Maugham and Music: Reflections

Being passionately interested in both Maugham and music, it seems natural that I should be fascinated by Maugham's musical taste and the musical references in his works. Some random reflections follow.

Unfortunately or not, Maugham has written very little on music. One of the very few instances in his non-fiction occurs in my favourite essay “Reflections on a Certain Book” from the collection The Vagrant Mood (1952). Here Maugham deals with an infinitely compelling question, namely the aesthetic emotion and its value, and just by the way he gives an explanation why, when arts are concerned, he always wrote of painting, and of course writing, but virtually never of music:

In any case I would not venture to speak of music; the peculiar gift which enables someone to invent it is to me the most mysterious of the processes which produce a work of art.

When they are not obscenely preoccupied with his sexuality, Maugham biographers deign to mention something about his tastes. In terms of music, Maugham seems to have been fan mostly of the Classical and Romantic periods, with occasional glimpses into Baroque or Modernism. He was a great opera lover, apparently with a special affinity for Wagner but by no means confined exclusively to him. Some of the most precious bits in Selina Hastings' The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham (2009) are excerpts from his letters in which he mentions that he attended Strauss' Rosenkavalier and Verdi's Requiem. Reportedly, Maugham was a regular visitor to the Wagner festival in Bayreuth. It is tantalising to speculate whether he attended the legendary performances under the baton of Arturo Toscanini, the first Italian to disturb the German hegemony, during the 1930/31 festivals; several generations of Wagnerians have regretted the fact that no recording, however poor, was preserved.

I remember seeing somewhere – probably in Calder’s biography – a questionnaire filled by Maugham in which he mentions Mozart and Wagner as his favourite composers. Mozart is an obvious choice if one seeks a broad parallel with Maugham's writing. If there is a musical equivalent of ''lucidity, simplicity and euphony'', it must be Mozart. If there ever was a composer who expressed a wider range of human emotions with fewer notes, I have yet to hear about him. Change ''words'' for ''notes'' and ''writer'' for ''composer'' and you get the best description of Maugham in one sentence I can think of.

Interestingly, there are very few references among Maugham's writings of Mozart. I can think of only one, in his introduction to Great Modern Reading (1943). He wrote that he can get an equal amount of pleasure from an opera by Mozart as well as from one by Puccini, but it is a different kind of pleasure. It is certainly true that Mozart and Puccini are very different, but if Willie implied that Puccini's operas are inferior to Mozart's, I disagree. At any rate, he obviously was familiar with several operas by each of these composers.

Wagner is quite another story. Here the aforementioned parallel is impossible to be established, which is no big loss since it is a very tenuous one. Wagner is an antithesis of simplicity and sometimes – when performed badly, which is often – lucidity and especially euphony are the last things one thinks of while listening to his long and complex music dramas. But his best creations, when performed superbly, are surely among the greatest achievements of Western civilisation.

Perhaps, one might speculate, Maugham was attracted by the fact that Wagner was a writer. It is well-known that he wrote all his libretti as well as a huge amount of prose (non-fiction). Unfortunately, Wagner was as terrible a writer as he was a great composer; the little I have tried to read of him, in English or in German, is just about unreadable. The long poems he set to music, however, are often exciting and moving, if very difficult to read in original and often scorned by the critics. Unlike Maugham, who was perfectly content to use the old resources of English, Wagner invented his own German language, a kind of ''Wagnerisch''. On the other hand, what is more likely, Wagner's literary ambitions may well have had nothing to do with Maugham's attraction to his music. It doesn’t work that way. Music is the most emotional and least intellectual of all arts. It is entirely self-sufficient and independent of external factors. If it doesn’t grip you right away, nothing will help. If it does, then you may start deepen your deepen your appreciation.

Among the great composers, Wagner is by far the most often encountered name among Maugham's writings. Indeed, a first person narrator in one of his short stories (“The Alien Corn”) once said that he visited a Wagner festival in Germany, which was most probably true and it must have been the Bayreuth festival. In Strictly Personal (1942), a vastly underrated book, Maugham dedicates a whole page or so to his dachshunds in the Villa Mauresque. All of them were named after heroes and heroines from Wagner's operas, and it is entirely characteristic of Maugham to call the saintly Elsa from Lohengrin ''exasperating''.

Then there is the short story “The Voice of the Turtle” from the collection The Mixture as Before (1940). Not one of Maugham's best short stories, certainly, but it has one of the most haunting endings I have ever read. It is also the most explicit Wagnerian reference in all of Maugham, with a two-line quotation from the original German text:

The prima donna was standing in the window, with her back to the lighted room, and she looked out at the darkly shining sea. The cedar made a lovely pattern against the sky. The night was soft and balmy. Miss Glaser played a couple of bars. A cold shiver ran down my spine. La Falterona gave a little start as she recognized the music, and I felt her gather herself together.

Mild und leise wie er lächelt

Wie das Auge hold er öffnet.

It was Isolde's death song... It did not matter now that instead of an orchestral accompaniment she had only the thin tinkle of a piano. The notes of the heavenly melody fell upon the still air and travelled over the water. In that too-romantic scene, in that lovely night, the effect was shattering. La Falterona's voice, even now, was exquisite in its quality, mellow and crystalline; and she sang with wonderful emotion, so tenderly, with such tragic, beautiful anguish that my heart melted within me. I had a most awkward lump in my throat when she finished, and looking at her I saw that tears were streaming down her face. I did not want to speak. She stood quite still, looking out at the ageless sea.

