LA VESTALE
Gasparo Spontini (1774 - 1851)
Opera in three acts in Italian
Liberetto: Etienne de JouyPremièr at Opéra, Paris – 15 December 1807
04†, 07, 11, 13, 17* December 1969
Teatro Massimo, Palermo
OPENING PERFORMANCE OF TEATRO MASSIMO DI PALERMO
Conductor: Fernando
Previtali / Corrado Martinez *
Chorus master: Mairo Tagini
Stage director: Mauro Bolognini
Chorus master: Mairo Tagini
Stage director: Mauro Bolognini
Scene: Pierluigi Samaritani
Costumes: Marcel Escoffier
Costumes: Marcel Escoffier
Direttore musicale del palcoscenico / Stage Musical Director:
Corrado Martinez
Maestri collaboratori / Collaborating Directors: Donitilde Di Carlo, Enza Ferrari, Giuseppe Grassodonia, Edoardo Müller, Franco Rossitto
Aiuto regista stabile / Permanent Asistan to Stage Director: Salvatore Gennaro
Direttore di scena / Stage Manager: Dino Camuccio
Maestri rammentatori / Prompters: Rudolf Kaiser, Nino Serafino
Direttore dell’allestimento scenico / Director of Stage Design: Antoni Carollo
Direttore della sartoria / Tailoring Director: Franco Folinea
Capo reparto elettiricisti / Head of Electrician Department: Aurelia Bianco
Maestri collaboratori / Collaborating Directors: Donitilde Di Carlo, Enza Ferrari, Giuseppe Grassodonia, Edoardo Müller, Franco Rossitto
Aiuto regista stabile / Permanent Asistan to Stage Director: Salvatore Gennaro
Direttore di scena / Stage Manager: Dino Camuccio
Maestri rammentatori / Prompters: Rudolf Kaiser, Nino Serafino
Direttore dell’allestimento scenico / Director of Stage Design: Antoni Carollo
Direttore della sartoria / Tailoring Director: Franco Folinea
Capo reparto elettiricisti / Head of Electrician Department: Aurelia Bianco
Licinio a Roman General ROBLETO MEROLLA tenor
Giulia a young Vestal virgin LEYLA GENCER soprano [Role debut]
Cinna a centurian RENATO BRUSON baritone
The Pontifex Maximus AGOSTINO FERRIN bass
The Chief Pristess FRANCA MATTIUCCI mezzo-soprano
A Consul ENRICO CAMPI bass
Aruspice SEGRIO SISTI bass
Time: 269
Place: Rome
† Recording date
* Note: The
fifth performance of La Vestale was conducted by Corrado Martinez
* Nota: La quinta recita de La Vestale e stata diretta da
Corrado Martinez
Photos © CHRISTOPHE DELHOUME
Photos © AGENZIA FOTOGRAFICA ALLOTTA, Palermo
Drawings © FONDAZIONE GIORGIO CINI ONLUS
FONDAZIONE GIORGIO CINI
LA VESTALE
BELISARIO
JERUSALEM / GERUSALEMME
LES MARTYRS
MEDEA
MEDEA IN CORINTO
 |
| With Lucia Bosé (actor) and Mauro Bolognini (stage and movie director) |
CORRIERE DELLA SERA
1969.11.15
RADIOCORRIERE.TV
1970 June 07 - 13
L'UNITA
1993.12.06
CORRIERE FIORENTINO
2022.11.02
COMPLETE RECORDING
1969.12.04
Recording Excerpts [1969.12.04]
Sinfonia
Tu nascondi ... Quando amistà Act I Scene I
Alma Vesta del ciel pura figlia Act I Scene II
E' questa l'ultima volta che de tuoi perigli Act I Scene III
Oh di funesta...Ti vedrò Act I Scene IV
Divino foco, alma del mondo Act II Scene I
Tu che invoco con orrore...Su questo sacro altare Act II Scene II
O Nume tutelar degli infelici Act II Scene VI
Ohimé! quale apparato Act III Scene I
Caro oggetto, di cui il nome proferir Act III Scene V
Lieti concenti, dolci momenti Act III Final Scene
FROM LP BOOKLET
LA VESTALE
NOTES ON LA VESTALE
HERBERT WEINSTOCK
Gaspare Luigi Pacifico Spontini was born at Majolati, in the Anconese Marches, on November 14, 1774, the second of five sons of a cobbler who also owned a little land. Sent to study for the priesthood at Jesi with an uncle who was in orders, young Spontini rebelled over the lack of local possibilities for musical training and ran away to live with another relative at Monte San Vito. Musical training that he succeeded in acquiring there led, in 1793, to his entering the Conservatorio della Pietà de’ Turchini at Naples. Three years later, apparently on the basis of some church music that he had composed, he was commissioned to supply music for a two-act farce, Li Puntigli delle donne, tor a Roman theatre. Its success induced him two years later to compose a one-act farce, L’Eroismo ridicolo, for production in Naples (1798). Fleeing with the Bourbon court to Palermo in the face of the French invasion, he became maestro di cappella there. During 1800 he provided the exiled courtiers with no less than four other brief operas.
