BSO | Barber - Vanessa

Samuel Osborne Barber II was born March 9, 1910, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and died on January 23, 1981, in New York City. The composer Gian Carlo Menotti offered to write a libretto as early as 1952 and had written part of it by summer 1954, when Barber began his first sketches. Menotti didn’t complete the libretto until 1956. Barber composed most of the opera in winter 1956 and completed the orchestration the following year. Vanessa was premiered in its original four-act form on January 15, 1958, at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, with Dmitri Mitropoulos conducting and soprano Eleanor Steber in the title role and Nicolai Gedda as Anatol. Barber revised the score in 1964, combining the first two acts and shortening the work somewhat. This new version was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in March 1965, and it is this version that is most commonly performed today. (See the synopsis below.)

The score for Vanessa calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bells, sleigh bells, triangle, cymbal, tam-tam, snare drum, tom-tom, bass drum), harp, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses). When staged, the opera also features an onstage band of flute, oboe, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, trumpet, drum, piano, celesta, organ, accordion, and strings.

In 1956, even the whiff of a new American opera on the horizon amounted to big news: “Menotti Writes 4-Act Libretto,” a New York Times headline celebrated, “finishes book of Vanessa for which Samuel Barber will compose the score” (January 7, 1957). For most, this was the earliest notice of Vanessa, the first full-length opera composed by the already-famous Barber and the only evening-length American work that New York’s Metropolitan Opera had produced in over 20 years. The pressure on both composer and librettist was immense — could an American opera succeed at the Met? History was not on their side.

In the first half of the 20th century, opera production in the United States was dominated by European composers. While it was commonplace to hear beloved works by Verdi and Puccini, Wagner and Strauss, Gounod and Bizet at the Metropolitan and other major opera houses, there was little appetite for contemporary music, and even less so for a new opera by an American composer. The Metropolitan had attempted to mount only a handful before Vanessa, and none had achieved any lasting success. In the mid1950s, however, change seemed to be afoot. Just days before the premiere of Vanessa, music critic Howard Taubman colorfully described a growing taste for opera born in the United States with this: “Can it be that, despite the unquestioned bouquet and effervescence of imported champagne, there is something to be said for the taste and fizz of the domestic brands? It can be, and there is. American opera is growing up” (NYT Jan. 12, 1958).

Taubman’s optimism stemmed, in part, from his confidence in the creative team of Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007). A composer starting at the age of 7, Barber made his first mark with his Violin Sonata in 1928, followed by his orchestral Overture to The School for Scandal (1931). In 1935 he received the Rome Prize, enabling him to study at the American Academy in Rome, where he wrote several important works including his first Essay for Orchestra and the String Quartet (best known for its slow movement, which became the famous Adagio for Strings). What followed was a career studded with major commissions by famous performers and organizations, the Boston Symphony Orchestra prominent among them. The BSO and Serge Koussevitzky premiered his Second Symphony (1943) and his Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947), the latter commissioned by soprano Eleanor Steber, who also sang the first performances. The conductors Arturo Toscanini, Artur Rodzinski, and Bruno Walter also championed his music. His Piano Sonata (1949) was commissioned by Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers and was first performed by Vladimir Horowitz. The classical music world positively swooned for Barber, not only for his musical accomplishments and impressive commissions, but also for his personality and looks. An article published following the premiere of Vanessa described him as “almost unbelievably handsome,” as a young man, “and he remains one of the most photogenic of today’s composers. He is of medium stature, with deep brown eyes and brown hair. He talks rapidly in a low voice. He is fond of travel and is facile in all the operatic languages — French, German, and Italian” (New York Times, January 16, 1959).

Despite his considerable popularity, Barber remained a relative novice to the world of opera when he set out to write Vanessa. His only prior experience with the genre was at the age of 10 when he composed The Rose Tree, an operetta whose libretto was penned by the family’s Irish cook. As inexperienced as he was, however, Barber was intimately familiar with the voice, having studied singing at the Curtis Institute and having pursued a brief career as a baritone after graduating. He applied his understanding of the voice directly to his compositions. As the biographer Barbara Heyman has observed, “first-hand experience as a singer and an intuitive empathy with the voice would find expression in the large legacy of songs that occupy some two-thirds of his output.” Despite his facility with vocal writing, however, it took a huge leap of faith to make his operatic debut at one of the most important opera houses in the world, a leap he confidently attempted in part because of his partnership with Gian Carlo Menotti, Vanessa’s librettist and its first stage director.