I often read this short story only because of these final lines (which is unjust, for it contains many other fine moments). Afterwards I usually listen to Isoldes Liebestod – one of the most shattering pieces of music ever composed – and I find it even more incredibly affecting than usual. Don’t take my word for it. Just listen to Jessye Norman, Waltraud Meier or Birgit Nilsson. If you prefer the orchestral version, usually played together with the prelude as a concert piece sanctioned by Wagner himself, give an ear to Karajan, Solti and Toscanini.

Maugham must have been fond of Beethoven, too. (It is indeed very hard to resist Beethoven. He is overwhelming). In the same short story, he makes hilarious reference to La Falterona and the Fifth Symphony:

Once at a concert to which I went with her she slept all through the Fifth Symphony, and I was charmed to hear her during the interval telling people that Beethoven stirred her so much that she hesitated to come and hear him, for with those glorious themes singing through her head, it meant that she wouldn’t sleep a wink all night. I could well believe she would lie awake, for she had had so sound a nap during the Symphony that it could not but interfere with her night’s rest.

And in “The Alien Corn” from First Person Singular (1931) he makes the magisterial Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, or simply Appassionata as it is well-known, an important part of the plot.

Before going into some detail about “The Alien Corn”, it is worth mentioning “The Traitor”, one of the best among Maugham’s Ashenden-tales. This is a fine example how Maugham could use musical references to make fun of his more patronizing and chauvinistic characters, in this case Mrs Caypor, the German wife of the British “Traitor”. Her accomplishments are listed without any irony and her character on the whole is anything but caricature. And yet, the juxtaposition of Beethoven and Debussy is a devastating satirical weapon:

She was no fool. She had read much, in several languages, and she could talk of the books she had read with good sense. She had a knowledge of modern painting and modern music that not a little impressed Ashenden. It was amusing once to hear her before luncheon play one of those silvery little pieces of Debussy; she played it disdainfully because it was French and so light, but with an angry appreciation of its grace and gaiety.

When Ashenden congratulated her she shrugged her shoulders.

‘The decadent music of a decadent nation,’ she said. Then with powerful hands she struck the first resounding chords of a sonata by Beethoven; but she stopped. ‘I cannot play, I am out of practice, and you English, what do you know of music? You have not produced a composer since Purcell!’

“The Alien Corn” deserves a special attention, of course. It is a fine story, one of Maugham's finest, and there is a great deal about music in it, for George Bland wanted more than anything else to be a pianist. The first person narrator mentions a number of things that we may, perhaps, accept as Maugham's opinions. For example, his going to a performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in Munich probably refers to a real event, only it must have been in Bayreuth (which is not far from Munich). It is a funny passage with serious undertones. It hints at the mighty inspirational power that Wagner might be for those who are susceptible to his charms:

I shall never forget how humiliated I felt once when, having come to Munich for a Wagner festival, I went to a wonderful performance of Tristan und Isolde and never heard a note of it. The first few bars sent me off and I began to think of what I was writing, my characters leapt into life and I heard their long conversations, I suffered their pains and was a party to their joy; the years swept by and all sorts of things happened to me, the spring brought me its rapture and in the winter I was cold and hungry; and I loved and I hated and I died. I suppose there were intervals in which I walked round and round the garden and probably ate Schinken–Brödchen and drank beer, but I have no recollection of them. The only thing I know is that when the curtain for the last time fell I woke with a start. I had had a wonderful time, but I could not help thinking it was very stupid of me to come such a long way and spend so much money if I couldn’t pay attention to what I heard and saw.

There are also memorable descriptions of playing Chopin and Bach:

He played Chopin. He played two waltzes that were familiar to me, a polonaise and an etude. He played with a great deal of brio and I wish I knew music well enough to give an exact description of his playing. It had strength and youthful exuberance, but I felt that he missed what to me is the peculiar charm of Chopin, the tenderness, the nervous melancholy, the wistful gaiety and slightly faded romance that reminds me always of an early Victorian keepsake.

She played Bach. I do not know the names of the pieces, but I recognised the stiff ceremonial of the frenchified little German courts and the sober, thrifty comfort of the burghers, and the dancing on the village green, the green trees that looked like Christmas trees, and the sunlight of the wide German country, and a tender coziness; and in my nostrils there was a warm scent of the soil and I was conscious of a sturdy strength that seemed to have its roots deep in mother earth, and of an elemental power that was timeless and had no home in space. She played exquisitely, with a soft brilliance that made you think of the full moon shining at dusk in the summer sky.

I have always found Bach's keyboard music, and much of his other music, uncommonly boring, but Maugham's description of Chopin I certainly find very accurate indeed, at least for the repertoire mentioned. Had he heard some of the Scherzi, Ballades or the Second sonata, Maugham would have known that there is much more in Chopin than that; there is, for example, a tragic personal drama of universal import, the drama of the restless spirit confined to a sick body that must be felt by many today. The apologetic tone about his lack of special knowledge is quintessential Maugham.

It's worth noting the obvious: one has to be very careful when one takes a narrator's words at their face value. For here he says of Beethoven's Appassionata:

I used to play it myself when I played the piano (very badly) in my far distant youth and I still knew every note of it.

Now, I know nothing of music either, but Appassionata seems to me a formidable work. To play it even ''very badly'' one has to be an accomplished pianist – which Maugham almost certainly never was. Of course, he was entirely justified to invent this for the story; but it's a nice reminder to be careful with such extrapolations.

To finish with ''The Alien Corn'', it must be said that the movie version in Quartet (1948) is disappointing. There are two chief reasons for that. The first is Dirk Bogarde's wooden performance which becomes particularly atrocious at the piano; his Chopin is perhaps expected to be bad, but hardly the worst possible. As for Bach, he is substituted here for a very passable Schubert, played well and acted beautifully by Francoise Rosay. The second reason is the heavy abridgment of the original. Much of its depth has been lost.

