Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

I Puritani
The Puritans

Malibran: Bel Canto's Luminous Ghost

Daniel Vasquez

Prima donna. This word may fall ill on our modern ears. At once, we associate it with a difficult woman (or man, depending on the situation) likely to make impossible demands. In former days, however, prima donnas were celebrated, respected artists, capable of inspiring the greatest of musicians to arrive at their sublime masterpieces. Opera composers, in particular, tailored their music and vocal writing to various specific singers, providing music suited to both their range and musicality, as well as their style of declamation. In many cases, we are not only indebted to the composers who wrote the operas that enrich our existence today, but also to the great singers who inspired these compositions. Particularly with opera of the Ottocento [nineteenth century], it is the singers who influenced many of the operatic developments of the age. The genius of artists like Pasta, Malibran, Schroeder-Devrient, Viardot, and Grisi helped circumvent the exceedingly ornate style of baroque singing, inspiring an era of dramatic truth in composition. Of these, one singer managed to enslave the European musical world at one turn of her lily white hand, blaze the stage with astounding vocal exuberance, and command international interest in both her artistic and personal life like none other until the arrival of Maria Callas in the 1950s. She was the eternal, spoiled child of nature, Maria Malibran.

She was born in 1808, christened Maria Felicita Garcia. In the annals of musical history, that last name holds a certain magic. Her father, Manuel Garcia, was the patriarch of a singing dynasty the likes of which have not been seen since, and the tyrannical training methods he employed to mold Maria's unimpressive instrument into a glorious 3 octave range have become the subject of opera lore. When Maria was a mere child, her father took the entire family to America to perform opera in the New World, where Maria became the first European Prima Donna to be heard in New York. Here, shielded from the indifferent gaze of the European critics and backstage backstabbing, Maria was allowed to develop her stage deportment and perfect her musical execution, all under the strict supervision of her exacting father. In 1827, finding herself in a loveless marriage to Eugene Malibran, she set her eyes back on Europe, where her idol Giuditta Pasta was the reigning prima donna. Her return to the old country would find her joining the ranks of operatic royalty. Those in the know would even go as far as to crown her as the undisputed queen.

Paris was the first to fall, and it began innocently enough. Malibran had performed small concerts at various private salons, and the news spread like wildfire-whispers of this delectable young lady and a voice unlike any heard before, spanning from the contralto low D three octaves up to the soprano high D. The same rumors also spoke of her ability to embellish in a most lively fashion, and on the spot, any composition she was delivering. She was equally at home in all registers and loved to display the splendor of her lower notes, prompting the critics to address her as a contralto, and then confusing them by switching up to high soprano territory. At her first official recital, which took place at the Paris Conservatory in January of 1928, she would confirm the rumors. Ernest Legouve was in the audience, and, recalling Malibran's performance of Desdemona's Willow Song from Rossini's Otello, summed it up as follows: "Her every look seemed completely charged with melancholy, with reverie, with passion. She sang the 'willow song' from Otello. After a few bars, the audience was conquered; at the end of the first stanza, it was inebriated; at the end of the piece, it was insane." Once her startling extension and dramatic powers were discovered by the public at large, the response from theater managers was immediate, with all the major houses in Paris vying for her services. Rossini himself noted uniqueness, and the Theatre-Italiens was well aware that her range in voice and temperament allowed her to sing any repertoire, ranging from the buffo to the dramatic. Malibran had ascended to the pinnacle of her profession, and only the grave would keep her from delighting in this position.

And indeed she could sing everything with the most childlike abandon and the most committed stage deportment. In many ways, Malibran's stage life mirrored her personal life: frenetic, tireless, unpredictable. Yet in all respects, she was always passionately committed. We can only speculate the effects of the abusive treatment by her father on her adolescent development, and all the existing reports reveal a bizarre personality. In a letter to her idol Pasta, she writes charmingly enough by offering standard congratulatory verses, but towards the end of the letter she writes this: "In effect, it would be to melt you with kisses and this I can't do, because you are a hundred thousand leagues away, rascal, witch, gossip, infamous one, go! you are missing a tooth....Don't forget your always mad girl, Maria Garcia." Pasta, understandably, never replied to this correspondence, although she admired the young star and collaborated with her on numerous occasions. Her excess was not limited to paper and letter alone. A frail, attractive woman, Malibran embarked in the most tireless, lively displays of physical excess, which seemed at odds with her delicate constitution. She partied hard, sang hard, lived hard. She would awaken at 4 am, dress in men's attire and mount the wildest steed in the stable, galloping toward the nearby ocean. Then she'd return by noon and sing for friends and admirers until mid-afternoon. After this merry making, she would head for the theater and perform that evening's opera, following which she would be seen arriving at the most fashionable party, where she would sing until 2 am. The following day she would repeat this routine, to the astonishment of all around her.

