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Great Singers at La Scala
Note by Roland Vernon |
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| La Scala's position at the hub of Italian musical culture during the past hundred and fifty years, has been subject to frequent challenges and assaults.
The greatest threat to its survival came about in the first two decades of the twentieth century, partly because of the volatile social, political and industrial circumstances that had affected life in Italy since unification (1870), but also because the phenomenon of opera, which Italians had at one time pioneered across the world, had taken root of its own accord in countries with greater economic stability than Italy.
London, New York, Chicago, Bayreuth, even Buenos Aires had established their own temples of operatic endeavour, which, together with the work of northern European composers (especially Wagner) had dissolved the exclusivity of La Scala's prominence as the global centre of opera.
As the century drew to a close it was clear that Milan's musical Mecca either had to shed its anachronisms, or content itself with mere provincial status.
By the time Arturo Toscanini and Giulio Gatti-Casazza took over control of the theatre as artistic director and administrator, in 1898, La Scala was in a state of physical disrepair, musical mediocrity and economic chaos. Gatti wrote of his impressions after a first meeting with the company's directorate: 'Theatre almost abandoned, finances and subsidy far below essential demands, no scenery, chorus, ballet, school, orchestra, stage crew; everything gone and everything to be reorganised'. Indeed the theatre had had for a while to close down altogether. The great days of Verdi's premieres were gone; the former Austrian rulers of Lombardy - who had built the theatre in 1776 and patronised it for more than a century - were ousted, the heady euphoria which followed Italian unification - when La Scala had become a symbol of cultural identity - was withering; the socially-prominent families, who owned boxes by subscription and underwrote the company's finances, were finding that the costs of opera were rising faster than the acceptable takings. Verdi's personal boycott of the theatre for twenty years (following a quarrel with the management) had come to an end in 1869, but even the brief thrill of witnessing two new works from the old maestro (Otello in 1887 and Falstaff in 1893) could not stem the tide of opera's evolution as an industry. Toscanini and Gatti-Casazza were young men in 1898, and though full of artistic ideals, faced an uphill struggle against outdated traditions and audience chauvinism. Box-holders and their guests were accustomed to come and go freely during the course of a performance; chattering was permissible during musical numbers; encores of favourite arias were expected; artistic license was encouraged, even to the point of distorting a composer's melodic intentions; ladies retained their fashionable hats during the performance, at the expense of stage visibility; and familiar repertoire (such as Il Trovatore) was laden with false traditions and interpolations which rendered them still-born as theatrical drama. All this the young pair now set out to undermine, as well as attempting to incorporate some contemporary non-Italian repertoire into the season (e.g. Charpentier's Louise and Debussy's Pelléas). Neither directors nor audience were happy with the changes, and a furious battle ensued, of the type that was to become familiar during the course of Toscanini's uncompromising career. Tullio Serafin, then a viola player in La Scala's orchestra, wrote: 'In those years orchestral discipline, even at La Scala, was very lax... Against this whole conglomeration of defects, made up of laxity, laziness, inattentiveness and false tradition, Toscanini fought like a lion. He was after one thing only: respect for art. But in his anxiety to get it, or rather to force it to happen, he exercised no self-control: he shouted, imprecated, even insulted... His impatience made him go too far'. For his encouragement of Wagner he was branded a 'Kapellmeister'. For his authoritarian reforms he was mockingly called a 'dwarf king', a 'monster of Mephistophelian arrogance', who 'erected his fame on the basis of absolute disregard of good manners and on an exercise of unconscionable stubbornness'. Against such opposition he can perhaps be forgiven some of his extreme reactions, such as storming out of the theatre during a 1902 performance of Un Ballo in Maschera, when the audience insisted on an encore from the tenor Zenatello. Above anything else, Toscanini insisted that a singer's star status should not impede the musical or theatrical flow of performance. In his striving for egalitarian company spirit he was ahead of his time. The Milanese were fiercely fond of the star system, and their powerful claque set out to ensure that star politics were a fundamental element of La Scala's operation. A number of singers, Italians included, felt intimidated by the competitiveness that such an attitude generated, especially