He didn't even last 24 hours on stage.
The King Has Amusement,
a play by Victor Hugo, premiered in Paris in 1832 and was banned the next day.
It could not be performed in France, although the text was published and ended up reaching the hands of Giuseppe Verdi, to whom it seemed the perfect plot for his next opera:
Rigoletto
.
The Italian censorship tried to prevent it, but had come across a great businessman.
Verdi's opera premiered successfully and began touring theaters throughout Europe.
All?
No. Not France, and not because of censorship.
This time it was Victor Hugo himself who did not consent to it being performed while his work was still prohibited.
How does an opera get past censorship before the text on which it is based?
Well thanks to the genius of Verdi.
Two centuries later,
Rigoletto
continues to raise controversy: the last production premiered in Spain, staged by Miguel del Arco, was booed at its premiere at the Teatro Real in Madrid last December.
The production is now in Bilbao and will later stop at the Maestranza in Seville.
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The abuse of power in 'Rigoletto' takes over the scene with Miguel del Arco
This work by Verdi is the great example of censored opera and also of how a composer's intelligence manages to outwit it.
That is why he has starred in part of the Opera and Censorship course taught at the Teatro Real by the musicologist and music critic Mario Muñoz.
“When the Italian censors find out that Verdi is trying to make an opera that is about how the king of France tries to sleep with whoever he wants, they tell the composer and librettist that they have chosen very poorly and that they should look for another work. that does not question the established establishments, the king and, above all, that does not put them in a diplomatic problem with France,” explains Muñoz.
There were many fronts that scandalized the censors, but there was one scene that made their hair stand on end: a king raping.
The negotiations were very tough and Verdi made many concessions.
He demoted the king and made him duke.
He couldn't be French either, so they chose an Italian duchy that was already extinct by then: Mantua.
The tug of war was constant until only the main obstacle remained: the rape.
Verdi then decided to remove it and the opera went forward.
“The funny thing,” adds the musicologist, “is that it has recently become known that Verdi, under no circumstances, was going to put music to that scene, but he used it as a tool to negotiate and get more.”
Verdi knew very well what he was doing when he chose
The King Has Amusement
as the plot for his opera.
He didn't want to entertain the audience with pretty music, but rather give them something to think about.
Joan Matabosch, artistic director of the Teatro Real, explains it: “It is a tremendously uncomfortable work, if you want to understand what it says, of course.
If we believe that watching
Rigoletto
is humming
La donna è mobile
, no.
But this is not understanding this opera, but rather betraying it.
And betray Verdi in the process.
For this reason, it is symptomatic how cruel the censorship of the time was towards her.
The premiere was as controversial as expected, with numerous viewers complaining that the topic dishonored the glorious institution.
And with the critics showing their confusion.”
If Verdi stood out for his ability to negotiate with censorship, what Rossini was good at was avoiding it.
But he also had some headaches, for example, with
La cenerentola (Cinderella)
, which Muñoz also analyzes: “she is the daughter of direct censorship.
“Rossini was going to do another work, but the censorship prevented it and they had to choose Perrault quickly.”
And even a seemingly harmless children's story had its teeth censorship sunk into it.
“They considered the shoe scene too erotic because it forced the ankle to be shown.
It's complicated because you already start from a very murky point of view.
So they changed the shoe for a bracelet,” adds the musicologist.
The mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli with the bracelet in the legendary production of 'La cenerentola'.
When the nobility is criticized, he censures.
If something appears that could seem erotic, censorship.
If religion considers it dangerous, it censors.
They seem like the great taboo themes in the history of opera, but according to Muñoz it has less to do with ideological issues than with another factor: “I think what is penalized is the individual's loss of control.
Not so much what the author talks about, but the fact that he talks about whatever he wants and that that can be the fuse for critical thinking to spread.”
But control remains in the word and forgets the composer's most powerful weapon.
This is the case of
Dido and Aeneas
by Henry Purcell.
For the morals of the time, suicide was an unforgivable act that forever condemned the soul of the person who committed it.
The censors were not going to allow him to be put on stage, so Purcell does not make Dido commit suicide, but rather she dies of love.
“Deaths of love are the most useful thing in the history of opera because they allow the listener to absolve of what he is seeing,” adds the musicologist.
But Purcell did not want to be left without telling, in some way, the story as it was.
And what does a composer do when he is not allowed to tell something in words?
Well, do it with music.
“As she dies, a continuous descending musical staircase plays to explain that she is eternally condemned to hell.
“One thing is what the text tells you and another is what the music tells you.”
It's not always for the worse
Another conclusion that emerges after analyzing censorship in the history of opera, explains Muñoz, is that, although it may seem otherwise, it usually ends up benefiting the work: “In general it does not usually affect negatively because when censorship tightens the In the end, the artist manages to turn the subject around to say what he wants, but in a different way.
So on many occasions what he has managed to do is turn top-notch operas into masterpieces.”
It is no coincidence that
Rigoletto
,
La cenerentola, Tristan und Isolde
or
Salomé,
examples of works marked by censorship
,
were created in the 19th and 20th centuries.
“At first it is not so problematic because opera was born [at the end of the 16th century] totally linked to power.
When political, religious and individual freedom issues are mixed, that is when everything is at its worst, which is in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
“It is when censorship has the greatest power.”
And today, does it still exist?
“Of course not,” Matabosh responds emphatically.
But what about self-censorship?
Can a scandal encourage a programmer or a stage director to cut themselves for fear of the public's reaction?
The production of
Rigoletto,
with Miguel del Arco as stage director, caused a stir at its premiere at the Teatro Real.
Some spectators booed the performance and the criticism spread to social networks.
There were also many positive comments, but the boos at the premiere were loud.
“It is symptomatic that when a current stage director decides to truly explain, with all his forcefulness, what Verdi denounces in
Rigoletto,
there are still those who accuse the show of the same thing that they accused Verdi of at the time: of depravation. , in bad taste and inappropriate for a glorious institution.
“This shows that his issue is still very topical and continues to bother us,” says Matabosh.
Del Arco, to whom the criticism has been directed, acknowledges that he tries to be oblivious to the comments, although something always ends up getting to him: “They have said fierce things to me.
A lady wrote to me that she will never forgive me because I ruined a wonderful afternoon of Verdi music and that for no reason do I bring the outside world to the stage.
He does not censor himself, but he does recognize that all that pressure from the public can affect a theater or a stage director with less experience: “Yes, it can affect, I speak very fluently, but it has not been easy to withstand all the media pressure.” .
The baritone Étienne Dupuis during 'Rigoletto' that premiered at the Teatro Real in December.Javier del Real
It is not the first time he has faced that pressure.
In 2016, her zarzuela
De ella ¡How is Madriz!
suffered a boycott by the public.
"I remember that when we went to Oviedo, where no one had seen it yet, we found a demonstration and banners that said: 'If you are a Christian, don't go to see this performance.'
Sometimes you feel the need to say: 'why are you spending your time on this if you haven't seen it?
Come in and then we'll discuss.'
It is a spirit that has a lot to do with that censorship,” she says.
But just as the censors achieved the opposite effect in the history of opera to what they were looking for, these scandals, says del Arco, also have a positive effect: “Sometimes they come in handy.
With
Rigoletto
we have even appeared in the soup.
Suddenly a minority thing like opera and at a time of a brutal media explosion in which it is difficult to gain a foothold, you become moderately noticeable and that is good.
It means that you have not gone unnoticed.”
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