By Teresa Radomski

Manuel Garcia

Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodríguez García (b. 1775, Seville; d. 1832, Paris) is widely recognized as one of opera history’s greatest tenors, for whom Rossini composed the role of Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia. Equally celebrated as the founder of L’École García, he was credited with the preservation of valuable bel canto techniques, which he passed on to his students, including his famous daughters, Maria Malibran (1808–36) and Pauline Viardot-García (1821–1910). His son, Manuel Patricio García (1805–1906), through innovative use of the laryngoscope, described and documented the García teaching method in detailed treatises that continue to enlighten vocal pedagogy and performance practice.

Although Manuel García’s place in history has been secured by his renown as a performer and teacher, he was also an extremely prolific composer. During his early years in Madrid, García’s tonadillas (intermezzi) and operettas in the Spanish style were well received, as were his later operas composed for Naples and Paris. In 1825 García’s company of singers (which included his family) brought professional performances of Italian opera for the first time to North America, where New York audiences heard his works alongside those of Rossini and Mozart. In Mexico García returned to composing operas in his native style and language before sailing back to Paris in 1829, where he devoted his final years to teaching and composition. By the time of his death at the age of fifty-seven, García had completed over fifty operas and operettas, numerous songs, symphonies, masses, and chamber works. At García’s funeral François-Joseph Fétis remarked that most of García’s works—“and without a doubt the best”—remained unpublished.

García’s last works were five chamber operas, composed in 1830–31: L’isola disabitata (N042), Un avvertimento ai gelosi (N065), Le cinesi, I tre gobbi, and Il finto sordo. Described as “cinq petits opéras de salon” by Fétis in his Biographie universelle des musiciens (1837), each opera features a small number of singers with piano accompaniment. García labeled Un avvertimento ai gelosi an “opera per soscieta [sic],” a “society opera,” indicating that it was intended for the intimate setting of the salon—one of the most significant musical venues for the Romantic movement then blossoming in Paris.

In 1831, the year that Manuel García composed Un avvertimento ai gelosi, Paris was indeed riding upon a wave of Romanticism. George Sand and Frédéric Chopin—two artists most associated with salon culture—both arrived in the city that year to launch their careers (they would both become close friends of García’s daughter, Pauline Viardot). Franz Liszt had already moved to Paris in 1827, and the following year, Maria Malibran made a sensational debut in Semiramide. In 1829 Parisian audiences heard Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (with García’s student, Adolphe Nourrit, in the leading tenor role). Hector Berlioz premiered his Symphonie fantastique in December of 1830, having finished the score amid the furor of the July Revolution of 1830—an event that inspired Liszt to compose a “Revolutionary Symphony.” Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (a favorite opera of Chopin’s) was premiered at the Opéra in 1831, while in the literary world Victor Hugo published his Notre-Dame de Paris and Honoré de Balzac his La Femme de trente ans. One cannot imagine a more exciting time to be in Paris—and although García, born in 1775, was from the previous generation, he personified the liberal Romantic spirit with his chaleur andalouse and exerted considerable influence on the technique and style of the Romantic singer.

García’s salon operas, although modest in scope, effectively illustrate the ample artistic requirements of early nineteenth-century singers. Created specifically for the vocal, musical, and dramatic education of his students, the salon operas reflect García’s collective talents as a virtuoso singer, actor, teacher and composer, representing over thirty years of experience. The music is stylistically similar to the early nineteenth-century operas in which García performed, with occasional displays of harmonic innovation and Spanish temperament. Especially noteworthy is García’s gift for crafting brilliant ensembles, as well as his ability to blend attractive melodies with extremely florid writing—for which he had a special penchant, both as performer and composer. Above all, his music is designed as a vehicle for improvisation, an artistic skill he deemed indispensable and therefore expected of his students. The salon operas also reveal García’s adept sense of theatrical timing, apparent not only in his dramatic musical expression but also in the modifications that he made to the original libretti, which cleverly amplify the characters and enhance the scenario.

