noir, E blanc, I rouge U vert, O bleu […] – O l'Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux!")4. A better illustration of how music interferes with our lives is given by the tradition of the Great Eastern Empire. The wise Se-Ma Ts'ein (for whom the origin of music is the sky) maintains that between a certain epoch's music and society there is a close interdependence, which he highlights in the following hypotheses: - When the intentions of the prince are petty, the music is full of jerk5 and poorness, and the people is blue, sad, and worried. 4

Œvres de Arthur Rimbaud, préface de Paul Claudel, Paris: Mercure de France, 1929, p. 93. 5 Remember the composer A. Honegger's predictions for our century as to the music of the year 2000, which we referred to in a note at the beginning of this study.

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- When the prince is ill-mannered6, insolent, and cruel, the musical sounds will set the extremities of the body moving (the hands and the feet) [...] and the people is harsh and firm. - When the prince is upright, just, powerful, and fair, the music is the expression of an appropriate attitude, it is sincere, and the people is solemn and firm. - When the prince is perverse and lazy, the music is excessive and overflowing like a wave, and the people is immoral and erratic. - They say that music is a determinant factor in order that good behaviour of the people be instilled […]. When vital elements are altered, the music is corrupt, musical sounds are sad, lacking dignity, or, if they are merry, they do not originate calmness, but push man towards an acceptance of disorder, or make him think solely of the fulfilment of his egotistic wishes; in a word, music is mean. Moreover, when this pursuit of personal wishes leads to a neglect of our duty, then confusion sets in, without any joy. - He who was appointed prince over people, should not take care of his own pleasures and displeasures; and this would suffice, because what the prince loves, the people does, as the people always imitates the actions of their superior. If you observe this, it is easy to lead. - When man perceives music in a profound manner [real music, I might add], his soul is calm and he is happy. Being happy, he is at peace. Being at peace, he is consistent, thus resembling the sky, and through this, he is like a god who originates trust; without getting irritated, he inspires fear. Music has a regulating function, because it represents harmony between sky and earth, projecting over the latter the spiritually superior influence of the first. (cf. "Ceremonialul" [The Ceremonial], trans. S. Couvreur, Paris, 1951 – see "Les memoires hist." Paris 1976, vol. III, col. UNESCO of representative works; the Chinese series, the Romanian Academy Library II, 532129). As a much later echo, we will meet in the 16th century with a European variant of this relation between music and social life, that is, the 1570 Patent of the King of France, which regulated the good organisation of the musical life: "Charles, King of France from the Grace of God […] 6

The reader is asked to avoid making any connections with the political life of the 21st century Romania, especially of the past few years.

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following his councillors' advice, and considering that where music is disorderly also mores are depraved, and where music is well ordered, in conformity with the high laws, also people live by healthy moral standards…"

* After the short but suggestive incursion in the world of Chinese wisdom, which might make us think of meaningful correspondences between our music (commercial music) and the society we live in, let us come back, somehow freed from the straits of Stravinsky's sensible argumentation, and enter the ocean of the multitude extra musical implications of music. The music that consists of numerical relations that correspond to the relations between notes, which is like Stravinsky conceived it, or like the construction of Bach's7 entire Art of the Fugue, does not exclude the possibility for its expressive virtues in any way. In fact, the correspondence between music and affect bring about the real possibility of complications that music causes in the human soul, intellect, and spirit; such complications appear when, living under the influence of the atmosphere of the music, we are captivated by the state it generates in us. Without such relation, the opera performance would not exist, and we, interpreters, would be useless. The most beautiful argument is brought by Lucian Blaga, at the beginning of his "Spa‫܊‬iul Mioritic" [The Mioritic Space] (the second greatest chapter of Trilogia Culturii [The Trilogy of Culture]); this argument confirms the "expansion" of music outside its boundaries, which demonstrates its valences even in the most distant domain from it, the domain of spatiality. He invites us to wonder – while being placed in the sonorous field of a fugue, a cantata, or a passion by Bach: What spatial horizon does this music suggest? It is the infinite horizon! Blaga, inspired, goes on, suggesting the passing to abyssal noology: "by the rhythm and the interior line of music you can guess this space, the same as by the flight of the bird, you can guess the width of space".8

* 7

See Erich Bergel – J. S. Bach, Die Kunst der Fuge – Ihre geistige Grundlage îm Zeichen der thematischen Bipolarität (1980) and Bachs letzte Fuge (1985) Brockhaus-Musikverlag, Bonn. 8 L. Blaga, Trilogia culturii – Spaаiul mioritic, op. cit. p. 119.

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Reviewing a part of what we might call music psychology, and encouraged by a thought belonging to Paul Cézanne ("The painter is interested and has to see and do exclusively with colours; psychology is there anyway"), we will stop for a while in the company of a study belonging to the Belgian composer André-Modeste Grétry, "Memoires ou Essais sur la Musique", published in 1796; here, he gives a very interesting interpretation of tonalities, which this "Moliere of the lyrical comedy" (R. Rolland) summarizes in a kind of a psychology of tonalities: "Do is noble and open; do is pathetic; Re, bright; re, melancholic; Mi flat, noble and pathetic; mi, less melancholic; Fa, mixed; fa, the most pathetic; Fa sharp harsh, overloaded with accidents; Sol, bellicose; sol, like fa; La, sparkling; la, naive; Si flat, noble and pathetic; Si, bright; si, ingénue" (the tonality spelled with a capital letter is major, and the other is minor). Such characterisations are considered by many as subjective, reductionist, even; the same could be said about the arbitrary difference between major and minor, which is restricted by Gretry to the following scheme: Major is joyous, it affirms, it relates, it proves, it answers questions, being specific to sanguine and choleric temperaments, while the second, the minor, asks questions, seeks, very often regrets, denies, doubts; it is appealing and it expresses grief, even death, being specific for the melancholic-phlegmatic temperament. Major is, generally, seen like the echo of an offensive attitude [anabatic], while minor of a retractile, defensive one [catabatic/descending]9.

Irrespective of the schematic character of reducing music to certain fixed, even dubious inner feelings that might accompany musical audition, and that are suggested by music (as we know, reality is much more complex), we might, still, consider that there is some truth to such observations. They do have a real support (mathematically speaking, as we shall see), if we think of the play between the major and the minor tierce. From a scale (1:2), by harmonic division (2:3:4) we have the quint and the fourth; from a quint (2:3), by division (4:5:6), we obtain a major tierce (4:5) and the major tierce (5:6); from the major tierce, we obtain a major tone and a minor one (8:9:10). The difference between a major tone and a minor one is 81:80, approximately the fifth part of a semitone, that is, the value of the comma, expressed in numbers (see dtv-Atlas-Musik, Munchen, 1997).

9

André-Modeste Gretry, Eseuri, II, 365-358, (cf. Romain Rolland, Călătorie în аara Muzicii, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Muzicală, 1964, p. 231).

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* In the following lines, closely linked with the theme of dilettantism, I will start from the hypothesis that music, through its representatives, cannot barricade itself in a ghetto. On the contrary, its representatives are called to transform the esoteric character of the musical script into an exoteric performance; that is, they are called to open and facilitate a closeness between it and the least initiated individual's understanding and feeling. By their interpretation the artists will have to raise this individual to the level of the music's meaning and content, so that they should not degrade its virtues and value; otherwise, the spectator would not have the opportunity to profit from music, and have it enrich his soul.

* Music means construction. Its rigour and clarity is close to that of a crystal. The music state, though, is a diffuse one, even cloudy, which is perceived intimately (like hormones, which are released by the endocrine glands in the circuit of the organism not directly, but through thousands of small capillary veins). It enters in the inner life of the creator, in the moment of inspiration, and in that of the addresser of music, that is, the amateur, the dilettante. Normally, such state, when it leaves the subconscious and reaches light, under the form of a musical creation (in the case of the composer), will have a precisely10 and rigorously structured expression, which needs to become even more obvious within the reality of its representation during a performance. Moreover, the professional is different from a dilettante by the fact that he is able to maintain order, and the ensemble that he can find in the musical discourse; he does not consider music only as a more or less pleasant mixture of sounds, like the dilettante, who very often is lost in contemplation, as he would be when watching a mountain spring sparkling in the sun. The true professional will find less time for such contemplation. According to B. Leroy's interviews,

10

Once governed by the state of inspiration, the artist has to master that state by finding the proper technical means to express it; he has to give his dream a reality. When interpreting, the interpreter has to do the same: from owned he has to become the owner of music. This means that he has to master the concrete and just expressive means, so that he could help the spectator get closer – with his soul and his mind – to the feelings that the composer had when he composed the music. This very complicated interplay between being the master and the servant of such powerful feelings can never be available to the dilettante.

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an amateur slides in a reverie related to his intimate life when listening to a Beethoven symphony (see H. Delacroix). The dilettante (and, unfortunately, the majority of today's directors are nothing but dilettantes) hopes that by being in contact with the subject, that is, the pretext of the music – taking into consideration only the libretto and never the music itself – his "inner" feelings will allow him to find that small crack through which he could squeeze his own personality in the interpretation. He will do so only for his own pleasure, being convinced that his involvement, in his capacity of interpreter-creator, can be only marginal, vague, lacking spine, in a word, at the level of impressions. In fact, they should alternate intuition with conceptual thinking; but, because the atmosphere does not rely directly on reason, the dilettante imagines that he is allowed to disregard reason altogether. This is how, due to laziness of the spirit and non-professionalism, it is lack of culture that generates inept wanderings! Feeling is known to be the first commentary of music, and in the case of the dilettante, it is strangely overwhelming and unique11. Consequently, he will "build" everything based on the nebulosity of his impressions. It is an even stranger fact that the feelings of such dilettantes take the shape of representation-formulas that the spectator can hardly identify with. This is why the public will feel like in an inferno in the paradise of the dilettanteinterpreter (think again at the images from the München Rigoletto, or the Barcelona Masque Ball we reproduced in Chapter IX). Unfortunately (or not?), it is not enough that an artistic creation produce pleasure only to its creator with no regard to the receiver, even when it belongs to the domain of interpretation. In order to please the addresser, there is more we should bring to the interpretation than the simple wish and "impulse" of the amateur. Besides talent, and a technicalprofessional standing, the interpreter-creator has to be endowed with artistic conscience, which cannot disregard the musical component and its whole complexity. As to such conscience, the philosopher and psychologist W. Wundt considers that it is creative, because it unites two states of conscience, which results in more than a simple sum of the 11

Delphine de Girardin characterises her impressions from the opera hall in a picturesque and eloquent manner, for "Le Courrier de Paris", in November 24, 1839: "Dear aunty, I would like to invite you in my box, but only if you come without your husband, since his presence bothers me. He is an extremely furious dilettante; any accomplished musical phrase that he savours full of admiration, he also accompanies with a fist blow to the back of my seat. Well, this time, I would like to listen to music quietly…" (cf. A. Boschot, Hector Berlioz – un romantique sous Louis-Philippe, Vol. III, p. 287).

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composing elements. Such synthesis brings something new, because in the domain of this conscience, 1+1>212.

* Artistic conscience makes the creator get a certain distance from his own creation, so that he might have objective-critical relations with it. This is a condition for any "happy" case, that is, the case of masterpieces. The following eloquent example speaks about this situation of the composer. On the handwritten sketch for the "Ode to Joy", part of the IXth Symphony, by L. van Beethoven, after the first variant of the initial phrase, the composer wrote: "Mauvais!" A little further on, the motif appears in a new form, which he considered: "Ceci est mieux". Only the third variant, the definitive one, which we enjoy and admire today, carries the approval of its creator: "C'est ça!" Logically, it is of great importance for the interpreter to look at the impulses of his inspiration in a circumspect manner, and make sure that the understanding of the object to be interpreted is just, and whether the formula he found to interpret expresses and duly covers the intentions of the script. The director has to translate in a stage language the entire world of these representations, which are suggested by the musical script (J. F. Herbart, the founder of psychology as science, considers representations as the fundamental fact of all psychic phenomena). Both at the stage of perceiving and understanding the opera, and that of its staging, the director should be driven by talent and sensitivity. Nevertheless, these need to be accompanied, even conducted, by his knowledge and musical culture, which means that he is able to analyse and understand the musical script. Then, there comes the singer, who has to have the technique and professional mastery to reveal the content of the music. Surprisingly, the professional-dilettante director, who has none of the above accomplishments, has been accepted as a citizen of the world of the opera, getting even to a privileged position, nobody would have even dreamed of half a century ago. The institutionalization of this strange apparition in our times is even less justified, as it is based on a paradoxical syntagmatic definition: a professional-amateur. Nevertheless, we should not be totally surprised, as our contemporary times are very fond of such absurd and nonsensical forms. A dilettante13 is a person who manifests interest for a certain domain, without having the necessary professional education; at the same time, we 12

Quoted in Lucian Blaga, "Wilhelm Wundt", in VoinĠa, 1920, I, nr. 16, p. 1.

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can call a dilettante someone who does not study his own profession enough. Who could we think of when we are dealing with a dusty, stern interpretation, which displays no personal involvement? This is the way some "specialists" degrade and compromise the music of such composers as Bach or Mozart, under the pretext of fidelity and respect for the text. This kind of "respect" only lets music hibernate in the text, since it has not been awoken to life. It is the result of an exasperatingly lazy14 routine interpretation. It is a tamely interpretation, so tamely that it has no insight, thus falsifying the music by making use of superficial formulas, which are both insipid and tired; they communicate nothing and demonstrate a lack of professional commitment, as well as a lack of knowledge and musical conscience15. This is the dilettante! What could we say about the creator of an opera performance that has not linked what the public sees with what it hears? It is a show in which the composer could not even recognise his own creation thus represented, while the convention that is at the basis of the entire genre is compromised, even poisoned. In such a performance the stage becomes a scaffold for the composer. All this horror happens due to the schizophrenic view of a director, who rambles around… full of enthusiasm. If we drew a comparison of such "modern" adventures and a "special" flight, in which the plane will never land where it was supposed to, and neither can it go back from where it took off, then we would get the full "charm" of such endeavours! What can such an "avant-garde" visionary be but a dilettante? He does not master his trade, he does not have the necessary education for the job he is employed to do; to define his position, we can refer to the Romanian philosopher N. Ionescu's expression: "he occupies the position, but does not fulfil the job". This is why his enterprise fails. 13

From this definition of the dilettante I exclude any complicity or implication of the etymologic meaning of the word, because his "masterpieces" produce no pleasure whatsoever. 14 Baudelaire affirmed, reproducing the words of the great painter Eugène Delacroix: "Nature is only a dictionary; nobody can pretend that the dictionary is, or can replace an artistic composition". 15 "… The specific conscience of the philosophical and musical domains alike is conditioned by a long experience […], by assiduous contact of the existing works, and a continuous effort to assimilate them; then, by exercise, in so much as the spiritual faculties that we engage in such preoccupations are involved. […] artistic conscience is of real value to both the creator and to those who want to enjoy the various values included in the masterpieces [but especially to the interpreter, I would add]" (L. Blaga, About philosophical conscience, a copied academic course, Cluj: Schildkarut, 1947, pp. 1-2).

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Neither the pretence-avant-garde artist, nor the dilettante are "intimidated" by music, thus neglecting any difficulty that the perceiving music may entail. They both read music with a false key, or they do not read it at all. Music is magic. It is made, it becomes whole only when you understand it. It disintegrates, it vanishes when it is only exterior to you. Both these "artists" cheat when faced with the Gordian knot represented by the musical text. As they are not able to un-knot it, they just squeeze under it. They do not realize, or do not want to take into consideration the fact that the job of the interpreter is to communicate the intention of the composer. The secret of communication consists in the matching of the expression (the interpreter) with the intention of the author, and be successful reads that none of the expressive means fall outside what the composer proposes, that is, outside the musical text. It has to be considered like a unitary world. See the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller referring to Faust, from which it is obvious how Goethe sees art, as well as his efforts to obtain unity; such efforts took him almost half a century, from 1773, when he started to write Faust, till 1831, when he finished Faust II. The work of art is a Cosmoid (as Blaga would call it), with its laws, opposed to CHAOS, which has no law, it is un-law-ful! The dilettante, by taking the place of the real professional, wanders topsy-turvy through music.

CHAPTER XI MUSIC, THE OPPOSITE OF CHAOS (WHILE MUSIC IS OPPOSED TO CHAOS, THE AVANT-GARDE DIRECTION IS THE OPUS OF CHAOS)

"Paulatim licentia crevit"1. (Caius Sallustius Crispus)

The more we ponder the idea of music's autonomous life – as existing only in itself and for itself, like a circle that is closed for anything that exists outside it, as Stravinsky conceived it – the clearer its defining character: a construction made of harmony and inner perfection. This is the model of great masterpieces. When approaching what music really is in a conscious manner, we will have, besides our sensations, the conviction that we are parting with opaqueness, the vortex of haphazard, and indeterminacy, and we enter a chosen domain of organisation, in which the whole is correspondent to all its parts, and each part carries the whole; everything is correlated, and nothing is due to chance. Consequently, any modification of a part brings about structural changes, severely affecting the integrity of the whole. Heinrich Wölfflin, the great art critic, a follower of Buckhardt at the Basel University, considers that parts have to function as necessary elements of the whole2, and this is the fundamental principle of artistic creation. One of the revolutionary poets of modern art, Charles Baudelaire, also presented his poetic art in Fusées: "Je crois que le charme infinie et mistérieux [...] tient à la régularité et à la symétrie qui sont un des besoins primordiaux de l'esprit humain" [I think that infinite and mysterious charm [...] relies on regularity and symmetry, those being primordial needs of the 1

Little by little rampancy has grown. Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Basel: Schwabe & Co., 1963.

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human spirit]. (Écrits sur l'Art, Gallimard, 1971, vol. II, p. 383); which means that harmony is basic to art. Robert Schumann, at his turn, as the fine Romantic musician he was, when talking about perfection in art (with reference to H. Berlioz's Fantastic Symphony) says: "On ne pourrait absolument rien ajouter ni rien aupprimer, san ôter à l'idée sa tranchante énergie, sans nuir a sa force"3 [There is nothing we can add or eliminate without causing a loss of its force or of the energy of the idea]. If we give up the strict and harmonious qualities of its making, which the work of art imposes, especially the musical one, we enter a world in which the governing forces are the order-less, the nonsensical, the unjustified; we will find ourselves disoriented, dwelling between misunderstanding and ordure. By the creative gesture, the entrance in the privileged world of music also means an exit from the contingencies of the randomness, the stochastic, and the prosaic. Such gestures, by the installing of rigorous order, polarise and organise the place in which liberties and undifferentiated possibilities have formerly struggled, and thus, crystal appears from this confused and muddy suspension. If we looked for a visual image, this fundamental difference could also be assimilated with the difference between noise and sound, that is, between a disordered oscillation, lacking periodicity (represented in the graphic projection below with A, and that of sound B, which is characterised by obvious orderly organised rhythm4.

Fig. 1: A visual image of differences between oscillations: A – noise; B – musical sound.

*

3 Quoted in A. Boschot, Hector Berlioz, Vol. I – La jeunnesse d'un romnatique, p. 247. 4 Leibniz, characterising the pleasure that the principle of order causes, compares it with the vibrating movements of an agreeable sound, because they unfold in certain order.

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Noica, in "Spiritul românesc în cumpătul vremii" [The Romanian Spirit in the Changing Times], affirms: "The so-called liberty of the individual [...] does not represent true freedom, but empty possibility"5; or, as Jakob Taubes puts it: "Befreiung in das nichts" [Freedom to nothing]. Paradoxically, the more our contemporary lets himself caught by the vortex of rebellious liberties, which govern him and harass him, the more his existential crisis deepens; in this way, man gets lost, he is drown towards chaotic choices, and it is more and more difficult for him to bear this situation. Such unbalance generates panic. Worringer maintains that "Créer une oeuvre artistique [...], c'est échapper a la vie et à son arbitraire"6 [To create a work of art means to escape from life and its arbitrariness]. In other words, the work of art is setting us free from chance, arbitrariness, and chaos7. To irrationally pursue freedom for freedom's sake, is eventually transformed into an alienating undertaking, as it suppresses humanity in its fundamental tendencies. The chaos of great modern metropolises notoriously generates many individuals that are seriously troubled, it causes schizophrenia. I have never seen so many people speaking alone on the streets as in Manhattan (and my experience dates from the 1960s when there were no mobile phones). This is why I could not agree more with Wöffling when he refers to "The necessity to put order in the limitless multitude of phenomena, which means a postulate of intellectual conservation"8. Life cannot exist but in equilibrium, within the limits that such balance governs (unbalance in an organism will lead to death, eventually); life itself cannot be easily taken out of its matrix, by endangering it on any crooked pretext. To descend into the inhuman, the chaos that excessive unchaining might lead to, means not to recognize man's spirituality and slide towards less than animal bestiality. An animal's life is kept in balance by the control of his instincts, which function rigorously, like the mechanism of a watch; such control governs all forces and insures the concord that existence requires. As such balance is not easy to strike, it is 5

C. Noica, Spiritul românesc în cumpătul vremii, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Univers, 1978, p. 116. Wolfgang Worringer, L'art gotique, Paris: Gallimard, 1967, p. 32. 7 Related to the fear of man in front of the avalanche of the phenomenal world which he needs to defend himself from by using values that oppose chaos, Worringer also shows that in the past art was "a conjuration of life, thus discovering the advantage of regularity, of order", "Il doit donc chercher a transformer la relativité immense du monde phénoménal en valeurs immuable et absolues [...] pur s'arracher de la sort à l'arbitraire". 8 H. Wöfflin, Principii fundamentale ale istoriei artei [Fundamental Principles of Art History], Bucureúti: Meridicane, 1968, p. 193. 6

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also difficult to maintain. Let us, then, sacrifice life, for the sake of the upside-down game! Human instincts, which are to the greater part atrophied by… civilisation, when stirred, or over-excited, will derail, and culminate in deplorable results, as the pathological cases show: the staging of operas in Munich and Barcelona (Chapter IX); the performance in Essen, or the one in Vienna, on the occasion of Mozart's bicentennial, in which lots of women in the nude appeared on stage in the opera Cosi fan tutte. Their presence, fascinating as it might have been, parachuted in the midst of the musical undertaking, becomes counterproductive, since it annuls the artistic. The director, by his wish to shock, or be "honest" (with himself?), and tell it as he sees it, practically short-circuits the dramatic unfolding, which risks to get to finish… sooner than it started. Due to impatience (which Leonardo da Vinci called the mother of stupidity), a malign tendency of our times, music is annihilated and the performance is taken out of its atmosphere. There is only one step further to take, namely that the public in the hall should immediately take off their clothes, as well. Then, they would sanctify the unchallenged victory of art, as it is professed on so many contemporary stages. It is not very difficult that by such interpretation you should quarry at the bottom of primary instincts, but it is much more difficult to provoke the spirit of the spectator by creating exhilarating sensations.

* There are two fundamentally opposed tendencies in man, which struggle with each other until they exclude the other. On one hand, there is a tendency towards orientation, on the purpose of reducing, or even suppressing uncertainty9 and unbalance; on the other, the untamed wish for adventure, a hunger for the unknown. Attracted by the fascination of the waves, you first are excited by the mirage of the unlimited; but, when such waves become menacing, you also risk to go down and you are fed up with the surprise of your voyage. A person who feels the call for adventure to such extent that it is overwhelming and leads to an unconditional acceptance of abnormality cannot be impressed by great music. It is only out of chronic boredom that some want abnormality to become the norm. 9

What else could the multitude of insurance companies represent, especially in the civilised world, than the omnipresent surprise of the unpleasant, or of danger of all kinds, which our future can present us with at any given moment?

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When you let your mind and your soul be governed by Mozart's10 music, you cannot think or feel differently from how Mozart felt. Then you partake in what he tasted, you become Mozart to a certain extent, you enter his law, an opus which is opposed to anything that means lack of rigor or harmony. By doing so, you distance yourself from the chaotic world of free choice, from the vice-versa, and from what this new direction in art promotes these days, which can also result in liver failure. When Mozart reaches out to shake your hand, it takes a very troubled mind and an out-of-the-place spirit to still listen to the false "tunes" in your over-heated brains, and refuse to accompany him in the world of ethereal thinking, which has but a thin connection with the lower life, as it makes us fly higher and higher with music. When you want to interpret Mozart, when you, the director, fall and stagger in mud, it means that you prefer to dwell in such muddy places, in which a stupid riot of the senses can only show its suffering instincts, rather than see that his music is trying to get you out of there, and take you beyond, to a higher level. When you do so, you have turned Mozart down definitively. You have missed your meeting with him. I will always refer to Mozart, not because there is no music without Mozart. In fact, the way in which we understand and "feel" him today, as seen in contemporary interpretations, proves that we can do without him all right. When I say Mozart, I do not mean to limit my study to him, but to think of the music that exhilarates you, that makes the human being even more human - as many of us like to think -, and that makes us dream about ourselves. There are so many people who get bored in the company of Mozart! Let us believe them. Maybe they stopped at the first contact with his world. The inclination of their spirit (shall I say superficial and opaque?) at meeting with Mozart, is nothing but a sign of the spiritual drought that haunts them. Therefore, they stop at the first aspect of his music, the rococo, and reduce his music to this only characteristic. If we want to stop Mozart from passing us by, we will have to read him in another register. The initial result of his music, which we have mentioned before, comes from the sense of expansiveness, an exterior effect, which is pointed outwards by its brightness. It is consumed rapidly, though. If we limit ourselves to it, then the profound meaning of his music, which is not exhausted at this level, will remain obscure for us. A second threshold appears, which is not only different, but totally opposing the first; it is open towards the inside, and attracts by deep significance. Mozart's music 10

For an "adventure" with Mozart, one needs a more elaborate cultural equipment.

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has several realms. The first is obvious for everybody, like the explosion of spontaneous joy. The other is pointed inwards, unfolds and grows stealthily, loading the human conscience with the serious and true problems of existence. His genius, though, does not get drowned in this opposition, but solves magisterially the "quadrate circle". In order that we might be enriched by such thought, and be able to understand it, a thought that has nothing from the gratuity and frivolity of rococo, we need to greet it with the best in us. Innumerable musical phrases contain echoes from a world full of melancholic accents, even painful ones, which come from a reality that is hidden under the appearance of his unmistakable smile, which seems to be only the pretext he uses in order to speak to you on another tone, about another realm. Mozart never cries! His music lacks pomposity. On the background of the exterior burst of his creation, in sordine, we can hear the obstinate memento mori, and anything that can be linked with the diffusion, even sublimation of the great enchantment of living life on earth! It is a kind of high responsibility that should accompany this unique opportunity called life. This is why we need to believe him when he expresses this thought in his letters in the most direct manner: "My best friend is death". This is supreme wisdom! Let us not hate life's end, even if life elates us, let us not make death our enemy, or as M. Tarangul would put it: let us not forget that death is the shadow that accompanies life. The enchantment we feel when hearing Mozart is nothing but the reverberation that the skies send to him. For Mozart, life goes on there!

* I will appeal to an apparently inappropriate example – unexpected, for certain – to illustrate the inosculation of these two realms in Mozart's music. Please let yourselves be impregnated with the influx of exuberant joy that seized Cherubino, the innocent cherub, as he feels his first waves of love. Let us re-live his candour, his youthful spontaneity, and the grace that comes from the sincerity of his feeling. You will feel how a tremor of confusing calls are born in his heart, which announce the little storm, caused by his coming close to something that he both fears but, still, longs for. The ply of his senses - as he expects for the un-happened to happen is expressed by the linking of smaller intervals (bars 5 and 7, for the voice – see the following musical example), or by tensions provoked by small chromatic rises, as well as some groups that are raised from rhythmic elation (bars 3 and 11 for the voice), falling back in a minor tierce; thus,

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everything is coloured by an exhalation of sadness without object, which is anticipated by the orchestra, which displays short sighs (bars 5 and 6 in the introduction). In order to keep his innocence from any shadow, Mozart chooses to tell us all of the above in the most simple bar 2/4, in which the first two bars (of the voice) describe the thought that is seized by a wind of desire and expectation. These two bars are like a small bridge that descends, and suggests, surprisingly, the ascending tendency of a hope, because it is followed by a jump to a fifth. Only Mozart can merge two positions, two contradictory states in a little inextricable unity, through the enveloping matter-of-factness of the music. In the following bars – 5, 6, 7, and 8 – Cherubino seems to implore confirmation from everybody: "Is this feeling of mine true?" The following bars, 9 and 10, make Cherubino slide for a second towards the most charming loss of control, which is love; then, in the second part of the 11th bar there is an unforeseen stop, on the semiquaver followed by dot, followed by a demisemiquaver; these hint to the hesitation that he feels, and the fear provoked by doubt. The natural Mi in the 14th bar expresses the pain that accompanies the fascination of this "novelty" he feels. We could go on analysing11 Mozart's questions, and the answers that our musical sensitivity might find where Mozart placed them, between the notes, in such an appropriate, yet unpredictable manner. If we neglect such "details", though, we will introduce lack of meaning to the musical form, thus destroying art and transforming it in a succession of notes, which seems useless, even chaotic, in spite of the agglomeration of sounds. Observing the relation between the whole and the part, you will discover in Mozart's music, at each step, the refined expression, full of delicacy and purity, which come together in a miraculously indestructible and surprising alloy, and which is often clad with a slightly bitter aroma12. The air of self-enchanted graciousness that floats like the foam of the 11 If we analysed Mozart's style from the angle of Blaga's philosophical principles, and considering the formal variations within the Mozartian style, we may see that his characters are circumscribed to a "formative wish" of the individualized mode, which is characterised by a creation concentrated on all musical nuances, coming together in an exemplary convergent harmonisation (see Trilogia Culturii); that is, these characters are all typically and consistently Mozartian. The luring charm of his feminine characters consists in this convergent harmonisation. 12 In Charles Baudelaire's writings on art, there is a passage in which he exposes in a succinct manner his conception about beauty: "J'ai trouvé la définition du Beau. [...] Cest quelque chose d'ardent et de trisete, de volupté et de tristesse qui comporte une idée de mélancolie" [I have found the definition of Beauty. [...] It is a mixture of voluptuousness and sadness, which contains the idea of melancholy] (Ecrits sur l'Art, p. 391). This mixture characterises most of the Mozartian feminine characters, as well.