Coming back to Maugham and Wagner, there are quite a few Wagnerian hints in the short story ''Winter Cruise'', one of my least favourite stories due to its idiotic and all but pornographic plot. Yet the piece is fun to read and has some memorable, if farcical, scenes. But to the point – the Wagnerian hints. Since the whole story is set on a German ship and all characters but the loquacious Miss Reid are Germans, it is hardly surprising that there should be some amusing references to Wagner:

Germans were so musical. He had a funny way of strutting up and down on his short legs singing Wagner tunes to words of his invention. It was Tannhäuser he was singing now (that lovely thing about the evening star) but knowing no German Miss Reid could only wonder what absurd words he was putting to it. It was as well.

''Oh, what a bore that woman is, I shall certainly kill her if she goes on much longer.'' Then he broke into Siegfried's martial strain. ''She's a bore, she's a bore, she's a bore. I shall throw her into the sea.''

''The lovely thing about the evening star'' is easy to be identified: it must be ''O du, mein holder Abendstern'' (''Oh thou, my gracious evening star''), Wolfram's serenade, such as it is, from the Third act of Tannhäuser, the closest to opera aria Wagner ever came, in his mature works at all events. One can only surmise that Tannhäuser's eternal struggle between the spirit and the flesh appealed to Maugham; it sure did to Oscar Wilde as evident from The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1891).

Siegfried's martial strain is a trifle more difficult to locate with such certainty, but the words certainly fit the famous Siegfried's theme. I will have to refer to the music drama for anything more accurate, but Maugham certainly knew Siegfried pretty well, as shown in the following, highly preposterous, conversation from ''Winter Cruise'':

As soon as dinner was over and Miss Read had left them the captain sent for the radio-operator.

''You idiot, what in heaven's name made you ask Miss Reid last night whether she wanted to send a radio?''

''Sir, you told me to act naturally. I am a radio-operator. I thought it natural to ask her if she wanted to send a radio. I didn't know what else to say.''

''God in heaven,'' shouted the captain, ''when Siegfried saw Brünhilde lying on her rock and cried: Das ist Kein Mann'' (the captain sang the words, and being pleased with the sound of his voice, repeated the phrase two or three times before he continued), ''did Siegfried when she awoke ask her if she wished to send a radio, to announce her papa, I suppose, that she was sitting up after her long sleep and taking notice?''

''I beg most respectfully to draw your attention to the fact that Brünhilde was Siegfried's aunt. Miss Reid is a total stranger to me.''

''He did not reflect that she was his aunt. He knew only that she was a beautiful and defenceless woman of obviously good family and he acted as any gentleman would have done. You are young, handsome, Aryan to the tips of your fingers, the honour of Germany is in your hands.''

If anything, this passage makes clear that Maugham (1) knew the plot of Siegfried quite well indeed, and (2) he was rightly slightly apprehensive in the preface to Creatures of Circumstance (1947) that he hadn't changed the nationality of his characters. Right after World War II, probably few people relished anything about Germans, let alone ''the honour of Germany'', even in so flippant a context.

Another story in which Wagner plays a minor but not unimportant role is ''The Pool'', Maugham's heart-rending study of mixed marriages in the South Seas. When the first person narrator has one his rare conversations with Lawson, the unfortunate white husband, the latter remarks wistfully on London life in general and Wagnerian music drama in particular:

'I suppose Covent Garden’s still going strong, ' he said. 'I think I miss the opera as much as anything here. Have you seen Tristan and Isolde?'

He asked me the question as though the answer was really important to him, and when I said, a little casually I daresay, that I had, he seemed pleased. He began to speak of Wagner, not as a musician, but as the plain man who received from him an emotional satisfaction that he could not analyse.

'I suppose Bayreuth was the place to go really,' he said. 'I never had the money, worse luck. But of course one might do worse than Covent Garden, all the lights and the women dressed up to the nines, and the music. The first act of the Walküre’s all right, isn’t it? And the end of Tristan. Golly!'

His eyes were flashing now and his face was lit up so that he hardly seemed the same man. There was a flush on his sallow, thin cheeks, and I forgot that his voice was harsh and unpleasant. There was even a certain charm about him.

The sublime ending of Tristan has already been discussed. The first act of Die Walküre is both historically important and musically compelling. The latter is by far the most important aspect, of course. The third scene of this first act, the great love duet between Siegmund and Sieglinde, may well be the greatest celebration of incestuous love ever created. From the solo cello that indicates the first meeting of their to the passionate finale which suggests a sexual intercourse immediately after the curtain, this scene is the epitome of musical and dramatic perfection combined in one.

There is another short story by Maugham which is connected with music, though not so specifically. This is the unjustly forgotten ''The Buried Talent'' that was never published in book form during Maugham's life but appeared only in magazine (1934). Much later it was reprinted in A Traveller in Romance (1984) and Far Eastern Tales (1993), both edited by John Whitehead. The two main characters are opera singers and a reference to Gluck's Orfeo and Euridice is made. There is also some discussion of voice and opera which shows that Maugham is obviously a layman in the field, but with passion for opera.

It's interesting to note that Maugham's musical tastes are very similar to mine, for I too love Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven and Chopin. It is indeed fascinating when I reflect that – from what I've read of his anthologies so far and from what I've seen in Purely for my Pleasure (1962) – apparently our tastes in terms of literature and painting are vastly different indeed. I need to read much more of his anthologies, but just about one third of Maugham's paintings I wouldn't put on my walls even if I get them as a present.

