Don Giovanni: Gazzaniga vs. Mozart

So - Gazzaniga versus Mozart. Your first thought, possibly:

"Gazza who?"

What - you don't have an extensive collection of the works of Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743-1818) in your personal compact disc library??

Gazzaniga: first, but not best

Yeah, neither do I...

I do have, however, a disc of highlights from Gazzaniga's entry in the lengthy list of works devoted to the subject of Don Juan: Don Giovanni Tenorio, which premiered in Venice in February, 1787. This date places Gazzaniga's opera some seven months earlier than Mozart's masterpiece, the subject of my next several posts.

Gazzaniga's libretto was supplied by Giovanni Bertati. Many commentators have speculated that Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart's collaborator, "was familiar with" or "may have known" Bertati's work.

That's a bit like saying the producer's of the current CBS re-boot of Magnum, P.I. "may have been familiar" with the Tom Selleck original of the 1980's.

A quick comparison of the two men 's work makes it clear that da Ponte relied heavily on Bertati; many scenes are exactly parallel, with parallel numbers. Read da Ponte's memoirs, however, and you'll find Bertati unacknowledged; he produced Mozart's text, it would seem, in a glorious rush of coffee-fueled inspiration.

Whatever! In fact, other than re-wording the arias and ensembles, da Ponte's most original contribution was the fleshing-out of the dramma giocosa to full-length dimensions with the addition of a couple of scenes; namely, from the beginning of Act II. These include the episodes in which Giovanni and Leporello exchange clothes; Giovanni's serenade "Deh vieni alla finestra"; and Leporello's disguised wooing of Elvira. Bertati's scenario resumes when Giovanni and Leporello encounter the statue and invite it to dine.

 The good thing about the similarities between the two operas is the opportunity for side-by-side comparisons of the two composers. It's instructive in that Mozart's vastly superior skill-sets as a musical dramatist stand out in stark contrast to those of Gazzaniga, who is revealed to be a competent mediocrity.

Having said that, it's important to clarify something: Gazzaniga's aim was NOT to create an immortal, timeless masterpiece of cosmic grandeur and real-as-life psychology. His intent was to treat the Don Juan subject more or less as all previous dramatists had: as a low-comedy sex romp. Sexual licentiousness was not considered an appropriate topic for elevated drama. It was up to Mozart to transform the material into an art-work for the ages.

Let's be content with three examples. In all cases, the links displayed will take you to YouTube tracks of the individual numbers.

EXAMPLE ONE: LEPORELLO
First up: the opening arias for Giovanni's servant. In both cases, the operas' overtures are followed by solos for Leporello (in Mozart) and Pasquariello (in Gazzaniga). In both cases, the disgruntled side-kicks are griping about having to stand guard while Giovanni canoodles with beautiful women; they're sick and tired, they want you to know, of being underpaid, sleep-deprived servants.

What strikes you about Pasquariello's "La gran bestia è il mio padrone"? Is it horrible? Are the orchestration, vocal writing or musical materials amateurishly unlistenable? No, not really. To the casual listener, Gazzaniga sounds fine; one might even mistake his music for Mozart. They certainly share essential elements of style. But in what way does it characterize Pasquariello? The music seems awfully generic: a buffo aria out of central casting.

Now listen to Leporello's version, "Notte e giorno faticar"; Mozart's skill at making every note dramatic rather than merely pleasant pops right out. The orchestral introduction alone accomplishes two things. First, this figure describes what Leporello is physically doing.

Mozart could not be clearer: Leporello is pacing back and forth. To be honest, it drives me crazy when, in performance on stage, the artist stands without pacing. The physical action is mandated by the theme. Why ignore Mozart's image of the impatient servant? 

Second, it also depicts a peasant's heavy footsteps; this man is no graceful aristocrat. So there is wit in the elegant orchestral flourish at his words "Voglio far il gentiluomo" ("I want to be the fine gentleman"). In mere seconds, Mozart has deftly drawn a vivid sketch: a lowly peasant pacing back and forth with heavy footsteps who dreams of rising above his station. That, by the way, is a fantasy that he briefly experiences at the top of Act II when he wears Giovanni's finery.

