Puccini's "Edgar": My Brush with Immortality.
by James Kilbourne
I am writing this confession of my own free will, so that, at long last, I may enjoy a full night’s rest.
The scene of the crime was the canyons of New York and the flatlands of Long Island. The time was the mid 1970s. I was a young man in my early 30s, but it must be confessed that I was severely maturity-challenged. At least, that was what my numerous critics said. The message that “life sucks, then you die,” had not penetrated my skull. (Truth be told, it is still bouncing off my 60-year-old head. I have observed that maturity as defined by most people is something like being dead, so I don’t do much striving for it anymore.)
I was working at a music publishing house at 61st and Broadway in Manhattan. My job was Assistant to the Head of the Rental Department for Serious Music. (That’s right. I was a clerk.) I had started at $89 per week three or four years earlier, and through sheer grit and a tenacious application of my talents, I was already earning $99 per week. My job was to rent the musical scores of classical compositions to organizations -- such as orchestras and opera companies -- for performances all around America. The company I worked for, Belwin Mills Publishing, represented many of the great publishing houses of Europe, including G. Ricordi, the original publisher of the music of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini.
Before introducing the drama, a little background about my unique musical talents and the state of music in New York is necessary. I had come to Manhattan in 1971 to star at the Metropolitan Opera. Unfortunately, the Met was unaware of this, and I soon found myself retired. I was the only Puccini fan at Belwin Mills Publishing; everyone in the know wanted the free seats available to employees for the latest avant-garde compositions by our latest avant-garde composers. There were plenty of free seats at these performances, because the dumb reactionaries (the public) didn’t want to have anything to do with music that sounded like fingernails scratching on a blackboard. I mean, this stuff was bad. Most of the orchestra pits in those days were equipped with a radar screen to warn the conductor when he was approaching a melody. But I digress.
On a crisp fall day in 1976 (I’m not really sure of the year, much less the season or the weather, but it helps the story along, don’t you think?), while lost in reverie, I was startled to hear the loud ring of the phone on my desk. It was Eve Queler of the Opera Orchestra of New York, or her assistant; who can remember back 30 years? Anyway, Eve was famous for each year conducting a performance of a relatively unknown opera at Carnegie Hall. She was looking for a score to Puccini’s second opera, “Edgar,” which hadn’t been performed in over 75 years. I called my buddy, John, who managed the scores stored in our warehouse in Long Island. John loved music. “What’s 'Edgar' like?” he asked. “Nobody alive has heard it,” I said. “But it’s Puccini. How bad can it be?”
John, a wonderful guy but a lover of contemporary music, was kind enough not to offer his opinion at that moment. An hour later, John called back to say, "I’ve got bad news. There is only one score to 'Edgar' and it is huge. Management says it would cost too much to make a copy [remember the 70s, friends?], and they won’t let it out unless there is a definite performance, because it might get damaged, and then there wouldn’t be even one score to 'Edgar.'"
As you can see, our company management was taken from the same gene pool that produced our country’s leaders in those days. Well, to cut to the quick, John and I sneaked into the warehouse, sneaked the score out, and brought it to Eve Queler to peruse. Then we sneaked it back into the warehouse.
Fast-forward two years. I had left my job shortly after the incident at the Belwin Mills Warehouse, and was living in Boston. As I walked down Newbury Street one day, I looked in the window of a record store and saw: “Puccini’s ‘Edgar’. Live performance from Carnegie Hall, starring Renata Scotto, Carlo Bergonzi; conducted by Eve Queler.” With my place in history now secure, I put on the first side of six to hear what this “flop” sounded like. On another occasion, I will write a full review of 'Edgar.' Suffice it to say that 'Edgar' contains some of the most glorious music Puccini ever wrote, and since we are talking about Puccini here, that means it contains some of the most glorious music ever written. To the best of my knowledge, it has not been performed since this Carnegie Hall unstaged production, but at least I know it is preserved in this wonderful recording for the day when the world comes back to its senses.
Those of you with a sense of adventure and a love of romantic opera can survive a somewhat confused libretto to find the grand rewards of this early Puccini music. It contains two of his finest soprano arias, and, I think, the most moving orchestral music he ever penned. I will go to my grave, hopefully a long time from now, with the realization that, hanging by the edge of my fingernails, I contributed a little something to the rediscovery of this early Puccini masterpiece.
Discuss this Article (6 messages)
|
