LINER NOTES

In 1853, Giuseppe Verdi presented the premieres of two operas: Il Trovatore in Rome in January, and La Traviata in Venice in March. While it took more than a year for La Traviata to enter the repertory, Il Trovatore became an overnight hit and remained one of Verdi’s most successful operas.

From El Trovador to Il Trovatore to Le Trouvère

The libretto of the opera is taken from El Trovador, an enormously popular drama by the Spanish playwright Antonio García Gutiérrez. This original work, “in poetry and prose,” as Gutiérrez described it, was divided into five acts, designated as “Five Days” in that it took place in Spain in the year 1409. Of the five principal characters in the play, four are young people, Doña Leonor de Sesé, the most beautiful of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting; Don Guillén, her brother; the Conde de Luna; and the rebellious troubadour, Don Manrique. An older woman, Azucena, is the gypsy who raised Manrique from infancy and claimed to be his mother. The plot turns on events of the year 1390, when Azucena’s mother was accused of laying a curse on the young son of the elder Conde de Luna. When the little boy died, the gypsy was hunted down and condemned to die at the stake. Azucena, her daughter, determined to get revenge, snatched De Luna’s other child from his crib and disappeared with him. In the horror of the moment, as she watched her mother’s ghastly death, Azucena threw her own baby boy on the fire, thinking it was De Luna’s son. She then raised Manrique as her own child, never telling him that he was not of her own blood. The play begins when the adult Manrique and Doña Leonor fall in love. Instead, her brother orders her to marry De Luna, who is madly in love with her, “perdidamente enamorado,” as Gutiérrez wrote.

Verdi’s imagination was caught at once by the twisted story and particularly by Azucena, the strongest figure in the play. Salvatore Cammarano, Verdi’s librettist, transformed this drama into Il Trovatore by changing important aspects of the action and eliminating several minor characters and one important figure, Leonora’s brother. The basic structure of the plot, however, was retained. Il Trovatore, which had its world premiere at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 19 January 1853, became wildly popular. About it, Verdi later said, “Go to the Indies or to the heart of Africa and you will hear Il Trovatore.”

By 1853, Verdi had worked often in Paris and had even lived there for nearly two years, from the summer of 1847 until the summer of 1849. He returned to oversee and conduct Il Trovatore on 23 December 1854, at the Théâtre des Italiens. Less than two years later, he signed a contract with the Théâtre Impérial de l’Opéra, which engaged him to produce Il Trovatore in a French translation there. The agreement between Verdi and Alphonse Royer, the director of the Opéra, is dated 22 September 1856. Verdi was then staying at the Hôtel Sydenham in Rue Choiseul; with him was his lover, the former soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, whom he married in 1859. According to the terms of the contract, Verdi agreed to write ballet music for the production and direct the opera. He also agreed to “oppose performances” of Il Trovatore at the Thé‰tre des Italiens in Paris because of the damage that would ensue should the rival theater stage it in the same season. The French translation of the opera would be called Le Trouvère.

As Verdi was preparing for this production, he was also working on Simon Boccanegra, the world premiere of which was to be given in Venice in March 1857. Final revisions of the Boccanegra libretto were made while Verdi was in Paris. At the same time, he was revising Stiffelio (1850) into Aroldo, which was to be produced in Rimini in the summer of 1857. In spite of his important Italian commitments, the composer had to carry out the terms of his contract with the Opéra and remain in Paris until 15 January. For Le Trouvère, as for Aroldo, he would be paid as if it were a new work. His fee at the Opéra would be 10,000 francs, half to be paid while the work was in production, and the other half to be paid on the day of the final dress rehearsal. The cast was stipulated by contract. The leading soprano in the production was to be Giuseppina Medori, a woman of fashion-plate glamour whom Verdi had once considered for Violetta in the world premiere of La Traviata. Believing that she would be his Léonore in Paris, Verdi asked his Venetian friend and librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, for a report on her recent performances. Verdi’s Azucena would be Adelaide Borghi-Mamo, a strong young Italian contralto who had sung Azucena in Paris under Verdi’s direction at the Thé‰tre des Italiens. Among others mentioned in the contract was Louis Gueymard, who had made his debut at the Opéra in 1848 and had established himself as a leading tenor there. The baritone chosen for the role of Comte de Luna was Marc Bonnehée, who had created the role of Guy de Monfort in Verdi’s Les Vêpres siciliennes in 1855 at the Opéra. The translation was by Emilien (Emiliano) Pacini.

