Italian concert programme — Donizetti, Verdi, Denza & Puccini — Concert Programmes

Vincenzo Bellini (1801-35)

Dolente immagine di Fille mia (c.1824)

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)

Su l’onda tremola (c.1825)

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

Brindisi (1834–1845)

Luigi Denza (1846-1922)

Vieni (c.1900)

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

Canto d’anime (1904)

As far as the serious interpretation of poetry is concerned, 19th-century Italian song cannot beging to compare with either the French mélodie from Gounod onwards or, still less, the German Lied. Bellini’s major concern in song, like that of most of his Italin contemporaries, was to flatter the voice with a seductive melodic line accompanied by a minimarlly intrusive piano. The poignant Dolente immagine di Fille mia is a particularly appealing example and, at the same time, a clear stylistic indication that, for Bellini at least, the lirico da camera was, in effect, a minor offshot of opera. So it was for Donizetti who, however, in his extensive output for voice and piano – he once claimed that he could write 12 canzonette “while the rice was cooking” – also came close to the Italian popular song of the day. His Su l’onda tremola is a charming compromise between the two styles.

Verdi’s first published work was a volume of Sei Romanze which appeared in Milan in 1838, when he still occupied the humble post of maestro di musica in Busseto. He had not yet written his first opera – Oberto was to be performed at La Scala the following year – but it is clear from these six early songs what his ambitions were. He had actually tried his hand at the drinking song or brindisi, a staple of the operatic art, with an extravagantly colourful example as early as 1835, the excesses of which he moderated but before publishing it in his second collection of Romanze ten years later.

With Luigi Denza, although he was ambitious enough to write a 4-act opera seria on Schiller’s Wallenstein in his late 20s, opera was comprehensively discarded in favour of popular song. In fact, he wrote more than 500 songs. The most famous of them has always been Funiculì funiculà – a tune which, believing it (to his cost) to be a Neapolitan folk song, Strauss quoted in his symphony Aus Italien. Vieni, which is so effectively written for the voice that it earned a close association with Toscanini’s favourite tenor Aureliano Pertile, is not far behind Funiculì funiculà in popularity. Of a more robust constitution, and of unmistakable authorship, Canto d’anima is perhaps the best of Puccini’s dozen or contibutions to the song repertoire.