— Teatro Nuovo

Gounod: Biondina

A full-scale narrative song cycle by the composer of Faust and Roméo et Juliette? That sounds like it ought to be a staple of recital repertory, especially if it is as melodious and well-proportioned as Biondina. And maybe it will become one, after spending 150 years in near-total obscurity. The simple fact that it is in Italian may have contributed to its long neglect: the song recital, as a genre, was pioneered by German- and French-speaking singers, and texts in those languages (followed by Russian and a little more distantly by English) made up the foundational classics of its repertory.

But from Teatro Nuovo’s standpoint, a text in the language of Bel Canto makes the cycle all the more interesting, and we are delighted to publish it as the most substantial entry to date in our series devoted to La romanza italiana.

Gounod, like practically every French composer whose name we remember, took his turn winning the Prix de Rome, and headed south in 1839 to soak up Italian culture for his allotted time in the Eternal City. He really did absorb it, which was not a guaranteed outcome; Bizet, winning the same prize eighteen years later, emerged with not the faintest notion how to set Italian verse to music, which makes his otherwise appealing Don Procopio nearly unperformable (Teatro Nuovo may one day attempt a rescue operation on this musically beautiful score).

It’s a particular skill. Remember the beautiful aria for the Italian Singer in Der Rosenkavalier? Anyone who knows Italian poetry can tell within the first page that the composer didn’t. But nobody would be able to tell that Biondina was not written by a native; Gounod’s command of the idiom was complete, right down to the echoes of traditional stornello style in the second and sixth songs. The vocal line is lightly florid, beautifully conceived for lyric tenor voice (Gounod himself was an appreciated singer of that type), and straightforwardly melodic throughout.

Biondina was composed, though, not in Rome but in London, where the amateur market for Italian vocal music was high throughout the 19th century. How Gounod came to write it is part of one of the more bizarre episodes in any composer’s life. He had come to London in 1870 for the usual reason (musicians could earn more there than anywhere), with the additional motivation of escaping the Franco-Prussian war, the Commune, and their aftermath. There he met Georgina Weldon, a singer in the chorus of one of his oratorios, and in short order he was living in her orphanage-and-music-school, with an agreement to compose a steady stream of music whose profits would support the school.

The arrangement quickly proved tempestuous to say the least. Mrs. Weldon, with aspirations as a singer, educator, social reformer, and spiritualist, is remembered mostly for her lawsuits - over a hundred in all, with targets including her husband and Gounod himself among many others. These were so successful in attracting attention that a cartoon appeared in which she gives the magistrates of London permission to begin their summer vacation because she has nothing further for them “just yet.”

The whole story and many others can be read in several modern biographies (one is entitled The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon). One of the lawsuits, filed in Gounod’s name against his own publisher, finally prompted the composer’s escape from what he later called “this life of anxiety, of submission to the terror of saying the least word, of the sacrifice of my own thoughts so as to feel myself paralysed.” She retaliated with at least two books (“published for her PERSONAL JUSTIFICATION at the request of her friends”) in which she called the composer “that amiable Tartuffe, that Man of Sand.” Gounod was probably not blameless; he seems to have had a tendency to suggest romantic enthusiasm whose recipients took it more seriously than his follow-through justified. The great singer Pauline Viardot also had occasion to call him a Tartuffe.

Gounod and Weldon - etching by Frédéric Régamey

Mrs. Weldon also had the poet Giuseppe Zaffira among her lodgers at some point, and introduced him to Gounod. About Zaffira little is known. He may have been a minor Count; he published a collection of poems in 1858 and a translation from the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the following year, both in Milan; he was described as “poet of Her Majesty’s Theatre” in London in 1873. He remained in the Weldon orbit after the Gounod debacle; Georgina herself published a new cycle of his poems in Rome in 1875.

We have been unable to find either Zaffira’s birthdate or any likeness of him, and would be grateful to any reader who could supply them! In the meantime, his verses have long been familiar to Italian operagoers who may not have known his name: “Non conosci il bel suol,” “Ah, non credevi tu,” and “Addio Mignon, fa core” are all beloved arias from Zaffira’s translation of Mignon. The texts for Biondina are in a similar tone; the cycle’s story is of young love and premature loss, and the words, like the music, are unpretentious and straightforward yet far from unsophisticated.

Spare a sympathetic thought for Mrs. Weldon. She was extravagant, egocentric, demanding, vindictive, and ultimately ridiculous, but she did mean well. Harnessing the talents of a world-renowned composer to the goals of musical education is not a contemptible plan. And in an era that obstructed the path of women best suited to taking charge of an enterprise, we can’t be surprised if some found their best available outlet in taking charge of a prominent man. Would Gounod have done something better with his time if he hadn’t entered this peculiar arrangement? Hard to say, but at least we have some charming and touching songs that wouldn’t otherwise have been born.

TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS:

1.
Da qualche tempo in faccia a casa mia,
Fa dimoranza una biondina bella.
È senza damo, e credo che la sia
Un'orfanella.

