O Lola of the milk-white blouse,

of the fair skin and cherry lips,

when you come laughing to the window,

happy is he who first can kiss you.

Blood has been shed across your door,

but I shall not care if I am slain there.

And if I should die and go to Paradise

and not find you there, I would not stay.

SANTUZZA: Tell me, Mamma Lucia . . .

MAMMA LUCIA [surprised]: It's you? What do you want?

SANTUZZA: Where is Turiddu?

MAMMA LUCIA: So you come here to look

for my son?

SANTUZZA: I just want to know,

forgive me, where to find him.

MAMMA LUCIA: I don't know, I don't know. I don't want trouble.

SANTUZZA: Mamma Lucia, I beg you, weeping,

act as our Lord did toward Mary Magdalen.

Tell me for pity's sake, where is Turiddu?

Tell me for pity's sake, where is Turiddu?

MAMMA LUCIA: He went for wine to Francofonte.

SANTUZZA: No! He was seen in the village late last night.

MAMMA LUCIA: What are you saying? If he didn't come home . . .

[Going toward her house] Enter.

SANTUZZA: I can't enter your house. I can't enter.

I'm excommunicated. I'm excommunicated.

MAMMA LUCIA: And what do would you know about my dear son?

SANTUZZA: What a thorn I have in my heart!

I know people will think I'm engaged in fuddy-duddyist nitpicking when I complain about Coppola's mendacious rearrangement, moving the Easter hymn of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana from virtually the beginning of the opera to virtually the end. Give us a break, isn't that just a bit of dramatic license?



Well, no, it isn't. It not only misrepresents the kind of story-telling Mascagni was engaged in, which is bad enough (come on now, if you think Cavalleria is worthy enough to exploit for your own dramatic purpose as the Sicilian-themed opera that Michael Corleone's son Anthony is singing for his operatic debut, in the capital of Corleone country, Palermo, Sicily, then I'm sorry, you have an obligation not to falsify it so blatantly), but transforms the intense character portraits Mascagni was undertaking into cheesy melodrama -- "operatic" in the conventionally disparaging sense.



Bottom line: Coppola has every right to choose cheesy melodrama for his own story-telling, but not to transform other people's into it.

(1) ALFIO: The horse's hooves thunder,

the harness bells jingle,

the whip cracks, ehi là!!

Let the cold wind blow,

let rain or snow fall,

to me what does it matter?

VILLAGERS: Oh, what a lovely way of life,

to be a carter,

to go here and there.

ALFIO: The whip cracks, the whip cracks, ehi là!



ALFIO: Waiting for me at home is Lola,

who loves me and comforts me,

who is ever faithful.

The horse's hooves thunder,

the harness bells jingle,

it's Easter and here I am!

VILLAGERS: Oh, what a lovely way of life,

to be a carter,

to go here and there.

ALFIO: The whip cracks, the whip cracks, ehi là!



(2) MAMMA LUCIA: You're lucky, friend Alfio,

that you're always so happy.

ALFIO: Mamma Lucia, you don't still have

any of that old wine?

MAMMA LUCIA: I don't know.

Turiddu has gone to get some.

ALFIO: But he's still here.

I saw him this morning

near my house.

MAMMA LUCIA: What?

SANTUZZA [quickly to MAMMA LUCIA]: Be quiet.

[From the church the Alleluja is heard sounding.]

ALFIO: I'm going now.

You others go in chuch. [Exits.]



(3) CHORUS INSIDE THE CHURCH: Regina coeli laetare --

Allelua! --

Quia quem meruisti portare --

Alleluja! --

Resurrexit sicut dixit --

Alleluja!



(4) CHORUS OUTSIDE THE CHURCH (including SANTUZZA and MAMMA LUCIA):

Let us rejoice in hymn,

the Lord is not dead,

He in glory

has opened the tomb.

Let us rejoice in hymn

at the Lord's rising again,

ascending to Heaven.

CHORUS INSIDE THE CHURCH: Allelua!

[Everyone has entered the church except SANTUZZA and MAMMA LUCIA.]

SANTUZZA: As you know, Mamma,

before going off to be a soldier

Turiddu had sworn

eternal faith to Lola.

He returned, found her married,

and with a new love

wanted to quench the fire

that burned in his heart.

He loved me. I loved him.



She, that envier of any joy of mine,

forgetting her husband,

burning with jealousy,

snatched him from me.

Here I am stripped of my honor.

Lola and Turiddu are lovers.

I weep. I weep.



MAMMA LUCIA: Mercy on us, what on earth

have you just told me,

on this blessed day?

SANTUZZA: I'm damned. I'm damned.

Go, Mamma, to implore God,

and pray for me.

Turiddu will be coming.

I want to plead with him

yet one more time.

MAMMA LUCIA [going toward the church]: Help her, Blessed Mary.

