I’ll Just Sing the Old Songs Now

Oh, well. That was fun while it lasted.

Starting with Joseph Haydn’s work in the 1770’s, we were treated to a string of fantastic operas by Mozart, von Weber, Verdi and the bel canto guys, Offenbach, and others – you pick one, I’ll probably like it. Sweet rolling arias, magical quartets and even sextets, and choruses you can take home and sing to yourself. Golden age, from my perspective.

And then in 1876 the Italian Amilcare Ponchielli staged La Gioconda, and an era was ended. His student, Puccini, didn’t give us anything significant until another 12 years had passed, but when he did, it was obvious that he’d latched onto the new style of opera, and he ran with it, and so did the rest of the world. Except me.

Most of Gioconda’s solo arias, and even the occasional duets, sound to me as if they are not going anywhere; this is music that just rambles from one note or phrase to another, and I cannot track with it. These singers are only saying what they have to say, and it is mostly high-level poetry with emotional sounds, but a passage like this does not make a song, to my ears. (Puccini and his billions of followers thought this was wonderful, even after he dropped the poetry like a hot rock. But I myself was left hanging back in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s.)

While they sing their meandering pitches and volumes, the orchestra is not there with them. The orchestra is following behind, providing background music that supports – from a distance – what the singers are doing. So you get the feeling that the singers are now running the whole show, and somebody drove in later with an orchestra on a truck, and offered some complimentary sounds to kind of help out.

This accompaniment is more closely attached to the singing than what we hear decades later from Strauss; it is, I think, a true precursor of Puccini, as stated. (I don’t know what Strauss was doing with his orchestra. Maybe he was experimenting with different ways to vibrate the air, while the opera played out alone, up there on the stage.)

Listening to Ponchielli, the disconnect is troubling – like a missed opportunity – but the exception is the fully scored and satisfying choruses, and there are several. These are big pieces served up by the enormous male and female ensembles, and here, the orchestra steps in and delivers, and this is fun to hear: solid tunefulness.

Further, Ponchielli mixes in a couple of striking ballet pieces, and of course, the orchestra is right there working for the dancers – great stuff, even if you don’t understand ballet, as I don’t.

So there ends a hundred years of innovative vocal music powered by a coordinated orchestra, most of it reliably powerful, or tragic, or funny, or hopeful, and most of it is memorable and accessible.

Only bits of that came through when Ponchielli scripted out La Gioconda, so now I know pretty closely when the turning point happened; the time when operatic music moved toward the modern era, leaving me behind for good.

I note that a common classification of operatic eras does not match my observation. They call out the Classical Period (1750–1830) and then the Romantic Period (1830-1900), but I myself haven’t yet perceived a big change around 1830. For me, the music died in 1876.

One-Hit Wonder

Ponchielli had been writing operas since the 1850’s, and La Gioconda is his eighth of ten.

So, what would we find, musically, if we pulled up I Promessi Sposi (1856) or La Savoiarda (1861)? Perhaps something that fits with the middle years of Verdi, or harkens back to the final offerings of Donizetti? I will try to find out. I’m thinking about early efforts like Wagner’s hilarious Das Liebesverbot, and Puccini’s acceptable Le Villi.

He had some big-time failures, along with some moderate successes. Among these, Gioconda is the only one most of us have ever heard of. Just one remaining in inventory in the 21st century, and that’s kind of surprising, because if Ponchielli could pull this touching yet imposing work together, then he had the talent for less grandiose operas, and I am wondering why the others didn’t succeed.

The Unhappy Woman

Some of us have heard of La Gioconda (“the joyful woman”) because it contains the fabulous “Dance of the Hours”, a tune ruined forever by Allan Sherman and his little comedy song about Camp Granada. Others have seen one of the occasional stagings of Gioconda, drawing envy. (You can find a recording on Medici.tv.)

And this one is rare. For 2025, we have Budapest and Caligari (Italy), and a few concert performances and concert extracts. No surprise: Gioconda looks pretty difficult and expensive to put on the stage.

And that’s unfortunate, in my view, because this is one huge, spectacular, fully-fledged opera, at the scale of William Tell, and Les Troyens, and the Wagner epics. “Italian Grand Opera”, they say, and it held my attention better than any of those others.

Here are some knockout features of this extravaganza, and they will keep you glued to your seat, even if you don’t go for most of the music:

1. A compelling plot, more complicated than most. Predictably, a love triangle, but in this case, the poor lady is both “odd woman out” and the one who saves everyone else’s lives and romances. No reward for beautiful Gioconda here on earth, we know that much. All she gets is a creep called Barnaba, and she views him as less desirable than a sharp knife to the guts. The opera’s title drips with cynicism.

2. A contralto role. Actually, this opera has an important role for three female ranges and three male ranges, and that is unusual. If you’re wondering about the German Fach system, read up and then watch this. No contra-tenors, thankfully.

3. A lovely dance presentation in Act 1, and a truly superlative ballet interlude in Act 3. To me, a 10-minute ballet is a gross interruption in the flow of the story, but then, the way Arena di Verona did it in 2015, the ballet alone is worth the ticket. The “Dance of the Hours” is so well developed and the music so sublime, that you will end up hating Allan Sherman permanently.

4. Four acts, four completely different sets. Verona knows how to use their triple-wide outdoor stage with enormous effect, so we understand easily that we are seeing the canals of Venice (gondolas, bridges and all), and a two-masted ship at the wharf (which is set ablaze in front of our eyes), along with the standard palaces and courtyards.

Another aspect which is helpful to me, though not a “knockout feature”, is Ponchielli’s tendency to separate clearly one aria or duet from its neighbors. As I got into Act 2, I noticed that there is a clear sequence of individual pieces, punctuated by deserved applause: a baritone solo, a combined male/female chorus, a tenor solo, a tenor-mezzo duet, a mezzo solo, and so on.

Without much recitativo secco to tie them all together, the various pieces stand out clearly, and for me, this makes them easier for me to identify and appreciate. Granted, the segments might seem, to some, as unnecessary breaks in the story line, but I accepted them easily. Further, I suspect it is more challenging to write an opera this way, so once again, I salute Ponchielli and his librettist.

His main librettist was Arrigo Boito, who bizarrely scrambled the letters and signed his name “Tobia Gorrio”. Why, Arrigo? “Barto Riogio.” “Ioti Groobar.” “Big Oratorio.”  That’s a different story, I guess.