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sparkling silver of the "white wig", becomes more and more transparent, till it vanishes. In its place, like when developing a photograph, the great truth of life appears slowly, but powerfully like a gold dike. Why is that? Because over his thought there came something like a drop of genius intuition. Shall we compare him with others? What useless naivety! Who displays the same unmistakable manner by which the waves of the melody envelope naturally the angelic combination of elation and shyness, like in the soul of Cherubino, the page. Mozart, like a mystagogue, discovers and delivers for our admiration everything that his high human sensitivity (even more than human, sometimes) has poured into the soul of the character: the mystery of life, with the entire richness of the dramatic moment that the sudden change in his being produces; such mystery has governed Mozart his entire life, and this is what he was telling his father about, in the above-quoted letter. Thus, Cherubino's purity and naivety, troubled by temptation, lives in front of our eyes, individualized and lively. This is an example of creating from the little, insignificant page, a… personage. I called the deep and refined meaning of such musical metaphors nooks of the music; such details should never be overlooked by us, interpreters. They need to be spotted and made clear because they not only are part of what we call Mozart's charm to the highest degree, but they also represent the deep substance from which he weaves the truth of his art. Unfortunately, these little things cannot be perceived prima vista, by a rushed look. Nevertheless, when the interpreter has discovered them, and then he sings them (becoming, thus, an interpreter of the music and its content in the most adequate way), the charm and the splendour of this indestructible combination comes to surface and convinces, making the spectator say: This is it! There is no other way! To sing properly – this is a strange word! In order that we may find the meaning of this word, let me broaden the analysis a little; this time, I will not deal with the character, but with the psychology of the interpreter (of today, of always; the one who only reproduces the notes). By virtue of his trade, the interpreter is too ready to start the "exterior" engine of his (socalled) expression, which is not always and consistently supported by an inner commitment; it is only routine that has become a reflex, and due to it, a spelling out of the music is automatically switched on. Exterior expressivity does not have the backing up of an intimate motivation, when the inner engine has not been set in motion. Such disaccord causes superficiality of analysis, which paralyses, even suppresses the artistic; if we want to overcome it, we must take our wonderful inner mechanism out

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of its inertia, so that it may accord itself with the music. Only its active presence will engage and will make the scene believable. This is why, by such examples, I am trying a kind of "burrowing into" music, into its notes, rather (a scrutiny, as I would call a typical analysis of musical forms), in the hope that it might give the interpreter a real support in getting this inner engine started. This is why I dare say to the interpreter: It is not bad if you take into consideration Mozart's wishes. Sing before you start singing! Let your soul and thought sing! Another remark: musical pauses should not even exist for your inner engine. Because it will just go on and on. If you do pause the listener will feel, even without saying, that your "expression" has no object, it just covers for emptiness, for an absence – it is your absence, the emptiness of your thought, which should have been serving Mozart, and his music.

But we should not under-estimate the fact that the purity and the charm of nuances is not easy to accomplish as Mozart requires. We should observe the duration of the notes (the rhythm of their unfolding) without accentuating the shorter ones, on the intention of not dissolving the rhythmic profile which is so necessary to this expressive music. By exaggerating this kind of alien accents (absent in the music), which a poor vocal technique might expose us to, we could introduce a note of brutality, unfriendly for this atmosphere – a proof of false approach to the music, even a proof of misunderstanding it (remember the example of Susanna's aria from Figaro's Wedding earlier in this study). When they are recreated by an appropriate interpretation, these musical metaphors transcend the structure or the rhythmic-melodic construction that generated them, sympathetic with the spirit of the listener, which he projects somewhere above the daily routines that he goes about usually. Consequently, this is what could be considered as interesting when listening to Mozart's music – or not interesting at all as recent staging seems to prove. These new contemporary wanderings, raised to the rank of doctrine, do much harm to this music. The true Mozart was misunderstood by his contemporaries, apparently, but we misunderstand him even more today13, because when the sublime is not perceived as it should be, it

13

I could say, and it would not be at all exaggerated, that it is absolutely unforgivable that after two centuries of "confrontation" with Mozart's art, there should still be so many unexplored parts, so many novelties and surprises for the spirit and the intelligence of an artist of the 21st century.

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Fig. 2: Fragment form Cherubino's aria, Figaro's Wedding, Act II, "Voi che sapete che cosa e amor".

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becomes… boring. More than the banal! This is why Vienna, in its condescending14 commemoration of one of its sons, whom (let us say between ourselves) it tormented quite a lot in his life15, and whom it tries to homage today as one who brought immense services (of unfathomable value and amplitude), considered it appropriate to highlight the quintessence of his music, by "adorning" it with appearances on stage of the kind that we have mentioned! This is a performance: to celebrate the memory of Mozart's genius by what is furthest from the spirit of his music. You cannot tell what is less forgivable: the error, because they just did not understand it, or the intention to willingly disregard and degrade his genius, in order that they might bring it closer (sic!) to our times, and make Mozart our "contemporary"! To propose such a reading of the musical text, in which the high significance of his fathomless music is sacrificed, represents a certificate of dubious musicality. A great non-truth that they say about Mozart's genius becomes gross manifestation of nonrecognition in this kind of bringing homage at the highest level. Unfortunately, any masterpiece of the past is facing today, fatally, similar fates. Everything that is most valuable in their content should just disappear, and that has been brought to us by the much blamed TRADITION (I am referring to the good tradition that artistic sensitivity and discernment will identify unmistakably). The masterpiece of a genius has access to our world today on one condition: that it gives up to its own status and identity; to what makes it unique, unrepeatable, so that it might be sacrificed by rushed trials to catch chaotic originality, in the service of a nivellment par le bas.

14

Condescendence and high deference reached a climax at Mozart's funeral; his earthly remains were deposed in the common grave in the cemetery for the anonymous poor. Whenever we pass through Vienna, let us not forget that here, in Vienna, Mozart ended his terrestrial existence like a creature with unknown identity! It is useless to try and fix such ingratitude by making up lies, and raising a funerary star on the place where Mozart's grave is supposed to have been, and marking it with an improper pointer: Mozartsgrab. 15 Prague had proven to be more receptive to Mozart's genius, by the manner in which it received his creations.

CHAPTER XII TRADITION AND ITS ROLE IN THE OPERA

"It is more necessary to put out arrogance than a fire". (Heraclitus of Ephesus)

The harnessing of the past1 We appeal (consciously) to information that we gathered in the past and accumulated in our memory through learning and education, so that we might get oriented in the inexhaustible diversity of the surrounding world; especially when instinct does not intervene. Primitive animals have a rudimentary nervous system; for them there does not exist any learning by accumulation of knowledge in a rational manner – their great pointer is their unconsciously functioning instinct. The more we go up on the phylogeny ladder from one species to the next, till we get to the human being, the more complex the nervous system will be, and it will show a greater capacity to record and store knowledge – which is memory, and combinatory adaptation, according to the "ingenuity" of our synapses. The human being is, thus, the beneficiary of a larger conscious experience during his life, and learning by accumulation and usage of his own experience, as well as that of other individuals, passed from one generation to another, gains more and more importance2; it can be put to value more appropriately, and in diverse forms, in concordance with each individual's discernment, or, according to… dopamine. To prepare an action that is more complicated, and surpasses an automatism that is governed by instincts, means to use the past consciously, in the benefit of solving new issues in an optimised manner. There is a reversed ratio between education and the automatism of instinct 1

In a study entitled Initiation and Spiritual Accomplishment, René Guénon speaks about the [new] anti-tradition custom. More directly, this could mean: you should get up, so that I might sit; without any explanation or justification (of value). 2 See Konrad Lorenz.

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(which is basically another result of accumulation of "wisdom" at a phylogeny scale, without, though, using reflexive reason each time – like the zigzagging of an animal chased by its predator). The more the implication of the instinct diminishes, the more the use of educated knowledge increases. Let us also remember the fact that in very complex issues of the social-cultural life, to appeal to instinct is almost inoperative; and when it does intervene, it may have a counterproductive role, even a poisonous one, because it throws us back on the evolutionary scale of cultural development. This is the case with many contemporary productions, as we shall see.

* Consequently, it is obvious that there is a successive link between past and future. Between these two, the present is inserted, which is, in fact, nothing but the meeting point of the past with the future. We might say that in the moment of passage from what has been to what is about to be – a moment that we call present – we are, practically, dealing with the future that has already become the past, unless we want to prolong the latter to the detriment of the first. This is why the matter of actuality belongs to the domain of the ephemeral, even if we in our short-sightedness hold to it terribly (today more than anywhere else in time); in fact, the present is the instantaneous which is overcome by the future, and swallowed by the past3. Besides this successive link between past and future, there also exists one of dependence, that is, the future is kneaded in the past, this being the root that conditions the first. Therefore, it is obvious that we cannot conceive the future without the past, not even in the case of a creature that has just one second to live. Consequently, the "consumed" moments motivate and indubitably condition the one that will follow, in a direct or an indirect manner. This fact is frequently confirmed when we have to make predictions. Any prediction that pretends to be more than pure fantasy gets a contour only according to the past, to the past events. Even when the profile of the future seems to be confusing and unpredictable, we still appeal to the past, to our accumulated experience, which becomes in a certain way the "warrantor" of the future. A prediction that is followed by a possible real accomplishment can only be the result of a selection that we operate in the archives of the past, by making use of our discernment. 3

Still, there is one exception: the spiritual living of the moment, in which case it becomes equal with… eternity.

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In order that we make consistent predictions, we must be able to tell the essential from the accidental; the essential has hidden values, which are able to explain the genesis of any future phenomenon. As to the importance of discernment, this is how Heraclitus of Ephesus called it, over two and a half millennia ago: "The multitude of knowledge does not teach us to have reason"4. From our experience – as a reservoir of the past – selective discernment makes up a new formula that the future will accept or will tolerate in the short term; it also might reject it altogether. When discernment goes into an eclipse, the transition can last forever, which corresponds to compromising the future5. This is where fashion can find its place; P. Valery gave this definition to fashion: "That, which becomes unfashionable". It becomes unfashionable even sooner, in so far as the discernment of those who cultivate it proves to be faulty, or just not present.

* Things are not very different in the domain of art, as to the interplay between past and future. Any novelty springs from the combination of the material we have in our basic memory, with the aid of a selection of the essential. This material contains in nuce elements that will be constitutive for the new phenomenon. Consequently, it is obvious that when the smooth-faced revolutionary – especially the neophyte director – makes malign combinations, since he is obsessed with novelty and does not make use of discernment, misusing the harnessing of the past that he pretends to have parted with, or erroneously projecting the exigencies of the future, he also proves to have lost his objective from sight; in other words, he does not know what he wants. Therefore, lack of measure in taking liberties from the past (by wilful neglect), in the name of what is about to be but will never be able to be, will prove to come against its producer: it will bring only aborted performances that the future will reject6 more promptly 4

Beware of the education (and, implicitly the "scientific" attitude) that only relies on a satisfaction of our thirst for information! 5 If this study were not dedicated to the domain of music, we could also make socio-political considerations, applicable to the political and economic state our world lives in nowadays. 6 There are cases of manipulation in our modern epoch, as Roger Scruton notices when speaking about the proliferation of pressure groups, in which certain structures that have influence on the mass-media maintain the public attention on a certain fashion artificially, even if its outdate-ness is only delayed; or, on the contrary, they introduce certain dogmatic "principles" over particular "preferences"

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and bluntly than we might suspect. This modern syndrome, that I might call the virosis of change, which is the effect of a shadowed reason in search of innovation at all costs that throws the one who got contaminated in full absurdity: absurdity is the dominant characteristic of chaos, as well as of those who cultivate it. Each valuable creation of the human spirit – both those that belong to the world of the arts, and to speculative thinking – make up an organized whole, which has inner consistency to the smallest detail, and, therefore, the history of this spirit is characterised by the effort to eliminate the absurd. To enjoy freedom excessively, as it is the generator of an inflation of impossible… possibilities – under the pretext of overcoming ankylosed mentality that characterises the direction that lacks any force to create a living and attracting performance, as if they were touched by rachitism – the neophyte director proposes the shock-performance instead; the socalled avant-garde. He appeals to patterns, or a dominant all-heal that is governed by the chaotic face of a disfigured atmosphere. We can reach a contour of the profile of this contesting current at the beginning of the 20th century by a short incursion, which comes handy to anyone, in the world of a "puerile vulgarity" (as Blaga would say), of the Avant-garde and Surrealism7 (represented by the famous Picabia, De Chirico, Max Ernst, Picasso, Arp, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Iancu, Andre Breton – the theoretician of the Surreal movement8; P. Eluard, S. Dali, L. Argon, Duchamp with his illustrious Gioconda, and culminating with the "Prolet-cultist manifesto"). They intended to "discredit all feelings" (see S. Dali, La Femme Visible, 1930). For them the only positive type is represented by the Marquise of Sade, in whose memory he proclaims in the last stanza of his panegyric in free verse:

which prove to be lacking any viable substance in the real structure of society, but, on the contrary, they prove to be malign, fatal, or tragic. 7 About Surrealism, Blaga observes that "it is an ostentatious manifestation of freedom. But art principally excludes any kind of ostentation […] as it is the product of the solipsist who affirms that 'The world is only my nightmare'" (L. Blaga, Elanul insulei, p. 243). 8 Breton affirms: "La définition du Surréalism […] reprise du Manifeste de 1924, préconisait l'usage d'une pensée automatique, non seulement soustraite au contrôle de la raison mais encore dégagée de toute préoccupation esthétique et morale'". And, later on, read completes the Breton effect which wanted "to force the subconscious": "… le Surréalism a toujours été un effort héroique pur contenir et définir l'automatisme et autre procédés 'paranoïaque'" (Herbert Read, Histoire de la peinture moderne, Paris: Aimery-Somogy, 1960, pp. 169, 186).

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Ce que nou aimons et admirons en lui c'est le dompteur de la nature, c;est l'agresseur des dieux, le contempteur des lois, le liberateur du sex, le rebelle Sade (quoted by M. Kornfeld, L'énigme du beau, Paris: PUF, 1942, p. 98).

This is the credo of the Marquise the Sade (as quoted by H.-R. Patapievici, Omul recent, Bucureúti: Humanitas, 2001, pp. 74-75): "Un de mes plus grands paisirs est de jurer Dieu qunad je bande, Il me semble que mon esprit, alors mille fois e plus exalté abhorre et mèprise bien mieux cette dégoûtante chimère…"9 (Let us not forget, nevertheless, that in any domain, great masterpieces that represent the foundation of culture are characterised by a radical detachment and liberation from under the chains of so many limping instincts, which are astray from their original function. Neither Michelangelo's David, nor Beethoven's symphonies bear any stigmata of sensuality, or complexes of such nature.) The relation between the origins of inspiration and their artistic result is admirably surprised by Blaga in his words: "A poem is always born from psychological, social, and material realities, in natural conditions, but it is not allowed to carry any umbilical trace on its body "10.

* One of the principles of these "insurgents", most of them struggling with the profession they had, was to promote in art the "enigmas of the subconscious, liberated through automatism"(?) (Paul Klee, for instance, wanted to feel like a newborn, and Kandinsky dreamed to paint – literally – the inside part of man (?), etc.) This trend of modernity did not settle for just ravishing the primary instincts, but it also strived to set up an authority, on all paths that the advantages of the free world had to offer11. Compared to the Renaissance – an epoch that appeared on the precise 9

De Sade, La Philosophie dans le boudoir, Troisième dialogue. In Eonul Blaga – Întâiul veac, a collection of papers dedicated to the Lucian Blaga Centennial, edited by Mircea Borcilă, Bucureúti: Albatros, 1997, p. 284. 11 These are, according to Roger Bacon (1220-1292) the four principles of the instauration of imposture (falsehood): (1) idolatry of [made-up] authority; (2) the [poisonous] influence of [bad] habit; (3) acceptance of the prejudice [on the part of the supporters], but, especially (4) a disguise of ignorance [so that imposture should proliferate in full liberty]. 10

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purpose of enlivening the Greek-Roman antiquity under the auspices of the Italian genius, and became the miracle about which Jakob Burckhardt affirmed that "it would never have become the admirable fatality of history, if it had not made abstraction of antiquity" – avant-gardism proved that it was not enough to blow everything up in the air, they had to despise tradition and break any relation with it, in order that a new trend could impose itself as style and lasting value. This is why the perspective of the moment12… was fatal to it; that is, they anchored in the obsession of the present, which is always thirsty for the eternal "something else", an unanswerable proof of hysterical superficiality. The subconscious13 (like instincts and their world of reflexes) is not capable to promote the "new"; the detection of real novelty is only available to conscience. Conscience is the biological function that carries forwards, while the subconscious is a conservative function, that is, a repeating of unchanged actions, as T. Herseni14 maintains. In other words, the wish for novelty of the neophyte, a novelty that might correspond to new requirements of the future, cannot be satisfied but relying on the mechanism of the subconscious, a prisoner of unconditioned reflexes, which block the opening, thus compromising it, and lead any evolution… backwards. Or, they keep it put! Cubism and other trends that followed in painting demonstrated that the results could not keep up with the intentions of the revolutionaries, who got the project of their spiritual father, Paul Cezanne, backwards. He wanted to create in art an order that could be independent from personal and confused impressions, that is, the very contrary of what they wanted. Brâncuúi "ne cessa de lutter pur éliminer e facteur personnel, pour arriver a l'essence des choses... [...] parce que son art est par là diamétralement opposé à l'Expressionnisme"15 [(Brâncuúi) has not ceased to fight for eliminating the personal factor, in order that he might get to the essence of things [...] because his art is, due 12 The moment can offer a series of opportunities, but never a perspective, as this entails a certain distancing, both in space and time. 13 This is what Blaga says in his Trilogia Culturii, when speaking about the "other realm", that is, about the subconscious: "A reek of the slums follows you after frequenting psychoanalysis for a long time" (p. 24). I use many quotations from Blaga in this chapter, not only because his poetry is very new, but also because his studies and investigations in the domain of abyssal noology of the subconscious are revealing and comprehensive. 14 Conscience is an advanced biological function, while the subconscious a conservative one; it repeats unchanged actions, which will not be able to solve new and unpredictable circumstances (cf. T. Herseni). 15 Herbert Read, p. 117.

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to this fact, diametrically opposed to Expressionism]. In fact, art is known to be born neither from emasculation, nor from complexes. These are not capable of generating and supporting creativity, whose primordial condition is the opposite of complexes (of inferiority).

* "Dramatic art is an art of perfection" (Caragiale)

In the contemporary staging of lyrical theatre we notice a constant wish to set up the sovereignty of impressions, which, in so far as they are fugitive, they are also personal and confused – in a word, they wish that the relative should become absolute. This is exactly what each new staging of such directors of a "new" type want to do. The conclusion we could arrive to is that once the unconscious becomes the master of this world of subjective impressions, it will not be able to answer to the requirement of the future, which it will, thus, compromise, since the instinct, being subconscious, lingers in formulas that have a closed, unchanged circuit, unable of innovation. Consequently, the subconscious, not as the valuable source Blaga speaks about16, but as a procedure, as a mechanism, has proved its retrograde function in the habits of opera directors. Just see the long lists of performances that are all conceived following the same primitive pattern, dominated by a rich contribution of infirm instincts, besides crass musical ignorance. Such habits will not make the bill. Very few of such representations last for more than 2-3 performances, including the opening night. This is why, even if we tried to be very understanding, this skill-tic (unconscious and uncontrollable habit) cannot be considered to be real ingenuity, because real ingenuity can obtain change under the form of viable and convincing innovation. Obviously, the avant-garde revolution has not changed much; on the contrary, besides its falsity, it proved to be lacking in substance and, implicitly, in perspective, like any imposture. A conclusive example of the reign of the tic, which illustrated the imagination of the producer-director that is a servant of fashion (which is also a kind of tic), is represented by the following images, in which we can notice the stereotypical use of the cliché of Gestapo and NKDV uniforms. We are talking about three different operas, whose subjects belong to three 16

In "Orizont úi Stil", Blaga treats the theme of the subconscious in detail, naming it the other realm, and creates a new science: abyssal noology.

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different epochs; they are staged by three different directors at three different Opera Theatres: B. Britten, Peter Grimes, in Lübeck (1978); G. Verdi, Il Trovatore, Oldenburg (1983); Ch. Gounod, Roméo et Juliette, Salzburg (2008). If we changed the subtitles between them, nothing would really change. There is no alteration of the artistic "truth". The character in Il Trovatore, can very well be replaced by that in Romeo et Juliette, or Peter Grimes. The change will suit all of them alike, even if the action in Britten's opera takes place in a small town (Borough) on the Eastern coast around 1830, the second in Biscay and Aragon in the 15th century, and the last in Verona and Mantua in the 16th century. The first character is a fisherman, the second a swordsman, and the third a young gentleman. To all this, we should add that there is something that represents the profound difference, that is the essential difference in interpretation between the three creations, that is, the difference in atmosphere and style, which are characteristic for the operas, and especially their composers, each belonging to another world. Nevertheless, they were all brought to the same denominator by the prolific fantasy of 'modern' director-ship.

Fig. 1: Peter Grimes, Lübeck; Il Trovatore, Oldenburg; Roméo et Juliette, Salzburg.

*

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The obsession of imperious change of the data contained by the musical text, which seems to have haunted these modern directors, is provoked by their lack of professionalism, and by their incapacity to understand and enter the world of the music. This is why there is no real novelty at the horizon, only the eternal vicious circle in which the frailness of musical sensitivity of the vocational revolutionary goes round and round. A typical case in this respect is represented by the director Jorge Lavelli, who made his mark(?) in Paris, by staging Gounod's Faust, in a period in which the destiny of the Parisian lyrical theatre depended on the composer Rolf Liebermann, himself. Lavelli, in his work as a director, manifests a sovereign independence, not only from the text of the libretto, but especially from the music, from which he departs totally. On the occasion of an interview that Alain Lanceron obtained from him, at the question "Méphisto est habillé exactement comme Faust, avec une élégante redingote blanche. Cela ne vous gêne donc pas qu'il n'a plus l'épée au côté, la plume au chapeau?", Mr. Lavelli answered serenely and… doctoral: "Rien n'est littéral, tout est interprétation"! That is to say that Mefisto's retort, heavy with the symbol that the spirit of evil is disguised in, which is the support for the entire construction and myth of Faust, has absolutely no value in the mind of the director. The entire spiritual provocation on which Goethe founded his masterpiece was torn apart and thrown away to the waste basket. Consequently, the victim can easily be taken for the doer! The sign of equality, even the identity between the two annuls the entire European culture, characterised by the so-called Faustic spirit. But let us go back to our performance, and see that the poor spectator can only close his eyes, to avoid watching Mr. Lavelli's interpretation. If he chooses to open his eyes, he will have to cover his ears. I have to ask this: how is it possible that Mr. Lavelli did not eliminate more sentences from both the literal and the musical text? How simple and reviving such action would have been! Or, even simpler, he could have just given Faust up altogether, and then nobody would have doubted his talent and intelligence. Consequently, nothing happens as it should happen. Everything can happen differently, because everything is at the unlimited discretion of the director. By witnessing the institutionalisation of the absolute relative as we have already mentioned, we are also the witnesses of a burst out of the most ridiculous arbitrariness that rebellious subjectivity can produce. Mr. Lavelli does not take anything into consideration. He counts on the law that dictates that he should not observe any law. In his imagination, the two, Faust and Mefisto, can appear under any form, until their identity is

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confused. These are the corollary and the implications of Mr. Lavelli's affirmation, implications that he reveals on stage during the entire show, with a consistency that would have deserved a better cause. For example, in Tableau III, in which the choir of the soldiers, together with Valentin, come back home after a victorious combat, singing the famous march of victory happily and proudly, Mr. Lavelli feels that this should be transformed in an ice flow. A party of crippled men, prompted in their cans, bandaged, limping or just about standing, under the close supervision of the director, will sing their triumph with the most pitiful expression, worthy only of sympathy (see the image below). This is the model for an accomplished demonstration of classical schizoid vision, a fracture between what the text and the music say, and what Mr. Lavelli shows on stage, in his capacity of a great fighter… for peace. True, he managed to shock. But, what was the price? The price was that the attention of the public was detoured from the action, which culminated dramatically with the next scene, that of Mephisto's serenade and that of the duel and of Valentin's death, which are key moments of Margareta's tragedy.

Fig. 2: (cf. L'avant scène-Opéra, mars-avril 1976, nb. 2, p. 25).

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Fig. 3: Gounod, Faust, Act IV, The March of the Soldiers, direction J. Lavelli, Paris 1975. Photo: Colette Masson (Cf. L'avant scène-Opéra, mars-avril 1976).

Why does Mr. Lavelli turn everything upside down? Because he makes a joke of everything, even heroism. Especially heroism, which today has to be condemned. But this heroism is absolutely necessary in the economy of the dramatic situation on stage, as it is contrasted with Mefisto's mockery of Margareta and her brother, the volcanic Valentin; this is a typical procedure for early Romanticism (Sturm un Drang), that Goethe belonged to. Gounod, himself was a late Romantic. The rout and the side-slip that seize J. Lavelli are nothing but proof of his dubious professionalism and musicality. We have to notice that he does not mention at least one time the word music during the entire interview. We might suppose that he was not endowed by nature with any statocysts, the "auditive" organ of invertebrates. Maybe this is how we could break this mystery, right?

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We are placed in the eon of modern culture17, whose survival needs unlimited extenuating circumstances, as contemporary art seldom raises above CARICATURE. This kind of director is of no help, as he prefers not to get troubled with getting real skills, understanding the opera, or understanding it right. Should we be surprised at the result?

17

We would be very wrong if we mistook the degree of information as cultural level, as the philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus signalled half of a millennium before Christ.

CHAPTER XIII ACTION AND ITS CARICATURE – CHAOTIC FUSS ON THE STAGE

"You can be highly original on the path of errors but it is harder on the path of appropriateness". (L. Blaga, Elanul insulei, p. 133)

One of the dominant characteristics that define the style of modern epoch is the loading of time with movement to the extreme (I refer to exterior movement). Man cannot and does not want to free himself from the day's trepidation, to find a moment of inner peace. Over-abundant movement has come to suppress the passage of time itself in our conscience. This is the paradox: although we always are on the run, we are always late. Time, emptied of its content, annuls itself, or takes us over incessantly. Our rush devours time as we are thinking about the future obsessively, and we are old one day… unawares. Our time has passed! This hysteria that has seized us, due to the terror exercised by the agitation and turbulence around us, is transmitted to each and any of us in everything we do and think – in fact in everything we do, and then think; most of the times the deed comes before the thought, we do things without pondering them enough, as we are too agitated. Consequently, we should not be surprised if this generalized whirl that evokes a pathological state makes its presence felt even in the world of the arts. Of course that I will refer to the opera direction again. Some directors today will always put us face to face with this overflow of movement, which is eventually perceived by the public as monotonous. Paradoxically, everything seems to be standing still, as a consequence of too much movement. The public will wake up at intervals, like the millowner when the mill stops! We witness a repletion of time and space with movement; uninterrupted agitation seizes the stage, and cannot be equalled with the artistic event on stage, in any way. We can romp ceaselessly without something really important happening. This is why I find this chaotic confusion, which seems to be gratuitous movement for movement's sake, as an obvious

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symptom of the inner void that leaves no time for reflection1, a moment that might stop the absurd race. Such is the situation that strikes us during the entire performance with Traviata, "… The Salzburg TRAVIATA Europe's most talked-about opera event of 2005. The black-market prices rose to astronomical and desperate fans wrote blank cheques […] for a single ticket to the first night of Salzburg's new production…"2 This staging, though, has absolutely no justification, either in Verdi's music, or in the manner the action unfolds, as entailed by the drama of this opera.

* "It would be terrible for you to destroy freedom where The Almighty intended it, or to introduce it where it does not belong". (Pascal)

The action in the direction of this Traviata takes place in the abyss of an underground station. This is confirmed by the immense clock – which is always present in such a location; it appears in the performance all the time, the director uses it as a leitmotif: it is either down, in the middle of the stage, or on the wall; it can also provide shelter, or refuge for a character. This clock, which intervenes obsessively in the action, wants to suggest something that it… does not suggest. It remains in the abstract because it does not come alive! The association that it is supposed to bring to the minds of the spectators fails to appear, because the symbol is pushed too hard. It deforms the main accent of the drama of the heroine, and displaces it towards a peripheral zone, even if not an entirely alien one. The themes that the director introduces by the metaphor-clock, whose presence is like that of a tumour on the body of the Verdian masterpiece are absent both from the Dumas-son's book, and from Verdi's opera. The clock is only part of the obsession of the director.

*

1

The aria in the lyrical theatre is known to be what the monologue is in the spoken theatre: it means a suspension of exterior movement, and a passage towards the inner movement, the movement of the soul. 2 The Booklet accompanying the DVD of La Traviata, Deutsche Grammophon, 00440073 NTSC. PCM Stereo, p.7).