In October the Emperor and Empress invited Verdi for a visit to their country residence. He then hurried back to Paris to work on the production. Before rehearsals began at the Opéra, he learned that Medori would not be his Léonore. Instead, the role was assigned to the Belgian soprano Pauline Lauters Gueymard. The wife of the leading tenor of Le Trouvère, she later sang the first Eboli in Don Carlos at the Opéra and then was Amneris in a landmark Aida in Paris in the mid-1870s. The role of Fernand was taken by the bass Prospero Dérivis, who had sung a leading role in the world premiere of Verdi’s Nabucco at La Scala in Milan in 1842.

The premiere of Le Trouvère took place not in the Palais Garnier, which had not yet been built, but in Salle Le Peletier, on 12 January 1857. Alan Schrager reports that the box office receipts for that performance were 6358.93 francs, of which Verdi got 375 francs. The opera was given eight times that month. Beyond his share of the receipts, the composer was paid 10,000 francs for the “cession” of the opera, for ceding his rights to the theater, which had the exclusive right to give Le Trouvère. During that same January, the unstoppable company at the Italiens gave thirteen performances of Verdi’s operas: Il Trovatore, La Traviata, Ernani and Rigoletto, which had its Paris premiere there on 19 January, one week after Le Trouvère opened. These Italian-language productions were given in the Salle Ventadour, so that five productions of his works played in Paris almost simultaneously.

The composer’s most important addition to Le Trouvère was the ballet, which he inserted into the third part (Act III) [CD 1, Tracks 22–23] of the opera, which is set in de Luna’s military camp. Verdi wrote four numbers for the ballet, the Pas des Bohémiennes; the Sevillana; La Bohémienne; and a Galop. Perhaps the most effective of the other changes he made is the extended finale of the opera. In the score of Le Trouvère, Number 23 is “Suite de Trio, Scène Finale” [ CD 2, Tracks 14–15]. It includes Léonore’s death, which is followed by a repeat of phrases from the “Miserere.” Azucena awakens, crying “O, heaven! This song of death! My son! Where is he? My son! My son! Ah! They are going to kill him, kill my son! My God, have pity! Have pity on him! Have pity on me!” As she sings, Manrique is heard from offstage, calling out his blessing on her, then addressing the dead Léonore: “I shall follow you to heaven!” The Count’s lines are: “He will die! He will die! The axe is ready, and I have had my revenge!” To Azucena, he shouts, “Look!” And she responds, “Dead! He is dead! He was your brother! Heaven has avenged my mother!” Di Luna cries, “O, terror!” as the curtain falls.

The finale of El Trovador is more violent than that of Le Trouvère. As Manrique is executed offstage, the audience hears the axe fall. Azucena cries out, “Alas! Alas! This blood!” De Luna shouts to his henchmen, “More lights on the victim! More lights on him!” Azucena then shrieks, “Yes! Yes! Lights! He is your brother, you imbecile!” Enraged, De Luna hurls her to the ground, shouting, “My brother! Curses!” She utters her last words before dying: “Now you are avenged!”

In fact, what Franco Abbiati called a “lightly reinforced finale” proves in performance to be quite startling. The finale of Le Trouvère was used in the 1993 Italian language production of Il Trovatore given in Belfast by Opera Northern Ireland. There, the expanded prison scene showed that Azucena actually had time to reveal Manrico’s true identity to De Luna. She might have saved him, but she did not. It is a harrowing finale.

The Singers on the Recording

Jane Morlet, who sings Léonore, was born on 22 January 1879, and was the daughter of a well-known opera and operetta baritone. She was named after her mother, a soprano. The younger Jane Morlet made her debut in 1906 in Monte Carlo, in the posthumous world premiere of Bizet’s early comic opera Don Procopio. From 1908, she appeared at the Thé‰tre Trianon-Lyrique in Paris, where she sang in the first performance in French of Leoncavallo’s Zaza (1911). On the cover of the 1912 recording of Le Trouvère, she is identified as an artist from the Trianon-Lyrique, where she sang major and minor roles until 1916. Later, she turned to operetta, the legitimate stage and films, where she remained active until the 1950s. In addition to Le Trouvère, she recorded a complete La Traviata in 1912.

Catherine (Ketty) Lapeyrette, who sings Azucena, was born on 23 July 1884 at Oloron-Ste. Marie in the Pyrenees. After studying at the Paris Conservatory, she made her debut at the Opéra as Dalila in January 1908. Until 1941, she remained on the roster there, singing major mezzo roles in La Favorite, Hamlet, Rigoletto, Aida and Falstaff and appeared in all four operas of Wagner’s Ring. She also sang in the Paris premieres of Der Rosenkavalier (Annina, 1927), and Elektra (Klytämnestra, 1932). After engagements at La Scala in Milan and in Amsterdam, she sang in London in the Covent Garden Coronation Season of 1937. At the end of her career, she served as a professor of voice at the conservatory (1944–1955). She died in Paris on 2 October 1960.

