In the last 15 years, French grand opera has received renewed attention from houses across Europe. Regional, national and international companies have mounted new productions, yielding a small but growing body of commercial recordings. CPO’s new release of Auber’s La muette de Portici, a coproduction with Deutschlandradio Kultur, joins this field, becoming only the second recording of this ground-breaking and historically significant opera. With Thomas Fulton’s EMI recording currently out of print, this new release may provide many listeners with their first exposure to the work.

Yet this new recording could easily stand its ground in a more crowded field. In many respects, it compares favourably to Fulton’s performance. At the podium, Antony Hermus generally proceeds at a slower pace, and forgoes much of the rubato heard in other grand opera recordings. This combination – slower tempo, less rubato – creates an effect similar to the ‘slow burn’ in a well-directed film, in which moment-to-moment excitement is sacrificed to establish a longer, more intense narrative arch. His young cast handles the challenges of the repertory admirably. Angelina Ruzzafante brings a rare combination of agile coloratura and dramatic power to the role of Elvire. Oscar de la Torre’s light, lyric tenor complements her well; he is a fine, poised Alphonse. As Masaniello, Diego Torre might seem like an odd fit. Known primarily for his success in the Italian spinto repertory, Torre’s voice has a roughness that contrasts with those of the other soloists. In some instances, as in the Act 4’s ‘Du pauvre seul ami fidele’, this proves disadvantageous, as the melody sits uncomfortably high, just above his break. Yet in the denser textures of the internal finales, his voice shines through. For listeners like me accustomed to hearing the lightness of the voix-mixte in this repertory, Torre’s spinto ultimately forces us to reimagine the role.Footnote ¹ Although I miss the clarity of line at times, there’s no denying that his larger sound captures our attention, especially in the final act. Lastly, Wiard Witholt takes every opportunity to add dramatic nuance to his interpretation of Pietro, enhancing the character’s sinister edge.

Those who know this opera well, however, will notice that this recording attains its tight, dramatic tone at a cost. Nearly every number has some internal cuts, usually removing Auber’s written-out repetitions.Footnote ² Some notable repetitions remain: the repetitive a cappella prayer in Act 3, for example, is maintained in full – a strange decision, perhaps, considering how many other moments were left unrepeated, but one that makes sense if we remember that this music returns in the orchestra as the revolution onstage falters in Act 5. But other repetitions are edited in a way that transforms some of the basic parameters of the genre. I’d like to consider the following more closely:

1. 1. There is no stand-alone ballet music in this recording. This is, to be sure, a fairly common omission in modern grand opera performances. In La muette, eliminating the Act 1 ballet shortens the scene greatly without affecting the basic parameters of the plot. Yet I wonder whether Auber and Scribe’s placement of Fenella’s entrance immediately after the ballet was a deliberate means of establishing dance as part of the spectacle’s vocabulary before introducing such an idiosyncratic danced role. The tarantella in Act 3 – which, as far as I can tell, has never been recorded by a full orchestra – would have added both tonal contrast and length to a scene that, in its absence, feels both too heavily weighted toward major keys and too short to be dramatically effective. Moreover, as both Maribeth Clark and Mary Ann Smart have shown, to ignore the visual and gestural choreography of this repertory is to ignore one the main channels for its interpretation.Footnote ³

2. 2. Some cuts radically alter the style. The infamous Act 2 duet – ‘Mieux vaut mourir’ – stands out in this respect. Not only is it heavily abbreviated, but it is presented without the Rossini-style fioritura flourishes that were so much a part of the musical landscape of 1820s Paris. The result sounds more like Verdi: ‘Si pel ciel marmoreo giuro’ (Otello) and ‘Dieu, tu semas dans nos âmes’ (Don Carlos) come to mind. In spite of the growing presence of Rossini’s tragic operas on stage, modern musicians and audiences are still more likely to associate fioritura with Figaro than with Maometto II. We only maintain that lopsided association by continuing to cut fioritura from more ‘serious’ pieces.

This recording ultimately presents an interpretation of a work from 1828 that conforms to later aesthetic norms. This is Auber via Verdi. And it works well on its own. We would be mistaken, I think, to view this as merely a corruption of Auber’s text. After all, this new recording inscribes not just a performance, but a series of decisions influenced by web of contextual forces. The Anhaltisches Theater may have insisted on cuts because of external pressures stemming from a limited budget or the time constraints of working in a shared performance space. More generally, such cuts may tell us something about the kind of interpretive work needed to make grand opera viable on the modern operatic stage.

All this may be in keeping with the spirit of nineteenth-century opera. As many scholars have noted, composers often transformed their texts to meet the demands of specific singers or local customs. Some, notably Verdi, would revise older works simply to revitalize their dramatic impact.Footnote ⁴ Those who refused, like Wagner, were chastised in the press.Footnote ⁵ Our insistence on authoritative editions and complete performances reflect our own historical and creative values.Footnote ⁶ Nineteenth-century productions were, on the whole, much more malleable affairs.

Yet those of us concerned with the history of this repertory remain charged with the task of engaging with performances, practices and interpretations from a distant past. To that end, it would be interesting if companies would essay more uncut productions of the grand opera repertory. Those that aspire to make fewer cuts, however, often feel the need to make other concessions to modern tastes. While this may interfere with our historical interests, these solutions often display real ingenuity. Consider, for example, the Wiener Staatsoper’s 2004 production of Don Carlos – the most complete to date. To make the Act 3 ballet work for modern audiences as part of such a long evening, director Peter Konwitschny developed a creative solution: a domestic fantasia called ‘Eboli’s Dream’, in which the princess imagines a life of 1950s-style domestic bliss as Don Carlos’s wife. Of course we lose the 1867 Paris ballet experience, but was that ever really recoverable? What we gain, instead, is modern psychological depth that only adds to our understanding of the Eboli’s actions later in the opera.

There is, it seems, a gulf between two perspectives on French grand opera: one found in modern productions, the other in the historian’s imagination. The former thrives on contemporary dramatic relevance; after all, few go to the opera for the sole purpose of being transported back to a historical past. The latter remains bound to sources. Perhaps this separation is for the best. It may help a director of La muette de Portici to know about early nineteenth-century melodrama performance practices, yet she need not be bound to rehash them. Similarly, a new recording of the opera may help a musicologist interpret scenes and understand characters differently, but our scholarly arguments still rely primarily not on sounds, but on sources.