Saint Saëns: The Swan, from The Carnival of the Animals

When the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns was a baby just two months old, his father, an official in the Ministry of the Interior, died of consumption on the first anniversary of his marriage. This led the family to fear that Camille could have inherited the disease. It was not the case, though, over much of his lifetime, Camille endured a frail health and carried a weak physical constitution.

Quite the contrary, the author, born in 1835 –five years before Tchaikowski–, outlived the Russian maestro and other musicians of his time a number of years. He even reached to live in the first decades of the 20th century, dying in Algiers in 1921. He seems to us, therefore, an author of our times.

The Carnival of the Animals
Alongside this is the fact that some of his most famous works did not have a good reception at their premieres, and the audiences surrendered to their charms only in dates much later than their composition.
This is the case of the orchestral suite "The Carnival of the Animals", a sort of private joke that Saint-Saens wrote in 1886, in Vienna, on the return of an unfortunate tour that occurred to him to carry out in Germany right after he had spoken nasty things about Wagner and German music.

Written in order to forget the troubles of the tour, it is a kind of "zoological fantasy" divided into fourteen movements. Discouraged by the poor reception of the work, Saint-Saens forbade it to be performed while he was alive (with the exception of  "The Swan"), and it was not until 1922, a year after his death, that it was heard in its entirety by a larger and more numerous audience, reaching a celebrity that has not diminished since then.

The Swan
The fourteen movements make comic allusions to a large part of the music written by other composers of the time, including himself. The quotations are to Rossini, Berlioz, Offenbach, Mendelssohn and others, and the comedy comes fundamentally from both the unusual tempos the pieces are performed with or the instruments chosen for it. The movement entitled The Swan is the most serious and calm of the work, also, the most "romantic".

A staple of the cello repertoire, this is one of the most well-known movements of the suite, usually in the version for cello with solo piano which was the only publication of this work in Saint-Saëns's lifetime. More than twenty other arrangements of this movement have also been published, with solo instruments ranging from flute to alto saxophone.

The rendition is by the prominent cellist Yo-Yo Ma, born in France to Chinese parents.

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Tchaikovsky and Antonina - Violin concerto - Mov 1

In mid-March 1877, the brilliant Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky received a letter from an unknown woman in which she let him know her deep admiration for his work. Then others followed, more and more passionate. By the time, the 37-year-old composer had a full career already, so, letters from fans did not drive him mad –receiving letters had become a daily event.
Pyotr Ilyich, a sensitive person with a tendency to depression and a subject of recurrent nervous crisis, did not dare to contact the stranger. And it was not only a fear of gossip: the Muscovite society in which he lived had been commenting, sotto voce but sometimes acrimoniously, on some improper behaviours of the maestro. The issue was going far beyond that. The author was just one step away from seeing his manhood openly questioned.

For that very reason, finally, he took the step. Pyotr Ilyich ended up meeting Antonina Miliukova, who turned out to be a 28-year-old lady, moderately educated and with pleasant features and easy smile. Piotr Ilyich then took the final step. Just four months after receiving the first letter from his unknown admirer, Antonina and Pyotr Ilyich were married. The composer took Antonina as his wife and, in passing, as a barrier against the increasing rumours that fostered the suspicion of sexual misconduct.

The decision had disastrous results. For two never-ending months, Pyotr Ilyich was not able to approach the marriage bed... He did not have the strength to do so, and the marriage ended right there. They decided to separate, without grudges.
The composer fell into a depression of such magnitude that he was about to commit suicide. Antonina, on the other hand, began again to send letters to other celebrities to whom she lied, as to Pyotr Ilyich, about her noble origin, and whom she always ended up falling in love with. Antonina also had something about it and ended her days in an insane asylum.

Violin Concerto - First movement
Despite the disintegration of his marriage, in the following months Tchaikovsky completed the opera Eugene Onegin, orchestrated his Fourth Symphony, and composed the Violin Concerto.
The later was composed in March of the following year, exactly one year after the first letter of Antonina, in a resort on a shore of a lake, in Switzerland, where Pyotr Ilyich had gone to recover from the depression.
The work, in three movements, was initially rejected even by great virtuosos who believed it was unplayable; others found some of it impracticable.

The first movement lasts approximately 20 minutes. The abbreviated performance presented here belongs to the 1947 movie Carnegie Hall, with one of the most notable violinists of the 20th century, the Lithuanian maestro Jascha Heifetz, who plays himself in the film.
The more recent Franco-Russian film, The Concert, features a final scene with a mixture of the first and third movements, with a somewhat disastrous orchestra (according to the plot) that happily ends joining up.

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Viva Verdi! - Rigoletto vocal quartet

The months Giuseppe Verdi and Giuseppina Strepponi spent wandering the pretty Paris streets in 1847, after enamouring each other in the Cafe Les Deux Magots, could not last forever. Shortly after the romance began, the news that the peoples of Italy had risen up against the Austrian occupation brought them back to reality. The revolution had finally erupted. Milan and Venice had revolted. The king of Piedmont, Carlos Alberto, attacked Austria.

"Music of the cannon"
Although he qualified at best as a moderate liberal, Verdi did not remain oblivious to the storm winds that were shaking Italy. In a letter to his friend and librettist Francesco Maria Piave –enrolled in the revolutionary army– he wrote these lines:

"The hour of [Italy's] liberation has sounded... You speak to me of music!! What's got into you? ...Do you believe I want to concern myself now with notes, with sounds? ...There must be only one music welcome to the ears of Italians in 1848. The music of the cannon!"

