ITALIAN OPERA SINGING AT THE TIME OF VERISMO;
The invention of the modern voice by BARBARA GENTILE
2024 180 pp
ISBN 978 1 83765 0781
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In spite of some caveats this is a unique and in some ways even a brilliant attractive hard cover book. There have been books written about verismo before but none of them go into the fully detailed and in-depth analysis as in this book by Barbara Gentili.
In the decades that span the turn of the twentieth century, the Italian tradition of operatic singing became ‘modern’ is the main starting point of the author. Gentili “identifies and explores the formative elements of this multifaceted ‘modernity’, and its connections with the emergence of verismo, a realistic trend that affected every aspect of creative and intellectual life in fin-de-siècle Italy. This novel approach to artistic representation meant that singers had to redefine the operatic voice, exchanging the bel canto ideal of ‘pure’ vocal quality with an irreversible gendered connotation and an erotically charged expressive force. Pivotal to this shift was the gradual development of a homogeneous vocal color through the compass, an aesthetic principle that was alien to the voice culture of the previous centuries.”
What certainly is new to the study of verismo is the author’s comparative analysis of early vocal recordings and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century vocal methods.
Recordings mainly by singers particularly associated with verismo composers are discussed and compared. Along the book’s five chapters singers like Nellie Melba and Emma Carelli (chapter 3) are juxtaposed demonstrating artists who adhered to or disavowed the ‘traditional’ rules that they were taught. Likewise for Mattia Battistini and Titta Ruffo.
In the following two chapters tenors Enrico Caruso, Giovanni Zenatello and Alessandro Bonci are compared in order to illustrate the different approaches with which these singers joined the registers for instance. Chapter five deals with the ‘verismo’ soprano a new category embodied by both Emma Carelli and Eugenia Burzio. By far the best chapter.
All 45 recordings talked about can be accessed on the book’s webpage not under the “related content” tab as written in the book but simply by clicking on the “music and blog post”.
Now to the caveats : a first one is that an elementary knowledge of music (solfège, vocal terminology) is needed to fully capture what is being discussed.
Regrettably this book is not written for the opera/voice lover and/or record collector. For that the book has too much of a university thesis aura about it. It’s far too academic for the music lover in general to enjoy and I have the strong impression this book is solely aimed at scholars and students of opera history as the book’s blurb rightly states.
I also have a problem with the author’s overestimating the influence of the verismo genre and its historical singers on the evolution of singing. Gentili also ignores the utmost importance the invention of the gramophone had on singing. She also totally neglects the Russian school of singing for instance where the influence of verismo was rather limited but even in Italy there were opera artists who were not ‘contaminated’ by the ‘verismo school’ Giacomo Lauri-Volpi is a case in point.
To Gentili’s credit only a few typos/mistakes crept into the narrative. The author constantly refers to “I Pagliacci” while the correct title of the opera is “Pagliacci”. The correct spelling of the tenor role in Aida is Radamès not Rhadames or Radames, the author of The Grand Tradition is John Steane (not Stean) and sometimes ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ is spelled as “Una furtiva lacrima”.
The book contains 8 photographs but the photo captions limit themselves to the identification of the artist and the origin of the photo only. Yet the Battistini photo is remarkable because it is dedicated to Emma Nevada, a Marchesi student. Same for the Zenatello photo which is dedicated to the renowned Dutch author, music critic and record collector Leo Riemens.
Above all this book is the result of dedication, perseverance and passion for its subject. This can be read on every page and in every word. The book in spite of its shortcomings complements our history of the operatic art form around the beginning of the 20th century.
Rudi van den Bulck, December 2024