I quattro rusteghi (1906)

Musical comedy in three acts to a libretto by Giuseppe Pizzolato

after a comedy by Carlo Goldoni

As an Italian opera composer who was more successful in Germany than in his own country, Ermanno Wolf Ferrari was a rare phenomenon. He was born and died in Venice but he made Munich his home and most    of his operas were first staged, in German versions, in German opera houses. The duality in his professional life had its origins in his mixed family background – his mother, a pianist, was Italian, his father, a painter, was from Baden in Germany – and is reflected even in his name: Hermann Friedrich Wolf became Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari in his early twenties when he italianised his first name and, perhaps to avoid confusion with the Austrian composer Hugo Wolf, added his mother’s maiden name to his surname.

Although Wolf-Ferrari did enjoy some success in his native country in the second half of his career, only one of his first six operas to reach the stage owed its initial production to an opera house in Italy. After Cenerentola failed at La Fenice in Venice in 1900 the next five, all written between 1903 and 1913 – Le donne curiose, I quattro rusteghi, Il segreto di Susanna, I gioielli della Madonna, and L’amore medico – were first performed in Munich, Berlin or Dresden.

The reason why Italian opera houses took comparatively little interest in his work at this time could be that they were not ready for him. This is not to say that his music was too progressive for them. On the contrary: if they were looking for something in the manner of Puccini or such versimo composers as Leoncavallo and Mascagni, scores like that of I quattro rusteghi or Il segreto di Susanna must have seemed hopelessly old-fashioned. Wolf Ferrari was aware of that, which is why he attempted a verismo opera, Il gioielli della Madonna, in something like the style of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana. In a sense, however, that was a step back rather than forward. His natural idiom was an anticipation, by a decade or more, of the neo-classical style which, paradoxically, would be the avant-garde trend in Western music from, say, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella in 1920 to his Rake’s Progress thirty years later. By 1925, when Gli amanti sposi was presented at La Fenice, Venice had caught up with him.

I quattro rusteghi was first performed at the Munich Hoftheater in 1906 in a German version called Die vier Grobiane and was not seen in Italy until 14 years later (its first performance in this country, under the title School for Fathers in a much admired translation by Edward Dent, was given at Sadler’s Wells in 1946). A particularly inspired example of Wolf-Ferrari’s neo-classical genius, it is clearly modelled, though more in spirit than in style, on the comedies of Rossini. At the same time there are a few echoes of Puccini and more than a few of Verdi’s Falstaff – an opera which similarly sets the women of the community in conflict with the men over the latter’s unreasonable treatment of the matrimonial ambitions of two young lovers. On the other hand, as the second of no fewer than five Wolf-Ferrari operas based on comedies by the 18th-century Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni, it is in a tradition the composer could call his own. All but one of the ten characters of I quattro rusteghi (the exception is the foreign Count Riccardo) sing in Venetian dialect, while local colour – mainly in the form of the popular “Carnival of Venice,” the tune of which is introduced in the orchestral Intermezzo between the first and second acts – is everywhere. Another recurring theme, incidentally, is the gavotte which lends such melodic grace to the short but delightful Overture.

The great distinction of I quattro rusteghi is its ensembles, like the bickering trio for Lucieta, her boorish father Lunardo and her stepmother Margarita in Act I, the brilliantly sustained contrapuntal exchange between all ten principal voices at the end of Act 2 (which both rivals and resembles in texture the famous nonet in Falstaff) and the trio for three basses (a rare event in opera) at the beginning of Act 3.

A particularly attractive aspect of these ensembles is that they do not pop up as set pieces but develop naturally out of the foregoing action. The same applies to the comparatively few solos and the rather more numerous duets which, with the exception of Luceta’s “I mè vol” at the beginning of Act 2, emerge out of and merge back into the surrounding events without being set apart as separate “numbers.” There is scarcely any recitative here. Just about every word is set melodiously or at least comically, always in the latter case with the witty participation of the orchestra. Necessarily in an opera which features four “curmudgeons” the writing for bass voice, particularly that of Lunardo, is highly resourceful and, naturally in these circumstances, the bassoon plays a near-starring role.

In the opera house, thanks largely to the irresistible popularity of a favoured few, many fine scores are neglected. But in the concert hall, where elaborate staging is neither possible nor desirable, those works on the periphery of the repertoire can be presented and enjoyed at comparatively little expense. Among the finest of them, an unfailing source of melody and wry observation of character, is Wolf-Ferrari’s I quattro rusteghi.   

