Verdi, Rigoletto, Aria "Caro Nome"

Quite a few difficulties had Giuseppe Verdi to overcome before the premiere of his opera Rigoletto at Teatro La Fenice, in Venice, in 1851. The play on which it is inspired belongs to Victor Hugo. With the title Le Roi s'amuse, the play staged a cynical and immoral seductive king. For that reason, it had been banned in France for twenty years and would continue for another thirty. Although it was the very Teatro La Fenice that had asked Verdi for a new play, it seemed difficult to perform it in Venice, due to Austrian censorship.

With great caution, Verdi and his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, moved to Busetto, Verdi's hometown, to work out of sight and ears of the censors. It didn't help much because three months before the premiere, censorship got there in letter format:

"The military Governor of Venice, il Signore Gorzowsky, deplores that the poet Piave and the famous musician Verdi have failed to choose another field to make their talents emerge than that of the disgusting immorality and obscene triviality of the libretto entitled La maledizione [its working title]. His excellence has thus arranged absolutely veto the representation ... and be advised to refrain from any further insistence on this."

Joining wisdom with goodwill, Giuseppe and his librettist decided to make some changes to the libretto. Starting with the title, which was changed to Rigoletto (from French rigoler - laugh), then the king of France became a duke who governs Mantua (a duchy that no longer exists), and, going beyond, the Duke became part of the Gonzaga family, a family no one remembered because had been extinguished in Italy many years ago. The censor approved the representation.

Caro nome
The aria belongs to scene II of Act I. The deceived girl (there is always one), named Gilda, daughter of court jester Rigoletto, has just met a formal, circumspect and respectful young man in the church, whom she falls in love with and who has identified himself as a student, a poor student, to be precise. Actually, he is the cynical and evil duke. Gilda sings recalling the false name he has told her: Gualtier Maldé. Caro nome (dear name), she says, to top it off.
The Russian soprano Ekaterina Bakanova sings, in a performance in Austria for the Opera Festival of St. Margarethen, where, it is seen, no expenses were spared.

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George Gershwin, Three Preludes

When George Gershwin was born in America, in 1898, the great northern country was beginning to emerge as a powerful and expansionist power. It had just taken Spain's last possessions in the Caribbean and the Philippines and was on its way to becoming the great imperialist power of the twentieth century. The country was settling territorially, and at the same time, thousands of emigrants were approaching North America due to the shock wave of the Industrial Revolution in the European continent.

Coming from St. Petersburg, the Gershovitz family arrived in the promised land in the second half of the 19th century, and soon after, in an understandable desire for integration, they Americanized their last name by changing it to Gershwin. His children will be George and Ira, the first one would be a musician and pianist, and the later, lyricist of his younger brother's songs.

Three Preludes

George Gershwin (1898 - 1937)

The three short pieces known as Preludes – which should be understood as a unique work – were released in 1926, a year after the premiere of the Piano Concerto. They immediately became an indisputable success, because they perfectly fit with the "simultaneistic" atmosphere that proclaimed the integration of jazz with serious music, a task that, in the opinion of his contemporaries, George Gershwin was the one in a position to carry out. This had been outright illustrated with his 1924 Rhapsody in blue.

The rendition is by Krystian Zimerman. Each of these three preludes does not last more than two minutes. In the video, the rest are applause between prelude and prelude. The second prelude, a slow and melancholic melody, allows a blues to act as an adage in this little masterpiece of which, incidentally, transcriptions have been made for orchestra, one of them, emerged from Arnold Schönberg's invention.

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