Other non-fiction references, in addition to those already mentioned, include the essay ''Some Novelists I Have Known'':

I was once sitting at the opera behind a distinguished and talented woman. The opera was Tristan und Isolde. At the end of the second act she gathered her ermine cloak around her shoulders and, turning to her companion, said: 'Let's go. There's not enough action in this play.' Of course she was right, but perhaps that wasn't quite the point.

Poor woman! She must have been bored to death by what is probably the longest love duet is all opera.

It is interesting to observe that in the same essay there's one of Maugham's rare passages in which he is somewhat preoccupied with the question of taste and his attitude strongly smacks of intellectual snobbishness. That said, Maugham of all people had the right to be an intellectual snob; whether he was especially intelligent or of impeccable taste are debatable questions, but what is surely a very well documented fact is that he made a great success of his life. I am not sure many people achieve this, even on a much smaller scale, especially people as sensitive and restless as Maugham. Still, such passage as this leaves me with a slightly bitter taste in the mouth:

There are persons of intelligence and susceptibility who prefer Verdi to Wagner, Charlotte Bronte to Jane Austen and cold mutton to cold grouse.

I don't know about the last two cases, but I see nothing wrong with anybody who prefers Verdi to Wagner. I do occasionally, though on the whole I wouldn't want to be without either.

Maugham and Rachmaninoff: Random Parallels

For what it's worth, and it's probably worth nothing, having listened to a lot of Rachmaninoff recently it occurred to me that an interesting parallel can be drawn between Somerset Maugham and the great Russian composer. This may at first seem very strange. I can’t think of a single reference to Rachmaninoff in any of Maugham’s works and it remains a matter of pure speculation whether he knew his music at all. He probably did, and he might even have attended some of Rachmaninoff’s concerts during his spectacularly successful career as a concert pianist during the 1920s and 1930s. Nor have I ever run across any reference to Rachmaninoff's literary tastes. If he had any, and if he read any Maugham at all, they have remained a secret. Nevertheless, there are several suggestive parallels.

The most striking similarity between Rachmaninoff and Maugham is that both of them, all of their lives, were accused of being anachronisms. While Maugham continued to write stories very much in the way Maupassant had done in the nineteenth century, so Rachmaninoff continued to write symphonies in the manner of Tchaikovsky. Of course, in both cases there is no question of slavish imitation, nor can we talk of any great similarity of styles indeed; it’s much broader and more fundamental than that. While Schoenberg and the New Viennese School, to say nothing of his revolutionary (at least musically) compatriots Stravinsky and Prokofieff, were charting new ways into atonality and dissonance, Rachmaninoff stubbornly refused to leave tonality and melody. Likewise Maugham never tired of writing with simplicity and lucidity stories that have ''a beginning, a middle and an end'' and can be understood by everybody who can read. While the likes of Katherine Mansfield insisted that stories should be formless jumbles of impressions, Willie preached that they should ''follow without hesitation, from exposition to climax, a bold and vigorous curve'' in the best Maupassant-fashion. Unlike many other cases, all parties – Modernists and Traditionalists, writers and musicians – practiced what they preached.

I find it a remarkable similarity, indeed, that both Rachmaninoff and Maugham, until comparatively recently, were not at all taken seriously by professional critics, musical and literary respectively, yet their works have never been out of print or the standard repertoire. This makes me wonder, yet again, what sense artistic criticism really makes, if any. Here it flatly contradicts both the popular taste and the test of time, and aren’t these factors more important than the opinion of a miniscule minority, no matter how erudite these fellows could be? After all, lasting popularity suggests a wide human appeal. Critical praise suggests nothing of the kind. Both could be – indeed, have been – wrong in the past, but I think few enthusiasts would argue in favour of criticism being the more infallible one. The most brutal attacks – of Edmund Wilson on Maugham in The New Yorker (June, 1946) and in the New Grove on Rachmaninoff (1954) – are unfortunately too well-known; no need to quote them yet again.

Other, and smaller, similarities between Maugham and Rachmaninoff include, for instance, spending half of their lives away from their native land: the former in France, the latter in America. However, both the reasons and the circumstances were radically different. Rachmaninoff left his homeland for purely political reasons. Being from a family that can be called proletarian only by grossly misusing the word, he turned out to be persona non grata after the revolution of 1917. Rachmaninoff never went back to Russia, or the Soviet Union as it was then called, and, reportedly, until the end of his life suffered from severe nostalgia, trying to make himself at home in America (and Switzerland from time to time) but never quite succeeding. In contrast, Maugham’s reasons for leaving England are rather more complex and still not fully elucidated. Avoiding taxes or avoiding his wife, living freely with Gerald or enjoying the greater prestige that men of letters had in France, or simply stronger links with the country where he spent a happy childhood than with England, or all that together, we’ll probably never know for sure. Unlike Rachmaninoff, Maugham did visit England a number of times over the years after his moving to Cap Ferrat.

Interestingly, both visited America for the first time in the course of two years (1909-10). But the reasons were again different, though not very much. Maugham was attending the production of one of his plays, Rachmaninoff was playing the world premiere of his (now famous, then ignored) Third Piano Concerto with Walter Damrosch and the New York Philharmonic (or the New York Symphony Society as it was then called). Both were in their own ways grateful to America. In 1946 Maugham gave the manuscript of Of Human Bondage to the Library of the Congress; his address on the occasion was later published as Of Human Bondage, with a Digression on the Art of Fiction. Rachmaninoff used to play at every of his American concerts his own transcription of The Star-Spangled Banner; he never made an audio recording of it, but a piano roll does exist.