N065 cover

Un avvertimento ai gelosi (A Warning to Those Who Are Jealous) is based on a libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa (1760–1845), who excelled in the one-act farsa genre that originated in Venice in the 1790s and remained popular through the early nineteenth century. Foppa’s libretto was published in 1804 as a farsa giocosa, a single-act comedy with a small cast of characters resembling those of the commedia dell’arte, entangled in amorous intrigues and marital vicissitudes. The plot features a highly jealous husband, Berto, who unjustly suspects his pretty wife, Sandrina, of infidelity. When the couple’s new feudal lord, the Count Ripaverde, arrives to oversee his estate, he is instantly attracted to Sandrina, as is the Count’s secretary, the pompous dandy, Fabio. In order to punish Berto for his jealousy, Sandrina pretends to reciprocate the Count’s interest, resulting in hilarious complications that confuse everyone—including the Count’s deserted fiancée, Ernesta, and the wise gardener, Menico, who helps Sandrina “change the cards” and bring about the opera’s happy conclusion.

With the objective of creating a work for his students, García took advantage of the opportunities for ensemble singing that Foppa’s Un avvertimento ai gelosi provided: a duet (male-female), a trio (three males), and a quartet (one female, three males), along with an extended finale, in which the six characters sing successively and in various combinations before the ultimate tutti chorus. To these, García added another duet (male-female) with a preceding recitative, apparently written to his own text. Foppa’s libretto also called for a solo cavatina and four individual arias, but García chose to eliminate one of the arias and the corresponding libretto text.

While García’s musical setting animates Foppa’s characters, the arias and ensembles of Un avvertimento ai gelosi are designed to inspire further creativity on the part of the performers. Thus the score retains a simplicity that is conducive to embellishment, rather than being a thoroughly developed composition with complex harmonies and arrangements. García occasionally wrote out ornamentation for repeated passages, offered some sample solo cadenzas, and provided carefully coordinated embellishment for the ensembles. Otherwise, singers were expected to vary repeated melodies and fashion their own cadenzas—preferably on the spur of the moment. Accordingly, the score of Un avvertimento ai gelosi must be regarded as a point of departure and not as an end in itself.

Given the didactic premise of García’s salon operas, familiarity with his method of teaching is essential to the interpretation of Un avvertimento ai gelosi. This edition offers examples from García’s concise Exercises and Method of Singing (1824), along with explanations from his son’s lengthy Traité complet de l’art du chant (1840, 2nd ed. 1847). Comparison with the bel canto techniques illustrated in the various vocal methods of the García family reveals the arias and ensembles of Un avvertimento ai gelosi to be a series of well-devised études. García, who believed that “the only true singer is the one who is a true musician,” encouraged his students to study piano, harmony, counterpoint and composition, and solfeggio—all in order to establish a solid base for improvisation through aural acuity. Extensive, disciplined vocal training was necessary to develop a well-tuned instrument with tonal beauty, flexibility, and legato, while complete musicianship laid the foundation for artistry.

García designed Un avvertimento ai gelosi to appeal to nineteenth-century salon audiences as well as to his students, who would have enjoyed portraying the opera’s lively characters while conquering the significant vocal challenges. Indeed, García’s opera is a comprehensive bel canto tutorial whose skillfully constructed ensembles encourage the development not only of individual artistry but also of coordinated musicianship and virtuosity. García devoted himself completely to his students during his final years and must have taken special pride in their performances. While it is unknown whether Un avvertimento ai gelosi was ever performed during García’s lifetime, the work’s sentimental humor, conveyed through charming arias, virtuosic fireworks, and dazzling ensembles, retains the potential to delight today’s singers and audiences.


 

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Teresa Radomski is Professor of Music at Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, North Carolina). She is coeditor of the first publication of a salon opera by Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodríguez García, L’isola disabitata (A-R Editions, 2006, N042), which received its modern premiere performance under her supervision at Wake Forest University in 2005. On the occasion of the opera’s European premiere, she presented a lecture at the Teatro de la Maestranza (Seville, 2010). Teresa Radomski’s bicentenary tribute to Manuel Patricio García was featured at the Sixth International Congress of Voice Teachers (Vancouver, 2005) and subsequently published in The Australian Voice (December, 2005). An active performer, she can be heard on the world premiere recording of Manuel García’s salon opera Le cinesi (Harmonicorde, 2009).