Of all the singers of Italian opera during the first half of the nineteenth century, none was as extraordinary as the “king of tenors”, Giovanni Battista Rubini. Born near Bergamo on 7 April 1794, his early artistic years (from 1815 to 1829) were passed largely in Naples. After developing a European reputation in Vienna and Paris during the mid-1820s, Rubini was featured in Milanese theatres between 1827 and 1831, after which his activities shifted to Paris and London. He retired in 1845 and died a decade later, on 3 March 1854.
Rubini’s art was distinguished from that of his contemporaries in several ways: his close association with the most important composers of the epoch; the variety of roles he undertook; his stratospheric range, accounting for the infamous high F in the last act of Bellini’s I puritani. Among modern tenors, Juan Diego Flórez is the acknowledged master of this type of vocalism: the pairing of Flórez and Rubini appears inevitable. The selections recorded here provide a cross-section of both tenors’ art.
Rubini first sang in Naples in 1815, as Lindoro in Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri. He often supplemented or replaced the two principal Neapolitan tenors of the day, Andrea Nozzari (with whom Rubini studied) and Giovanni David. Although Rossini — mainstay of the Naples theatres over the years from 1815 to 1822 — wrote no operatic roles for Rubini, the singer participated in the premieres of two orchestral cantatas. Rossini also revised operas for him, including La donna del lago and Zelmira.
Rubini’s relationship with Donizetti was less intense, nor did Donizetti grasp the particularities of Rubini’s gifts, although the composer prepared for him several new operas in Naples. Their most important collaborations, however, were Anna Bolena at the Teatro Carcano of Milan in 1830 and Marino Faliero at the Théâtre-Italien of Paris in 1835.
For Bellini, Rubini was a kindred spirit. Beginning in 1826, he composed four operas with the tenor’s voice in mind (Bianca e Gernando, Il pirata, La sonnambula and I puritani) and revised a fifth (La straniera). Bellini’s music transformed Rubini’s artistry. As he himself put it in a letter to the tenor dated 4 January 1828: “If it were not for Il pirata, where you could demonstrate your capabilities with music written for your voice, you would have left Milan with the reputation of an old-fashioned ‘cavatina’ tenor and not a great singer and actor”. Thanks to Bellini, Rubini emerged as the leader of a new generation of Romantic tenors, dramatically strong yet soulful. The lighter “tenore di grazia” characteristic of many Rossinian roles (especially in comic or semi-serious operas) gave way to a more robust, virile sound, which Rubini applied to older and newer repertoire alike. Whether as Almaviva (alias Lindoro) in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Gualtiero in Il pirata or Elvino in La sonnambula, Rubini defined a new sound for a new generation. Unlike other singers of his day (such as Gilbert Duprez), however, who sought to maintain a unified sonority throughout their range, with ringing high Cs produced from the chest, Rubini continued to adopt a lighter sound in his upper register, using an extended “head voice” to include pitches beyond the reach of other tenors.
With Gualtiero in Il pirata Bellini defined the declamatory melody and heightened sensitivity to text that characterised the Romantic tenor aria, in both the lyrical cantabile opening and more forceful cabaletta section. After the work’s premiere at La Scala, Milan, on 27 October 1827, the role of Gualtiero became one of Rubini’s favorites. In this entrance aria (1–3),
the shipwrecked pirate affirms his continuing love for his beloved Imogene, who ten years earlier saved her father’s life by marrying the evil Duke Ernesto.
While Rubini did not create the role of Norfolk in Rossini’s Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples on 4 October 1815, he sang it extensively in Naples under the composer’s direction, beginning in April 1820. The second-act aria for the traitor (4–6) features an introductory scena (“Che intesi!... Oh annunzio!...”) that embodies the composer’s evolving dramatic style: Norfolk’s dishonest determination to manipulate the crowd to rebel against Elizabeth and free the honest Leicester is illustrated by appropriate instrumental and harmonic details.
In Marino Faliero, premiered at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris on 12 March 1835, Donizetti wrote for Rubini the role of Fernando. Nephew of the Doge Marino Faliero, Fernando is leaving Venice to spare his beloved Elena, the Doge’s wife, with whom he has had an adulterous affair. The role is unusual, since Fernando is killed in a duel in the second of the opera’s three acts, but Rubini gave it dramatic intensity, as Donizetti wrote on 16 March: “Rubini sang as I’ve never heard him, and for that reason I had to repeat the cavatina (7–9) and the aria every night.”
While Rossini’s 1814 Il turco in Italia was not widely performed during Rubini’s career, he participated in a revival at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London, in July 1841, presumably singing the aria here included (10-11), which Rossini added during the rehearsal period for the original Narciso, Giovanni David. An admirer of the capricious Fiorilla, Narciso is furious to learn of her planned flight from Italy, and from her husband, in the company of Selim (the Turk of the opera’s title). The structure of this two-tempo aria is standard, but the musical invention is splendid.
Bellini first collaborated with Rubini in Bianca e Gernando (premiered in Naples, 30 May 1826), where the tenor played Gernando, son of Duke Carlo of Agrigento. Carlo is imprisoned by the usurper Filippo, who intends to marry Carlo’s daughter Bianca. Unaware of Filippo’s plot, she thinks her father dead and her brother an enemy. During the second act Bianca and Gernando uncover Filippo’s machinations and vow to free their father. For a revival of the opera in Genoa in 1828, under the revised title Bianca e Fernando, Bellini introduced this coro, scena ed aria (12-16) for Fernando after the duet. While not composed for Rubini, he sang it at La Scala in September 1829.
Although La donna del lago had its premiere at the San Carlo on 24 October 1819, with Giovanni David as King James V of Scotland (disguised as Uberto), when Rubini assumed the role in June 1820, Rossini replaced the brief reprise of the Barcarolle at the end of Act Two with Orestes’s cavatina “Che sorda al mesto pianto” from his earlier opera Ermione. The piece sits awkwardly at that point, however, and when Rossini again presented the opera with Rubini (Paris, 1825), he added a recitative and used it as a substitute for “Oh fiamma soave” at the start of Act Two. This version of the piece (17-19), reconstructed by Philip Gossett, is performed here for the first time since 1825. Contemporary sources offer Rubini’s ornamentation, some of which is adopted by Flórez.
As an artist associated with the Théâtre-Italien, Rubini was unable to perform Rossini’s Guillaume Tell in Paris, where it had been exclusively reserved for the Opéra since its premiere there on 3 August 1829. But in London in 1839 he assumed the role of Arnold in Italian translation. The aria at the beginning of the fourth act (20-23), in which Arnold deplores the death of his father at the hands of the Austrian governor Gesler and promises revenge, was always a great success, whether sung in French by the elegant Adolphe Nourrit, in French or Italian by the showy Gilbert Duprez, or in Italian by Rubini.
Although all these arias share a similar structural design, the variety of vocal styles, the melodic individuality of each piece, and the changing dramaturgical weight accorded to the tenor voice are sufficient to demonstrate the breadth of musical approaches characterising Giovanni Battista Rubini. Thanks to Juan Diego Flórez, today’s “king of tenors”, audiences are experiencing this splendid repertoire anew.
Philip Gossett
