# Italian Operas with French Libretti



## Tuoksu (Sep 3, 2015)

I was listening to Julia's aria _tu che invoco_ (Ponselle) when it hit me that _La Vestale_ was actually set to a French libretto. I went to check out the same aria in french (link below) and I really don't like it. Am I the only one? Same thing with _Medée_. 
There is just something that's not compatible between the Italian style of these operas and French librettos. I have nothing against French by the way, it's my second language, and it has nothing to do with the singers' voices or diction (Shirley is a bit cringy though, but June spoke perfect French.)


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Verdi's Don Carlo


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## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

I've seen the OG French version a few times (Chatelet, recent-ish Paris, and Liege a few months ago) and it just feels weird. I'm so used to the Italian I could probably sing the whole opera from memory. French is wrong. And what's up with the Restate? It barely resembled what we are used to. They are just casually chatting, no dramatic outbursts and the like. In Paris Philip also forced Posa to fence with him (they were in a gym) and it was rather ridiculous.

I do love having the extended edition bits but you can just put those back into the Italian (as a few productions have).


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

What an interesting topic!

Neither Medea or Vestale are considered top drawer operas and so neither has been recorded much and the best recordings of each are the classic Callas ones (unfortunately Vestale is in very bad sound). There are also recordings of two of the Vestale arias sung in Italian by Ponselle. These will be the way that most people got to know these operas and no recordings made since come close to these two in this rep. I therefore think it is very difficult to compare decent recordings of the works or arias from then in French with superlative recordings of the opera in translation. Furthermore the two versions posted above of Anderson and Verrett aren't very good.

For Vestale in the original I would go to the Kuhn recording where Rosalind Plowright gives a much better performance of Julia's act two aria. She doesn't have the technique or suave skill of a Ponselle or a Callas, but she gives a better idea of how the opera works in French than Anderson. Both of these operas were written in the classical style and tailored for French audiences of their day. That means that they are based on a cantabile legato line which is easier to adhere to in the Italian translation. However, you only have to listen to Plowright singing the cabaletta to that aria to understand that its irregular rhythms make more sense when paired with the original text. As pointed out, the Italian translation works very well due to the classical sense of line in French opera music of that period.






When it comes to Medee, then I would listen to Iano Tamar's singing of that scene rather than Verrett's. Medee/Medea is two operas, a classical French opera with dialogue and an Italian romantic one with recits and both work on their own merits and when the original composition is performed as written it works just as well as the better known Italian melodrama.

N.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

I vespri siciliani (Italian pronunciation: [i ˈvɛːspri sitʃiˈljaːni]; The Sicilian Vespers) is a five-act Italian opera originally written in French for the Paris Opéra by the Italian romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi and translated into Italian shortly after its premiere in June 1855.

Under its original title, Les vêpres siciliennes, the libretto was prepared by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier from their work Le duc d'Albe, which was written in 1838 and offered to Halévy and Donizetti before Verdi agreed to set it to music in 1854.[1]

The story is loosely based on a historical event, the Sicilian Vespers of 1282, using material drawn from the medieval Sicilian tract Lu rebellamentu di Sichilia.[2]

After its June 1855 Paris premiere, an Italian libretto was quickly prepared using a new title because Verdi realized that it would have been impossible to place the story in Sicily. Based on Scribe's suggestions for changing the location,[3] it became Portugal in 1640 while under Spanish control. This version was first performed at the Teatro Regio in Parma on 26 December 1855.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

We should never forget, though, that Verdi wrote *Don Carlos* to a French libretto and that the Italian version is a translation. As mentioned above, *Les vêpres siciliennes* was also written to a French libretto by Scribe and Duveyrier and first performed in Paris in 1855. I may be more used to the Italian settings, but Verdi did actually set a French text.

For some reason, I actually prefer _La fille du régiment_ in the original French. Ditto *Guillaume Tell* and _Le comte Ory_.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Tsaraslondon said:


> For some reason, I actually prefer _La fille du régiment_ in the original French. Ditto *Guillaume Tell* and _Le comte Ory_.


So do I. (Although I haven't heard Comte Ory in Italian.) A lot of the music in Viaggio a Reims was reused in Comte Ory and yet the music goes with the text in both. That's because Comte Ory isn't a French translation of an Italian original, but a new text in its own right. Rossini may have asked the librettist to produce some verses to the specific rhythms of some of the Reims music because he was thinking of reusing it.

N.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Rogerx said:


> I vespri siciliani (Italian pronunciation: [i ˈvɛːspri sitʃiˈljaːni]; The Sicilian Vespers) is a five-act Italian opera originally written in French for the Paris Opéra by the Italian romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi and translated into Italian shortly after its premiere in June 1855.
> 
> Under its original title, Les vêpres siciliennes, the libretto was prepared by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier from their work Le duc d'Albe, which was written in 1838 and offered to Halévy and Donizetti before Verdi agreed to set it to music in 1854.[1]
> 
> ...


Do you have a preference for either version?

This is possibly the one opera of these French works by Italian composers that I think works better in the translated Italian version. The words and music don't go together in the French version. I mentioned in another thread the theory for why that is. The autograph score and performing materials for the French original have been lost and the French version is actually the Italian version wedded to the French libretto, which was all that remained from the French premiere run. The theory speculates that Verdi rewrote the opera for the Italian libretto so the music matches that version better. I don't know how viable this theory is.

N.

Edited to add: It turns out there isn't anything to this theory, see my comment #12 below.


