La Boheme

Maestro Jorge Parodi, Arias in Puccini’s Operas — to be or not to be? May 20, 2020

(A link to the recording of this talk is at the bottom of the page — many thanks!)
Do you love Puccini? He’s certainly one of my favorite composers, and I’m not alone. Puccini is considered by many the height of opera. Certainly of the three most performed composers nowadays (Verdi, Mozart and Puccini) he is the latest, and so his operas could be considered at the top of the evolution of opera. Evolution as the constant change that any art form is subject to, because of the constant search of artists to be more expressive, more interesting, more appealing.

Since we are talking about this continuum in time, let me talk really briefly about the history of opera. Opera as an art form has the particularity that we know which one was the first one, which is something that can be said for rarely any art. La Dafne by Jacobo Peri was performed in 1598 in Florence, and it started a series of similar plays that were sung throughout. They were trying the recreate Greek theater (most early operas have classical stories) and they thought that theater in classical Greece was actually sung, so they decided to sing the whole thing. These early operas were like sung recitations, and they sounded closely to what we call now recitative.

Most of the characters were mythological gods and heroes, and then kings and warriors, and eventually their stories were seasoned with comedic characters that were of lower class, like fauns, shepherds, and villagers. These low class character were often given little catchy songs and simple dances, that actually were very successful with the audience. By the end of the 1600s after a hundred years of evolution, these dances and songs took over the heart of the operas, and the recitatives were left to keep the story going in between songs, that by then were already called arias, or melody for a single voice. The arias marked a single moment in the course of a dramatic action. Ensemble singing, from duets to full company choruses were present in operas from the very beginning (since earlier opera composers were great madrigalists), and continued throughout the evolution of the genre, but the arias were always the key moments, for excitement that comes out of the concentration of the dramatic content and the opportunity for technical display of the performers.

This alternation between arias and recitative continued unchanged until Gluck (famous for his Orpheus and Eurídice, a very popular classical subject for opera by the way) tried to smooth the transitions between recits and arias. By the time we get to early 1800s the flow of the score goes pretty much continuously, still with clear endings at the end of large ensembles or show stopping arias. But towards the end of the century composers are trying to get rid of all this start and stop that they considered a distraction to the dramatic flow of their operas. Wagner was very adamant about this concept and most of his operas only stop at intermission and even he often wrote operas without one, like Flying Dutchman and Rheingold.

This take us to Puccini and particularly La Boheme. In this opera he tries to eliminate most of the stops in the run of the music and if you have had the chance of seeing it, you may have noticed that Act II goes totally uninterrupted from the beginning to the end. We still have those extended solo moments in which the characters express their feelings in a not too long monologue, and although there is plenty of vocal display (mostly focused in the very famous ‘high notes’), most of the aria is actually a vehicle for character and relationship development. Contrary to the traditional arias in which time stops, Puccini arias are more often embedded in the time continuum and belong more to the action that to the character. They blend beautifully in the scene which makes the whole experiment more realistic.

Let’s take the example of Benoit monologue. It could easily be considered an aria, albeit short, but the flow of the drama, and the fact that we are focusing in the character in his interaction with the other characters make us not perceive it as an aria. It also lacks of dramatic punctuation, and-like many of Puccini arias in this an other operas after this- the orchestra moves away right into the next thing, without signaling a stop, which further blurs the boundaries of the aria.

We will hear our Benoit, Stefanos Koroneos, singing the landlord monologue.

But before that let’s welcome him again! We are so happy to have you here with us!

What is your history with Boheme, I know you directed it recently. And how is your relationship with Benoit?

You will also play Alcindoro, Musetta’s sugar daddy in the second act. Let me tell our friends that in the original production Benoit and Alcindoro were sung also by the same singer, and it is traditionally done that way. What are the challenges in playing two characters in the same everting?

(Naama: you can hear Stefano’s responses in the recording of the talk, see link at the bottom of the page)

Let’s hear Stefanos singing Benoit scene, in a video recording from Den Nye Opera in Bergen, Norway.

Ann-Helen Moen Mimi César Gutiérrez Rodolfo Nina Gravrok Musetta Mads Wighus Marcello Thorbjørn Gulbrandsøy Schaunard Jacob Zethner Colline Stefanos Koroneos...

You can see how the action goes on even before he is done with his monologue and abruptly segue into the next dramatic moment.