EXAMPLE TWO: ELVIRA

I wrote about Elvira's brilliant aria "Mi tradi" in another post a few weeks ago, and I'll have more to say about her in a future post.  But again, it's highly instructive to compare this number to Gazzaniga's version, a perfectly lovely cavatina entitled "Povere femmine". 

Gazzaniga's effort has a lot going for it: it's a model of Classical restraint, formal balance and graceful vocal writing. But, perhaps even more so than in the Pasquariello aria, the word "generic" really fits. Listen to the aria again: what in this music is specific to Elvira's situation? Couldn't this music be equally appropriate for a song in praise of Nature ("Ah, the beauty of the verdant meadow and the leafy forest"), or a contemplation of the goodness and mercy of God?

You bet it could.

Mozart, on the other hand (and as noted in that post about Mozart arias) came up with a truly brilliant stroke of genius: a musical figure that, in performance clearly suggests a looping, circular contour.

As this figure is repeated over and over and over throughout all sections of the Rondo structure of the aria, the cumulative effect is stunning. We hear, with our own ears, that Elvira's mind is running in circles: "I hate him... I love him... I hope he dies... I hope he takes me back". She's like a hamster racing endlessly on a treadmill. She can't make it stop; she can't let go. 

This particular performance has the useful feature of presenting the musical score unfolding in real time as the music is played, thus allowing you to visually see the "loop motif" recur, sometimes in the voice, sometimes in the woodwinds, sometimes in the strings. (The aria begins at about 1:52 following the recitative.)

Find me a better example of an abstract musical figure absolutely nailing an obsessive-compulsive disorder and I'll give you a cigar.

Finally, let's check out:

EXAMPLE THREE: THE STONE GUEST

What factors that led Mozart to treat the damnation of Giovanni with such utter gravity, with music that can still inspire terror, will be the subject of another future post. But it's worth noting that I don't fault Gazzaniga for failing to invest his statue-man with music of cosmic mystery. His goals were modest: a tuneful, entertaining sex comedy.

But GOOD GRIEF - I'm sorry, but even on those terms, this music is INEPT. The Commendatore's first words begin at about 1:05 of the statue scene. There is no attempt by our composer to give the creature any kind of unearthly or even spooky utterance. This statue sounds pompous, stuffy and boring. He sounds like the mayor of a small town at a ribbon-cutting ceremony speaking to a gathering of citizens for the opening of a new strip mall. He sounds like a corporate CEO giving the quarterly earnings report at a board meeting. Hey, Gazzaniga: TRY HARDER.

One of Mozart's achievements in his version of this scene, one I think is often overlooked, is his creation of a non-human musical language for his Commendatore. The creature is not given conventional melodic lines; his utterances are stiff and mechanical. Pay attention to the disjunct, angular contour of the statue's lines "Ferma un po'! Non si pasce di cibo mortale chi si pasce di cibo celeste". The statue can speak, but sounds a bit like the disjointed speech of robots in vintage TV shows. It's extremely creepy.

In short, Gazzaniga's failure is in mistakenly thinking that it's the job of the libretto to define character and tell the story, whereas his role was limited to providing conventionally pleasant music that people would enjoy. 

But that's backwards! This is OPERA, where it's the music that tells you what's going on more clearly and evocatively than mere words can ever do. Mozart's entire score is an object lesson in how to infuse every number - and even every note - with dramatic and psychological meaning.

Two similar libretti. Two dissimilar composers. It makes all the difference between hackwork and a masterpiece.

Final comments on the music of Street Scene

The music of Kurt Weill's Street Scene is like a meal where the menu consists of a grilled cheese sandwich, chateaubriand, hot fudge sundaes, collard greens and gummy bears.

