Anita Cerquetti, an Introduction and a Rememberance

It would have been easy to label this post 'The Forgotten Prima Donna, but the fact is that soprano Anita Cerquetti has long been cherished by opera enthusiasts and record collectors. That says something for Cerquetti's art, since few of us heard her live. The lady retired in 1961 at the age of thirty and never sang in public again.




Anita Cerquetti died last week at her home in Rome, at the age of 83. She had surfaced in a few documentary films in recent years, a cheerful, hefty old lady who spoke intelligently and passionately, not about her career but about music, text, and singing.

Far from being a curiosity, Cerquetti had a fine career for the decade on the 1950s. Her debut at age 20, to her final appearances in 1961 had her singing all over Italy, South America and Europe. In the States she appeared with the Chicago Opera, and I believe there were concerts in New York and Philadelphia. This was a brief career, Euro-based. Of commercial recordings in the age of Tebaldi and Callas, there are only two: La Gioconda with Del Monaco, Simionato and Bastianni, and an aria recital.



The record companies weren't interested. The public was. Cerquetti excelled in the big Verdi girls: Aida, the Leonoras, Abigaille and Elena in I vespri Siciliani. Bellini's Norma was a specialty. Cerquetti it was who replaced Callas when that singer abandoned a run of Normas in Rome in 1958, to international fury  (de Gaulle and the President of Italy were in the audience. It was thought Callas 'walked out', thus insulting the heads of state, when in fact she was ill and simply could not sing)

Cerquetti was a big woman with an expressive face and a large, gleaming voice. There as a certain huskiness to the tone which helped give the voice originality. The tone was even thought the scale. Norma's rage was no problem for Cerquetti, nor was Norma's ecstasy. This was a huge talent with a very brief career. Why?

Cerquetti spent her life explaining her early retirement, and fighting off rumors from cancer to insanity. By 1961 she was tired. In an interview with Lanfranco Rasponi, she stated:

"When my father became hopelessly ill, I cancelled ll my performances so I could be with him, as I loved him with all my heart. After the shock of his death, my beloved  maestro Mario Rossini, to whom I owed everything, passed away. I kept postponing the signing of contracts, then I found myself pregnant. After the birth of my daughter Gioia, once more I could not make up my mind to resume. She needed love, attention and care, and who was going to give it to her with a mother always on the go?"

So she stopped. Raised her daughter and enjoyed her home and family. Interest in her singing never wavered. Cerquetti was always the source of rumor and musical journalists often rang the doorbell. Rasponi, in the aforementioned interview in the elate 1970s tell us, "At first Cerquetti was not eager to see me, but eventually received me in the most cordial manner."

Thanks to recorded broadcasts, we have complete performances of Aida, Norma, Ernani, I vespri Siciliani and Guglielmo Tell.  Cerquetti's singing is all over youtube. Her biggest hit is the aria O re dei cieli from Spontini's Agnese di Hohenstaufen. Get going.

One Verdi Opera a day: Stiffelio, Rigoletto, Il trovatore

Now it gets intense. The challenge is to say something new about Rigoletto and Trovatore. The hits just keep on coming.

But  Stiffelio is not well known. There's a story to be told:
 
If you write an opera called Stiffelio,  you'd better be sure it's a good opera.
Giuseppe Verdi wrote a three act tragedy based on the play Stiffelius back in 1850. The story is  the tale of a Protestant pastor who forgives his wife her adultery. There is a very effective closing scene, as Stiffelio preaches the gospel of the woman taken in adultery and proclaims that Christ pardoned her. "Perdonate! Perdonate!" he cries as his wife makes her way toward him down the church aisle.  Handled right,  this is a simple and moving scene.




 Stiffelio has been called Verdi's forgotten opera. Until very recently it was  never performed. The 1850 premiere was ruined by the Austrian censors active in Trieste. They demanded so many changes (a minister with a cheating wife, indeed!) that Verdi lost interest and moved on.

Verdi's estate at Sant'Agata, near Milan

I'm here to tell you however, that Stiffelio is not forgotten,  silly title and all. This writer sang in the chorus of the American staged premiere. Sarah Caldwell directed and conducted Stiffelio with her Opera Co. of Boston in 1976. Sarah was one of those people who could make a cheese souffle out of peanut butter, graham crackers and a turnip. She never paid the bills. Her theater was a movie house in a bad part of Boston. Porno on Tuesday, Opera on Wednesday. The dress rooms were the stinking back alley. Never mind.

