The Young Lovers in "Falstaff"

Author(s): Thomas Bauman

Source: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Summer, 1985), pp. 62-69
Published by: University of California Press
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19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
Our
inquiry
could be
complemented by others,
and could
certainly
benefit from other view-
points.
Nor are we
yet
in a
position
to consider basic
questions:
how far does Otello break with Ver-
di's earlier
operas
with
respect
to musico-dra-
matic
organization?
Are the extended "tonal
models" of his middle
period,
in works such as
II Trovatore and Un Ballo in
maschera,'5
dropped
because of the increased formal flex-
ibility?
Is the work
"Wagnerian"
in its
manipu-
lation of
tonality
and motive?
Furthermore,
we
are in no
position
to
impose
on Otello a univa-
lent
structure,
whether on the basis of its text
forms and allusions to traditional
practice,
or its
patterns
of motivic
recall,
or even its tonal
plan.
But such a situation need not deter the
open-
minded
analyst.
At a time when too
many
stud-
ies of
opera
are
one-dimensional,
Otello
may
prove
a fruitful
meeting ground
for those who
enjoy measuring
their theoretical
preconcep-
tions
against
a work whose formidable individ-
uality
and
compelling
dramatic
power
are
matched
only by
its
challenges
to
t.
conventional
analytical
method.
'5For a discussion of one such
"model,"
see the
present
au-
thors' "Motivic and Tonal Interaction in Verdi's Un ballo in
maschera," Journal of
the American
Musicological Society
36
(1983),
243-65.
The
Young
L overs in
Falstaff
THOMAS BAUMAN
From the earliest
conception
Boito formed of
Falstaff
to the
scholarship, analysis,
and criti-
cism of
today,
the
young
lovers Fenton and
Nannetta have
occupied
an
important place.
"Quel
loro amore mi
piace,"
Boito wrote to
Verdi in
1889,
"serve a
far pih fresca epiid
solida
tutta la commedia."
("Their
love
pleases me;
it
makes the whole
comedy
fresher and more
solid.")'
Edward T.
Cone,
in an influential
study
published
in
1954,
described them as one
pole
in
"a basic contrast. On the one hand is the world
of
fighting
and
clowning,
of
appetites
and revul-
sions,
of
plots
and
counter-plots.
....
But there is
another world: that of Fenton and
Nannetta,
which
they
create for themselves. Its
symbol
is
Nannetta's
fairyland,
and into its
unreality
the
lovers are
able,
for a little
while,
to
escape."2
The
image
of
playful,
innocent
young
souls
taking refuge
from
reality
in their own world
squares
with Boito's
"pih) fresca"
in the letter
cited
above,
but not with his
"pih)
solida." Nor
is there much that is solid in Fritz Noske's ex-
planation
of the lovers as emblems of the coex-
istence of
fantasy
and
reality
in the human con-
dition:
Fenton and Nannetta are in fact the true
fairies,
not
only
in the final act but in the entire drama. While
lightly expressing
the eternal
poetry
of
love, they
mix
with the other characters in the
everyday
world.
They
make it clear that the
opera
is neither a domes-
tic
comedy
nor a dramatized
fairy tale,
but a mirror of
the human universe with its
interchangeable
dreams
and realities. In this sense
Falstaff
is Verdi's most re-
alistic drama.3
What seems
troubling
both here and even in
Cone's
conception
is that the lovers are not
per-
ceived as
changing
or
growing
in the course of
the drama-that the last
portrait
of love Verdi
limned is a cheerful but static one
idealizing ju-
venile romance.
'Mario Medici, Marcello Conati, and Marisa Casati, Carteg-
gio Verdi-Boito (Parma, 1978), I, 150 (letter of 12 July 1889).
Boito adds: "Their love
ought
to enliven
everything
and al-
ways
in such a
way
that I would almost wish to
drop
the
duet of the two lovers."
2"The Old Man's Toys:
Verdi's L ast
Operas," Perspectives
USA 6
(1954),
132-33.
19th-Century
Music
IX/1 (Summer 1985).
@
by
the
Regents
of the
University
of California. 3The
Signifier
and the
Signified (The Hague, 1977), p.
270.
62
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Could the chronicler of the destruction of
Otello and Desdemona have
envisaged
such a
portrait?
Cone
points
out several
interesting
parallels
between Desdemona and
Nannetta,4
which
suggest
the latter as some sort of
extrapo-
lation of the former.
