Queen of dissent: Mary Stuart
and the opera in her honour by Carlo Coccia
by Alexander Weatherson
The mystery of the sudden banning of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda in Naples in 1834 should not be quite as mysterious as it has always been made out to be. Politics were the cause. Though the "Carbonari" was the name given to anti-governmental rebels in pre-Risorgimento Italy few realise that this romantic term was derived from the legends surrounding Mary Queen of Scots, when a "chain of seditious charcoal-burners" was supposed to have been organised to carry out a secret struggle against the throne of Queen Elizabeth I. Sedition of this kind made the decapitated monarch unpopular in Bourbon Naples of course, and not only in Naples, the claim that the banning of the opera was just because the King and Queen of Naples were extremely remote descendants of Mary Stuart (like almost every other Catholic monarch in Europe) was very wide of the mark.
The article below was presented in 2001 at the request of the Teatro Donizetti of Bergamo to mark the revival of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda of that year.
Political Mayhem - Carlini's Maria Stuarda of 1818
Breaking the ice - Coccia's Mary Stuart of 1827
Grasping the nettle - Donizetti's Maria Stuarda of 1834/5
Introduction
That the sprightly Neapolitan,
Carlo Coccia, came to see Mary Stuart through English eyes goes
without saying. A highly professional operatic refugee from the
Rossinian torrent in his beloved native city of Naples, he had first
paused in Lisbon (writing four operas and a National Anthem) before
coming on to London in 1823; here as musical director of the largest and most glamorous
opera house in the city, the King's Theatre in the Haymarket (Covent
Garden at that time was merely a teatro di prosa), he
became a sort-of figurehead endearing himself as no visiting Italian had ever done
before, not even the brilliant succession of Italian composers in
the eighteenth century. Urbane, imperturbable and greeting the great
pesarese himself with admirable sangfroid
when he too arrived in London (later conducting Zelmira between
clenched-teeth) as he alighted from his coach with Isabella Colbran
on one arm and a large green parrot on the other, all three white-faced
after a frightful channel crossing. Soon this pupil of Paisiello was professor of singing
at the brand-new Royal Academy of Music in London with a stream
of eminent pupils. Indeed,
it was the friendly, gregarious Coccia (1782-1873) who restored
the high-profile of Italian song in that proud and stubborn island,
Italian Opera once again re-emerging from the mists with honour
and acclaim.
Scotland too re-emerged from the
mists - as far as the
English were concerned - at much the same time. The last of the
exiled Stuarts was dead, the pathetically threadbare Henry Stuart,
Cardinal “York” (1725-1807), cadet brother of the Young Pretender
Charles Edward Stuart had breathed his last in Rome, his
tomb in St Peters had been paid-for by King George III, but it was the latter’s more imaginative
son King George IV who snatched-up the torch and brought all things
Caledonian back to life. He was painted wearing a kilt; he ennobled Sir Walter Scott; the Scottish regalia was bundled out of an old chest in
Edinburgh Castle; shortbread
(a kind of Highland biscuit) and porridge (a stodgy oatmeal soup),
appeared on genteel tables in the Home Counties and everything
Hebridian was
coated with a thick layer of well-meaning sentimentality.
After 1820,
and George IV’s Coronation in Westminster Abbey, the Scottish capital
moved an inch or two closer to London.
As a kind-of bonus, Mary Stuart came out of the woodwork into which she had been confined ever since her decapitation in 1587. Poetically-inclined melancholy ladies sighed over her sad fate, a veil was drawn over many of the details of her vexatious career. As a result, and in 1827, Carlo Coccia wrote the one opera of his four-year stay in England, the opera seria in tre atti Maria Stuart, regina di Scozia for the great soprano Giuditta Pasta, a work that would represent a complete change of style.
