A Grand Finale

To me, Rossini’s last opera fits the role well, particularly if we assume that he knew his career was coming to a close. This is 3½ hours long, and holds a broad story of human oppression, a fight for the homeland, and the origins of Switzerland.  All this on top of the obligatory forbidden romance, the threatened but cohesive nuclear family, and the massive armies in battle.

Rossini and his two librettists, writing in French, deliver Schiller’s story and legend, with multiple leads, two major dance scenes (are there other Rossini ballets?), and many solo arias, duets and trios. It feels as if Rossini packaged everything together and offered us his grand opus finale.

We don’t know what he was thinking when he closed up the rest of his blank score sheets to live in retirement for 37 years, but William Tell is not typical for Rossini.  And it doesn’t seem to be the culmination of increasingly long and complex works (like the huge career windup of Wagner’s Parcifal, for instance).  Rossini’s second to last opera, Comte Ory, is much more standard in its length and humor and staging.  But it would make sentimental sense to think that he was taking one last long bow for the opera world, and gave William Tell everything he had.

Hazy History, with an Apple

The main story is about a region in 13th century Switzerland that was occupied and cruelly subjugated by the Austrians, personified by their tyrannical leader, Gesler.  Outnumbered and outgunned, the Swiss gain their independence forever, under the determined leadership of their hero, William.  (He rallies the feeble troops using the force of his personality, and his famous skills as a boatman and crossbow marksman.)

William’s trusted friend Melchtal nearly brings it all down by falling in love with the Austrian Mathilde, who is supposed to be on the opposite sided of the conflict.  But William saves everything, partly due to the steadfast support of his wife and their young mezzo-soprano son, Jemmy.

Right, little Jemmy with the apple on his head.  There is a lot of discussion about how much of this legend is literally true, and even controversy about the existence of the hero William.  Not important to me; this is an excellent and complicated tale, and the Swiss take it seriously, so fine.

Should We Wait for La Scala’s Version?

New York produced Tell in 2016, and it looks like the one before that was in 1931.  Dublin staged a nice one in 2022, and now we have Vienna and Milan both in early 2024.  I’m sure there are others in recent years, but this simply isn’t a frequently-performed opera.

Aside from the extreme length – four long acts with 3 intermissions -- the staging requirements may be a reason why this one is a bit hard to find.  Almost every scene is outdoors, and they need to convey the presence of the Alps, romantic encounters in the forest, and the gathering of armies for battle.  How are they going to show the two scenes with a boat in a lake?  And how is William going to shoot an apple off of Jemmy’s head with his crossbow, right on stage?

I suspect another reason for the rarity of these productions is that the music here just isn’t like everything else Rossini wrote.  After the hugely popular overture, there is no more fun; this is a war story bordering on tragedy, and the key arias frankly sound more like Verdi than typical Rossini.  (But there was no overlap: Verdi got rolling more than 10 years after Rossini bowed out.)

If you pull up the 2024 La Scala video (LaScalaTV.com) you will see the clock ticking toward 5½ hours, but don’t worry; they run the camera through all three intermissions, plus the intro and the final bows and credits. In addition, this production includes the long dance scenes, which I think were absent in the 2022 version by the Irish National Opera. 

During the intermissions, they interview the principles, sometimes with English translations, so that might be worth playing through.  Here, the conductor Mariotti explains how unusual it is to produce this, the full-length French version of William Tell.  Knowing that there were several revisions (including a popular Italian version), we can guess why this one has the ballets and other productions do not.

Pointless Mystery, Terror Ballet

The first mystery, right there in Act 1, is why La Scala has all the Swiss people holding iPads.  These are pretty large tablets, and they are powered up and luminous, and almost everyone in town has one.  Sometimes the people seem to be reading from them, sometimes the kids point at them while they play, and later the soldiers hold them out, as if in defense against the brutish Austrians.  The e-tablets are onstage through to the end.

In any case, we can assume the electronic tablets were not written in by Rossini, and Dublin did well without personal electronics, so why are they here? I couldn’t figure it out. 

Second mystery: the fight scenes, oddly benign.  The Austrians move in, point machine guns at the poor Swiss, and knock some of them to the floor.  The Swiss try to fight back, but because the soldiers don’t do anything except threaten them, nobody wins the fight. They all just gradually move off the stage, leaving us to look at Gesler, the big bad guy.  (I found this same puzzlement in the Irish production: big threats, no action.  Did either side have a plan, or not?)

But what really throws me, and makes us question Chiara Muti’s staging (yes, his daughter!) is the completely overplayed brutality of the Austrians. 

The gist of the first act is that the bad guys crash a triple wedding to show their strength, thus breaking the will and determination of the peaceful Swiss. 

In the Irish show, the Austrians pack the Swiss into a side corner, and prevent them from moving or speaking.  Good enough for me.

