Puccini: the great melodist

Jack Pepper
Friday, November 29, 2024

November 29 marks 100 years since the death of Puccini – to explore his art in detail, Jack Pepper talks to three leading performers of his music

Act One: Speranza Scappucci

Italian-born conductor Speranza Scappucci (Photo credit: Ian Ehm) 

Having been born into an opera-loving family in Rome and made history as the first Italian woman to conduct at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, Speranza Scappucci is the ideal person to help lead the Royal Opera House’s Puccini 100 commemorations. As Principal Guest Conductor Designate, she’ll be speaking at their Insights event and stream on December 3rd and conducting La bohème through December and January. She tells me how she is keen for Puccini to be properly analysed, so that we don’t focus solely on the ‘obvious greatness’ of his melodies

‘Look at the first act of La bohème before Mimi comes in. It all runs in real time, happening as it happens. It’s a dialogue and not necessarily a melody. What we get there are fragments, leitmotifs that will be developed through the opera later. And it’s never just an aria. I hate that word because in Puccini, it’s always a moment that leads to another moment.’

Perhaps, she suggests, we forget his modernism. This was a 20th century writer, where ‘nothing is ever in one metre: it’s constantly changing, this ebb and flow, the rubato. The challenge for a conductor is: how much of this are you allowed to do? When does it become too sweet, like putting sugar over honey? Keeping it real is a priority.’

‘Because the orchestration is so thick, one of the main focuses for me is texture,’ Scappucci continues. ‘Unless it’s really required, we must never be overbearing with what’s happening on stage. The biggest risk is the orchestra covers the stage; we must hear the singers.’

Speranza Scappucci discusses some of the unique aspects of Puccini's orchestra writing in La Rondine.

Indeed, she admits to attending many a La bohème performance and struggling to distinguish the words, especially in Act 3; as she points out, the score is sometimes marked ppp. ‘Because the texture is thick, it’s hard to play soft,’ she acknowledges. ‘But if you do that, then when the big moments really happen there’s huge contrast. The beauty of his music is this wide range of colours one can achieve. Don’t be so taken by the beauty of melody that you bathe in it, and you lose the sense of direction and drama. You need to find the dramaticism of the melody.’

I ask to zoom in on these specific single lines that, to Scappucci, defy aria categorisation. What makes a Puccini melody distinctive? ‘Often, his melodies start soft and then there’s a big crescendo, a climax. He knew how to write for the voice, making it easy for the singer to climb up there, often moving in steps rather than jumping up and down. The actual line itself is quite simple and builds to a peak. It’s very singable, making it easy to remember. But where there is a melody – like the quartet in Act 3 – there’s plenty happening underneath. There’s a counterpoint and complexity that is very exciting. It’s what’s below the melody – the harmony, the shifts and colours – that often makes it special.’

‘If you analyse Puccini in a superficial way, we stop at the melodies. But you can’t reduce Tosca to Vissi d'arte. The genius of Puccini is being able to make contrast between those moments and everything else that is the opera. He’s a real man of theatre who also had a great gift of writing melodies that helped them to become famous; but writing a melody is one thing, and the rest of the piece is as genius as the melody. That’s why his music is eternal – not because of the melodies, but because of everything.’

Act Two: Freddie De Tommaso

Tenor Freddie De Tommaso (Photo credit: Craig Gibson)

The British-Italian tenor joins me on Zoom from New York, the day after what was surely one of the biggest nights of his career: his Met Opera company debut, playing Cavaradossi opposite Lise Davidsen (also making her company debut) in David McVicar’s Tosca. Standing ovations and cheers aplenty, Freddie went to bed at 1.30am but was quite happy to wake at 6am to see his wife off to the airport!

He'd never met conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin until their piano rehearsals, but their temperaments for the piece clicked instantly. ‘In a duet where we pick up phrases from one another,’ De Tommaso tells me, ‘there are traditions where Tosca has a little corona on the end of her phrase, pausing on the final note, before Cavaradossi takes over. But Yannick was keen for us to carry through and do it as written; he was in favour of me taking the baton in tempo and continuing the flow of the music. Puccini love duets are all about this outpouring of love and over-the-top emotion; that taking of the line from each other makes the music run much better and builds that feeling of an outpouring of affection.’