No one could complain that Italy had ever abandoned Mary Stuart. Theatrically speaking she had shown a marked resilience but not really on account of her spiritual perfection. It was as a political symbol that she had captured the imagination of Italian radicals and their kith and kin. In the earliest years of the nineteenth century performances of Alfieri’s (1780) and Schiller’s (1801) far-fetched historical plays staged in her honour rubbed shoulders with a lesser political layer. Thus a dim “Maria Stuarda restituita dai Carbonari”, for example, a rag-bag of fact and fiction that somehow managed to bridge the gap between fervent Catholicism and Jacobin wishful-thinking[1] , found a place among a host of similar popularist plays that included August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue’s “ Edoardo Stuart in Scozia” [2] and the screaming tabloids ”Il principe Eugenio all’assedio di Tamisvar” and “Il trionfo di Napoleone il Grande” aimed directly at a credulous public. They shared the footlights with an even more imaginative “Matilde ossia I Carbonari” in 1809 - which presented the unhappy queen with a fictitious daughter (who too would figure, rather later, in Rossini’s Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra but shorn of any disloyal aspects) - as well as a cut-price “I carbonari di Dombar” (ie Dunbar) of similar construction.
All these ephemeral plays had something
in common, and were favoured
by a dissident public. Needless to say, it was not long before
this “Jacobin” Queen of Scotland was given a musical setting: Pietro
Casella’s Maria Stuarda
(Firenze
4.1812) was prudent enough, but Pasquale Sogner’s Maria Stuarda ossia I carbonari di Scozia (Venezia 26.12.1814) - omitting
to name the poet - sparked-off a political row, which was soon stamped-out
by the newly-installed Austrians in Venice who put a
stop to all
such provocation, as
they saw it to be. When
the Neapolitan Michele Carafa staged his Elisabetta in Derbyshire ossia Il castello di Fotheringhay
with a libretto
by Antonio Peracchi at La Fenice on 26.12.1818 (based upon Schiller), the maestro took care not to upset
anyone with either its title or its text (only with some of its
spelling), while Saverio Mercadante, whose Maria
Stuarda, regina di
Scozia with a text by the Venice-based
Gaetano Rossi (Bologna 29.5.1821), though not more than obliquely
dependent upon these sources, took care accordingly to stage it
as far away from Naples as possible.
There was a good reason. A far more testing opera had preceded both,
and this was
to play havoc with the reputation of the incautious former monarch
as viewed by the Bourbon dynasty of Naples.
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Political Mayhem - Carlini's Maria Stuarda of 1818
Luigi Carlini’s sadly foolhardy Maria Stuarda, regina di Scozia was his very first opera. He wrote the libretto himself it seems, but based it, as its preface makes clear, upon a drama by Camillo Federici, pseudonym of Giovanni Battista Viassolo, entitled IL TRIONFO DEI CARBONARI (printed in capitals, as here, in the libretto), a play published in Padua in 1802, which itself was the unattributed source for most of the plays listed above. Federici (1749-1802) was a former actor, a piemontese and the author of pulp dramas whose subject-matter encroached upon those of Schiller and Kotzebue, but far more politically charged. He complained, and with justice, that many of these had been pirated by anonymous opportunists. Carlini’s ill-fated and ill-timed opera made its first and only appearance at the Real Teatro Carolino of Palermo as the eighth opera of the stagione of 1818 and was dedicated, indeed not very prudently, to none other than SUA ALTEZZA REALE IL DUCA DI CALABRIA (also in capitals). The cast was optimum with Girolama Dardanelli (niece of the maestro) in the title role, Giovanni David as Ormondo, Luigi Sirletti as Lenox, and Luigi Lablache as Duglas (sic) - which roster of stars would nowadays fill La Scala three times over. It is unnecessary to report that poor Carlini’s melodramma with such a boldly proclaimed source and with such a dedicatee promptly vanished without a trace, deleted from all record with wonderful efficiency[3].