I find it fascinating that Rachmaninoff and Maugham were almost exact contemporaries, the Russian composer being but a year older (born in 1873), and both experienced a great shift in their creative lives during middle age. Strangely enough, the directions were totally the opposite.

In 1918, aged 45 and for purely pecuniary reasons, Rachmaninoff had to turn himself from, primarily, a composer and a conductor into a virtuoso pianist giving 40 to 50 recitals per season. The amazing thing is that until then, though he had appeared many times as a pianist, he had no working repertoire because he had played almost exclusively his own works. How Rachmaninoff could, for just a few years, build an enormous repertoire of Liszt, Chopin, Schumann, Beethoven and what not and turn himself into one of the hottest tickets on the American concert stage is one of the major miracles in music history. But the price was steep. He lived for quarter of a century after 1917, made quite a few recordings which today prove beyond any doubt his unique place among the greatest pianists, but he composed very few original works; only six actually, though almost all of them are among his finest.

Maugham’s life-changing event was, of course, his first travel to the South Seas in the end of World War I; during the 1920s it stimulated several other, usually quite extensive, Far Eastern sojourns the consequences of which for his life and work were incalculable. They renewed his interest into the genre of the short story which resulted in three of his finest short story collections, The Trembling of a Leaf (1921), The Casuarina Tree (1926), and Ah King (1933). Three novels and two travel books more share exotic settings, the former because they deal with extremes of human nature that could hardly happen in more civilized parts of the world. Most important of all, as eloquently demonstrated by The Summing Up, these travels profoundly changed Maugham’s outlook: he lost any trace of intellectual snobbishness, that awful side effect of culture, which he might have had in his youth. Last and least, the constant globetrotting, ever since his student years and by no means in the Far East only, gave his works the cosmopolitan character that is Maugham’s trademark.

Though only one year younger, Maugham outlived Rachmaninoff by 22 years. There is something poignant, it seems to me, about the fact that while in the beginning of 1943 Rachmaninoff was dying of cancer under the blazing Californian sun, somewhere among the marshes of South Carolina Maugham, a war refugee and a temporary American citizen, was writing The Razor’s Edge…

Reflections on Verdi's Rigoletto

Leonard Warren

Robert Merrill

Tito Gobbi

Ettore Bastianini

Reflections on Rigoletto

Well, I guess my recent interest in Otello has become a bit of obsession. Finally, my craving for the good, old Verdian melody led me to investigate my humble collection of recordings for one of his most melodic and most beautiful operas: Rigoletto. I have found all in all three recordings, I have listened to all of them – to some with pleasure, to some with exasperation, to some with rapture – and I have bought a wonderful book for the complete libretto which turned out to be much more than that. Here are some random thoughts of mine about this opera, these three recordings, and this lovely little book. And don’t be offended if you find some scathing remarks about a favorite singer of yours. It is just my personal opinion, it has nothing to do with you and it is not important, or at least should not be, for you.

I have always loved Rigoletto very much. It was one of the first operas I saw on the stage and it has always been one of the operas I most often listen to. Now, a number of years after the first time I heard it, I have found that my interest in it has grown to another level discovering that Rigoletto is more, much more, than just a feast of wonderful tunes. Now I get exasperated when people dismiss this masterpiece as an inferior work, something for newcomers to opera, something that contains too much melody and is far too popular to be considered as a serious work of art, let alone a masterpiece. And what a nonsense all that is! Not that I am not a newcomer to opera, certainly I am, but I do think Rigoletto will retain the special place in my heart it occupies now even when one day (if ever) I am no longer an opera neophyte. Anyway, should I be forced to choose only one opera by Verdi, only one opera at all, for my desert island exile, yes, I think I will go with Rigoletto. It has everything and is as close to perfection as possible. And please note, to settle that matter right away: it is an opera; it is no music drama at all, although it does contain a good deal of drama.

I may start my reflections with the book which I purchased because of the full libretto with an English translation, but which turned out to be so much more than that. This is, of course, Rigoletto: A guide to the opera, by the renowned Verdian expert Charles Osborne and with a foreword by no one else but Tito Gobby himself. The 1979 edition by Barrie & Jenkins looks like that:

On the dust jacket: Tito Gobbi and Renata Scotto (as Rigoletto and Gilda, of course).

My first meeting with Charles Osborne's writing – the liner notes to Karajan's EMI recording of Otello – was not a very pleasant occasion. But this book is really delightful. It's written in a charmingly witty and amusing style, it's lavishly illustrated with black-and-white photos of singers and sets, and it contains lots of extremely interesting information as well as a complete English translation of the libretto done by Charles Osborne himself.

Mr Osborne explores the history of composition, quoting extensively from Verdi's letters, the fighting with the authorities about this or that scene, the multitude of similarities between the libretto and its literary original by Victor Hugo (there is a wonderful comparison between the two versions of the famous soliloquy “Pari siamo”), and he surveys the performance history on both stage and record. The last section is the only disappointment; it is perfunctory in the extreme. Moreover, two of the recordings I will refer to later are not even mentioned and I really think they should have been. But this is a minor drawback completely redeemed by the book’s numerous merits. For knowledgeable and experienced opera buffs such a book, I guess, would be a somewhat boring read, but for an opera neophyte like myself it is really fascinating and that’s why I shall quote a lot from it.

(Extensive quotations may also be consulted in the postscript to my review on LT.)