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"Neither art without meaning, nor meaning without art". (Caragiale)

Fig. 1: Traviata, Salzburg, 2005, Booklet of DVD, p. 6.

The conviction that we are in a subterraneous station – a modernised version of the Paris salon of the 19th century? – that this un-limited space creates, allows the characters to run from one side to another, covering tens of metres each time. This is not my interpretation of the director's interpretation: it is the reality of the show, it is certain fact. Thus, we are at a late hour, when the public does not bother the wallow that the protagonists indulge in "on the floor", by the principle anytime and anywhere, that is, on the platform, even in the garbage that a group of inebriated individuals leave behind. I will bring another image as proof of such actions, taken from the same booklet that accompanies the DVD made on that occasion. From time to time, the door of the invisible car of the train that is stationary opens, pouring out the choir-crowd3 and flooding the stage. Then the cavalcade reaches new levels of paroxysm, while the music also reaches a climax of its… uselessness. Who would care to identify with the musical text, when the direction proves to be a superb liberation from the music? 3

The choir in the musical text is mixed, but in this staging it is made up of men, only, as women appear in travesti, which is a clear preference of the director; nevertheless, at the end of Act II, the first ballet dancer gets a woman's costume, putting on a dress, in open stage.

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Fig. 2: Act I, Alfredo – Violetta.

After the crowd on stage goes away, there is another moment in the first act, the duet Violetta – Alfredo, in which the heroine is seized by an uncontrollable access of desperation, which could end the drama in a moment; she just might throw herself under the train. This is what we get from the convincing despondency that you can see in the following picture (taken from the same booklet)4:

Fig. 3: Alfredo-Traviata, Act I duet, booklet, p. 12. 4 I have chosen to insert only pictures that appear in this booklet, not to be accused of any parti pris; they are representative in the eyes of the producers of the DVD.

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The situation is kept "under control" by the creator of the show, as we should not worry as to the manner in which things will go on after the irreparable has happened. Exactly as he was able to surprise us with the subway station and the clock, he will also find justification for another ending of the opera, different from that imagined by Dumas-son. What a banal thing: to die in your bed! Such century-old finale is boring!!

* Coming back to the unfolding of the events, I find myself obligated to stop my rushed generalization, and admit that there is one moment, at least, when the Director actually took the music into consideration. I was mistaken to think there was no such moment. I found one. There is one scene in this show, in which the movement of the actors on stage imitates the music in an exemplary manner. I am thinking of the moment in which the choir has to be kicked out of the stage because, in the meantime, the conductor starts the prelude of Act III (Violetta's "bedroom", in the subway station, of course), and the heroine, waiting for Alfredo, is dying on the platform. (I predicted this a few lines above, but the reader thought I was joking, I am sure.) At this moment, the director gives the entire force of his mastery, by the mise-en-scene he invents. He could never have found a more suitable time, or a more ingenious manner to get rid of the choir than using… the prelude. This procedure, and, especially, the principle that originates it will remain in the history of the lyrical theatre as a milestone. This invention will create, of course, a trend for those more interested to chase out music from where the composer intended it to be. Let us take a closer look at this procedure. It consists of motivating the actions of a character, the choir in this situation, while the music belongs to another character5 – the heroine. On this orchestral prelude – the expression of the inner struggle of the last glimmers of the character's soul before the end, in which it will depart from this life – the choir marches, in a funerary manner, backwards, hypnotised by doctor Granvil's look (he is the master of their retreat)! They all go backwards, moving with the tempo of the music, which they observe with marked musical accuracy. The gravity of Granvil's steps, is mimicked by the choir, on the pavement of the platform, and, thus, the distance between the doctor and the choir remains the same during the 5

As this is only a prelude, Mr. Director considered he was allowed to give this music ad libitum (as he pleased) to anyone, irrespective of its content and the situation of the dramatic moment.

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entire course of their retreat; this, of course, brings new dimensions of charm to this automatic movement! Wonderful match between what Verdi suggests, expresses, and even "describes" in the prelude of Act III, and the mechanical misalignment of the group of robots.

* "That which has no purpose is absurd". (E. Ionescu)

One last remark, before we let the curtain fall on this production. Dumas-son tried to present a love story6, to which he offered more credibility by trying to prevent it from becoming ridiculous (we know that the novel, which is autobiographical, starts with the crazy cavalcade of the author, in his whish to catch Marguerite still alive – that is Violetta in the opera). Verdi, at his turn, justifies each and every moment of the dramatic unfold, by the spontaneity and the expressive power of the music; this is what brought him the consecration of his genius: the spectator becomes part of what he sees on stage. He is joyful or sad, sympathising with the characters. If the behaviours of the interpreters, whipped by the illfantastic-ideas of the director, did not stand against the music, but, on the contrary, collaborated with it, then the spectator would really identify with the fate of the heroes. Such task should be in the mind of the director, in conceiving the show in accordance with the music, which his direction should always want to potentiate, thus creating an effect of spontaneity on stage. The secret of this artistic illusion consists in a credible staging, in which the just actions and gestures (as I already called them in a previous chapter) should be spared from the unexplainable, or the artificial. Well, a great part of the behaviour of the poor singers – whose efforts to get involved in the living of the action they are supposed to present are obvious – is sabotaged by this continuous obligato, imposed by the direction. They are forced to frequently interrupt and leave the appropriate path of the dramatic line, just to apply to various symbolic-ceremonial acts, invented by the director, because without those the history of Violetta risks to remain obscure. The fatidic clock is such a very important symbol! Both Alfredo and especially Violetta are forced by Mr. Director to have direct contact with this metaphor, in key moments of the opera, even if 6

The author, remarking that the story has only one merit, that of being true, also affirms that "all characters, besides the heroine, who died in 1847, are still alive". In fact, the heroine, Marguerite Gauthier existed in reality, her real name was Marie Duplessis (1823-1847).

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that metaphor is placed at a distance of 18-20 metres at that moment. Unfortunately, the stage in Salzburg is very wide, and therefore, the public has to bear with the singers who march and run across it all the time. In Act I, after the choir leaves the stage, Violetta runs to the other side of the subway station to find shelter on the face of the clock, and adjusts the fingers before starting her aria. In Act II, towards the end of her duet with Giorgio Germont, Alfredo's father, when Violetta asks him to tell his daughter that she will give up Alfredo, she turns her back to old Germont, and heads towards the clock; then she starts confessing to the clock: "Tell the dear, innocent child7… etc." In tableau III (Finale secondo), in order that she may get rid of Alfredo, after being chased by him around the immense clock, Violetta finds shelter on its face, and nests between its fingers. The clock, used as a metaphor by the director with so much fervour, tricks him, because the passing of time that the presence of the clock suggests (and the direction tries to convince us about) cannot be an ally of the heroine; on the contrary, it is her number one enemy. He (She) who tries to find consolation in the arms of the enemy is mentally deranged. The eternal steeplechase of the runner-singers, loaded to the maximum with obsessive metaphor-symbols collaborates to destroy the atmosphere methodically; and not only the atmosphere of the music. The spectator, inclined to let himself caught in the dramatic world, is awaken to reality by the shock that the cold showers of these incessant metaphors treat him with (they do not stop at the play with the clock). I will pass over the bothersome and indecent allegory of the ritual of undressing on the stage that the heroine practices. Each time she has to make an important decision, Violetta prefers to strip to her underwear. I will just mention one example of these "climactic" moments: when she decides to leave Alfredo, after confessing to the clock what Germont, the father, had to find out. In order that she might seal her decision, Violetta frees herself from any metaphor, that is, she takes off her little red dress – a symbol of happy times? – and in her under-dress, she approaches old Germont, with the words: "Please hug me… etc."8 Fortunately, he turns away… Thus, the mania of metaphors that seizes and contaminates the entire performance, attacking all registers in the most unexpected situations, is a 7

"Dite alla giovine si bella e pura…" I simply refuse to analyse this fine allusion that the director invented, with the obvious intention of "humanising" the profile of the heroine.

8

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generous source of ineptitudes, in which true originality is replaced with arbitrariness abundantly. A new metaphor follows! At the beginning of Act II the two lovers fulfil their love on a kind of a coach, covered with cheap cloth that has immense flower prints. This is, doubtlessly, a symbol of retreat in the heart of nature – a kind of Robinsonade, or a story like "Paul and Virginia", as the musical script indicates a house in the country, near Paris. Towards the end of the tableau, after Germont convinces Violetta to give up Alfredo, wanting to convince her public that her happiness drew to an end, she picks up these coloured metaphors, and then, she angrily crushes them and throws them on the floor, as a sign that the break is irreversible. In the following scene, Alfredo, in the confrontation with his father wants to run away, trying to escape his anger as he attempts to give him a physical correction. Unfortunately, he trips in the metaphors, falls down, and in order to protect himself from another paternal aggression, he covers himself with what has remained from the symbol he tripped on, a manly gesture with obvious psychological significance.

* The rattle-brained running around of protagonists, who trap all around the subway station (the stage), found a splendid parallel in the run of the director-demiurge after sui generis metaphors, which make the action on stage and the credibility of those moments succumb lamentably; their place is filled with meaningless, unjustified actions, which take control over the stage. This is even more serious, since the world of fiction on stage should be guaranteed by the director, who is the warrant of artistic credibility: his mission is exactly that of making the drama credible and convincing, and to place it in perfect accordance with the music. In this version, the protagonists and the choir, as they have to continuously speed about the stage, were also trained to execute like automatons very precise movements, to pre-determined places, which are calculated in such a way that, Violetta, for example, has to even stretch on the face of the clock, which she decorates with her figure. In short: this is a classical parade of schizophrenia. This unceasing agitation, spiced with absurdities that are signs of obvious psychological unbalance, are overlapping the musical organisation, which is the engine of the inner movements, and, implicitly the motivating guarantee of any event on stage. Consequently, such mismatch brings the music to a ridicule, emptying it of any artistic value, annulling its effect of

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spontaneity, which should be the first and main concern of all interpreters to preserve. There is only one plausible explanation that might help us understand this mockery that directors make of music, by which they think they revolutionise the opera theatre. When violins play one thing, the trombone another, let alone the oboes and the flutes, mister director, lost in the rushbed of the orchestration (which he cannot understand), trying to hide his perplexity, wonders: "Well, why shouldn't I let myself go?"; and he does it, eloquently, using the most inappropriate means, characteristic for a certain degree of knowledge and a certain type of psychological development. Consequently, the modern opera has been born by suffocating the music. The staging of the opera, which should have been the means for putting music to value, has become a purpose onto itself. What a purpose! The performance became a true OBSTACLE between the public and the music. If anyone thinks I am exaggerating, I invite them to go to the Opera! Konrad Lorenz, the savant biologist, speaking about the specific of cancer cells, identifies in their fundamental character immaturity; this is why they develop independently from the necessities of the ensemble. Such immaturity makes them incapable of integrating within the structure they appear in. Who cannot find any analogy, even identity between the development of cancer in the organism and the proliferation of the effects of the modern director in the opera, which are due to his artistic immaturity, should tune his sight and hearing better.

CHAPTER XIV THE SPECTACLE AS AN… OBSTACLE1 – WHY THE “GREAT REFORM” IN THE LYRICAL THEATRE HAS NOT BROUGHT ABOUT ITS RE-BIRTH

"L'homme actuel ne choisit plus: il accepte passivment tout ce qui lui permet d'oublier qu'il est homme". (J.-L. Chalumeau)

In this last group of framework-ideas of the study in musical hermeneutics2, which might be considered a kind of a post-note, I will use the opportunity to draw a few conclusions, together with my reader. It would be presumptuous of us to think that in this manner we have completed the entire horizon of issues in the domain, that we have exhausted all the problems, all the aspects that are to blame for the present state of the lyrical theatre. The catabatic process that characterises this manner that the "great reform" has inaugurated in the interpretation of lyrical masterpieces is indebted to the avant-garde tendency to point our spirit almost exclusively downwards, towards the obscene, towards the swamp of triviality; such manner seems to go on and still hold its surprises for the future. Nevertheless, there will come a moment when we will understand the great impending dangers that are directed towards our existential fibre itself, and we will learn our lesson!

*

1

The title of this chapter is not an insult or an addressed irony, but the current state of "progress" in the art of the lyrical theatre. 2 ǼȡȝȒȞȑȓȐȢ – not Aristotle's sense but that of Fr. Bacon, the meaning of "interpretatio" (in Novum Organum).

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In our intention to not give the impression, or even the doubt that such concussions are only the result of a number of subjective opinions, far from reality, and fabricated by my own imagination in an artificial manner, I will come yet and again to the "exemplary" cases, some of which I have already shown in the previous chapters, some that I am still going to ad; I have collected such examples from an apparently inexhaustible series of such events. They are meant for those who do not care for the neglect of the musical text when they want to understand music; they are meant to give them enough elements that can help them identify instances of going astray from these texts; they will see, then, how most of the revolutionary opera performances that betray the music constitute a real obstacle, an insurmountable gap between the great lyrical creations and the public. The thus "modernised" opera performance contradicts the scope that lies at its coming into being: to give life to the musical text. Today it has become the failure of a very costly enterprise (from a financial point of view), an enterprise that instead of facilitating the reception and understanding of the music, makes music obscure, and even annuls it. I repeat, I am referring to the understanding of music because we must not forget that there exists music which should not remain at the level of perceiving with our sense of hearing in order that we might share into its values, but needs to be also understood3. The so-called revolution – marked by the implication of newcomers from all over the world who want to save the opera theatre and change its fate for the better – throws us in full entropy, assuring total bewilderment at its reception. A convincing case in this respect is the example of a recent production of Turandot at the Essen Opera, in Germany.

* We are living in a world of paradoxes, one more "ingenious" as the next. At a first glance they might appear interesting to some people, even savoury, when they happen in vitro, in the world of the soft, on the screen or on stage; interesting and savoury as long as they do not aggress the psychic integrity of those who feed their minds and souls on such paradoxes and do not bring any direct harm to the peacefulness of their lives, which they would like to keep as separate as possible from any kind 3

In Remarques sur Grandeur et décadence de la ville de Mahagonny, Bertold Brecht affirms that the opera must be transformed "d'un instrument de joussance en instrument pédagogique".

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of paradox! In time, though, we will all find ourselves poisoned irrecoverably, because the fruit will have started to ripe in our hearts and minds, and the chance for a detoxification will be almost impossible. I am thinking of the danger that menaces a society in which our consciences remain much behind the possibilities offered by technical progress. A. Toffler affirms in his Future Shock that the future comes too quickly over us. Today we have got to be the masters of too many things that we cannot handle any more. In reality, many of these possibilities are mastering us. They use us much more than we use them. Most of them come against us on a medium term and, especially, on a long term. Our brain, through the elation that has intoxicated it, is on the verge of escaping the control of our conscience, and I refuse to imagine how our civilisation will look like in such a generalised hypostasis. The philosopher Karl Jaspers maintains that "culture is a form of life; it is based on the discipline of thought and is exercised in the domain of a kind of knowledge that is subject to order"; Leibniz also affirms that "order is a help that we bring to our spirit". Nevertheless, the entire spectre of culture today is irresistibly attracted on an orbit of errancy, and art does not hesitate to actively participate in the instauration of disorder, of chaos (which we have already dealt with in the previous chapters).

* "The meaning of music dies through people's not understanding it". (a paraphrase after V. Parvan)

Faithful to the disarticulated play of phantasms and encouraged by the lack of minimal responsibility – not a cultural one, but, at least, one belonging to the realm of our trade deontology, which is trampled on by the aces of such modern visions – "modernised" performances fundamentally pervert the essence, the meaning, and the artistic values of the masterpieces of the universal lyrical theatre. What else can we read into the pulverisation of music, when the producer of the performances "rows" against it, when he opposes it by all means. Such performances are indebted to extra-musical intentions, which do not belong to art at all, sometimes, since they come from an exacerbated wish of the interpreters to acquire public stature, even if they lack any kind of… stature4. The 4

It was enough for the musical critique to speak about "Zeffirelli's Traviata", or "Wieland Wagner's Salome", to make each director want to brag with similar syntagms: "X's Lucia", or "Y's La Boheme".

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public is simply heroic when they manage to be attentive to the music, even for just a second, since they can hardly associate what they hear with what they see, as I have already pointed out. Franco Zeffirelli, in an interview for the magazine Duponchelle, in 1990 (p. 73), entitled "First the director", speaks about the mismatch between the results obtained and the impressive theatrical machinery put to work; he goes easy on his colleagues and considers that in such cases "we are only speaking about wonderful constructions which are accomplished based on a false principle"5. What can there be more false than to stage, to direct the opera against the music? In a series that we published in the journal Muzica in 2006-2007, as well as in the previous chapters of this study on hermeneutics, I have copiously exemplified, using eloquent cases, how the neglect of music is the constant principle of modern (and postmodern) direction. Let us remember Rigoletto, at the "Magio Musicale Fiorentino", in which the caprice of the director brought Hitler, Stalin, and Mao6 to the Duke of Mantova's court; or Lavelli – another rara avis – and his "Norma", in which Montserrat Caballé was supposed to sing the aria Casta Diva up on a truck hood, as she was embodying a Druid priestess, etc., etc. In an interview related to his view on the modernisation of the opera performance, Lavelli is asked the following question: "Is your approach of the opera similar to that of the theatre?" He answers: "Yes, the same. […] The fact that there exists a musical text does not change at all the basis of my work. My big decisions have already been made beforehand"7. This is how he expresses his cultural level, with no embarrassment whatsoever. The masterpieces of lyrical music have gained in time the privilege to be considered "transpersonal"; this means that some of them should be spared the intentional or non-intentional aggression that they might meet with, and which could alter and vitiate their artistic structure, their meaning, and their human dimension. They should be considered as objects belonging to the World Cultural Heritage, and placed in the care and under the patronage of UNESCO. 5

"qu'il s'agit là (…) de merveilleuses constructions élaborées sur un principe faux" (Zeffirelli's words). 6 Music does not constrain imagination, on the contrary, it lets imagination go free until it loses any connection with the reality of the musical text, and goes totally astray. 7 In the original, this unbelievable answer that Mr. Lavelli gives reads like this: "Le fait qu'il ait une partition ne change pas la base de mon travail. Les grandes options sont pris à l'avance." – the collection "L'avant scène", "OPERA", no. March-April, 1976, p. 81.

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* "The incapable are not afraid to gnaw". (Gustave Thibon)

I would ask the reader to allow me to introduce in our discussion a nuance that I consider important and impossible to overlook, although it may seem somehow obsolete if we were to take into consideration how our times go. I am referring to our trade, in which the interpreter is confronted with the great models of (European) culture, models that are present in most of the masterpieces of lyrical music. One of the consequential attributes that underline the eminence of the contemporary artists is that of authenticity. When the critique decreed that an artist was authentic in his sincerity, then a peak was reached. There is nothing more to say! Each creature is as it is. Any individual is authentic, and most of us are complacent in our… authenticity. From the point of view of interpretative art, though, the authenticity of that individual should not be a cover for the authenticity of the character he embodies. Smith is only Smith, but that does not represent a guarantee that Hamlet in Smith's interpretation will be Hamlet – as Shakespeare created him – if Smith is obstinate in being Smith. The interpreter has to sacrifice his identity, or, rather, to enrich and enlarge it through culture, so that he might receive and "get dressed" in the identity of the hero he acts as. Consequently, it is possible that the muchacclaimed authenticity and sincerity that the interpreting artist is praised for should be meaningless in this kind of performance; it might become a confusing attribute, even. This is why Mircea Eliade, in the beginning of the "Soliloquies", voiced his surprising intuitions (he was a young man who was very authentically preparing to overstep his epoch): "Sincerity is very often aside from truth, or even against it". Blaga was not very compliant, either, on the contrary: To brandish "sincerities" easily is more an animal attitude than a human one [...] I think I am not mistaken when I suspect that behind them there is great shamelessness, which wants to embellish itself; there are vices which, by loud uttering, try to make up an excuse; there is cynicism that is looking for an air of innocence in order to fool you; or, there is abyssal perfidy that tries to entrap you.

We are all authentic, as I said, but not all of us are true. To be a real individual is not something that anyone can be, as he lives not only through his own DNA, but according to something that is above him,

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higher than himself. Only conscience opens the road of the individual in order that he might better himself and become a Man (a generic noun, of course). Conscience has no role when all you want is to remain as you are, authentic. Coming back to the artist-interpreter, we may say that by the specific of his trade he is always confronted with other identities8, of which the most difficult to embody is that of the hero, which represents the rolemodel9, although today each individual wants to be his own role-model, or a model for the others, even when he has not even "found" his own identity (or especially then). The hero is the model in "the flesh", and not his abstraction. He does not fall short of his substance of a true man, even when he is torn by terrible temptations, or affected by tragic vicissitudes. In order that the hero might become a quintessence of the human, the minds of great creators have strived along the millennia and have often overruled their own instincts of conservation; the result is what we call today Culture with a capital C. ("The hero is he who is immovably centred", Emerson notably says about the hero). In moments of deep lucidity, which means high dreaming, the spectator wants to be more than he is. This is why, after the curtain has fallen, ravished, he takes with him the image of the hero, as a reflex of his dream. This only happens when the interpreter has done his job; he has been convincing, he had become true for his spectator – he has grown into a model! Smith is no more. The embodiment of a hero especially asks for the interpreter to surpass his own "authenticity", to not be himself, in order to become a real alter ego of the hero-character that he embodies on the stage. His own authenticity will involuntarily get through anyway, but it will be moulded by the knowledge provided both by the mastery of his trade, and by 8

The spectators do not go to the theatre to meet Smith disguised as Werther (I am referring to this example which in a way is a hero that is less classical for our times); they want to see Werther himself, as he was created by Goethe-Massenet, who pushed quite a few people to kill themselves back in his time. Such miracle will only happen when the artistic conscience of the actor Smith will take over his authenticity, and will leap to a new level, that of the hero-character. In this way, the public will have the chance of meeting lots of other roles, and not Smith all over again; they will not be like little Paul, who will be so disappointed to recognise behind the cotton moustache the "authenticity" of his next-door neighbour, asked by his parents to pretend to be Santa Claus. 9 If we can live without such models today, as we have thrown our great models to the trash-bin, in the previous eras composers got inspired from such models, and the idea of the hero actually functioned.

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culture. One can accede to such high state only through intense and concentrated work on the "hidden" resources of one's own… authenticity; the model that is crystallised in the substance of the music will fecundate such work, and thus, it will come to life in your conscience.

* For H. Delacroix10 "the musician is a profound analyst of the sentiment". Musical logic is the expression that is closest to pure affective life, and, by its accomplishments, it renders the most subtle movements of the soul. This is why the new identity, that of the character, is assumed by embodying this hero, as the great actor Mounet-Sully also affirmed: "… to have this penetrate you, to let yourself be haunted by him". In such cases we are plenary involved in the process of interpretation, and the spectators do not meet you, but the imposing identity of the character; or, as Sarah Bernhardt used to say: "Whenever I create a role, the character comes before my eyes; but this is nothing but a materialised vision, from which the soul that must dominate the character is suddenly educed". I wonder now how is it possible that Monserrat Caballé should identify herself with the great priestess of a Druid temple and besiege the gods, when she is parodically placed by the director on the hood of a truck instead of the staircase of a temple? (Of course that the great soprano did not accept such direction, and declined her collaboration with it.) Where have we gotten to with our interpretation of such a creation like Norma, coming from a genius as Richard Wagner, himself, considered it to be? If contemporary philosophy has passed beyond the real and replaced it with the possible (Weizsäcker), today's directors have taken a further step and replaced the possible with the… impossible. I wonder: What will the spectator understand and take with him in his soul after the falling of the curtain, when such direction just runs riot like this?

* "Le vice est devenu une science exacte". (M. Proust)

The disconcerting proliferation of rebellious independence from the musical text is the consequence of an incorrigible lack of musicality, and 10

Henri Delacroix: Psychologie de l'art – Essai sur l'activité artistique, Paris: Alcan 1927.

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an institutionalised lack of knowledge. It is based on the great discovery that revolutionary directorship has introduced: the abolishment of any connection between the contents of music and the form of interpretation. Such connection, though, is indispensible for the life of lyrical masterpieces. In the best scenario, this kind of direction that has derailed from the track of music has gotten it to concurring parallel worlds, which is a classical hypostasis of schizoid reflexes. I would also ask you: Could we tell one style from another11 in this manner of conceiving the art of interpretation? (or the great truth of art and of culture in general?). Today, at the market of dilettantism, they bid the degree of estrangement from the opera that is about to be interpreted. Such shameful and alarming musicalcultural "innocence" that allows that the musical script should not even be touched by interpretation is not the only accomplishment of the opera revolutionary. Sheltered by musical opacity, a plethora of brand new directors use opera creations (exclusively masterpieces, of course) as pretexts for the deflation of their own complexes, provoked by an assaulting fever of the erotic, which has low and abject implications coming from the lowest and most authentic slums. Almost all instances of modern staging are proof of that, but this recent case that I am about to speak about also shows that this trend is engaged on an ascending track; it is exemplary in the manner in which it seasons the content with the form. The "phenomenon" reaches paroxysmal moments when it is combined with macabre episodes. As I have already mentioned, I am referring to the production of the opera Turandot12, by G. Puccini, at the "Aalto-Oper" in Essen, in the season of 2007-2008. This ensemble was awarded by the musical critics with the prize for the best lyrical theatre in Germany (?). The following will be a musical analysis – although Puccini's genius reaches in this creation a last and superior stage, which is worthy of a more detailed analysis (see our chapter on the character and the specific difference of the opera language). My comments will be limited to an overlapping and a comparing of this staging with the original text of the opera. The libretto of the opera Turandot represents the dramatisation of an exemplary model coming from a fairy-tale13, with ideal connotations as to 11

In Trilogia Culturii, Blaga maintains that style is the supreme dignity of man. The homonymous opening night of the play took place in Berlin, in 1911, and was written by Ferruccio Busoni, who was inspired by the commedia dell'arte Turandot, belonging to the Venetian Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806); at his turn, he had taken the subject from the Chinese folklore. 13 The fairy-tale, as it was preserved in the multi-millenary folklore, represents the thesaurus of a part of the immemorial spiritual tradition of humanity, in which the 12

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the characters of the main heroes, as well as the message it transmits to the spectator; this message foregrounds the power of transfiguration that is due to the noblest human feeling, which is love. Let us concentrate on a few scenes of the dramatic plot of the opera, in parallel with the interpretation that this new production proposes. The fantasy it displays should never be mistaken for real creative imagination; it is rather a "stumbling stone for fools", as Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus used to say. 1. Timur, the Tatar king, blind and deposed from his throne, wanders in the company of his slave, Liu, around the empire's palace, where he is happy to meet his son, prince Calaf. They are surrounded by the tumult of the crowd acclaiming the decapitation of a new unhappy suitor who could not pass the tests that might have made him worthy of princess Turandot's hand. Calaf, bewitched by the appearance of the princes, decides to try his luck, as well. Timur and Liu want to divert him from this foolish attempt. Liu, who has a special affection for the prince, implores him not to risk his life, in an aria entitled "Signore, ascolta". Calaf refuses and, in the aria "Non piangere Liu", he asks her to leave with Timur, as he has to follow his own fate. Firm in his decision to confront the proud princess, who attracts and fascinates him, he announces the arrival of a new suitor willing to give answers to the three fatidic questions, by beating three times in the big gong. This is how the libretto of the opera is conceived. In the Essen direction, this scene is spiced with an episode in which the blind king, Timur, foreshadows the rape of the slave Liu in a far too suggestive pantomime; then he slaps her, while the Chinese people devour parts of the bodies of those who could not answer the questions. 2. At the beginning of act II, the three ministers (chancellor Ping, marshal Pang, and head-chef Pong) express their concern for the country that is in an unhappy state. This scene also "benefits" from a pearl of interpretation in the Essen staging. While the three dignitaries speak, they also stuff the bodies of the victims of the princess' cruelty in trash sacks; but, before throwing them in the trash pit, they manifest necro-sadistic and necrophilia actions. 3. The scene in the next act represents Turandot's boudoir. The first duet Calaf-Turandot, in the vision of the director, culminates with the deflowering of the princess, after which, the conqueror, suddenly prudish, turns his back to the public and shakes his slit.

hero, in order to be able to defeat evil – the negative principle – undergoes a series of trials that, once passed, will purify his being; the only hypostasis that brings with it the victory of the supreme principle is love.

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4. The last duet in the end of the opera (Puccini left a manuscript with 36 pages with sketches that F. Alfano, the composer, used to "finish" this opera) represents an apotheosis of a hymn dedicated to love, which represents the union of two individualities in a superior one. This finds the following expression in the direction of this performance: the space in which Calaf and Turandot are placed is invaded by the bodies of the suitors, who rush in through the windows of the boudoir, wearing… Adam's costume. Among them, we can also find Liu, carrying a small baby, whom Calaf throws in Turandot's lap! Before I give the reader full freedom to ponder what I have just showed here, I will also add two images from this show, together with the remark of the director of the theatre (who was also the conductor of this performance); in the foyer of the Opera, on the occasion of the opening night of this show, congratulating the director, he declared, coram populo, that he finally managed to understand the opera and its message (also see the considerations about conductors, that I included at the beginning of this study).