This was a shame. Though Carlini’s dramma serio was certainly viewed with dismay by the Royal Palace in Naples (and by its dedicatee, naturally) it was in fact a fairly innocuous effort with some attempts at historical accuracy; the villain “Ormondo” may have been nothing but a bland personification of Mary’s hooligan of a third husband, Bothwell, and the Congiurati, who figure prominently, merely release the Queen from the durance vile of the “Castello di Dombar”. But the theme had become political dynamite, of course. 1818, in its own way, was a watershed for dissent. Naturally the dangerous political acquaintances of the incautious Queen of Scots had not escaped eagle eyes in Naples. The legends had been grimly noted. During her English seclusion all sorts of plots and plans to release the imprisoned queen had flown back and forth - or so the stories go. Arising from a convoluted version of the Babington plot of 1586 (referred to in Bardari’s libretto for Donizetti) in which Elizabeth’s assassination was fully envisaged, a whole host of conspiratorial myths, fantasies and inventions had been put forward by continental sympathisers. That they were absurd was no impediment to their dissemination. Indeed, the most fantastic of all supplied the most potent impetus for political change, that an undercover chain of seditious charcoal-burners secretly deployed throughout the forests of England could have been a cover for a band of sworn conspirators intent upon the destitution of the “usurped” throne.
The Romantic Era was always ready
to adopt extravagant metaphors for its most serious projects.
Dreams, visions
and technicoloured improbabilities were the currency of the day.
But none of
this was good news for Mary Stuart, and certainly not in 1818.
She, like Carlini’s
opera, was fatally compromised by association. As far as the Bourbons were concerned
she went back into the woodwork for good. That the Neapolitan branch was
descended from Mary Stuart was no excuse (they were equally descended from the Tudors),
nor was her
decapitation any kind of mitigation (there were far more bloody examples in recent times),
it was
conspiracy that undid her. Even 30 years
later Verdi could write (to Piave): “They allowed Ernani, so they might allow this too,
as there is no conspiracy” [4].
Conspiracy
was the ultimate unforgivable sin, indeed pathologically-so
as far as the
Bourbons of Naples were concerned. A TRIUMPH OF THE CARBONARI was
not to be contemplated, not even in the cause of any martyred Catholic
queen - ancestral or otherwise. It needed no spelling-out ...“ sarebbe inutile un più minuto dettaglio” as it says so cogently in the
libretto.
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Breaking the ice - Coccia's Mary Stuart of 1827
In London, free from the shadow
of the Bourbons, Coccia turned his attention to this unhappy tale.
Possibly it
was a declaration of independence, perhaps exile
had made him bold - there is no way of telling. Maybe Pasta herself made the choice, certainly she favoured regal models for her art and went
to Westminster Abbey to view the tomb of the martyr.
We know nothing
more than this. Pietro
Giannone, his modenese expatriate librettist, was certainly
aware
of the explosive
nature of this theme at home but he too played his cards close to
his chest. The
title page of the opera reads as follows:
MARIA STUART,
REGINA DI SCOZIA,
OPERA SERIA,
In Tre Atti.
POESIA DEL SIGNOR GIANNONE,
MUSICA DEL SIGNOR COCCIA.
RAPPRESENTATA PER LA PRIMA VOLTA
NEL TEATRO DEL RE
HAYMARKET, 7 GIUGNO, 1827[5]
For Coccia, the project was full
of novelty. In a London resounding to the portentous accents of Weber
and Beethoven his orchestration took wings, a darker mood began to infiltrate the Rossinian certainties
that had for some time been his anchor. In the city where Shakespearean tragedy was a yardstick
for dramatic integrity something more than facile diversion was
mandatory,
especially
if his hard-won operatic sobriety was not be crucified unmercifully
by the critics. And
then too he had the great star at his disposal. Music and text would be obliged to bridge a credibility
gap between the perception of Italian Opera as mere vocal entertainment
and a relatively sophisticated audience. Only with Pasta’s name at his disposal could he have dared tackle such a theme. Through English
eyes - through
those now of
Coccia -
Mary Stuart
needed very careful handling,
her unprecedented
oleographic aura made demands that would have nonplussed even a
native composer. Above
all else there must have been a fear of inadvertently offending
the susceptibilities of those very same people to whom she had lost her head so many years before;
his own head,
he may have felt, could well be poised above the very same block.