Apart from the wonderfully clear and lucid translation of the libretto, the most wonderful part of the book was the one I did not in the least expect to like: the musical analysis. Charles Osborne goes through the whole opera and makes compelling observations in almost every paragraph. For my own part, the most astonishing thing was that many of the famous high notes in the opera, so much loved by singers and audiences alike, are actually missing in Verdi’s score. Is this really true? Well, I guess Mr Osborne, as a renowned Verdian expert, must know best. He says flatly that most of these show-off (and show-stopping usually) notes are mere interpolations and result of singers’ vanity. He gives a number of examples, and it was striking to read that some notes are a whole octave above what Verdi actually wrote. That seems a lot even for a person like me who has no idea of music theory. But the point remains: Verdi sought fine characterization, not show-off for singers. What a marvellous job he did in this department!

Rigoletto is, of course, not perfect. No opera is. Some scenes are ludicrously improbable, for example Rigoletto's leaving himself to be deceived by the court morons that they are going to steal, not his daughter, but countess Ceprano. And some characters are absurdly unreal and sometimes very exasperating. Gilda, for example, would hardly have any competition for the title "The stupidest girl in the world", and her all too conscious sacrifice for the man who has raped and left her for the next flirt looks pretty silly to me, to say the least. But one has to remember that Gilda is just a girl (16 years old or so) and a virgin (at least for Act 1 and part of Act 2) who has been brought up by his father in something very much like total seclusion. So she hardly has any idea of the world and how it works. So we, and by “we” I mean of course “I”, should not be surprised if she acts quite differently than any person with a little common sense would. Gilda’s famous “Gualtier Malde... Caro nome”, when sung flawlessly and with restraint, is an outstanding representation of virginal beauty. Pity that many sopranos sing it like “Sempre libera”...

How about the Duke? Is there a tenor who doesn’t adore this part? How many arias has he got? Let’s see… four, I think, although in some old recordings “Possente amor mi chiama” is cut. Why? No idea, but I guess some tender ears are offended by its lightness and... uh... obscenity? The same people are inclined to put “La donna è mobile” in the category of inferior stuff that has little if anything to do with great music. I still remember, and am vexed with, an eminent Bulgarian contemporary composer who flatly said that such music as “La donna è mobile” has no place at his music festival. What about “Questa o quella”, Mr. Know-All? Let’s throw it away too. Let’s throw the whole Rigoletto in the waste, it doesn't deserve the attention of the serious music lovers. What an arrant nonsense!

Charles Osborne finely says that “La donna è mobile” is perfectly in accordance with the character of the Duke and the situation on the stage and to dismiss the aria, or to complain of it as absolute music, is to misunderstand completely the art of opera. The Duke, after all, is a classic Don Juan: lecherous, fickle, certainly without superfluous amount of intelligence, determined to turn his life into a constant string of pleasures. All of his arias, the famous duet “È il sol dell’anima”, the more famous, the most famous actually, quartet “Bella figlia dell’amore”, all of his music in short, is a very fine example of masterful characterization which only a genius like Verdi could achieve.

But there is one odd moment in the Duke’s part, immediately recognised by Mr Osborne, in which it seems, at least at first glance, that Verdi lost the grasp of the character. This is the famous recitative and aria that open Act 2: “Ella mi fu rapita!... Parmi veder le lagrime”. Enchanting music (and text by Francesco Maria Piave) that sounds very much like somebody who is very much in love and isn’t that quite out of character for a woman-eating monster like the Duke whose only goal as far as women are concerned is to go to bed with them? The most reasonable explanation for giving such a rake such a heartfelt music is that he honestly mistakes his lust for love. (By the way, is there any difference between them? I'm not sure there is.) Well, you are at perfect liberty to dismiss me as an odious cynic, but I believe you would agree with me that the only chance for the Duke to achieve what he wants is to be perfectly sincere. So he is. Whether one calls it love or lust is of no consequence at all. The Duke honesty believes his feelings are genuine; he has no idea that after having gone to bed with a certain young lady once or twice all these feelings shall vanish into thin air. The women he seduces may not be very smart, but they have keen instincts and would immediately sense any insincerity. He may succeed with one or two, but with number three he wouldn’t reach the bed if he is not entirely sincere. His charm is so devastating and his conquests so successful because he is always 100 percent sincere about his feelings – at least until after the coitus.

By giving his character so enchanting an aria of a man in love, Verdi not only didn’t lose the grasp of the character, but he improved it a great deal. He made it much more coherent and believable. He made it as finished as any character of the proverbial rake can be.

But the real gem in Rigoletto, the real masterpiece inside the masterpiece, is Rigoletto himself. The opera couldn’t have been named more appropriately. Here is a character of real complexity. Rigoletto must surely be among the most finely drawn of all opera characters, “burnt in music” as Bernard Shaw memorably described it. He is a bundle of incongruous feelings, passions and obsessions. Unfortunately, in the brilliance of his characterization lies also his curse; quite a different one than Monterone’s but no less damning. Because Rigoletto is an almost impossible role. Mere talent won’t do here. The part needs not only an exceptional voice, but great acting skills too; it needs a singer-actor possessed of that rare quality of the soul: genius. I can't even imagine how anybody on the opera stage can do justice to both the vocal and the acting side of the character. And on recordings he must act with his voice, which leads to one important caveat. The acting Rigoletto requires is so difficult to reconcile with the singing that those who attempt the Jester, on stage as well as on record, quite often simply leave out the music almost completely. This leads to abominable histrionics and kills one of Verdi’s greatest melodic achievements.