[for texts see above]

Let's listen to the opening of the recording, bearing in mind that tenor Beniamino Gigli had turned 50 the month before. He still had a lot of singing years left in him; this is the case of a lyric tenor who did much if not most of his singing in the heavier-weight spinto- and dramatic-tenor repertory, and by this time there wasn't much lyric ease or plush left in the voice -- and once it was gone (and time would surely have taken it from him anyway), he didn't have to worry about preserving it anymore.It's sometimes suggested that Mascagni was just too old when he made the commercial recording, and it's certainly true that he was no longer the same young man who created the opera 50 years earlier. However, while it's admittedly only a couple of years earlier than the recording, in the live performance from The Hague from which we've already heard excerpts, he took pretty similar tempos.And when Leonard Bernstein undertookat the Met, when Franco Zeffirelli's still-in-useproduction was new in 1970 -- pointedly conductingthe Mascagni opera and not Leoncavallo's, which was entrusted to the conventionally dependable, and dependably conventional, Fausto Cleva -- he took a similar approach.Far more typical of opera-house rough handling is this excerpt from a performance we're going to be returning to in this post, routinely but energetically conducted by the aforementioned Fausto Cleva but featuring some quite out-of-the-ordinary singing by Irene Dalis (a fine singer who didn't get nearly her due; we haven't had a dramatic mezzo anywhere near her worth in a long while) and Barry Morell (who, to be honest, I never heard otherwise do any singing on this level -- he really did an afternoon's work that Saturday). Please note that the source for this performance is at quite a high volume level, which I didn't succeed in taming even in the couple of excerpts I edited.This, you recall, is the little scene in which Santuzza tries to find out from Turiddu's mother where he is. That moment I love so much, Santuzza's "Mamma Lucia, I beg you, weeping," comes at 2:16 of our clip today, and after Mamma Lucia's "Enter" (at 3:16), Santa's heart-rending cry of "I'm excommunicated, I'm excommunicated" comes at 3:26.The above dialogue between Santuzza and Mamma Lucia is interrupted, you'll recall, by the music announcing the entrance of the teamster Alfio, who mentions in his energetic song that when he finishes his rounds he returns home to "Lola." A "Lola," again you'll recall, is the woman to whom our offstage tenor sang his seductive "" in the Prelude.It's Francis Ford Coppola's "highly dramatic (or literally melodramatic) use (or more accurately abuse) [in] of the great Easter service, which provides a backdrop for the film's climactic serial bloodbath," that forms the basis for my complaint about what he did with, or to, the opera. As I wrote:In this excerpt from the composer's 1938 Hague performance, the moment I love, when the organ first sounds, preparing us for the beginning of the Easter service inside the church (with the singing of the "), occurs at 3:07. I know we've heard the Easter hymn -- with the "" (at 3:36 of our clip) being sung inside the church and the villagers still outside singing, "Let us celebrate in hymn that our Lord isn't dead." But we're going to hear the scene beginning with the "" once more, because this is, remember, our starting point -- my extreme discontent with the trashing inflicted on the opera by Coppola in[from "" only]Once the churchgoers have dispersed, Mamma Lucia asks Santuzza why she silenced her when Alfio pointed out that Turiddu is still in the village, having been seen near his house last night. On only one point does it seem to me that Santuzza is to be mistrusted here, but unfortunately it's the one that's most important to her: her belief that Turiddu loved her. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of this. Rather she seems to have been a convenient outlet for his urges when he came back from the army and found his beloved Lola married.Sure enough, Turiddu makes his belated Easter appearance, and Santuzza demonstrates the sadly human inability to believe an ex-lover when he says it's over. By and large, when one party has been as emphatic about the overness as Turiddu, it's only a deludedly overactive imagination on the other party's part which allows for any other possibility.We're hearing just the later part of this climactic confrontation, including Santa's desperate final plea to Turiddu stay with her (""), for which you'll recognize we've already heard the music in the Prelude. It would be hard to imagine four Santuzzas more unlike, vocally and dramatically. than Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Victoria de los Angeles, and Irene Dalis, but in their very different ways I think they communicate masterfully the character's desperation and desolation. As for the Turiddus, Jussi Bjoerling's technical mastery and vocal magic camouflage the fact that his tenor is underweight for the role -- as is Giuseppe di Stefano's, perhaps by natural endowment even more beautiful than Bjoerling's, though his already-evident tendency to vocal pushing and heaving conceals the vocal underendowment less well. The role really asks for something like Franco Corelli's gleaming dramatic-weight tenor. At least on this Saturday afternoon Barry Morell sounds uncannily like the genuine article.Giuseppe di Stefano (t), Turiddu;Unfortunately for Turiddu, at this very moment who should happen along but the gentleman he's cuckolding, Alfio? I know to some people this sounds like a coincidence that reeks of the "operatic." To me it seems like pretty much the way life works a lot of the time -- timing counts for a lot. In these circumstances, is it surprising that Santa does, well, what she does? Which is to tell Alfio what he's probably just about the last person in the village to know: what's going on between his wife and Turiddu.Of course the clock is ticking for Turiddu in any case. How long do you suppose it would be before Alfio found out otherwise? And do you suppose he would be any more, er,then? I'm estimating that Santuzza's untimely revelation merely shortens Turiddu's life by a week -- or maybe two at the outside.Oh, there's lots more to happen. By a rotten stroke of luck for Turiddu, who should happen along at this very moment but Alfio? And given the state Santuzza's in, she can't stop herself from doing a nasty thing: spilling the beans to the cuckolded husband. My contention, though, is that she only shortens Turiddu's life by maybe a week, tops. In a village this small, how long can Lola and Turiddu's secret remain a secret? Especially since we know that Alfio already knows Turiddu has been hanging around his house.Then in the opera's second scene we'll have the public celebration that feature's Turiddu's drinking song, and Alfio's confrontation with Turiddu, and Turiddu's tipsy farewell to his puzzled mother, followed shortly by the spreading word that Turiddu has been killed. But I think we'll take our leave where we came in, with the Intermezzo.