The journey of Mercadante’s Il proscritto from discovery to legacy!
Learn more about this masterwork and the process of bringing it back to life.
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Research & Discover
Synopsis
THE STORY
The events take place in a castle near Edinburgh and in its surroundings. The epoch is in the first half of the seventeenth century, during the rule of Oliver Cromwell. Some time before the action begins Malvina Douglas was married to Giorgio Argyll (a supporter of the Royalist cause); but he was caught up in a shipwreck and is believed dead. Malvina’s mother, Anna, and Anna’s son by an earlier marriage, Guglielmo Ruthven (a supporter of Cromwell), then urge her to marry Arturo Murray (also a Cromwellian). The action opens on the day of Malvina’s and Arturo’s planned wedding.
ACT ONE
Richly illuminated gardens: to one side magnificent steps leading to the castle, in front of which is a platform with orchestra; a lake in the background, strewn with boats from which alight ladies, knights and relations of the Murray family; the Ruthven family proceed from the castle, giving them a festive welcome: Osvaldo is with the guards who surround the scene.
The gathered assembly celebrates the marriage about to take place between Malvina and Arturo (Chorus: ‘D’amistà le soave catene’). Guglielmo, however, warns Osvaldo to remain alert, as royalist rebels have been seen in the vicinity.
Arturo arrives and declares his love for Malvina (Cavatina: ‘Son del tuo volto immagine’).
A large room in Malvina’s apartments; on the right a door that leads into internal rooms; on the other side an entrance that leads to a corridor.
The scene opens with a discussion between Clara, a former servant of Giorgio, now Malvina’s maid, and Odoardo, Malvina’s younger brother, who has hastened back from London on news of her impeding wedding. Malvina enters and describes to Odoardo the shipwreck in which Giorgio and their royalist father perished, and then tells of her mother’s and Guglielmo’s plans to marry her to the Cromwellian Arturo. Her first thought had been to poison herself, but meetings with Arturo gradually blossomed into mutual love. She is, though, torn by guilt at the thought of her former husband. Odoardo tries to comfort her (Duet: ‘Il mar fremente’). Women appear and lead Malvina to her wedding.
Giorgio arrives, ushered in by Osvaldo. Giorgio asks to see Clara but refuses to give his name. Osvaldo departs, his suspicions aroused. Giorgio rejoices in anticipation of seeing his beloved Malvina (Romanza: ‘L’aura ch’io spiro’), feeling sure that, after his travails, none of the other guests will recognise him. Malvina arrives and immediately screams in horror, overcome at meeting Giorgio face to face. Hearing others approach and fearing for his safety, she ushers him into her rooms.
The assembled company arrives, Osvaldo whispering to Guglielmo that the castle’s unknown guest must now be in Malvina’s rooms. Malvina attempts to deny her evident agitation but half-faints into the arms of the surrounding women. Everyone onstage explores their conflicting emotions – of despair (Malvina), perplexity (Odoardo, Arturo), suspicion (Guglielmo, Osvaldo) or concern (Anna, Clara) (Concertato: ‘Omai l’arcan terribile’).
Guglielmo and Osvaldo order armed men to search Malvina’s rooms, but Odoardo places himself before the door. Swords are drawn, but suddenly Giorgio appears. He does not reveal his identity, but says that they can know the truth about him from the widow of Giorgio Argyll. Guglielmo orders the stranger taken prisoner, Giorgio resists but eventually gives his sword to Odoardo, inviting his opponents to kill him and place his head before the bridal couple. The act ends in an ensemble of general confusion (‘Il cor ne avvampa’).
ACT TWO
A room in the apartments assigned to Arturo, who is sitting at a table on which lies a paper with writing on it.
Osvaldo tells Arturo that Guglielmo has gone to Edinburgh to marshal troops who will escort the stranger there. After Osvaldo leaves, Arturo reads a letter he has received from Malvina, asking him to help the stranger, who she says is a friend of her deceased husband. Giorgio is shown in and, when they are alone, Arturo offers to release him; but Giorgio angrily refuses, also revealing that he was once loved by Malvina, a confession that tips the two men into open conflict (Duet: ‘Ah! perché rovente acciaro’). Arturo promises Giorgio a sword: at break of day they will fight a duel to the death.
Rugged cliffs, some of which lean out over the sea. It is night, the moon is covered with clouds. From a cave whose entrance is hidden by thickets men emerge, wrapped up in cloaks: they are the exiles, Giorgio’s companions.
The exiles evoke the dark night and their wandering state (Chorus: ‘Ha steso la notte’). They hear bagpipes, first in the distance, then coming closer. Odoardo appears, saying he can help them rescue Giorgio. As proof of his good faith he narrates to them how Giorgio saved his and Malvina’s father, rescuing him from Cromwellian executioners by pleading for his life (Aria: ‘Ah! del giorno sanguinoso’). The exiles agree to Odoardo’s rescue plan and depart for the castle.
