The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 23 (2017) No. 1

Pleasurable Passions on the Modern Stage: Cavalli on Video

Wendy Heller*

1. The challenge of Cavalli on video

2. Directorial choices

3. The politics of La Didone

Appendix

Video Examples

References

1. The challenge of Cavalli on video

1.1 The question of how and when to use operas videos in the classroom is complex, regardless of the repertory. We want our students to come to understand opera as the multi-media art form it is, rather than as disembodied excerpts in an anthology, but there are consequences to shifting the focus from the ears to the eyes. A major issue is that the experience of viewing an opera on video can become much like that of watching a movie, where the action on the screen is the central part of the work, while the music is relegated to the background, providing only a secondary layer of meaning. Ideally, our students should bring to their viewing of operas an understanding of the musical style and the historical context, but also develop the ability to analyze the many artistic decisions that go into any given production: set and costume design, dramatic gesture, staging, as well as vocal and instrumental performance practices. We also want students to be aware of the extent to which producers control the experience: videographers decide what part of the action we should be focusing on at any given moment; the translations in the subtitles necessarily provide an interpretation of the text; the packaging, program notes, plot summaries, and video extras (such as interviews with directors) offer varying degrees of information and self-promotion, and are not necessarily based on the best scholarship.

1.2 The situation with Cavalli operas is particularly thorny. Even in the wake of a Cavalli revival that can boast 139 performances of twenty-seven productions between 2014 and 2017 and the publication of a new critical edition of Cavalli’s operas by Bärenreiter (https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/catalogue/complete-editions/cavalli-francesco/), we are dealing with an unfamiliar musical and dramatic style and a barely nascent performing tradition against which a given production might be judged.^[1] At this time only six of Cavalli’s extant operas are available on commercially produced DVDs (see Appendix); while there is much to recommend these both musically and dramatically, the small representation of Cavalli’s oeuvre, and the wide distribution of these DVDs, allows them to play a disproportionate role not only in shaping ideas about Cavalli opera, but also in codifying current performing practices as correct, or even “authentic.”

1.3 Indeed, unlike the operas of Handel, Purcell, Lully, or Rameau, with Cavalli there is far less consensus among conductors on how the music should be played or—to put it another way—whether the principles of historical performance should be adhered to for operas that come down to us in manuscripts that are skeletal at best. Although archival evidence unambiguously shows us that the Venetian opera orchestra comprised only strings and continuo, in each of these productions the conductors have increased the size of the orchestra, adding wind and brass instruments (in the manner of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo) as well as percussion, and frequently composing new obbligato parts that tend to obscure the text.^[2]

1.4 The publication of critical editions should be helping conductors make informed decisions about scoring, cuts, and transpositions, but this is not necessarily the case. Because the manuscripts seem so simple and bare-boned, consisting largely of voice and continuo parts with an occasional ritornello for strings, conductors who would never think of performing a Handel opera without consulting an authoritative critical edition have turned the complex task of editing Cavalli into a do-it-yourself project. It is all too easy to use the Cavalli manuscripts, which sometimes contain multiple layers representing different productions, to create an edition that not only has errors in the text, pitches, and rhythm, but might even conflate two or more different versions of the opera, thus fashioning an opera that is at best dramatically unpersuasive and at worst nonsensical.^[3]

2. Directorial choices

2.1 As is the case with so many Baroque operas, directors who take on Cavalli must grapple with the oddities of librettos that are rife with multiple plots, arcane classical references, sexual innuendo, and the juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy (familiar to modern audiences from Shakespeare). Basic decisions about the story line, plus the choice of settings and costumes, can profoundly impact the way in which the opera is interpreted. The production of Il Giasone by Sardelli and Clément, for instance, sought to create a new mythological realm that avoids reference to any given historical moment, reflected not only in the industrial elements in the set that have no distinctive architectural identity, but also in the mélange of costumes, each of which captures something distinctive about the characters, as is apparent in the photos from the production (http://mariameclement.com/en/IlGiasone.html#): Ercole (Hercules) is a cross between a football player and primitive superhero, the stuttering Demo is equipped with rabbit ears, the nurse Delfa is a drag queen with vulgar prosthetic breasts. And since the mythological Jason had to subdue the fierce Colchis bulls to regain the Golden Fleece, it is perhaps not surprising that he sings his Act 2, scene 3 duet with Medea (who is clad in a sequined gown) in the garb of a toreador, as shown here: https://youtu.be/TXiGF5G56Is.

2.2 Of the two productions of La Didone, the one by Fabio Biondi and Carlo Majer takes the more classical approach, grappling quite seriously with the opera’s Virgilian legacy. See, for instance, Hecuba’s stirring recitative monologue in Act 1, scene 7, as she laments the death of her daughter Cassandra and the destruction of Troy: https://youtu.be/4Ah0r-fl0D4.^[4] La Calisto (Jacobs and Wernicke), the very first Cavalli DVD to be released, underscores the genre’s commedia dell’arte roots, while for Elena, director Jean-Yves Ruf opted for a “timeless character, even if certain costumes evoke associations with the seventeenth century or with distant lands.”^[5] David Alden’s production of Ercole Amante, which Cavalli had composed for the marriage of Louis XIV, juxtaposes evocations of Versailles with macabre touches, such as toys, as in this excerpt from Act 3, scene 4: https://youtu.be/ILV6iqwZeGg?list=PLD37D5F0412F8D261.

