Mascagni’s L’Amico Fritz and Lodoletta: “commedia lirica” and “dramma lirico”

With Cavalleria rusticana (1890), his first opera and the liminal title of Italian verismo, Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) was assured a place of privilege in operatic history. In a single act, the composer distilled the unbridled passion—and jealousy—of a woman betrayed. Revenge followed, and with it the offstage duel fatal to her guilty lover. So goes life in a Sicilian village in the late 19^th century as depicted in the libretto based on the Giovanni Verga novella (1883). That more than one reviewer credited the success of the piece to its high drama rankled the composer.

In response, Mascagni next chose “a simple libretto, something almost insubstantial, so that the opera will be judged entirely on its music.” Like Cavalleria, L’Amico Fritz (1891) has a rural setting, sylvan Alsace. But here, the similarity ends. In Fritz, a “commedia lirica,” the eponymous hero is a confirmed Jewish bachelor and wealthy landowner. David, the local rabbi, takes it upon himself to awaken his “friend’s” love for Suzel, the daughter of one of his tenants. The happy ending promises the couple an imminent wedding.

L'Amico Fritz enjoyed enormous acclaim at its Rome premiere, was soon conducted by none other than Gustav Mahler in Hamburg and was taken up quickly by other European companies. Yet the work failed at the Met in 1894. Since then, L’Amico Fritz has been heard a mere handful of times in New York, has survived on the margins of the core repertoire in Italy, and is only occasionally presented elsewhere. Perhaps, bent on an “insubstantial” plot so as to privilege his music, and as a rebuke to the critics of his first opera, Mascagni compromised the afterlife of his second.

If productions are rare, recordings of L’Amico Fritz are plentiful: we have at least ten editions on CD or DVD, some taken from live performances, two produced in the studio. The most popular excerpt, the Act II “Cherry Duet,” is on YouTube in a plethora of versions. Here, drawn from a 1969 complete studio recording, are Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni at their peak. Fritz and Suzel, still hesitant to express their feelings for each other, sing instead the praises of music and Springtime.





Earlier, Suzel offers a bouquet of violets to Fritz along with her Act I “Son pochi fiori (Just a few flowers).” In a clip from a 1980 studio recording Leona Mitchell lends her rich, well-equalized timbre to both the aria’s dramatic opening and its expansive conclusion.








Between 1890 and 1935 Mascagni published fifteen operatic scores, many bearing labels that signal their diverse genres—lyric comedy, tragedy, drama, melodrama, idyll, among others. His 1917 “drama lirico,” Lodoletta, is based on Ouida’s 1874 novel, Two Little Wooden Shoes. The title character, a Dutch orphan, and Flammen, a French painter exiled in Holland, are chaste lovers. When Flammen is pardoned, Lodoletta follows him to Paris in Act III and, mistakenly thinking him unfaithful, dies in the snow on his doorstep.

Lodoletta, moderately successful at its Rome premiere, was greeted with even less enthusiasm elsewhere. The Met’s most bankable cast notwithstanding--Geraldine Farrar, Enrico Caruso, Pasquale Amato--the opera managed to string together very few repetitions in two seasons. A single aria, Lodoletta’s “Flammen, perdonami (Flammen, forgive me),” is familiar to contemporary operaphiles in the excellent renditions of Freni, Renata Tebaldi, Renata Scotto, and Renée Fleming.

And then there is Mafalda Favero. Favero and Jussi Björling made their Met debuts in a 1938 La Bohème. The tenor went on to a long career with the company; the soprano, detained in Italy by World War II, never again returned to the United States, alas. Favero’s 1941 recording of “Flammen, perdonami” is unforgettable. The exceptional clarity of her diction captures the crushing pathos of the dying Lodoletta.

Accessible on YouTube is a complete recording of L’Amico Fritz conducted by the composer and starring Ferruccio Tagliavini and Pia Tassinari. Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu are Fritz and Suzel in a more recent album. Strongly recommended is the “Cherry Duet” sung by Favero and Tito Schipa and also by Tagliavini and Magda Olivero.