Fig. 1

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Fig. 2 "Nothing is difficult to explain for our times, due to their double character: of cynicism and arrogance". (Ch. Baudelaire)

Marketing – whose wisdom consists of the principle "I profit moderately but I sell to more" – has lately found a solution to increase the number of clients, by continuously lowering the level of cultural-spiritual values, represented by masterpieces of the lyrical theatre; the purpose is that of matching these creations with the world of the instincts, and to protect intellectual laziness. It is absolutely normal for those who put everything they had in this praiseworthy process of "popularisation" to also receive the gains. What followed was a world-wide multiplication of such "adjustments", well remunerated, of course, as efforts need to be rewarded. The world of music, which represents something very different from that of marketing, is annihilated, as are its values; the ingenuity of the famous mega-companies has found the solution, by marketing an endless series of DVDs under the unexpected but attractive generic

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"Music for the Eyes"14. In other words, what is meant for the ear is now sent to the… eye. If a record company produces music for the eye, we should then have museums who offer on display paintings for the… ears. This is the right path, of course. We should make sure we do not go astray!

Fig. 3: The ad used by Deutsche Gramophon & DECCA for the presentation of the new super productions.

Under such slogan, we can read in the booklet that comes with the double DVD containing Die Zauberflöte, edited by the famous record company DECCA, a few remarks related to Mozart and his music. In this presentation, we can notice the "valuing" of this extraordinary creation at the level of reductionist caricature, so that the public might have the most relaxed relation with Mozart: "Mozart lacks complications. […] The universe of the Flute is surprisingly childish – like a circus performance. The flute is a joyous, simple fable, appreciated by ordinary people [in the French text they call them "gens ordinaires"], a fable that ‘intelligent’ commentators are striving to find profound"; such profoundness does not exist, of course, in reality, in the opinion of Mr. Tom Sutcliffe, the one who signs this relevant text. 14

Four hundred years before Christ, Plato had noticed that the effect of visual information comes on a proportion of 60% as compared to those coming in other ways. Maybe this is why a publishing house that I do not wish to name here, has chosen to present an illustrated history of philosophy; they show to their readers the pictures of philosophers, on the intention of a more conclusive analysis of their systems of thinking.

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I will oppose Mr. Sutcliffe and his opinions; the same do Hermann Aber, W. A. Mozart, Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1919-1921 (two volumes of approx. 1000 pages), as well as T. de Wyzewa and G. de SaintFoix, W. A. Mozart, Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1936-1946, in 5 volumes, of approximately 2000 pages; these both, in analysing Die Zauberflöte consider that we are dealing with the "most authentic creation of musical genius". "Mozart brings Bach's spirit in his theatre, especially in Zauberflöte, by the symbolism of the religious scenes, as well as of the tests; they are scenes of purifying music, full of the highest poetry". "By the feeling of Innigkeit that is rooted in the deepest feeling, without passionate joy, in which the absence of earthly passions and the dreaming serenity represent the apotheosis of the highest spiritual preoccupations". "In Pamina's aria only the rhythm renders a feeling of reality, while the rest of the music makes us forget this reality". (Keeping the proportions, this is exactly what would happen almost one century later in Puccini's Turandot.) This is what happens when a musical genius mixes a Zauberstoff, with the miraculous substance of an exemplary fairy-tale. In such a case, music reaches heights that transcend our world). Do we still need to ask ourselves why both Beethoven and Wagner manifested their special preference for everything that musical thinking had more elevated, as well as the orchestral perfection in Zauberflöte? Goethe himself was so fascinated by Zauberflöte that in 1795 he started to write a play that was supposed to be a sequel to this Magic Flute. He never finished it because Mozart had left the scene of this world. A practical conclusion, then: there cannot exist something that an opaque musical sense cannot perceive; we should just not give it a right to existence. For such leaders of opinions there should not exist another Mozart, but their own15. The spectator is forced to only see and hear what such activists say, in their work on the field of destruction of all values of European culture. The immediate goal - but not the final one, though - of such "musical interpretation" is one of a more lucrative-financial nature, typical for the agenda of the producer: to multiply to a world scale the number of common buyers, by luring as many naive persons as possible. They have to be attracted and not rejected by highlighting a more profound facet of the opera, whose understanding would – God forbid! – entail some effort of the brain. I repeat, the plan goes towards maximum accessibility, and, 15

Referring to Aida, Mr. director J. C. Auvray – in a staging at the Opera in Bremen – justifies his intervention in the text of the libretto of the opera, by saying "Everything in the libretto is naive, implausible, and illogical", so Verdi must be corrected!

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why not?, even with the risk of mutilating and ridiculing Mozart's masterpiece. For the knowledge and conscience of marketing it is indifferent if you raise the client to Mozart's level, or if you lower the composer to the level of the client. They opted for the second variant, which is easier. Thus popularised, Mozart becomes "one of us" – the dream of mediocrity, to put it mildly, not like Ion Ghica in one of his famous letters in which he is rightfully scandalised and exclaims: "Any dunderhead asks for equality with a man of genius". The tendency of the epoch to do away with the troubling difference between up and down has been caught in the air by the perspicacity of the business men. They understood that this is the surest manner if they did not want to encounter commercial risks, not even in the domain of culture, which they also started to consider just a commercial enterprise like any other. This is how, by crushing Mozart's music, marketing fulfils their cultural plan for… profits.

* Obviously, the performance has its legitimate right to interpretation, according to the power and vision of each artist, within the framework of the laws of their trade, and with good intentions; among these, they should also count a respect for the musical text. Why such respect? For the blessed reason that music has to be in accordance with direction and not the other way round. It is absurd (we encounter too much absurdity every day) that the first representation should only be a pretext for a second, although this is not only the dream but also the intention of too many local visions of the world of opera performances. In this case, though, the author of such productions is careful with the music according to his own calibre, and this is the ideal condition for an unlimited unfolding of his interpretation. Nevertheless, a man of culture – be he a director – if he respects the deontology of his profession, will never focus the entire attention and interest on anything else but the music; this is the element on which a true understanding of that particular opera depends. It is under the influence of music that so many meanings blossom, which are otherwise hidden to our superficial thought and sensitivity. Almost only music, on its own, offers the most fecund and ingenious suggestions for interpretation. Therefore, the interpreters (and especially the director) have to be able to find their way in the musical text very well: this is the primordial condition for a performance that is honest both to the composer and his work, and to the public. The director has to be able to read and understand the musical text as if he were reading a word one, a paper; after that, he

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can be a genius as much as he wants (and is able to). Only in this manner will the musical organisation be in consonance with a just organisation of the space and time on stage, with everything this entails. Only in this case will the rendering of the musical script be PROFESSIONAL and artistic within the performance. Otherwise, the result is a fake whose author aspires to the rank of imposture.

CHAPTER XV PROFESSION AND CAREER

"Impatience is the mother of foolishness". (From Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks)

"To learn one must be humble". (J. Joyce – Ulysses)

The unnatural relation that its professionals establish between having a job and building a career is one of the causes which are responsible for the bad shape the contemporary lyrical theatre is in. Normally, the professional preparation precedes and justifies the career, with the second being the result of the first. Only by getting a strong hold on the secrets of the profession, can talent, from a natural gift, become an artistic reality; and only knowing and observing the most intimate procedures of the phonating mechanisms can we master and command them (to paraphrase an affirmation belonging to Francis Bacon1). The temptation and, especially, the practice of counting solely on one's talent and putting in brackets the mastering of the technical means leads rapidly, and fatally, to imposture. This process is due to the hastiness of young interpreters to have a career. Still, sooner or later the impatient singer is exposed, as he/she becomes incapable of fulfilling the obligations that need to be assumed, that is, according to the Romanian philosopher Nae Ionescu I have quoted in this study, "they fill the job, but do not accomplish the work". Contrary to this obvious necessity, nowadays practice in the lyrical theatre has turned things upside down: the effect precedes the cause! All parties, especially young singers, first want to "make a name" for themselves, to get to that luminous stage of great popularity; thus, they glorify ignorance of their own profession, in favour of what they call "talent". Only when they meet with difficulties do a part of them try to surmount at least a sum of those missing parts of their education; very few 1

"Naturae non nisi parendo imperatur", Novum Organum, Book 1, CXXIX.

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lose any sleep over such misgivings, though. The great majority will be tempted to bring the level of the musical text to their own standards, which is too little for such composers as Mozart, Verdi, etc. Such practices are met with in many instances in the lyrical theatre, and they come against the general tendency of our times, which enforce the importance of getting specialized, as much as possible. While science and technology enlarge their horizons and develop to unforeseen depths, getting richer in the most surprising and unfathomable manner, art becomes smaller and smaller, crammed into the corners of lack of professionalism; this spells out amateurism and a less-than-honourable improvisation and its tricks. In short, even when artists do have something to say, they lack the appropriate means that could help them express the contents of their intentions. I will bring as witness to such considerations the plethora of natural talents that are absorbed by the majority of lyrical theatres. They are thrown onto the stages in roles whose interpretation require a very different level of preparation – not only a mastering of vocal technique, but also a level of culture that can facilitate the understanding of the nature and complexity that such roles entail (and of the heroic figures2 that are the main characters, as well). This kind of hero is present in many classical operas. If the interpretation does not match the stature of the hero, his path is broken. The entire story becomes ridiculous, as it is not convincing anymore – the dramatic construction sinks, and disappears in the absurd. Facing such major obstacles, the young artist of great future hopes spends little time trying to overcome them, as he is terribly rushed and preoccupied to get to the top of his career. He wants a name first, so that he might enjoy the much dreamed of notoriety3 before it vanishes (in no time). 2

The hero, in his confrontation with extreme obstacles, will be triumphant in the end, as he is the opposite of those who seek a quick minimal resistance solution. The hero cannot be betrayed, as he is circumscribed to a behaviour that is logically and ethically consistent, with no contradictions or dispersions. He could fall short of expectations, only if he departs from his heroic statute. The hero's attitudes and actions belong to a higher world, a world that our contemporary times have detached from, and this is the reason why we, today, do not have access to an understanding of the hero, we cannot imagine his "temptations" or his reasons. 3 In today's world, the inversion of values is not an exception. Artists who are lacking professionally accede notoriety in no time, and the disoriented public is a sure prey of the attacks of "cultural" advertisement, which are persuasive and pretend to give an "expert" opinion in cultural matters (remember the abovementioned case of the fastest pianist).

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We will have to admit that such a situation places almost all opera managers in a very delicate position, even a critical one. As there are no well-prepared singers, the theatre has to do with those who are… promising. They are under-qualified, because the voice, the natural talent alone cannot solve complex artistic matters; they will be quickly replaced by new "promising" voices, who demonstrating the same professional level will be as ephemeral as the first; a young singer needs a certain amount of time and study in order to arrive to the level that his profession requires. "On hiring them, there is no examination of the interpretative capabilities […] and the early use of singers in main roles brings about too great difficulties, both for the young singers, and for the theatre", says M. Bertram4. Still, in order that the business should work, and the theatre should "prosper", both the managers of the theatre and the young talents shake hands at the expense of art, and to the misfortune of the spectator. This is why when one is assaulted by technical issues, which are still unsolved, the interpretation limits itself to a reproduction, to a spelling out of the notes, more or less accurately. If the singer does not stumble in the middle of the representation and manages to get to the end; if he even emits one or two "loud and high" notes; and if the final curtain does not need to be drawn before the end of the show, then it means that the performance was a success. This is why the public of many theatres, accustomed to expect even worse, will be ecstatic with such a performance. There are other cases that the media speak about, when in some theatres that have a long tradition the spectators do not declare themselves satisfied so easily, they do not think that "this will also do", and they even manifest their lack of approval in the most obvious manner. Nevertheless, good and bad, the "business" works. It has to work!5 In this way, the naturally endowed artists are insufficiently prepared, but they continue to be the main reservoir that provides for the opera theatres. (I do not think that it is very difficult for us to identify the reason, or the reasons that have brought about such a state of affairs.6)

4

Manfred Bertram "Sänger-Nackwuchs" [The young generation of singers], Bühnenenge-nossenschaft, 2/1986, p. 8. 5 If not, the first who would become unemployed would be the management of the theatre. 6 Signed by Heiz Ludwig, an article of the journal Die Welt, in its issue 189, of August 16, 1986, identifies the guilty party, even from the title: "Musikhochschulen imTal der Tränen" [Musical universities in the vale of tears]. In two words, the article shows the reality: "… die gravierenden Ausbildungsdefizite" [serious lack of study].

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To avoid suspicion that I only see everything that is black when the situation is considered to be… pink, let us take a closer look and analyse, in order to understand why the new direction in the interpretative art manages to highlight only very little of what makes an opera a… masterpiece. The first aspect that the spectator is confronted with these days is the almost exclusive use of the singers' voice in forte or fortissimo7. This foible of singing loud, hammer and tongs, besides exposing the phonating apparatus to premature wearing-out, thus "insuring" many young singers with meteoric8 careers, also has a series of shortcomings of an artistic nature, most of which being obvious even for a less informed person. When the adequate technique is lacking, the singer, in his fight with the orchestra, instinctively goes for the "loud" solution, thus putting his phonating apparatus on the rack; the voice makes a much too disproportionate effort in comparison with the result. Such efforts, obvious 7

One of the causes is represented by the excessively large and powerful orchestras. In an issue of the journal Opernweld, Perché, quoting Kersing, affirms: "Voices are brutally forced, and are mercilessly covered by the ever louder orchestras". This anomaly was analysed in a preceding chapter. 8 This is why the French have created a saying, coming from the experience of the lyrical theatre: "La voix ne vit qu'un primtemps" [the voice only lives one spring]. This is the situation of the next case, which I will summarize here. The specialised journalist of Opernwelt, relating a new staging of the opera Das Rheingold, by R. Wagner, which happened on December 7, 1985, on the Frankfurt/M opera stage, writes about the interpreter of the role Fricka: "Die Stimme der Sängering sich in einem desolated Zustand befindet […]. Sie hat die Stimme kaum unter Kontrolle, denn sie ‘rutscht’ städig aus und klingt fast in jedem Terz-Abstand anders" [The voice of the singer is in a deplorable state [...] She has lost control of her voice, which "slides" always from under her control, as it sounds differently at almost each third interval] (Opernwelt, 1/1986, pp. 18-19). I will not make the name of the singer public, as the principle that I am guided by does not allow me to name colleagues when I cannot praise them; moreover, I had this singer as partner a few years before this "happening", in Don Carlos, an occasion when she enthused the public, as we can see from the following chronicle: "Die erste Bravorufe des Abends gab es für N. N. (Prinzessin Eboli). Und in der Tat hatte dieser leicht guttral gefärbte, äusserst virtuose Mezzosopran […] eine faszinierende Einheit von expressiven Spiel und Gesang geboten" [The first Bravos! of the evening were shouted for the singer who played the role of the Princess Eboli. It is true that this slightly guttural nuanced voice, displaying special virtuosity, brought a fascinating unity between the expressive acting and the singing] (Otto Gärtner, "Giessener Algemeine"). It is extremely sad, and I feel heart-broken that such catastrophic cases in the life of artists are far from being exceptions. Their frequency is disorienting.

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even in places where they should not be even noticeable, involuntarily make their mark on the mimics of that singer, which expresses something different than what the music wants to suggest. Such a manner of singing comes in contradiction with the indications of the musical text, as well as the dramatic situation, both expressly requiring at times phrases that should be sung in piano, or mezza-voce; for instance, parts of the duets we have already discussed. In the duet Violetta-Alfredo (Traviata, DVD/ 0743215 – DECA), the two protagonists are placed very closely, face to face, as the direction requires, and shout at each other as if they were on two different mountain peaks, and at a distance that only Marconi could make shorter. In order that we might understand the crass mismatch between how we sing today and the one in which Verdi wanted to hear his opera interpreted, I will quote a short fragment from a letter he wrote to his editor, Giulio Ricordi: "Una buona interpretazione si ottiene suonando leggerissimamente"9. Clear and concise! When the two – Violetta and Alfredo – finally decide to turn their voices a little down, the tenor has a certain grin that suggests a kidney crisis, accompanied by an unexpected modification of the timber of his voice that pales abruptly, leaving the vocal line, as well as the musical expressivity aside; this is unaccountable from an artistic-musical point of view, as they are fundamental elements of the Verdian style, and of professional singing in general. Greatly annulled by the interpretation required by the psychological states of the dramatic situation, the possibility to convince and enchant the listener is lost. I will note again: such examples are provided by a DVD, whose booklet presents such production as a "Sumptuous period Production from the Los Angeles Opera & two of Opera's biggest Stars". A presentation that is closer to fact and more lucid reads like this: "… D'un aplomb que rien ne gênait, ils n'avaient aucun scrupule à l'égard de ce qu'ils ignoraient".

* In art, and not only, the equation profession-career has to be completed by a third term – vocation. There are many talented singers who lack the calling, that is, a disposition to dedicate their time to passionate study, to loyally confront the hardships of their trade; they are solely obsessed with the wish to show off their natural gifts, instead of subordinating them to the commandments of interpretation. Only a passion-vocation, which does 9

Which does not mean lacking sonority, it only means moderate, effortless. This is what I will further on demonstrate when speaking about the professional technique.

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not settle for the rush to pick up the fruit before they are ripe will be the warrant for an artistic result. I would say that this calling makes the one who is its slave an endangered species these days, a very rare exponent – a perfectly disinterested artist. The less interest he takes in himself, the more he will be interested in the mission he was given when he had the opportunity to be the carrier of musical messages. This is why a routine and superficial interpretation, by the "ear", will never have an "insight" of the music, and will never be able to express its messages.

* "Der liebe Gott stekt im Detail".10 (Old German proverb)

The miracle of the lyrical art - the opera - springs from the striving passion for obtaining the fine tuning of each sound (not any note, or note interval was written by the composer in such a way as to match any interpreter, or all interpreters) – der liebe Gott – as the German proverb says. The accomplishing of a valuable performance is the result of a minute alchemy, through which the multitude of details and nuances of the musical part will be transposed in interpretation, in the voice of the singer. In order that I may convince my readers of the truth of these remarks, I will have to invite them in a little more detailed foray, which will help us understand at least part of the key mechanism due to which the performer has the possibility to realize the sonorous correspondent of the nuances enciphered in each of the elements that the musical text… and context are composed of. Before that I will have to make a few necessary comments. The sharpness, or the force of a sound is determined by the intensity of its emission, and is measured in Decibels (dB). A sound in piano has less Decibels as compared to a forte one, while its richness, or sonority depend on an entirely different thing, that is, on the number and dosage of the overtones11 that the sound contains. For a further clarification of the above, another explanation is needed. Each sound of the human voice is a composite one, being made up of several sounds: the base sound (the fundamental sound), with a frequency (pitch) which corresponds to the sound that is emitted by the vocal cords (whose frequency is measured in Hz); over this sound other secondary sounds appear, which are called overtones, or harmonic sounds, which 10 11

"The good Lord is hidden in details". Übertöne, in German.

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have various frequencies (also measured in Hz)12. The most important for the quality and brilliance of the voice are the extra harmonics, which have a superior frequency to the base sound, that is, higher overtones. These are produced spontaneously, by the phenomenon of resonance which takes place almost instantaneously (in the pharynx, in the oral cavity, the jaws' sinuses, etc.), that is, in a very short time from the moment when the vocal cords have produced the base sound (uttered intentionally). In order that a sound, which has not been uttered forte (but leggerissimamente, as Verdi requires) should be harmonious, sonorous, and brilliant, the overtones that compose it have to be as numerous as possible, so that they are superior in intensity to the base sound, and their frequencies should be very rich. In the images below, the overtones are highlighted in the bottom sections (C). Consequently, the more intense the overtones, that is over 90 dB, and the frequencies between 350 Hz and 3500 Hz prevail in the constitution of a sound, the more beautiful, rich, and brilliant that sound will be: a true professional sound. In fact, this is where the secret of the rate between effort and sonorous effect lies, which means that the result should be superior to the pains that produce it; otherwise, the whole endeavour becomes ridiculous. Ridiculousness and art do not match very well. A special technique is needed to get here, whose consequence is represented by the optimization of the efficaciousness of the phonate apparatus. At the same time, we will have to mention that a young singer, who usually sings in forte, very often hides behind the strength of his sounds the weaknesses in the functioning of his phonate apparatus, weaknesses that along the way will be more and more obvious, and whose correction is extremely difficult, if not downright impossible – as it will happen with most bad 12

Regarding the overtones of human voice, we need to underline that in speech, when we utter various vowels, the sonority of the voice is limited to the overtones of those particular vowels, known as vocalic overtones, alongside their pitch, or the frequency of the uttered sound. The production of the sounds of each vowel is the result of a certain frequency that characterises it (after Helmholz: "a" = 220 Hz, "o" = 440 Hz; "e" = 880 Hz; "i" = 2347 Hz), which also accounts for the different places in the oral cavity where these frequencies are produced, according to the size of the space of that particular cavity. For example, "i" is front (the smallest place), while "a" is backwards (the biggest place). The sonority of the voice is not limited to vocalic overtones, also extra vocalic overtones appear, which are produced by the fundamental sound when we sing. These are produced, especially, as a consequence of a certain technique, and they are the source of the richness, the brilliance, and the sonority of the singing voice of a professionally exceptional singer. Aided by them, the opera singer is capable to reach and express the nuances required by the musical part, particularly when it is extremely exigent (in Mozart's case, especially, as we have already seen).

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habits that become a second nature, as we very well know. Unfortunately, more detailed explanations that might clarify the mechanisms intimately entail a series of specialised pieces of knowledge, which would require a much too ample and difficult demonstration for the non-professional reader. Supplementary clarification can be found in two of my other works13. Nevertheless, in order that I illustrate the words of the great tenor Aureliano Pertile (see below), I will add at the end of this chapter a few images of the sinusoids of other vowels, which will give you an image of the difference between sounds that are sung unprofessionally (with a too powerful implication of the larynx), and those sung by a trained professional, whose voice is rich in overtones.

* The difference between a loud and a sonorous sound is not easily perceived by a less expert ear. In fact, while a loud sound – which is bare of overtones – remains rigid, it does not have suppleness14, a sonorous sound, be it in piano or forte, will preserve its richness and brightness (due to its overtones), and especially its suppleness, a quality that music cannot do without when it is real music. Only such a sound, obtained through a particular technique, will allow the singer to accomplish, for instance, a legato in singing, which means that he will be able to pass in an ideal manner, imperceptibly, from one note to another, from one pitch to another, as well as from fortissimo to pianissimo, and vice versa. Through a dynamic decrease on a melodic ascension, one can realize (in singing) the most surprising, and truly artistic combinations, very refined ones, as we have already seen in the analysis of the fragment from Susanna's aria, in the last act of The Marriage of Figaro, by Mozart (as exemplified by Maria Callas, or her "rival", Renata Tebaldi; to give you two examples that you can always check out yourselves on YouTube). Then, only with the help of a technique that enables the singer to obtain such sounds, full of overtones, can the singer also obtain the effect that leads to the impression that the state of mind of the character is, in fact, the creator of the music in that particular moment, not that the singer is forced to perform on a certain tune which requires a strenuous effort. Only this kind of freedom, obtained through professional vocal technique will favour true singing performance, 13 Cibernetica fonaĠiei în canto [The Cybernetics of Phonation in Singing], Bucureúti: Editura Muzicală, 2000; Grai úi cant [Speech and Singing], Cluj: Editura UniversităĠii, forthcoming. 14 The increase or decrease of the strength of the sound, as well as of its colour, required by the psychological context, that is the state of mind of the character.

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making it credible and, therefore, convincing. The effort is not felt, either in voice or in mimic, or, at least, not to the point where it may contradict the supposed state of mind of the character, the music, and the dramatic action. When this is not accomplished, we will only hear a noisy spelling out of the notes. For each good singing performance, the necessary spontaneity, the one that manages to convince – through the expressivity of the voice – is, nevertheless, the result of a minute and prolonged endeavour, which W. Pater (whom I also cited on another occasion) synthesizes in his paradoxical formulation: "Only Work can efface the footsteps of Work". This is why one must strive and put a lot of effort into study, in order to make the effort disappear from the performance itself. As this principle is not important only in singing, I will exemplify this paradox with a paraphrase of a retort belonging to J. Whistler, the important English painter and theoretician of the correspondences between painting and music, a retort given to a person who was amazed at the rapidity with which the painter finished a painting: It takes years of work till you can paint a painting in two hours. Mozart is also known for a similar retort. Our young singers, though, do not seem to be very keen on such strenuous work, especially as at their age the effort of singing "all hammer and tongs" is not felt as too tiring – on the contrary, it is a voluptuous thing to do. But physical voluptuousness is very sensibly different from the musical one! The difference between a sound that is uttered naturally, spontaneously, unrefined by the technique that we have briefly analysed, but based on an obvious vocal effort, and a professional one, is that the latter will just give the impression of spontaneity; it is not the result of a particular vocal effort. This situation is clearly explained by the images below, of the oscillograms of the three sounds. The difference consists in their qualities, which depend on the mechanisms that create them – and that is of great importance for the freedom of expression. What is more, a voice that is well "clad" in overtones, also has the quality of covering the mechanism behind it, giving the impression of a marvel, as it is detached from the source that created it. The sonorous outcome will contain only vibration, with no trace of "materiality". Sounds produced in the absence of such professional technique, inappropriate for the musical exigencies and the dramatic context, are always accompanied by air surplus, upsetting for the ear15; they have not become sonorous, because of the fact that the exhaling during phonation 15

Especially with high-pitched voices.

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was not rigorously controlled16. This is why, such a sound will always be rigid and lacking in quality, with a kind of sonorous power only in forte and fortissimo. On the contrary, the sound that is enriched by the professional technique of inhalation (that is the support of the sound – appoggio), will be accompanied by a multitude of overtones in the resonant cavities of the phonating apparatus; it will be sonorous, elastic, and brilliant, both in forte and in piano; it will be a result of less physical effort of the larynx and, implicitly, of a sonorous exhaling of reduced flux17, as the last example of the computer analysis of the three vowels A shows. With the aid of such technique one can get a vocal emission that will give them a "readiness" to adjust to any requirements of the musical text, of which the first in line is voice elasticity. A summary of the previous considerations will read as follows: - it is only by this method that right values and dosages of the voice can be obtained, in order that the interpretation should not come against the musical text, and the intentions of the composer; - it is only in this way that sounds retain a high degree of resemblance between them; they will be of the same brightness, colour and calibre when the voice passes from (1) a sound at a certain pitch to another at a superior pitch, and vice-versa; that is, it can realise a legato, which will hide the "journey" of the voice (the non-artistic portato) between two sounds that have different frequencies (Hz); (2) from one intensity to another, when the intensity of the sound (dB) has to be modified, that is, when the voice has to realize a gradual crescendo or a decrescendo on the same sound; (3) from one vowel to another (see the oscillograms of the vowels "I" and "E", which show the great difference between them when spoken, and when professionally sung. In one word, an equality of the voice is obtained. It is clear now that this kind of singing will solve the "paradox" represented by the need to realise all requirements of variation and nuances18, the clear-obscure of phrasing, at the same time maintaining the legato, that is, the unity of the musical phrase. The musical phrase has to display continuity, its flow is a capital quality of music, which is a time16 As a curiosity for the readers, I will inform them that two Romanian phoniatric doctors, Gârbea and Cotul identified in their studies over 10 cardinal differences between a spoken sound, which consumes the exhalation uncontrolled, and a professionally controlled one. 17 With a speed, though, that is in reversed proportionality with the debit! 18 That is, if the singer is not obligated to go for a falsetto, or a head voice, he will not have to change the calibre and the normal timbre of his voice.

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Fig.1: Verdi, Don Carlo, Act III, Introduzione E Scena.

related art. As an example of how important the clear-obscure quality of interpretation is, I will remind you of the orchestral introduction (a chords solo) of Fillip II's aria in Don Carlo, by G. Verdi, "Ella giamai m'amo"; the 16th and 18th bars, and especially the 20th. The two groups of four semiquavers should not be executed identically, that is mechanically-equal (as we usually can hear). Such interpretation is of little expressivity, if any, and, therefore, unconvincing. On the contrary, each tempo of the bar should receive another dynamic nuance, and even the tempo should differ (rubato!), as they reflect the inner struggle and the bitter disappointment

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that Fillip feels at the thought that he has never been able to conquer Elisabeth's heart. But the realisation of such nuances requires long and hard exercise, and, especially something that our 21st century singer seems to be barren of – patience. Our century lives and develops under the pressure of just one dimension: artistic passion.

* When the flow of the phrase is not perfect, or is interrupted, the melody and its magic suffers, and with it the music suffers, too. Such flow contains the secret of the grace that was so arduously pursued by Leonardo da Vinci in painting, during his entire life. He found it, and as proof we may look at his entire creation in the domain of the clearobscure; such grace was for him part of the mystery of the universal flow19. The mastery of a vocal interpreter consists in obtaining such effects of clear-obscure in music. To conclude, we may affirm that a lack of unity of the musical phrase, or a levelling of its nuances, which lose the charm of their inter-weaving (according to the exigencies of the musical text!) corresponds to a real musical catastrophe. The saving solution consists in using the technique we are speaking about in this chapter (like in Chapter I, when discussing Susanna's aria in Act IV of Figaro's Wedding, and that of Violetta in the finale of Traviata). Such exigencies do not need to appear exaggerated, and should not appear like that to anyone, as we are speaking about masterpieces that have been part of the musical repertoire for hundreds of years, and their sensitivity and artistic refinement has had all the time to be discovered, internalised, and transmitted to the next generations; such "legacies" will be highlighted and objectified through adequate technical means that reveal all the existing nuances and details that the musical texts contain, rendering their entire splendour to the public.

* Not being able to demonstrate and exemplify these things live – and I cannot ask the reader to just give me credit and let himself just be persuaded by sheer affirmation – I have chosen to transpose the sounds in digital form, so that images might convince and persuade anyone. 19 Cf. Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, Livre de Poche illustre, Paris, 1967, who explains the charm and the mystery of the Gioconda in this manner.

