3 opera arrangements

Sérénade du Barbier de Séville

Air d’Il Trovatore

Final de La Somnambule

Fantasia sur Norma

Fantasia Cerrito

Nel cor più non mi sento

Melodia No.4: “Auld Robin Gray”

Fantasia sur Beatrice di Tenda

Melodia No.2

Romance de L’Elisir d’amore

“Una furtiva lagrima” from Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore

Fantasia sur Lucia di Lammermoor

Nocturne

Like Paganini himself, “the Paganini of the double bass” – as Giovanni Bottesini was known to his admiring contemporaries – was a musician interested in far more than demonstrating his phenomenal mastery of his chosen instrument. Like Paganini again, he was in demand everywhere as a virtuoso and achieved immense fame – though without, unlike his violinist counterpart, attracting the reputation of being in league with supernatural forces: it is difficult, after all, to imagine the devil choosing to associate himself with the double bass. Bottesini’s life might not have been so colourful as to inspire an operatic equivalent to Lehár’s Paganini but, even better, between 1848 and 1880 he wrote ten operas himself, often with considerable success.

In fact, Bottesini loved opera as much as he loved the double bass. He devoted much of his life to the instrument, beginning at the age of 14 when, more less by chance, he became a pupil of Luigi Rossi at the Milan Conservatoire. While developing double-bass technique and extending its range to hitherto unimagined heights, however, he was ambitious in pursuing an operatic career. That much is clear not only from his industry as an opera composer but also from the official positions he held, including musical directorships at the Italian Opera in Paris, at the Real Teatro Bellini in Palermo, at the Lyceum Theatre in London and at similar institutions in Spain and Portugal. Verdi, a long-term friend, was so convinced of Bottesini’s taste and authority in this respect that he invited him to conduct the first performance of Aida in Cairo in 1871.

Another indication of Bottesini’s love of opera is that a significant proportion of the music he wrote for double bass was inspired by his experiences in the opera house. On this CD, for example, eight out of a total of twelve items have their origins in opera in one way or another. He was not alone of course in producing operatic arrangements and fantasias. Everyone was doing it, from the most exalted like Franz Liszt to the merest street musician. He often did it in his own way, however.

Some of    Bottesini’s arrangements are little different, apart from the fact that they feature the double bass, from the general run of these things. Of the three opera arrangements at the beginning of this programme, two of them, Sérénade du Barbier de Séville and Air d’Il Trovatore (as Bottesini’s linguistically confused titles identify them) are free transcriptions of famous arias – respectively “Se il mio nome” from Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia and “Il Balen” from Verdi’s Il Trovatore. The Donizetti Romance, which comes later in the programme, is another free transcription, in this case of “Una furtiva lagrima” from L’Elisir d’amore.   

Final de La Somnambule on the other hand, takes little more than a phrase, Amina’s “D’un pensiero e d’un accento” from the finale to the first act of La Sonnambula and develops it as though feeling that Bellini had given it too little prominence before having it swalllowed up by the following ensemble. This is not so much an arrangement as an improvisation – scaling a height which, like that in the cadenza of the Verdi arrangement, can be approached on the double bass only by way of perilous harmonics.

When he conducted opera Bottesini would frequently appear on stage in one of the intervals to deliver a solo on his much-prized three-string Testore double bass. That was probably the origin of his opera fantasias – based on works like Bellini’s Norma or Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor – featuring favourite arias and other notable episodes. At best they are worked into a coherent single-movement construction but not necessarily in the order in which they appear in the opera.

Any Norma fantasia would have to include the heroine’s great first-act aria “Casta Diva,” as Bottesini’s does at a suitably late stage in the work, miraculously transforming the double bass into a bel canto singer. The fantasia opens, however, with a piano version of the orchestral introduction to the second act and continues, on the entry of the double bass, with Norma’s poignant arioso “Teneri, teneri figli.” It ends with the march-like chorus “Dell’aura tua profetica” which, although it precedes Norma’s first appearance in the opera, is combined here with a purposeful coda leading up to the closing bars.

Similarly, no treatment of Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda could omit Orombello’s “Angiol del pace.” Bottesini introduces it in double-bass harmonics towards the end of a fantasia that begins and ends in march mode and consists entirely, though with no lack of expressive variety, of music in 4/4.

Perhaps the most sensational of the opera fantasias is the one on Lucia di Lammermoor which opens on piano in the storm at the beginning of the third act and at an early stage involves the double bass in dramatic recitative heightened by wide-ranging cadenzas. In fact, it is called upon to perform imposing cadenzas throughout, not least after its second presentation of    “Fur le nozze a lei funeste,” a last-act chorus to which, alongside more lyrical numbers, Bottesini gives unexpected prominence.

Another indication of Bottesini’s affection for opera is that by far the most of his melodic decorations and cadenzas are vocal in style and are derived in many cases from bel canto composers like Bellini. When Bottesini and the double bass take on Paganini and the violin on their own virtuoso ground the difference is plain: Nel cor più non mi sento, a set of three variations on the aria of that name from Paisiello’s opera La Molinara, is a display of instrumental rather than vocal bravura. While some of the figuration would not be beyond the scope of an accomplished singer, techniques like the bariolage in the coda following the last variation are exclusive to string instruments.

The Fantasia Cerrito has nothing to do with opera. It is a tribute, originally scored with orchestral accompaniment, to one of the most famous ballerinas of the day, Fanny Cerrito. If we didn’t know that Bottesini was infatuated with her, it would be clear enough from the music itself. She gets an extraordinarily dramatic introduction which would be even more impressive with the orchestral colours that the piano tremolandos can only hint at.    The Andante section which follows introduces a passionate and elaborately decorated melody in the minor and a more tender though no less intricately articulated one in the major. The quicker closing section is based on a tune which, after its introduction by the piano, inspires the double bass to perform leaps and pirouettes of a complexity and brilliance which any ballet dancer would be proud of.

While there was nothing at all unusual about Bottesini’s devotion to opera and ballet, an interest in chamber music was rare among 19th-century Italian composers. He wrote not only a string quintet with double bass but also as many as 11 string quartets in which, of course, there is no part for his instrument. They might well be recorded on future Bottesini issues.

In the meantime, the nearest approach to chamber music here is in the two Melodia pieces and the Nocturne. Melodia No.4 takes the form of variations on an 18th-century Scottish ballad written, apparently, in preparation for a concert tour in Scotland. It is an attractive work which actually differs little in texture from the standard double-bass-and-piano display pieces. Melodia No.2, on the other hand, presents a genuine dialogue between the two instruments both of which contribute, if on less than equal terms, to a spontaneously, even passionately developed argument of more than usual harmonic interest (the double bass, incidentally, offering the only example of double-stopping on this CD).

As for Nocturne, it allows the piano to anticipate the main theme in the opening section but then gives it no share of the melodic line so expressively introduced and sustained by the double bass. It is, however, the piano which towards the end initiates the change from minor to major harmonies, just before double-bass harmonics magically project the melody into the soprano register.

If Bottesini expected to be remembered by future generations he no doubt felt that it would be through his operas and sacred music. In fact, while they are forgotten, his posthumous reputation derives from an instrumental artistry which, though it died with him, survives in the hands of those few bassists who can do his compositions full justice.

Gerald Larner ©