I was fortunate enough to find my favorite version of "The Siciliano" from Macagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" on YouTube (below). Maybe because the first version I ever heard featured Franco Corelli, I've never been able to love any other the same way. I think it was in a set of opera records (Italian) my father bought me for Christmas. I was at the age to fall in love with this opera (a gritty "verismo" piece which my snobbier friends nevertheless call "smarmy.") And the very first time I heard this song---I was fifteen, so it was 35 years ago and yet I remember it plainly---I was hooked.
I had an image of a young man---face in shadow----playing the guitar under massive trees and a violet sky. Fifteen, of course, is a sort of sexual turning point for a young girl. Perhaps part of the trouble I had settling down in my younger days is that what I really wanted was someone who would break my heart by sitting under the trees singing about another woman. Perhaps it's unfortunate that the most impassioned love song I'd ever heard was being sung by a man who had abandoned his pregnant girlfriend to start up a liaison with a married ex.
Strangely, no one else reacted to the song the same way. "Nice," said my father politely. "Mmmph," said my mom (who didn't care for opera). That was seventies; none of my friends got it; they were mystified why I liked listening to opera at all when there was so much great rock music out there (there was, and I loved it too).
I remain surprised that this hasn't been "arranged" for today's youngsters. Whenever anyone talks about a "haunting" melody, I flash back on the Siciliano.
The words are as follows:
O Lola ch'ai di latti la cammisa
Si bianca e russa comu la cirassa
Quannu t'affacci fai la vucca a risa
Biato cui ti da lu primmu vasu
Ntra la porta tua lu sangue e sparso
E nun memporta si ce muoro accisu
E s'iddu muoro e vaju m'paradisu
Si nun ce trovu attia mancu ce trasu (2t)
The Sicilian dialect sounds more beautiful than it is. He loves her right down to her white camisole, finds her fair as a flower, believes that anyone who kisses her red, beguiling mouth is the most favored of fortune, etc., etc. Same old, same old, up to a point.
But: the song also foreshadows the opera's grim ending, when Turiddu is killed by Lola's husband, thanks to the intervention of the desperate woman Turiddu cassts off. In the song, he says (more or less) that he doesn't care if his blood is shed on her doorstep; if he's killed he'll go to Paradise----though without her there, he'll come back. Does he ever come back? That we never know. We don't even know whether Lola survives her husband's wrath. In my private version, she doesn't.
But for me, Corelli IS Turiddu. This is the definitive voice of the Siciliano for me. Yours may be different.
One thing that makes opera different---or that used to make it different---from television or films is that people in young middle age have the best voices. It's true. A great singer doesn't come into his or her prime until the thirties, or so I was always told.
For this reason, one often used to (not so much now) see the heroines of opera played by people relatively stricken in age. To me, this has always given it a gritty realism more like life than TV or films. The actors look like real people, not matinee idols. Their maturity simply heightens the effect of their desperation.
In "Rustic Chivalry," the heroine, Santuzza, is Turiddu's cast-off---and pregnant--- lover. Not only is her heart broken, but she is shunned by the whole village. This lends credibility to her desperation; she's not JUST a 19th Century obsessed stalker, but also someone who has been permanently injured by the man she still desperately (and also hopelessly loves). Who has not known a Santuzza----attractive, warm-hearted, and with very poor impulse control?
Turiddu has seduced her as revenge on his former fiance, Lola, now married to Alfio. Lola---who is definitely that girl---isn't having that, and lures him away from Santuzza into an adulterous affair. At the beginning of the opera, on one very grim Easter Sunday, Santuzza is pathetically trying to stay with her rather than follow Lola. .
The argument between Santuzza (mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier) and Turiddu (Jose Cura) in the YouTube video linked below ("Ah! lo vedi!) is amazingly, perfectly played. For me, it's the definitive version.
"Get away from me! Leave me alone!" he more or less shouts. "Turiddu, listen! Listen!" she wails. "No!" he says. "No!" But poor desperate Santuzza repeatedly hurls herself at Turiddu and is just as repeatedly rebuffed. After quite a lot of this, she somehow manages to "insinuate" herself into his arms, and he seems more than half-thawed by her pathetic pleading for him to stay with her and love only "your Santuzza." But just as she thinks she's won and starts smiling shakily (and slightly creepily), he remembers Lola and pushes her away. She throws herself at him again, and a lot of musical "shouting" ensues (loud singing in unison, with her begging for his love and him refusing, till finally he pushes her away roughly. You can see from her face when she gets up again that he's crossed the line.
Here's a completely different version of that same scene from the early Sixties by Giulietta Simionato and Angelo Lo Forese. This is a very different interaction; Santuzza is diffident and clearly slightly afraid of Turiddu; he is coldly and repeatedly turns his back to her, so that she is clinging on to his ice-cold shoulder. He is having none of it.
But his "No! No!" when she is begging him to stay with her---complete with that indifferent flick of the hand Italians do so well---is worth a mountain of gold. He stomps away from her and sits down at a little table. She gets down on her knees to beg him and he rolls his eyes. (You've also got to love her stiletto heels under the peasant's dress.) It's good right to her unconvincing collapse at the end, which looks more as if she is having some sort of seizure. And the thing about this Turiddu is that he is basically a prick.
My own first recording of "Cavalleria Rusticana" featured Simionetta and Corelli. Based on this scrap of a rehearsal someone salvaged, the version above reflects pretty much how Corelli played Turiddu. (In my imagination, I'm afraid that Turiddu will always have Corelli's face, but I love to imagine him reflecting the divided impulses of Cura.)
I wouldn't shed a tear at his death, as anyone would for Cura's more complex Turiddu. Furthermore, it's hard to see why this hard-ass would---realizing he's probably going to his death as he heads off for his duel---beg his mother to take care of Santuzza. I think Cura brings more nuance to the part than any Turiddu I've ever seen.
I love it that these singers/actors are able to bring so many dimensions to the same scene. Does Turiddu still have some lingering affection for Santuzza or is he now completely indifferent? The modern version makes him a much more complicated man. Clearly he does feel something; it's just not enough to overcome his own obsession (with Lola).
And of course it all ends badly. First, Santuzza spills the beans to Lucia, Turiddu's beloved "Mama" and finally to Alfio (which she immediately and futilely regrets). But there is one scene that redeems her from being more than a 19th Century psycho hose beast. It's Easter morning and Santuzza, banned from entering the church, stands outside and joins in the joyful Easter Hymn, "Inneggiamo, Il Signor non e morte."
I don't
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