#Melba Ruffo

[opera-ghosts]

  Ambroise Thomas’s 1868 operatic telling of Hamlet premiered on March 9, 1868 at the Paris Opera.   Carrée and Barbier (who also wrote the libretto for Gounod’s Faust) have been greatly blamed for the distortions of Shakespeare in their text for Hamlet but, apart from the ending, they managed to condense a very long play into a reasonable opera libretto.The coronation of Gertrude (mezzo-soprano), queen and consort of Claudius, King of Denmark (bass), is taking place at the castle of Elsinore. Prince Hamlet (baritone) expresses his sadness at the death of his father and the hasty remarriage of his mother. He sings a love duet, ‘Doute de la lumière’, with Ophélie [Ophelia] (soprano). Together with her father Polonius (bass), Ophelia bids farewell to her brother Laerte [Laertes] (tenor), who is leaving Denmark. On the ramparts Hamlet sees the Ghost of his father (bass), who relates how he was murdered by his brother Claudius. Hamlet swears to avenge his father.In Act 2 Ophelia complains that Hamlet no longer loves her. She asks the queen’s permission to enter a convent, but Gertrude, already worried by her son’s strange behaviour, refuses the request. Claudius tries in vain to calm his wife’s fears. Hamlet proposes to divert the court with a play put on by a troupe of strolling actors. After a chorus and a drinking song, the play, about the murder of King Gonzago as he lay sleeping, is mimed to Hamlet’s commentary. Claudius pales, revealing his guilt, and Hamlet is overcome with rage; the act ends with a magnificent septet.Act 3 starts with Hamlet’s monologue, based on ‘To be or not to be’. Hamlet hides behind a tapestry as Claudius attempts unsuccessfully to pray. He is joined by Polonius and their conversation proves Hamlet’s suspicions to be correct. Shattered to discover that Polonius knew of the plot, Hamlet violently repulses Ophelia and her love for him. The act ends with a long duet (based largely on Shakespeare’s Closet Scene) between Gertrude and Hamlet, who finally draws a dagger with which to kill his mother, but is stopped by the Ghost.A ballet-divertissement (obligatory at the Opéra) ‘La fête du printemps’ begins Act 4, followed by Ophelia’s mad scene (‘A vos jeux … Partagez-vous mes fleurs … Et maintenant écoutez ma chanson’) and her subsequent suicide by drowning.In Act 5, after a curtailed version of the gravediggers’ scene, events depart radically from Shakespeare. On learning of the death of Ophelia, Hamlet sings ‘Comme une pâle fleur éclose au souffle de la tombe’. A funeral march heralds the arrival of Ophelia’s coffin, followed by a chorus of young girls. Prompted by a final visit from the Ghost, Hamlet kills Claudius and is acclaimed king: ‘Vive le roi Hamlet’.In Paris, at least, a Hamlet with a comparatively happy ending did not worry either the critics or the public, who flocked to hear the great baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure in the title role. The hundredth performance at the Opéra, scheduled for 28 November 1873 at the Salle Le Peletier, did not take place until four months later at the Salle Ventadour, as the Salle Le Peletier burnt down on the morning of that date. Meanwhile, on 19 June 1869, Hamlet was produced with considerable success at Covent Garden, London, where Christine Nilsson repeated the triumph she had scored as Ophelia in the Paris première. Other famous singers of Ophelia included Calvé, Albani, Melba and Garden.The mad scene, much on the lines laid down by Donizetti in Lucia di Lammermoor, is in several sections. Ophelia asks the courtiers if she can join in their games; imagining that she is married to Hamlet, she fears that he will be faithless. In a waltz movement she distributes flowers before singing the ballad ‘Pâle et blonde, dort sous l’eau profonde’, about the Wilis, spirits who lead faithless lovers to a watery grave. (Its melody is hummed by an invisible chorus after Ophelia’s death.)Although it was undoubtedly the mad scene that ensured the opera’s popularity during the 19th century, it is mainly as a superb vehicle for a baritone that Hamlet has survived since then. Faure was succeeded in the title role by singers such as Maurel, Lassalle, Renaud, Ruffo, Battistini and Singher. More recently Sherrill Milnes and Thomas Allen have sung in noteworthy revivals. Hamlet’s music is much more dramatic than that of the other characters; everything he sings is consistent with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, apart from the drinking song; even that can be seen, like his madness, as part of the camouflage put on to deceive Claudius.Another well-drawn character is Gertrude. Her second-act arioso, ‘Dans son regard plus sombre’, was considered by several contemporary critics as the finest solo number in the score, while her third-act duet with Hamlet is the opera’s dramatic and musical centre, as the Closet Scene is the heart of Shakespeare’s play. Though Laertes, Claudius, Polonius and the others are more conventional in their musical characterization, Thomas’ skill in atmospheric scene-painting is frequently at its most vivid in this work. The Ghost’s appearance on the ramparts, accompanied by eerie writing for the brass, is most effective, as also is the melodrama of the mimed play about Gonzago. The ballet music for ‘La fête du printemps’ is less interesting and overlong, but the scene of Ophelia’s funeral procession is very impressive.