The continent itself grew concerned for the young woman, and even amongst the printed criticism following various performances, we can read the writers advising her to treat herself to a more restful lifestyle. At times, she would pay the price for her frenetic behavior. In one famous instance, Malibran insisted on attending an afternoon soirée, regardless of the fact that she was due to sing the ardous role of Arsace that very evening. When she finally appeared at the theater to dress in her costume, she fainted from sheer exhaustion, much to the displeasure of the impresario. The gentleman, alarmed by Malibran's unresponsive demeanor, did what he thought necessary to revive her: He poured ammonia on her lips. Malibran quickly revived, and finding her lips badly blistered, took a pair of scissors and discarded the damaged flesh. She stepped onstage on cue, and as usual, created a sensation. This was typical of Malibran, and to today's readers, this behavior will not appear so foreign. In essence, this is the mantra of today's liberated woman. But unlike twentieth century feminists, Malibran did not need to burn her bra in order to break through gender barriers. Rather, it was her voice that she set aflame, burning the operatic stages of Europe at an unstoppable pace. By her mid-twenties, she conquered London, Milan and Venice, all of which joined Paris under the rule of the new Queen of Song.

It was then fitting that at the peak of her fame, Malibran would meet the other operatic rebel of the time: Vincenzo Bellini. Bellini was attending the London premiere of his new opera, La Sonnambula, at the Drury Lane Theater in London. Malibran was cast as the bucolic Amina in this rather butchered version of the score, heavily cut and translated into English. The very unfavorable circumstances did not bode well for Bellini, but Maria's triumph was predictably complete. An instant bond of admiration and friendship developed between the two most famous personalities in the European musical scene. Add to this the fact that both were young and terribly good looking, and the attraction must have been overwhelming. Bellini, infamously a ladies' man, could not hide his overwhelming admiration of her, and rumors took flight as to their supposed affair. Both denied any romantic scenario, but in a letter to his longtime friend Florimo, we get the idea that Bellini wished otherwise.

Whatever their actual relationship, Bellini promised Maria he would write an opera specifically for her talents, but as was his fashion, Bellini took a great time to produce the work. It wasn't until he was in mid-composition of his last opera, I Puritani, that he decided to adapt the score to Malibran's unique powers. Unfortunately, the reworked version of the opera, the fabled Naples Malibran version of I Puritani, was never staged. Due to a contractual technicality, Bellini was never able to deliver the entire opera to Naples, and the management of the theater nullified their commitment, much to the extreme displeasure of the prima donna. What does survive, however, is a short piece of music which flashes by in less than 2 minutes. The piece is Elvira's polacca, "Son vergine vezzosa," and enthusiasts of this opera will recognize it as rather ill-matching with the rest of the music. It has a lift, a spirit, and a quality quite foreign to the rest of the lachrymose proceedings. Following some research, we learn that Bellini was inspired to write the piece by Malibran herself. He tells us that he has written a piece "most curious and brilliant…just the sort of thing she likes," leaving us to daydream on the possibilities of this voice.

Bellini aside, most first-rate composers did not have the chance to compose music for Malibran. In fact, it is with slight exasperation that, to our modern standards, it was mostly third rate composers who managed to design their works around the young siren. Of the many oddities, one opera, Persiani's Inez de Castro, was quite famous at the time of its premiere. A casual examination of the score will reveal an impossible array of vocal fireworks. In particular, the score features an almost absurd requirement to entertain wide octave leaps. Other examples abound; a famous one can be found in a modern recording of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, where one finds Joan Sutherland embarking into a piece of music other than the usual cabaletta for Adina's "Prendi per me sei libero." Even though the recording notes do not linger into the origins of this piece, the inserted number is an homage to Malibran the composer; she wrote this piece herself to be inserted at this moment in the opera. I urge anyone curious as to the sort of singing this young lady was capable of to revisit this recording.

Like most young geniuses, Maria Malibran, the toast of Europe, died tragically. While she died at 28, too young for the great masters to write a complete major composition tailored to her talents, what is certain is that her spirit haunted those composers who experienced her art, and it subsequently influenced their work. The young Verdi saw Malibran once and proclaimed her a unique phenomenon to which no other singer of his time could compare. It is curious to note that most of Verdi's early works are considered quite challenging to leading ladies, requiring the singers to extend greatly into both the extreme top of the voice and feel equally at home in the lower regions of the instrument. We may even dare to fast forward into his latter masterpiece Don Carlos, where the role of Eboli has perpetually left both mezzos and sopranos wondering just how to approach these disparate vocal requirements. Was Verdi secretly inviting a new breed of singers to be young Malibrans? The mind reels!

And after all these years, it may appear that even death has not managed to quench the restless spirit of Malibran. Noted divas have been known to have her readily in mind (Maria Callas possessed a framed portrait of Malibran next to her bed, and the Bonynges made a hobby of collecting Malibran memorabilia). But there are many startling claims that our dear Maria may have very well transcended into the world of the supernatural. In an interview with Opera News, Renata Scotto revealed that while still an unknown singer, she was contacted by the spirit of Malibran during a seance. Illustrator Mel Odem once painted a portrait of an unknown woman whose throat was represented by a cello. He promptly showed the painting to his neighbor, writer Freeman Gunter, who quickly identified the woman in the portrait as Malibran. Gunter himself states that he has been visited by the spirit of Malibran on several occasions, particularly when he strolls various streets in New York which she frequented. These claims either spark further interest or inspire ridicule depending on your attitudes toward the supernatural. In either case, it is not hard to see that, in general, Malibran lives! Thirty minutes into the performance of Puritani, you too will get to experience a small glimpse of that restless, joyful spirit when Elvira embarks into her polacca. Somewhere within those interlocked trills and upward scales, there is a built-in laugh, expressing a joy so complete and unwavering that it hovers over the other singers and orchestra. And there she lives on, like the Cheshire cat's smile, never fading, never forgotten.

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