Such was Sarah's creativity that she attracted big name singers. Stiffelio was to star the Canadian tenor Jon Vickers. He was still at the height of his powers in 1976. Soprano Anna Moffo would sing Lina. In 1976 she remained the most beautiful and glamorous figure in opera. She had lost her voice at least five years earlier, due to over work and poor training. Stiffelio was meant to be her big comeback.

Jon Vickers never came to Boston. He sent word from his estate in the Bahamas that having studied the score he was convinced the part was too difficult.  No Vickers, no opera. NOBODY sang this opera in 1976. Moffo arrived and everybody else began  to rehearse without the title character. She was on every talk show and this production had enormous pre-publicity.




Long story short. Glamorous and diva like in public, Anna Moffo was warm and kind and professional in rehearsal. It was clear to all of us she was still in vocal difficulty. Remember there was no leading man. Eventually, Sarah forced the role on a young tenor and he valiantly went on. He did himself nor the audience any favors, poor guy. Miss Moffo sang one performance. Her voice quit completely mid way of performance 2. A chorister sang from the wings. Moffo went home to Fifth Avenue and RCA, and Stiffelio limped on the understudies.

With all of that, it was clear this was a wonderful opera. It's hard to cast. Still unfamiliar, it demands accomplished singers-and they are expensive and you can't bounce their cheeks as Sarah did to the rest of us. Nevertheless it was a good-looking, well costumed production. The media who came for Moffo stayed for Verdi. Bad luck with casting also plagued Verdi himself but in 1976 it was okay for a pastor to have  cheating wife onstage.

The Opera Co. of Boston closed its doors in 1991. Stiffelio arrived at the Metropolitan in 1993. I remember being annoyed that all the press coverage ignored the 1976 Boston production. Phooey. We got there first.



Rigoletto  Venice 1851
Francesco Maria Piave, after Hugo's Le roi s'amuse

Tito Gobbi, Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano. La Scala/Tullio Serafin
 
The censorship that crippled the inital run of Stiffelio wreaked havoc with Rigoletto. Victor Hugo was anathema to conservatives. Regicide on stage? Impossible. If the King (Duke of Mantua) has to live he'd better have terrific tunes:




Rigoletto endears itself to the public for the tenor's tunes. The scenes with Gilda and her father are gorgeous and heartbreaking. And the jester himself is a glorious acting role. And what a sing!



Verdi knew what he had. He didn't let a note of this score out of his sight until after the first perforamnce. He eknew every organ grinder in Venice would take up thersr melodies. Where ios there such a balance of tunes and true drama. The beautiful father-daughter dynamic is simple. That it is memorable here is due to Verdi's passion.




Il trovatore Rome 1853 

Salvatore Cammarano and Leone Emmanuelle Bardare after El Trobabor by Guiterrez

Jussi Bjorling, Zinka Milanov, Fedora Barbieri, Leonard Warren/Renato Cellini
 



 Get in there and fight! Get in there and sing! The Marx brothers made fun of Il trovatore and do many others. It is a stand up and sing (or get in there and fight) opera. You need superlative voices. If the singers aren't well matched the balance can annihilate those lest....sonorous. In Trovatore,  the forward momentum Verdi first demonstrated in Nabucco is perfected. This is a swift moving show. One of the gems for me is the offstage nun's chorus in Act 2 sc. 2. The set up toward the battle between Manrico and di Luna and Leonora's rescue ("Donna, mi segui!") is thrilling.
Azucena becomes the pivotal character. A woman who murdered a child and becomes a craezd, pathetic figure has the most dramatic music.




The monks chanting the Miserere, Manrico sings from his prison and Leonora, hearing all this...di te scordarmi!

 

I heard Maria Callas in Boston, February 27, 1974

I was seventeen when I heard Maria Callas in Boston's Symphony Hall, on February 27, 1974. She appeared on the American 'leg' of a world concert tour she undertook with tenor Giuseppe DiStefano and pianist Robert Sutherland.



Callas had not sung in public for eight years when the tour began, in Germany, in the fall of 1973. She remained a potent figure in opera. Her on again off again liaison with Aristotle Onassis, begun in 1959, was fodder to the press before and after that gentleman's marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy.

Early reports of the European concerts weren't promising. Callas and DiStefano had each been in
glorious voice twenty years earlier. They sang and recorded together in Chicago, Milan, Rome, Mexico City and throughout Europe. Di Stefano was a very handsome man with an open, thrilling voice-and no discipline. Callas was highly disciplined with a voice that began to slip away early. Nerves? Weight loss? Burn out? I don't think we'll ever know. By 1965 she was acting up a storm and singing carefully (and rarely), DiStefano continued to appear, but the tone and ring of his voice were gone.