amongst the divas, and avoided La Scala for all or part of their careers. Neither Galli-Curci nor Ponselle ever appeared there, and some foreigners, such as Chaliapin and Sobinov, were victims of xenophobia. It cannot be wondered at that many of the world's great singers between 1900 and 1920 were hesitant to accept engagements at such a theatre, overrun, as it was, with prejudice, idiosyncratic tradition and conceit. There was, of course a stable of tried, tested and loved artists already resident with the company when Toscanini and Gatti-Casazza arrived. Most of these had made their reputations in the last golden years of Verdi's come-back. Tamagno and Maurel, for example, had created Verdi's final protagonists, Otello, Iago and Falstaff. Navarrini, Bonci, De Lucia and Storchio (who bore Toscanini an illegitimate son) were also installed as favourites before the close of the century, but fewer celebrated singers of the next generation were to become La Scala regulars. This was not entirely due to the company's physical degradation; other factors were to play an important part in encouraging the most ambitious artists to concentrate their energies elsewhere. Principal amongst these was money. The Metropolitan and its New York rival, the Manhattan, offered considerably higher fees, and their season conflicted with that of La Scala, preventing, to all intents and purposes, an artist engaged with one to participate with the other. In addition there was the lure of great wealth and fame to be made through gramophone records. Italian singers had become the best-selling commodity of the recording industry from the start of the century, but their fortune and global reputation depended on establishing themselves in the opera houses of England and America, the twin centres of the industry. Many fine singers did remain for the most part at La Scala, but were never to become the best-known voices of their day, such as Eugenia Burzio. Many others were tempted across the Atlantic, hardly ever to return to Italy. The composer Giacomo Orefice said in 1914 that Italy had been abandoned by its most famous singers in favour of the Americas. When Toscanini and Gatti-Casazza eventually followed the same course, in 1908, and took on management of the Met, they were delighted to find a first-rate company of highly proficient performers, but dismayed by the level of profiteering and ambition that ran rife in such a collection of super-famous stars. The First World War, and the European impasse which it created, was another factor preventing well-known figures travelling to La Scala, particularly after Italy's own initiation of hostilities against Austria and Germany. So critical did the situation become, the company and its theatre closed down once again towards the end of the war, and looked set for collapse. If La Scala were to survive any longer, radical measures would have to be taken: the management overhauled, and a new cosmopolitan attitude established. It was Toscanini once again who came to the rescue, having left the Met after a dispute with Gatti, a broken liaison with the soprano Geraldine Farrar, and a heightened sense of patriotic duty towards the Italian war effort. Toscanini had worked well at the Met with several former La Scala colleagues (Caruso, Ruffo and Amato), but had become disenchanted with what he considered to be too stagnant and circumscribed a routine. 'That may be of use for the artisan', he wrote, 'not for the artist. "Renew yourself or die". Voilà tout'. He was now entrusted with complete directorship of La Scala, and set about establishing an Independent Administrative Body - independent, that is, from the former rule of aristocratic patrons, the disproportionate influence of the publishing family, Ricordi (which at one stage conducted its business from the theatre premises itself), and the charismatic insistence of individual impresarios, who speculated on the careers of their 'discoveries' for personal profit. This time Toscanini made it his mission to restructure the theatre's artistic output absolutely. The funds were raised by means of a civic tax, the building entirely refurbished, the orchestral players hand-picked and an international tour undertaken to spread the word. The new company was inaugurated in its restored home on December 26th 1921 with a performance of Toscanini had at last realised his dream of a professional company, with little tolerance for star hagiolatry, but supreme emphasis on interpretative artistry. Amongst the first generation of audience favourites moulded by the great conductor, were Toti dal Monte and Aureliano Pertile, both of whom reached considerable heights through patient adherence to their maestro's artistic creed. Only the shadow of fascism and the inevitable conflict that sprang from it were to taint the stupendous revival of fortunes instigated at La Scala by Toscanini. The conductor resigned in 1929, but played a significant part in raising funds to rebuild the theatre after it was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1943. |
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