A Singer’s Guide to the Great Composers: Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi was born near Busseto in northern Italy in 1813. It had been part of the Duchy of Parma which had been incorporated into the First French Empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1808. His family was reasonably well-off, his father running an inn in the village of Le Roncole, and the young Verdi was brought up in a solid provincial middle-class way. His later attempts to claim a quasi-impoverished childhood for himself were driven by a desire to create a myth of humble beginnings and glorious achievement. The achievement side was totally convincing, as he became one of the most famous Italians of the 19th Century, and one of the greatest opera composers of all time.
I have been fortunate throughout my career to sing in many of his operas, although I am the first to admit that my voice is not a typical Verdi voice. I shall explain why later. The early stages of my career were dominated by his opera ‘Rigoletto’ and the later ones by ‘Falstaff’.
While still at university, one of my first ever roles was Dottore Grenvil in scenes from ‘La Traviata’ staged by the amateur group, Edinburgh Grand Opera. It is not a thrilling role, and I was at that time a terrible actor, so it didn’t have much going for it, but it was a start, and I had caught the opera bug. I must admit here that Traviata is my least favourite Verdi opera. I’m not really sure why, but this operatic version of Dumas Fils’ play ‘La Dame aux Camélias’ fails to excite me. I watched it again recently at Aix-en-Provence with the marvellous Natalie Dessay and remained unmoved throughout. No fault could be attached to the singers, but I just can’t get into it. It’s a good story (Dumas fils was the son of the Three Musketeers Dumas), although apparently Verdi was hugely disappointed that, at the premiere in 1853 at La Fenice in Venice, the theatre had cast a somewhat elderly and plump soprano as Violetta, making nonsense of her character as a glamorous courtesan who dies of consumption! Perhaps I always expect Verdi operas to be full of blood and thunder, and a story set in the salons and boudoirs of Paris fails to get me interested. Clearly, I am in a minority here, as ‘La Traviata’ (which translates as “the Fallen Woman” by the way - a fact which had escaped me for nearly 50 years!) has proved to be enormously successful, and one of the public’s favourite operas!
When I moved to London in 1978, I was fortunate to see some of the greatest singers in the world singing Verdi at Covent Garden. I wrote in ‘A Singer’s Life’ that my wife and I would often get tickets in the Upper Slips for a tiny sum, and at least hear, if not see clearly, a whole range of great performances in that fantastic era when Colin Davis was Musical Director. ‘Don Carlo’ with Christoff, Domingo and Bruson, ‘Otello’ with Domingo and Margaret Price, ‘Rigoletto’, ‘La Forza del Destino’ and ‘Un Ballo in Maschera’. I wanted to sing some of this music but was wisely advised to wait for my voice to mature before going near some of Verdi’s bass roles.
It was not until the mid-80s that I was cast in my first professional Verdi opera, as Monterone in Scottish Opera’s interesting production (by David Alden) of ‘Rigoletto’. This high bass role is not huge but makes a great impression. The wronged father of one of the Duke’s conquests storms on stage to denounce the Duke of Mantua and his henchman and jester Rigoletto in a dramatic episode which really stands out as a major scene. Having been mocked by the hunchback Rigoletto (played by the brilliant Lancastrian baritone John Rawnsley), Monterone thunders out a curse on both the Duke and Rigoletto which plagues the jester for the rest of the opera. In this production, I was strung up on a chandelier and had to sing my curse hanging 20 feet up above the stage. Not the most comfortable of positions, but extremely dramatic! Monterone returns later in the opera, having been condemned for supposed crimes, but really to be got rid of, and, in another dramatic entry, bemoans the fact that his curse has failed to stop the evil behaviour of the Duke and his jester. As he is led away, Rigoletto, who has now found out that the Duke has apparently seduced his own daughter, Gilda, vows to get his own revenge on his employer. As we will see, his revenge goes badly wrong, and instead of killing the Duke, it is Gilda who dies at the end, with Rigoletto screaming “Ah The Curse” as his last utterance.