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Moreover, such analysis of sounds is not subject to subjective oscillation, to particular cases (we know how personal impressions regarding music may be; sounds that are beautiful for some, might not be the same for others). In the oscillograms we see how sounds differ in a numeric form, by translating quality in quantity, with the aid of a computer soft that is beyond doubt or any controversy20, and, therefore, objective. These experiments were conducted by me, personally, in the Phoniatric Ward at the Hospital of the Medical University in Cluj, in collaboration and under the guidance of Dr. Rodica Mure‫܈‬anu. I will take this opportunity to thank this refined phoniatrics specialist for her interest and passion for our detailed research. Comparing the three images, regarding the difference in sonority, brilliance, and richness between spoken A, spontaneously sung A (sung "normally"), and A21 that is sung with a professional technique, we may see the following: 1. Noticing the superior register of image B (marked to the right side), which contains the oscillograms of the first two sounds (spoken "a", and spontaneously, naturally sung "a"), there is a certain degree of similitude. As to the inferior registers (marked C on the side), there is also a resemblance in richness, intensity and frequency of the overtones. This alikeness in overtones of the spoken "a" to the unprofessionally sung "a" highlights the reality that normal singing is very much influenced by the way we speak. The only difference appears in the way the second sound has overtones between 2000 Hz and 3000 Hz, slightly stronger than the spoken sounds, but only in between 2600 Hz and 3000 Hz, which means the power of penetration of the sung sound is higher than that of the spoken one.

20

This is what Leonardo da Vinci was saying, more than half a millennium ago, about discussions and controversies, in his Treatise about Painting: "The truth is only one, but when it is known and confirmed by the evidence brought by senses [through experience as we call it today]; the discussion is closed forever". 21 In fact the third A should be articulated more like Ă [‫]ۑ‬, with the mouth a little more open.

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Fig. 2: Vowel "a" first spoken, and then sung unprofessionally, spontaneously © J. Piso.

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Fig. 3: Vowel "a" sung professionally, in apogee © J. Piso.

2. In comparison with the first two, the oscillograms of the third sound "a", sung professionally (appoggio) are fundamentally different, both in section B, in which its richness, its intensity and its density are clear, and in section C, where we must underline that the sound has a multitude of overtones with frequencies between 200 Hz and 3200 Hz22. Such frequencies are better perceived by the human ear, and form the pulp of the voice, as well as its brightness, each having an intensity that very often 22 I would like to share a detail with the reader, which will enable him/her to guess the secret for which Naples has been the cradle of so many wonderful songs, and also of so many famous singers (Caruso was from Naples). This is what Francescatti states, at page 327, in one of his studies: Air in Naples vibrates with a dominant of 1500 Hz, which, practically means that it favours that part of the sonorous spectrum which especially gives the tenor voice consistency, colour, and brightness.

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is more than 100 dB, reaching even to 122 dB (see section C). This means that, alongside great richness, the sound has a particular brilliance, and a special power of penetration, as a result of the high frequency overtones (up to 3200 Hz), and great intensity. We must emphasize the essential fact that the intensity of overtones, which are spontaneously created in the natural resonant cavities (pharynx, oral cavity, jaw sinuses, etc.), when the technique observes the rules of physiology and acoustics and amplifies the sound uttered by the larynx, go much above the intensity of the base sound of 90 dB. Consequently, the professional sound benefits from a spontaneous amplification (a result of the laws of acoustics) with approximately 30 dB more than the 90.56 dB of its base sound. This means that the efficiency in sonority and brightness obtained through this technique are remarkable in view of the effort necessary for its production (the microphone was situated at a distance of around 80 cm from the sonorous source). Here lies the solution that the singer can always use in his permanent struggle with the ever more massive and numerous orchestras of today, a technical solution that has also an artistic outcome, as it gives one the possibility to utter bright sounds, rich in overtones, and obtained with a minimum of effort at the level of both vocal cords, and lungs. These sounds are, as Verdi always wanted them, leggerissimamente. Now – after having conducted such analysis – it is obvious that the voice technique of the tenor in Traviata, for instance, that we have already spoken about, has another problem to solve, which is not unessential. By singing loud as his own level and aesthetic view requires, besides the extreme laryngeal effort, he also has to always articulate the vowel A, especially, with an exaggerated opening of the mouth23, in order to allow 23

A last remark regarding the articulation of vowel "A", not from the point of view of the quality of the voice, but from that of the mimic of the interpreter: to articulate while singing with the oral pavilion wide open (a big opening of the two jaws), in order to pronounce the vowel "A", especially, in a correct manner, is a frequent case in the acute quince, when the singer wants to demonstrate a voice that is bigger than it really is. In this situation, the mimic will almost always suggest the "psychological" state corresponding to a desperate outcry, or a menacing call; or, sometimes the impression is that the singer is like a fish taken out of the water, and striving for air, which, let us admit, is an expression that might not be in accordance with the intentions of the music. The exemplification of such situations is easy to see by anybody who wants to access clips with opera singers on the Internet. Just try and look at the expression of the soprano "Y", singing the aria "Ah, non crede a mirarti", from the Somnambula, in the Paris concert of 1965, and just watch it without sound; compare this expression with the mimic of soprano "X" in the aria "Ebben ne andro lontana…", from the opera La Wally, in the Praga concert in 1994… Then tell me if I am not right! I have not

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the surplus air that is exhaled by the lungs together with the sound to leave the oral cavity. This technique (?) obviously harms the quality of the sound, due to the turbulence of the air, which does not allow the enrichment of the sound with harmonic overtones24, a deficiency that they try to compensate for by exaggerating the solicitation of the vocal cords25. I do not think that the reader will find it irrelevant if I will come back to the central theme, that of the vocal education of the lyrical artist; after having shown in the pages of this study, using so many examples, how important the issues related to interpreting the musical text are, let us go back to the singing technique. I am convinced that the reader will be able to look at the mastering of the voice with different eyes, especially as the demonstration in Chapter I was a little too succinct. He will understand the fact that the germs of inadequate interpretation lie in lack of preparation, in technical failure, in a word, in professional "innocence", in dilettantism! This is why a special preparation is necessary, which will really help the great roles of opera repertoire come to life; the interpretation of such parts has to be regarded as a sacrifice on the part of the singer. I feel obligated to come back to the theme of mastering the trade, as this is something much more complex than a non-initiated mind might consider it to be. The difficulties of mastering the phonating apparatus – which was not scheduled to be used in such manner at its origins – consist in the fact that this apparatus functions by combining two apparatuses, the respiratory and the digestive ones. Today, the overcoming of such difficulties, instead of being a result of hard study, are metamorphosed into a vulgarization of such issues; improvisation is largely used, all kinds of tricks that have malign consequences, both for the career of the singers, as they misuse the phonating apparatus, and for the music, which is degraded by such

mentioned the names of the sopranos, as this is not a ad personam critique, but the exemplification of a phenomenon, that of singers who want to pronounce above the possibilities of their voices, and want to pronounce sounds "correctly", like in speech; neither of these are good choices. 24 An explanation of this phenomenon, and details, you may find in the abovementioned study, regarding the cybernetics of phonation, in Chapter III: "The cybernetic space of lyricism". 25 In the case of young voices, we will have to take into consideration that a strain to the maximum of the phonating apparatus (due to lack of experience, or to large orchestras that cover the sound of the voices), can sometimes hide such errors of functioning; the timbre of the voice can hide, for a less expert ear, the existence of the surplus of air, an effort which will, nevertheless, be revealed by an exaggerated mimic. The avalanche of "Black pearls" on the Internet, will only come to confirm my affirmation.

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interpretation; its only advantage is that it protects the pride of that particular artist. Let us concentrate on the issue, and I am sure that the reader will be able to follow me into this explanation, too. I have to make sure from the very beginning that the theoretical idea that lays at the foundation of this technique consists in the identification of solutions that lead to the obtaining of a maximum of effect from the phonating apparatus in singing (as different from speaking); in other words, in finding solutions to build the mechanism by which one can sing with a reduced effort a musical sound that is above expectation, both in quality and in intensity (quantity). The sonorous result, through its overtones, will exceed with up to 30 dB the effort used to obtain a sound of 90 dB, as the last oscillogram shows: the vowel "A" – appoggiatura sound. To produce such a sound, though, the singer has to control the synchronization of the activity of several muscles that are involved in the phonating act, and which do not normally work at the same time. Before we analyse this process, I have to underline the fact that the sound is born at the level of the larynx (the middle segment), and needs a certain air debit, exhaled by the lungs (the low segment); its amplification is obtained in the oral-pharynx, that is, at the superior segment, as a sonorous result. A. At the inferior segment, that is the level of the air source – the lungs – two couples of muscles have to contract simultaneously in order that a professional sound might be obtained: (a) the diaphragm, and (b) the great rectus abdominis muscle26; these muscles usually work alternatively: when the diaphragm is contracted, in order that air could be inhaled in the lungs, the abdominal muscles are relaxed, and vice versa – for exhaling, the diaphragm relaxes and the abdominal muscles are contracted. This is why they are named antagonistic muscles. The concomitant antagonistic functioning of these muscles has as purpose a reducing and dosage exhalation, especially when the singer sings in forte and in a high-pitch voice, so that the musical sound is obtained correctly. This activity was made clear with a larynx-stroboscope (Timke 1957), and by a glottis-graph (Fabre 1957). The antagonism of those muscles makes the diminution of the debit of exhalation decrease, and the speed of the exhalation flux increase, which also helps protect the vocal cords. B. In the middle segment, at the level of the vocal cords - the larynx, which is also called the glottis - there is another antagonistic pair of muscles that need to be mobilised so that a unity of sound should be 26

The abdominal "belt" of muscles is formed of several muscles, but I referred here to the most important one. For the same reasons I do not refer to the inter-rib muscles.

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obtained on the entire ambitus of the voice: (1) the cricothyroid muscle, concomitant with (2) the internal thyroarytenoid muscles. The contracting of the cricothyroids strains the vocal cords, makes them longer when we want to obtain a higher-pitched sound; but, after Fa3 (tenor), in the acute quince, the normal voice changes its consistency, calibre, and colour, and passes suddenly to a head voice (in a falsetto). In other words, the vocal line disappears, which in the professional canto is not allowed (to sing in different voices). To prevent this from happening, the internal thyroarytenoids (the Goerttler fibres), which are disposed in parallel with the vocal cords and do not let them elongate, have to be contracted simultaneously with the cricothyroids that provoke this elongation. This concomitant-antagonistic contraction will produce in the acute quince consistent and round sounds, which resemble those in the medium voice; the vocal line will correspond to the melodic line. Let us remember the following: the control of command over these muscles in the larynx is indirectly done by the centre of analysis of the final sound, which is placed in the third segment, that of the resonators, because there should not exist any sensation at the level of the larynx; it is the same as when looking at something and when the healthy eye cannot feel anything! C. At the superior segment of the oral-pharynx level, there are the resonators that take over and decide the fate of the fundamental sound produced in the larynx, which is of low intensity (and the ear cannot apprehend) and has no vocal colour. The final sound depends on the manner in which the larynx sound is shaped and enriched by the modification of its volume in the oral cavity. The resonators create the specific harmonic sounds of vowels, the overtones, as well as those that correspond to the height of the sound. Such harmonics are formed to an optimum only when there exists an appogio (at the inferior level), when the sonorous exhalation does not provoke any turbulence, any air current in the oral-pharyngeal cavity. The modification of the oral-pharyngeal cavity depends on opening or closing the jaws, as well as on the form of the tongue. The movement of the jaws – also used in speech (for A, they are open, for I, they are closed) – will bring with it a change in the colour and the timbre of the voice, as the vowels have different places, they are "scattered" all over the palate (see the figure below, with the distribution of vowels in speech and in singing), according to their respective frequencies (a=220 Hz; o= 440 Hz; e=880 Hz; i= 2340 Hz), which prevents a vocal line from forming. This modification of the oral-pharyngeal cavity is necessary for the articulation of various vowels and can also be obtained by modifications in the

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position of the tongue (accompanied by slight modifications of the positions of the jaws and the lips); consequently, all vowels (from a to i) will be formed almost in the same spot. This is the solution that the good professional singer will choose in pronouncing the various vowels, so that he should not give the impression of continuous barking (see note 23 in this chapter), a famous expression launched by the Wagnerian tenor Max Lorenz27. I hope that from all the above considerations, the reader can clearly understand the difficulty of the struggle with deeply rooted habits that the singer is faced with, and the importance of study in order to obtain the correct technique. To create and master such technique requires much time, attention, concentration, and work. Bartok did not exaggerate when he said that in order that you get to something, before you start working and learning, you need to work and learn, and work and learn some more. My two other works I mentioned before contain more detailed explanations as to the mechanisms of sound producing, the detrimental effects, as well as their remedy. The behaviour of the young singer, who is talented but not prepared enough, as he still does not have the professional technique I am speaking about, is due to the tendency that he has to use the normal exhalation of air, like in speech; this behaviour has unfortunately become a fundamental principle in our contemporary vocal technique (see my analysis of Susanna's aria in the previous chapters). We very often hear from many conductors, or canto masters the advice according to which we should "Sing normally, as we speak!" In a monograph entitled Pertile, una voce un mito, Venice: Malipiero, 1985, Bruno Tosi reproduces the great artist's words, in his study dedicated to Aureliano Pertile (the tenor that Toscanini could not conceive not to have in his opening night of the Scala in Milan season): 27

Referring to the sonorous results of a moderate opening of the inferior jaw (and the mouth), together with a parsimonious dosage of sonorous respiration (appoggio), two music critics, the Escudier brothers, were noting even around the middle of the 19th century, on the occasion of listening to Italian singers in Paris: "Si l'on veut savoir pourquoi ces artistes se font entendre dans des grandes salles sans effort, c'est qu'ils ont la voix en dedans et que c'est à force de l'avoir en dedans que les sons finissent par sortir claris, ronds, vibrants" [If we want to know why these artists are heard better in big performance halls, without effort, it is because they sing from the inside, and do not need to intentionally project their voices outside their mouths. This is why the sounds come out (automatically) clear, round, and vibrant] (J. Laurens, Problèmes du chant français, Subervie, 1977, p. 20). The technique we analysed in this chapter, and the effects of the mechanism of singing find confirmation in the affirmations of these critics.

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Le vocali a, e, i, o, u non si devono usare nel canto col medesimo colora della lingua parlata […] In tal modo il colore delle cinque vocali, che nella lingua parlata e cosi disuguale, viene nel canto assai avvicinato [The vowels a, e, i, o, u should not have in canto the colour they have when we speak. […] In this way, the colour of the five vowels that is so different in speech, in canto is very close] (p. 157).

The truth that Pertile's few words expresses (and he only refers to the result, without explaining the mechanism that can lead to such results) also appears clearly from the four figures below, in which we can notice: the difference between the oscillograms of the spoken vowels "I" and "E", and the great resemblance between the same vowels "I" and "E" when they are professionally sung (canto appoggiato). These exemplifications were also realised by using a digitally and rigorously controlled procedure, at the Phoniatric Laboratory of the Medical University in Cluj, in collaboration and under the supervision of Rodica Mureúanu, MD, specialist in phoniatrics. If we compare the oscillograms of vowels "I" and "E" (prompts III and IV) in both sections, B and C, vowels that are obtained through the professional performance technique (canto appoggiato), even somebody who is not initiated can see how much they resemble, to the point where "I" could be easily mistaken with "E", as they are both very close to the oscillograms of vowel "A", professionally sung (see above); contrary to this situation, look at the oscillograms of the spoken vowels "I" and "E" (prompts I and II), and see how different they are. Between them and the sung ones there is absolutely no comparison possible, which confirms what the great tenor Aureliano Pertile says when he speaks about the colour of vowels in canto as being very close (assai avvicinato), as compared to speech. The colour of the vowel is determined to a great extent by the dimensions of the space in which they are formed, as well as by the vicinity of the fixed resonant cavities (sinuses, jaws, etc.). The space of the oral cavity can be easily shaped with the aid of the tongue, as I have already mentioned above, and by the manner in which the mouth and the jaws are opened.

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Fig. 4: Oscillograms of vowels "I" and "E" in speech. © Ion Piso.

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Fig. 5: Oscillograms of vowels "I" and "E" in professional performance singing. © Ion Piso.

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Fig. 6: Difference of the manner in which vowels are distributed on the palate while speaking (left) as compared to singing (right). © Ion Piso.

The image above shows the difference between the manner in which vowels are differently distributed on the palate (the place in which we have the sensation and we represent the formation of the final sound), the resonants of the five vowels: in speech on one hand, and while professionally sung, on the other; these figures are realised on the basis of my personal theoretical and practical research. To be perfectly clear, I will repeat that the secret of the mastery of technical means that I have tried to present to the reader for just a short moment, cannot and will not replace natural talent; such technique will just amplify this talent, will give it more room to develop, will give it practical and efficient means that will help the singer use his naturally born talent and be free; this is how many of the complexities of the musical part can find optimum solutions, even if the text is redoubtable in terms of technical intricacies.

CHAPTER XVI ABOUT THE NEW PRODUCTION OF THE OPERA IL TROVATORE, BY G. VERDI, ON THE STAGE OF THE ROMANIAN NATIONAL OPERA (AN IMAGINARY TALK BETWEEN TWO MUSICIANS)

D.P.: Incited by the general reaction of musical journalists related to the last staging of the opera Il Trovatore by G. Verdi on the stage of the National Opera, I am thinking that this is a proper moment for us to continue our dialogue on Music, started in the Antifonar Epistolar [Epistolary Antiphonary], especially as the Romanian Union of Composers and Musicologists published a series written by you, in several instalments; you continued in those, among other considerations, a deep analysis of "modernist" staging events. This is why I have to ask you if you saw this performance, and what impression it has made on you. I.P.: If an amateur is allowed to just have opinions, be they good or bad, if he is allowed to like a performance or not, the professional cannot limit himself to this level. This is why I never express my convictions in terms of opinions – there is a lot of "personal opinions" around us as it is, especially in our country that seems to witness an inflation of such opinions; even less so, as the situation of the opera is part of a syndrome of contemporary culture in general, that is, of the crisis of culture. The case we are speaking about here is very serious, it cannot be expedited by a simple opinion by which you accept or reject it. I always try that my affirmations be based on objective analysis, like in the series published by the journal Muzica, that you have mentioned. The result of such applied analysis could be doubted or contested only by those who, due to their education, differentiate things with more difficulty; in such cases, the theme glides outside the domain of culture, or of logic. Firstly, to clarify this case, let us not forget that Il Trovatore was, and still is, Verdi's opera that has had enormous success, even starting with its

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1853 opening night. In Paris, a few years after this opening night, it already got to the 100th show; in Berlin, in the second half of the 19th century, it had gone way after 200 representations; and in Italy, there is no street hand-organ player who does not have in its "repertoire" arias from this opera. Its success has gone on for a century and a half, and this is why the avant-garde direction tried to profit from this opera's "habit" of making success; they have tried to use it as a life saving buoy, as their talent seems to be overboard. The secret of this fabulous success especially consists of this Verdian opera’s exceptional musical quality, which the most learned and exigent musical experts all over the world enthusiastically characterised with memorable sentences like: "Extreme musical vivaciousness"; "Melodramatic genius"; "Contagious rhythms"; "Overabundant melodic fluid"; "Passionate melodies with dramatic effects"; "Vigour, spontaneity, emotion…" Shall I go on? The expressive force of the musical-dramatic Verdian genius is accompanied by an inner tension that had never been there in his operas before the Trovatore. It sometimes is closer to a savage song, with blustering accents and rhythms, predicting for the first time, even announcing the forthcoming appearance of Verism in Italy (K. Soldan). This tension is manifest within the musical text, even from the first bars of Ferrando's story, characterised by dotted and linked notes, preceded by a double appoggiatura, and followed by staccato notes, both extremely frequently present both for the voice and the orchestra; I would call these Verdi "specials" (see the following examples, taken from the story of Ferrando):

Fig. 1: Fragment from Ferrando's aria, tableau I, Il Trovatore, G. Verdi.

When Verdi intends to give a special dramatic-emotional load to a moment, making it very expressive, such musical "mechanisms" are meant to captivate the entire attention of the public, and thus any other element that might draw their attention from such moments are counterproductive and misplaced. If we do not take this Verdian procedure into

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consideration, it means we do not want what he wants us to do; and vice versa, you want something that he does not! Such action is more than condemnable, and interpreters should avoid making such decisions. What can we notice in the latest Bucharest staging? During the entire story, which introduces the spectator in the drama, which is very mysterious, there is so much that occurs on the stage, in the movement of the ensemble and the projections of the set, that the spectator is practically prevented from any possibility to concentrate on what this drama consists of; he is especially not capable to concentrate on the music, and the typical means Verdi found to clarify by the music what the drama says on stage, by giving essential nuances. In order to better understand the purpose of the new Verdian procedure, I will repeat a quotation from a letter that Verdi sent A. Boito, in which his inclination towards getting closer to the spectator is clearly expressed; it is like he wants an almost un-mediated relation with the public: "I think that the talent of not making music, sometimes, is commendable, the talent of "s'effacer"; likewise, the poet, instead of the beautiful verse, should use the clear and stage worthy word […] which makes the public prick up their ears". On the background of the hustle and bustle of the stage galimatias, which looks like a full boiling fair – the product of the direction and artistic-direction of this show – the public will uselessly try to prick their ears. Thus, from a psychological point of view, the procedure that this direction uses dissolves the entire undertaking on which Verdi's music builds up its dramatic quality. The direction does not only NOT use the expressive force of this music, which it should highlight and turn to value, but it abolishes it. Verdi has become useless, with his music and all. D.P.: I wonder if this is what they meant with the words: "a perfect collaboration between music, the visual, and movement", as the General Director of the National Opera declared, in reference to the new staging, in his interview in the paper Ziua (February 26, 2007, page 11). I will address this question to you in view of your experience which is longer than half a century. You sang Trovatore from the heart of great Russia (Sankt Petersburg), to the Atlantic coast, and, therefore, please tell me how would you have been able to adjust to such direction? I.P.: Poor singers of the Bucharest performance! When they sing, they try to move as the music suggests, while the choir, and especially the ballet, as well as all the other characters invented by the director, manifest the autonomous behaviour of some automatons; such behaviour has nothing to do either with the character of the music, or with the dramatic

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moment; and even less with the manner in which the main characters act. Between the two worlds there functions a perfect lack of accord, a perfect mismatch – which makes the situation on stage appear schizoid almost all the time. The show has no trace of unity, it is very far from what the opera as a genre represents: a synthesis between visual and auditive arts. Why should an opera performance display unity? The idea is that the effect should be more powerful through the syntonic collaboration of everybody. In our show such effect is almost non-existent, due to the diversions that the direction introduced by this agitation; also the art-direction uses a succession of confusing projections. Everything that the direction adds represents an uninterrupted diversion, which gives the impression of a fair, and which draws our attention far from the plot, as well as the motivations of all events that the music expresses, even starting with the first scene, which should be filled with mystery. If I were to answer your question indirectly, I would start by analysing the scene of Manrico's serenade, at the beginning of the tercet from the second tableau. In order to obtain a more intense dramatic effect of the music, Verdi relies in Manrico's song on the first procedure, the one used in Ferrando's story, as well. And more. Instead of dots, above notes there appear expression accents ^^^, which ask the interpreter for an even more intense participation; this is a defining character of the Romantic exuberance and elation (see a short fragment from the serenade of Manrico, the troubadour).

Fig. 2: Fragment from Manrico's Serenade, tableau II, Act I.

The direction relies on the same diversionist action as in the first tableau. Among other things, there is a plastic ghost descending from the ceiling (an alter ego of the troubadour?), which distracts the attention of the public from what happens on the stage. The real protagonist, Manrico, barely succeeds to make his way from behind this spectral apparition to come to the middle of the stage in order to confront his rival. There is an

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obvious annulment of both the protagonist, and the expressivity of the music. The direction insists on blocking their way. Such devices have obvious negative effects for the "organism" of this masterpiece, but they are abundantly present in this performance. During the arias, which seem to bore and exasperate Mr. Director to the maximum, the stage is filled with unexplainable appearances. Cavalcades of ballet dancers and mutes come on stage from all sides, producing confusion, especially when the protagonists try during their arias to clarify the events, or justify actions and their motivations, in close connection with the dramatic plot. The directorial input, instead of highlighting these, distracts attention from the musical discourse and the dramatic flow, which it drowns in confusing interventions, which are not related with this opera in any way, or with the behaviour of the protagonists, who mind their own business, not paying any attention to these strange apparitions. It seems like two ensembles dispute the stage with obstinacy, due to a failure in planning performances, and neither of the two wants to be defeated. This is the mastery of the direction. Another example I will take from the beginning of Act II: Azucena's aria, in which she tells her terrible story, containing such events like the burning on the pole of her own mother. This story is doubled (read jammed) by a fight that takes place in the host of gypsies between two figures on stilts, often met with in the circus. I can only assume, as there is no other explanation, that Mr. Director, sympathetic and kind, wanted to distract our attention from this hallucinating story, in order that he might spare us from such terrible acts. Had he been braver, he could have taken the aria out from this scene altogether. The solution would have been more honest, anyway! The public, attacked with so many parasite events, yet curious and interested what these appearances might mean, finds it harder and harder to concentrate, in order to understand an intrigue that becomes clear only when Azucena's last words are uttered: Manrico is, in fact, Count de Luna's brother, whom Azucena had stolen many years ago from the palace. Being frightened, instead of throwing this child in the fire as revenge for her mother's death, she had thrown her own child in fire. Count de Luna, being convinced that Manrico is "only" Azucena's son, sent his own brother to the scaffold. This is an intricate story, full of horrors, typical for Spain in the middle ages, though. The public, who does not understand Italian, especially the sung form (they sing in the original, and the language they use is abundant in syntagms that are not characteristic of the everyday vocabulary), in their wish to understand the words, has to watch the translation in Romanian;

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they are like Argus, with 100 eyes, one of them being fixed on the screen above the stage for the translation, and the other 99 are monopolised by the direction that does not leave any room for them to get the plot, at least. We cannot speak about the music and its nuances, as the intervention of the direction sweeps everything in its way. Let us give another example, similarly exemplary, that is the short duet Leonora-Manrico of Act II, before the nuptial ceremony. The director has the pleasure to defile the atmosphere of this duet by Ruiz's grimaces and pantomime, which have a mocking character, and which make obscene allusions on the music of the organ. I have sung the Troubadour during decades, and still I found it impossible to get oriented in the symbolic allusions and the mixture of this staging. A boy (?) also appears on stage, led by another invented character; I cannot find any reasons for this appearance in the story, there is nothing that relates it to the contents of the opera. I will not even begin speaking about the pantomime that is used as preface of the show. Besides the obscurities of the drama itself that such invention does nothing to make less ambiguous, there is more mystery and confusion that is inflicted by it. Moreover, there also appear fireworks, which never miss (the opera Oedipe has them, too). It seems to me the National Opera has signed an advantageous contract with a Chinese supplier! Is this how an opera performance should look like? A performance that the director introduced as being "for all ages and all social classes?" (quoted from the same article in Ziua). I hope we have clarified which are the benefits that such a show brings to Verdi's music, as well as those the public can "enjoy" as a direct consequence of such modern direction, so I will not go on with giving other examples. As a provisory conclusion I might say that the achievement of the Bucharest staging, which "jumped" to aid Verdi's opera in order to enhance its artistic efficiency, is the same as if we added prosthetic feet to Usain Bolt to help him beat his own record. D.P.: I will go back to your essay in the musical journal Muzica in which, analysing the succession of styles, you fore-grounded the specific of the Romantic style that Verdi represented in the opera. You consider this style dominated by intensity, and characterised by dynamism, dramatic input, and tension. I would like to ask you whether the direction and the art-direction have taken into consideration all these defining characteristics of Verdi's music.

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I.P.: If I appeal to Verdi's music in need of its "services", and not only to build up my profile as a director, this is the first condition that I will have to observe: the contents of the musical text should not remain an enigma for me as director. I will be able to understand all its musical virtues that might be of help to my direction, only if I manage to analyse it; obviously, that means that I can read notes and this reading tells me what it should. If not, the whole enterprise looks like participating in a running event with a leg in a casket. If we draw a parallel between the character of Verdi's music – whose exuberant romanticism is more than obvious, as we can notice with the manner in which Manrico and the Count of Luna behave and act – and the expressivity of the "conventional-modern" style of the choreography of the ballet, the mute participants, and even the choir (the choir evokes rituals of all kinds, multi-ethnographical, from Borneo to the Cordeliers), it is clear that these two worlds do not meet at any time; on the contrary, they sabotage each other continuously, at the expense of the music and the public. Even a less educated musical sensitivity can notice that the first world, that of the protagonists, is still somehow faithful to Verdi, who requires an adequate behaviour through his music; the second world, the one invented by the director, freed from the music that it abuses by the massive and relentless agitation of the ensemble, dominates the first until it almost annuls it. We cannot speak about a style that this performance observes. Completely "enlightened", following the example of the other guests in my box who had already left at the interval, seeing that I remained alone, I did not wait for the final curtain to be drawn, either. On my way home, I filled my time with thinking of the entire opera repertoire I am familiar with, trying to bring to my mind one single opera that such staging would not be "fit" for. Fortunately, I determined that such direction and art direction can be used for any opera I knew of, from Monteverdi to Britten, to the same degree that it did for Trovatore; maybe even better for the Wagnerian Tetralogy. This is how I discovered the principle of the universality of the interpretative art that Mr. Director masters so well. Even if the theme of our colloquium does not entail considerations regarding the musical-vocal interpretation, I cannot help myself and underline, as a singe truly positive aspect, the remarkable musical performance of the choir, conducted by the choir master Stelian Olaru. D.P.: You have proven, more than convincingly – and I have no counter arguments – that the new staging has nothing to do with either the music, or the subject of the opera Il Trovatore. This is why the public,

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when they go to the theatre, should get used to the idea that they listen to one thing, and see another. Like TV commercials, in which you can hear Violetta's aria "Addio del passato", and you see the most effective long lasting deodorant.

