Now the tone settles again, with four bars designated dolce, marked by a repeated little two-note figure that is surely the next question stealing into your mind. So you ask it: It’s been three months since you came here, and you’ve seen nothing of the city. Perhaps, with your father’s permission? And here you, the singing actress, come up against another blank—a big one—that must be filled in. If you’ve been sequestered here for three months (and safe as you may feel, that is becoming intolerable), where were you before that?(I) Your timid question about venturing out sets your father off again, to the point that he summons Giovanna and interrogates her harshly about possible intrusions and the lock on the gate. Giovanna’s assurances seem to settle him down, and for the first time, he initiates a movement with touchingly heartfelt admonitions to her to keep you safe and return you to him “immaculate.” How can you further this feeling, provide some comfort and forestall more outbursts? Here is one more vital consideration: whatever your version of your backstory may be, you are a devout Roman Catholic, and your belief is of a literal, unquestioning sort that we might nowadays associate with a very young girl. So when you counsel your father, as you now do in a reply, to have no fear because your mother is up there in Heaven (“lassù in cielo”) close to God, a guardian angel for you both, you see and feel her as a living presence and know that he will, too. Through her, you will remain as immaculate as the Holy Virgin herself. (A note on articulations here: note the placements of the accents and the crush notes—both musically, within their bars, and in terms of the words to which they lend emphasis. Try exaggerating them, to feel how they help your expression.)
Footnotes
| ↑I | Major assignment: You must write your autobiography. First, give the text of the opera a close scan for clues. I think you’ll find there’s nothing there that will explain anything before your arrival in Mantua. The only important secondary source (unless you’re an uncommonly scholarly soprano, and wish to seek out all the variants of the text that preceded the final one, on the slim chance that you’ll find a nugget of inspiration) is the play on which Verdi and Piave based their opera, Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’amuse. But remember that we are not in search of dry facts or a “correct” answer, but rather of an imagined life that will give you both the most satisfying logic and the most emotionally pregnant charge. Keep in mind that when you find something in a secondary source that the creators of your work have chosen to omit, the omission may tell you more than the found thing. It’s what feeds you that is most useful. Your imagined autobiography (not a day-by-day diary, of course, but the kind of Story of My Life we all carry about with us, and use to explain us to ourselves) serves the sole purpose of filling out your self-identity and providing you with the strongest possible motivations. It must not contradict or make improbable anything about you and your situation that has been established in the text, but as you’re discovering, that leaves vast territories for you to fill in. A few of them here: If you were not with your father before arriving here (and bear in mind that it’s evidently only you who have been here for just three months (“son qui venuta,” first person singular), whose care were you under, and what was that like? Was it a long-term situation, or a temporary arrangement? Have you known Giovanna, your nurse, only since coming here? Has your life been settled, or itinerant? (If you are using the same score I cited above—the best choice, I think—you may discover that Andrew Porter, the translator, has inserted a possible answer to some of these questions. He would not have done so without grounds, but those grounds are not to be found in the text of the opera.) It’s generally assumed that you know nothing of your father’s occupation, but can you find any evidence of that? Absent such evidence, which choice is stronger and more in line with everything else you’re finding out? |
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