Langston Hughes, lyricist

Funny thing about Mozart - there's never a moment where he inserts a ragtime number or a polka, but that's just Wolfgang for you. Weill's strategy of juxtaposing wildly contrasting genres and styles, often with jarring effect, is a deliberate calculation. Does it work? It helps if you just sort of go with it. Does it succeed? As someone who composes myself, I've come to think that the only way to define "success" in music composition is via this standard:

Did the music turn out as the composer intended? Does it sound exactly as he hoped it would? Is it in fact the composition he meant to create?

If "yes", "yes" and "yes", then BANG: he succeeded. How it's greeted by the rest of us is not always relevant. Street Scene rings the bell from this point of view.

I'm intrigued by the duet for two nannies in Act 2, in a moment after the excitement of the murders and Frank Maurrant's arrest have died down and left the neighborhood in an uneasy quiet. The nannies croon a lullaby to infants in strollers, even as they peruse tabloid papers. The lyrics alternate between lines of nanny-like phrases and lurid references to the violence ("Hush, tiny tot; it shows where they got shot").

What I find intriguing here is that Weill momentarily seems to revert to the quirky, satiric, heavily ironic style of his pre-American collaborations with Bertold Brecht. The Threepenny Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and The Seven Deadly Sins are nothing if not bitterly satiric and heavily ironic. Once landed in New York City, however, Weill "read the room", so to speak, of his new home and realized that such qualities were decidedly NOT to the American taste. Americans, he saw, are big on sentiment and sincerity, likely accounting for the relative lack of popularity of his European masterpieces in the USA.

But "Sleep, baby dear" is completely satiric and ironic! The disconnect between the languidly somnolent tune and the words eagerly recounting the bloodshed is an "in your face" gesture. I wonder if Weill realized he was momentarily abandoning the new-found earnestness of "Wrapped in a ribbon", "Somehow I never could believe" and the other numbers?

As noted in a previous post, virtually every number seems to be an homage of some sort, summoning up the varied styles and genres of mid-century American popular music. This includes one moment of Weill's self-homage - at least, in my opinion.

This happens in the "Ice cream sextet", an exuberant parody of Italian opera's tradition of concerted ensembles (I'm lookin' at YOU, Donizetti...). In the middle of the piece, following a robust opening more or less in the vein of a tarantella, Lippo Fiorentino waxes lyrical as he begins an ardent paean to American lunch counters where you can get every type of food you could want. His neighbors begin rapturous recitation of their favorites. Lyricist Langston Hughes indulged himself with a somewhat dubious quartet of rhymes: 

"You can get chicken hash;

You can get potato mash;

You can get summer squash;

But I want succotash"

Do "squash" and "hash" really rhyme? Well, never mind...

I believe Weill told Hughes that he needed such a rapturous recitation of favorite foods because he wanted to salute his final European composition, The Seven Deadly Sins. In the "Gluttony" movement, Anna's family back home in Louisiana have a similarly rapturous recitation:

"Crab meat; pork chops; sweet corn; chicken; and those golden biscuits spread with honey."

A self-salute for those with ears to hear it.

A final detail that makes me smile is found in the opening number of Act 2; a children's singing game led by young Willie Maurrant with a bunch of his friends. As the song nears its end, all the kids suddenly break out with "Hey baba rebop, hey baba rebop". What's so notable about that? Bear in mind that Street Scene premiered in 1947. As it happens, the previous year saw the release of a swing/blues song by Lionel Hampton called "Hey baba rebop"; You can hear it on this Youtube video.

I really like the fact that, in the totally fictional world of Street Scene, Hampton's song (which spent sixteen weeks at No. 1 on the Rhythm & Blues charts and made it as high as No. 9 on the national hit parade) is a real song, one these fictional children hear on the radio every day and have incorporated into their street game.

It's just another instance of Kurt Weill absorbing and utilizing yet another style of mid-century American music as he found it, assembling them all like colors on a painter's palette.

