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Aida Times Two: How Italian Veterans of Two Historic Aida Productions Shaped Argentina’s Music History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2016

Aníbal Enrique Cetrangolo
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Abstract

Aida famously inaugurated the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 1908, but the musical history of the city is also linked to two earlier productions of the piece: its debut in Cairo in 1871, and another legendary performance, in Rio de Janeiro in 1886. This article retraces the steps of five Italian musicians who played in the orchestras of the Cairo or Rio productions before moving to Buenos Aires, and thereby formed part of the vast Italian emigration to Argentina in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Once there, Pietro Melani, Tomaso Marenco, Giovanni Grazioso Panizza, Italo Casella and Ferruccio Cattelani radically transformed the concert life of the city through their musical activities, not least through their introduction of a wide range of orchestral and chamber music repertoire. By reconstructing their trajectories, I argue for a stronger focus on international networks in thinking about the history of Italian opera at this time and for a greater attention to the contributions of performers who would later fall into obscurity. In addition, I suggest that the insignificant attention given to such figures even in Argentinean narratives would seem to indicate the persistence of a historiography that plays down the contributions of European immigrants in the musical history of the city and the nation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 79 - 105
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

Aníbal Enrique Cetrangolo, Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice; Universidad de San Martín, Buenos Aires, aecetrangolo@gmail.com

References

1 Earlier accounts of Aida in terms of contemporary dynamics follow, needless to say, from Said, Edward, ‘The Empire at Work: Verdi’s Aida’, in Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; responses and alternative readings include Robinson, Paul, ‘Is Aida an Orientalist Opera?’, Cambridge Opera Journal 5 (1993), 133–140CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bergeron, Katherine, ‘Verdi’s Egyptian Spectacle: On the Colonial Subject in Aida’, Cambridge Opera Journal 14 (2002), 149–159CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Locke, Ralph P., ‘Beyond the Exotic: How “Eastern” is Aida?’, Cambridge Opera Journal 17 (2005), 105–139CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Leydi, Roberto, ‘Diffusione e volgarizzazione’, in Storia dell’opera italiana, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (Turin, 1988), 6: 350–354Google Scholar; in English as ‘The Dissemination and Popularization of Opera’, in Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth, ed. Bianconi and Pestelli, trans. Kenneth Chalmers (Chicago, 2003), 334–7.

3 On Wagner in Italy, see Panizzardi, Mario, Wagner in Italia, 2 vols. (Milan, 1914)Google Scholar; Ipser, Karl, Richard Wagner in Italien (Salzburg, 1951)Google Scholar; and Jung, Ute, Die Rezeption der Kunst Richard Wagners in Italien (Regensburg, 1974)Google Scholar.

4 For further information about the musicians involved in Aida’s premiere, see the collected materials in ‘Genesi dell Aida’, ed. Mario Medici (including unpublished material edited by Saleh Abdoun), Quaderni dell’Istituto nazionale di studi verdiani 4 (1971). On Giovanni Bottesini, the conductor, see also Martin, Thomas, ‘In Search of Bottesini’, International Society of Bassists 10/1 (1983), 6–12Google Scholar; 10/2 (1984), 6–24; 11/2 (1985), 25–39; and Inzaghi, Luigi et al., Giovanni Bottesini: virtuoso del contrabbasso e compositore (Milan, 1989)Google Scholar.

5 Special thanks to Michele Mescalchin for bringing this information to my attention and providing me with photographs of the original documents held at the Naples Conservatory.

6 ‘Notizie storiche sul Teatro Marenco’, www.fondazioneteatromarenco.it/notizie-storiche#storia (accessed 18 July 2014).

7 Excelsior would subsequently be performed at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 1883, by an Italian ballet company, where it was a great success, and performed thirty-one times in succession. For further information on Excelsior see Testa, Alberto, I grandi balletti, repertorio di quattro secoli del teatro di danza (Rome, 1991)Google Scholar; Pappacena, Flavia, ed., Excelsior. Documenti e saggi/Documents and Essays (Rome, 1998)Google Scholar; , Pappacena, Il linguaggio della danza classica. Guida all’interpretazione delle fonti iconografiche (Rome, 2012)Google Scholar.

8 Panizza, Héctor, Medio siglo de vida musical. Ensayo autobiográfico (Buenos Aires, 1952)Google Scholar. Héctor would become one of the most important conductors of the early twentieth century, and he was particularly connected with Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera, as well as the Colón. He conducted operatic premieres such as Zandonai’s Francesca de Rimini (Turin, 1914) and was admired by figures such as Puccini and Richard Strauss.

9 Panizza, Medio siglo, 14.

10 Annunziata’s husband was Enrico Stinco Palermini, an important baritone who had collaborated with conductors such as Edoardo Mascheroni, for instance, in the premiere of Catalani’s Loreley (Turin, 1890). From 1897, Annunziata developed a significant career in South America, including performances in São Paolo (Teatro San José), Montevideo (Teatro Solís), Rosario de Santa Fe (Teatro Olimpo) and Córdoba (Teatro Progreso).