Stopping at Rome in 1801, Venice in 1802, Naples again in 1803, Spontini moved on to Paris, where he soon was composing light operas in French. These failed, in part because of foolish librettos, but Spontini then had the good fortune to become friendly with Victor-Joseph Etienne de Jouy, an accomplished dramatist and librettist. Etienne de Jouy, working with Michel Dieulafoy, provided him with a one-act text based on an incident in John Milton’s life. And the one-act Milton (Opéra-Comique, 1804) helped to establish Spontini’s reputation. His rapidly increasing seriousness of purpose showed still further in 1805, in another one-acter, Julie ou Le Pot de fleurs—and bore its firmest fruit when, in 1807 (by then he had become private composer to the Empress Josephine), his masterpiece, La Vestale, was staged sumptuously at the Opéra. Again, with the help of Etienne de Jouy, Spontini at the age of thirty-three had become one of the foremost operatic composers of his era. La Vestale was adjudged the winner of the 10,000-franc decennial prize established by Napoleon.
Working this time with Joseph-Alphonse Esménard, Etienne de Jouy next provided Spontini with the libretto of Fernand Cortez, again showing that he knew how to evoke the Italian’s uniquely imperial style of grand opera. Staged at the Opéra in 1809, this pageant of the Conquest of Mexico became a smash hit. After Spontini’s marriage to a niece of Sébastien Erard, the renowned piano-maker, he was appointed director of the Théatre-Italien (1810), holding this exposed position long enough to give Paris its first untampered-with performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Spontini lost the directorship in 1812 amid confused charges of financial duplicity. Under Louis XVIII, however. he became court composer and concocted pseudo-operas glorifying the restored Bourbons. His last important French opera, Olympie, lacked the magic touch of Etienne de Jouy. It was a failure in 1819, and Spontini thereafter transferred his activities to Berlin.
King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia appointed Spontini court composer and general music director for Berlin. Spontini established his position as a formidable conductor with a resoundingly successful staging in German of Fernand Cortez (1820), which he followed with an even more splendid restaging of Olympie (May 14, 1821), this latter with its text translated into German by E. T. A. Hoffmann. By this time, he was evolving into an internationally feared musical dictator, a stiff figure of unbending pride and pomp—and in one sense a representative of the rapidly dying Napoleonic imperial and pseudo-classic past. The spontaneous success of Weber’s Der Freischiütz at Berlin (June 18, 1821), only five weeks after the Olympie there, signalled the end of Spontini’s Berlin reign and the arrival of the new romanticism to which everything in his nature was inimical. None of the new operas that he composed to German texts—not even the admirable Agnes von Hohenstaufen (1829)—won him more than aloof esteem. He gradually created a formidable phalanx of enemies. Not so much favoured by Friedrich Wilhelm IV as he had been by Friedrich Wilhelm HI, Spontini finally was driven from the Berlin opera by angry audience demonstrations. He retired in 1841.