How very unfair that an unhealthy life style caught up with Weill far too soon, taking him at age 50. How might he have refined his search for a viable voice for American Opera? We can't know.

Cafeterias and Tootsie Pops: the music of Weill's Street Scene

I have two food-centric analogies to help me convey the essence of Kurt Weill's approach to the music of Street Scene:

It's a cafeteria. It's a Tootsie Roll Pop.

Any questions? ...Yeah, you probably need a little more detail. Gotcha.

HOW IS IT A CAFETERIA?
When you eat at a cafeteria, you are presented with an array of entrees: meat loaf, baked chicken, ham, lasagna, fish. The entrees are selected to represent the most popular dishes possible.

The musical numbers in Street Scene reflect the composer's experience of observing and absorbing the state of American popular music during the twelve years from his arrival in America in 1935 and his opera's premiere in 1947. As noted in my previous post, this was a golden period during which such giants as Rodgers, Loewe, Berlin, Porter, Bernstein and Gershwin were doing brilliant work, as were the great bandleaders of the Big Band era.

In my view, Weill deliberately evoked the styles of several of these masters; virtually every number in Street Scene is an homage to a particular composer.. He had a two-fold reason for this scheme:

1. The diversity of styles and genres seemed an appropriate match for the notable diversity of characters making up the cast: African-American, German, Irish, Swedish, Italian, and so forth.
2. I believe Kurt Weill was, in effect, sending a message to his American colleagues. The message? "We composers need to find a distinctly American musical language for opera, or we'll end up writing niche works for a niche opera. American music is rich and fertile and full of potential. There is no reason that any or all of these diverse styles can't be employed in the service of opera. Don't be afraid to write a serious opera with popular styles - after all, that's what Rossini did, isn't it?"

Okay, I'm taking a few liberties at putting these words in his mouth, but I think I'm on the right track.

In this regard, let's take a look at some examples of Weill deliberately appropriating another composer's style:

• "Ain't it awful, the heat". The opera opens with three neighbors kvetching about the sultry weather in New York; a heat wave that, surely, is a metaphor for the oppression suffered by the residents of the tenement house, in which poverty and ethnic tensions make life a trial to be endured. The musical style is laid-back jazz, notably evoking Gershwin.
• "I got a marble and a star" Here we have a blues number sung by an African-American character whose music reveals a likeable, easy-going nature and a contentment not dependent on material possessions. We are expected to recognize an homage to "I got plenty o' nothing" from Porgy and Bess.
• "Wrapped in a ribbon and tied in a bow": Young Jennie Hildebrand's joyous celebration of her graduation day is charming, sweet, and a tiny bit corny. The music is pure Rodgers and Hammerstein. This number is in R&H's ingenue vein, calling to mind "I am sixteen going on seventeen", "I'm as corny as Kansas in August" and "When I marry Mr. Snow".
• Wouldn't you like to be on Broadway?: This number for Harry Easter, Rose's smarmy boss, has something of the Tin Pan Alley milieu of Irving Berlin
• What good would the moon be? Rose's reply to Harry is a no-brainer: this song is pure Cole Porter. Further, it seems to suggest a particular Porter song: "Night and Day" from his 1934 musical The Gay Divorcee. Rose is no ingenue like Jennie; this is music for a sophisticated urban woman. Rose's ascending chromatic vocal lines correspond nicely to the descending lines in the Porter song.
• Moon faced and starry eyed. When Mae Jones and Dick McGann (two otherwise minor characters) feel Dick's gin hitting their systems, they sing a song that is followed by a raucous swing dance that sounds as if the DNA of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller were somehow combined to create worthy new voice of Big Band. It's interesting that Weill out-sourced the orchestration of this number to a Broadway arranger rather than attempt it himself.

I could go on, but you get the idea, and there's a Tootsie Roll Pop question on the table.