Certainly
there is a
strong
streak of
self-parody
in Verdi's
Falstaff, yet
the
parody
in this
instance,
if there at
all,
exists in
the most subtle and refined
spirit
of the
term,
complementing
and
ratifying
Verdi's
tragic
muse rather than
travestying
it. Others have ar-
gued
that because Fenton and Nannetta are sec-
ondary characters,
Verdi could look
upon
them
with
grandfatherly indulgence,5
an acute
enough
observation
psychologically.
But Fal-
staff
if
anything
intensifies the
spirit
of
integra-
tion, continuity,
and
unity
of interest which
suffuses Otello,
a
spirit
hostile to
any
neat
po-
larization of characters.
Finally,
in
defending
the common view of Fenton and Nannetta as
harmless
adjuncts many
writers
quote
Boito's
wish that their love music be
sprinkled
like
sugar
on a cake.6 But Boito's
hypoglycemic
sim-
ile seems to refer
only
to the interactions be-
tween Fenton and Nannetta themselves. It does
not
imply
that
they
remain the same
through-
out the
drama,
or that
they
do not interact im-
portantly
with the others.
Several of the
points just
raised set
great
store
by
Boito's dramatic
conception
of the
opera.
Cone, by contrast,
was loath to do so:
In
any opera,
we
may
find that the musical and the
verbal
messages
seem to reinforce or to contradict
each
other;
but whether the one or the
other,
we
must
always rely
on the music as our
guide
toward an
understanding
of the
composer's conception
of the
text. It is this
conception,
not the bare text
itself,
that
is authoritative in
defining
the ultimate
meaning
of
the work
(p. 130).
Although
the
composer's authority
in this re-
gard
has had its
ups
and downs in the
history
of
opera,
it would be
well-nigh
contumacious to
deny
the
pre-eminence
of Verdi's music in de-
termining
the dramatic
meaning
of
Falstaff.
Yet
no
composer
holds a
monopoly
on "the ulti-
mate
meaning
of the work." Cone
impugns
the
importance
of Boito in
asserting
of both Otello
and
Falstaff:
"I attribute to Verdi the
speci-
fically
dramatic content of the two works as un-
reservedly
as their musical treatment"
(p. 126).
This is
going
too far.
James
A.
Hepokoski
has
given
us a more balanced
picture
of the collabo-
ration, stressing
for
example
the
importance
of
the
original (or
at least
non-Shakespearean)
na-
ture of most of the lines
given
to the
young
lov-
ers,
and
stressing
as well "the
importance
of
purely literary
structures in
Falstaff.
"7
The
question
before
us, then,
is whether
Verdi and Boito created in Fenton and Nannetta
no more than static innocents in the
pursuit
of
romantic
escapism,
artless weavers of a con-
trasting subplot only loosely
bound to the dra-
ma's main business. That Fenton and Nannetta
are two of
opera's
most chaste
young
lovers is
beyond dispute.
Cone
very properly
links their
innocence with the
physical objects symboliz-
ing
their
separation
from the world-the trees
and
shrubbery
in the
garden
scene
(act I,
sc.
ii)
and the screen in Ford's bedroom
(II,
ii)--and
he
quotes
a well-known letter from Verdi to Ri-
cordi with
specific scenographic instructions,
including sketches,
for both of these sets in the
Milanese
premiere.
Hiding, however,
is an
activity
Fenton and
Nannetta share with other characters in the
drama. The
shrubbery
functions not
only
as a
prop
for their
games
but
also,
more
germanely,
as cover for the
merry wives,
who overhear the
plans
of Ford and his
league
and in
response
hatch a
counterplot
of their own.
Similarly,
the
screen in the finale of act II serves as a foil to a
more
important hiding place,
the
laundry
bas-
ket which harbors a
suffocating Falstaff,
in what
Verdi himself called "il punto culminante" of
the drama and "vera trovata
comica."8
Finally,
we may extend the notion of concealment to
the disguise
of Ford as Fontana, to Falstaff's
4Pp.
130-31. Their innocence
(of mind)
and the
parallel
scenes of the village children singing and dancing around
each are compelling links between the two characters.
SSee,
for
example,
the
description
of Verdi's "occhio in-
dulgente
del nonno"
by
Constantino
Fiocchi, paraphrased
in Franco
Abbiati, Giuseppe
Verdi
(Milan, 1959), IV,
495-
96.