Gerald Larner © 2012

Prelude

Intermezzo

Il segreto di Susanna (1909)

Overture

Intermezzo

I gioielli dell Madonna (1911)

Festa popolare

Intermezzo

Serenata

Danza napolitana

L’amore medico (1913)

Overture

Intermezzo

Suite-Concertino in F major Op.16 (1932)

for bassoon, two horns and strings

Notturno: Andante un poco mosso

Strimpellata: Presto

Canzone: Andante cantabile

Finale: Andante con moto

Il Campiello (1936)

Intermezzo

Ritornello

La dama boba (1939)

Overture

As an Italian opera composer who was more successful in Germany than in his own country, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was a rare phenomenon. He was born and died in Venice but he made his home in or near Munich and most of his operas were first staged in German versions in German opera houses. The duality in his professional life had its origins in his mixed family background – his mother, a pianist, was Italian, his father, a painter, was from Baden in Germany – and is reflected even in his name: Hermann Friedrich Wolf became Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari in his early twenties when he italianised his first name and, perhaps to avoid confusion with the Austrian composer Hugo Wolf, added his mother’s maiden name to his surname.

Although Wolf-Ferrari did enjoy some success in his native country in the second half of his career, only one of his first six operas to reach the stage owed its initial production to an opera house in Italy. Cenerentola having failed at La Fenice in Venice in 1900 but having flourished in Bremen in 1902, the next five (Le donne curiose, I quattro rusteghi, Il segreto di Susanna, I gioielli della Madonna, and L’amore medico) were all first performed in Germany..

The reason why Italian opera houses took comparatively little interest in his work at this time could be that they were not ready for it. This is not to say that his music was too progressive for them. On the contrary: if they were looking for something in the manner of Puccini or such versismo composers as Leoncavallo or Mascagni, scores like that of Il segreto di Susanna must have seemed hopelessly old-fashioned. Wolf-Ferrari was aware of that – which is why he applied himself to a verismo opera, Il gioielli della Madonna, in something like the style of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana. In a sense, however, that was a step back rather than forward. His natural idiom was an anticipation, by a decade or more, of the neo-classical style which, paradoxically, would be the avant-garde trend in Western music from, say, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella in 1920 to his Rake’s Progress thirty years later. By 1925, when Gli amanti sposi was presented at La Fenice, Venice had caught up with him.

An early example of Wolf-Ferrari’s accomplishment in the neo-classical style is I quattro rusteghi (The Four Curmudgeons), the second of his five operas based on comedies by the Venetian classical playwright Carlo Goldoni. First performed at the Hoftheater in Munich in 1906 in a German version called Die vier Grobiane – and later known in English-speaking countries, thanks to a highly successful translation by Edward Dent, as School for Fathers – it is animated by a score of characteristic wit and vitality. The short Prelude, with its graceful melodic line drawn by muted violins or cellos over a pizzicato accompaniment, charmingly evokes decorous 18th-century manners. The similarly scored Intermezzo reflects, in its recall of a popular melody already heard in the first act, the Venetian setting..

While he adored Wagner and Verdi, as models for his own work Wolf-Ferrari preferred composers like Pergolesi, Cimarosa, Mozart and Rossini. There is no better illustration of that than the brilliant little overture to the one-act comedy Il segreto di Susanna (Susanna’s Secret) based on a contemporary libretto by Enrico Golisciani, which was first performed at the Munich Hoftheater as Susannens Geheimnis in 1909. A display of rare contrapuntal mastery, it introduces four themes in quick succession with a view to presenting them all at once towards the end. It is accomplished with such tuneful ease and such lightness of touch, however, that there is not the slightest hint of a technical exercise about it. Susanna’s essential innocence – her only secret is that she enjoys the occasional cigarette – is established by her association with a delightful Mozart pastiche which is heard early on in the opera on the piano and is recalled, with some harmonic distractions, by the orchestra in the Intermezzo.

If Wolf-Ferrari’s brave venture into verismo did disappointingly little for his career in Italy – where it wasn’t seen until five years after his death – I gioielli della Madonna (The Jewels of the Madonna) proved to be successful just about everywhere else. After its first performance at the Kurfürstenoper in Berlin in 1911 (as Der Schmuck der Madonna) it was immediately taken up in Chicago, New York and London. From there it went on a triumphant progress not only to other opera houses in the United States and Europe but also to the world’s concert halls, where orchestral excerpts continued to keep the composer’s reputation alive even when he was forgotten for everything else except the Overture to Il segreto di Susanna.