That discretion was paramount is obvious by the text. Giannone bends over nearly backwards to do some kind of factual justice to his heroine and her all-powerful rival. Indeed, comparing Giannone’s Maria Stuart with the Maria Stuarda of Bardari for Donizetti reveals the latter to be not just concise but a miracle of temerity. Coccia’s opera was one of the most wordy ever performed it would seem, there are sub-plots galore. His cast is much longer and differs significantly: Maria, Elisabetta, Leicester, Cecil (called Burleigh here - his real-life title) and Anna, are more or less the same in both operas but the role of Talbot (arch-loyal to Elizabeth in history, and whose noble descendents would certainly have gone to law had he been portrayed otherwise) is split between Melvil, a Scottish rather than English sympathiser, who takes on some of Talbot’s role as well as part of that of Leicester, while new is Paoletto (i.e. Sir Amyas Paulet - Mary Stuart’s chilling jailor at Fotheringhay Castle) and a certain Mortimero [6] , or Sir Mortimero - his nephew (or son-in-law, it is not clear at all) - a stripling at once in love with the Scottish Queen, a romantic bungler and a Babington figure of sorts as well as an outright amorous rival to the two-timing Leicester.
Giannone’s
lack of focus
is disconcerting. Three
scenes only can be found in exact parallel with that of Donizetti: Maria’s outdoor excursion into the park of the castle
(Act 1 Sc.10); the
infamous “dialogo
delle due regine” as
Donizetti wryly calls it (Act I Sc.12); and the final scene of the scaffold (Act 3 Sc.4), all the rest differ greatly. In
no case are the verses quite the same, but they are similar. Elisabetta is as antagonistic in Coccia as in Donizetti
but less ironic and has more scruples; Maria is more arrogant (which makes her execution more
logical), indeed she is superbly boastful but less vulgar;
Leicester’s
double-dealing is more overt (but this may have been nothing but
the truth); important
differences include an unconcealed duplicity on the part of every
character on the stage - which may have
been a current view of the Tudors in London in 1827, plus one major and significant difference:
an assassination
attempt upon Elisabetta during the angry squall between the two
queens, which is the actual trigger for the execution of the
hated rival.
It was not a gratuitous insult addressed to
Anne Boleyn
(who too had been given a recent whitewashing) which led her distant
cousin to the axe - the “fishwife” slanging-match of Donizetti’s
libretto would never have been permitted in London, no
more than in Milan.
The
most obvious difference of all, however, especially to Italian eyes,
is the absence of religion:
Maria is not a Catholic heroine in Coccia’s opera. No one (and certainly not the English Catholics) took
her religious credentials very seriously - after all she had married two protestants - except in that they precluded her from claiming to be
heir to the throne. The conflict is one of statecraft, not of reformed religion. There is no confession scene,
no absolution,
no concealed vestments, no crucifix (in its place is a love scene between Maria and Leicester!).
The irony of
course, is that the King of
Coccia’s roster of singers was not the least interesting aspect of his staging. Apart from Giuditta Pasta in the title-role there was an unconventional Elisabetta - a role scarcely less important. This was a newcomer, a soprano who would later assume the same role at La Scala at the official prima of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda in 1835. As such, she too would be a potent link between the two maestri. Giacinta Toso, the piemontese wife of the celebrated horn player Giovanni Puzzi, was something of an enigma [8] , she had been taking lessons from Coccia in London, or so it would seem, and had established herself there. Together with her part-time impresario of a husband they had rented a large house in Piccadilly where they gave fashionable concerts for almost a half century, only shaking off the London murk after his death in 1876 when she also returned home. Among the famous singers whose concerts the Puzzi couple hosted and which brought them a considerable fortune were Pasta herself, Giulia Grisi, Rubini, Mario, Lablache, Tamburini, Duprez, Jenny Lind, Fraschini, and significantly - the charismatic Maria Malibran, and later her sister Pauline Viardot.