6Expressed
in his letter of 12
July 1889, already quoted (see
fn. 1).
Boito seems also to have been
prepared
at this
early
stage
to do
away
with Fenton's aria in act III. In a letter of 7
July
1889 he writes to Verdi: "Of course Fenton's
song
was
stuck in to
give
the tenor a solo and this is bad. Shall we take
it out?"
Carteggio
Verdi-Boito
I,
145.
7Giuseppe
Verdi:
Falstaff (Cambridge, 1983), p.
31.
8L etter to Boito of 6
July
1889.
Carteggio
Verdi-Boito
I,
142.
63
THOMAS
BAUMAN
Falstaff
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19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
feigning
the ardent
lover,
to the wives'
pre-
tended
reciprocation,
and
eventually
to the
masquerade
in Windsor
Park,
where the entire
cast of
characters-including
Fenton and Nan-
netta-dons
disguises.
Hiding, therefore, may
be said to link the lov-
ers with their elders rather than
distinguishing
them. But is this a dramatic
link,
or are the lov-
ers in Windsor Park as divorced from
reality
as
the lovers at verbal
swordplay
in act I? L et us
look at their
progress,
musical and
dramatic,
through
the four scenes in which
they appear.
In
the two
garden
encounters in
I, ii,
Boito set their
exchanges
in
virtually
unbroken
quinari,
which
Verdi turned into
garlands
of two-bar
phrases.
These draw their
lyricism,
like
nearly
all the
love music in the
opera,
from the
swirling 3
me-
ter and the
sunny major
second
6-5
(F-E6),
here
the
opening
interval on
"labbro" (p.
97 in the or-
chestral
score).9
The two-bar
phrases spin
forth
until the
approach
of the others
prompts
a tem-
porary farewell, sung
to the celebrated
couplet
of endecasillabi from
Boccaccio,
"Bocca ba-
ciata non
perde
ventura, / Anzi
rinnova, come
fa
la luna. "
The
couplet-a
sort of
private
code
exqui-
sitely appropriate
to the secret world of these
two childlike lovers-seems to
suggest
that
their encounters will
proliferate
in a cheerful
and varied
cycle,
confirmed
by
the second brief
meeting
in which their dalliance takes on the
metaphor
of a duel. In each
instance,
Verdi in-
terprets
the Boccaccian
couplet
with
poetic
touches that set these lines
apart
from the rest
of the interlude
(see pp.
99 and 114 in the
score).
In the subdominant
minor,
the music darkens
momentarily
the F-E6 of the love music to F6-
Eb. The orchestra has fallen silent save for the
high
Ab
pedal
in the oboe. When Nannetta takes
over this
high
note on the first
syllable
of
"luna" the
strings
restore the
brighter
F-E6 and
we have heard a musical
analogue
of the lunar
phases
in Boccaccio's simile. The
promise
of re-
newal in the
poetic imagery
has become a musi-
cal one as well, and the high
AI
remains etched
clearly in our memories until it resonates once
more in Windsor Park.
These are the lovers as we
instinctively
recall
them when
thinking
about
Falstaff. By degrees,
however, they
soon become drawn into the in-
trigue swirling
around them. Nannetta stands
watch while her mother entertains Falstaff in
the scene in Ford's house
(II, ii),
and this time
her
escape
with Fenton is less
complete.
Their
quinari
can no
longer ignore
the turmoil around
them,
and their self-awareness
grows
as well:
NANNETTA: Vien
qua.
FENTON: Che chiasso!
NANNETTA: Quanti
schiamazzi!
Segui ii
mio
passo.
FENTON: Casa di pazzi!
NANNETTA: Qui ognun delira
Con vario error.
Son
pazzi
d'ira.
FENTON: E noi d'amor.
A little
later,
when
they
return to their wonted
"sfere
beate" and
"sogno
bello d'Imene," they
are
betrayed by
a kiss and must stand
suddenly
exposed
to the
glaring reality
of Ford's
unyield-
ing opposition
to their union.
In the first
part
of this
scene,
Verdi sets the
only
moment the lovers
sing
alone
(beginning
with the lines
given above)
not in
A6
but in
Eb,
a
key strongly
associated with Ford. The
6-5
ar-
ticulation is now cloaked in
rising figures
tinged
with subdued chromatic
poignancy
over
a dominant
pedal (ex. 1).