I talked last week with Suchan Kim, our Marcello, about the fact that Marcello has no so called aria in this opera, even though he is on stage longer than any other character in the opera. But there’s a moment at the top of Act IV in which the attention focus on Marcello, and somehow the time stops and we witness a single moment in the dramatic action, that as I said before, is one of the defining qualities of an aria. This moment is actually part of a lovely duet between Marcello and Rodolfo, in which each character is ‘thinking’ and taking to themselves, which allows the composer to have them sing together.

Act IV starts with these two friends telling each other that they have seen the other person’s girlfriend doing quite well with their new conquests, which send them both to this melancholic recalling of their former feelings. I’m very excited to share with you a video recording of the duet sung by our Marcello (Suchan Kim) and Rodolfo (Kohei Yamamoto) that we put together this past week, and bears all the traits of our stay-at-home production style. I hope you would recognize several of the themes that we heard last week:

Mimi’s

Musetta’

Rodolfo’

Marcello or the friends’

Here is the duet:

Puccini’s arias are masterfully constructed with a clear sense of dramatic structure and emotional growth. As I mentioned last week, he uses the Leitmotif technique. The leitmotif is a recurrent musical theme with clear melodic, rhythmical and harmonic features that are associated with a character, idea or situation. The leitmotif helps establish an emotional connection between the character and the audience, so we become friends of these characters because we become familiar with their music. Of course these themes are beautiful and heartfelt. Mimi’s themes are very recognizable, and there are several in her aria and each of these melodies are totally different from each other yet they go so well together!

We already heard Mimi’s theme in the duet.

Here is the flower and warmth theme, Mimi true musical soul:

Also this happier and playful theme that has no specific definition, but it is very distinct and will appear several times throughout the opera, and each time it will bring us back to the happy old times of their first encounter:

I am delighted to introduce Maria Natale, our Mimi. Welcome, Maria!

(Naama: you can find the discussion with Maria and her singing in the recording of this talk, see the link below)

Continuing with his efforts to facilitate the flow of the drama while providing clear moments for each character to develop and flourish, Puccini and his librettists Illica and Giacosa, instead of making Mimi’s first aria a single moment in time, they make her tell Rodolfo -and us- about herself, so time never stops, and even more, Rodolfo gets to interject in the middle of the aria to further bend the traits of a traditional aria. Also, and especially, the end of the aria is not a typical end with high notes and loud chords, but instead the arias fades out into a recitative with almost no accompaniment.

Let’s hear Maria Natale singing Si Mi chiamano Mimi. I recorded the piano reduction for her, I hope we can hear it well enough, but the important thing is that we hear her gorgeous singing!

I’d like to open now the mic to anyone in the room to ask questions to our guests or about Boheme arias or anything really.

I would like to remind you our our upcoming offerings.

A conversation with our singers: Sunday May 24 at 2:30 PM. With Laura Leon, Pavel Suliandziga, Stefanos Koroneos and more.

And talk about the music of The Elixir of Love by my other favorite composer, Gaetano Donizetti. With guests Pavel Sulyandziga, our Nemorino, and April Martin, our Adina. It will happen in exactly two week, Wednesday June 3 at 2 PM

Thank you everyone!

Jorge Parodi

Music Director, Manhattan School of Music Senior Opera Theater 

Music Director, Opera in Williamsburg (VA)

www.jorgeparodi.com

Maestro Jorge Parodi, La Boheme characters and their music, May 6, 2020

Talk by Maestro Jorge Parodi about Puccini’s La Boheme and its Musical Characters, May 6, 2020, with soprano Catalina Cuervo (Musetta) and baritone Suchan Kim (Marcello)

 Bohème is one of the most beloved and most performed operas for many reasons.  We love the story that is about everyday people and about events that are simple and extremely appealing and identifiable to the audience. The characters are quickly fully developed, they are lovable and endearing, it has wonderful dramatic moments that contrast high comedy with heartbreaking suffering, but most importantly it has unforgettable melodies with the most refined orchestration.  The music of Bohème is what makes its great story a masterpiece. Puccini knows how to make us fall in love with the characters, enter their world, participate in their relationships, and partake in their memories.

In the opera we witness a year in the relationship of two couples, one that has a preceding history, Marcello and Musetta; and another couple that meets in the first act, Rodolfo and Mimi.  Coming from the Wagnerian tradition of leitmotifs, Puccini assigns musical themes to each character, and to some key events in the story.  A leitmotif is short, constantly recurring musical phrase associated with a particular person, place, or idea.  But Puccini’s use of the leitmotifs is less self evident than in Wagner and often we don’t even realize they are there, yet we perceive -sometime at the unconscious level- the familiarity of the character or the situation because of the use of the motif.