CHAPTER XVII ŒDIPE BY G. ENESCU, OR THE COMPOSER AND… THE OTHERS

"The fear of analysing evil can lead to an even greater evil". (Boileau)

I do not think that anyone would be mistaken if they considered that the ideas and the feelings that a composer puts into his creation, and especially the manner in which he does so, are elements that are important and cannot be overlooked, or eliminated, when staging his creation. Nevertheless, contemporary mentality, as we meet with it frequently in the world of the lyrical (or non lyrical) theatre today, do not tolerate the existence of thought and feeling that are not theirs. A normal hierarchical order, though, would require that everybody, all interpreters, should be the carriers of the intentions of the author, the living carriers, and not the forgers of this work. An opera represents a message by which the author, using a codified language (the musical text) communicates a certain content of thoughts and feelings, under a certain form. The interpreters should find a sensuous analogue of the "idea", in other words, an articulation of sensitive correspondences for that particular context (of ideas). Such correspondences should not denaturise the musical content, but only bring about its transfiguration (not its disfigurement); this condition is fulfilled only when the interpreter both feels (has the intuition), and understands why a certain content commanded for a particular musical form that "wraps" it. Only after the musical analysis has clarified such aspects can the interpreter pass on to the unveiling of the secrets of the music, by finding matching equivalences, and realising the interpretation on stage, making it into a performance. Consequently, the prerequisite of interpretation is the knowledge of the "secrets" of the musical text. If not, such knowledge would be an obvious… lack of knowledge, and interpretation would express something alien to the opera (as many directors today like to do), offering the public

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something very different from what the author thought and translated into his music. Let us note that the substance of this kind of creation lies in the musical text, not in the literal1 text – the latter has a scheme that, with few differences is almost identical in each case; it is in the structure of the music that we should look for the substance of this creation. Moreover, it does not consist in the emotional load as much as in the manner in which these emotions (which are universally human) are treated from a musical point of view, in the style of the epoch and of the composer. Such forms represent the cultural-spiritual variety and richness of an epoch, and it has to be the artistic material that cannot be absent from any appropriate interpretation. Consequently, the primordial condition of an accomplished performance resides in the importance that others give to the implications that exist in the musical text. These "others" are on one hand those who de-code the musical text, realising the musical and stage interpretation (the singer, the conductor, the director, the art director, the choreographer, etc.), and, on the other hand the public, who is the real addressee of the opera; it is the public that the composer wants to get to, and the performance has the aim to reveal the musical text, and transform it into a convincing audio-visual reality. This is a complicated mechanism, and a very… expensive one (especially today). The entire journey from the composer to the public can be reduced to the following scenario: the spectator-addressee of this artistic message, who cannot read the musical text, goes to the theatre, where the staging helps him understand what the addresser wanted to say (please remember Chapter VII on Atmosphere, in which I quoted Schumann's opinions regarding the importance of the performance in putting the musical script of the opera to value). The intermediary, that is, the interpreter (the entire crew) is obligated to "voice" the contents of this message in an adequate manner, and fulfil the intentions of the addresser (author). To transmit an altered message is equivalent with imposture. The interference of somebody who pretends to be something that he is not does not raise up to the task, and transmits the message in a counterfeited manner – in such a case we may speak about a lie on stage. This is the scheme that functions theoretically in all situations. In practice, there are other nuances that can be discussed.

* 1 I have had the "chance" many times to work with directors, and stage directors who led rehearsals with the libretto in their hands.

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Connected with the matter of the accuracy of interpretation, there are at least two questions that arise with necessity: Would the composer of a masterpiece be entitled to recognise his own work and find at least part of his intentions if he had the possibility to see the performance? Could the public, who is the real addresser, hope to meet with the composer's intentions? Unfortunately, modern interpretations demonstrate an emancipation from the text, which very often goes even to a denial of what the author intended. An accuracy of interpretation – true not to the letter of the text but to its spirit – is essential. This is why an adequate, just interpretation is a consequence of a syntony of all elements, which are interdependent and interconnected, and concur to the building of the masterpiece on stage, in which there is nothing fortuitous2: nothing can be independent, not even the… direction. Another fundamental aspect refers to the fact that the interpretation has to have an anagogic character, that should carry our spirits "upwards". Even if it will not get to the height3 of the creation, it can, still, at least go near it. I underline this fact, as many avant-garde interpretations manifest an unmistakable attraction to masterpieces, whose genius they overlook or even parody. Each of us, the ones used to the lyrical theatre, has too vast an experience in the domain, so I will not give you any examples. Our reader has already had the opportunity to read about some such examples in the previous chapters. The performance is validated by the fact that it brings to life the intentions that are contained in the music, and not others; also, it is validated by the fact that the ones who have taken this task upon themselves are able to understand the artistic message, and then reveal it to the public. Consequently, it is obvious that the success of any opera performance is dependent on this immanent formula. To cast it aside, under the pretext that the public cannot assimilate its artistic message unless a strange digestive is administered (which the direction finds ad hoc), means to almost despise the expressive faculty of the creator; it also means that they 2

I have already quoted a letter written by Liszt to Wagner, referring to this, but I will remind you of it, yet again, as I think we should meditate on the value and truth it contains: "In dramatic music, each bar has to be justified, thus expressing an idea that refers either to the action or to the character of the protagonist" (cf. E. Bondeville, Correspondance entre Wagner et Liszt, p. 10). 3 Ch. Baudelaire considers that "beauty has an aristocratic character; even in centuries that seem monstrous and insane, the undying taste for the beautiful gives satisfaction" (Vol. II, p. 137).

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consider the public even less reasonable, or intellectually endowed than the… director. A director who either does not understand or disregards the cultural-artistic context that determined the musical garment of a particular content, considering such creation an anachronism, will fail in his attempt to "resuscitate" it; it cannot be saved by twisting it, or by intervening on its inner structure in a mutilating manner. The final result, far from the intentions of the author, will be very unconvincing, as the consequence of such counterfeiting brings no profit to anyone, especially not to the public.

* They have noticed that there are many cases in which it takes decades, or even centuries of "confrontation" with a masterpiece to get to understand it better; some critics, as well as a part of the public, manage to find in its intimate structure unsuspected spiritual dimensions, which have not been highlighted by previous interpretations. Nevertheless, from what we can find on numerous stages today, we cannot draw a conclusion that in the mind of the interpreter-director there has been an accumulation of past artistic experiences which might lead to an evolution of such interpretations; there is no getting closer to the profoundness of that particular masterpiece, as Jouve4 points out. The biologist Konrad Lorenz shows that even in the animal world the accumulation of individual experience plays an important part in the evolution of the species. Of all species, only that of the opera director seems to be an exception. Interpretation as a cultural gesture (and it is not music that I have in mind), especially in the 20th century Europe, has managed to overpass the provincial mentality in which it dwelled for centuries; it gained a broader horizon due to the more intense contact with other cultures and 4

This is what one of the most inspired critics of Mozart's creation, P. J. Jouve, considers in his study "Le Don Juan de Mozart": "A genius needs time to become what he really is. Talent, in order to make itself known does not need any such exigencies, but the genius, like an enormous plant, is too vast for man's eyes to see. […] What Delacroix loves about Mozart is not what he should have admired. At that time, the true Mozart was not visible." On the contrary, the graceful, tender and vivacious Mozart, the nice Mozart replaced the true Mozart entirely. This false Mozart was invented by the shallow and deaf to his spiritual virtues […] as Bruno Walter maintains; Mozart was censored by his fans. […] Mozart burns and converts profane grace into sanctity. Mutatis mutandis, the same can be said about Enescu's interpreters, shallow and… deaf, for whom he remains "invisible", and, therefore, unapproachable in his intellectual input, and in his musical formulations – see so many crooked interpretations of his opera Œdipe.

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civilizations, whose value they try to understand (sometimes too late), and not destroy (I am thinking of Mircea Eliade's entire scientific contribution). Consequently, the interpretation of an opera, if it tries to remain in the sphere of culture, cannot lead to a deviation from the meaning of its immanent artistic values, or to their degradation, even if it is just interpretation. The inflation of such deformations cannot only be pinned on the impetus towards a renewal of the art of directing, but it comes from a superficial, therefore false, understanding; this is the characteristic of the intellectual convenience of the interpreter.

* Unfortunately, the values that are sheltered by the masterpieces of great composers, have long ago ceased to be a source of inspiration for most staging instances. A short-sighted superficiality of the so-called traditions, ramblingly vegetating and lethargically dozing on the staves of the musical text, repeats overused formulas, mouldy clichés, which do not reach the music anymore. As an unavoidable consequence, the appearance of the rusty routine, which cannot be considered to be an interpretation. This is why the innovators are right, since conformity with such tradition leads to a crass mechanical taking-up of worn-out conventions, which kill any artistic virtue. The parade of modern direction does not take us any further, either. A feverish and obsessive look-out for the something else, which is nothing but the refuge of somebody who is overwhelmed and cannot understand the musical text (which in Enescu's case is really difficult, let us admit that), generates a barren buzz, seized by the mystique of change, which provides shelter for the lack of musical culture. This is why the incongruity of the directors' creations becomes ridiculous, when it is not downright absurd. The fear of not showing their personality, or of letting another personality take over (like that of the composer) pushes such directors towards the most surprising senselessness. The obsession of being original suppresses any self-control and possibility of getting into contact with the musical reality of that particular opera. Fearful that the his creative fantasy might be benighted by music, the director displays a superior disregard of the musical text. The degree of "neutrality" to the music, measures the skid of the imagination, that is, the going far astray. By listening to their interviews, or observing their work, one can see that in the eyes of such directors the music is nothing but a prejudice, which they are quick to abandon at the very beginning. One fairly recent example is offered by an issue of Actualitatea Muzicală, from October 2003, in the chronicle entitled "Eternal Œdipe". This is what Mr. Costin

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Popa can say about the musical implications of the direction, although he tries to say something: "No doubt, Petrica Ionescu studied in detail Edmond Fleg's libretto…" What about the music, I ask? To what extent has the director taken it into consideration and studied it, so that he might stage this music?

* One thing must be expressed clearly. We all want surprise, but not any kind of surprise, especially not the kind that goes too far from the musical atmosphere and leads to a relativisation of the artistic substance of the musical text that is taken beyond any boundaries. The manner in which an opera is reflected by our minds is the result of its confrontation with our spiritual being, with our sensitivity, and our musical knowledge, which functions like a resonator, or should do so. The staging of an opera reflects the profile, the spiritual configuration of the interpreter, as it is the exteriorization of what he understands, what he feels, and what he imagines when he is faced with the music5. The manner in which the director "gives light" to that particular opera, reveals his cultural level, representing both his own artistic creed, and the degree to which the musical substance is clarified in his mind. By seeing how you interpret, I can tell who you are, and which is your degree of knowledge.

* The artistic conscience of the author meets that of the spectator, through the mediation of the conscience of the interpreter. The consonance of different individual structures can only take place if they start from the common basis, a communion in culture. Besides the talent and the sensitivity of each of the three, such communion should lead, if not to a great artistic accomplishment all the time, at least to the possibility of communication. What result can we expect when the interpreter – instead of mediating between the other two, transmitting to the public, through stage language the artistic message of the composer – only betrays the composer, introducing in the performance the chaos, the arbitrary, novelty 5

Hanslik seems to be right when he affirms that the text can be turned from sad to happy, that is, instead of singing "J'ai perdu mon Euridice", you can sing in Gluck's music, "J'ai trouvee mon Euridice", as the music supports both variants. But the context does not support that, as, at that time, Orpheus did not reach the status of a schizoid individual.

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for novelty's sake, and the dubious sensational. This is how any communication of the artistic content is compromised. Over the chaotic scenery that the direction has fabricated, you feel how the music, together with the understanding of the public, fly around, like a bird over its devastated nest. The visual perception is totally different from what the perception of the ears tells us.

* These were the thoughts that crossed my mind as I was watching the "opening" night of the last staging of Enescu's masterpiece Œdipe. Even for somebody whose musical sensitivity is almost null, the exasperating sway of the characters, led by the hero, looks like loss of control: they are in a permanent disarticulated hustle and bustle. The ballet, too, are squirming around, looking like fire-fighters, who, arriving late at the fire scene, are seized by panic. All these, applied to the music look totally impossible to understand. Enescu's music is an immense adagio, as the composer Cornel ğăranu6 underlined, and he is a very good connoisseur of the great composer's music. Although the General Manager of the National Opera House affirms that the director knows Enescu's music intimately, in an interview in which he praised the merits of this production, I dare anyone who could prove that this director trusted music when he conceived the mise-en-scene for this performance. There is a very acrid mismatch between the irksome ado of the fair-like agitation on stage, and the still character of Enescu's music, containing that parlando-rubato of the Romanian doina – which is also called the long song – "a character that totally lacks the rhythmical pulsations of a tempo giusto" (ğăranu). Another interpreter of Enescu's music noticed that the adventure of inhuman events could take Enescu towards an exterior kind of glow, a false one – like that of R. Strauss's in Electra – that he might have used to give an illusion of pathetism. Enescu avoided this facile procedure. […] On the contrary, keeping the orchestra in a moderate sonority, by pacing the various parties, he expressed the mysterious and the

6

Cornel ğăranu is the one who finalized Enescu's symphonic work Capriciul românesc [The Romanian Caprice], which had remained in a manuscript, respecting both the technique, and the style of the work, as specialized critics maintain.

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(These affirmations do not speak of anything else, but they express the need to obey the atmosphere and the style of the opera.)

* How can you understand musicologists who consider many pages of Œdipe as having a Byzantine character, when you see this staging of the opera? In fact, the real question is: what can anyone say about the direction of this performance? These two appreciations, that of the musicologists, and the one of the reading that the director demonstrates in his staging are in perfect… disagreement. There is no doubt that the director's imagination and sensitivity have obstinately avoided Enescu's music. Although we have become accustomed to very unpleasant shocks, we must admit that the "poetic licence" apparent in this performance surpasses any expectations, almost exactly as the previous performance7 with the same opera. In fact, the grandiloquent staging, tailored according to the clichés of a gross style, draped in a formula that reminds of a typical hyper-production (Costin Popa, the journalist of the TV show Actualitatea muzicală [Musical actuality] makes no bones of calling many of the fragments of that staging as being semi-kitsch) is a perfect match of Offenbach's parodic style, rather than Sophocles' tragedy. It is no match at all for Enescu's music! Do you think this is Enescu's spiritual physiognomy? Is this the measure for the misfortunes that Œdipe has to face? This is tragedy raised to the status of divertimento, meant to impress the public at the opening night, and to festively meet the protocol participation of the powerful of the day in the official boxes! Well, no! I do not think that on the stage of the National Opera, on such an occasion (The "George Enescu" International Festival) there should appear such a reading of the musical script, which accompanies with great accuracy a perfect neglect of music. Previous performances of the same opera represented a kind of de-coloration of the Enescian message, till they got it to a numb status, a state of flatus voci, that is, empty words. The last two, nevertheless, have thrown us to another planet! 7

In spite of so many notable patronages, many directors that have been entrusted with a staging of Œdipe, have treated it like a kind of a no man's land lately.

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* The components of the expressive means by which music renders the tragic destiny of the hero do not come, according to Enescu, from the world of exterior ague, but are part of the explosive intensity of grief itself. The composer's inner structure filters and converts sufferance in an atmosphere of detachment, which is a result of a going beyond oneself, which leads to the spiritual sublimation, to catharsis. Therefore, the character of this music, confronted with that of so many (too many) other modern composers (whose art have reached astronomical box office standards) consists in a separation from the biological, which it surpasses. The tension of the anguish does not burst out in an expressionistic manner, in violent fists, as the "naive" spectator might expect, in his wish for nonlasting satisfactions, fuss on the stage, and strong sensations.8 This suffering is purified when it meets with the vibration of the composer's soul. The only way by which the "Man" (Œdipe) manages to defy his destiny is to go over the terror, over the devouring agony that is suggested by the music. Enescu, this representative and specific composer for our culture, is the genius who imagined such new dimension for this ancient hero. The world towards which the Enescian creation carries the public, like a transcending light, cannot easily penetrate our souls, as they are so much crumbled by the contingent, and less prepared for such heights of understanding and participation. Consequently, the interpretation has to 8

The entire bombardment of the senses through such paroxistic effects that "modern" directors use to assault the nerves of the spectators leads unexpectedly and paradoxically to their… indifference. According to recent studies on the activity of the human brain (tomography with emission of positrons) scientists revealed the fact that the part that operates the sensitivity of the subjects that were exposed to repeated horror images, characteristic for war catastrophes, ends up by not being able to react to these in any way. On the contrary, the frontal area of the left hemisphere of the brain starts functioning, which is in charge with controlling impulses. The researcher Matthias Franz draws the conclusion that these subjects suffer from the so-called "sensitivity blindness"; they are compelled to repress their emotions: they resort to a kind of defensive psychic armour that protects them from the excitement of every day life, as well as of horror images. The neurologist Antonio Damasio maintains that only by indifference can we stand terrifying images that are so generously offered by the mass-media on a daily basis, without bursting out crying (cf. Hören und Sehen, p. 37). Do I have to add that Œdipe's appearance on stage having spikes thrust into his eyes is distressing at first, but ends up being "accepted" as a normal thing that we have grown accustomed to during the show?

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suggest the atmosphere of the music, has to place us in resonance with it, it has to even officiate it. The role of direction is in such a case, maybe even more than in others, to carry us upwards, it has to be anagogic; if not, the world that the music opens for us will elude us very easily. We, regaining our everyday lucidity much too quickly (or our everyday lack of consciousness), will come back down in the world of "under-the-moon" passions, little and week, without having been able to partake in the high waft that Enescu wants to takes us on.

* I wander what would Nicolae Iorga9 have thought, had he been astray among the spectators of the opening night of this performance? How could his mind have found harmony in the mindless chaotic fuss un stage, in the continuous jamming of the music that this "super-production" provokes from start to finish, as it is always accompanied by fireworks, like a cheerleader contest, or a Moulin Rouge show10; how would he have reacted, in view of the manner in which he understood and characterised Enescu's musical creation: It is from us [our ethos] that he has the deep and discreet piety of late night prayer, and, especially it is from us that he has that ancestral measure, that defeat of anything that is howling in other types of inspiration […] that restraint from any gesture that steps over a threshold that is instinctively placed in front of any urge of the soul, which, in order that it might be sincere, cannot leave from under the mystery of the most perfect intimacy. 9

Important Romanian historian and politician, one of the great consciences of our nation (trans. note). 10 By such Bengali fires the producer thinks that Enescu's music will be aided in bringing to our souls the tragic dimension of the hero's confrontation with his destiny. The "Bengalisation", read vulgarization, of the music reached a very low limit. This is the music that H. Pruniéres affirmed in "Le Temps" that: "Les moindres intentions du texte sont transposées musicalement avec un soin, une minutie, un souci du detail et de la bienfacture qui n'entravent en aucun moment le libre esor du discours musicale ni le rythme générale. Tout est a sa place et chaque phrase est justement subordonnée à l'ensemble. […] Quelles que soient la véhémence du langage, l'intensité, l'exceptionalité des sentiments, jamais le musicien ne tombe dans grandiloquence ni l'outrance". In conclusion, he adds: Œdipe is a classical masterpiece, the geometrical place in which passion and intelligence, heart and reason, the abstract and the concrete meet on a level that is so rarely reached, in which all these sides appear as aspects of the same phenomenon.

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Consequently, seeing that the ditch was much wider than the jump of the director over it, we will notice and understand that those who praised and rewarded this hyper-production, the shakers and makers of the Transition, have put their feet in their mouths…

* Composers who directed the staging of their own performances have always been very sensitive and careful with matching the scene with the music. Verdi, on the occasion of the opening night of Aida, when he also conducted the orchestra and directed the performance, is known to have done so. The best example in this respect is Wagner, who accomplished the ideal of musical drama. By harmonizing the word with the music and the image, he realised das Gesamtkunstwerk; he was not only the author of the poetry (the text) and of the music, but also the one who supervised with great accuracy the staging of his creations. As Enescu praised Wagner's contribution to the development of the dramatic music, I think it is not inappropriate if in the considerations above I also had in mind the letter that Wagner wrote to Liszt, which I will quote again here: "In the dramatic music, each bar has to be justified, expressing an idea that refers to the action or to the nature of the character". The creator of the show has to take music into consideration to the highest degree, if he should strike the right balance between music, word, and image (syntony), since music is the expression of inner actions, which motivate the exterior ones. Being faithful to this principle, I tried to reveal the manner and the degree to which the director of this staging became intimate with Enescu's art, and obeyed the inalterable law according to which the founding and the justification of direction has to start from music, first and foremost. I hope that even for those who did not consider that the departure of the directors from the musical text was a grievous fault, it has become obvious no, that such freedom of interpretation cannot be (mis)taken as passion for Enescu's music on the part of these interpreters. Such conclusion can be reached even if we do not lead a detailed analysis of the performance. Still, even those who are not on the director's side cannot maintain that he amputated or added the text in any way, or that he did not know what he wanted. On the contrary! He got everything right, except he was very far from the spirit of the music. He created an interpretation for a totally different musical text, closer to that composed by Offenbach. It is known that Enescu detached himself firmly and consistently from that composition. Therefore, the survival of Enescu's music in the mise-en-

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scene of this last version is absolutely impossible. This show does not let the spectator listen to the music; on the contrary it prevents him from getting closer to it; it annuls it.

* In the light of what we have just demonstrated above, I feel that I have to state that in this case they have gone much beyond the maximum limit of cultural incompatibility between interpreters (in our case de direction and art direction) and the object to be interpreted, the opera. Whoever cannot accept that there is another point of view above his own, that is, the point of view of the composer that has to come first, will unavoidably take a turn towards the ridiculous; he will be placing himself out of culture, due to his misunderstanding. Willy-nilly, he will keep being faithful to the Cobra manifesto: "We do not want to understand or to be understood, but to break loose!" As life is equilibrium, and at one point puts a stop to all unfortunate experiences, I think that a serious musical theatre that wants to survive, will have to give up to such adventures! To conclude, without any presumptuous wish to interfere at such high levels, I would dare to consider that the General Manager of the National Opera should be more careful, even when he calls such altitude foreign forces for the direction of performances11, forces that have international credentials. When he was re-instated by the Ministry of Culture, in the laudatio, the minister said that "besides other many qualities, he also proves to be very knowledgeable when it comes to music". He should be more ATTENTIVE AND CONCENTRATED when staging a work that has the magnitude of Enescu's masterpiece.

11

In many cases, the fame of the director lives from less than justified credit, granted by the director of the theatre who, not taking into consideration the criterion of professional and artistic selection, lets himself influenced by strange, even occult principles. Even more unexplainable remains the budgetary benevolence that such extravagancies and such creators can be shown.

CHAPTER XVIII ATTENTION AND CONCENTRATION

"Talente werden nicht gefunden sondern geschaffen"1. (German proverb)

One might have considered it normal2 that this study should have started with an analysis of the importance of these two fundamental notions in the process of thought and of getting awareness3, which are necessary to an appropriate interpretation of music. Nevertheless, I think that the material that I have presented in the previous chapters will give more perspective to the value of attention and concentration in musical hermeneutics, a domain in which these attributes represent a primordial condition of the process of artistic interpretation; this is why it is only at this point of this study that I deal with them.

1

"Talents are not found, they are made (they become)", says the German proverb. Many readers, especially those of a Romanian origin, will certainly feel confused by this proverb. I placed it at the beginning of this chapter on the intention of making it clear that there exists an almost limitless possibility for us to correct our errors, to add where we are less endowed; we can enhance that part of our nature that needs enhancement, in order that we place in real light the true qualities that we have, and which, by perseverance, will make us shine. Goethe has a thought that will confirm this proverb, in his capacity of a representative of a people that is still at the lead of Europe's values. In a letter he wrote when he was 38, he confessed: "My knowledge in art, my small talents have to be formed thoroughly, they have to smoulder well; otherwise, when we meet again I will still bring you half a man". Goethe, as a genius, obviously constructed himself with patience and a lot of work throughout his life. 2 Especially today, when we have grown accustomed to living without norms, I hope that this liberty I took from normality will be forgiven. 3 We should analyse the well-known value of these two capabilities in the development of the living world, in the fight for livelihood, especially for the animal life. The one that is betrayed by his attention will lose, whether in the African jungle, or in that of… business.

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In connection with the importance of the faculty of concentration of attention, not only as an outside tool, but also inside our thesaurus of ideas, there is a remark that Leonardo da Vinci made, which I consider very suitable; in one of his notebooks, he urges the artist to try and identify an extraordinary scenery in any damp stain on a wall. Unfortunately, in the previous chapters I had to demonstrate that many artist-interpreters find in masterpieces something that resembles a damp stain on a wall. Still, my wish is to draw the interpreter's attention on a series of elements that might help towards an elementary systematisation of his analysis. Such systematisation4 lacks in today's practice so often, that I think I should try to give examples starting from the simple melody, and concentrating not on its inherent musical value, but on the psychological correspondences5 it might suggest. Such correspondences are suggested by the music because music contains them implicitly (they speak to an artistic sensitivity). Without such suggestions, musical-dramatic interpretation will be disoriented, it will be placed on quick sands. This is why the object that the musical texts propose should not be outside the attention span of our professional observation. In this respect, our concentration upon the musical text will fulfil an important disciplined exercising of our intellectual faculties, which the interpreters have to bring with them when investigating the implied (inner) side of music. Such elementary musical qualities, once they are identified and brought to conscious thinking, will be appropriately used by the talented interpreter as a basis that will generate many suggestions. The following remarks are meant to highlight the fact that theoretical convictions, as a rational result of intuition, can give an impulse to creative imagination. Still, in order that such an impulse be fecund, we must make sure that it is free of rigidity and mannerisms; it will have to give us artistic freedom, and not trap us in any stereotypical patterns. 1. The dynamics of a musical fragment, seen in its horizontal unfolding (with its vertical implications that are created by harmony) are indicative of the degree of feeling and excitement, or, on the contrary, of the silence or depression that the singer-interpreter has to render; in order to do so, he will first have to see them, understand them, and perceive their musical meaning, in a process of musical analysis that precedes interpretation. As a conclusive example, let me go to Mozart's letter to his father, written on

4

A little more discipline is necessary, especially when the singer-protagonist has not participated in the preparatory rehearsals of that opera, but collaborates as guest only for a few performances. 5 See H. Delacroix, Psychologie de l'art – Essay sur l'activite artistique".

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September 26, 1781, in which he makes the following remarks in reference to the tenor's aria in Act I of The Abduction from the Seraglio: Now, Belmonte's aria […]; the second violin renders at the second scale the way in which Belmonte's heart vibrates, full of love, but also of insecurity, while the crescendo renders the palpitations that burn smothered in his chest; the murmurs and the sighs that the first violin expresses can be also heard in sordine, in a unison with the flute6.

2. The anagogic accents reveal and indicate the relation between intensity and relaxation (by modifications of the tempo). From the point of view of the dramatic tension that the artist has to render, this relation represents an important means of manifestation; music is an expressive language, par excellence. 3. Consonance corresponds to a state of harmony, while dissonance represents a conflict, the existence of a disjunctive tendency or complication (even a divergence that excludes any possibility of conciliation). Both are the musical support, that is, the motivation for the behaviour of a character in a given dramatic situation, since the musical theatre, before being a physical attitude or movement, is a psychic movement of the soul. These three examples (see the analysis of the aria in Figaro's Wedding and Traviata, as well as the duet in Werther, or Jora's song), taken randomly from an endless number of signals that are enciphered in music, show how important they are, even if they might seem like naiveties that are part of the ABC of interpretation (I enumerated the simple ones, fugitively; this study is not meant to replace a proper "textbook" of interpretation). Such instances must be sought for, identified, and used by the interpreter. Then, they will be translated in states of mind, in representations; further on, they will be enlivened in stage actions, and, especially, in live music.

*

6

"Nun die Aria von Belmonte […] Auch ist das klopfende liebevolle Herz schon angezeigt. Man sieht das Zitter – Wanken –, man sieht, wie sich die schwellende Brust hebt, welches durch Crescendo exprimiert ist -, man hört das Lispeln und Seufzen, welches durch die ersten Violinen mit Sordinen und einer Flaute mit in unisono ausgedrückt ist" (W. Reich, Mozarts Briefe, Manese Verlag, Zürich, 1948 p. 228).

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"Why are we, moderns, so scatter-brained?" (Goethe)

When we are dealing with the work of such an important composer as Mozart, we will have to approach his work under the supervision of a particular concentration of our attention, because in his musical texts there are many aspects that are not easily recognisable at first sight. Mozart, more than other composers, addresses not only to our ear and our soul, but, especially, to our intellect; he does this through "larval" messages, shadowed on purpose by the glamour and brightness of his music; such splendour can easily put our musical vigilance in a dormant state. His genius hides – among the spotless "acrobatics" of his musical inventiveness – the truth of an unexpectedly serious thought, serious and deep. Therefore, our attention has to leave the primary level of approach, and see that this music is far from being "rosy"; in this way we will avoid a superficial and false reading, since the implied meaning is frequently dissimulated in the rococo clad. The vein of Mozart's musical inspiration is high up, in the world of the important and deep meanings that puzzle human conscience, and crystallises on musical staves their unspoken vagueness; he does so with an intuition and a pithiness that you are not prepared to find. I will ask my reader not to consider my words as contradictio in adjecto; these characteristics, even if they are not very easy to understand, are defining for this music that convinces very often, even if we cannot understand why at first.