In this new version, the conquerors show up in exaggerated armor, tear the three grooms from their brides and drug them (the grooms sit and stare at their iPads), and throw the women around repeatedly, and then – we gather – rape them and smile a lot.

Incredibly, this scene of terror is presented as a ballet, and it goes on for 15 minutes, and this is so much abusive mayhem that it is uncomfortable to watch.  The French audiences wanted that?  Has ballet ever been used for terror, before or since?

During the horror, the translation refers to the Austrians as “Germans”.  Are we supposed to think about the Nazis here?   Because I don’t want to.

But get ready, because this demented stuff happens again down in Acts 2 and 3.  Blood and roped captives and children in pain.  Good lord.

So that’s an hour and a half, and not much has happened, except we understand the Swiss are subdued, Gesler (who looks like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars) is a maniac, and his troops are all immoral animals.  

Tell you what: wait until OperaVision brings the Irish version back. They couldn’t think of a good way to shoot the apple, and they carried around cardboard boats, not iPads.  But it was fully watchable. 

Or let’s try the Rossini Festival (with Flórez!) from 2013, or what about Vienna in 2024?  But don’t pay money for this confusing, troubling show from Milan.

Verdi Saw This When He Was 16

If you listen closely you can enjoy some characteristic Rossinian music, with the very active melodies flowing out from his reliable woodwinds.  But this is harder to appreciate than usual, what with the troubling plot and gruesome stage action.

Let’s move on to the middle of Act 2, where the Austrian beauty, Mathilde, has her forest rendezvous with Arnold Melchtal.  Because this is so great, it almost makes up for the horrors of those other scenes.

Her love song for Arnold truly sounds like something Verdi would write, not Rossini, and it is fantastic.

Gloomy forest, sad and wild wilderness, I prefer you to the splendors of palaces

It is on the hills, and the dwelling place of the storm, that my heart can be restored to peace.

It's absolutely Verdian; it is a stupendous, soprano aria.  (This is so good, we have to roll it back and listen to her again.)

Matilde has her solo, and then Arnold shows up in the forest and sings to her, and then they alternate, and then they merge into a fabulous duet. This takes more than 20 minutes in all – delightful.

My opinion: This is really excellent work, but it doesn’t remind me of Rossini. It sounds much more like the style of Verdi.

Rossini gives himself away with the staccato woodwinds and the militant horns that move in from time to time. But the long phrases and the romantic poetry, the extended emotional exposition, does not sound like anything else this guy wrote. 

Maybe little Giuseppe was in the audience, taking notes.

Just Watch the Background Here

In Acts 3 and 4, there are a couple of nice pieces of music, but because of the horrific content, you might want to skip part of this show entirely, or focus strictly on the amazing set work, because it is remarkable.

• The first boat scene is surprisingly good; he’s up in the rafters, and that looks just as unsteady as a tippy rowboat.  (They bail out completely on the second boat scene.)

• They bring back Arnold’s dead father, Christ-like on a tall cross with a crown of thorns.  (Too much, maybe.)

• They manage to show a very credible splitting of the apple, far more acceptable than what the Irish did.

• You have the forest, you have a chapel, you have a multi-story castle, and then back to the forest, then a cathedral -- all without bringing the curtain down. 

• At the end, a full-width roof supported by fat pillars rises to the sky, the pillars extending higher and higher out of the floor. How?

La Scala goes over the top with the stagework, and I love it.  It’s hard to imagine a more stupendous production of these scenes.

And That Was the End

It all wraps up well: William shoots Darth Sidious with his crossbow, little Jemmy is returned to the family, Mathilde ends up with her guy Arnold, and Switzerland raises its own flag. No matter how you stage it, it’s a huge, high-stakes hero story with a happy ending.

But here’s an idea for a different write-up.  What were each of the major composers thinking about when they worked out their last opera?  Mozart with Magic Flute, Bellini with I Puritani, Verdi with Falstaff, Wagner with Parcifal, Puccini with Turandot, and (if anyone, not me, cares) Strauss with Capriccio.  (We don’t speak about Donizetti’s final Dom Sébastien; the syphilis was taking its toll, so just hush.)

The question is a tough one for Rossini and his William Tell; the historians don’t seem to have solid answers about why Rossini hung it up at that point.  All I can tell is that he was in a different mood with Tell, than he was a year earlier with Le Comte Ory; this is obvious. In 12 months he goes from funny drunken robbers dressed as nuns, to forceful oppression of the Swiss rebels.

So La Scala doesn’t help me solve the mystery of Rossini’s retirement, but it does make me want to lay out 3½ hours again, and check out some of the other recordings of this opera. I see a few online, and I hope they are all someone’s abridged version – the awful dance scenes aren’t doing it for me, Mr. Mariotti.  I still want to see how someone else handles those fabulous songs in Act 2.  And of course, what they do about the apple.