11 Panizza, Giovanni Grazioso, Clara, melodramma in tre atti ed epilogo, parole e musica di G. Grazioso Panizza (Milan, 1889)Google Scholar.

12 This can be deduced by cross-referencing two sources: Panizza’s son attributes Il Capitan Bastogio [sic] to his father (Panizza, Medio siglo, 14), while surviving documents and the score of the opera carry the signature of one Achille Panizza. See ‘Opening Night! Opera & Oratorio Premieres’, available from Stanford University Libraries, http://operadata.stanford.edu/catalog/10123171 (accessed 11 September 2014).

13 ‘Opening Night! Opera & Oratorio Premieres’, http://operadata.stanford.edu/catalog/10123172.

14 The film industry has never been able to resist such a story, and Franco Zeffirelli would make a film loosely based on these events: Young Toscanini, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (Italian International Film, 1988). For a more sober account of this event, see Sachs, Harvey, Toscanini (New York, 1980)Google Scholar.

15 In later accounts of Toscanini’s courage, the Rio de Janeiro events often become associated with his opposition to Mussolini’s regime: see, for example, the programme Arturo Toscanini, una luce, un mito, un genio, broadcast by RAI in Italy on 6 January 2012 (available at www.lastoriasiamonoi.rai.it/puntate/arturo-toscanini/1078/default.aspx).

16 These predilections were musically evident during the 2013 conference dedicated to the double bicentennial of the births of Verdi and Wagner by the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. For the occasion, the university’s School of Music presented five celebratory concerts. One could enjoy magnificent performances of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Tannhäuser, Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde; but not a single note was played of an opera by Verdi, who was represented as a chamber music composer with his string quartet and a few romanzas for voice and piano.

17 The Brazilian emperor’s interest in music led to many Brazilian musicians studying in Europe. For further information on the relationship between Dom Pedro and Wagner, see Chaves Junior, Edgard Brito, Wagner e o Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1976)Google Scholar.

18 The two singers were still locally important in 1886. Limonta was also present in Rio that year and would soon be collaborating on local stages with Toscanini. Gabbi, meanwhile, a celebrated soprano, had studied at the same conservatory as Toscanini, although the reasons she would never forget Rio were quite different, as it was there at around this time that the great conductor Marino Mancinelli wrote her a tragic farewell letter before committing suicide.

19 A Gazeta de Noticias, 30 June 1886.

20 A Gazeta de Noticias, 27 July 1885.

21 A Gazeta de Noticias, 16 December 1886.

22 Unfortunately the theatre has since been demolished, although we can get an idea of Rossi’s work from newspaper accounts, which describe the painting as representing ‘four allegorical groups which represent dance, music, poetry, and the theatre. These groups serve as a frame around a great wreath of flowers.’ There was also a large frieze with medallions containing the portraits of Meyerbeer, Gounod, Mozart, Verdi, Gomes, Weber and Rossini. An interesting detail, which was typical of a commercial centre such as São Paulo, is the presence of a rich, purple curtain ‘as is common in the theatres of France’, which served as a border for a second curtain containing commercial advertisements. See A Gazeta de Noticias, 27 July 1885.

23 O Paiz, 30 April 1886.

24 Gazeta de Noticias, 12 September 1885.

25 O Paiz, 15 May 1886.

26 O Paiz, 24 June 1886.

27 O Paiz, 24 June 1886.

28 Gazeta de Noticias, 27 June 1886.

29 Gazeta de Noticias, 30 June 1886.

30 Bertini arrived in Rio de Janeiro on the ship Sirio on 16 June 1886.

31 Gazeta da Tarde, 30 June 1886.

32 O Paiz, 1 July 1886.

33 These noisy protests were not exclusively reserved for theatres, and even churches were not safe. A few years earlier (see the Gazeta de Noticias, 2 May 1881), the local bishop tried to withhold the Holy Sacrament from the faithful of Rio’s Chiesa di San Antonio because they were talking too much during mass. The congregation reacted with a furious stamping of feet. For the ‘galleries’ letter, see Gazeta de Noticias, 2 July 1886.

34 See Boschi, Luigi, ‘Un direttore musicale per la Città di Parma’, www.luigiboschi.it/content/un-direttore-musicale-la-città-di-parma (accessed 11 September 2014)Google Scholar.

35 O Paiz, 1 July 1886.

36 L’Italia, 1 July 1886.

37 O Paiz, 4 July 1886.

38 O Paiz, 4 July 1886.

39 A Semana, 17 July 1886.

40 Gazeta de Noticias, 4 August 1886.

41 Oscar Guanabarino wrote: ‘Unfortunately we do not have the musical resources to repeat such performances without the participation of foreigners. The grand concerts of Club Beethoven are impossible when we do not have operatic companies in town.’ See O Paiz, 25 August 1886.

42 Magaldi, Cristina, Music in Imperial Rio de Janeiro: European Culture in a Tropical Milieu (Lanham, 2004), 73Google Scholar.

43 L’Italia, 19–20 August 1886.

44 The critic’s notice preserves two particulars which today might seem surprising: first, in his comments on a passage from Jules Massenet’s Hérodiade, he called that work ‘one of the chief monuments of modern opera’; second, he noted that the audience was in part composed of members of an abolitionist society. (Slavery was not abolished in Brazil until two years later, in 1888.). See O Paiz, 25 August 1886.