* In Mozart's music we do not meet with feelings in their direct form and expression; there is no reproduction of the reality of the natural feeling7. Feelings can become art only if they are fertilized with the expressions that the musical dimension brings to them, which is a result of the creative imagination. Musical images are above concrete, material reality; they build another, new relation with our sensitivity, which, this time, becomes an artistic sentiment. Only in this way can we feel the equivalent of the natural feeling, which is enriched and transfigured by music. This is why the participation of the public is neither simple, nor uncomplicated, as many cultural enterprises see it, from commercial reasons; they only produce art simulacra for the masses of "amateurs", urged to "watch 7

It is essential for the vocal interpreter of Mozart's music to see that! Only in this way can we safeguard this music from sentimentalism.

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music" (see Chapter XIV, the example with "Music for the Eyes"); they suppress, thus, any tendencies to perceive the deep meanings that are hidden in music. Such action is dangerous and very serious, as it practically annuls art. Goethe, in Wilhelm Meister, notices that the eye deceives the ear easily, luring the spirit towards outside depths8. There is a difference that Kant draws between the "free beauty" – pulchritudo vaga – that means nothing in itself, and "adherent beauty" – pulchritudo aderens9, that receives meanings as it is intimately linked with the expression of the idea. Only through this perspective will interpretation be able to reveal the "secondary play" that Mozart's music hides. I will always bring to the reader's mind what Bruno Walter used to say: the fake Mozart was invented by these superficial and frivolous people, deaf to what his spirituality has to offer. By turning Mozart's virtues against his own music, transforming the luminous power of his spirit in sparkling adornment, they bury his lurking sighs. This is the reason why our attention needs a minimum organisation when we deal with musical analysis, so that our discernment should not go astray and miss the complexity and the "little" rich world of essential nuances that squirm and blossom in the lace of Mozart's music. In other words, when dealing with these musical texts, we will always have to ask ourselves why a certain tonality was used; why he wrote in the 6/8 bar and not the 2/410; what expressive meaning is hidden by triolets11; what lies 8

This is exactly what we, the spectators, are confronted with when in modern performances we have to deal with the divergent subjectivity of the director that takes us to the far-away hills of the most unexpected derails. 9 See Lionello Venturi's detailed explanation in Histoire de la critique d'art, Bruxelles, 1938, p. 316. 10 Regarding the tempo of the "ballata" of the Duke in Rigoletto, tableau I, I have frequently had controversies with the conductors, as they thought of it in 2 and not in 6, and, therefore, they always imposed a tempo which was too alert; they hoped to give more animus to this "aria". This is not only a false illusion, but also a disregard of Verdi's offer. In the 6 bar, the ratio between the duration of the crotchet and the quaver creates a tension that gives much impetus to the melody, even if the tempo is only "allegretto" (which means merry, and not fast!). Eventually, I was able to convince them and conceive the ballata as Verdi wrote it, that is 6/8. When they do not play it this way, the characteristic tension of the quick temper of this character is lost. A tempo that is characterised by a plus of nerve that is well tamed will give an impression of vivaciousness, if the rhythmic construction of 6/8 is observed. In the 2/4 construction, you run uselessly, without creating the verve that Verdi invested this ballata with; this is not an aria, but a dance; the Duke confesses to Borsa the principles that he embraces when it comes to the… fragile gender.

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behind pauses, etc., etc. If we are diligent enough, we will find answers to these questions, and will not wander aimlessly in the company of ridiculous illusions, alien to the object of art under discussion, far from the meaning of music, and lost in confusion. The gentleness and the festive exuberance of the manner of the epoch, resembling the foamy flow of Champaign, like the silky charm of Mozart's music that makes you think that you have understood it once you have heard it for the first time, might make the interpreter slide too easily on its surface; many such interpreters (oh! so smart, especially today) miss what a more detailed analysis can reveal to them. Our times very often prompt us towards rushed decisions and superficiality. In short, the risk of interpretation consists in mistaking the luminous power of Mozart's music and its spirit for a sparkling jewel, as Bruno Walter remarked. Such danger, often characterised by a too quick tempo, has lured, almost threatened at times even the interpretation of great musical personalities. One famous case is that of Richard Strauss, in his capacity of a conductor. In his "Ten golden rules", he writes the 9th principle as follows: "If you think you obtained the maximum tempo, then take a double quicker one!"12 Later, though, after 1948, he goes back to this principle and says: "I wish to amend this: you should take a tempo two times slower". We would not be too mistaken to consider that the superficiality of interpretation that is reflected in the exaggerated speed imposed by some conductors is a sign of musical carelessness in dealing with the tempo of Mozart's music, and not only with his music. As to the attention of the interpreter, I would like to make a short parenthesis, regarding a detail of Mozart's extraordinary musical expressivity. U.L. Gerber, in the Historisch-biographischer Lexikon der Tonkünstler (published in 1790) affirms: Mozart, due to the fact that he got acquainted with the laws of musical harmony since he was a child, managed to reach to a profound and complex expression to such a degree that even the specialists, in order to perceive his dimensions and value, have to listen to one work several times; our contemporaries were not prepared to understand the appearance of this meteorite.

11

In one of the previous chapters I exemplified how in the duet Werther – Charlotte, the appearance of triolets expresses the tension of the growing affection that seized Werther, by the simple fact that the space that is destined for two notes, is filled with three notes, each with the same value. Consequently, the content will be denser, richer, and the musical phrase will gain in inner intensity. 12 As opposed to the "mild" tempos of the philosopher-conductor W. Furtwängler.

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In the preceding chapters, talking about the hidden places of Mozart's music, I exemplified my considerations with two arias from Figaro's Wedding: "Deh vieni non tardar", Susanna's aria, and "Voi, che sapete", Cherubino's aria; I also showed how much the interpreter can neglect some facets of the characters, which enrich the human profile of these protagonists, by the truth of the feelings they reveal; Mozart is a master in introducing with great mastery and finesse glimpses in the most intimate mechanisms of the behaviour of his (especially feminine) characters. Even the coloratura and the tempos of the arias from the Abduction or Don Giovanni that were sometimes full of concessions made to the singers of his time, as well as to the style of his time, were converted by his genius into dramatic means, loaded with very important expressive functions and virtues.13 In his previously mentioned letter of September 26, 1781, Mozart admits: Die Aria der Konstanze habe ich ein wenig der geläufigen Gurgel der Mademoiselle Cavallieri aufgeopfert, ‘Trennung war mein banges Los und nun schwimmt mein Aug in Tränen’, habe ich, so viel es iene welsche Bravour-Aria zuläßt, auszudrücken gesucht [Constance's aria I sacrificed a little to the usual gargles of Miss Cavallieri, but, in so far as an Italian bravura aria allowed, I tried to express the text; "We are apart now, and my eyes are filled with tears"]14.

In order that all this might get to the spectator as they were thought of and introduced in the music by the composer, the interpreter has to take it upon himself not to neglect them, and use his attention and sensitivity to identify and reveal them. When the interpreters, due to their psychological insight, manage to find and construct in clear representations the real profile of the hero – with all the richness of mysteries that the music entails – such "discovery" will make those characters live on the stage; at the same time, the interpreters will convince the public due to their musical and vocal talent, as well as due to their stage behaviour. On the contrary, when the spectators slip away from our "hands", and start just "enjoying themselves"15, instead of being concentrated on the musical 13

Even since the beginning of the 17th century (in 1614), the composer Giulio Caccini, a member of the Camerata Fiorentina, in his Nuove Musiche speaks about the so-called rhetorical coloratura, used to give expressivity to the musical phrase. 14 W. Reich, op. cit. p. 229. 15 We know very well that the public does not need much to lose concentration, and slip away from the tension of the dramatic scenes, immediately as the occasion appears. I had the "opportunity" to experience this characteristic of the public in my own career. On the occasion of a performance, in the duet Olga-Lenski, in

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content, the greatest guilt is ours, the interpreters'; our own lack of concentration is the real cause for our not being able to captivate their attention16.

* "I find music tiring, because it makes me think more intensely". (Darwin)

The capacity of concentration17 is an indispensible instrument in this complicated process of recreation of a character from the data included in the musical script, and its organic and accurate inclusion in the musicaldramatic development. Concentration is the only means to connect what happened with what is going to happen in the musical development, and this is essential, as the art of sounds unfolds in time. The possibility to focus and maintain consciousness on the musical-dramatic complex and its evolution on stage is a cardinal quality of the interpreter. Only in this way will the contents of music maintain its value; it will not get diluted and will find an echo in the sensitivity and understanding of the spectator.

* In the theatrical world a frequent remark says that a weaker general rehearsal represents the hope, if not the premises, for a good opening night. Those who are tempted to transform this "wisdom" of the backstage into a principle of the trade, demonstrate overt theatre ham, which equals lack of professionalism to quite a large percentage. Let me explain. The tableau IV of the opera Evgheni Oneghin, while I was desperately reproaching Olga her frivolous behaviour, a black cat crossed the stage from one side to the other, in front of the prompter's cage. Part of the public started to whisper. The backstage director, who wanted to catch the intruder, produced the contrary effect. The cat, wanting to get away, appeared on stage again (as it felt un-bothered there), and this time it crossed the stage back to where it came from initially. Well, the entire hall started to laugh. It took Tchaikovsky's music a long time to regain the public's attention. 16 I will discuss in a separate chapter the lack of attention and concentration on the part of the public; they share into the wonders of music so little, and leave the opera halls with less than they came. Consequently, they could be assimilated to people who would throw away the nutmeat and eat the shells… 17 R. W. Emerson rightly maintains: "The one prudence in Life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation".

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stress provoked by the terror of imminent failure is similar to the despair that brings together all forces in the final assault of a battle, whose outcome is obscure. Unfortunately, even when the performance turns out to be a success, such "call under the flag" is short-breathed, as it lacks support even during one and the same representation. In the absence of quiet and fecund concentration – which is certain to give inspiration the freedom and support it requires – on-the-spot improvisation as a last resort, mobilised by panic, is the most inappropriate artistic surrogate. (This is the manner in which politicians sometimes behave just before elections). This ad hoc mobilisation of forces brings about upsetting oscillations from one show to another. In my own experience, I only could be convincing in improvisations (well-received by the public) when I mastered the role very well. Only if I was free and un-stressed could I concentrate. Furtwängler, during a conversation with Abendroth which I will not hesitate to repeat, affirms: "… the rehearsal has to have its role, no doubt: it has to make sure that during the concert you do not improvise more than necessary. Nor less than necessary – and this is very important"18. Consequently, the success of improvisation, which should not appear as an alien body in the context, consists in preparing the path, opening a free way, and giving it the possibility of not wandering in disorientation and oddity.

* The lyrical artist, more than all the other participants in the performance, needs to understand that for him attention and concentration play a decisive role, since these qualities are almost incessantly required in the supervision of cybernetic circuits that are ruling over the vocal emission. A continuous and supreme control of the mechanisms of singing – which I described in detail in my book about the cybernetics of phonation in canto19 – is performed by the ear, which has to be on the watch at all times. Its importance in this process was signalled centuries ago. N. Cerone affirms in El melopeo, published in Naples in 1613 that: "el perfecto cantante mas canta con orejas que con la boca" [The perfect singer sings more with the ear than with his mouth]; Bacilly in Remarques curieuses sur l'art de bien chanter (Paris, 1660) also maintains: "C'est avec cette qualité – avoir de l'oreille – que l'on parvient a bien chater, sans 18

W. Furtwängler, Entretiens sur la Musique, Paris: Albin Michel, 1953, p. 79. J. Piso, Cibernetica fonaĠiei în canto, Bucureúti: Editura Muzicală, 2000, pp. 3355. 19

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laquelle celle de la voix et de la disposition ne sont quasi rien" [Only with the aid of the quality that is called to have an ear do we get to sing well; without this quality neither the voice nor the talent represent much].20 The immense task that attention is called to do, when it is, of course, amplified by concentration, as I pointed out in my previous considerations, is even more important in the case of the phenomenon that Diderot wrote about – the phenomenon of the actor's "duality". During the performance, the personality of the artist is split in two: one part continues to act in virtue of his involvement in the artistic enlivenment of the dramatic situations he is confronted with; the other part monitors continuously, with critical attention, his own stage behaviour, as well as the vocal one, of course. These are some of the reasons why I considered it to be my duty to underline these crucial qualities, so necessary in dramatic music, which are very often considered rather superficially; the value of the art of the interpreter depends on these qualities, especially in an epoch that is governed by haste.

20

Quoted in J. Piso, Cibernetica fonaĠiei în canto, Bucureúti: Editura Muzicală 2000, pp. 33-55.

CHAPTER XIX THE OPERA – IS IT A POPULAR, AN ELITIST, OR A MINOR GENRE?

"Oh, if only the spectators agreed to be listeners, as well". (G. Enescu) "There can exist neither art without meaning, nor meaning without art". (I. L. Caragiale)

The question referring to the "popularity" of the genre is likely to be asked in an improper manner, and answered improperly, as well. This happens because masterpieces of this genre (I am thinking, for example, at Mozart, Bellini, Verdi, etc., etc.) are at the same time popular, but also satisfy the tastes of the cultural elites. I analysed and demonstrated this in a cogent manner in the previous chapters with all the examples mentioned. If we do NOT take into consideration the style, or the value of the musical script, and concentrate only on the show – not in terms of quality but in terms of how it is seen by today's public, that is, the manner in which the new elites1 taste the opera and make it a minor genre – the opera performance becomes popular from an artistic point of view. This happens because the performances are thought in such a way as to match the snobbery2 promoted by the so-called cultural tourism. Just think of the 1

Referring to his own experience, Goethe notices that "preferences are purified with time". In this regard, the elites of the "spontaneous generation" are the product of the turning of values upside down (which in Romania is called transition); apparently, there is still a long way to get to… purification of preferences! 2 A puddle also reflects the sky, but upside down, including it in its characteristic "purity"; the same, the artistic value of an interpretation is topsy-turvy mirrored in the understanding of the snob, or of the spectator whose level is too… popular, especially in an epoch in which culture is feeble (do not mistake information for culture); the output of such culture is a slave of time(s). Therefore, the public should not abuse its right to ratify such wanderings! In support of my

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opera manifestations at the Verona Arenas, or other such arenas and festivals that set the tone, supported by an avalanche of productions on DVDs, sold as "Music for the eyes", the newest fabrication of the companies that make a profit from exploiting the less cultural facet of this genre, in which music is almost annihilated (see the chapter "The spectacle as an obstacle").

* We should not forget the fact that this kind of show was born from a necessity that was vaguely floating in the atmosphere of those times, which met the tendencies of the artists who were trying their first steps in the spiritual renaissance of ancient times in the domain of music. These clarifications are necessary for us to better understand the nature and even the dimensions of the crisis that the opera goes through today. At the beginning, the public was attracted by the creation of this Renaissance spirit that the Camerata Fiorentina was sharing into. It is known that a trend that is foreshadowed will get clearer contour and will come alive only if both the producer and the consumer are on the same wave length (to use market economy terms, all socio-cultural relationships are reduced to in the contemporary world). The following considerations refer to the public, the so-called consumer (inaccurately, as art is goods that is not consumed, but summed up, as Noica says). The more we share cultural goods, the more they grow; they are not exhausted. This holds true only if we are in the real domain of spiritual values, of course. In one of the letters that Goethe sends from Italy to his friends, we can read this narrative about a performance he saw in Venice, in October 1786, at the Comedy Theatre "Saint Luca": "The people are the basis on which

considerations, I will remind my readers of Rathenau's predictions that warned us about the three disasters that are endangering our times: (1) the vertical invasion – barbarians do not come from the outside but from the inside of society; from the bottom; (2) the reign of those who lack discernment – of dunces who exercise their reign over all natural laws; (3) the treason of common-sense people, who, instead of fighting back, let things happen. Goethe considers that society is striving (and it should) to have increased discernment, that is, a better understanding; on this purpose, it should use its two lungs: culture (İʌȚıIJȘȝȘ) to enhance knowledge and integration with nature, and technology (IJȑȤȣȘ), which can complete, and even substitute nature when necessary.

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the entire performance is built; the spectators also play a role. The crowd is fused with the theatre, making up a whole". Although not the entire world is Venice, and not every spectator an Italian, on any meridian the theatre lives from success; its intention is to captivate the public, because when the hall is indifferent or confused, the stage becomes useless. We will not expect the same reaction in Reykjavik as in Naples. (Still, we might note that even today there exists a certain degree of fusion between the public and the stage, but it is produced mainly on occasions when the manifestations are based on ravishing primary instincts that are the delight of young people; in such cases, music does not play any role. The musical feeling of the participant, if complacent in the situation, has already been sacrificed.)

* There is a third element today (a feared one, as well), which perverts the natural relation between the producer and the consumer, that did not exist in the past, or, at least, not to this overwhelming degree; this element that mars the sincerity and the spontaneity of reception is the guidance by the so-called experts (better said, the manipulation) of the masses of spectators (the amateurs), but also of some professionals inclined to enter this game. In an interview published by "The American Mercury" in August, 1957, Picasso spoke about these experts and the fact that today people expect from Art consolation and elevation but in vain; those whose profession is to do nothing, those who are rich and refined, only expect Art to provide them with the unusual, the sensational, the eccentric, and the scandalous. He admitted to have fed these people with what they wanted even since his Cubist period, and he ironically showed how the critique was happy with all the ridiculous ideas that crossed his mind. The less the critique understood his ideas, the more admiration he enjoyed from them. The more amused he was by such absurdities, the more famous and rich he became… (I paraphrased Picasso's words from the German translation of this interview).3 In connection with these tendencies that characterise the taste of the contemporary "elites" for the sensational and the eccentric, I also want to mention a recent study realised by the psychologist Paul Babiak (see PM – Welt des Wissens, 1/January 2010, p. 64), which is a research on psychotic

3

Also see Stuttgarter Zeitung, of January 22, 1962.

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subjects, and which reaches the conclusion that "Psychopaths are crazy about change"4. This is what the program that imposes taste does to us! This is who provokes the trend and dictates fashion! Artists have softened their temperament little by little, losing their dramatic fire, and the public yawned once, twice, several times, until they did not want to yawn and they just remained home [because] they come to the theatre to look for a moment of artistic emotion; and they are sentenced to twist their healthy minds so that they might disembroil the issues that emerge in the quizzical minds of the decadents (Caragiale, a theatre chronicle of 1899).

* Both Picasso's confessions, and Caragiale's opinion make me purposely try to avoid the mistake of excluding this sibylline-like theme of the spectator, which is the vital element for the existence of the opera, and for the path that the future holds for it. Only the spectator can decide the fate of the opera, and he will do just that. It is up to him if the opera will live (as it deserves), or will just… survive.

4

"Die chaotischen Prozesse der Globalisierung, erst recht die gegenwertige Krisse haben das Business in ein noch günstigeres Biotop für Psihopaten verwandelt. Denn je schneller und radikaler sich die Welt verändert desto besser werden sie sich darin zurechtfinden. Psihopaten lieben den schnellen Wandel. Was andere Menschen veränstigen, gibt ihnen den entscheidenden Klick" [The chaotic process of globalisation has transformed business – due to the present crisis – in a propitious biotope for psychopaths. The more the world changes, the better they feel. Psychopaths like rapid changes. What scares other people, psychopaths dwell in, and extract their decisive effusion from] (Paul Babiack). In the same number of the journal, two other psychologists also maintain: "Ein hoher Anteil der Untersuchten (hochrangigen Manager) zeigten stark psihopaten Züge. Sie waren selbstsüchtig, oberflächtig, frei von Mitgefühl, manipulativ… Dieselben Eigenschaften, die einem Menschen zum Massenmörder machen, lassen ihn in modernen Unternehmen Erfolge Feiern" [A large proportion of those examined (first rate managers) have displayed strong psychopathic characteristics. They are selfish, superficial, lacking empathy, capable of manipulation… Such features transform a man into a serial killer. This is the psychological profile of those who are successful in a modern enterprise] (Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon). Would we be entitled, then, to make a connection between the results of such research and the enterprises that dedicate their activity to art, and to the domain of the lyrical theatre and performances, both in vivo and in vitro?

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The spectator, yes!, can have a decisive role in the life of the opera, in so far as he is conscious; if he realises his own importance. The public ought not to forget that it is for him that this complicated machinery that we call an opera performance comes into being; on stage, in the backstage, in the studios and workhouses of the theatre, hundreds of people are busy many, many hours, just for this show, so that everything goes well each time. I will not speak about the weeks, even months of preparation that a new staging requires – it is hard and exhausting work. The only purpose of this effort is to get the final crown for the interpretation, which means that the spectators understand the music, and share into the creation of the composer. This is a decisive fact! To take part in an opera performance employs the affect and the intellect of the spectator in a different, special manner. In any case, the involvement of the spectator is different from that of a football fan, as it reaches, it even drills regions of his spirit that are not required when a goal is scored in the enemy's goalpost! I ask my reader not to consider these words as ironic. No! Somebody had the nice initiative to make an audioclip that consists of the highest and longest notes of various famous tenors, and uploaded it on YouTube. Just imagine! In this way we are going further and further from music, and enter the sports field, where the criterion of quality is thinner and thinner, until it disappears, and makes way to performances of the muscles and less of the circumvolutions of the brain, where the artistic conscience could come into existence. To take part in the representation of a masterpiece is an occasion for us to meet… ourselves, each time; we manifest, or, at least, we mobilise from under a spell of dumbness the most special, superior constituent parts we have, which are different from who we are during the everyday rhythm of our lives.5 Under the impulse and in the atmosphere of the music, as well as of the events that the dramatic-musical representation unfolds in front of us, we may discover the best part of our being; it gives us the chance to notice that we are more than we are used to thinking we are, revealing in our own innermost self things that we did not (still) hope to ever meet; the lives we live have made us give up these hopes. Such a meeting can give us the opportunity to look at ourselves with a different look: to ask more from ourselves! Therefore, to cultivate such unexpected experiences, which we dream of (secretly, in our subconscious), represents a potential that is extremely valuable for our lives; the opera proves to have a truly elitist content, and a matching structure. It is a genre that has virtues which 5

The kind of life that Lucian Blaga referred to saying that it is consumed immediately and for the security of life.

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are capable to make it popular, in the best understanding of the word; this content can be opened to many people, it can become accessible due to the various means of expression it can use. Nevertheless, the performance, as I have already tried to demonstrate in the previous chapters, has to be the result of the collaborative, harmonious work of the various interpreters (including the spectator, whom I see as the last interpreter); if these conditions are not accomplished, this entire work is useless. The opera performance and the popular interest it can stir is a quality that should not dominate at the expense of its elitist aspect; we are speaking about the elite that is a product of artistic values, which could easily be ignored and overlooked otherwise. To bring more proof to my demonstration, I will recall so many opening nights of absolute masterpieces that were popular fiascos: Traviata, Carmen6, some operas by Puccini, etc., etc.; when they were first performed, the public was not able to appreciate their value and artistic quality. In time, these operas have become (paradoxically?) among the most popular, without loosing any of their artistic carats, or of the beauty and profoundness of the thoughts that they may bring to our minds. I would like to emphasize this aspect, that as in the case of coins, which get worn by time, when a masterpiece becomes very popular, its value in the understanding and the consciousness of the great public becomes more vague, more confused. The entire world knows how famous Brâncuúi is, and if anyone asks people – for instance, those in Târgu-Jiu who are so proud to live in his town – why they think his creations are so valuable, they will answer that… Brâncuúi is great! The result would not be any better if we asked more people and more "connoisseurs" of Brâncuúi's art.

* Serious research and consideration should be given to the public, which includes the mass-media that both reflects and influences its preferences, trying to control them and bring its contribution to the birth and agony of fashion. Such a theme needs more time and attention, and such discussions might lead to important consequences. Answers to the question of what the public likes, or should be taught are essential for the level of a culture; unfortunately, the ones that allegedly promote the 6 Only in the 1940's, in Paris, did Carmen receive its citizenship at the Garnier Opera, which is reserved for the creations that are considered to be prestigious enough; the first performance was conducted by Roberto Benzi. Until that moment, this opera was performed only at the Favart, where comic operas were usually performed.

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artistic do not participate in this process of education; the great companies that should be promoting such values in a responsible manner (the record labels) are the last in such battles for quality, and their interest becomes "musical" only in so far as it brings a profit in a sure and uncomplicated way. Financial profitability establishes the artistic level, thus lowering their sizes and giving to contemporary taste a downward direction. Consequently, the public is forced to accept values that are turned upside down, under the pressure of fashion; such turnings prove to be poisonous for the cultural life (go back and look again at the pictures in the previous chapters).

* Within musical masterpieces, the primary, instinctual energies are distilled, and distilled should they be in their staging, due to the nature of the artistic and not as a consequence of prudery, as many maintain erroneously. A culture that "sets free" the brute matter in art, placing it first, has become the favourite betting horse of modernity. Unfortunately, this also led to the situation in which art has become the sewage place of all derelict instincts, barren of any artistic value, which are raised to the status of artistic scope and ideal. In reality, we are only faced with a parade of products coming from un-controlled brains, whose place should sometimes be in a manual of psycho-pathological diseases (see P. Babiak's conclusions). To convince ourselves that such practices have nothing to do with the artistic mechanism, I will ask the reader to observe with me the following analogous example. The appearance of enchanting images on the television screen only represents the result of electric short circuiting that takes place in a long and extremely sophisticated path in the complicated insights of the apparatus. In this way, electrons transform the wave they receive in the images we admire on the display. Drawing an analogy between the electric tension and that of passions, we will understand the secret of the appearance of a musical marvel – for instance Don Giovanni's serenade "Deh vieni alla finestra, o mio tesoro"; this is the result born in the athanor (or the transformer) of the composer, by converting natural passion into art, in a miraculous process of transmutation. On the contrary, if we unite the ends of the two wires that lead the electric current, then a banal faulty short circuit will take place. The result: the fuse is burned! The same happens when the revolutionary director does his plain, to the teeth staging. He short-circuits through his interpretation the path that the artistic process requires and imposes; in this way, he is

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convinced that he is the discoverer of the philosophical rock, when he intoxicates the spectator with the public display of his own sexual obsessions. If we just disgorge our instincts directly on the stage, without the cloak that helped the human species evolve above primates (through culture), such short-circuits leave us in the dark. Goethe rightly affirmed in one of his letters from Italy that impertinence could have its momentous amusing role, but when it is repeated all over again, it becomes injurious and disgusting! Let us remember a wise retort, which says: Courage takes one to heroism – dare stops as cheekiness.7

* To clarify the issue of the extraordinary virtues of the musical, and its being put to value by the public's understanding and perceiving the music (an aspect that is closely connected with the fate of the opera), the reader will kindly accompany me in a short incursion that tries to see certain particularities that are specific to music. Many of the dramatic moments that are present in a performance contain aspects that are hidden for somebody who is not attentive enough, or rushed in appreciation. Although they are essential for the accomplishing of the artistic, they are easily overlooked because only music can highlight them, they are not present without the music. Like the specks of dust that float in the atmosphere that can only be seen when the space is invaded by a ray of light that comes from the opposite side, the same happens to these features. Music has the role of the ray of light. Such miraculous "sundries" get to our minds only through the music that produces a reverberation around them. Sometimes they "betray" the characters, revealing something they are trying to hide, consciously or not. Other times, they are playfully dissimulating what the living thought would like to bring to light, like a translucent diamond. Trying to look through it, our eyes will be captured by the facets of the crystal, which reflect a light that does not reside in it, but lives multiplied in the brilliance of the precious stone. Seen in this way, the opera is and is not a popular genre, at the same time; in fact, we wish it became more popular, and let more people share into its values. This is the critical point where those in favour of the "simplification" of the artistic stumbled, as, in their efforts to attract more spectators, they shadowed exactly what turns a common work into a masterpiece. (The procedure to split an aria to three tenors was an unusual 7

This wise observation can also be applied to the sphere of the political life, even to the top of all hierarchies.

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momentous occasion; nevertheless, by repeating such curiosity, they only brought profits to snobs and to the Guinness Book of Records.)

* Mozart is the best composer if we want to exemplify the miraculous virtue of music in the dramatic art. They said that if he had not been a musician, he would have certainly become a remarkable playwright. When the text of the libretto is not satisfactory for him, instead of modifying it, or asking the writer to do so, Mozart turns to music again, completing and enriching with it a banal text, which is awkward or inelegant. A confirmation of such affirmations regarding Mozart's extraordinary dramatic sense comes from A. Schönberg. He does not resort to the epoch's baroque (the baroque pearl is uneven) in his intention to clarify why in Mozart's music some phrases are unequal in length, in the intermediary musical constructions: a distance of 3, followed by one of 1, then another of 1, and one of 3 (see the following musical example). He justifies such irregularities by the complex artistic organisation that has a psychological starting point, thus making Mozart a composer that is dramatic par excellence. To match music with the psychological state of mind means that each change of atmosphere or action is reflected by music; this is an important issue, and each opera composer has to be able to do that. If not, incongruities appear, or monotony, which lead to boredom. These are Schönberg's words: Die Konstruktion mittels Phrasen ungleicher Länge […] ist in Mozarts Musik verantwortlich, Beispiel aus dem streichquartett in B-Dur von Mozart ist komplizierter in der Organisation: 3+1+1+3 (der letzte [Abschnitt] ist vielleicht eine einheit von 2+1). Das ganze Thema umfast acht Takte; daher ist die Unregelmässigkeit sozusagen subkutan (das heisst, sie zeigt sich nicht an der Oberfläche […] Man wäre eher geneigt, diese Art von Unregelmässigkeit einem barocken Formgefühl zuzuordnen […] scheint es, dass es eine andere, mehr künstlerische und psychologische Erklärung gibt. Mozart muss vor allem als dramatischer Komponist gesehen werden. Die materielle oder psychologische Anpassung der Musik an jăglichen Wechsel der Stimmung oder der Handlung ist das wesentlichste Problem, das ein Opernkomponist meistern muss. Unfähigkeit in dieser Hinsicht würde Zusammenhang-losigkeit – oder schlimmer, Langweile – schaffen8.