The subsequent equation
Coccia
+ Giacinta Puzzi-Toso + Malibran = Donizetti throws some light upon the otherwise rather puzzling choice
of Elisabetta to sing in the true prima of Donizetti’s opera in 1835. She was
not an inconsiderable actress according to the reviews but being
scarcely twenty-years-old, and very tall, she had difficulty in portraying the middle-aged Virgin Queen who, in real
life was not much taller than her modern counterpart. This notwithstanding,
she had
a mini-triumph and sang with distinction. The tenor Alberico Curioni sang the role of Roberto Dudley; the
profondo Filippo Galli that of Cecil; another tenor Giuseppe Torri
that of Mortimero and the basso Arturo Giubilei that of Melvil,
with the small
roles of Paoletto, Seymour and Anna sung by De Angeli, Deville and
Nina Cornega respectively. All these artists (with the exception
of the three last) had substantial music to sing, Coccia was as
generous with his music as Giannone with his text. Each had a show-piece
of sorts -
that is, before everything began to slip away over the four eventful
days at the King’s Theatre.
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In the Maria Stuarda of Donizetti, a fictional confrontation of the two queens - Schiller’s brainchild- is made theatrically irresistible by their invective, thus elevating popular romanticism to an artform vividly dependant upon a feeling for historical justice, however nonsensical. In Coccia’s Maria Stuart there is nothing of the kind, despite a vicious encounter worthy of the German fantasist. This was not only through an immediate threat of indignant departure of the audience - vulgarity was scorned in the royal theatres - but because both queens were embedded in an immutable charisma they had acquired over the years: Queen Elizabeth I was an icon, “Gloriana”, impassive, high-nosed bejewelled and superb; Mary Queen of Scots (as she was always called) was douce, “unfortunate”, perpetually young, a domestic print of sweet sentiment in adversity. Both queens indeed (probably justifiably) would have been thought incapable of such behaviour, indeed Donizetti’s opinion that “those two queens were whores” (“ma p... erano quelle due”) would not have gone down well at all. The two operas took their point of departure from differing stage conventions: Coccia’s opera was a (moderately) decorous historical tapestry; Donizetti’s opera was a love-story in which neither woman wins (despite a veneer of religiosity): “ due illustri rivali” in fact - an important libretto theme of the day. It was a case of two operas with a common recipe, but a different audience in mind.
The music, however, of
Maria Stuart,
regina di Scozia, would have astonished Coccia’s admirers in Italy and pleased
Donizetti. Nothing
remained of Paisiello’s tutelage, nothing of the Rossinian bucolic charm which had invested
his Clotilde [9] still
going the rounds. From
the beginning he offered an unsettling sombre score, arrestingly
coloured and full of urgent pulsation, bouncing rhythms, dotted-note
patterns and a vocalism abounding in florid ascending and descending
scale passages which set-off
its extraordinary length and variety. Coccia now
unveiled the remarkable operatic continuity, the ostinati
and mastery
of ground-bass that would distinguish all his later stageworks.
This was new.
The orchestra
- moulded by Coccia over four long years - was
replete with wildly dramatic
and extended obbligati, intermezzi and mini-concerti for favoured
wind-players (one of them Giovanni Puzzi) so that its perception
as an Italian
opera
-
Pasta, Curioni
et al, notwithstanding, was viewed with some scepticism by its audience. There were those who considered he had surrendered too
much to romantic ardour. Ambitious, fascinating, full of energy, its best features
did not quite dispel the impression that the composer was yet only
half-way to something new.
Nine pieces were published in vocal score in London, but nothing in full score. They are as follows:
Act 1
In quella torre infausta cavatina (Leicester) Act 1 Sc.2
Quale audacia! in te credei duetto (Maria/Mortimero) Act 1 Sc.7
Scende al core cavatina (Maria) Act 1 Sc.10
Ecco l’indegna (finale primo) Act 1 Sc.12
Act II
Come mi palpita duetto (Maria/Leicester con pertichini) Act II Sc.4
Tremante atterito quartettino (Burleigh/Mortimero/Maria/Leicester) do.