Seduta alla finestra tutto il giorno
Lavora d'ago, e canta sì graziosa,
che ne son preso, e che le vo d'attorno
senza mai posa.

E come suole Amor che dà dell'estro,
M'ha suggerita questa letterina;
E gliela porsi quando n'ebbi il destro
L'altra mattina.

For some days, across the way,
a fair-haired maiden has been lodging.
She seems without a beau, and I believe
she may be an orphan.

Sitting at the window all day
she does her needlework, and sings so gracefully
that I am captivated, and I stand nearby
without ever tiring.

And as it is Cupid’s habit to give inspiration,
he prompted me to write this little letter,
and I gave it to her when I had the chance,
the other morning.

2.
Biondina bella, se tu fossi mia,
Ti vestirei di bianco tutta quanta,
Sì che paressi la Vergine Maria,
O qualche santa.

Ti condurrei così nella chiesetta,
Là dove m'han portato a battezzare,
E là ti vorrei fatta una nicchietta
Sopra l'altare.

E bramerei che l'organo suonato
Da qualche Serafin del Paradiso
Mi facesse morire inebriato
Sul tuo bel viso.

Pretty Biondina, if you were mine,
I’d dress you all in white
so that you seemed like the Virgin Mary
or like some saint.

I’d take you like that into the little church
where they took me to be baptized,
and their I’d have them make you a niche
above the altar.

And then I’d wish that the organ, played
by some Seraph from Paradise,
would make me die, enchanted,
before your fair face!

3.
Ier l'ho scontrata in abito di festa,
Che la parea venir dal Paradiso;
Un cappellino rosa aveva in testa,
Un bianco vel sul viso.

In bianco vel, sotto un cappello rosa
Non vidi al mondo mai più bella cosa.

Ella sembrava quasi la Madonna
Che sta dipinta in Chiesa a la mia pieve;
Era vestita d'una bianca gonna
Fulgida come neve.

In cappellino, in velo ed in gonnella,
Non vidi al mondo mai cosa più bella.

Yesterday I ran into her in her festive dress,
which made her look like a visitor from Heaven;
she had a pink bonnet on her head,
a white veil over her face.

In that white veil, under that pink bonnet,
I never saw such a beautiful thing in all the world.

She looked almost like the Madonna
painted in my parish church;
she wore a white skirt
radiant as snow.

In the bonnet, the veil, and the skirt,
I never saw such a beautiful thing in all the world.

4.
Le labbra ella compose ad un sorriso
Che avrebbe quasi affascinato il sole,
Poi, nel guardarmi, la si fece in viso
Color delle viole

Ond'io (vedete dove il timor si mette!)
Rimasi imbarazzato nel saluto,
E le volendo dir mille cosette
Stetti le labbra muto

Timido fatto, ed ella ognor modesta,
Ci guardammo senza nulla dire.
Ma nel toccarle un lembo della vesta,
io mi sentii morire.

She formed her lips into a smile
that would have entranced the sun itself;
then, looking at me, her face
blushed violet.

Whereupon I (see what shyness will do!)
stood embarrassed in my greeting,
and though they wanted to say a thousand little
things, my lips stayed mute.

Me being timid, and she modest,
we looked at each other saying nothing.
But when I so much as touched the edge of her garment, I felt I would die.

5.
E stati alquanto come bimbi persi,
Noi ritrovammo entrambi la favella.
Ed io così m'apersi
A Biondinella.

Son ito a navigar molta marina
E n'ho vedute, delle belle, assai;
Ma come te, Biondina,
Oh, no! Giammai.

Se fui cortese a niuna in altri lidi
D'un sorrisetto, d'un sospir, d'un fiore,
A te, quando ti vidi,
Ho dato il core.

And having stood a while like lost children,
we both recovered our speech,
and thus I opened my heart
to my Biondinella.

I’ve sailed on many a sea,
and seen many a beauty,
but one like you, Biondina,
oh, no, never!

If I flirted with none in foreign lands,
if I never gave a smile, a sigh, a flower,
to you, when first I saw you,
I gave my heart.

6.
Ho messo nuove corde al mandolino
Perché le voglio far le serenate,
E gliene voglio far sera e mattino
E verno e state.

E farò sì che per le mie canzone
Vada costei famosa e disiata,
Come la bella Donna d'Avignone
Un tempo è stata.

E si dirà, "Qual è cotesta stella
Ond'il mondo ragiona? Oh come ha'l viso?"
Ed io: "Non se ne trova una sì bella
In Paradiso."

I’ve put new strings on my mandolin
so as to make her serenades,
and I want to do it night and day,
and winter and summer.

And with my songs I want to make her
as renowned and desired
as Petrarch made the Fair Woman of Avignon
once upon a time.

And folk will say “What is that star of which
the whole world speaks? How does she look?”
And I: “You will not find one so fair
even in Heaven.”

7.
Se come io son poeta e so cantare
Fossi guerriero e maneggiassi il brando,
vorrei, Biondina, tutto soggettare
Al tuo comando.