While we are talking about ‘Rigoletto’, this is perhaps a good point to discuss the optional high notes that tradition has added to a number of early and middle Verdi operas. The composer only very rarely wrote high notes at the end of many of his phrases for all his singers, but over the century and a half since Verdi’s death, it has become expected that alternative high notes are interpolated by the performers. Some people deplore this wanton changing of the composer’s intent, and normally I would concur. I would be shocked if anyone changed large numbers of notes in Wagner or Mozart, but somehow, early and middle period Verdi seems to cry out for these additions, and the music seems wrong without them. The great Italian conductor, Riccardo Muti, famously insisted in performances at La Scala and on record, that the singers only sang what Verdi wrote, but I must say, I felt short changed. Perhaps, as a bass whose high notes are generally not what people are listening for, I should be more critical of this phenomenon, but, when great singers can produce fantastic top notes which serve to heighten the excitement of the moment, I really can’t complain.
However, by the time we get to ‘Aida’ and the later operas, changes should be frowned upon, as the master composer knew exactly what he wanted by this time, and no improvement comes from random improvisation.
Not long after my performances as Monterone in Scottish Opera’s ‘Rigoletto’, I was cast in the same role in the legendary Jonathan Miller production for ENO at the London Coliseum. This was my first role for the company (singing in English this time, as are all operas at ENO) and I sang numerous performances of this great show. It had first appeared in 1982, also with John Rawnsley in the title role, and famously transferred the setting from Italy to Little Italy in New York, at the height of the Mafia’s power. Miller’s production, and the marvellous singing actors he worked with, stood out as one of the iconic operas of ENO’s great period under the musical direction of Mark Elder, and I was very lucky to be part of this historic event. I sang the role again in the early 90s, when it was announced that the production would be finally retired, but it proved so popular with the public that it kept being revived until its 13th run in 2016!
In 1993, I was cast as Banquo in Verdi’s take on Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ at ENO but I never felt comfortable with the role, and this might be the time to ponder why some roles suit and others don’t. I wrote in my article about Wagner how some of his parts felt perfect for me while others were just wrong. The same applies to Verdi operas, even more so in fact.
The Verdi roles with which I have been largely associated are Monterone, Pistola and Falstaff. I sang a couple of Grand Inquisitors (Don Carlos) at ENO and would love to have sung King Phillip at least once, but the fact is that my voice does not possess the sound quality that people associate with Verdi’s bass parts, or indeed those of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini. My timbre is bright and clear while most great Verdi basses tend to the mellifluous and buzzy, a quality I can find in songs but not in opera when one is required always to project over an orchestra. Listen to any decent recording of basses singing Verdi’s music, and you will hear a sound quite different from my own. This is sad, but not a disaster, as I have found many other composers whose music suits me better, and I have no complaints about not being cast in many Verdi operas. I would like to have tried singing King Phillip in the French version of ‘Don Carlos’, as I am very comfortable in French and the actual sound of the music changes with the language but it was not to be. Mind you, when I auditioned long ago for the then director of the Opéra de Paris at the Bastille with Phillip’s great aria ‘Elle ne m’aime pas’, he was so impressed that he cast me in several further operas at Paris, Nancy and Geneva, including my first Pistola in Verdi’s ‘Falstaff’. So my loss in not singing Phillip became my gain in many lucrative contracts!
‘Falstaff’ was Verdi’s final opera, which he wrote at the age of nearly 80, and what a swansong it proved to be! He had only written one comedy in his long career, ‘Un Giorno di Regno’, and it hadn’t been a success, but when the composer and librettist Arrigo Boito presented him with a draft libretto based on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry the Fourth, Parts 1 and 2, he was inspired to write what I feel is his finest opera, a distillation of Italian brio and wit with the brilliant invention of Shakespeare.
I first got into ‘Falstaff’ at quite an early age, when I was still at school, and was thrilled by its energy and sparkle even then. Perhaps because I was obsessed with Wagner, Mahler and Bruckner at that stage, Verdi’s least Verdian opera appealed to me particularly. It was well received at its premiere in La Scala Milan in 1893, with an ovation lasting for an hour at the end, and quickly was played all over the world. Interestingly, Mahler conducted it in Hamburg in January1894! After the initial excitement, the reaction to ‘Falstaff’ cooled, as the public began to ask where all the big arias and sweeping scenes had gone from Verdi’s music, and it was only the young conductor Toscanini, who championed it in the early years of the 20th Century at La Scala and the New York Met, and who succeeded in reviving its reputation to an extent. It is still sometimes hard to sell the opera to an audience who are confused by its lack of big numbers, huge choruses and dramatic love triangles, but I firmly believe it to be his masterpiece. Not a note is wasted, and there is such a wealth of invention and spirit to be found in its pages that it seems scarcely believable that Verdi had not written a successful comedy before.