I think Rigoletto must first be sung and then acted. After all, if Verdi wanted lots of sobbing and crying in the famous plead in Act 2, he would not have written such a wonderful music, would he? As I said in the beginning, Rigoletto is by no means a music drama. It is an opera and one with melodic richness and beauty that are hardly matched by any other. Can you imagine that the Milan and London critics in the middle of the nineteenth century complained about lack of melody?! What on earth did they mean? If there ever was an opera with lots of memorable, beautiful and extremely well integrated into the characters and the action melodies, that surely is Rigoletto. So keeping the melodic line will be the first and the strongest criterion in judging the three recordings I have listened to. But I must point out again: beautiful singing with fantastic high notes does not at all exclude acting with the voice and the perfect result, or at least the closest one to perfection, must be sought in the perfect symbiosis of both. Most critics would surely disagree with me. As if I cared!

Let’s listen to some music now. While reflecting on these recordings, I will pay most attention to the part of Rigoletto but will try not to neglect the other principals. In any case, I will not discuss Sparafuciles and Maddalenas. The opera has several wonderful orchestral episodes although its main strength no doubt lies in the vocal parts. So here are three alternatives. Not surprisingly, the newest of them is from the early 1960s.

Rigoletto – Tito Gobbi

Gilda – Maria Callas

The Duke – Giuseppe di Stefano

Coro e Orchestra del Teatro della Scalla Milano / Tullio Serafin.

Brilliant re-issue of a 1986 remastering of the 1955 EMI recording produced by Walter Legge; sound engineer Robert Beckett. Mono sound.

Well, there is no point in beating about the bush. I simply cannot stand this recording. I don’t care it is a classic, I don’t care how highly praised it is by the Gramophone critics, I don’t care about the millions and millions fans of Callas or Gobbi. For my own part, the only acceptable things in this recording are Giuseppe di Stefano and Tullio Serafin. And they are not at their best, either. No one loves Pippo’s voice more than I do. But he sounds tired here, uninspired and bland. Which is regrettable because I think the part of the Duke is perfect for him. Perhaps he just had a few bad days; it happens to everybody from time to time. Tullio Serafin suffers mostly from bad sound. The mono is OK, although in 1955 DECCA were already making very nice stereo efforts, but the sound is distinctly poorer than the mono of the famous Tosca with Victor de Sabata two years earlier. Very strange, because this justly legendary recording of Puccini's masterpiece in superb sound was also produced and recorded by Legge and Beckett, respectively.

All these are minor drawbacks and were it not for Callas and Gobbi they would have fallen into oblivion. It is not the problem that I don't like Callas' timbre. In the aforementioned Tosca she is so fine dramatically that I not only endure her ugly voice but even like it. And speaking of timbre, like it or not, hers is far from suitable for the virginal quality essential for Gilda. Callas’ interpretation does not help the matter, either. She ruins the music, rather than creates a character. I couldn’t agree more with Charles Osborne that she is simply a miscast.

But I couldn’t disagree more with Mr Osborne about Tito Gobbi. He may have been the greatest Rigoletto of his time all right, but what he did in this 1955 studio recording remains – for my own part, I repeat! – total perversity. The problem is not that his voice is not in its best shape and his high notes are shaky. The problem is the histrionics. Matchless inflection of the text, the critics say. My eye! Matchless assassination of great music, if not Rigoletto’s character, that’s it! Tito Gobbi must have been great to watch on the stage, but on record he kills the music completely. And for me no dramatic inflection of the text can save this. Because Rigoletto is not Otello, after all.

In short, a recording which I find very hard to endure and simply impossible to enjoy.

Rigoletto – Robert Merrill

Gilda – Anna Moffo

The Duke – Alfredo Kraus

RCA Italiana choir and orchestra / Georg Solti.

1963 RCA recording remastered for this re-issue. Enhanced CD that contains full libretto with translations in English, French and German and can be viewed on every PC.

This one is much better to endure and even possible to enjoy, to some extent at least.

I have always loved the deep and dark voice of Robert Merrill and he is in fine form here, although not as fresh as in his 1956 recording with Bjoerling and Peters. And he is so much more musical than Gobbi’s hysterical outbursts. Unfortunately, his voice is not powerful and versatile enough for such a monstrous part as Rigoletto. Robert Merrill is a very intelligent singer, he knows his limitations and is very convincing within them. But his pronunciation is good rather than excellent, and his vocal acting is superb but shallow in scope. Overall, he is fine but not moving. His Rigoletto is essentially a broken man, victim of his vendetta, not just by accident as it is, but by his own weakness and fear of it. Robert Merrill remains a simply unsurpassed Figaro for me, but a mediocre, rather frightened and devoid of passion, Rigoletto. Much better than Gobbi, yes, but not at all good enough.

Alfredo Kraus is precisely the type of tenor I really don’t like: oily voice, sugary singing, far too much elegance and far too less passion. But the role of the Duke seems to fit such voice to perfection. And Kraus has all the notes all right, even if his voice is somewhat weak. In this particular role, his elegance and polish sound extremely persuasive, including the illusion of sincerity in “Parmi veder le lagrime”. Much as I dislike his voice and manner in general, I think he can hardly be bettered in this part and he is as close to the perfect interpretation as anyone could possibly be. His laughter in “Questa o quella” is the most natural I have ever heard in opera; it should be noted that it is exactly in the right place. I wonder if Verdi specified this in the score?

Anna Moffo is the greatest disappointment here. And that’s very strange indeed. She has a lovely voice, the right one for Gilda, and she seems to know how to use it. And yet, she is dull all the way – from “Mio padre” until “Lassu in ciel”. Her duets with Rigoletto, no doubt some of the high points in the opera (has it got any other points but high ones?) are astonishingly lifeless. So is her “Caro nome”; technically nearly flawless, but cold and detached. I don’t know exactly what is wrong with her, but it is something really serious.