Set in Naples – where the blacksmith Gennaro’s love for Maliella fatally tempts him to go one up on his rival, the camorrista Rafaele, by stealing jewellery for her from an effigy of the Madonna – I gioielli della Madonna is abundant in local colour. The Festa popolare, a wild night-out with the camorra featuring a boisterous tarantella at first and broadening out towards the end, is a vivid demonstration (even without the voices in the original score) of how far Wolf-Ferrari was prepared to go for the whole-hog verismo effect. And yet the Intermezzo, with its violin line drawn over pizzicato accompaniment, has much that is characteristic of the composer in spite of the Neapolitan melodic colouring. So has the Serenata, an orchestral-intermezzo version of Rafaele’s melodious second-act serenade to Maliella, which is crafted with no little contrapuntal skill. The Danza napolitana, described in the stage directions as “a regular orgy in the Apache stye,” is as reckless as the first movement in its celebration of the popular idiom.

Although Wolf-Ferrari was never again to embrace the verismo style, the vast expansion of resources required by I gioielli della Madonna could not be completely reversed when he returned to comedy. His next opera, L’amore medico (Doctor Love) based on Moliere’s Le médecin malgré lui, could have been set in his familiar Goldoni manner but the score is actually rather more colourful than that. The use of brass instruments in the stately 17th-century pastiche at the beginning of the Overture is an immediate indication of his enlarged palette. The quicker main section, while it is entirely characteristic in its deft treatment of strings and woodwind, is more developed, more dramatic and more varied in material than earlier examples of its kind. As for the Intermezzo, which comes dangerously close to the waltz time that would have been out of place in Molière’s Paris, it features a solo cello in one of the most attractive of all manifestations of the composer’s melodic gift.                 

Wolf-Ferrari differed from other Italian opera composers of his day not only by reason of his professional allegiance to Germany but also by virtue of his accomplishment in music for the concert hall, not least in a much-admired Violin Concerto completed two years before he died. The Suite-Concertino for bassoon, one of three works featuring a solo woodwind instrument, was composed in 1933 between two Goldoni comedies, La vedova scaltra and Il campiello. It is not, however, written in the Goldoni spirit. Far from treating the bassoon as the comedian of the orchestra, the composer takes it seriously here, giving it a particularly interesting role in the opening Notturno. It finds its way with difficulty through the nocturnal darkness evoked by lower strings and expresses its apprehension in a melodic line which the orchestra almost entirely avoids. The violins twice suggest alternative ideas, on the second occasion introducing a graceful minuet which the bassoon agrees on adopting as the theme of a slower episode before going back to the now not quite so dark shadows of the beginning.

The rest of the work offers a more conventional characterisation of the bassoon. A good humoured if faintly macabre minor-key scherzo headed Strimpellata (Strummed) is followed by a melodious Canzone (Song) designed to flatter the soloist’s tenor voice and a Finale with cheerful baroque-style outer sections and a slower, expressive middle section.

All but two of Wolf-Ferrari’s last seven operas were first performed in Italy. The break-through had come with Gli amanti sposi at La Fenice in Venice in 1925 and it continued with Sly at La Scala, Milan, in 1927, La vedova scaltra    in Rome in 1931 and Il campiello and La dama boba at La Scala in 1936 and 1939 respectively. The fifth and last of his Goldoni comedies, Il Campiello is set in the small Venetian square to which the title refers and inspired music instantly recognisable from previous Goldoni inspirations. The basically 18th-century idiom of the Intermezzo does, it is true, admit the occasional hint of 19th-century operatic passion but the delicately scored Ritornello, above all the muted violin line drawn over a gently strummed accompaniment, is quintessential Wolf-Ferrari.

For their third collaboration Wolf-Ferrari and his librettist Mario Ghisalberti, who had adapted the last two Goldoni texts, turned to La dama boba (The Stupid Lady) by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega. Written a century before Goldoni’s plays and set in Madrid rather than Venice (the title is Spanish), it seems to have got the composer thinking about modifying his approach to comic opera, or at least the comedy overture. The story, about an apparently brainless woman made wise in the ways of the world through the power of love, is little different from the average Goldoni plot – as the quick central section of the Overture, which immediately calls Rossini to mind, clearly acknowledges. But the discreetly and uniquely Spanish-style slow introduction combines with its grandiloquent recall at the end to add a new dimension to the Wolf-Ferrari overture.