The Italian-born Menotti was uniquely equipped for these tasks: a composer, librettist, director, and playwright of considerable stature, he was also Barber’s life partner and creative collaborator for over 40 years. Menotti himself wrote 25 operas, two of which had already been produced at the Met when Vanessa was premiered: Amelia Goes to the Ball in 1938 and The Island God in 1942. Menotti understood the ins and outs of operatic production better than almost anyone in the United States, and together, he and Barber made an unstoppable pair.

In a New York Times article published three days prior to Vanessa’s premiere, Barber described his experience of working with Menotti: “As we were not bound by the conditions of a commission, we were utterly free in choice of time and place. This particular idea seemed to call for a European setting, so we allowed ourselves the same freedom that Mozart, Verdi and Puccini did. We picked an exotic scene.” Later in the same article, Barber praised Menotti for his precise language, words that lent themselves easily to musical setting: “Menotti himself, perhaps with undue modesty, would say a libretto is no more than a pretext for music. But this is an over-simplification. Interested as I have always been in any poetic texture I have set to music (and I have set Joyce, Hopkins, Yeats, Agee), I could immediately understand and appreciate the economy of Menotti’s use of words (so necessary for the singing stage), their utter simplicity (how wonderful to set!) and his sense of theatrical timing, which seems to me unique” (January 12, 1958).

Perhaps another reason that Barber was drawn to Menotti’s libretto was for the ambiguity lurking beneath its surface. Erika is Vanessa’s niece, but who is Erika’s mother? The libretto is silent on her parentage, an omission one could easily chalk up to dramatic expediency, but what if there were more to the story? Could Vanessa be Erika’s mother instead of her aunt? In this scenario, this exchange between the two women takes on new meaning: Erika: “You, too, were young / when you came back here.” Vanessa: “Oh, but that was different.” One can’t help but wonder, where did Vanessa go and why was it different? Did Vanessa run away to have the elder Anatol’s daughter in secret? If Vanessa gave birth out of wedlock, we can begin to understand why her mother, the OldBaroness, refuses to speak to her, and why, later in the opera, after learning of Erika’s pregnancy and miscarriage, the Baroness declines to speak with her as well. The possibility that Vanessa and the elder Anatol are Erika’s parents is deeply unsettling because it means that the relationship between Erika and the younger Anatol is incestuous. Perhaps for this reason, the libretto maintains its silence — some truths are too disturbing to name outright.

The weeks leading up to Vanessa’s premiere were fraught with unambiguous anxiety due to unexpected changes in the casting of the title role. In early planning for the opera, there were hopes that Maria Callas would create the role of Vanessa, but negotiations broke down, mostly likely because Callas was loath to sing in English and she was not fond of performing contemporary opera. In March 1957, it was announced that the Austrian soprano Sena Jurinac had been contracted to sing the role, but only six weeks prior to the premiere, she was forced to pull out due to illness. According to Barber, “there was consternation in the opera house and talk of a year’s postponement,” but another soprano with intimate knowledge of his music, Eleanor Steber, came to the rescue. To everyone’s enormous relief, the impressive cast was set. The other singers at the premiere were Nicolai Gedda as Anatol, Rosalind Elias as Erika, Regina Resnik as the Old Baroness, and Giorgio Tozzi as the Old Doctor. The opera was conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Those listeners who know Barber exclusively via his Adagio for Strings, a piece rooted in lush romanticism, might be surprised by the considerable eclecticism and frequent dissonance woven into Vanessa’s score. The drama opens with an Overture that sounds as if it were plucked from a 1950s Alfred Hitchcock film, and throughout the opera, one can hear traces of Verdi, Puccini, and Tchaikovsky mixed in with Barber’s own individual style. Heyman describes the score as showcasing many of his “compositional strengths: metric flexibility that supports the natural rhythms of the text, a fluid use of harmonic color to underscore the bittersweet poetry, and an abundance of accessible melody.” Two arias have become famous in their own right: Erika’s “Must the Winter Come So Soon?” and Vanessa’s “Do Not Utter a Word,” both of which have gained popularity through recital performances and recordings by famous mezzos and sopranos including Leontyne Price, Renée Fleming, and Denyce Graves. Barber saved the biggest showstopper for the end of the opera, the final quintet, “To Leave, to Break,” which the New York Times described as “a full-blown set-piece that packs an emotional charge and that would be a credit to any composer anywhere today.”