Inside a tower: a balcony at the back, a door to the side.
Giorgio is asleep, dreaming uneasily of Malvina, as Odoardo and Malvina appear. Odoardo throws down a rope ladder from the balcony, warns Malvina that dawn is approaching, and departs. Giorgio awakes and Malvina tells him that his companions are waiting for him. In a passionate duet (‘Stretto agli avanzi fragile’) Giorgio tells her of his desperate times after the shipwreck and of his pain at now seeing her; but when she says she will escape with him, he begs her to remain with her new partner rather than join him in a vagabond life. She refuses and moves to the balcony, but they are interrupted by Arturo, Guglielmo and his followers. Arturo accuses his fiancée of treachery but Giorgio defends her honour, saying that she was escaping with her husband. This revelation of his identity precipitates another grand ensemble (Concertato: ‘Come sol raggio l’onore di costei’). An officer then gives Arturo a letter from Cromwell, ceding to him the interrogation of the prisoner and, if he is found guilty, his execution. Malvina, Odoardo and the chorus beg Arturo to show mercy; but both he and Giorgio continue implacably opposed.
ACT THREE
A large room next to the tower, with a door at the back. Giorgio is seated, Malvina is near the threshold as if waiting with the greatest impatience; two sentries patrol beyond the door.
Giorgio and Malvina are waiting for Arturo’s decision. Giorgio is eager for death, but Malvina makes him swear that he will elect to live if she demonstrates to him that all his fears about her future with Arturo are baseless. Odoardo enters, reporting that Arturo has sent for Giorgio. Giorgio exits with Odoardo.
Malvina, left alone, decides that she must kill herself, but is interrupted by Arturo, who announces that she is free to leave with Giorgio (Duet: ‘Vanne dunque… a te concedo’). Malvina rejects the offer, finally admitting that – in spite of Giorgio’s return – she continues to love Arturo. The latter is overjoyed, but Malvina tells him solemnly that they can only be united in heaven.
Malvina departs, and almost immediately Giorgio rushes on, having overheard the final part of their conversation. He again challenges Arturo, who tries to placate him but is finally goaded into accepting a duel to the death. They are about to rush off when Malvina staggers on, deathly pale. She says she has taken poison and entreats them both to fulfil their vows to her. As she falls to the ground, Giorgio rushes to her and signals Arturo to depart. His final words are: ‘Spenta o viva è mia tuttor!’ (Dead or alive, she is mine forever!).
Note from Carlo Rizzi
“When I found the autograph manuscript of Il proscritto in the Naples Conservatory archives, I was immediately struck by its musical qualities and originality. We at Opera Rara look through and discuss a huge amount of unknown music, and often we decide that “forgotten” operas have some frailty that makes them unlikely to communicate with today’s audiences. But it became immediately clear to me that Il proscritto was something different: here was a work that could have a powerful effect. What makes the opera so compelling for me is its melodic inventiveness, its fascinating orchestral textures and its unique vocal sound world. The impressive choral opening, with its off-stage band, and the two big concertati at the end of Acts 1 and 2, are among the grandest inspirations in Italian opera of this period; but there are also lyrical, intimate arias such as those of Arturo and Giorgio in Act 1; a marvellous series of confrontational duets; and intensely dramatic scenes such as the poignant death of Malvina at the end of the entire drama. There is so much musical variety for audiences to enjoy. I feel sure that, in this first ever performance for nearly 200 years, Mercadante’s opera will offer the public a fascinating and dramatically involving evening of music.”
Mercadante and Il proscritto: from bel canto to reform by Roger Parker
Saverio Mercadante (1795-1870), certainly the most successful nineteenth-century Italian opera composer outside the “big four” (Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi), had a chequered career. Born illegitimate (his noble father and domestic servant mother might themselves have peopled an operatic plot), he managed to gain an education at the Naples conservatory and around 1820 transitioned to an operatic career, inevitably as a follower of Rossini. His greatest earlier success was with the comic opera Elisa e Claudio, whose triumph at Milan’s La Scala in 1821 led to many new commissions. International achievement seemed assured when the Neapolitan impresario Domenico Barbaja engaged him to feature in a season at Vienna’s Kärtnerthortheater in 1824. But that went badly (the Rossini-obsessed Viennese were as yet unwilling to contemplate an Italian successor) and by the time Mercadante returned to Naples a rival composer, Giovanni Pacini, had established himself there. And so the rollercoaster went on. Successful stints in the Iberian peninsula again raised his stakes, and in 1833 he was appointed maestro di cappella at Novara Cathedral, a position that, while it clearly required the production of religious music, also allowed him periodic leave to continue his operatic career. A further watershed moment occurred in 1836: Rossini, by then retired and eminence grise of the Théâtre Italien in Paris, arranged for him to give a premiere in that most prestigious of theatres (as had Bellini and Donizetti in the previous year). But the impact of the opera he produced, I briganti, was only modest.