Any attempt to restore his position in Paris which Spontini may have planned was forestalled by implacable dislike on the part of the director of the Opéra there. The Italian’s one later moment of glory came in 1844, when Richard Wagner prepared a revival of La Vestale—which he admired greatly—at Dresden, with Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient in the title role, and invited the aging martinet to conduct it. After that, Spontini retired to Italy, jerkily, unendingly, deafly devoting himself to good works. By the time of his death at Majolati on January 24, 1851, the then seventy-six-year-old composer of La Vestale and Fernand Cortez was a glorious relic from a frozen past.
But the ice in which the operas of the early nineteenth century so long remained congealed began to melt toward the third decade of the twentieth. Spontini’s position as a founding father of true French grand opera led then to occasional revivals of Fernand Cortez, La Vestale, even of Olympie and Agnes von Hohenstaufen. And when those mouldering scores were made to sound, dramatic music of great power and persuasiveness emerged. We began, then, to understand the lineage that led from Spontini’s three. major operas (1807, 1809, 1819) to Auber’s La Muette de Portici or Masaniello (1828), Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829), Meyerbeer’s Robert de diablo (1831), Les Huguenots (1836), and Le Prophéte (1849), and Halévy’s La Juive (1835). This was the family of true grand opera, the effects of which still are discerned in Wagner’s Rienzi (1840), Tannhduser (1845), and Die Meistersinger (1867), Berlioz’s Les Troyens (1859), and Verdi’s Aida (1871). As the founder of so remarkable a family, Spontini—particularly with La Vestale—fully deserves a place of living honour in the world of opera.
La Vestale is a three-act grand opera with a libretto by Victor-Joseph Etienne de Jouy, who had based it on a passage in Winckelmann’s Monumenti antichi inediti.’ He had not written it for Spontini, but had offered it first to, among other ‘composers, Boieldieu, Méhul, and Cherubini. Cherubini was to have reason to regret refusing it: La Vestale won the 10,000-frane Prix Napoléon in a contest that Cherubini lost. Boieldieu—after La Vestale succeeded—asserted that Spontini has frisked the libretto away from him. In 1823, Beethoven said that the two best opera librettos yet. written were that of La Vestale and the one that Jean-Nicolas Bouilly (author of the French libretto on which Fidelio had been based) had provided in 1800 for Cherubini’s Les Deux Journées.
And Etienne de Jouy’s La Vestale libretto deserves all praise. It sometimes has been criticized adversely because of its “happy ending’—which Wagner tried in vain to persuade Spontini to alter. But Julia, the Vestal of the title, has committed no mortal sin of the flesh: she is not Norma. Her transgression consists of letting the sacred fire on Vesta’s altar expire because she is experiencing the emotion of love. Norma committed mortal sin; Aida betrayed both her lover and his country. Ethically and artistically their deaths are justified. But the reluctant Vestal Julia, true to herself and to her beloved, has erred momentarily rather than sinned. Her final happiness is ethically justifiable and esthetically necessary.
Setting this libretto with all his powers and with concentrated labours of thought and imagination, Spontini employed an orchestra of 2 flutes (alternating with 2 piccolos), 2 oboes. 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 harps, * percussion, and strings. The cast of characters include Julia, recently become a Vestal Virgin; La Grande Vestale; Licinius, a Roman general; Cinna, commander of a legion; and Le Grand Pontife, chief priest of Jupiter. The scene is Rome.
