Music Lounge (47)

At first sight, Bellini’s La Sonnambula is a quaint, sentimental piece of nonsense. Maybe at second sight too. Yet there’s something there to be discovered if you’re willing to give it some time. As I wasn’t at first interested in buying a recording, I first saw it in a live performance in which everything felt like reverie wrapped in exquisite melodies. I have to say that I even liked the silly plot, in which we can get a glimpse of these characters’ secret desires behind the alpine pageantry.

While the opera turns around the characters of the sweet sleepwalking Amina and her jealous fiancé Elvino, Eugène Scribe’s scenario for the ballet-pantomime La Sonnambule (on which Felice Romani found inspiration for his libretto) had the subtitle L’Arrivée du Nouvel Seigneur (The Arrival of the New Lord of the Land). In Scribe’s text, M. de Saint-Rambert is young, handsome and a womanizer. He has some decency and, when Thérèse (Amina) walks in her sleep into his bedroom, he realizes it would be plainly wrong to take advantage of the situation and leaves. Later on, he tries to fix things by explaining the situation to Edmond (Elvino). When the young man refuses to believe him, Saint-Rambert contents himself with laughing about the whole absurd situation. I am not sure how Romani decided to make things more complex by inserting in the plot a story we’ve read more than once in literature – the Count Rodolfo (Saint-Rambert) comes to his estate in the countryside where he fell in love with a local girl many years ago only to find a young woman who looks just like her. In different versions of this story, the moment when he discovers that she is his own daughter varies, sometimes too late. Curiously, Bellini did not like Romani’s idea and made him delete the scene where the truth about the girl’s paternity is found out. There is only one remain of the ghost subplot in the libretto – right in the cabaletta of Rodolfo’s aria, Vi ravviso, o luoghi ameni (“I see you again, pleasant places [of my youth]”), when we hear him say “That adorable beauty is revived in my thoughts/she was then as you are now: in the morning of her life”.

Although we’re not listening to the cabaletta, the item in our Music Lounge this week is precisely Rodolfo’s Vi ravviso, o luoghi ameni. As usual with Bellini, this is an aria that requires absolutely perfect legato, noble tonal quality and, above all, poise. Rodolfo is not the womanizer in Scribe’s pantomime. Maybe in his youth – here he just revives those days in his mind on seeing a girl who looks just like his teenage sweetheart. Although Romani probably imagined that his resisting his own impulses in the bedroom scene was due to an instinctive realization that there was a family bond between them, the final version of the libretto just shows him as a decent man who knows how to draw a line between what is proper and what is not. It is a cruel role in a sense – the audience’s impression about Rodolfo depends entirely of how the bass is singing this first aria. If he does not deliver it in impeccable bel canto style, then he’ll just look like an old cad who was for some reason not in the mood that evening. As almost everything composed by Bellini, it is difficult to describe its charm. The strings basically produce an arpeggio pattern throughout the entire piece, while woodwind and horns season the vocal line. The text is very simple – we are in a cavatina pattern – Vi ravviso, o luoghi ameni/, in cui lieti, in cui sereni,/si tranquillo i di passai/Della prima gioventù./Cari luoghi, io vi trovai/ma quei di no trovo più. (“I see you again, pleasant places/ where I calmly spent/the happy, serene days/Of my early youth./Dear places, I may find you now/but I’ll never find those days again.”). The other characters and the chorus comment that he seems to know the village well and they wonder why.

When the aria starts, the singer first has the clarinet with him, soon to be joined by the French horn basically adding some harmonic zest to the string arpeggi. In the first phrase, Rodolfo experiments again the contentment of his youth, but the second one is about the present emotion of feeling young again. In order to mark the change of mood, Bellini adds more woodwind to the mix: flutes and oboes double the singer’s voice. And yet the composer insists that the dynamic should be kept piano. He even adds some morendo to prevent everyone from getting too perky here. The increase in emotion is made exclusively by tone colouring. As the text of the aria reflects Rodolfo’s thoughts (he is not speaking to anyone here), Romani and Bellini have the audience listening to the villagers talk about the stranger who has just arrived there. In the recitative, he voices the fact that he finds everything in the same place where they used to be the last time he was there. Now an extra clarinet and bassoon join the other woodwind and we hear Rodolfo’s almost repetitive melody, as a sweet memory we’re not ready to let go, intertwined with the chorus. that sound pictures remains the same until the end of the aria but for the interruption for the singer’s cadenza, where the bass usually sings a low g before he ends in a low a flat.

The only reason why we’re not listening to the cabaletta is because the clip featured this week only shows the cavatina. This is a favorite aria, especially in vocal competitions and you’ll find recordings with almost every bass in the Italian repertoire. Cesare Siepi, for instance, recorded it more than once, and I bet his deluxe, ultrarich singing is considered the reference for all Italian basses. There is absolutely nothing to fault there, and yet I was looking for a performance with Mozartian grace and a real sense of Innigkeit. In Mario Lafranchi’s film with Anna Moffo, Plinio Clabassi sings with the right balance of nostalgia and nonchalance. Siepi’s fans won’t be wrong to find his voice slimmer in comparison, though. However, in the last minute I found László Polgár’s performance on YouTube and he comes really close to the way I would like to hear this aria. First, his voice is so gentle, smooth and velvety there – this is truly classy. Although the conductor rushes him forward, he still sounds absolutely chic. The legato is seamless, every note is round and fruity. Also, his use of portamento is very subtle, there is no unnecessary emphasis in any syllable (as usual in the first della prima gioventù). This is a lesson in bel canto singing – and the cadenza is delivered with flexibility and rotund low notes. I wonder why the audience applauds so bureaucratically in the end.

Although I really like Polgár’s voice – he is a musicianly and elegant singer – I am not an unconditional admirer. He could sometimes sound detached in an almost abstract way, especially in his recording with Nikolaus Harnoncourt. His Leporello, for instance, is so unresponsive that you could almost call him Il Sonnambulo. That said, there is plenty to cherish in his video- and discography, such as his Sarastro for Arnold Östman in Drottningholm. His recordings turn around Classical repertoire and early Romantics , but it seems that in his native Hungary he would sing all kinds of roles – you can hear his Filippo in a Don Carlo with Ilona Tokody, for instance. His performance in the title role in Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle has been recorded more than once, the last time with Jessye Norman as Judit, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Pierre Boulez.