2.3 These directorial choices have a profound impact on all aspects of the production, from basic notions of what constitutes humor to fundamental aspects of performance practice, including vocal style, ornamentation, or even the choice of continuo instruments. What happens to seventeenth-century texts when they are conflated with contemporary notions of humor, modern jokes, twenty-first century props, and references to contemporary mores? Consider, for instance, the problem of cross-dressing as manifest in the duet between Giove and Diana, in Act 1, scene 5 of Jacobs’s and Wernicke’s production of La Calisto, where Giove, disguised as his daughter Diana, attempts to seduce the young nymph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP2B4DZMDQ8&feature=youtu.be&t=4m23s.^[6] By having Giove sing the role in falsetto, Jacobs and Wernicke turn this into a moment of burlesque that corresponds with their somewhat bawdy notion of commedia dell’arte, the plucked strings in the continuo only heightening the gender incongruity. This could not be more different from the version sung by Janet Baker and Ileana Cotrubas at Glyndebourne in 1970, as staged by Peter Hall and reconstructed by Raymond Leppard: https://youtu.be/vZToJPUxEz4?t=24m52s.^[7]

2.4 The contrast is not only in the style of playing and singing (Leppard, as is well known, opted for a large orchestra with modern instruments and a rich orchestral sound, colored with exotic harp glissandi, that eschews all current early music conventions) but also in the candor of the eroticism and the insidious way in which Baker, as the false Diana, assumes Giove’s predatory manner to prey on Calisto’s innocence, underscoring the emphasis on female desire that is built into the opera.^[8]

2.5 The explicit sensuality in the librettos, which Cavalli’s lyrical voice captures so brilliantly, also presents challenges to directors and those of who use the videos in the classroom. Clément’s staging of “Delizie contenti” from Act 1, scene 2 of Il Giasone vividly reflects the decadence of the hero, who has failed to secure the Golden Fleece because he chose to spend most of the past year sleeping with a woman (Medea) whose face he has never seen.^[9] In this lush, languid aria, with lilting string ritornellos, an exhausted Giasone, lying naked in bed, may be remembering his nocturnal activities, but as hands begin to emerge from under the sheets—first one, then another, a third, and a fourth—a quasi-supernatural erotic encounter unfolds in front of the viewer’s eyes: https://youtu.be/FWWsHP7OooM. Might this have been inspired by the somewhat more conventional 1988 Innsbruck production, conducted and sung beautifully by René Jacobs (https://youtu.be/9cnjTi152jI?t=7m20s), where the hero’s caresses of his own body seem so natural and appropriately self-indulgent and auto-erotic? And a completely different approach can be seen in the production by Australia’s Pinchgut Opera Company (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyJVogHXNBI): Giasone is placed in a pink bathtub wearing only a helmet, and is carried out onto the stage by sailors brandishing pink towels—surely a comic reference to his effeminacy (underscored by the transposition of the aria to a higher register) that was designed to evoke a laugh, but which contrasts jarringly with the languid intensity of the aria.^[10]

3. The politics of La Didone

3.1 But what about the serious side of Cavalli’s operas? Indeed, one of the greatest directorial challenges has do to with the treatment of potentially volatile political issues that are often raised in Venetian operas, only to be suppressed in the lieto fine. This is the case with Cavalli’s setting of Giovanni Francesco Busenello’s libretto La Didone, inspired by the first four books of Virgil’s Aeneid. Unlike Virgil’s Dido, who commits suicide in flames, the Venetian Didone only contemplates suicide before she faints and is rescued by her rejected suitor Iarba, whom she then agrees to marry.

3.2 What is so fascinating is not only the comparison with Nahum Tate and Henry Purcell’s Dido, whose bloodless death is somewhat more faithful to Virgil, but the way in which both the Biondi and Majer production (Video 1) and the one by Christie and Hervieu Léger (Video 2) subvert the happy ending by making Didone an unwilling participant in the lieto fine, who accepts her new husband with stoic resignation and despair rather than the joy so evident in Cavalli’s music. (In the latter production, Didone even smears herself with the blood of the dead stag that has been—inexplicably—on the stage for almost the entire opera.)

3.3 In the context of twenty-first century gender politics, this is in many respects a viable solution. As I noted long ago, there is something deeply disturbing about Didone’s acquiescence here whereby an exceptional woman, the Queen of Carthage, is silenced by the end of the opera into a compliant wife; if we take race into account, it becomes still more complicated.^[11] At the same time, we must surely acknowledge the fact that in seventeenth-century Venice there would have been no ambiguity in this happy ending: Didone would have been obliged to celebrate her union with Iarba, even though it necessarily meant a loss of autonomy. And perhaps this is the biggest challenge that we face in using opera productions from today to study the music of the past: how can we honor the operas’ historical legacy and the societal expectations that the composer and librettist surely shared with their audience, while also taking account of today’s vastly different social and political concerns? This is the puzzle we should present to our students, who are more than capable of understanding this kind of dissonance that is integral to the survival of Baroque opera today.

Appendix

Appendix. Operas by Cavalli on DVD

Video Examples

Video 1. La Didone, excerpt from final scene, Biondi and Majer production

Video 2. La Didone, excerpt from final scene, Christie and Hervieu Léger production