 I talked in my last meeting about Mimi’s introductory theme. This is how is sounds when she first knocks at the door:


And here at the beginning of her aria, right as she says “They call me Mimi”:

When later in the final act Mimi comes back, we hear it modified, showing that she is not feeling well:

There’s several other themes associated with Mimi that will come back often during the show, but one is particularly important because it’s related to her personality.  It’s a gentle melody that first appear when she talks about what she likes: spring, flowers, warmth and poetry (aka Rodolfo):

Several years ago I was talking with the great Renata Scotto at her apartment and she said “here is when the aria really starts, because this is Mimi’s true spirit”. This theme appears when Rodolfo introduces Mimi to his friends:

And it will appear several times during the whole show.

Rodolfo also has several themes associated with him, most of them appearing in his famous aria “Che gélida manina”. Here is the first one:

This theme will appear later in the show, not necessarily to remind us of Rodolfo (although he will be present at those moments) but rather to create familiarity and affinity between the characters and the audience, like at the end of the first act, in the love duet between Mimi and Rodolfo. We will hear it again later when I play a video of this suet.

Another theme for Rodolfo is this important theme that later appears in his aria, right when he singes the high note!  It is impassioned music to underscore his excitement about having met Mimi:





This wonderful theme will appear often throughout the opera, and in the masterful Puccini style, often without us noticing.




Here it is at the beginning of the first act love duet (notice towards that the end of the duet is the music for “Che gelida manina”) — see this video clip:

https://youtu.be/QNAj88riHXs

There is a theme associated with Mimi and Rodolfo first meeting, it appears in the middle of their first duet when they are looking for Mimi’s keys that she has dropped on the floor. Because it’s dark in the garret, they cannot find the keys:


In fact Rodolfo says at the beginning of his aria “what’s the point of looking, we cannot find it in the dark”. This music will appear again only at the end of the opera, when Mimi recalls their first meeting.  This theme is one of the few that are associated always with the same event, so we could call it the ‘Search Theme’.  

Other characters also have their own themes.  Shaunard makes his first entrance with the melody that will be always associated with him, a theme that is youthful and exciting:

Also Musetta’s first entrance is underscore by her theme with a playful and coquettish musical gesture:




I would like to end with the final scene of the opera, but not the whole thing, because I don’t want to give out the ending.  I’m sure we’ll recognize all the musical phrases that bring the opera full circle and reveal the memories recurring in the minds of the lovers:

(stop at 8:30 if you don’t want to see the end!)

https://youtu.be/ttSAipywtHU

Maestro Jorge Parodi, La Boheme and its music, April 15, 2020

Maestro Jorge Parodi's Zoom talk about La Bohème, April 15, 2020, at 2 PM EDT

La Bohème is the love story of Mimi, a seamstress (which was often a euphemism for a kept woman) and Rodolfo, a starving poet. They lived the romanticized bohemian life in mid XIX century Paris (similar to the romanticized life of artists in early XX Century Paris that included Picasso, Cocteau, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Satie).  Mimi meets Rodolfo on Christmas Eve and they have a passionate but short relationship, they decide to break up in late winter and she dies, probably of tuberculosis, in early spring.  Also in the opera we watch the relationship between Rodolfo’s friend, Marcello, a painter, and his on-and-off girlfriend, Musetta, a singer.  Completing their circle of friends are the musician Shaunard, and the philosopher Colline.

Why is La Bohème so popular? It might be because the music is beautiful, the characters are endearing and the story is bittersweet.  In less than 2 hours one really feels like one knows these people and that you have really witnessed their whole relationship up to their heartbreaking farewell. 

This is typical of Puccini's golden age operas, in particular La Boheme, Tosca and Butterfly, all composed one after the other, with 4 years in between and by the team of Puccini, Luigi Illica (book) and Giuseppe Giacosa (lyrics).

These mature works each tell a moving love story, one that centers entirely on the feminine protagonist and ends in a tragic resolution. All speak the same refined and limpid musical language of the orchestra that creates the subtle play of thematic reminiscences.  The music always emerges from the words, indissolubly bound to their meaning and to the images they evoke.

The majority of Puccini’s operas illustrate a theme defined in Il tabarro: “Chi ha vissuto per amore, per amore si morì” (“He who has lived for love, has died for love”). This theme is played out in the fate of his heroines—women who are devoted body and soul to their lovers, are tormented by feelings of guilt, and are punished by the infliction of pain until in the end they are destroyed. In his treatment of this theme, Puccini combines compassion and pity for his heroines with a strong streak of sadism: hence the strong emotional appeal of the Puccinian type of opera.  The action of his operas is uncomplicated and self-evident, so that the spectators, even if they do not understand the words, readily comprehend what is taking place on the stage.  La Bohème, which marks Puccini’s emergence as a fully mature and original composer, contains some of the most memorable arias and musical scenes in any opera. 