Again,
as in the first
act,
their
interchange
de-
scends to a restful
perfect
cadence
(on
"sia bene-
detto," p.
271 in the
score),
but without the ex-
pansive opacity
or
high register
of the
Boccaccian conclusions.
To this
point,
all the lovers' musical ex-
changes
have come in
very stable, clearly
ex-
pressed
flat
keys,
and all have been in
triple
me-
ter. L ater in the
scene, however,
in the
grand
ensemble
just prior
to their
discovery,
the intru-
sive
quarter
rests in Fenton and Nannetta's
soaring
line seem to
adjust
a
melody
born to
3
to
the common time enforced
by
the others
(pp.
290-94),
a feature also found in the
original
ver-
sion of this passage.'0
9References
throughout
are to the
original
Ricordi
publica-
tion of the full score
(Milan, 1893),
which has
recently
been
issued in a
photo-reprint (New
York: Dover
Publications,
1980).
'0Hans Gal has
reprinted
the earlier version of this music
(whose
excision
by
Verdi he
regrets)
from the earliest edi-
tion of the Italian
piano-vocal
score. "A Deleted
Episode
in
Verdi's
Falstaff,"
Music Review 2
(1941), 266-72.
See also
Julian Budden,
The
Operas of Verdi, vol. III
(New York,
1981), p.
500.
64
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Allegro
NANNETTA
^
5
S I ' I "' -'
Vien
qua. Quan- ti schia- maz- zi
FENTON
Che chias- so!
Im cIPE
Example
1
In the first scene of act
III,
Nannetta and Fen-
ton have no
separate episode together. Instead,
they
interact with Alice in the
plotting
of the
masquerade, particularly Nannetta,
who in the
words of Vincent
Godefroy, "strays
from
being
'sweet Ann
Page'
to
assuming junior
member-
ship
of this female coven."" This is Boito's do-
ing,
since it was he who decided that Nannetta
and not Mistress
Quickly
should take the
part
of "la Fata
Regina
delle Fate." When Alice de-
scribes to Nannetta her costume for this
role,
her
daughter merges
with her
motivically
for
the first time in
lightly echoing
Alice's cadence
(pp. 338-39).
The
complicity
of the
young
lovers
in the
plot against
Falstaff also involves them in
Alice's
complementary
scheme to
bring
about
their own
happiness. Reality
has invaded their
relationship.
The
changes
which this
process
of "socializa-
tion" works on Fenton and Nannetta become
palpable
in the Windsor Park scene.
Now,
ex-
cept
for one
fleeting
moment at the end of Fen-
ton's
sonnet,
each
sings
alone. If this culminat-
ing
scene
represents,
as Cone would have
it,
their
"escape
into a world of their own mak-
ing," why
this
departure
from their
previous
es-
capes ai
2? To be
sure,
we are invited to think
back to the lovers' first moments
together
in the
opera by
the evocative orchestral
introduction,
which reasserts
Ab major
and weaves in
frag-
ments of the
garden
interludes toward the end.
And the sonnet's first
quatrain begins
with fa-
miliar features from the earlier love music-a
broad dominant
pedal
which cadences
firmly
in
the tonic at the
end, harking
back to the tonal
stability
of the lovers'
exchanges
in earlier
scenes,
with which it also shares a
prominent
6-5 (pp. 354-55).12
Yet in other
respects
this
passage
sounds dif-
ferent from the earlier music of Fenton and
Nannetta.
Allegretto
and
Allegro
have slack-
ened to Andante assai
sostenuto,
and
triple
me-
ter has
yielded
to common
time, creating
a
more measured and reflective
atmosphere.
The
second
quatrain brings
further
changes:
the
harp
enters for the first time in the
opera,
and
Verdi's
phrasing
of the
perfectly wrought
ende-
casillabi soon
expands
into broader arches as
the tonic
yields
to new areas
(notably
E
major,
B
major,
and D1
minor), providing
a tonal sense of
mission absent from the earlier love music.
Pitch
organization
is
similarly
more
complex
than before. The common tone
G# (Ab),
to
which Fenton's line ascends
again
and
again,
sets in relief
key
words in the text
("labbro,"
"lontana,"
and
"baccai")
and sets
up
Nannet-
ta's own A6 an octave
higher.