The Verdi Requiem: "Opera in Ecclesiastical Dress"

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On December 2 the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast was devoted to the company’s 53^rd iteration of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem. The Requiem was first performed at the Met in 1901 on the occasion of the composer’s death; he had died earlier that year. Among those similarly honored in memoriam have been John Kennedy in 1964 and Luciano Pavarotti in 2008. This season’s edition was dedicated to the recently deceased baritone, Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Verdi’s masterwork has a complex genesis. It was born when Verdi proposed that a requiem mass be forged in tribute to Gioacchino Rossini who died in 1868. Each section, according to the plan he presented to his editor, Ricordi, would be assigned to a contemporary Italian composer of opera or sacred music, thirteen in all, and all now largely forgotten with the exception of Verdi himself. The Rossini requiem was scheduled for premiere in 1869, then cancelled and not performed until 1988 in Stuttgart; it has been recorded and can be accessed on Youtube. Just a few years later, with the 1873 death of Alessandro Manzoni, author of the epic nineteenth-century novel I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), Verdi determined to compose a requiem on his own. He conducted his opus in 1874 on the first anniversary of Manzoni’s death in the church of San Marco in Milan. The second performance took place soon thereafter at La Scala. Verdi toured his Requiem to theatres and auditoriums in Paris, London, and Venice.

In fact, the Requiem, scored as for grand opera, replete with a large orchestra and chorus and four soloists, had not been meant for a liturgical setting. As Verdi contemporary, conductor Hans Von Bülow, quipped, here was an “Opera in ecclesiastical dress.”

Towards the end of second section, the “Dies irae,” is the tenor aria “Ingemisco” which carries with it the indelible imprint of Verdi’s late manner. The despair of the sinner, mitigated by his hope for redemption, is powerfully expressed through the repetition of first-person pronouns.

Ingemisco tamquam reus,                                          I groan, as one who is accused,

culpa rubet vultus meus,                                            guilt reddens my check;

supplicanti parce, Deus.                                              spare Thy supplicant, O God.

Qui Mariam absolvisti,                                                Thou who absolved Mary,

et latronem exaudisti,                                                 and harkened to the thief,

mihi quoque spem dedisti.                                         Has given hope to me.

Preces meae non sunt dignae,                                    My prayers are worthless,

sed tu bonus fac benigne,                                           but Thou, who art good and kind,

ne perenni cremer igne.                                              Rescue me from everlasting fire.

Inter oves locum praesta,                                           With Thy sheep give me a place,

et ab hoedis me sequestra,                                         and from the goats keep me separate,

statuens in parte dextra.                                            Placing me at Thy right hand.

We have chosen the “Ingemisco” from a 1970 performance of the Requiem conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The singer is Placido Domingo early in his long career, his voice fresh, clarion, and alert to the drama.

Immediately following “Ingemisco” is “Lacrymosa,” scored for the four soloists and chorus. The text of the prayer is drawn not from scripture but from a poem by a 13^th-century Franciscan monk, Thomas of Celano, and the infinite sadness of the music is intoned not by a single voice but by the weaving of multiple voices conventional in liturgical music.

Lacrymosa dies illa,                                                     Tearful that day shall be

qua resurget ex favilla,                                               when from the ashes shall arise

judicandus homo reus.                                                Guilty man to be judged.

Huic ergo parce, Deus,                                                Spare him the, O God,

pie Jesu Domine,                                                         gentle Lord Jesus,

dona eis requiem. Amen.                                            Grant him eternal rest. Amen

This “Lacrymosa,” recorded in 1967, is sung by a quartet of singers at their peak, Leontyne Price, Fiorenza Cossotto, Luciano Pavarotti, and Nicolai Ghiaurov. Herbert von Karajan conducts the chorus and orchestra of La Scala.

The Requiem concludes with “Libera me,” a prayer not integral to the mass itself; it is intended to be pronounced after the funeral. Like “Ingemisco,” “Libera me” is a first-person supplication, an expression of individual terror in the face of death and the wrath of God.

Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna,                      Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death

in die illa tremenda,                                                    on that dreadful day,

quando coeli movendi sunt et terra,                          when the heavens and earth shall be moved,

dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem.               when Thou shall come to judge the world by fire.

Tremens factus sum ego et timeo,                             I am full of fear and I tremble,

dum discussio venerit atque ventura ira.                  awaiting the day of account and wrath to come.

Dies irae, dies illa,                                                       Day of wrath, day of mourning,

calamitatis et miseriae,                                               day of calamity and misery,

dies magna et amara valde.                                       that day great and most bitter.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,                      Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.                                          and let perpetual light shine upon them.

Verdi is at his most operatic in this, the last section of the Requiem. The composer awards the highly emotional aria to the soprano. He demands a two-octave range deployed in extreme contrasts of high and low, loud and soft. The “Verdi soprano” descends to her low C again and again; she caps the piece with a high C unfurled above the thundering chorus; she floats the middle section in an ethereal pianissimo, ending with an octave vault to a perilous high B-flat. In a concert from the 1982 Ediburgh Festival, superlatively conducted by Claudio Abbado, we hear Welsh soprano Margaret Price. When at her best, as Price is here, there was no one better. She invests her famously pure timbre with a dramatic urgency that conveys the full measure of fearsome awe at the final judgement.