Let’s hear our friend Denis Sedov, who we heard last singin Sarastro in our lovely Magic Flute last year, singing Colline’s aria Vecchia Zimarra. Colline, the philosopher friend of Rodolfo, decided to pawn his coat to get some cash to buy medicine for Mimi.  In this aria he says good bye to the coat. This performance is from last summer open air production by the Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg.

This aria introduced in the last act new melodies that have never been heard in the opera, and this makes this moment very special. 

Throughout, Puccini relies on short musical motifs that represent characters, themes, and moods so that the music underscores and highlights aspects of the drama.

One example is Mimi’s theme that first appears when she knocks at Rodolfo’s door.  The same tune will appear at the beginning of her first aria, when she says “They call me Mimi”, forever associating that tune with her. 

In fact this association between this lovely tune and Mimi is one of the most famous example of leivmotive, or musical motive that is associated with a character or idea that Puccini learnt mostly from Wagner, although this technique had appeared in Handel, Mozart, Donizetti and many other composers. This motive became immediately very popular, and Puccini himself quotes it in Il Tabarro, when the Song Vendor tries to sell a song inspired by the story of Mimi.

In the case of Mimì and Rodolfo, musical phrases bring the opera full circle and let the music reveal the memories recurring in the minds of the lovers as they say farewell. Perhaps in another meeting we will explore all the different motives associated with each character and how they appear throughout the opera to create familiarity and help the audience bond with them.

One very interesting feature of this opera is Puccini’s use of material that he had composed before. The idea of recycling is very common in music, in particular in earlier period before music printing was the standard. Handel (and all the Baroque composers) would reuse the same tune in several operas, especially if the opera was performed in a different city or several years apart, even with the same lyrics. Rossini and Donizetti did this often and even Bellini, who wrote not that many operas by comparison, recycle whole sections of earlier unsuccessful operas. One nice example is the famous overture of the Barber of Seville: it was actually recycled from two earlier Rossini operas, Aureliano in Palmira and Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, and thus contains none of the thematic material in Il barbiere di Siviglia itself. This happened because the composers were either short in time, or wanted to fully profit from a worthy musical tune.

I’m talking about borrowings (which is the technical term for music recycling) because Puccini uses a tune he wrote 8 years before the premiere of La Bohème for the finale of Act 3. This song was written to be published in a periodical called Paganini. We think that he wrote the lyrics and he even set to music the signature!

Let me show you a picture of the first page of the song: you can see the year of publication (1888).

Let’s hear our friend, soprano Kinneret Ely sing Sole e Amore. I recorded the piano accompaniment and sent it to Kinneret, who is with OiW General and Artistic Director Naama Zahavi-Ely in Tel Aviv. Kinneret recorded for us earlier today! Here it is:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24QvsgtvEt8&feature=youtu.be 
(The translation in the subtitles is by Laura Stanfield Prichard, Boston Baroque, with our thanks)

This beautiful tune was used almost note by note in the Finale of Act III of La Boheme. Puccini uses also the same key and the same accompaniment, and he repeats it twice. In this double duo we see the moment that Rodolfo and Mimi decide to break up, but not until the spring when warmth and flowers will be their companions; and we also hear an argument (one of many) between Marcello and Musetta. This recording is from the Opera di Modena, from the Teatro now called Pavarotti, because Pavarotti was born in Modena. And the main characters are played by Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni, with Lucio Gallo as Marcello and Anna Rita Taliento as Musetta.

La Boheme di Giacomo Puccini - Opera Completa Mimì: Mirella Freni Rodolfo: Luciano Pavarotti Musetta: Annarita Taliento Marcello: Lucio Gallo Schaunard: Piet...




What a great way to close our chat. Now I will open the mic to everyone who would like to ask questions about Puccini, La Boheme or anything you heard today, and hopefully I’ll have something interesting to respond!

(Unfortunately we don't have a transcript of the Q&A session)

I know that there are people in this group who have supported us generously again and again, and we really and truly appreciate it.  If anybody would like to contribute, you can do so from home through our website (see the “donate” link below).  We also have a fundraising auction going on online April 13-30, 2020, you will find a link to it on the website home page as well.  Thank you so much, and we hope to see you in person in September!