Wolfgang
Osthoff has
sought
to associate
"The Dramatic Genius
of
Verdi: Studies
of
Selected
Operas
(L ondon, 1977), II,
318.
'2F and
Eb
are
already present
in the
hauntingly spare Eng-
lish horn
part
here. Verdi
strengthened
the role of this mo-
tive in his revision of the
opening
of the vocal line so that it
begins
on the
English
horn's F rather than on
Ab.
See
Gug-
lielmo
Barblan, "Spunti
rivelatori nella
genesi
del
Falstaff,"
Atti del 1o
congresso internazionali di studi verdiani
(Parma, 1969), pp.
16-21.
65
THOMAS
BAUMAN
Falstaff
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19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
much of the verbal content of Boito's sonnet
with
Shakespearean models,'3
but such
pur-
ported
indebtedness is
clearly
a
secondary
issue.
The extended conceit of
antiphonal song join-
ing
the lines of
separated lovers,
whatever its
source,
is tailored
perfectly
to Fenton and Nan-
netta in
general,
and more
specifically
to the in-
troduction of the refrain
passage
in
Db
minor.
The harmless kisses of the
garden
scene and the
not-so-harmless smooch behind the screen
graduate
here to the
imagery
of
song,
to the
more mature interaction of utterance and re-
sponse, lending thereby
new
poetic meaning
to
the lovers' "bocca baciata."
Verdi
gives
the
couplet
new musical
meaning
as well.
Structurally
its music is no
longer
a
coda-like farewell
tag
but a
coming together
and
fulfillment of a
process-or
almost. No lone
high
A6 in the
oboe,
but a return of the
harp
with
figuration energized
into
sextuplets propels
the
piece
from B
major
into the "bocca baciata"
music,
now fresh and new
harmonically
rather
than a
plagal afterthought
in
Ab.
The sonnet has
moved,
as none of the lovers' music
preceding
it,
with
burgeoning
harmonic richness and ec-
static vocal
expansion
to the
high 6-5
(BI-AIb)
on which Alice arrests the lovers'
rapture (pp.
360-61).
She arrests our attention as well. The beauti-
ful
high
A6 from the
garden
scene is left
hanging
at the threshold of
Db major,
and from its
heights
we
plunge quickly
to the
guttural
be-
stialization of the same
key
as Falstaff enters
with his antlers and mantle. Alice's
interrup-
tion strikes
Hepokoski
as a welcome trunca-
tion: "This is
Falstaff,
after
all,
and the de-
mands of the
plot
have been
delayed
too
long!"
(p. 89).
Yet one also feels a subliminal need for
some kind of resolution to the exuberant
flight
of the sonnet's last
tercet,
for a fulfillment of the
promise
in the lovers' new musical and
poetic
rhetoric.
It does
come,
but
only
after the rarified and
newly ripe
love of Fenton and Nannetta has felt
the sharp
contrast of the cynical, carnal, manip-
ulative travesty
of love represented by Falstaff.
Cone seems to have allowed this contrast to
po-
larize his
interpretation
of Nannetta's canzona-
scene
(as many
a
stage designer
has also
done):
The music that she
sings
here is not unlike that
which has characterized her
throughout,
but
lighter,
daintier,
less solid. Her
separation
from the real
world, already prepared
in the
passages previously
pointed out,
is now
complete; contrasting, earthly
counterpoint
is no
longer present.
She has become
the
fairy
she is
pretending
to
be,
and the elves she
summons are real elves. The
magical
orchestration
of the
passage
insures the transformation.
(p. 132).
Nannetta's canzona is indeed the
longest,
most
static,
most
completely
closed number in
the
opera. Not, however,
because she is now
cast
fully
adrift from the
reality
around
her,
but
rather because it is
ceremony,
because it fulfills
the ideal toward which so much
comedy
tends-acceptance
into
society through
the
idealizing
ritual of
matrimony. Matured,
the
lovers have
opened
their
eyes
and have been
drawn into the
unpleasant
realities of the world
they
are
joining,
but now that world also
opens
itself to the
enriching
ideals and fresh emo-
tional
strength
of the
young.