La Vestale was staged for the first time on December 16, 1807, at the Académie Impériale de Musique (Opéra), with this cast: Alexandrine-Caroline Branchu (Julia), Marie-Therèse Davoux Maillard (La Grande Vestale), Etienne Lainez or Lainé (Licinius), Francois Lais (Cinna), and Henri Dérivis (Le Grande Pontife). It achieved one hundred singings by 1816, two hundred by 1830—and during Spontini’s lifetime was heard throughout Europe and in the United States—in French, German (100 performances at Berlin by 1839), Italian, Russian, Spanish, Polish, Swedish, Hungarian, and Danish. It was heard early at New Orleans and was sung by a New Orleans company at Philadelphia on October 30, 1828. New York heard it for the first time, in Italian, at the Metropolitan Opera House on November 13, 1925, when the cast was: Rosa Ponselle (Julia), Margarete Matzenauer (High Priestess), Edward Johnson (Licinius), Giuseppe De Luca (Cinna), and José Mardones (Pontifex Maximus); Tullio Serafin conducted. La Vestale opened the 1925-26 Metropolitan season (with Giacomo LauriVolpi replacing Johnson, Ezio Pinza instead of Mardones), but left the repertoire that season after a total of eight Metropolitan performances.
* For the final scene, Spontini originally asked for six harps. The management of the Opéra, however, pointed out that in order to install them on the stage, it would have to remove no less than twelve seats—seats for which tickets could be sold—and therefore refused the request.
FROM LP BOOKLET
LA VESTALE
THE STORY OF LA VESTALE
HERBERT WEINSTOCK
The impressive overture to La Vestale supplies a moment of recognition which at first is puzzling. It consists of an andante sostenuto introduction, then a presto assai agitato, and then steady development to a final cresendo. And its second theme, almost exactly as heard here, occurs in the overture that Rossini composed for his opera Aureliano in Palmira, transferred to Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra, and finally attached to II Barbiere de Siviglia. The theme was Spontini’s first: Aureliano in Palmira dates from 1813.
Act I of La Vestale takes place in the Forum. At the left, the private quarters of the Vestal Virgins, which communicate via a colonnade with the Temple of Vesta. On the same side, facing this atrium, the Palace of Numa and a part of the surrounding Sacred Wood. The background represents the Palatine Hill and the banks of the Tiber. It is early morning. Preparations are being made for the riumph to be awarded a returning victor.
Licinius is depressed despite his victories. His friend Cinna slowly pries from him the reason for his state of mind: the girl Julia, who had plighted her troth to him, has deserted him to become a Vestal Virgin. (What Licinius does not know is that Julia’s only wish was to marry him, but that her father, out of pride of family, had stood against that wish even when her mother had supported it—and that Julia had taken the Vestal vows as a way out of her crushing unhappiness). Notable in this first scene are Cinna’s aria beginning “Dans le sein d’un ami fidèle,” the powerful arioso recitative —as in Licinius’ lines beginning “Elle était pure, alors. Ami, te le dirai-je?”—and the duet beginning “Non, de ma flamme criminelle/Rien ne peut arréter le: cours.”
In Scene 2, La Grande Vestale, Julia, and the other Vestal Virgins enter from their quarters, singing the magnificent Hymne du matin (“Fille du ciel, éternelle Vesta”) in the Sacred Wood before entering the Temple. La Grande Vestale and Julia are alone in Scene 3: the priestess warns Julia of the dangers confronting her if she persists in her insubordination and adds that Julia has been selected to place the conqueror’s wreath on the head of the returning general. Denouncing human love, La Grande Vestale sings an impassioned aria beginning “L’amour est un monstre barbare,” marked by harsh minor ninths. Left alone (Scene 4), Julia has a cantabile (“O d’un pouvoir funeste, invincible ascendant!”’), followed by a short recitative and then by the aria “Licinius, je vais donc te revoir!” She is reminded that her absence is delaying the sacrifice, that the triumphal procession has begun. Scene 5 is a—not to say the—locus classicus of grand opera. It is Licinius’ triumph, and into the Forum come Julia, La Grande Vestale, the other Vestals, Licinius, Cinna, Le Grand Pontife, Consuls, Senators, Roman Ladies, Gladiators. Musicians, and all the paraphernalia of the triumph. The procession is preceded by a crowd, which fills the back of the stage. Then come the priests of various temples, at the head of whom march the Grand Pontife, the Chief Soothsayer, Senators, Consuls, Roman Ladies, and Warriors. When the first section of the cortege has taken its place, the Vestals emerge from the Temple. The Grande Vestale carries the Palladium, Because Julia is to be the next guardian of the Sacred Fire, a lighted altar is borne before her. The Vestals pass in front of the soldiers, who render supreme honours to them. The people kneel, the Senators bow, the fasces of the Consuls are lowered before the symbols of Vesta, which are carried by four Lictors. The Vestals assume their places on a raised platform near their atrium. The Consuls and Senators range themselves at its base. The triumphant Licinius’ chariot appears, preceded by musicians, and followed by chained captives. Other enemy prisoners follow. Cinna marches at the head of the troops.