But the revolution failed. Pope Pio IX withdrew his support and the rebellious king, the aforementioned Carlos Alberto, had to abdicate in favour of his son Victor Manuel –the Austrian domination not changing one iota. Thus began a new era in which the maestro Verdi would become one of the heralds of the Italian yearning for freedom.

If in the past years Verdi's music was sung ostentatiously in the streets, and if in the theaters the libertarian songs were chanted and applauded standing next to Austrian officers with frowning brows, now it is his own name that would serve as an emblem of the revolutionary spirit. The second war of independence would be preceded by the acronym of his name the Italians painted on the walls of the streets: VIVA VERDI: Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia.
But it would be necessary to wait 11 years, until 1859, for the second Italian independence war to develop, this time successfully.

The popular trilogy
In the meantime, Verdi is going to compose eight operas, among which is included the famous "popular trilogy" consisting of the works Rigoletto, El Trovador and La Traviata, a clear sign that his music had taken another path. The defeat of the year 1848 had the effect that the patriotic choirs, the libertarian armies and the wailing of oppressed peoples lost their meaning entirely. The music of the trilogy's operas, in contrast, would sing the intimate conflicts and the main character’s situation would be the key foundation for building the story line and the dramatic conflicts. Therefore, these operas are also known as "character operas", because the characters are the ones that move Verdi, they are the protagonists and it is thanks to them also that these three works survive to this day.

Rigoletto
Released in 1851 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Rigoletto is the first opera of the trilogy. With libretto by Piave, and based in the work by Victor Hugo, Le roi s'amuse ("The king has fun" –the bad tongues would say that he is the only one who has fun), the work tells the highly pathetic story of the court jester Rigoletto who for protecting his daughter Gilda, by means of a curse will end up killing her with his own hands.

Bella figlia dell'amore (Beautiful daughter of love), the famous vocal quartet from Act III, has been described as "an intricate musical depiction of four personalities and their overlapping agendas". Indeed, the four singers sing two dialogues at the same time, but they are as couples singing in different places.

In a concert version, the soprano Anna Netrebko and the mezzo Elina Garança. The guys, Ramón Vargas and Ludovic Tézier. The quartet itself begins at the minute 1:30.

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Verdi and Giuseppina - La Traviata

The enthusiastic welcome given to Nabucco, which opened to Verdi the doors of both fame and Milanese high-society, was mainly concerned with one of the leading figures of La Scala, the singer Giuseppina Strepponi. In the first eight performances of Nabucco, she had been able to masterfully tackle a very difficult role.

Giuseppe and Giuseppina
By the time, Streponni was the lover of a famous tenor endowed with a sweet and languid voice who had become a specialist in dying on stage. The "tenor of the sweet death" –as it came to be known– was married with children. Consequently, for a sensitive but sensible woman like Giuseppina, there was no hope for a common history and a shared future.
It is not uncommon to find Verdi scholars suggesting that it was during Nabucco rehearsals when the first seeds of a romantic relationship between the maestro and Giuseppina were sown. But apparently, it was just an illusion.

Reunion in Paris
Five years later, in 1847, Giuseppe and Giuseppina were reunited in Paris. Comfortably sitting at the tables of the outdoor cafe Les Deux Magots, they celebrated the meeting by talking without reservations about their past lives, about the present, and about the future. Sipping his milky coffee, Giuseppe listened patiently to all that Giuseppina had to tell him. While the hot chocolate was cooling, intact, on the table, Giuseppina confessed that his relationship with the tenor of sweet death had been a tormented and unhappy experience. She had had two children with the tenor, but eventually, shortly after the premiere of Nabucco, she had broken up with him. As expected, all that resulted in her spirit destroyed and her voice damaged, after so much crying.

Giuseppe, a bit more cautious, roughly outlined his sad and humdrum life without Margherita, despite his personal success, with five new operas to his credit. When there was nothing to tell, they looked each other in the eye.
The coffee, or chocolate, or confidences, had done the miracle. Minutes after paying the bill, they left the Cafe deeply in love. During long months they lived their unsuspected idyll, in Paris, completely oblivious to the surrounding world.

At home
However, in the surrounding world, Giuseppe already enjoyed a sound financial independence. He had recently bought a farm in a town near Busetto. Up there he took Giuseppina. And laughter and murmurings began. The maestro Verdi, in the opinion of his countrymen, had returned to his land with a woman who was not his wife and, to top it all, was a singer. His ex-father-in-law also adhered to criticism and, though in a veiled way, scolded him. The maestro responded with a furious letter.
A year later, Verdi began to compose La Traviata.

La Traviata (say, "The Fallen Woman") is an opera in three acts based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas fils, La Dame aux Camélias. Tells the story of Violeta, high-flying courtesan, who falls deeply in love with Alfredo, a young bourgeois. They start to live in sin, in a peaceful country house, outside Paris. Unexpectedly, Alfredo's father reaches there to demand Violeta end his relationship with his son because that improper way of living is harming his entire family. Violeta agrees but doing this she will lose the one and true love of her life, thus unleashing the tragedy that will end with her dying in the arms of Alfredo.

The premiere at the La Fenice opera house in Venice, 6 March 1853, was a complete failure, largely because of the singer who personified Violeta. The artist was 38 years old and somewhat overweight to credibly play a young woman who will die of consumption. That evening the audience laughed out loud with the final scene. However, the following year the work achieved an overwhelming success and since then its popularity has never waned.

Act II - Final scene
The outstanding concatenation of famous and beautiful arias, duets and choirs that make up the work, makes it difficult to choose a piece that stands out above the rest. We have chosen a set scene, where nobody on the stage is left without singing. It is the end of Act II. Playing Violet, the beautiful Russian soprano Anna Netrebko.

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