To this end Boito transferred the
part
of the
Queen
of the Fairies to Nannetta. In the
preced-
ing
scene he had described her attire
precisely:
"A white
gown
covered in chaste
voile,
circled
with roses." In this bridal
guise
she
appeared
at
the end of Fenton's
sonnet,
and the visual im-
pression
created there
urges
a
likening
of Alice's
intervention to the tradition which
abjures
the
groom's seeing
his bride on their
wedding day
before her father has
given
her
away. Now,
in a
tableau at once matrimonial and
maternal,
Boito surrounds Nannetta with the towns-
children decked out as little
fairies,
and fills her
song
with flowers.
The rest he left to Verdi.
Falstaff,
his debase-
ment
complete,
lies
prostrate
on the
ground,
certain that to look on the
supernatural specta-
cle of the
spirits
will be death and damnation to
him. A
high At
in the first violins initiates the
rite. Nannetta's
exordium
rises to a
figure
on
"sorgete" which recalls dimly to our ears Fen-
ton's "rivola" in the sonnet (ex. 2):
NANNETTA FENTON
4
4
- A1
?-
Sor- ge- te ri- vo-
- -
la
Example
2
13"I1l sonetto nel
Falstaff
di
Verdi,"
in II melodramma ita-
liano dell'ottocento: Studi e ricerche per
Massimo Mila
(Turin, 1977), pp.
157-83. Osthoff finds
parallels
in Shake-
speare's
sonnets 8 and
128,
and in Romeo and
Juliet.
None
of these
goes beyond
verbal
parallels
of the stock
imagery
involved.
66
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The
re-entry
of the
harp-not
heard from since
the last notes of the
sonnet-strengthens
the
relationship.
Eventually
the introduction
yields
to the
canzona
proper,
scored with the most ineffable
delicacy
and
beauty.
Verdi
put
the music in
Nannetta's
3,
but in A
major
rather than in
Ab
major. Tonally,
Verdi
thereby
confirms Nan-
netta's
entry
into womanhood: she is
singing,
for the first time in the
opera,
in her mother's
key.
Much has been written about the tonal
plan-
ning
of
Falstaff,
which more than
any
other
Verdi
opera
elaborates an extensive and
quite
consistent
system
of tonal areas associated with
the most
important
characters and
concepts.
I
think it not
implausible
that Verdi
sported
with
the idea of
using
a basic set of
key
areas
gener-
ated
by
the musical letters in the name of the
character who
guides
the
opera's machinations,
Alice,'4
and what
might
be called the
cognate
keys
to
A, C,
and
E-A6, CO,
and
Eb.
It is
clear,
at all
events,
that A6 and
Eb
are connected with
the lovers and Ford
respectively,
C and
C#
with
Falstaff,
and A and E with Alice. A
major
had
first been broached in the
opera
in
I, i,
when Fal-
staff introduced the
subject
of Alice
Ford,
in-
cluding
a double
pun
on the first letter of her
name with the
key
of A and its solmization
"la,"
the
syllable
with which he lands on her
pitch (ex. 3):
FAL STAFF
: j~
E
quel-
la!
/
v
'1
Example
3
Alice's direct association with A and E occurs
most
strikingly
in her
parodistic reading
of Fal-
staff's love letter in
I,
ii
("Facciamo
il
paio"),
which sets out in A and ends in E
(pp. 70-73).
In Nannetta's
canzona,
not
just
the
key
of A
major
but motivic connections
convey
musi-
cally
the
message
that she is
ready
to
put away
childish
things
and enter her mother's world.
Melodically,
she celebrates her
passage
from ad-
olescence to adulthood
by joining
the world she
shares with Fenton and the world her mother
occupies.
We saw a
rapprochement
with her
mother's world earlier in
III,
i. The canzona
completes
this
process
and at the same time
concludes the
interrupted
sonnet of Fenton.
At the end of her first stanza Nannetta hints
at a
phrase
of Alice's
parody
aria and
joins
it to a
variant of a luminous 6-5 ornamentation in
Fenton's
sonnet,
"la desiata bocca,"
the
spot
where the
harp
had burst forth into
sextuplets
(ex. 4).
The second stanza
brings
these tentative
connections into the
open.
This time Nannetta
quotes
Fenton
confidently
and almost
literally
(compare
ex. 4 with the
beginning
of
5),
but she
stops
short of Fenton's closed
cadence,
where-
upon
the
harp
flowers
suddenly
into
sextuplets,
reawakening
memories of the
interrupted
"bocca baciata" tercet of the sonnet. In the
new,
extended conclusion of the second stanza
that
follows,
Nannetta
steps
over into her
mother's world. With "words illuminated in
pure
silver and
gold"
she now
quotes directly
from her mother's
aria,
as
sextuplets
from Fen-
ton's sonnet
ripple
beneath her line
(ex. 5).