The big finale of Act I begins as Licinius addresses the populace. La Grande Vestale orders Julia to pass the conqueror’s wreath through the Sacred Fire and place it on the victor’s head. (Julia: “Grands dieux! soutenez ma faiblesse.”) As the chorus chants De Vesta, chaste prétresse,” Julia crowns Licinius: “Jeune héros, de la gloire/ Recois le gage en ce jour.” In asides to her, Licinius says that he will come to seek her later in the shadows of the great portals. After Le Grand Pontife has ordered the throng to the Capitol, where the prisoners will be immolated, the procession leaves.
Act II takes place in the interior of the round Temple of Vesta. The walls are decorated with flames. The Sacred Fire burns on a vast altar of marble in the centre. The seat for the guardian Vestal, reached by a circular ramp, is on top of the altar. A bronze portal at the rear; smaller doors elsewhere, leading to the Vestals’ private quarters and to other sections of the Temple. Present are La Grande Vestale, Julia, the other Vestals. After a brief orchestral introduction, they all sing the moving Hymne du soir as they stand around the altar: “Feu créateur, dme du monde, /De la vie embléme im- mortel.” Then La Grande Vestale formally hands Julia the golden wand with which, during the rest of the night, she is to stir the Sacred Fire, keeping it alight: “Du plus auguste ministére, /Le signe révéré que je mets en vos mains, /Cette nuit, Julia, vous rend dépositaire/ De la faveur des dieux et du sort des Romains.”
In Scene 2, left alone in the Temple, Julia addresses Vesta in the double, recitativeseparated aria that is the most renowned passage of the entire opera: “Toi que j'implore avec effroi,/Redoubtable déesse,/Que ta malheureuse prétresse/Obtienne grace devant toi” (This section of the aria is often referred to by the opening words of its Italian translation: “Tu che invoco.”) As Julia mounts the altar to stir the Sacred Fire, she comments in recitative (“Sur cet autel sacré”) on her belief that Vesta, aware of her true feelings, is rejecting her. Then she pours out words of love for Licinius. The second section of the aria follows: “Suspendez la vengeance, /Impitoyables dieux!"—a presto agitato perhaps best known, again, by the opening words of its Italian translation, “O nume tutelar.”
Licinius appears (Scene 3), and a love scene follows, building slowly up to the moment at which, as they prepare to mount the altar, the diminishing Sacred Fire dies out. Julia realizes that her fate now is sealed: she will have to die for her treachery and her neglect of her sworn duty. Cinna enters (Scene 4). Together, he and Julia persuade Licinius that he must flee before the possibility of being found in the Temple (trio: “Ah! si je te suis chère,/Prends pitié. de tes jours”). Sovinds are heard approaching, and Licinius leaves with Cinna, swearing that he will save Julia or die. Left alone momentarily (Scene 5), Julia speaks of the brief moments of joy in her unhappy life. Then, hearing clashing and clamour from outside, she fears that Licinius has been apprehended. Gasping out: “Grands dieux! s’il était . . . Je me meurs!” she falls unconscious on the altar steps.