What opportunities does Puccini give for this, I wonder? Are there things unique to this composer and Tosca? ‘It’s verismo rather than bel canto and the Verdi that came out of bel canto. Puccini, Mascagni and Leoncavallo allow you to be more dramatic, because they are the highest level of drama: it’s love, death, treachery… it’s emotion on steroids. It lends itself to dramatic and emotional singing.’

It means, he explains, that Puccini allows not so much a different vocal technique but a ‘looser’ approach to the rules: ‘in bel canto, it should always be elegant; in verismo, elegance is good but it’s not the thing you should always be striving for. You’re thinking about character, acting and drama. If the character is in pain, you can sound that. It’s a lot of big, punchy middle singing in Puccini in general. For the tenor, you’re often singing D, Eb, F, G and then jumping to a Bb. In Verdi and bel canto, you have much more passaggio with less of the top, heroic, verismo notes.’

Tosca has been at the heart of De Tommaso’s rise to prominence. He made headlines standing in last minute as Cavaradossi at the Royal Opera in December 2021. He suggests the role – which he has played around forty times now – has taught him a great deal in the last few years. ‘I started in my repertoire young. These days, most tenors are singing Tosca in their forties; for my first, I was 27. My voice is still changing, and it will keep changing for another five years. As you get older, the voice matures because you get a hardening of the cartilage in the larynx; this means your voice can become more metallic.’

Elena Stikhina, as Floria Tosca and Freddie De Tommaso, as Cavaradossi perform the Act I Love Duet from Puccini’s Tosca. 

As singer, De Tommaso is the perfect person to unpick the mysteries of Puccini’s magnetic melodies, and he points to Puccini as an expert vocal writer. ‘Certainly, in his later works, Puccini really understood what was comfortable for a singer,’ he says. ‘The melodies often build in step; there aren’t lots of awkward leaps. For the tenor, you sing in the passaggio much less than in Verdi, who makes you sing in that middle voice all the time. Instead, the challenge in Puccini is: do you have the voice to get across the orchestra? Because somebody is always doubling you, always playing your part, so you must have enough punch and decibels to get across. People who struggle to sing Puccini are the ones who don’t have the instrument, I’d say.’

As Scappucci touched on too, then, the orchestra is an equal part of the drama. De Tommaso is acutely aware of the three-dimensional and says it’s all in the collaboration: ‘a good conductor manages the balance, ensuring the players are quiet when they need to be. There’s nothing worse than having a tender moment where you want to sing sweetly and quietly, but you hear the orchestra are playing at 50% and not 15%. They must maintain the colour and a textured sound, but small, to let gentle singing be heard. There’s nothing more ridiculous in an opera than when you’re dying but singing at full blast because the orchestra’s too loud!’

De Tommaso is quick to point out there are no excuses, as Puccini gives you everything – ‘dynamics, how to stress the phrases, phrase markings absolutely everywhere, even stage directions’ – all detailed minutely in his scores.

It is this perfectionist dramatist in Puccini that appeals to him. Growing up in England, De Tommaso was fascinated by theatre, specifically plays; he was an actor before he was a singer, attending drama camps over summer holidays, studying as a drama scholar at school and acting in Shakespeare. ‘Part of what I love most about singing Puccini is the drama. Getting to mix that with singing is the perfect combination.’

And it’s the dramatic high points of Puccini’s operas that form the backbone of De Tommaso’s latest Decca album, released to mark the Puccini centenary. ‘I love singing the parts of the drama where you are at the maximum of emotion, whether that’s really in love, angry or forceful. Those are the best arias, when you know the character is going to die, is destroyed emotionally or is going mad! I like it when the stakes are high and you’re at the limit – because that’s what makes the best singing and theatre.’

Puccini had featured on his previous albums; La bohème, Madama Butterfly and Turandot featured on Il Tenore, but now he’s showcasing the ‘more dramatic’ repertoire he’s going to be singing in the next couple of years. Expect a slice of Manon Lescaut, ‘Torna ai felici di’ from the early Puccini opera Le villi and ‘Una parola sola’ from La fanciulla del West. ‘They’re not the most famous moments, and I love that; I like to take lesser-known pieces from a famous composer and champion them. ‘Una parola sola’ is more fun to sing because it’s a bigger, more dramatic scena. All the arias I’ve chosen are the pinnacle of dramatic intensity in their respective storylines.’

With peak after peak, high note after high note, recording this disc must have been exhausting. But it turns out British brew and restraint are the key to his sustaining Puccini’s melodies… ‘I took loads of tea breaks and learnt early on to sing only when the red light is on. No matter how much you want to practise something with the orchestra, remember: the recording session can be three or four hours long.’