[opera-ghosts]

Selma Kurz (October 15, 1874 – May 10, 1933) was an Austrian operatic soprano known for her brilliant coloratura technique. She was first heard in Vienna at a student concert of Ress pupils on March 22, 1895.  She got good notices and offers poured from many opera houses, especially the ones in provincial Germany, which were always looking for new talent.  She made her début in the title role of Ambroise Thomas's opera Mignon at the Hamburg Stadttheater, on May 12, 1895.  She appeared there and at Frankfurt am Main for the next four seasons, singing diverse roles including Eudoxie in Halévy's La Juive, Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser and Bizet's Carmen. In the year-long Mozart festival performances organized to celebrate the composer's 150th birthday, Kurz sang Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte in 1905 and Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail a year later. Also in 1906, on the occasion of a much-acclaimed Caruso gala, she sang Gilda in Rigoletto, with Titta Ruffo in the title role. This was Ruffo's only appearance in Vienna. Although she had great triumphs in coloratura roles, Kurz did not neglect her lyric repertory. Indeed, of the 992 performances she would give at the Vienna Hofoper (later Staatsoper), more than 100 would be devoted to Mimì in Puccini's La bohème.  She also created that composer's Madama Butterfly for Vienna (1907) as well as Saffi in Johann Strauss's Der Zigeunerbaron (1910). She sang Tatiana (Eugene Onegin) and Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier) in 1911 and, in one of the many high points of her Viennese career, created Zerbinetta in the world première of the second version of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, on October 4, 1916. She sang Zerbinetta 36 times in Vienna. In Vienna she sang every imaginable role, from Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and Wagner's Elsa (in Lohengrin) and Sieglinde (in Die Walküre) to Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, Massenet's Manon, Frau Fluth in Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor and Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus. Next to Mimì in La bohème, her most frequently heard roles were Gilda, Violetta and the Trovatore Leonora. Her last performance at the great theatre in the Ringstraße, where so many of her triumphs had been acclaimed by two generations of opera lovers from all over Europe and the world, took place on February 12, 1927. This appearance, as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, closed one of the most glorious operatic careers in the twentieth century. Form the outset Selma Kurz was widely required all over Europe and she appeared successfully in both opera and concert at the Grand Opéra in Paris, the Princely Opéra in Monte Carlo, Rome, Salzburg, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam, Ostend, Bucharest and Cairo. In London she was first heard in May 1904 in Rigoletto, with Enrico Caruso and Maurice Renaud. She then sang her famous page, Oscar, in Un ballo in maschera, with Giannina Russ, Caruso, Antonio Scotti and Marcel Journet. The following year she again sang A Masked Ball with Caruso and Mario Sammarco as well as her other favourite page role, Urbain in Les Huguenots,  opposite Emmy Destinn, Caruso, Scotti, Journet and Clarence Whitehill. She also appeared in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette opposite Charles Dalmorès' Romeo.  She also repeated, in these two seasons of coloratura successes, her Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, with Karel Burian in the title role. In 1907 she was heard again at Covent Garden, this time in Lucia di Lammermoor, with Alessandro Bonci as Edgardo. She repeated Rigoletto (with Bonci and Sammarco) and Un ballo in maschera (with Amedeo Bassi) and added Catalani's Loreley, obviously a Bassi vehicle. She was then not heard at the Royal Opera until 1924, when she sang La bohème and La traviata. Her London appearances were extremely successful, notwithstanding the enmity of the all-powerful Nellie Melba, as entrenched at Covent Garden as Kurz was in Vienna.

[opera-ghosts]

Marcel Journet (25 July 1868 – 7 September 1933), was a French, bass, operatic singer. He enjoyed a prominent career in England, France and Italy, and appeared at the foremost American opera houses in New York City and Chicago. Journet was born in the town of Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, and studied at the Paris Conservatory. He made his operatic debut at Montpellier in 1891. Journet went on to sing a wide range of roles in operas by Richard Wagner and major French and Italian composers during a distinguished, 40-year career. The Royal Opera House at London's Covent Garden, Milan's La Scala, the Paris Opera and the New York Metropolitan Opera, were some of the famous venues graced by Journet's presence during the first quarter of the 20th century. Arturo Toscanini was just one of the celebrated conductors under whose baton he performed. His on-stage colleagues included such renowned singers as Nellie Melba, Luisa Tetrazzini, Enrico Caruso, Giovanni Martinelli, Titta Ruffo, Giuseppe De Luca and Feodor Chaliapin. Journet died in Vittel, of kidney failure, aged 66. He possessed a beautiful, cultured voice and a fine technique—hitting the absolute peak of his powers as a singer and an actor during the 1915-1925 period, during which time he became La Scala's principal bass. Numerous recordings testify to Journet's outstanding vocal attributes and the high standard of his interpretative powers. Many of these recordings have been re-issued on various CDs, most notably on the Marston and Preiser labels.