Vorrei del sol farti una bianca vesta
Onde fossi la Bella delle belle,
Vorrei posarti una corona in testa
Fatta di stelle.

Poscia vorrei che un giorno a' primi albori
Fossimo desti in una via fiorita,
Sparsa di pecorelle, e là pastori
Finir la vita.

If, as I am a poet and know how to sing,
I were a warrior and wielded a sword,
I would like to subdue the whole world,
Biondina, at your command.

I would like to make out of sunlight a white dress, in which you’d be the Beauty of beauties;
I’d like to set a crown upon your brow
made out of stars.

And then I’d like one day at dawn
that we should wake on a flowery meadow,
scattered with sheep, and there, as shepherds,
pass all our days.

8.
Siam iti l'altro giorno dal Curato
Con un regalo, secondo l'usanza,
E là m'apersi, e'n sua presenza ho dato
L'anello di fidanza.

Egli era all'orto, dove ogni mattina
Suol coglier fiori da parar lo altare,
Tolse il più bello ed alla mia Biondina
Lo volle proprio dare.

E come fu del rito il dì fissato,
C'incamminammo entrambi sì festosi,
Che per la strada tutto il vicinato
Dicea: "Viva gli sposi!"

We went the other day to the Curate,
with a gift, as is the custom;
he admitted us, and in his presence
I gave her the ring of betrothal.

He was in the garden, where every morning
He gathers flowers to adorn the altar.
He took the prettiest one, and was moved to
give it to my Biondina!

And as the day of the ceremony was fixed,
we walked together so festively
that on the street the whole neighborhood
called out “long live the happy couple!”

9.
E le campane hanno suonato a festa,
E rimbombato ha l'aria da' mortai;
Ah! Che una cerimonia come questa
Non s'è veduta mai.

Biondina ed io a tutti per le vie
Gettavamo confetti a canestrate;
Abbiam ballato e fatte assai follie
Come v'immaginate,

Poi che fu giunta di quel dì la fine,
Ah! Con quali note ve lo posso dire?
Ebbro di gioia, fra le sue manine
Io mi credea morire!

And the festive bells rang out,
and fireworks filled the air;
Ah! such a wedding as this
was never seen!

Biondina and I threw confetti
by the basketful to everyone in the streets;
we danced and partied like mad,
as you can imagine.

Then when the day came to an end -
Ah! with what notes could I express it?
Drunk with joy, in her dear hands,
I thought I would expire!

10.
Ella è malata, ella s'è messa in letto
La povera Biondina! E son d'avviso
Che Dio la voglia fare un Angioletto
Del Paradiso.

Oh! Madonnina! Il Ciel n'ha pur già tante
Anime elette! Lasciami costei!
E se non lice, fammi sull'istante
Morir con lei!

Come colombe al tuo santo appello
Noi volerem chiamati dal desio;
La tomba è forse il talamo più bello
Dato da Dio!

She has fallen ill; she has taken to her bed,
my poor Biondina! And I am given to
understand that God wishes to make her
an angel of Heaven.

Oh, sweet Madonna! Heaven has already
so many elect souls! Leave just this one to me!
And if it may not be, cause me this instant
to die with her!

Like doves at your holy call,
we will fly, called by desire.
The tomb! Perhaps it is the fairest bridal
chamber offered by God.

11.
Ier fu mandata una persona pia
Che la vestì di bianco tutta quanta;
Poi son venuti, e l'han portata via
In pompa santa.

L'ho vista proprio là nella chiesetta
Là dove m'han portato a battezzare;
Stava la bara della poveretta
Presso l'altare.

Mi venne allor sul viso uno smortore
Che somigliava al bacio della Morte,
E freddo per letargico sudore,
Caddi alle porte.

Yesterday they sent a nun
to dress her all in white;
then they came to carry her away
in sacred pomp.

I saw her in the very church
where they took me to be baptized.
The bier of the poor girl
was by the alter.

There came over my face such a pallor
as seemed the kiss of Death,
and, chilled by a lethargic sweat,
I fell at the doorstep.

12.
L'ho accompagnata fino al Camposanto,
Dove la terra fu per lei rimossa,
E là mi sono stemperato in pianto
Vicino alla sua fossa.

Poscia ho piantato della croce al piede
Due fiorellini d'opposto colore:
Uno era scuro, ed è per chi lo vede
Simbol del mio dolore.

L'altro era bianco siccome la Fede,
E gliel' ho posto proprio sul core,
E gliel'ho posto; ed è per chi lo crede
Simbol del suo candore.

I accompanied her all the way to the cemetery,
where the ground had been opened for her,
and there I dissolved in tears
beside her tomb.

Later I planted at the foot of the cross
two little flowers of opposite color:
One was dark, and for whoever sees it,
it is a symbol of my sorrow.

The other was white, like Faith,
and I put it above her heart;
I placed it as a symbol, for whoever believes,
of her purity.

Bel Canto Collection

Gounod: Biondina