The major consequence of Mercadante’s Parisian trip came from his attendance at one of the most influential premieres of the entire nineteenth century, that of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. In the wake of that experience, Mercadante returned home determined to reform Italian opera along the lines of Meyerbeer’s spectacular brand of grand opéra. His very next work, Il giuramento (first performed to great acclaim at La Scala Milan in 1837), was meant to be the spearhead, and in a letter to his Neapolitan friend Francesco Florimo, he laid out an ambitious manifesto:
With Il giuramento [I have] varied the forms, abolished trivial cabalettas, exiled the crescendos; concision, less repetition, some novelty in the cadences; due regard paid to the dramatic side; the orchestration richer, without swamping the voices; long solos in the ensemble numbers avoided, as they obliged the other parts to stands coldly by, to the detriment of the dramatic action; not much bass drum and cymbals, and very little banda [stage band].
The proclaimed distance from the Donizettian/Bellinian norm of the 1830s was clear and provocative, and in the three years following Il giuramento, Mercadante produced a series of further “reform” operas: Elena da Feltre, Il bravo and La vestale. All of them were well-received, and some commentators in the wider European musical community saw them as marking a new seriousness of purpose in a genre that was otherwise dangerously popular. But, even at the time, critics in Italy often thought there was a price to pay for the “reform” agenda: they claimed that the operas’ exploration of harmonic and orchestral complexity sometimes came at the expense of melodic fluency and even dramatic cohesion. Although on occasions much-praised, the “reform” operas did not take decisive root, the old, singer-centred way of doing things remaining stubbornly in place. In 1840, at another watershed, Mercadante was appointed director of the Naples Conservatory (a position that Donizetti had long lobbied for) and began to devote increasing time and energy to the composition of instrumental music. He toyed with the idea of giving up operatic composition entirely, but eventually returned to composing for the stage, although at a much slower rate.
Il proscritto, first performed at Naples’ Teatro San Carlo on 4 January 1842, was the first opera to emerge in this new phase of Mercadante’s life. It augured well, not least because of a fine libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based (as was usual at the time) on a recent French mélodrame. At the centre of the drama is a classic love triangle, set in the “exotic” location of Scotland during the rule of Oliver Cromwell. The tortured heroine Malvina is torn between two political opponents: Giorgio, her first husband and a passionate royalist, is believed dead at sea; Arturo, now her betrothed, is – of course – a convinced Cromwellian. The fourth principal is a so-called “trouser role”, Malvina’s younger brother Odoardo. The cast chosen to impersonate these warring characters was indeed stellar. Malvina was sung by mezzo soprano Antonietta Ranieri Marini, who had in the preceding years been the female lead in Verdi’s first two operas. Giorgio was baritonal tenor Giovanni Basadonna, who some years earlier had created the title role in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux; Arturo was another tenor, Gaetano Fraschini, then near the start of an important career that would see him develop into an imposing tenore di forza (he created the title role in Verdi’s Stiffelio and was the first Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera). The fourth principal was Eloisa Buccini, a prima donna contralto who plied her trade in many distinguished opera houses during this period.
Alas, and in spite of such persuasive interpreters, all reviewers agreed that the première didn’t go well: the first act was applauded, but the other two were received with indifference. One long review in the journal Teatri, arti e letteratura is unequivocal about the reason: it was that the music “imitates the Germans, who care about instruments rather than voices”. Warming to the polemic, the critic continued: “the theatre is not a cathedral in which one preaches the rules of counterpoint”. At subsequent performances, however, there were distinct signs of a public turn-around, perhaps as the opera’s unusual musical idioms became more familiar. Certainly the Naples correspondent of the Revue et gazette musicale reported public acclaim gradually emerging and boldly stated that “everything suggests a long and glorious future for this work”. He could not have been further from the mark. Perhaps in part because of the highly unusual vocal line-up (two tenors, a mezzo and a contralto) the opera was never revived, either in Naples or elsewhere.