Not
just
the melodic
quotation joins daughter
and
mother,
but also the
chromatically descending
bass line-the
"contrasting, earthly
counter-
point"
Cone was unable to detect in the
fairy
music.
Finally,
Nannetta's
high
sustained A on
"malie"
("spells") uplifts
the earlier
high Ab
of
her Boccaccian
couplet
with Fenton.
L ater,
in a last act of filial
submission,
Nan-
netta
steps
back to the brink of
Ab
major
in en-
treating
her father's
pardon
after the
apotheosis
concluding
the double
wedding.
But Ford side-
steps Ab
and
good-naturedly
welcomes her and
Fenton into his own key
of self-deception,
EI
major (pp. 435-36),
at which the whole gather-
ing shouts "Evviva!" Falstaff, who has also
learned his lesson, quickly engineers
a return to
his own turf, the universal solvent C major, for
the moral of the story-the celebrated fugue
"Tutto nel mondo a burlo." The extent to
which everyone is implicated
in this world view
would appear
to be considerable, judging from
140n 11
February
1894 Verdi wrote to L eon Carvalho: "take
good care of the role
of Alice. It needs first
of
all,
of
course,
a
very agile, beautiful voice, but at the same time an actress
with tremendous
temperament.
The role of Alice is not de-
veloped
at such
length
as
Falstaff,
but it is
just
as
important
from a scenic point of view. Alice leads all the
intrigues of
the comedy." Verdi, The Man in His L etters, trans. Edward
Downes (New York, 1942), p. 425.
67
THOMAS
BAUMAN
Falstaff
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19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
a. AL ICE
in un a-mor ri- den- te
b. NANNETTA
33 r-3r7-3 ----IFR
S " "
I
'I.
I
le magi-che ac- cop- pian-
do ca- ro- le al- la can- zon.
FENTON
Co- si ba- ciai la de- si- a- ta bol- ca!
Example
4
a. NANNETTA
A
A- 3"r
-- 3--
-3
--3
3
:
>
I
I
Pi
III I
-
dal- le fa- ta- le ma- ni
ger-mo gli no pa- ro- le. Pa-ro-le al-lu- mi-
6 6 6 6
i
_,:g4
3
b. AL ICE
in un a- mor ri-
[a.]
3---3
-- -
na- te di
pu- ro argen- to e d'or, carmi e ma- li- e.
[b.]
den- te di don- na bel- la ed'uomap-pa-ri- scen- te.
66 6 6 6 6
1
? ?? ?
????IHAW
Example
5
68
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Verdi's use of
fugue,
in Cone's words
"probably
the best formal device available to indicate
gen-
eral
acceptance
of the outcome without loss of
the
individuality
of each character"
(p. 129).
But
the
message
of the
fugue
is universal
only
in a
sexist universe. In the drama
only
the men are
"gabbati,"
both
by
each other and
by
the
women. The women
oppose
the males' lust for
money
and control with cheerful
good
sense.
They
weave
counterplots only
to chastise those
exercising manipulative strategies threatening
the social order which the females
respect
and
understand far more
acutely
than
Cajus, Ford,
or Falstaff.
Is Fenton
ready
for
conscription
into the
ranks of these
"gabbati," just
as Nannetta has
already-has long since-joined
the
merry
wives? The
opera,
like the
comedy,
ends with
the classical conclusion of
wedding
and feast.
These rituals
convey
not
only acceptance
into
adult
society
but also the
recurring hope
that
the
young may play
their new roles better than
their elders. Cone
places
the whole moment of
this abandonment of adolescence and initiation
into adulthood at the
very
end of the drama:
Fenton and Nannetta
"recognize
that even
they
must
eventually
come to terms with the
others,
that the claims of
ordinary society
are
impera-
tive: so
they
too
carry
their
parts
in the final
fugue" (p. 133). I
think it comes earlier. I have
tried to show how
verbally, musically,
and visu-
ally
Boito and Verdi dramatize the rites of
pas-
sage
into the adult world of Fenton and Nan-
netta,
whose artless attachment turned to
understanding
"serves to make the
whole
comedy
fresher and more solid."
-
69
THOMAS
BAUMAN
Falstaff
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