How many cups of tea are we talking? ‘Hundreds of gallons. I’m keeping PG Tips in business!’

Act Three: Michael Fabiano

The American tenor is soon to grace the London stage as Ruggero in a concert performance of La rondine, joining the London Symphony Orchestra and a cast including Nadine Sierra and Serena Gamberoni. It will see Sir Antonio Pappano return to the work nearly thirty years on from his first encounter with the LSO, recording La rondine at Abbey Road in 1996 (EMI / Warner Classics).

Fabiano tells me it is the 'truth' of the work that speaks to audiences: 'this was a story that happened to so many people over the ages and could play out in today’s world; there are people who live a life that is not the one they really have, and lives are broken when faced with the reality that they have to be honest.'

Fabiano is familiar with many Puccini roles, having recently played Calaf in Turandot at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and Pinkerton in San Francisco Opera’s Madama Butterfly.

'La rondine,' the tenor says, 'is in some ways typical Puccini. La fanciulla del West – which came before it – is more progressive, showing us a direction Puccini was thinking about going in. La rondine is more at the cross-section of romanticism, with an eye on the fact that in Strauss and Der Rosenkavalier there had been progressive romantic music being written just a few years before.' It tells us, Fabiano suggests, that Puccini 'was a populist, interested in reaching as many people as he could.'

Memorable melodies helped him do so, and it is their 'rising step-based high notes' that form a distinctive recurring signature. 'Where we go from an F to a G, a G to an A, then an A to a Bb, for instance. Lots of major second climbs happen in this opera. It’s a trademark; he does these step-by-step inclines of seconds until it resolves to a high note.'

Does this, then, make it easy to sing? 'Sometimes, in simplicity there is difficulty. Sounding incredible within simplicity is actually harder than within complexity, as complexity can shroud the difficulty of the vocal line. I would argue the music in La rondine is more simplistic than Manon Lescaut or Turandot; it can be almost sing-song, and the trap is to not get sucked into sounding common. Simple music is always exposed because it can reveal the heart more than something that perhaps on the surface is more complex. It requires not just vocal prowess but emotional openness too.'

La rondine is less performed than the Puccini megahits – it returned to the Met this spring after an eleven-year gap – and we ponder if this could be one of the reasons. But Fabiano turns more to the story. 'The problem is the opera doesn’t end in a resolution that people understand from the operatic stage. But this is the most probable way a situation like this would resolve in real life. They won’t jump off a cliff; they might just leave. What we experience in La rondine happens every day.' Again, it speaks to the truth that Fabiano began by highlighting, underlining Puccini’s powers as realist and dramatist.

It’s interesting, then, to observe the growth of concert performances of Puccini operas, given these strip him of the very (literal) theatrical context that gives the stories themselves such power. I think of Sir Mark Elder’s acclaimed concert versions of Puccini with The Hallé, and Pappano’s choice to include a similar offering in his first season as LSO Chief Conductor.

It is a liberating offer for a singer. Says Fabiano: 'it allows me to show off colours that I might not be willing to risk on the big stage because I’d be overwhelmed by the stage work too. I love concert and recital performances; I feel that I have more of an opportunity to paint. On a big operatic stage, I have physical responsibilities that might block my ability to use my voice at 100 per cent.'

Concert hall or opera house, it turns out the open sky is a natural preparation ground. Fabiano is a qualified pilot and his first instructor taught him a useful lesson for opera.

'My instructor was always telling me to stop overmanipulating the control panel; stop pulling back so hard. I’ve been flying for a dozen years now, and what I’ve realised is that to fly a plane requires almost no input whatsoever. It requires the touch of two fingers and very little actuation on the power unit. If you think about singing, the best singers are the ones that do very little to have a big success. That was so informative to me: doing less results in more. It took flying for me to realise that.'

I’m assured, though, that the Puccini anniversary won’t be marked by a Fabiano flypast. Some heartfelt singing at the Barbican will prove enough.

Puccini 100 takes place at the Royal Opera House’s Clore Studio on 3rd December and will be streamed live on the Royal Ballet and Opera YouTube channel.

La bohème will be at the Royal Opera House December 13 – January 17, directed by Richard Jones.

Freddie De Tommaso’s album ‘Puccini’ is out on Decca from November 29

La rondine will be given concert performances at London’s Barbican Hall, December 10-12

 

 

 

 

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