What did people expect in 1973? It must have been daunting, having to compete only with your younger self. By the time the duo came to the States, there had been months of rows, cancellations, aborted performances and cheers, cheers, cheers. The first Carnegie Hall concert was cancelled at the last minute. The crowd had jammed into the Carnegie lobby and spilled out onto 57th St.

Then came Boston.

Tickets went on sale just after Christmas. I cut school that day and took the Mass. Ave bus to Symphony Hall to be there when the box office opened at 9 a.m. I got there around 8.30. There were no mobs of eager ticket buyers. People stood outside for four days to get standing room for Callas' last Tosca at the Met in 1965. Not any more. I was probably tenth in line and I was on my way before 10 a.m. (Did I go back to school? Are you kidding?)

The top ticket price was $25.00. You won't believe it today but in 1974 that was unheard of. The best seats in Lincoln Center were $17.50. NOBODY paid $25.00 for a Boston Symphony concert, great as they were. (If you got $5 for cutting a neighbor's lawn, you were rich.)

The weeks went by with my tickets burring into my bureau. (I got a week's detention for cutting school and spent it reading George Jellinek's biography of Callas. Maria never became my friend but many years later George Jellinek did) The press said DiStefano was screaming or crooning like a pig and that Callas was terrified, unsure and had no voice.

On February 27 I got to Symphony Hall early. I told the lady next to me I had been sick to my stomach from nerves all week. She had too! And people around us were nodding in agreement! Callas was nervous and her audience was petrified in anticipation.

The announcement came that while Callas was in the Hall and would perform, DiStefano was not and would not. No one cared. ("Callas said later, 'he abandoned me in Kennedy country')

A Greek pianist called Vasso Devitzi would play some Chopin and Schumann between Maria's arias. Then the lights went down and she came out.



Okay its not Boston but you get the idea.
She began to speak to the audience, apologizing for being nervous. "I hope everything will go well." She said, 'Can you hear me?'

NO! People yelled back, but applause and shouts of encouragement went out again and again. She had a large, radiant smile that lit up her eyes. "You are a marvelous audience. Thank you."

She began with 'Suicidio' from La Gioconda, the opera of her first break in 1947. After the first four notes there was a buzz in the Hall. All of the color was there. The timbre was there. What had made Callas was still Callas. The aria had been transposed down but in this piece it didn't matter. She growled, she cried, she sang and the excitement was incredible.

She gave us 'Vissi d'arte'. Not so good. 'Voi lo sapete". Better. It became apparent that Callas had retained low notes and even some above the staff. But from I'd day the G above middle C to the D above-the fifth-there as no voice at all. The voice had separated and the middle was gone. Exactly where most of the repertoire lies.

She sang 'Tu che le vanita' from Don Carlo. She held the words on note cards. The print was so large you could read it from the cheap seats.

The final encore was O mio babbino caro



(Okay, that wasn't Boston either)

The applause longer than the concert. One man stood on his seat and yelled 'Noi t'amo!'
(We love you). She thought he had said 'Puritani' and she said, "Not this year. Next year."

I was seventeen. I didn't know you shouldn't bother the artists. I was with some friends from NEC, and we went to the stage door. It was mobbed. Cops were pushing people away. We went for pizza on Huntington Avenue, reasoning that eventually the crowds would leave and then Callas would come out.

The pizza was good. And we were right. Post-pizza, Gainsborough St. was quiet but the stage door was still open. We went up the stairs and there in front of us was Maria Callas. Thee were maids, poodles, agents and Vasso Devitizi. but there was Callas, reaching for her coat. We were kids and pushed our way in. "Hello!" she said. "Hello-we loved your concert and yadda yadda yadda". Up close she looked drained and pale, but we got a tired smile, autographs and 'God bless you.' What would you say to Maria callas? All of us were trying not to wet our pants.

And then we left and she left and went on to tour the States and Japan. DiStefano was here today not here tomorrow.

The last concert was in Sapporo in late 1974.

Then Onassis died. Callas withdrew.

Richard Dyer put it best in his respectful and honest review of the Boston concert. "She asked us for something she had never needed before. Our love."

She got it.

Maria Callas died in Paris in September 16, 1977.
I thought with gratitude of the great night she gave three years earlier.
I still think of it, gratefully and sadly, nearly forty years later.

PS. In fairness, here is Maria Callas in her prime: