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The “hache sanglante”
of the Duke of Alba
Part
2 - The structure and numbers of the opera
Alexander Weatherson
The second part of
an article
that appeared in Newsletter
102, October 2007, pp. 17-21.
The first part, a history
of the opera can be found here
and the performance history since 1950 here.
The structure of the opera holds few
surprises. Act I, set in the Grand Place of Brussels consists of an
Introduction, an entrance aria for the prima donna, a trio for Amelia, Daniele
and the Duke, and a duet for the Duke and Marcello. Act II, set in the
Brasserie of Daniele, is predominantly choral, there is another aria for
Amelia, a duet for Amelia and Marcello and ends with a concertato. Act
III set within a room in the Hotel de Ville of Brussels with a view over
the Grand Place opens with an aria for the Duke, followed by a duet for the
Duke and Marcello, there is a trio for Marcello, the Duke and Sandoval, and it
ends with a quartet and concertato, while Act IV is set in Amelia’s Oratory
with the big aria for Marcello, followed by a duet for Marcello and Amelia,
after which the scene changes to the Port of Anvers; there is a chorus, a
march, an arioso of farewell for the Duke. the attempted assassination, and the
tragic ending with its wholly irresistible trio-finale and choral envoi. These
last two acts including some music selected by Donizetti himself from his
earlier operas but very extensive tailoring by other hands.
As a whole Il duca
d’Alba conforms effortlessly to the spectacular receipe expected of grand
opéra in the Paris of his day, except that the mandatory ballet - projected to
follow the Introduction to Act I - is missing, the allotted pages in the
autograph manuscript are blank (so it would seem that the music was never
composed - rather than that the ballet music was re-appropriated for use
elsewhere). In detail there are surprises: large sections of the livret
by Scribe were never set to music, it would seem that the literary integrity
proposed by the poet got short shift from the composer at the very start and
that a predictable series of romantic Italian set-pieces with elaborate
repetitions took its place even at the earliest stages of composition. Thus the
progress of Donizetti towards a Parisian modus vivendi was less in evidence
than might have been expected. True, the major arias in Il duca d’Alba
are much plainer than usual, there is very little fioriture, and even in
the Italian version recitatives tend to be declamatory (but few of these were
written by Donizetti!). What vocal elaboration there is, is transparently the
work of Salvi and his trio of experts. It is clear that Donizetti made
considerable efforts to blunt those self-indulgent Italianate cabalette
likely to upset French sensibility but, in Il duca d’Alba Salvi simply
put them back in the score, and with an almost indecent enthusiasm (and with
the unhappy side-effect in our day that cabalette or strette
actually composed by Donizetti have been eliminated by eager-beaver revisori
)
A breakdown of the
above items is as follows:
Act I
Coro d’Introduzione
‘Espagne, Espagne...O
mon pays! Je bois ˆ toi!’ (the Scribe original text)
'Espagna, Espagna...o
suol natal, io brindo a te!’ (Salvi)
[usually reduced to a
fragment in modern performances]
Cavatina Amelia
‘Au sein des mers et
battu par l’orage’ (Scribe)
‘In seno al mar,
preda all’atra tempesta’(Salvi)
[an elaborate vocal
sequence supplied by Scribe and set by Donizetti, including a cantabile, a
tempo-di-mezzo and a cabaletta ‘Coll’audacia l’uom risponda’ with a vast choral
reprise divided by a staccato choral bridge-passage, this second section almost
invariably cut in modern editions of the opera despite the fact that it is
mostly original Donizetti]
Terzetto Duca
/Amelia/Daniele
‘Race faible et
poltronne’ (le Duc) (Scribe)
‘Popol flacco, vil,
abbietto’ (Duca) (Salvi)
[Scribe envisages a
quartet to follow this between the Duc/Henri/Daniel/Hélène but this has been
eliminated in the Salvi score]
Duetto Duca/Marcello
‘Punis mon
audace!’(Henri) /’J’aime son audace’ (Le Duc) (Scribe)
‘Un vil io non
sono’(Marcello) /’Dei baldi ardimenti’ (Duca) (Salvi)
[Donizetti has
compacted the two main sections of Scribe’s text into one cantabile but has set
the stretta conceived by Scribe]
‘Je suis libre et sur
la terre’(Henri) /’Téméraire! Téméraire! Par le ciel, obéis moi’ (le Duc)
(Scribe)
‘Di me stesso io son
signore’(Marcello) /’Di perdono torna degno. Obbedir tu devi a me!. (Duca) (Salvi)
Act II
Coro
‘Liqueur traitresse’
(Scribe)
‘Liquor, che inganna’
(Salvi)
[This chorus, merely
sketched in the autograph but completed by Salvi, is, with slight variations,
repeated frequently in this act as in Scribe’s original]
Scena e terzettino
della Ronda
[This is a fleeting
trio, often cut, but unmistakeably by Donizetti]
Aria Amelia
‘Ton ombre murmure, ô
mon père’ (Scribe)
‘Ombra paterna, a me
perdona’ (Salvi)
[Donizetti composed
this touching Romance in accordance with Scribe’s text, that is, without
a cabaletta but with a contrasting centre-section]
Duetto
Amelia/Marcello
‘Oui longtemps en
silence’(Hélène/Henri) (Scribe)
‘Ah!si,l’ardente
affanno.(Marcello)‘Anch’io pietade eguale’(Amelia) (Salvi)
[Scribe’s text
proposes many quasi-unison passages between the lovers, these survive only in
the jaunty stretta to this duet but whose music is improbably by
Donizetti
‘Noble martyr de la
patrie’ (Hélène/Henri) (Scribe)
‘Del patrio suolo’
(unison Marcello/Amelia) (Salvi)]
Concertato: (Scena
della congiura)
‘Les derniers feux
meurent dans l’ombre’ (Trio et choeur) (Scribe)
‘E spenta omai
l’estrema face’ (Terzetto con coro) (Salvi)
‘Des armes...Des
armes...Nous le jurons’ (Tous) (Scribe)
‘Dell’armi! ah si...
dell’armi...Noi lo giuriamo’ (Tutti) (Salvi)
[This oath-taking
scene is the longest concerted scene of the opera, its principal themes are
certainly by Donizetti - the Hymn to Liberty is derived from Maria Stuarda
- but much elaborated, orchestrated, and augmented by other hands, it is
followed by the arrival of the Duke’s soldiers and the arrest of the
dissidents.]
Act III
Aria Duca
‘Au sein de la
puissance’ (Duc) (Scribe)
‘Nei miei superbi
gaudi’ (Duca) (Salvi)
[The beautiful
introduction and recitative that precedes this important aria were not supplied
by Donizetti; the vocal line of the cantabile ‘Nei miei superbi gaudi’ was
derived by Donizetti from the cantabile of the aria of Zarete ‘Qui pel figlio
una madre gridava’ from Il paria (1829) whose emotional substance
presumably struck a chord when he was composing Le Duc d’Albe so many
years later, Salvi apparently based the missing orchestration of this cantabile
upon the score of Il paria. Scribe conceived this aria as a Romance in
three strophe, the Salvi/Zanardini version of Il duca d’Alba has added an
unconvincing cabaletta ‘Mi arridon vittorie’]
Duetto Duca/Marcello
‘Je venais pour
braver sa rage’ (Henri) (Scribe)
‘Ne volea sfidar lo
sdegno’ (Marcello) (Salvi)
[The Duke shows his
son the letter from his dead mother]
‘Toi. qui
n’épargnes rien, si ta hache sanglante,
Rencontre Henri de
Bruge, honneur de son pays,
Epargne au moins
cette tête innocente,
C’est celle de ton
fils!’
(Scribe)
‘Tu, per cui nulla
è sacro - se la fatal scure
Scontra Marcel di
Bruge - onor del patrio suol,
Risparmia il capo suo
- è quel del tuo figlio!’ (Salvi)
[Sections missing
from this duet in the autograph were in fact present in the collection of
Donizetti papers assembled by Charles Malherbe - now in the Bibliothèque
Nationale - which appears to have been used by Salvi to complete his version of
the music, but the whole is much shorter than the Scribe original]
Terzetto
Marcello/Duca/Sandoval
‘O sort fatal! O
peine extrème’ (Henri)
‘Oh sorte ria! -
fatal martoro!’ (Marcello)
[This trio of
consternation on the part of Marcello, pity on the part of the Duke, and anger
on that of Sandoval, has been amplified once again, it would appear, using
sketches in the Malherbe collection]
Quartetto and
Concertato /Tutti
‘Terrible lumière’
(Hélène, Daniel, Conjures)
‘Squarciato è il
mistero!’ (Amelia, Daniele e i Congiurati)
[The vocal line of
the autograph has been inordinately extended,also making use of
material to be found in the Malherbe collection]
Act IV
Aria Marcello
‘Ange des cieux’
(Henri) (Scribe)
‘Angelo casto e bel’
(Marcello) (Salvi)
[‘Ange des cieux’
having been taken out of the unfinished score to become ‘Ange si pur’ in La
Favorite, its replacement has been the ex-novo ‘Angelo casto e bel’, which
together with its highly effective prelude and recitative, is one of the very
few items in Il duca d’Alba that has
no Donizettian
source: its real author is not known]
Duetto
Marcello/Amelia
‘Ecoute un instant ma
prière’ (Henri) (Scribe)
‘Ascolta! Ascolta!’
(Marcello) (Salvi)
[The duet is present
in the autograph manuscript but without recitative or orchestration]
Coro
‘O rive chérie/De
l’Andalousie’ (Scribe)
‘Qual vaga fanciulla’
(Salvi)
[Not composed by
Donizetti who has merely noted possible themes]
Arietta Duca
‘Je pars! Adieu donc
ma conquête’ (Duc) (Scribe) [Originally:‘Je pars adieu donc’]
‘Addio! addio,
conquistata mia terra’ (Duca) (Salvi)
[Vocal line only
composed by Donizetti]
Finale ultimo
(Marcello/Ameilia/Duca)
‘La gloire vous
appelle...L’Espagne vous attend’ (Henri) (Scribe)
‘Con le tue labbra
aflorami’ (Marcello) (Salvi)
[The theme of the
arioso for the dying Marcello was recycled by Donizetti from the arioso of the
dying Ghino in Act II of Pia de’Tolomei (1837), but both he and Scribe
intended an aria finale for the Duc to follow it, a larghetto ‘Mon fils,
Espoir de ma vieillesse’ an aria not present in the Salvi version of the opera
but the autograph music of which exists in outline in the Bibliothèque
Nationale, seemingly detached from the score in the Casa Ricordi. As a
compensation, the final imprecations of the Duca and the joy of the Flemish
throng at his departure are more virulent and effective in Il duca d’Alba
than in Scribe’s original]
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