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## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

Vespri is really weird in French since it's about Italians pulling the Red Wedding on the French... maybe it should be performed bilingual - ie. principals sing mostly in Italian, minor French characters and the French part of the chorus sing in French, and Monforte switches based on who he's talking to. There are supertitles anyway so it wouldn't be a problem to understand, and it would feel more realistic.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Sieglinde said:


> Vespri is really weird in French since it's about Italians pulling the Red Wedding on the French... maybe it should be performed bilingual - ie. principals sing mostly in Italian, minor French characters and the French part of the chorus sing in French, and Monforte switches based on who he's talking to. There are supertitles anyway so it wouldn't be a problem to understand, and it would feel more realistic.


But isn't that the same as saying *La Fanciulla del West* is weird because they don't sing in English, or any of the Donizetti Tudor operas for that matter?


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## Tuoksu (Sep 3, 2015)

The Conte said:


> What an interesting topic!
> 
> Neither Medea or Vestale are considered top drawer operas and so neither has been recorded much and the best recordings of each are the classic Callas ones (unfortunately Vestale is in very bad sound). There are also recordings of two of the Vestale arias sung in Italian by Ponselle. These will be the way that most people got to know these operas and no recordings made since come close to these two in this rep. I therefore think it is very difficult to compare decent recordings of the works or arias from then in French with superlative recordings of the opera in translation. Furthermore the two versions posted above of Anderson and Verrett aren't very good.
> 
> ...


I agree that the best versions being both in Italian AND sung by masters like Callas an Ponselle doesn't really help much. Shirley and Anderson weren't really great in these arias, but Rosalind's version isn't all that better either. Vocally among these, only Shirley was more or less fit for either role. June and Rosalind were too light.

It's more than just singing, though. It's the way words "sit" with the music. As you said, part of it because they're classical operas which kind of favors Italian, but it's also the way French sounds. A random example that I picked up when I listened to Plowright: "une main sacrilége" has absolutely none of the dramatic effect that "la sacrilega mano" regardless of the singer. "Sospendete qualche istante la vendetta o crudi numi " sounds more dramatic than "Impitoyables dieux suspendez la vengeance" which sounds rather mellow. The most important single line in my opinion "poi sommessa alla vostra possanza" which loses a lot when it becomes "et Julie soumise à votre loi sévère"... 
It's not just the sound of the french text, it's also how it's written. The italian version sounds somewhat more poetic while the French text is a bit more "casual", so to speak. But maybe it's just me.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Sieglinde said:


> Vespri is really weird in French since it's about Italians pulling the Red Wedding on the French... maybe it should be performed bilingual - ie. principals sing mostly in Italian, minor French characters and the French part of the chorus sing in French, and Monforte switches based on who he's talking to. There are supertitles anyway so it wouldn't be a problem to understand, and it would feel more realistic.


That's a fascinating idea (although it would take quite a bit of work to pull it off).

I've gone back and listened to bits of the opera in the Italian and French versions and I've managed to disprove the theory above, the two versions _are_ different. The melodic line is different in places in each version and so Verdi must have rewrote parts for the Italian version and that is why it works despite being a translation. One place this happens is in Helene/Elena's act one aria in the section "Viens a nous, Dieux tutelaire!/Deh! Tu calma, o Dio possente". Where the melodic line is quite different in places to fit the words.

There are still parts where you can tell the Italian text is a translation, but there are also parts where the music is so Italian in style that it sounds odd in French. An example of this is the stretta/cabaletta after Procida's O tu Palermo. The jaunty passage for the bass with chorus is very much italianate Verdi (it's very similar to the passage after Di Luna's "Il balen" in Trovatore). This part definitely sounds better in Italian, the clean cut of 'vendetta' fits the clipped short phrases better than 'vengence' despite a rhythmic similarity between the two words.

It's a hybrid and shows how much Verdi learned and developed by the time he came to write Don Carlos, which is very much a French opera.

N.


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## Tuoksu (Sep 3, 2015)

Tsaraslondon said:


> But isn't that the same as saying *La Fanciulla del West* is weird because they don't sing in English, or any of the Donizetti Tudor operas for that matter?


GOD FORBID :lol:


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Tuoksu said:


> I agree that the best versions being both in Italian AND sung by masters like Callas an Ponselle doesn't really help much. Shirley and Anderson weren't really great in these arias, but Rosalind's version isn't all that better either. Vocally among these, only Shirley was more or less fit for either role. June and Rosalind were too light.
> 
> It's more than just singing, though. It's the way words "sit" with the music. As you said, part of it because they're classical operas which kind of favors Italian, but it's also the way French sounds. A random example that I picked up when I listened to Plowright: "la main sacrilège" has absolutely none of the dramatic effect that "la sacrilega mano" regardless of the singer. "Sospendete qualche istante la vendetta o crudi numi " sounds more dramatic than "Impitoyables dieux suspendez la vengence" which sounds rather mellow. The most important single line in my opinion "poi sommessa alla vostra possanza" which loses a lot when it becomes "et Julie soumise à votre loi sévère"...
> It's not just the sound of the french text, it's also how it's written. The italian version sounds somewhat more poetic while the French text is a bit more "casual", so to speak. But maybe it's just me.


I agree that Plowright was too light voiced for the role and some parts do sound softer in the French, but it _is_ a classical work and not a romantic one. It's a shame there isn't Jano Tamar's singing of the final scene of Medee on YouTube as it sears with drama and shows that the original language works very well. One thing has to be said, the Italian translations of both these two are excellent, much better than the one done for Don Carlos (Verdi never set the Italian text of Don Carlo, all the revisions were done to French texts that were then subsequently translated).

N.


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