***
What are we to make of Il proscritto as it emerges after nearly 200 years of complete obscurity? One point needs stressing immediately. The fact that the opera was not revived is not at all unusual and should not be granted undue significance: this fate, after all, befell the majority of operas in early nineteenth-century Italy. In a cultural economy in which (a little like today’s cinema) the greatest interest was always attached to new creations, works especially written for the occasion, many operas had to be cast aside to make room for the constant influx of the new. On the other hand, it is clear from the reviews and reports of the public response that Mercadante’s idiom was unusual and considered somewhat “difficult”. Worst of all, perhaps, at a time when the great Neapolitan school of opera was in evident decline, the composer was accused in this opera of betraying his homeland and seeking to emulate “northern” influences. Why this accusation was particularly attached to Il proscritto remains a mystery, but – whatever the case – we are dealing with distinctly local concerns; the Neapolitan judgements of 1842 are hardly likely to impinge much on us, 200 years later, with the history of all that has occurred operatically since then now ringing in our ears. We must try to think afresh.
In this context, what is immediately striking and paradoxical is that, in some senses at least, Mercadante’s new opera rowed back on his “reform” agenda of the previous decade. For example, the solo numbers (notably for Arturo and Giorgio in the first act) are full of lyric inspiration, and while they do indeed have some ear-catching harmonic and orchestral diversions, these serve to support rather than undermine the melodic outpouring. What’s more, and contrary to Mercadante’s manifesto quoted earlier, the opera has its fair share of exuberant cabalettas, starts with a prominent racket from the banda and is (when the mood demands it) liberal with the bass drum and cymbals. However, it is also true that one of the great glories of the score is its sequence of duets, and here the “reform” agenda is more visible. A partial exception is the Act 1 duet between Malvina and Odoardo, whose slow movement (an Andante sostenuto) is a wonderful addition to the tradition of two-women duets that grace the Italian nineteenth century. But in Acts 2 and 3 (that is, in the acts that froze the audience into disapproval on first night) there are three scenes of angry confrontation, between Malvina and each of her two lovers, and between the lovers themselves. And here, although one can sometimes trace shards of the conventional series of “movements” that most duets shared in the period, Mercadante’s typical procedure was to explore a more dynamic conception of musical drama, in which fluidity of emotional response and declamatory outbursts are brought to the fore.
Perhaps even more radical, though, are the opera’s three finales. These act-ending moments were those in which Italian composers of the period displayed their “science”: their ability to blend voices and themes skilfully, and to undertake long, complex harmonic unfolding. Typically, though, this “science” would be tempered by the delights of solo song, one of the principal characters initiating the whole adventure with a winning melody (the Duca di Mantova’s “Bella figlia dell’amore” from Act 3 of Verdi’s Rigoletto is a classic case). In the first two finales of Il proscritto, Mercadante stuck to his “reform” by banning any lengthy indulgence to an individual singer: each finale begins with the choral ensemble, the first with fragmented, shocked utterances, the second with a dark, brooding unison theme; and each rises to great heights of communal emotion in climaxes as grand as any created by his more famous Italian contemporaries. And then the final act’s ending is utterly different: much like Verdi’s Nabucco, which was premiered in Milan only a couple of months later, the opera ends with the fractured voice of a dying woman, in this case punctuated only by the distraught cries and melodramatic excesses of her two lovers: it was a bold decision after all the choral magnificence, but one that surely makes dramatic sense in the larger context.
There is so much more to say about this remarkable opera. About how its unusual blend of lead singers, its two warring tenors and its concentration on the lower reaches of the female voice, is matched by a consistent preference for “dark” tonalities (as far as D♭ minor in the second finale). About the sheer daring of some of the harmonic excursions: listen out for deft harmonic touches in many orchestral passages, in one case even a lingering on the Tristan chord; or the extraordinarily atmospheric orchestral opening of the Malvina-Giorgio duet in Act 2, which illustrates Giorgio’s troubled sleep. About the continual inventiveness of Mercadante’s “bridge” passages between lyrical sections, which never lapse into routine and often present a level of musical originality entirely unusual in such circumstances. Above all, perhaps, about the manner in which the music responds to the unusual psychological complexity of the principal characters. Malvina, Giorgio and Arturo all begin the opera in what we might call classic melodramatic situations; but in each case their beliefs are called into question, causing strange reversals and creating situations in which they show a psychological depth which is rare indeed in this operatic period. Mercadante responds magnificently to the challenge of this complexity, in particular through his ability to sustain prolonged moments of free-form declamation in which the emotional attitudes of the characters are in flux. The result is an opera which, although it disappeared from view almost immediately after it was created, can nevertheless communicate powerfully to a contemporary audience, perhaps even causing a rethink of the historical landscape that produced so much of our staple operatic repertoire.
Record & Perform
Iván Ayón-Rivas sings ‘Son del tuo volto immagine’ from Mercadante’s Il proscritto
Irene Roberts and Elizabeth DeShong discover their Act 1 duet from Mercadante’s Il proscritto
Opera Insider: Bringing Il proscritto back to life
Carlo Talks – Il proscritto
Il proscritto Recording Launch Event
Concert Programme
28 June 2022
Mercadante’s Il proscritto performance
at Barbican Hall