In Scene 6, the various priests, including Le Grand Pontife, enter from the right, the Vestals from the left. From outside, the people chant the gods’ demand for vengeance. Le Grand Pontife at first believes Julia to be dying. But she slowly revives, whereupon he demands to know if she is the one who must expiate the crime. “Prétre de Jupiter,” she responds, “je confess que jaime.” When he says that her heart has betrayed the most sacred law, she answers: “Est-ce assez d’une loi pour vaincre la nature?” In the big finale, the priests and the Grand Pontife pronounce Julia’s doom and demand to know the name of the man who has violated the Temple (which she refuses to tell). The Grand Pontife then has Julia’s vestal regalia stripped from her and throws a black veil over her head. Two Lictors escort her from the Temple as the Vestals and the priests go out through other doors. All are bound for the Sceleratus ager, the “Field of Execration.” Act II begins on the Field of Execration, bounded on the left by the Colline Gate and the ramparts of Rome, on the right by the Circus of Flora and the Temple of Venus. In the background can be seen the Quirinal Hill, on top of which rises the Temple of Fortuna. In the Field itself, two tombs contain the names of Vestals put to death there, with the dates of their entombments. A third tomb, destined for Julia, is open; a stairway leads down into it. In Scene 1, Licinius, alone and in extreme agitation, looks in horror at the open tomb. The suppressed tension of the adagio orchestral introduction to this scene is worthy of Spontini’s admiring contemporary, Beethoven. Licinius sings an aria of challenge, swearing that love and despair will come to his aid in rescuing Julia: “Julia va mourir! . . . Non, non, je vis encore.” Cinna arrives (Scene 2), and it becomes clear that he has a body of soldiers ready to attempt Julia’s rescue. In an aria, he advises Licinius to try to persuade Le Grand Pontife to relent: “Ce n'est plus le temps d'écouter/Les vains conseils de la prudence.” Licinius demurs, but at last allows himself to be persuaded.
In Scene 3, the Grand Pontife enters. Licinius, failing in his attempt to soften the heart of the Grand Pontife,* threatens to intervene with his soldiery. The duet sung by Licinius and the Grand Pontife (‘“C’est a toi de trembler!”) was a particular favorite of Carl Maria von Weber's. They also have another few moments of confrontation, with Le Grand Pontife warning Licinius: “Tremble, tremble! tes vains efforts/Ne sauveront pas la victime.”
Preceded by the extinct altar, Julia is brought in, accompanied by Lictors, her relatives, a group of young girls, La Grande Vestale, priests. soldiers, Roman Ladies, Consuls, and the other Vestals. With solemn ceremonies Julia is prepared for death— which she now is ready to welcome. In her aria “Toi que je laisse sur la terre,” she expresses her enduring love for Licinius. At last she begins the descent into the open tomb. From the Quirinal Hill, Licinius, Cinna, and their soldiers descend upon the Field of Execration. In the midst of the resulting clamour and threats, as Licinius calls out to his followers to take action, the sky suddenly turns black and bolts of lightning fall. All mill about in terror and confusion; Licinius and Cinna follow Julia down into the tomb. Suddenly the sky above the Quirinal Hill opens and a ball of lightning sweeps down, setting fire to Julia’s Vestal robe on the altar—and thus relighting the Sacred Fire. The Grande Pontife recognizes that Vesta has forgiven Julia. and orders everyone to proceed to the Temple of Venus. The scene changes to the Circus of Flora and the Temple of Venus. The rejoicing Julia and Licinius are to be married, receiving the. blessings of the Goddess of Love. The opera ends with a Chorus: “Chants d’allégresse,/ Aimable ivresse,/Régnez sans cesse/Au séjour des mortels!” In the accompaniment to this chorus Spontini makes brilliant use of the solo harps. Interpolated within the chorus are a brief solo of thanksgiving by Julia, and later a reprise of the second act love duet of Julia and Licinius. The chorus closes with the words: “Son few rayonne/Sur ses divins autels!” as the lovers are joined amid a general dance of celebration.
* One of the lines sung by Le Grand Pontife—"La roche Tarpéienne es prés du Capitole"— originally was spoken, under the most dramatic political circumstances, by Mirabeau.
