Brogi: Visione Veneziana
Fernando Cisneros
Renato Brogi (photographer unknown)
Renato Brogi (1873-1924) was among the many operisti minori in the period of Italian opera’s last great flourishing, the age of Puccini and verismo. He was born near Florence, where he began his studies, and moved early to Milan, which had become Italy’s unofficial musical capital. In 1896 he won one of the publishers’ competitions that had become popular since the success of Puccini’s Le villi and Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, both composed as competition entries. This led to the premiere of his first opera, La prima notte, in 1898. He was to compose four more, often with local success. The last, an operetta with the inviting title Bacchus in Tuscany, may be a good prospect for revival, but none of them established Brogi as a leader in what was then a very crowded field.
He did, however, collaborate with major singers of the day, including Antonio Paoli, Gemma Bellincioni (the original Santuzza), and the baritone superstar Titta Ruffo. It was Ruffo who first popularized the present song, which has been Brogi’s most lasting composition. The poem is by his fellow Florentine Angiolo Orvieto (1869-1967).
Grandi cumuli di rose,
di giunchiglie, di verbene,
di gerani e tuberose,
la mia gondola contiene.
Essa fila nell'aurora
che sorride sul canale,
che i palazzi grigi sfiora
col suo bacio d'immortale.
Presso ad una testa bionda
che fra le verbene affonda
e di rose s'incorona,
il mio capo s'abbandona.
E la gondola ci culla
tutti e due soavemente;
ma la pallida fanciulla
nulla vede e nulla sente.
Chiuse son le lunghe ciglia
sovra il sogno mattutino;
ella sembra una giunchiglia
sotto il cielo cilestrino.
Nell'aurora, fra gli odori
dei bei cumuli di fiori,
questa gondola mi porta,
con la mia diletta, morta.
Great clusters of roses,
of daffodils, of verbena,
of geraniums and tuberose
my gondola carries.
It threads its way in the dawn
that smiles on the canal,
that touches the grey palaces
with its immortal kiss.
Beside a blonde-haired head,
sunk in the verbena,
crowned with roses,
I lay my own.
And the gondola cradles us
both sweetly;
but the pale maiden
sees nothing and hears nothing.
Closed are the long eyelashes
over the morning dream;
she resembles a daffodil
under the pale blue sky.
In the dawn, among the scents
of the lovely heaps of flowers
the gondola carries me
with the body of my beloved.