By all accounts, Vanessa was an unqualified success at its premiere on January 15, 1958, and when Barber took his bows, Newsweek reported that he was greeted with a “full-throated roar usually reserved for prima donnas.” Taubman was positively “giddy with pride,” celebrating what he described as “the best American opera ever presented at the stately theatre on Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street,” adding that “it is professional; it has atmosphere; it builds to a moving climax.” Later that year, Vanessa earned for the composer the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes and became the first American opera staged at the Salzburg Festival. The opera’s reception in Salzburg, however, was not as warm as it had been at the Met. Critics were dissatisfied with what they perceived as a European, “un-American” feel to the score. Disappointingly for Barber, Menotti, and all who were hoping for a kindling of interest in American opera, excitement for the work dampened quickly and revivals became few and far between. Hoping for more performances, Barber revised the score in 1964 from four acts to a more concise threeact version, but the effect was minimal.

Though Vanessa did not spark the American operatic revolution some had hoped for in the mid-1950s, time has been kind to Barber’s first opera. Recent revivals have revealed what early audiences at the Metropolitan Opera may have already sensed: that the work’s emotional depth, musical sophistication, and psychological complexity place it among the finest operas of the 20th century. Vanessa no longer needs to prove that American opera has “grown up.” It simply stands as evidence that it had.

Hilary Poriss

Professor and Chair, Department of Music, Northeastern University, Hilary Poriss is the author of Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance and Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (both Oxford University Press).

Synopsis

Act I.

Scene 1. A drawing room in a country manor in an unnamed “northern country about 1905,” where the middle-aged Vanessa has lived with her mother, the Baroness, and her niece Erika. The mirrors in the house are covered in order to suspend time. As a storm rages, the household servants bustle about, preparing for a visitor. Vanessa awaits the return of her beloved Anatol, who left her twenty years before. When the guest arrives, it is not Anatol but his son, also called Anatol. The young man makes himself confidently at home, asking Erika to join him at the dinner table. The young woman is fascinated.

Scene 2. About a month later. Erika reveals to the baroness that Anatol seduced her the very day he arrived and proposed marriage, which she had not accepted. In high spirits, Vanessa and Anatol arrive from ice skating. Vanessa announces her plans to uncover the mirrors and host a great ball. A family friend, the Doctor, tries to teach Anatol a dance from his past. Vanessa thinks Anatol has fallen in love with her and confides her belief to an astounded Erika.
Anatol reiterates his proposal to Erika but refutes the possibility of eternal love. Left alone, Erika cries, “My answer is no! Let Vanessa have him!”

Act II.

The manor house entrance. New Year’s festivities in the great ballroom in the background. The Doctor enters, tipsy, and tells the Major Domo he’s about to announce Vanessa and Anatol’s engagement. Vanessa and Anatol enter; she is upset that neither her mother nor Erika is present at the party. Erika appears at the top of the stairs just as the Doctor announces the engagement. Erika faints, but upon recovering, runs out of the house. The Baroness appears, crying for help: she has seen Erika headed for the lake.

Act III.

Scene 1. Erika’s bedroom, a few hours later. Anatol has gone with others to seek Erika while Vanessa, the Doctor, and the Baroness wait anxiously. Anatol’s party returns, carrying an unconscious Erika; Vanessa confronts Anatol about Erika’s motivation. After the others leave, the Baroness asks Erika why she wished to kill herself. Erika reveals her pregnancy, and that she miscarried when she fell.

Scene 2. The manor house drawing room, a month later. Anatol and Vanessa, now married, are preparing to depart for their new home in Paris. The Doctor again reminisces about the past. Vanessa still has her doubts about Erika’s relationship with Anatol, but Erika refuses to reveal the identity of her seducer. After Vanessa and Anatol leave, Erika orders the Major Domo to cover the mirrors once more.