A que’ detti, a qual sembiante duetto(Elisabetta/Leicester) Act II Sc.5
Act III
Tu, cui fanno al ciel diletto duetto (Maria/Melvil) Act III Sc.3
Sposo! ah teco or tu mi vuoi aria finale (Maria) Act III Sc.4
That
these were the most immediately attractive pieces in the score will
be clear, but nearly half of them were brutally dropped during the
bloodbath of performance. Leicester’s cavatina‘In quella
torre infausta’
was cut with its recitative; Maria’s brilliant duet with Mortimero
‘Quale audacia!
in te credei’ also
was cut revealing
that even his most vivid music was not spared; the touching encounter between Maria and Melvil which
forms part of the final dénouement ‘Tu, cui fanno al ciel diletto’ (whose
parallel in Donizetti’s opera would have to be the valedictory duet
‘Or che morente
è il raggio’
between Maria and Talbot) lost its two opening quatrains. Of the
unpublished music most of the Act 1 Introduzione was cut; Paoletto’s
recitative in Act 1 Sc.5 was dropped; as was Maria’s recitative in Sc.6; in Act II all of the opening music - Scenes
1 and 2 and half of Sc.3 were cut; so was all of Sc.6 thus removing Burleigh’s aria con coro;
all of Sc.8 and two-thirds of Sc.9 also vanished depriving Elisabetta
of most of the aria that ends the act. Act III - the shortest in the opera - lost only the
part of the
duet mentioned above. Of the portions that survived we can make several important
comparisons with Donizetti’s later score. Though Coccia’s
Maria
makes an early
appearance in the unfolding of the argument - unlike in Maria Stuarda - it is her “freedom” aria in
the park of Fotheringhay that first invites an immediate comparison:
Coccia Act 1 Sc.10 Parco del Castello di Fotheringay
Ebben,
si goda.
D’un momento di gioia-Oh mira! dove’
Sorgon que’bigi monti, ivi è la dolce
Mia Scozia; è queste nubi
Che discendon di là, fors’han veduta
De’ miei padri la reggia!
E ver la Francia or vanno!-Oh, salutate
Quelle al mio cor sì grate
Soavi sponde, o nuvole leggiere!
Siate voi di Maria la messaggiere.
Donizetti Act 1 Sc.4 Parco di Forteringa
Su’ prati appare
Odorosetta e bella
La famiglia de’fiori...e a me sorride,
E il zeffiro che torna
Da’bei lidi di Francia,
Ch’io gioisca mi dice
Come alla prima gioventù felice.
Oh, nube! che lieve per l’aria t‘aggiri,
Tu reca il mio affetto, to reca i sospiri
Al suolo beato che un dì mi nudri,
Deh, scendi cortese, mi accogli sui vanni,
Mi rendi alla Francia
There are many striking similarities above of course. Coccia’s aria for Maria “Scende al core, inebbria l’alma” follows the same ecstatic vein as the above, but his cabaletta has a totally different mood:
O suon, che ricordi
I giorni ridenti
Di puri contenti,
D’innocui piacer.
Tu scacci dal petto
Le cure segrete,
D’immagini liete
Tu m’empj il pensier
Sung by Pasta con coro upon hearing the hunting horns, which announce the imminent arrival of Elisabetta, it could scarcely be in greater contrast with Donizetti’s violent equivalent:
Nella pace del mesto riposo
Vuol colpirmi di nuovo spavento
Io la chiesi..e vederla non oso...
Tal coraggio nell’alma mi sento!
Elisabetta/Maria
Ecco
l’indegna
Maria
O Sorella! Il ciel
decise
A mio danno, a tuo favore;
Or pietà ti schiuda il core
Per chi tanto, oh dio! soffri....
(.......)
Elis.
Questo loco a te
conviene.
Donizetti Act
1 finale primo
Maria
Ah! Sorella ormai
ti basti
quanto oltraggio a me recasti
Deh! Solleva un’infelice
che riposa sul tuo cor.
Elis.
No, quel loco a
te si addice