45 The literature on Italian emigration to Argentina is extensive; useful overviews include Devoto, Fernando J. and Rosoli, Gianfausto, eds., La inmigración italiana en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1985)Google Scholar; Blengino, Vanni, Oltre l’oceano: un progetto d’identità: gli immigranti italiani in Argentina (1837–1930) (Rome, 1987)Google Scholar; Baily, Samuel L., Immigrants in the Land of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New York, 1870–1914 (Ithaca, NY, 1999)Google Scholar; , Devoto, Historia de los italianos en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 2006)Google Scholar; and Choate, Mark I., Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad (Cambridge, MA, 2008)Google Scholar.

46 The sister of my first music teacher, the Milanese professor Gaetano Marcolli, was baptised in 1895 with the name Celeste Aida, after the opera’s first aria.

47 Toscanini himself conducted the opera at both the Colón and the Teatro de la Ópera.

48 Ernestina Stoika’s career was centred on South America. She performed Il trovatore, Un ballo in maschera and Aida in Buenos Aires in 1873, Un ballo in maschera, La sonnambula and Lucrezia Borgia in 1874 at the Teatro Solís in Montevideo, and in 1875 Ruy Blas at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile. The career of tenor Salvatore Anastasi was more international. Between 1869 and 1883, we find him at Rome (Teatro Apollo), Florence (Teatro della Pergola), Milan (Teatro Dal Verme), Cairo (Khedivial Opera House), Paris (Théâtre Italien) and Madrid (Teatro Real) singing lead roles in operas such as Rigoletto, La traviata, Anna Bolena, Lucrezia Borgia and La favorita.

49 In the Marquis’s house in Bologna, where the seeds of the local Società del Quartetto were planted, the chamber ensemble was made up of Carlo Verardi (first violin), Federico Sarti (second violin), Giuseppe Bonfiglioli (viola) and Francesco Serato (cello). When Verardi died, Bonfiglioli left for the Americas, Sarti became first violin and ceded his post to Massarenti, while Consolini took Bonfiglioli’s place; see Sani, Sebastiano, Bologna di ieri (Bologna, 1923), 162Google Scholar.

50 Between 1901 and 1906, Toscanini spent four full winter seasons at Buenos Aires’s Teatro de la Ópera, years during which he also juggled duties as principal conductor of La Scala and guest conductor at other Italian houses and at Montevideo’s Teatro Solis. In 1912, while serving as principal conductor of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Toscanini would again spend the Buenos Aires winter season conducting locally, this time at the Teatro Colón. As his focus began to shift to the symphonic repertoire, he returned to Buenos Aires in 1941 for a series of concerts with the orchestra of the Teatro Colón, including a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 which was recorded live. See Sachs, Harvey, ed., The Letters of Arturo Toscanini (Chicago, 2006), 61Google Scholar.

51 For further information see Gesualdo, Vicente, Historia de la música en la Argentina: 1852–1900 (Buenos Aires, 1961)Google Scholar.

52 The building can still be found at Sarmiento 1374, in central Buenos Aires, just a few blocks from the Colón.

53 La Gaceta Musical, 13 December 1885, 236.

54 Cattelani, Ferruccio, Actividades Musicales en la Argentina con un prólogo del Dr. Alejandro Lucadamo (Buenos Aires, 1927)Google Scholar.

55 Ferruccio Cattelani, 6 studi per il meccanismo del violino (Milan, 1902).

56 Personal information provided by Lucio Bruno Videla. This was the Symphony in E major performed at the Teatro Politeama on 2 September 1900.

57 Cattelani, Actividades Musicales, 7.

58 Christensen, Kenneth A., The Toscanini Mystique: The Genius Behind the Music (Bloomington, 2014), 189Google Scholar.

59 Cattelani, Actividades Musicales, 74.

60 Many anticlerical circles of the time were established in popular districts dominated by Italian immigrants, such as Boedo and La Boca.

61 In this context, see, for example, the nationalist operas sponsored by those on the right wing, and published in Paris with joint Spanish and French texts, such as La Angelical Manuelita by Eduardo García Mantilla, premiered at the Colón in 1917.

62 The pampas offered a favourite theme for Argentinian culture of the period; see my Ópera, barcos y banderas. El melodrama y la migración en Argentina (1880–1920) (Madrid, 2015).

63 I have drawn up this provisional table using the following sources: Cattelani, Ferruccio, Actividades Musicales en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1927)Google Scholar (C in the table); Ferro, Enzo Valenti, 100 años de música en Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, 1992)Google Scholar (VF); Gesualdo, Vicente, Historia de la música en Argentina, 1536–1900 (Buenos Aires, 1961)Google Scholar; and various editions of La Gaceta Musical (LGM). In certain cases, Gesualdo only implies that concerts were local debuts, by using the expression ‘inusitados’ (unusual); see Gesualdo, Historia, 570.

64 It is unclear if this was played by Cattelani’s quartet or the Buenos Aires Quartet.