8

A. Schönberg, Stil und Gedanke. Aufsätze zur Musik, cf. Klose Dietrich, Über Mozart, Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1991, p. 223-225.

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Fig. 1

This aspect is more obvious in arias, whose function consists in characterising the heroes and their states of mind in certain moments of the dramatic development (very often beyond the text). Those who listen more to the music, will notice this very clearly. This is why I will come back, for the millionth time, and ask Mr. Director (even the singers can listen) to analyse the music attentively. Here and only here, enclosed in the music, will you find an unlimited source of inspiration for your interpretation, especially in masterpieces belonging to geniuses. Unlike the articulated word (in speech), music insists and continues after the moment of its production. While the spoken word falls down acoustically in the moment of its pronunciation, the musical sound has duration, and produces reverberations in the space it created beyond the moment of its birth, especially when it appears as a projection of the contents and a participation that brings such contents to light. The word, after having been articulated, only survives in our rational understanding (without excluding emotional aspects, though), since the spectator understands and gets involved by trying to find things that he identifies as analogous in the storage house of his brains. The musical sound, through its iridescences that seize us super-rationally, create an atmosphere that enshrouds us and leads us upwards. Let us remember the musical metaphors in the example we analysed – Cherubino's aria, in Figaro's Wedding (see the chapter dedicated to music as opposed to chaos); or, the other aria of the page, "Nonso piu cosa son, cosa faccio" (which I have not analysed in this study). Such metaphors are masterly used by Mozart on the purpose of suggesting an intermingling of two tendencies that are born in the page's heart at the same time: the exuberance of joy, which appears on the background of hesitation and apprehension. In the state of mind that

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man feels in moments of satisfaction, joy continues to be a means that he uses to chase away the unruliness and agitation that his soul is obstinately tried by in silence9. The great psychologist Mozart, catching the tremor in the soul of the too young page, suggests the mystery of such presence by the music that mirrors the miracle of the first taper of love. That intention creates a tension that is much richer than its fulfilment could ever be. In our case, the procedure is more fecund, due to the sensitivity of the spectator, who, with the aid of music, will be able to find on his own the secret that hides in the soul of the hero. Nevertheless, in order to do so, the spectator has to concentrate, as I already mentioned, and not much less than the singer-actor on stage. I repeat: the spectator is also an interpreter – a spontaneous interpreter, the last in the series of interpreters, starting with the composer. The true and unique Creator is only God. All the others, composers and their interpreters start from a given something, which they look into, and it is only in this hypostasis that they also have the power to create10 to a certain degree. The input of the composer, the one that gives meaning and elation to his feelings by the great anagogic leap, which transforms and transposes feelings and thoughts in precise musical forms, is nothing but an interpretation of what he understands from life – that is, a "demiurgic" valuing of it. We, the other interpreters start from this artistic 9

For us to better understand an essential facet of his soul, I will transcribe here, in the original, a fragment from the letter Mozart wrote to his father on April 4, 1787, when he had just turned 31: "Da der Tod (genau zu nehmen) der wahre Endzweck unseres Lebens ist, so habe ich seit paar Jahren mit diesem wahren, besten Freund des Menschen so bekannt gemacht, daß sein Bild nicht allein nichts Schreckendes mehr für mich hat, sondern recht viel Beruhigendes und Tröstendes! – Und ich danke meinem Gott, dass er mir das Glück gegönnt hat, mir die Gelegenheit zu verschaffen, ihn als den wahren Schlüssel zu unserer wahren Glückseligkeit kennen zu lernen. Ich lege mich nie zu Bette, ohne zu bedenken, dass ich vielleicht, (so jung als ich bin) den andern Tag nicht mehr sein werde. – Und es wird doch kein Mensch von allen, die mich kennen, sagen können, dass ich im Umgang mürrisch oder traurig wäre. – Und für diese Glückseligkeit danke ich alle Tage meinem Schöpfer und wünsche sie von Herzen jedem meiner Mitmenschen" [Because death is the real purpose of our lives, I have made the acquaintance with man's real best friend for a few years, and so its image has nothing frightening for me in it, on the contrary, it is something that comforts and soothes me. I thank God for giving me such joy, and such opportunity to meet with the key to true happiness. Although I am still young, I never go to sleep without thinking that the next day I might not be. None of those who know me could say that I am gloomy or sad by nature. I thank Him, my Creator, every day for this inner happiness that I wish each of my fellow humans might feel] (W. Reaich, p. 332). 10 This would be a sort of epi-genesis – a secondary creation.

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valuing of life that the composer brings. Let us not disregard it! Let us not lose it on the way! Let us not misconstrue it by false interpretation! The interpreter has to be faithful to the musical and its great virtues and significations. He should not appeal to a cheap gimmick of the so-called aggiornamento; that is, to come in front of the spectator with solutions that diminish and lower the deep and high meaning of that particular masterpiece, just to spare him the effort. Very often the comfort is on the part of Mister artist-interpreter. They will transform the performance in something much too… popular. By reducing the quality of interpretation that they engross with less than praise-worthy procedures, they mutilate music, in order to win over a large audience easily and rapidly. That spells immediate success, resembling the success of a clown in the circus arena. The art of the performance, I repeat, consists in bringing the public to the height that the genius of a composer officiates, not to slide to the level of banal connotations and significations, which, more often than not mean lack of any kind of significations; the spectators would take offense if they were told that they feel satisfied with just a superficial perception. I would like to ask the reader who is not satisfied with the malign saying "it will do even so", to let me come with yet another exemplification of the degree of forging that the meaning of music is subject to, when the vocal interpreter does not master his trade well enough; in order to do so, I will make another musical analysis, but only at an elementary level. I will stop at one example, a very well-known song, which many of us listen to around Christmas. Some, and not only a few, even have recordings with that melody, just to be able to listen to it more often. I am referring to the popular "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht" ("Silent Night"), composed by Franz Xavier Gruber, a song that in December 2018 will celebrate its bicentennial anniversary (see the following musical texts).

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Fig. 2

The melody of this "carol", written in the 6/8 bar, is characterised by the repeating 15 times (as we can see from the autographed manuscript of the composer) of the same rhythmic formula: a quaver with a dot, followed by a semi-quaver and by another quaver (a form of dactyl11, in which only the first note is accentuated and longer). 11

The dactyl, like the trochaic, brings a note of solemnity; it matches the atmosphere produced by the moment in which the miracle of the embodiment of the Saviour takes place.

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The interpreter, on the intention to correctly sing this rhythmic formula, will always accentuate, without exception, the short note (the semi-quaver), which in our third example is highlighted. I wonder how many of us, when listening to such interpretation, were not bothered by such accentuation that seems to give an aggressive, jerky character to this song, contrary to its meaning, not only to the melody but to the text as well? While both melody and text express an atmosphere of peace and wistfulness, the execution, which cannot avoid that accent – due to negligence, or lack of vocal technique – aggresses the ear and chases away the state of ecstatic peacefulness expressed by the words, and even more by the music. This is why I consider it appropriate to quote Berlioz's considerations again. This quotation refers to his contemporaries, two hundred years ago: "… they have lost the feeling of beauty, and so vulgarity is not shocking anymore for them; this is what a disregard of the quality of interpretation brings with it, and the public does not see it anymore".

* Let us look closer at this popular and wonderful song, together. The rhythmic skeleton that the composer uses to construct his music is: crotchet, quaver, crotchet, pause; quaver, quaver, quaver, crotchet, pause, etc.; this means that for each syllable there is a note (a sound), which is longer or shorter – the little group of sounds being interrupted by a pause here and there. 6/8 

Reduced to this rhythmic scheme, the song is disorienting in its platitude, like a sleeping pill. Although it suggests silence (die Stille), its monotony and uniformity is far from being artistic. Michelangelo says that if we look at a company of soldiers who march in perfect columns, after the first moments the extreme order of such parade does not retain our attention. The composer found the secret by which he makes monotony disappear, and he observes the atmosphere of peace, suggesting at the same time the intensity of this event, which comes from another world – a miracle. This is how he does it: he prolongs the duration of the crotchet

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with half of its value, that is, a crotched with a dot, but, at the same time, he shortens the quaver, by replacing it with a semi-quaver. In this way, without jerking the atmosphere, the miracle is achieved.

 6/8

Stil- - le Nacht, hei-li-ge Nacht

At his turn, the interpreter can accomplish a… miracle, by avoiding to accentuate the short note, the second note in the line, a note that is not there in the 6/8 bar, and, therefore, should not be accentuated. After the delay produced by the dotted note, the semi-quaver will appear like a hesitation, like a touch of a wing that does not want to blur the miracle that is about to happen and be revealed to us. Let us remark that all these are exemplified only by rhythm, and by what rhythmic subtlety expresses. If we add to this the melodic design, we will immediately understand why it was inspiration that suggested to the composer that the short note (the semi-quaver) should only be raised with one tone. In this way, the melody shyly goes higher for just an instance, only to come back to do (a crotchet), and continue, in piano, the tendency to also maintain its tone high. The quaver that follows (the note la) should not fall heavily, but float like a snow-flake that sets lightly in the peaceful atmosphere. Then… a pause of a quaver, like an expectancy of the coming of the High Ones. The formula is repeated with short melodic variation, only to be finished under the seal of the enchantment we have been seized by. Here it is:

Fig. 3

*

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The analysis above does not want to suggest that the composer's talent was perfectly conscious of all these implications of his steps12. I will not accuse him of such a thing, for the simple reason that I believe a confession of the great poet Lucian Blaga, who was also the most refined exegete. This is what he says: The significations and the values that I have brought to life in my poetical creations surpass the significations and values that I consciously put into these creations. Some of these significations and values emerge in my conscience only today, at a reading after decades. Most of these significations and values that are above my conscience will be highlighted by others, who will be endowed with more lucidity than I am. From this rather precarious situation of the creator of art there follows, with superior necessity, the essential task that the literary and artistic critic's work entails.13

Mutatis mutandis, this is the work of the musical interpreter in our case. This is what I have tried my best to accomplish in this study, showing the functions of the singer, the director, the conductor, the art director, etc., etc., that is, to fulfil the meanings14 contained in the music – on a musical line, and not besides or against it. 12 There is an example that refers to the fact that not even J. S. Bach was conscious of the mathematical significations of his creations, as highlighted and analysed with obstinacy by an entire professional modern literature (see E. Bergel's studies on Bach's last fugue). I am referring to an affirmation belonging to A. Schweizer, a well-known exegete of the music of the St. Thomas deacon from Leipzig. He shows that Bach "ne faisait aucun cas de toutes les spéculations sur la nature mathématique des harmonies et leurs rapports mutuels. Cette indifférence du maître pour les prétendues découvertes en ce sens, devait être assez prononcée, car Mattheson dans un de ses écrits, dit que dans les leçons d'harmonie de Bach, il n'était, certes, jamais question de speculations mathématiques. […] Sur ce point était très sommaire ‘Deux quintes et deux octaves ne doivent pas se succéder’…" [Bach was very undemonstrative as to all the speculations regarding the mathematical nature of his harmonies and their reciprocal relations. Such indifference of the master for the professed discoveries in this respect was evident enough for Mattheson to mention in one of his writings on harmony, that Bach would never bring the discussion about such mathematical speculations. In this matter, he was very short "There should exist parallel quinces or octaves"…] (A. Schweizer, J. S. Bach, p. 93). 13 Lucian Blaga, Elanul insulei, p. 239. 14 It was also Blaga who showed, when talking about he specificity of cultural phenomena, and with reference to the French philosopher Emile Boutroux, that, when we are speaking about the world of the soul the premises are generally

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* The pathway of this study, in which I tried to be one with the sufferings of the lyrical theatre (and, I hope, the reader did, too), seems to suggest that we are in possession of a kind of an answer related to what this musical genre should be; this musical genre that is both popular and belonging to the elites (it was considered of minor interest only in epochs of deep darkness). We have tried to show what the opera could be, thinking of the immense treasure of artistic values that it uses to make up its dowry. Unfortunately, lyrical masterpieces, like culture in general, have been taken over by a very superficial world today. It is bent downwards, either under the pretext of popularity, or that of its "elitist" character. This happens due to a tandem that seems to function. On one hand, there is bad, inappropriate, even poisonous interpretation, which suppresses the anagogic quality of music and its force to inflame our imagination that might take us to zones of spirituality far from dull thoughts; on the other, there is the spectator, who, faut de mieux, has arrived at the acceptance of "this will also do". No! This will not do (any longer)! Interpretation should not throw the spectator backwards, where from he has strived to come up during the multi-millenary path of culture. Such a thing the public cannot accept, for their own good. For their own salvation Let us not forget that the intention of any masterpiece is to transform the normal man in an elite one at least for a few seconds! What means should we employ? Well, we should give attention to Noica's advice, which is so suitable for this present case: "The openness that we are expecting, can only be the result of constraint"; this eon of wandering, of a freedom that is allowed to go about its licentious ways, can only be beaten by an effort of the spirit to remain equal and consistent with itself. It has to come back, it has to fight against the invasion of the stench produced by the pathogen mud of ignobility, by going back to Music. Remember that Beethoven considered Music a "revelation higher than any wisdom or philosophy", a revelation that in the present study I have tried to evoke, and invocate, basing it on the sensitivity, the intelligence, and the perceiving force of the reader.

overtaken by the conclusions and their variety (L. Blaga, "Emile Boutroux", VoinĠa, 1921, Year II, no. 92, p. 1).

WORKS CITED

BACON, Fr. (1957), Novum Organon, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Academiei RPR. BAUDELAIRE, Ch. (1971), Ecrits sur l'Art, Paris: Gallimard. BEAUFILS, Marcel (1983), Comment l'Allemagne est devenue musicienne, Paris: Lafont. BERGEL, Erich (1985), Bachs letzte Fuge, Bonn: Max Brockhaus Musikverlag. BERLIOZ, Hector (1962), Memorii I Юi II (traducere), Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Muzicală a Uniunii Compoz., RPR. —. (1980), Serile orchestrei, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Muzicală. BERTRAND, Louis (1916), Les plus belles pages de St. Augustin, Paris: Fayard. BEYLE, Marie-Henri (STENDHAL) (1992), Rossini, Mainz: Piper-Schot. BLAGA, Lucian (1969) Trilogia Culturii, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura pentru Literatura ‫܈‬i Artă. —. (1977), Elanul Insulei – aforisme, Cluj: Dacia. BOSCHOLT, Adolphe, (1946-1950), Hector Berlioz, vol I, II, III, Paris: Plon. BURNEY, Ch. (1772) De l'état présent de la musique en France, Italie, Hollande, Allemagne, Paris. CARAGIALE, I. L. (1942), Opere VII – Corespondenаă, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Fundatia Regală pt. Literatură ‫܈‬i Artă. CELLETTI, Rodolfo (1987), Histoire du Bel-Canto, Paris: Fayard. CORREDOR, J. Ma. (1964), De vorbă cu Pablo Casals, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Muzicală. DELACROIX, Henri (1927), Psychologie de l'Art, Paris: Alcan. D'ORS, Eugenio (1968), Du Baroque, Paris: Gallimard. FISCHER, L. (1966), Über Bachs Kunst der Fuge; Erläuterungen zur Einspielung auf Schallplatten, Stuttgart. FURTWÄNGLER, Willhelm (1954) Ton und Wort, Wiesbaden: F.A. Brockhaus. —. (1953) Entretiens sur la Musique, Paris: Albin Michel. GATTI, Carlo (1981), Verdi, Milano: Mondadori. GOETHE, J. W. Goethes Werke, Vol V, Aus meinem Leben, Dichtung u. Warheit Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlag. —. Goethes Werke, Vol. 6-8, Wilhelm Meister, Ital. Reise. Deutscheverlagshaus,

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Bong & Co. HOFFMAN, Alfred (1960), Drumul Operei, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Muzicală. JOUVE, Pierre-Jean (1967), Le Don Juan de Mozart, Paris: D'Aujourd'hui. LANDORMY, Paul (1943), La musique française après Debussy, Paris: Gallimard. LAURENS, Jean (1977) Problèmes du Chant français, Paris: Subervie Rodez. LORENZ, Konrad (1973), Les huit péchés capitaux de notre civilisation, Paris: Flamarion. —. (1961), L'homme dans le fleuve du vivant, Paris: Flamarion. —. (1969), L'agression, Paris: Flamarion. NOICA, Constantin (1978) Spiritul românesc în cumpătul vremii, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Univers. MOZARTS Briefe (1948), Herausgegeben von Willi Reich, Zürich: Manese-Cozett & Huber. PISO, Ion (2000) Cibernetica fonaаiei în canto, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Muzicală. SCHÖNBERG, Arnold (1951), Style and Idea (Sammmelband) die erweitete, Fassung eines Vortrags von 12, Febr. 1933 (apud Anthologie über Mozart, Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1991). SCHUMANN, Robert (1956), Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, Leipzig: Reklam. SCHWEIZER, Albert (1953), J. S. Bach, le musicien-poète, Wiesbaden: Breikopf & Härtel. STRAUSS, Richard (1963), Briefwechsel mit Clemens Krauss, München: C.H. Beck. VENTURI, Lionello (1938), Histoire de la critique d'Art, Bruxelles. WÖLFFLIN, Heinrich (1963), Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Basel: Schwabe & Co. WORRINGER, Wilhelm (1967) L'Art Gotique, Paris: Gallimard. YATES, Frances A. (1947) The French Academies of the sixteenth century, London: The Warburg Institute University Press. —. (1957), Geschenk der Musik (herausgegeben Fr. Springhorum), München: Prestel-Verlag. —. (1991) Über Mozart (herausgegeben Dietrich Klose), Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, jun. —. (1985) Nord West Zeitung, Oldenburg. —. (2005) Das Opernglass. —. (1988) Le monde de la Musique, Paris, (Décembre). —. (1980) Stuttgarter Zeitung, (April). —. (1984/6; 1986/2; 1986/1) Opern Welt, Hannover.

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—. (1990) ARC/ Duponchelle – Opera, Paris. —. (1976/ II) L'Avantscène – Opera, Paris. —. (2001/I) L'Opera. —. (2009/4) FOCUS, Das moderne Magazin, www.focus.de —. PM, magazin, www.pm-magazin.de

AFTERWORD A FEW CONSIDERATIONS FROM THE TRANSLATOR OF THIS STUDY

With such an unusually direct and daring book, I feel it is my duty as a translator of this study to be sincere, as well, and admit how multilaterally challenging this project has proved to be for me as a translator into another language than my mother tongue. I am an opera lover, I am among the first readers (and the first "official" reader) of this book, I am a university professor of literature and culture, I have three children of my own (two are already young adults) and a granddaughter, I love Europe and its multi-millenary culture, and I love Romania, and my multi-millenary people. I have enumerated here all these characteristics because they are the ones that have come into play in this translation (which, as you very well know is also an interpretation), and I would like the reader to understand my reasons for not only translating this book, but for considering it crucial for our culture today. 1. I used to go to the opera with my family when I was a child, then a young girl; then, as a student I would go with my friends. Living in a town in Transylvania, in the Romania of the communist dark decades, it was one of the few joys that we could share into, the joy of music, which could not be arrested by the regime entirely (although they were making serious efforts to alter this world of sounds and wisdom, as well). The opera house and the philharmonic hall were the two places that were "safe" from a cultural point of view, they were still talking about real values, and not pre-fabricated proletarian-cultist Marxist propaganda that we were faced with in almost all other instances of our lives. Going to the opera meant very much for us in those days; we were not very exigent with the interpreters (or so we thought) and we would enjoy such performances for everything they represented: music, stage, conductors, singers, ballet, staging, colour and sound. Life took me to other places, and after the changes in 1989 there was so much to do, that I did not have time to go to the opera again. I had my vinyl records, with my favourite operas and my favourite singers; and then

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I looked for those preferred singers on the Internet. Those who love the opera know that not even the best recording can give you the feeling you have when you are in the opera hall, in your seat, and breathe in with the interpreters and with the other spectators the beautiful whole that such a performance is. Well, last year I had the chance to take my young boy to the opera, and I did so "in style", that is, we went to Verona, to the Teatro Filarmonico, to listen and watch Rossini's La Gazza Ladra. It was such a disappointment! The music was there, as I knew and loved it, but the performance was absolutely repugnant: instead of everything I prepared my young boy to see on stage, there was this gloomy scene, with an enormous all-purpose rock in its midst, with a choir dressed like soldiers in Matrix, wearing machine-guns, with a soprano dressed in a sack that got all wet in Act II from the heavy rain that the director "commanded" on the stage… All wet, in her bare feet, the soprano had to sing with her head upside-down, hanging from the big rock at times, with everybody around her upset and bleak. I had to close my eyes and listen to the music and the singers, who were trying to do a good job, more or less, and dream of the beautiful 1987 recording that I had at home, with Ileana Cotrubaú singing beautifully. This is not the opera that you would want to take your children to. I was baffled, and I thought this was a singular incident, until I read Ion Piso's book on the crisis of the opera. I understood that this is the "trend" now, that if you go to the opera it is this kind of performance you are most likely to see… Well, not my cup of tea! I really love the opera, and this kind of performance is clearly conceived to make people who do not love the opera buy tickets, since it offers something else: violence, erotic scenes, shocking images, political commentaries, stylistic blurring, etc. Anyone who still dreams of going to the opera and finding the unity between music and the stage, between what is said and what you see, between the composer and his audience, please read this book attentively, and understand that it is us, opera lovers that are called to put an end to such unfortunate experiments. 2. The task of translating this book only came after reading it closely. For us, literature people, reading closely means trying to understand the message that the author puts forth, to understand all references, to get closer to the way the author thinks, to interpret certain aspects in such a manner as not to disturb the general meaning and alter the intention of the author. Everything that I know in terms of languages, synonymy, idioms, writing style (both Romanian and English) is filtered in this translation, together with other aspects of philosophy, literature (there are so many

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references to authors coming from both fields), cultural translation, music in general and the opera especially. Furthermore, I had to analyse the specific style of the author and make some choices: Ion Piso uses a style that is full of passion, ardent, it has a markedly oral character. His sentences are intricate, very long (especially for an English-speaking reader), with many brackets, incidental clauses and phrases, etc. Moreover, he considers that all the great authors (both musicians and others) live in unending synchronicity. He has no problem calling things as he sees it, criticising interpreters using words that leave no doubt as to his vision, or using a sarcastic tone, sometimes. Our academic writing has taught me that it is really important that our references be as "recent" as possible, that we should refer to the "newest" literature, and be as objective in style and manner as possible. We should not offend anyone, we should just express "our opinion", and consider that everybody else is entitled to maintain any other opinion as long as they bring enough "arguments" and "references". Then, we should prefer the Past Tense, in reference to people who are not amongst us anymore, we should write short, accurate, un-equivocal sentences, and observe all rules of rhetoric. Well, these two visions on writing are obviously opposed. The choice I made, which the reader might have already questioned, was to observe the style of the author, and be in "tune" with his ardour to the best of my capabilities. In doing so, I both wanted to give the reader of the English version the pleasure of reading that I felt when I approached this text in Romanian, and, more importantly, I wanted to be that kind of interpreter that Ion Piso speaks about throughout his study: giving importance to the author, obeying his wishes, trying to understand his meanings, being faithful to the spirit of the composition, facilitating communication between the author and the reading public. I know I am not an artist, but to translate an artist's text, one needs to get as "artistic" as possible. Ion Piso also studied philosophy with a few great masters of the Romanian school of philosophy (before the communist regime banned them from universities and locked them in prisons or working camps). Ion Piso was a tenor for half a century, he was an exile from Romania and got acquainted with the cultural, political, and economic life on three continents. This profile of the author made me even more conscious of my "mission", to be as faithful as possible to the original text, which is original in all senses. Therefore, I also kept a few particularities of the author related to footnotes, to quotation, to references, considering that this is not an academic essay written to impress title-acknowledging boards of professors, but to impress, persuade, and convince the readers

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(be they professionals of the world of the opera or just opera lovers) of the importance and stature of such a cultural endeavour. 3. There were quite a few pages in this book that were very difficult for me to "digest", understand, and accept. At one point I felt I actually needed to just go over my own ideas and go with the opinions of the author, as drastic and obsolete as they sounded to me. I am referring to his opinions regarding everything that is modern, avant-garde, postmodern, experimental, etc. Being a professor of contemporary literature and Popular Culture, many of Piso's observations made me think that the author was biased against modern culture, and that he just did not understand, or did not care to understand what was going on in this world. Modernism was a literary trend that gave so many important novelists to our culture, authors I love (like Joyce and Malcolm Lowry, or Virginia Woolf). Then there were the Magic Realist writers like Fowles, and Postmodernists like Malcolm Bradbury. I also appreciate Postcolonial literature, my PhD thesis is about contemporary British fiction, and I am in love with Rushdie and Ishiguro, with Kureishi and Dabydeen. Then I understood that there is a great difference between reading a book, having an unmediated experience with the text, and "meeting" the text in the mediated form of a performance on stage. In the first case, even if the reader's understanding of that book is grossly mistaken, or subject to lack of knowledge or lack of experience from the part of the reader, nothing really happens, except that particular reader will not appreciate that particular author, or book. No real harm is done, unless the reader is also a teacher (in which case, though, I imagine she will just not consider that book or author as choice subjects for her courses). But, if the text needs to be interpreted in front of an audience in order that it may come alive, like the theatre, the ballet, or the opera, then the readers of the texts are the interpreters, the ones who will have to transmit the message to the audience in such a way as to ensure the process of communication – the message of the original author has to be perceived by the audience. The original author of the opera is the composer (aided by the librettist). How is it possible, then, that interpreters of operas do not have the capacity to read the texts? The author refers especially to directors, who cannot read the musical texts, and who do not even care about the music, making the performance only about themselves, and their own "vision" of what is shocking enough to attract the public into the opera hall. It is as if I, as a professor of literature, would try to teach my students various things about the authors and their works, and I were an illiterate, with absolutely no personal experience with the texts I teach.

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Another aspect that is worth mentioning is that referring to consumerism, and the compromises that artists had to do in order to be "appealing" for the masses to a sufficient degree so that they would sell their "products". Unfortunately, the economic seems to be overwhelmingly important these days, and everybody in the arts and culture also wants to make a lot of money very quickly, and they do not have the time to build their careers step by step. They want to be famous; they want to jump up the ladder of fame and be paid accordingly, no matter the losses such activities might lead to (no sufficient mastery of their own trade, no sufficient preparation from an intellectual and cultural point of view of their career choices, and no sufficient respect for the great values of the musical texts they use and abuse). The public is lured into the opera halls to watch such performances, out of curiosity, but it is the shocking, the vulgar, the violent and the non-artistic that keeps them there (if something does) and not the artistic, the musical splendour, the deep feeling and thought. In March in Vienna there was an art exhibition where the public was only admitted if they took all their clothes off. Presumably, the naked public would be much more appreciative of the art exhibited there. Maybe we should stop with so many experiments that sell only because they are experiments, maybe we should stop counting the number of tenors on stage, or return from stadiums and sports palaces into the philharmonic halls and opera houses. Maybe we should let Ravel's Bolero be Ravel with no humming-along of a group of singers (as I witnessed in a musical "show" in Budapest last year, conducted by a world-renowned-best-selling violinist). Piso does not speak against innovation and experimenting, but against experiments for experiments' sake, and about unlimited disrespect for either the composers and the public. Many times during his study, the great tenor Ion Piso shows that he is not in favour of dusty performances that reek of old and of stereotypes. Innovation, experimentation, and novelty have all their role in culture, but they should spring out from a deep knowledge of culture, from a serious mastering of the singing trade, from inspiration drawn from the close reading of the suggestions contained in the composer's text, etc. 4. My love for my children, for my country, and my continent is relevant for this translation in various ways. First, I was very careful with Piso's quotations from important Romanian writers and philosophers, whom he obviously reads with great passion. I hope that some of their names are familiar to a larger audience than just the Romanian one (I am referring to Enescu or Brâncuúi); others are less familiar to a larger public, due to the language they were writing in, that prevented many Europeans to read their most significant work. I think it is very important that the

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reader get at least a few names of important Romanian men and women of culture, who are relevant for the new Europe that we envisage inclusive of all its great representatives, even if they are or were writing in a language that not very many people on the continent speak. I really hope, as a mother, and as an educator that more such books will be published, and more such refined artist will start speaking their minds, so that the opera might go back to being what it was intended to be: a complete art, in which the music, the text, the visual, and the stage management make sense and are harmonically coming together to form one complete and convincing performance. This book, written at an age of great experience and wisdom, after a long career that took the author to the remotest places on this planet, comes to both reveal the diseases, draw our attention towards the most important issues of the crisis of the opera (and culture, generally), and tell us what we need to do in order to stop the decline of this wonderful artistic manifestation of mankind.