Manrique is sung by Charles Fontaine, a Belgian tenor who was born in Antwerp on 24 May 1878. He studied at the Brussels Conservatory, then made his opera debut in the season of 1903–1904 at the Thé‰tre Royal Français in The Hague, where he sang Don José, Faust, Julien, Des Grieux and other roles. His first London appearance was at Covent Garden in 1909, when he was Samson in theater’s first staged performance of Samson et Dalila; other assignments there were Faust and Armide. Fontaine’s Paris Opéra debut followed on 7 July 1911, when he sang Raoul in Les Huguenots. He remained a leading artist with that company until 1930, singing the operas of many composers, from Rossini to Wolf-Ferrari.

After 1914, Fontaine also appeared frequently at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. His career abroad included several roles in Monte Carlo (1916) and two seasons with the Chicago Opera (1918–1920). There his assignments included Manon, Faust, Hériodade and Raoul Gunsbourg’s Le Vieil Aigle (all with Yvonne Gall) and Carmen, Cléopâtre, Thaïs, Louise and Février’s Gismonda (all with Mary Garden). He also sang Messager’s Madame Chrysanthème there, with the famed Japanese soprano Tamaki Miura. Fontaine died on 8 June 1955.

Also Belgian was the baritone Jean Noté, the Comte de Luna, born in Tournai on 6 May 1859. After studying at the Ghent Conservatory, he made his concert debut in 1883; his opera debut followed in Lille in 1885. Noté sang for several years in the provinces, then won a contract with the Paris Opéra, where he made his debut in the spring of 1893, in the title role of Rigoletto. For the next twenty-nine years, he was a versatile pillar of that company. On 31 May 1904, he sang the Comte de Luna at the Palais Garnier premiere of Le Trouvère.

Noté reached Covent Garden in 1897 and sang seven major roles there. During his single season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, he appeared in ten consecutive Sunday concerts and twenty opera performances. His assignments included Faust and Manon; he was Escamillo in Carmen on the night of Maria Gay’s debut, in a production that included Geraldine Farrar as Micaëla and Caruso as Don José, with Tosacnini conducting. Frances Alda was the Gilda to Noté’s Rigoletto, which had Louise Homer as Maddalena and Alessandro Bonci as the Duke. The veteran Noté, who made many recordings, was honored by the French with the Légion d’honneur and by his native Belgium with the Médaille du Roi Albert. He sang at the Opéra until just three weeks before his death, with the Rigoletto of 11 March 1922 as his last performance. He died on 1 April.

On this recording, Fernand is sung by Robert Marvini, who sang in Paris at the Opéra and at the Comique, but was best known for his appearances in Monte Carlo, where he remained a stalwart, singing a surprising number of roles in a career that lasted nearly thirty years (1909–1928).

Among the minor roles, Marie Gantéri sings Inès. She made her Paris Opéra debut in 1907 as Poussette in Manon. Louis Nansen, the Ruiz, also sang minor roles there from 1907 until 1920. His real name, Georges Noël, was modified to become his stage name: Georges Nansen. Only on record labels is he listed as “Louis” Nansen.

The conductor François (originally Franz) Ruhlmann, like the tenor and baritone on this recording, was a native of Belgium. Ruhlmann was born in Brussels on 11 January 1868. Study at the Brussels Conservatory was followed by engagements in Liège and Antwerp. The assistant conductor at the Thé‰tre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, he later was named as music director of the Opéra-Comique (1905–1913); he then moved to the Opéra in 1916. He remained there until the late 1940s.

Credits and Acknowledgements:

My grateful thanks go to William Ashbrook, Robert Baxter, Thomas G. Kaufman and James McPherson for biographical notes on the singers and conductor and for other help with this essay; and to Ellen Wolf for lending me the score of Le Trouvère. Alan Schrager shared his extensive research on box office figures and Verdi’s earnings.

Bibliographical references: Franco Abbiati, Giuseppe Verdi; A. Alberti, Verdi intimo. Carteggio di Giuseppe Verdi con il conte Opprandino Arrivabene; Julien Budden, The Operas of Verdi; Ursula Günther, “Documents inconnus concernant les relations de Verdi avec l’Opéra de Paris,” in Atti dei III Congresso Internazionale di Studi Verdiani, [1972], published by the Instituto di Studi Verdiani, Parma, 1974, pp. 564 ff.; David Rosen, Le Trouvère in Opera News, 4 April 1977; and Michael Scott, The Record of Singing.

© Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, 2000