As for Solti’s conducting, I have my usual experience with it: I like it immediately and immensely, I am quite impressed by it, but I cannot love it. The sound is excellent and the dynamic range is dangerous for the speakers. Sir Georg does have some sense of drama and can, occasionally, be very effective, like the orchestral explosion when Rigoletto confesses his real relationship with Gilda to the courtiers: “Io vo’ mia figlia!” But just a few minutes later, when Monterone passes on his way to the prison, he blasts the brass and obscures the strings, and so manages very well to be loud at the expense of the drama.

Rigoletto – Ettore Bastianini

Gilda – Renata Scotto

The Duke – Alfredo Kraus

Coro e orchestra di Maggio Musicale Fiorentino / Gianandrea Gavazzeni.

1960 recording for Ricordi and Mercury Living, re-issued here on CD with abominable sound: stereo, obviously with fine dynamic range and spectacular bass, but the orchestra sounds as if it were in the basement; fortunately, the voices are much better. (Greatly superior remastering is now available.)

Well, this is it. This is definitely my favourite recording of Rigoletto and the closest approximation to definitive interpretation of this lovely opera I can imagine. Not only is there no weak point in the principals, but all of them are perfect for their roles and captured in their absolute prime. Too bad for the orchestral sound because Gianandrea Gavazzeni is a fine conductor I like very much. He doesn’t have Solti’s bombastic sound, but he is much better balanced and consistent throughout the whole opera. He certainly has a keen eye for dramatic detail, too. Kraus is as excellent as he is in the aforementioned recording. Scotto is in lovely voice, I think she was not yet thirty at the time. She sounds exactly as Gilda should sound: fresh but innocent, tender but passionate. Her diction is exemplary and only seldom a slight shrillness in the highest register detracts a bit from the perfection of her rendition.

But Scotto, as well as Kraus and Gavazzeni, pale in comparison with Ettore Bastianini. He is in glorious voice here, two years before the terrible cancer diagnosis and seven years before his untimely death at 44. What a voice that is! Ettore seems to have everything: ringing top notes, steady and dark low ones, astonishing legato and fabulous diction. Not just every word and phrase, every vowel and every consonant are clearly pronounced. His is the most musical Rigoletto and this is the reason why it is by far my favourite. I don’t care that the Gramophone critic doesn’t like it, I don’t care that Charles Osborne doesn’t even mention it in his book (although there is a photo!), I don’t care that the so-called “connoisseurs of opera” despise him.

But it is not just a beautiful voice. The most extraordinary thing about Ettore Bastianini is that he can act with his voice without breaking the melodic line for a single second. He achieves everything only with his voice and Verdi’s music. No sobs, no cries, no ridiculous inflections of the text, no histrionics at all. Just voice. And melody. And every word with its meaning.

Take for example the famous scene with the courtiers in Act 2, surely some of the greatest twenty minutes in all opera: from “Povero Rigoletto!” until the tremendous “Sì, vendetta, tremenda vendetta”. It starts with an exemplary “La rà, la rà, la rà” which doesn’t need to be distorted until one can hardly recognise it to be effective and grief-stricken behind its apparent lightness. The exchange of ironic remarks with Marullo and company is restrained but finely articulated and in the right mood. The famous “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata” is staggering! I have never heard it so powerful in its anger, yet so beautifully shaped as music. Absolutely the same is true for Rigoletto's plead “Ah! Ebben, piango”. Restrained, without any false, unmusical sounds, yet deeply moving at the same time.

The following scene with Gilda is also something to marvel at. Listen to Bastianini's singing line in “Ah! Solo per me l’infamia” and in “Vendetta” when his voice trembles with anger and indignation, with furious rage actually, and yet the melody reigns supreme and every word falls in its place. Listen to the change in his voice when he addresses his daughter: “Piangi, fanciulla, piangi”. It becomes tender and caressing, clearly expressing the fatherly love, and the following duet is a perfect example of beautiful singing without the cacophony-like mess that usually happens on other recordings. The same is true for the other duets between Gilda and Rigoletto, in Act 1 and Act 3, immediately before her death. I never cease to be astonished how amazingly well both the music and the text in Rigoletto work together without any unmusical additions. Listen to Bastianini’s perfect phrasing and how he sustains the long melodic line in, for example, “Ah, veglia, o donna, questo fiore”. Just listen to it. Unbelievable singing! I listen and simply can’t believe my ears that such musical perfection and profound characterization are possible at all, let alone at the same time.

The favourite remark of the critics is that Bastianini is not a subtle singer. I would like to ask those for whom English is mother tongue to explain to me what on earth these people mean when they use the adjective “subtle” referring to singers and singing? Please, explain to me. If one has brilliant top notes, he can’t have fine interpretation of a complex character? If one refuses to distort the music with hideous histrionics, he is not a subtle singer?

There is not a single note misplaced in Ettore's performance, including the terrific high ones in the “Pari siamo” that so outraged the august Gramophone critic. Both his sneering in Act 1, “Voi congiuraste...” for example, and his grief in the finale – “Non morire, mio tesoro, pietade!” – as well as his most passionate plead with the courtiers to return his daughter to him – “Ridonarla a voi nulla ora costa, tutto al mondo tal figlia è per me” – are so devoid of any hammy nonsense, so very different from everything else I have ever heard in this role, that it really is unbelievable to hear them. It’s like hearing and discovering Rigoletto for the very first time. It’s like suddenly discovering a masterpiece equal to the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling into your own office where you’ve been working every day for years and yet never noticed such a thing. And this is the only way to discover how beautiful and great and powerful Verdi’s music really is.