HOW IS IT A TOOTSIE POP?
You've had Tootsie Pops, right? It's two candies in one! The outside is a light, crunchy, sugary fruit-flavored shell. But in the center is a DARK AND CHEWY CORE.

All the numbers listed above are pop styles of one kind or another. The pop genres, with one important exception, belong to the supporting characters: the residents of the tenement house, or the visitors like Harry Easter and Dick McGann. This is the light, fruity shell.

The DARK AND CHEWY CORE? This is the world of the four characters making up the serious tragic verismo-style plot. They are Frank and Anna Maurrant, their daughter Rose, and the bookish young Sam Kaplan. Whenever the focus turns to the Maurrant's loveless marriage and the star-crossed love of Sam and Rose, there is an abrupt shift in musical language. The vocal styles feature traditional operatic writing, calling for big dramatic instruments and extended range. The orchestral writing becomes symphonic, as opposed to the lighter, more traditionally Broadway sound of the pop numbers. Some illustrative highlights and notions about them:

Frank Maurrant's entrance. The dialogue as Frank joins his neighbors upon arriving home from work is underscored by ominous orchestral underscoring. It's easy to focus on the spoken lines rather than pay attention to the orchestra, but then one can miss an important motif introduced immediately in the strings: 

Opera-savvy listeners who note this short musical idea will immediately understand how the drama will end: Frank is going to kill his wife. They will know this because they can connect it with a similar motif (long note followed by four quicker ones) in Bizet's Carmen: the so-called "Fate Theme":

Anna's aria "Somehow I never could believe". This composition was a sticking-point in the collaboration between playwright/librettist Elmer Rice and Weill. The aria is redolent of Puccini-like devices in both vocal writing and orchestral gestures. At seven and a half minutes long, Rice was sure the number would kill the show dead in its tracks. Weill, who had firm and specific goals for this "Broadway Opera", refused to cut so much as a note. He had his way, and he was right: we need to hear Anna express her state of affection-starved misery at some length in order to feel empathy for her. Without empathy, she's merely an unfaithful wife, in which case her death is less tragic. 

Sam's solo "Lonely House". This, perhaps the best-known excerpt in Street Scene is vocally grateful for the tenor voice. More importantly, it is the most successful fusion of vocal writing that demands classical technique with a jazz-based accompaniment. It also seems the most "Weill-ian" in that I hear no particular synthesis of another composer's style. \

By the way, Langston Hughes's lyrics for "Lonely House" contain a bit of imagery uncomfortably close to one used by another poet some years earlier. At one point Sam sings:

“Unhook the stars and take them down”.

Nine years prior to Street Scene, W. H. Auden crafted the following lines in his 1938 poem "Funeral Blues": 

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

It's reasonable to assume that Hughes would have been familiar with Auden's work. Was this a conscious or unconscious bit of borrowing?

Sam and Rose's duet "We'll go away together"

Of equal importance to the plot line of Frank and Anna's doomed marriage is the bittersweet aborted romance of Sam and Rose. They are given no fewer than three substantial duets, ranging from perfumed operetta style to Sam's final heartbreak. "We'll go away together" occurs in Act 2; Sam summons up the nerve to propose an escape for the two of them to a happier life. Rose, in misery with her father's cruelty and her mother's scandalous affair, is tempted to take him up on it. The music is lyrical and buoyant; it could almost be Viennese operetta a la Franz Lehar. 

However, Weill inserts a telling harmonic touch that, for those with ears to hear it, foreshadows their eventual breakup. Here is the initial phrase of the main theme:

The final two bars feature a moment of bitonality: E flat major in the accompaniment and F major in the melodic line. Let's assume the former stands for Sam and the latter for Rose. The two harmonies don't match; they create a dissonance. Sam and Rose are not in agreement; they're in different keys. Lehar would have put both lines in E flat. Weill's bitonality is code; it's telling us that, for the foreseeable future, Sam is the square peg in the round hole of Rose's life.

We'll wrap up Street Scene next week with a few more insights on the music.