My first experience of singing in ‘Falstaff’ was at ENO when I was asked to understudy Pistola in the early 90s. This was a sad occasion for me, both because I never got to sing on stage, and because it marked the first time that the general public were made aware of the hearing problems of the wonderful Cornish baritone, Benjamin Luxon. Ben had been a great mentor to me, first at Scottish Opera and latterly when I moved to London in 1985. His help and advice were hugely important to my career, and to see and hear him trying to sing Falstaff when the effects of serious tinnitis prevented him from hearing either the orchestra or his own voice, was deeply distressing. I am happy to report that he is still reasonably well and living in America, and although unable to sing, remains a stalwart supporter of many young singers.
Not long after the ENO performances, I was cast as Pistola in a new production by the genial French director, Alain Garichot, in Nancy, with a starry cast. I fell in love with the opera all over again, and we took the production to Lausanne and Caen, with the Argentinian baritone, Victor Torres, as Falstaff. I then found myself singing Pistola in Manchester at the then newish Bridgewater Hall, with a stellar cast, including the Falstaff de nos jours, Ambrogio Maestri, conducted by my old friend, Sir Mark Elder.
Pistola is a fun character, but a smallish role, who becomes less and less important as the opera progresses. It never crossed my mind that I might sing the title role, until, while singing La Roche in Strauss’ ‘Capriccio’ in Bielefeld in Germany, the management asked me to have a look at Falstaff for the following season, as their contracted singer had become unavailable. Well, dear reader, I found that, with the help of my great vocal coach, Tony Roden (see ‘A Singer’s Life’), and with a following wind at one or two moments, the role fitted me like a glove. With my bright high bass voice and my naturally sunny and optimistic nature, I discovered it was the part that I had been, as it were, waiting for. It was the first time in my long career that I had the title role, and I had immense fun. We had an English director, which, for me, helped communication enormously, and, although some of his ideas were wacky (we were in Germany!), there was a superb, mainly young, cast and a good conductor with whom I had already worked twice. Falstaff is an interesting role for many reasons, but my initial worry about it being too high for me, soon turned into an exercise in making it work. With Tony’s help, I found that some of the high lying sections could be dealt with by using falsetto or parodying a romantic tenor sound, and others with a mixture of bluster and good old fashioned “welly”! There was only one big high G at the end of the first scene that actually lay outside my vocal range, and I got the conductor to make the orchestra play extra loud, while I mimed effortfully. Most people were fooled, except the English critic who turned up to watch the show, and he had seen it done before! The important thing to know about the two baritone roles in the opera is that, while Ford is a traditional Verdi baritone, like Iago, Posa or Germont Père, Falstaff is a different creature altogether, a role that needs great use of the words and nuance in performance, allied to an ability to colour words and sound to create a total character on stage.
My success in Germany led to me being engaged for the same role in Victoria on Vancouver Island in Canada, where I had also sung La Roche in ‘Capriccio’, with Pacific Opera Victoria. Readers of ‘A Singer’s Life’ will remember how much I loved working with this splendid company, and I can honestly say that the rehearsals and performances of ‘Falstaff’ there were the pinnacle of my career. Wonderful Canadian singers, an excellent orchestra conducted by the Musical Director of POV, Tim Vernon, and a delightful and clever director, Glynis Leyshon, all combined to create a magical show which the Canadian critics raved about. “Mr Bannatyne-Scott’s Falstaff is superb. His vocal range matches his physical range, including magnificent bellows of self-adoration and dudgeon, to funny falsetto and quasi-spoken bits”. I quote this not for vanity (well, not much!), but to show how luck plays such an important part in any career. Having largely eschewed Verdi over the years, I found myself lauded to the heights in a role I never imagined I would sing. Not only did I receive great reviews, but I had a star on my dressing room door, and a beer named after me in Victoria! Falstaff Ale, a dark beer like a German Dunkelbier, was brought out to coincide with the production, and I still have the glass to prove it!
After ‘Falstaff’, Verdi largely retired to his country estate, and involved himself in philanthropic ventures, until he died after a stroke in 1901 at the age of 87. He was buried in Milan where a crowd estimated at 300,000 turned up to celebrate his life and work. We will never see his like again.
