“A ma courageuse amie
Mademoiselle Marie Saxe.
L’Auteur
RICHARD WAGNER.”
The slight modifications, or pointages, asked from Verdi, were not, I was assured by Madame Saxe, of a character to alter either the rôle or the opera, and she remarked (I quote her own words): “Why should Verdi have shown himself more unreasonable or less yielding than Meyerbeer or Wagner?” (plus intransigeant, plus intraitable que Meyerbeer ou Wagner?).
In tradition, however, there is the true or accepted tradition—so called because believed to have been sanctioned by the composer himself, or approved of by competent authorities and its use warranted by time—and the false. This latter is simply an accumulation of excrescences superimposed on the original by individual whim or personal fancy. These have been invented by singers desirous of bringing into relief certain special and peculiar gifts, or who have mistaken, perhaps forgotten, the original and authentic tradition. Thus their artistic heritage has become so altered and disfigured by successive additions, or “machicotage,” as to bear no resemblance to the original, this being buried under a heap of useless complications.
But it may be asked, are there no authoritatively correct printed editions of such classics with the accepted traditions and the proper mode of their performance expressed in modern musical notation? Yes: but they are incomplete, being for the most part confined to airs and other excerpts, instead of the complete works themselves. In this connection, I may cite the admirable edition of the “Gloires d’Italie” by the late erudite musician and authority, Gevaert, for so many years Director of the Conservatoire at Brussels. These editions are characterized by a scrupulous fidelity to the composers’ text as it was understood when written, as well as by great taste and musical sense of what is appropriate and fitting, in such ornaments as the editor has introduced, when these have been left to the discretion of the singer. The solo parts for the principal singers in Mozart’s operas of Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, edited and revised for performance by the well-known singing-master and excellent musician, Signor Randegger, are also admirable. But other editions exist which do not bear the same imprint of authority, or conscientious care in their revision, as do the versions just mentioned.
In the edition of the well-known air “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice” (che farò senza Euridice?) from Orphée (Gluck), revised by Madame Pauline Viardot-Garcia, no mention is made of two traditions which have been used and handed down by a number of the most famous singers of the rôle of Orphée. I give them here:
[[Listen]]
The change on the third repetition of the principal theme is quite in accordance with the license then accorded in such airs.
In a special version of the opera Armide (Gluck), revised and edited by the late Sir Charles Hallé, the first bars of the great air of Armide in the first scene of the fourth act, “Ah! si la liberté” (Ah! if my liberty must from me then be taken), are printed thus: